by Randy Singer
The two women separated and tried to wipe away their tears. Kristen introduced Paige to the others as “Patrick’s girlfriend,” and Paige learned that the widows of two other men who had died that night were also in the house. Most of the men were drinking in the kitchen, and the women were hanging out in the living room. The air was heavy with a mixture of unspoken sorrow, resolve, and a game attempt to put on a brave face. These were SEALs and the families of SEALs. They could not flinch even in the face of death.
Paige overheard the men telling stories about their buddies, the combat missions and the pranks, the fallen men already being lionized into legendary status. Some of the SEALs were playing with the kids, especially the boys, doing everything they could to keep them distracted. The women were assuring Kristen and the other widows that they would never be left alone, that the team members would be there for Kristen’s sons, that if she ever needed anything done around the house, all she had to do was ask.
For her part, Paige mostly listened, sipping quietly on a Coke. She had never experienced a community like this—so close, so free with one another, bonds that came from facing danger together. It was something beyond loyalty, the threads of individual lives woven together into a tapestry even tighter than family blood.
Yet Paige felt like she was on the outside looking in. Everyone was kind to her and quick with a story about Patrick, but she knew instinctively that she wasn’t really part of this community. She was a girlfriend—not even a fiancée and certainly not a wife. Without anyone saying a word, or even hinting at it, there was a sense in the room that she would be able to move on and find another man. But the three widows in the house would forever be part of this community, gold-star families who would be linked to the SEALs for life.
The house quieted dramatically at eleven o’clock, when the president began her speech. Men leaned against the walls and doorjambs, sipping their beers, the living room crowded. A few of the moms took the kids into the back bedrooms. Paige found a place next to Kristen, sitting on the floor.
President Hamilton was grim-faced and to the point. She sat behind her desk in the Oval Office, the American flag and president’s flag flanking her. She told the nation that her heart was heavy with the news she had to bear.
She explained that American journalist Cameron Holloman and an innocent member of the Saudi royal family had been falsely accused of espionage in Yemen. They had been arrested by Houthi rebels and sentenced for execution without even a hearing, much less a full-blown trial.
“It was,” the president said, “an intentional and blatant violation of international law and a direct insult to American and Saudi sovereignty.” The president explained that diplomatic channels had failed and that, as a last resort, she had authorized a Special Forces team to free the innocent prisoners.
“Unfortunately,” she said, her eyes unblinking as she stared at the camera, “the mission did not succeed. Resistance was heavy. Even though our brave men fought with the courage and skill of the best forces in the world, they were eventually overcome by resistance that outnumbered them at least ten to one. We lost twenty of our bravest warriors in the conflict, men who loved their country and believed in our mission of freedom. It is estimated that more than a hundred and fifty Houthi rebels were killed in the firefight.”
The president paused, and it seemed she was struggling to keep her composure. Her lip trembled ever so slightly before she began again. Nobody in the Anderson living room moved. The only sound was the muted noise of the children in the bedrooms.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the brave men who gave their lives in an attempt to save others. I take full responsibility for this action. The decision to send in this team and protect the life of a fellow American was mine and mine alone. Tonight I am demanding that the Houthis call off the scheduled executions and return both Cameron Holloman and Abdullah Fahd bin Abdulaziz to their home countries. I am also demanding that the Houthis return the remains of our service members so that we might properly mourn them and provide a measure of closure for the families.”
“Screw that,” one of the SEALs said. “They should never have been left.”
Paige watched as the man walked back into the kitchen with his beer, trailed by a few of his buddies, mumbling curses at the president. There had been rumors circulating earlier that the president had called off a large force of SEALs and Delta Force members sent to extract the bodies and finish off the remaining rebels. None of the men and women gathered that night had made any effort to hide their disdain for the commander in chief.
The air was tense as the president continued. She said the nation would mourn but that America would also exact justice. “We cannot shrink back. The lives of these men demand more. America, by the grace of God, does not possess a spirit of fear. Ours is a spirit of justice, of freedom, and of a resolute mind. We will not rest until justice is served.”
Though she felt the resentment in the room, Paige could not be mad at the woman. The president had taken full responsibility and then articulated values that Paige embraced. Sure, the president was older and more liberal than Paige. But like Paige, the president had started her career in law enforcement. She understood the pain of victims and the righteous pursuit of justice. Paige trusted her. At the right time, in the right way, she would hold the Houthis accountable.
After the president finished, an awkward silence settled over the room. Eventually, in fits and starts, conversations broke out. There was a lot of speculation about whether the Houthis would go forward with the planned executions and, if so, what America’s response would be. Not surprisingly, there was a consensus among the men that the response should be swift, forceful, and heavily dependent on the Special Forces.
Less than thirty minutes later, Paige decided it was time to leave. She hugged the Anderson boys, her heart wrenched by the thought that they would never again wrestle with their daddy. She embraced Kristen one last time in the front hallway. After the hug, she tried to think of words to express the emotions bubbling up inside her. But there was nothing she could say.
Instead, she thanked Kristen for including her.
“Patrick loved you,” Kristen said. “That makes you family.”
19
The next morning, Paige lay in bed for a long time, her eyes open, sorrow and loneliness pressing her into the mattress. Even after the Ambien, she had slept fitfully and woke with a twisted stomach, the sadness sweeping over her as soon as she opened her eyes. He was gone. He was never coming back.
Patrick had not been shy about his faith, and Paige tried to tell herself that he was in a better place. On one of their last dates, when Paige had expressed concerns about Patrick’s safety during his deployment, he had brushed it off. “Believe it or not, God is in control of the Mideast, too. He won’t let anything happen to me before my time. And if I die . . .” He had shrugged as if that, too, was fine by him.
“Don’t talk that way,” Paige had said.
“Paul said that to live is Christ and to die is gain. I’m just saying—that’s the way I look at it too.”
“Can we not talk about it?”
From that point on, Patrick had gone out of his way to assure Paige that he would be fine—a cruise in the Med at taxpayer expense.
As she thought about him, tears rolled out of her eyes and down her face, soaking her hair and pillow. There were so many regrets. That last night together, shutting down the talk about marriage. Why hadn’t she just said yes? She had hurt him, though he had tried not to show it.
One more day. She would give anything for just one more day.
Eventually she forced herself out of bed and made a cup of coffee. She felt heavy and sluggish, her body weighed down with grief, her chest literally hurting from so much sobbing the night before. She still couldn’t believe this had happened. And the honest truth was that she didn’t care if her own life went on or not.
She tried praying, but it seemed pointless now. She had pra
yed for Patrick’s safety, and then he had died. The God she had given her life to as a child—the one who had walked the earth and healed the lame and come back from the dead—felt so distant now. Yet this thin and frayed strand of faith was the only thing that gave her any hope—the thought that she would see Patrick again someday.
She checked her phone and saw a text from Kristen. Are you up? Don’t turn on the TV. They’re showing bodies. Troy’s and Q’s were destroyed by bombs.
But like the rest of America, Paige could not look away. Sitting in her pajamas on the couch, she tuned in to CNN. The anchors were discussing the botched raid, interviewing a Republican congressman who put all the blame at the feet of the president. Within minutes, they were showing grainy footage of the bodies of sixteen SEALs hanging in the bombed-out ruins of the Sana’a Central Prison yard. The Houthis had removed the men’s helmets and night goggles and left them hanging by the neck in full uniform, their bodies rotting in the desert sun.
It nearly made Paige vomit even though the news feed was careful to show the images at a distance so the viewers could not see the faces of the men.
“The president has promised an appropriate response,” the congressman was saying. “But she missed her opportunity. She called off a second response force that would have retrieved the bodies of our servicemen. Nobody who does that is fit to be commander in chief.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Philip Kilpatrick was an adrenaline junkie who loved chaos, but even he had never seen anything quite like this. The White House was a flurry of activity the day after the failed raid. Like the president, Kilpatrick had slept only a few hours. Details of the raid were trickling out, though the press had still not caught wind of the cardboard cutout of President Hamilton inside the Sana’a prison cell, placed there by the Houthis to mock the Americans.
For its part, the White House had released statements and sent the president’s spokesperson out to talk with the media. It was a stalling maneuver while the president worked the phones with American allies and held high-level meetings in the Situation Room. The administration had a plan in place, but they would have to weather this day first.
The president’s critics took to the airwaves and second-guessed both her decision to send in the assault team and her decision to call off the QRF. But the criticism was mixed with a heavy dose of rhetoric about the country standing together. With the bodies of American SEALs hanging in the prison yard, the public was in no mood for politics as usual.
At 4:00 p.m., the president and Kilpatrick stepped into the Oval Office, where their two guests were waiting. Admiral Paul Towers and his young and gung ho chief of staff, Daniel Reese, had just flown in from Saudi Arabia. They both stood, snapped to attention, and saluted.
The president returned the salute, and everyone took seats in front of the fireplace.
Towers looked exhausted. He had dark circles under his eyes and a weariness on his face that seemed to go bone-deep. Kilpatrick found it ironic that the legendary Towers, known for being an iron man who survived on little or no sleep, looked more haggard than the president.
“I think you know why I called this meeting,” President Hamilton said, her legs crossed, forearms resting on the arms of her chair, her voice calm and authoritative. “After a lot of soul-searching, I have asked General Simpson and Director Marcano to remove you from command for tonight’s activities. Your behavior last night bordered on insubordination.”
“I followed your orders, Madam President,” Towers said.
“But not without questioning them first. And not without making it clear that you had lost confidence in my leadership.”
“The orders were a mistake,” Towers said bluntly. “Those bodies should be home right now. Instead, they’re being desecrated by our enemies.”
Kilpatrick saw the steel in the president’s eyes. He knew the president expected some sort of apology, but Towers was as belligerent as ever.
“I’ve heard that after I called you back for this meeting, you told some of your officers what I could do with that request. Is that true?” the president asked.
“That would appear to be accurate, Madam President.”
“Do you care to explain?”
“I think it’s self-explanatory.”
The man wasn’t going to make this easy. As Kilpatrick sat there, watching this extraordinary exchange, he knew that the strength of the country depended on men like Towers, men who would never back down, who brooked no compromise. But he also knew that the president would not tolerate it.
She let the silence hang for a moment, a stare-down of sorts between the president and one of her top commanders. “I’m asking for your resignation, Admiral Towers. You are a gunslinger, sir, and we don’t need gunslingers calling the shots for our Special Forces. I believe that your arrogance was at least partially responsible for last night’s fiasco.”
Towers started to protest but she cut him off. “Let me finish,” she insisted. “We should have sent in a much larger force. We should have at least called in the Quick Response Force as soon as we knew they had more men in those towers than we first anticipated. You think your men are invincible, Admiral, and last night it cost us.”
“Permission to speak freely,” Towers said.
“You’ve never needed my permission before, but go ahead.”
“The mission was appropriately planned,” Towers snapped. “The intelligence was seriously flawed. You should be having this conversation with Director Marcano, not me. He cost those men their lives. His agency should be held accountable. My men performed honorably and followed the mission with integrity.”
Towers’s face, tanned and wrinkled from the desert sun, was a deep shade of scarlet now. It was clear to Kilpatrick that there would be no reasoning with him—the same traits that made him such a confident commander would sink him now.
The president must have sensed it too, because she responded in a softer, more conciliatory tone. “Paul, I want to give you an honorable way out. Your service has been extraordinary. But I can’t leave you in command when you denigrate this office and publicly criticize your commander in chief. I’m asking you to submit your resignation from your current post. I’ll see to it that you’re reassigned to something befitting your record. But if you don’t resign, I’ll have no choice but to have General Simpson relieve you of your command and put you at a desk job pushing paper.”
Towers rose, and Daniel Reese hopped up with him. The admiral stood ramrod straight and looked over the president’s head as he spoke. “I will not resign, Madam President. I cannot do that to my men.”
She stood as well and let out a sigh. “Very well,” she said. “You’ll be hearing from General Simpson.”
Towers and Reese saluted, waited for the salute to be returned, then pivoted and left the room.
20
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA
Paige spent all day Friday trying to get a grip on her emotions. She called her mother, but the conversation was awkward and stilted. The two women had grown far apart over the years, and a boyfriend’s death wasn’t going to fix it.
Her friends brought food and drink and sat with Paige in her dark condo. She had the shades pulled and the overhead lights off, lamps throwing shadows across her living room. It was a cloudy day, but Paige wasn’t about to let one of the few rays of sunlight break through the windows.
Mostly she just wanted to be alone. Finally, late in the afternoon, she said it to them bluntly. She couched it in apologies, of course, because she didn’t want to hurt her friends’ feelings. After they left and quietness descended, she immediately regretted sending them away.
Between crying spells and rereading Patrick’s old text messages and after prayers that brought more questions than comfort, Paige sat on the couch and surfed through the news channels. The talking heads rehashed the same story from the night before, over and over, wondering when the president might speak again and address the mess she had created in the Middle East
. There were unconfirmed rumors that she had fired the commanding officer of JSOC, an outspoken former SEAL named Paul Towers. The networks ran old footage of the admiral, a thin and determined-looking man wearing khakis, strolling among the troops. The blame for the botched mission was apparently being laid at his feet.
Some of the commentators didn’t think that was fair. John Marcano, the bookish head of the CIA, did not have a lot of media fans. Sources close to the situation were reporting that he was in the hot seat as well. Faulty CIA intelligence had cost the lives of twenty good men.
All of it was just noise to Paige, making her angrier and more frustrated by the minute. The president and her cabinet had already shifted into blame mode, and none of it was going to bring Patrick back.
It was almost midnight when the breaking news scrolled across the bottom of her screen. U.S. Special Forces had conducted another nighttime raid and had successfully retrieved the bodies of the dead SEALs. This time, the U.S. had used overwhelming force. There were no reported casualties for the Americans and more than two hundred Houthi rebels confirmed dead. The president would be holding a press conference at nine on Easter morning.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Philip Kilpatrick stood to the side of the stage, his arms crossed in satisfaction, watching the press conference unfold. This was President Amanda Hamilton at her best. She confirmed reports from Friday night that the bodies of the SEALs had been recovered. The mission had involved air attacks followed by a Special Forces team of more than 120 SEALs and Delta Force members inserted at various positions around Sana’a Central Prison. The American forces, supported by targeted drone strikes, had converged on the prison yard and retrieved the bodies of their fallen brothers.
Hamilton stood to her full five feet ten inches, her jaw jutting forward, eyes blazing. Many criminal defense lawyers had tested this woman’s mettle and regretted doing so. And now, representing the greatest country in the world, President Hamilton was warning the Houthi rebels not to do the same.
