The Protector

by Marliss Melton

  Upon his return four months ago, he’d been amazed to see over sixty shops thriving in the downtown area, as well as a bustling market. Afghani forces patrolled the streets hoping to dissuade the re-infiltration of insurgents, but no one could tell militants from farmers when they kept their guns hidden under their tunics.

  Signaling his squad to wait, Ike queried his senses like a vine sending out tendrils. The cold air smelled of hard-packed dirt and stale sewage. An empty can rolled past their feet. In the distance a dog howled.

  The intelligence supplied by the FBI had proven flawless in the beginning. Ike’s squad had surprised half a dozen Taliban—former students of the Teacher, Farshad—within weeks of their arrival. But as weeks turned to months, the remaining few got harder to find, leapfrogging from one village to another. The last man they’d cornered had shot himself in the head before they could lay hold of him. That meant only one thing: the insurgents were expecting them, and that was never good.

  Sliding along the wall of a vacated building, Ike stole a peek at the next street over. The night-vision-enhanced visor on his helmet showed a wavering light shining in a second story window just across the street. The rest of the block appeared deserted. Their target had taken refuge in what had once been a hospital on the outskirts of Naw Zad.

  Ike’s thoughts flashed to an image of Eryn getting her chin stitched at the clinic in Georgetown. How bizarre that her world and this one had intersected the day that Farshad took her hostage in the RV.

  Yanking his thoughts back to present time, he glanced at his watch. They had twenty minutes in which to reconnoiter the building and determine their points of entry. With the capture of the last of Farshad’s students, the movement being dubbed The New Face of Terror would die out before it ever gained momentum, sparing the families of military leaders from the horror Eryn had endured.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of her, even though she’d ordered him not to. He risked his life every day for two reasons: to honor his fallen teammates and to make certain Eryn never lived in fear ever again. She might not be waiting for him. But this was all worthwhile, providing they got the job done right.

  So focus, damn it.

  Turning to his men, Ike conveyed his sighting with a series of hand signals, adding that he would take point. Typically, Rogue, who was small and light on his feet, went first. But the uneasiness that prickled Ike’s nape urged him to assume the greatest risk. The others were younger, less experienced.

  Under the watchful eye of Rogue, Ivy, and Jones, he darted in a crouch across the road, hurtling a pothole left by aerial cannon fire. Rats, startled by his approach, squealed and scattered. The fact that they were here at all meant the pile of garbage stacked against the building was fresh.

  Ike spared the reeking pile a cursory glance. As he shouldered his weapon and raised a hand to signal Rogue over, a sudden foreboding yanked his scalp tight. He glanced back at the trash a second time, signaled for Rogue to halt.

  Plastic and bottles and boxes of broken glass had been carefully piled one atop the other. Too carefully. It was as if someone had meant to cover up a...Fuck! With a warning cry, he started to run.

  He felt the hot blast of the improvised explosive device before he heard it. At the same time, the air seemed to shatter around him. He felt his left eardrum rupture. Wump! The explosion sounded dull and hollow.

  He became aware that he was hurtling through the air. Oh, shit, murmured a calm, emotionless voice just before a cinderblock wall, lit up by the explosion’s flare, slammed into his face.

  **

  As Jackson pulled his sleek Nissan GT-R along the curb, Eryn noted the brightly lit windows on both levels of her townhouse and wondered why her father was still up.

  Jackson set the handbrake but kept the engine running. Heat poured out of the vents to ward off the February chill. In the six months they’d been friends, he’d kept his word about just hanging out. The fact that her father still lived with her might have deterred him.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, sending him a strained smile. “That was fun.” They’d taken his eleven-year-old daughter to the Pentagon Row Ice Skating Plaza. Naomi Maddox had clung to Eryn’s hand all evening—when she wasn’t pushing Eryn into her father in an obvious effort to spark romance.

  Angling his head to see her better, Jackson searched her expression. “What’s wrong, Eryn? Something’s bothering you.”

  With a sigh, she eyed the naked elms that lined her street. When the trees sprouted leaves again, Ike would be back from Afghanistan. At least, that was what her father had told her. “We can’t do this anymore, Jackson,” she decided. “It isn’t fair to Naomi. It isn’t fair to you.”

  He sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “We’re just friends, Eryn,” he said tiredly.

  “Naomi needs more than that. You saw her tonight. She needs a mother.”

  Bowing his shaved head, he kept quiet.

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, touching his coat sleeve.

  He forced a smile. “Don’t be. I guess I’m still hoping Colleen will come back, the way Calhoun will.”

  “Oh, Jackson.” Twisting in her seat, she gave him a swift hug. “I wish I could make it better.”

  He kissed her forehead. “It’s okay. I’m okay, Eryn. Don’t worry about me.”

  She drew away, searching his stoic features for signs of suicidal thoughts. “We can still be friends,” she offered. “Just keep an eye out for the right woman, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Good night, Jackson.” Pushing out of his low-slung sports car, she gave one last wave and rushed through the frigid air toward her door.

  As she mounted the stoop, the memory of Ike’s forehead against her chest made her eyes sting. She wriggled her key into the lock, only to find the door unbolted.

  Behind her, Jackson’s engine roared and receded. As she stepped inside, her father emerged from the living room. One look at his haggard expression and she felt the blood drain from her face. “What happened?”

  He approached her slowly, put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s Ike,” he said, somberly. “He was hurt.”

  Her house keys fell to the hardwood floor with a chink. “How hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I got the news an hour ago. He was caught by an IED.”

  “Oh, God.” A vision of Ike looking like Anthony Spellman sprang into her head.

  “They’re transporting him to Lanstuhl, Germany.”

  Dark blotches obscured her vision. The hallway began to spin. Feeling herself fall, she groped for her father’s shirt. Her last thought as she felt him catch her was that she’d end up empty and alone, just like Jackson.

  **

  “Excuse me,” called a doctor, intercepting their march down the hospital corridor. “Only family members are admitted into ICU. Who are you?”

  “I’m General McClellan.” The Commander’s tone conveyed the importance of his rank. “This is my daughter, Eryn. We’re here to see Isaac Calhoun.”

  The doctor looked unimpressed. “Are you family?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t go in.”

  “Please,” Eryn begged. “We just flew all the way from the

  States. Can’t you make an exception?”

  “No exceptions.”

  “Do you realize who I am?” Her father’s thundering question caused the staff at the nurses’ station to freeze and look at them.

  The doctor’s lips curled. “Rules are rules. Plus, I’m a civilian contractor,” he added with a mocking lift of his eyebrows.

  “How’s Ike doing? Can you tell us that?” Eryn pleaded. “He’s the Navy SEAL brought in from Afghanistan.”

  The doctor thought for a moment, glancing down the hallway toward ICU. “Oh, yes. Well, he’s got a serious concussion, shrapnel wounds, and second degree burns. There may also be some spinal issues, but it’s too soon to tell. The good news is that he is responsive.”

  “What...what does
that mean?” A clammy sweat breached her skin. “What’s his prognosis?”

  “Our most immediate concern is that he’ll slip into a coma and not come out. Right now his odds are fifty-fifty,” said the doctor dispassionately. “If he remains responsive, those odds will improve.”

  She felt like she might faint again. Fifty-fifty?

  Her father put an arm around her as she sagged against him. Ike. She had to see him. She had to.

  “I’m sorry,” said the doctor with scant sympathy. “If you’d like to pray with a chaplain, there’s one around here somewhere.”

  Her father perked up. “Chaplain. Yes, we would,” he declared. “Find him for us, would you?”

  Rolling his eyes at the General’s heavy-handedness, the doctor nonetheless turned to do his bidding. Eryn pulled back to send her father a questioning look. He squeezed her shoulder, enjoining her to keep quiet until the doctor disappeared.

  “Daddy, what are you planning?” she whispered.

  He looked down with a twinkle in his eyes. “I have an idea,” he admitted, “and I don’t want to hear any protests.”

  “What kind of idea?”

  “Trust me, it’s the best thing for both of you,” he said. Pulling her closer, he whispered his idea into her ear.

  Eryn gasped. “That’s awful! We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Her father didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “The doctor said he was responsive. If he doesn’t want to do it, he’ll find a way to say no.”

  “And how humiliating will that be?” she cried.

  Stanley’s mouth split into a grin. “Not at all,” he promised, “because I know that boy, Eryn. He’ll marry you in a heartbeat.”

  It took twenty minutes to persuade the Marine Corps chaplain to do the honors, in secret without the doctor’s knowledge. Stanley’s threat to make or break his career had ultimately ensured the man’s cooperation.

  “Who’ll sign the register?” asked the chaplain in a final bid to escape the plot.

  Stanley waved a piece of paper under his nose. “Calhoun named me his agent when he rejoined the military. If he can’t sign it, I will.”

  With a grimace of resignation, the balding chaplain escorted them down the hall toward ICU. Peeking around a corner, he waited for a doctor to disappear into surgery before darting across the hall and waving them furtively through a closed door.

  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered, leaving them alone.

  Eryn looked around. They stood in a gently lit room jammed with instruments and monitors that bleeped and whirred and pulsed. A blanketed figure lay strapped to a gurney surrounded by half a dozen instruments attached to him via wires and tubes. Ike? His neck was encased in a thick brace.

  She willed her weak knees to carry her closer. Shock had her clutching the cold metal railing as she realized how much of him was swathed in white gauze. Looking past the bandages and the tubes conveying oxygen to his nostrils, she recognized the firm contours of his mouth and jaw, so dearly familiar that a sob escaped her throat. Oh, Ike!

  She bent over him, assailed by a sweet, medicinal odor that smelled alien on him. The un-bandaged portion of his face was red and swollen, his eye blackened, but thankfully not disfigured. Lowering her mouth to his one good ear, she murmured to him. “Ike, honey, it’s Eryn. I’m here. I came to be with you.”

  His lashes flickered, but his eyes remained shut.

  That’s responsive? Reaching for the hand that lay atop the blankets, she laced her fingers through his and was reassured by his warmth. “Can you hear me, Ike?”

  There was no mistaking the slow curling of his fingers. Tears flooded Eryn’s eyes. She looked up at her father, who now stood at the foot of the bed. “He heard me.” Then she bent over Ike again. “You’re going to be okay, love. You’re going to make it.” He had to. Fifty-fifty odds were nothing for a man like Ike, a man who’d defied the odds from the day he graduated SEAL training.

  “Ask him,” Stanley prompted, glancing at the door. “We don’t have much time.”

  Eryn hesitated. She wasn’t comfortable with forcing marriage down Ike’s throat. What if he didn’t want to marry her? After all, he’d chosen returning to the service over staying with her. What made her think he felt differently now?

  On the other hand, she’d be sick if she were told to get away from him now and to stay away till he was out of ICU. “Ike, honey, I need to ask you a favor,” she began, speaking slowly and clearly in his ear. “Dad and I aren’t allowed to be here. Only family can come in. But Dad suggested...that if you and I got married, here and now, then we could stay and visit you till you’re all better.”

  She searched his impassive face for any sign of panic or revulsion. “I never thought I’d be the one to do this, but...would you marry me, Ike? I understand if you don’t want to, but things have changed with you being injured and all. So, tell me by squeezing my hand, okay? One squeeze means, yes; two means—”

  He squeezed her hand, once, so quickly she had to wonder if he understood what she was asking.

  “What’d he say?” her father demanded.

  “He squeezed once. I think he said yes. Was that a yes, Ike?”

  He squeezed her hand again, harder, slower. That was definitely a yes. Her heart tripled in size. She laughed out loud, half joyous, half scared.

  The door squeaked open, curtailing her outburst. To her relief, it was just the chaplain, slipping into the room with two nurses, one of whom set a vase of daisies on Ike’s beside table. “We’re the witnesses,” she explained with a conspiratorial smile.

  “Let’s get this over with,” said the chaplain, who was visibly sweating. He cracked open a liturgical book and started reading. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the presence of friends and family...”

  Suddenly, Ike’s eyes opened. Eryn gave a startled cry, and the chaplain paused before continuing the rite at double the cadence. His words seemed to fade into the distance as Eryn leaned over, trying to catch Ike’s eye, only his gaze remained fixed and staring.

  Suddenly, the chaplain was addressing her. “Will you, Eryn McClellan, take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, for as long as you both shall live?”

  Never had that familiar, lengthy question seemed so loaded. Ike’s chances for survival were grim. He was in danger of slipping into a coma. His injuries might well leave him cognitively impaired. And here she was linking her future with his. Was she crazy? Then again, was any bride ever guaranteed happily ever after? No. Not one.

  But she could guarantee him unconditional love, something Ike had probably never experienced, not even as a boy. Whether his life lasted just hours or for decades, she would love him with all her heart.

  “I will,” she said with conviction. One of the nurses sniffled.

  Just then, the door swung open and they all swiveled in alarm. There stood the doctor, bristling with indignation. “What the hell is going on in here?” he demanded.

  The chaplain’s face turned seven shades of red. Ignoring the interruption, he plowed forward with the service. “And will you, Isaac Calhoun, take this woman to be your wife, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, for as long as you both shall live?”

  All eyes flew to Ike’s hand while Ike stared fixedly at the ceiling.

  “This is absurd. The patient can’t speak!” shouted the doctor.

  “Wait,” implored one of the nurses.

  The only sounds were that of the heart monitor racing at a strong, steady trot, the oxygen machine whirring, and the muted lights overhead buzzing quietly. With the breath locked in her lungs, Eryn waited for Ike’s tanned, powerful hand to signal his decision.

  Come on, Ike. Say yes. Let me be here for you.

  At last, he enclosed her fingers in a sure, powerful grip that showed no sign of easing up, ever.

  “That’s a yes!” her
father announced, shooting a triumphant grin at the speechless, outraged doctor.

  “Then, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I declare you both husband and wife!” the chaplain finished quickly, making a sign of the cross in the air.

  The nurses turned and hugged each other. General McClellan went to sign the marriage register on Ike’s behalf. The doctor threw up his hands and left without another word.