Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  The old lady just held her tightly. She didn’t try to lie to her. “Yes, I’m sure she is.”

  Amy glanced across the room at Maram and Umar, fear in her eyes, then whispered even more softly. “Is she going to come for us and save us?”

  “I know she would if she could. But I don’t know if she can.” The old lady looked directly at him, obviously aware that he was listening to everything they were saying. “Do you want me to tell more of the story?”

  Amy nodded, her head tucked close to her greatgrandmother’s skinny breast.

  “So there they were,” the old lady continued, a little bit louder now. He didn’t have to strain quite so much to hear her. “Over a quarter of a million British soldiers. Stranded in Dunkirk, France. Separated from their homeland by the English Channel.”

  A quarter of a million . . . He translated the expression into his own language and . . . A quarter of a million was a lot of men.

  “Now, the British navy was in something of a bind,” she said, “because no one had anticipated France would fall to the Germans so quickly. There weren’t enough ships to move all those men back to safety across that channel of water. And it didn’t take long for the Luftwaffe to completely bomb all of the piers in Dunkirk’s harbor. The water was shallow there, and the few large naval ships that were available couldn’t get close enough to fetch the men. So the navy began appropriating all sorts of small boats. Ferries and fishing vessels. Navy officials came knocking on doors all up and down the coast of England, informing people that their boats were now a part of the British navy.

  “Once the word got out, all across England anyone who owned a small boat—pleasure yachts, dinghies, rowboats, truly anything that could float—gathered in Ramsgate Harbor to help save our boys in the BEF from certain death. That harbor was right down the lane from where I lived. So I went, too. I was only sixteen, and I was a girl to boot, but I took my stepmother’s yacht—she was called the Daisy Chain and she could fit twenty-five people comfortably, fifty squeezed in tight and low in the water. I took the Daisy Chain into Ramsgate with all the others.

  “It was remarkable, Amy. I’d never seen so many boats—the little ships, they called us—in one place before. We were an amazing motley armada. But we were determined to bring our boys home.

  “I’d really only meant to bring the Daisy Chain into Ramsgate and turn her over to the navy, but there were no extra men to take her across to France, so . . .”

  “You tucked your hair up under your hat.” Amy gazed up into her great-grandmother’s eyes.

  Maram must have lost the fight to lazy Umar because she stomped up the stairs. He could hear her slam a door shut.

  Amy and her Nana would live at least until tomorrow.

  Amy’s Nana heard the door slam, too, but she only glanced briefly at him before returning her attention to the little girl. “Good thing I didn’t have hair like yours.” She tugged gently on one of Amy’s curls.

  “Your hair was blond and so beautiful. Mommy says you used to look like a movie star.”

  The old lady batted her eyelashes. “Don’t I still?”

  “Yes.” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but there it was. Now she knew for sure he was listening.

  She didn’t seem to mind. Instead she gave him another one of those dignified smiles. “Thank you, sir.”

  Sir. He could count the number of times anyone had ever called him sir on the fingers of one hand.

  “I’m Eve,” she told him, as if they were meeting at a party. “And this is Amy, my great-granddaughter.”

  He glanced over, but Umar, Khatib, and Gulzar had gone into the kitchen and turned on the TV.

  It was starting to drive him mad, the incessant yapping of the commercials and talk shows. “Turn it down,” he bellowed.

  Umar shouted back, telling him to attempt the anatomically impossible. But the volume went down a little—no doubt thanks to Khatib.

  “What’s your name?” the old lady, Eve, asked him.

  He looked toward the kitchen, but he was definitely alone in the room. He knew he shouldn’t be talking to them. He should keep them silent. But with the TV on, Umar, Khatib, and Gulzar would never hear.

  He’d always loved the stories his grandfather had told—of fighting the Nazis with Tito in the mountains of Yugoslavia, and he wanted to hear how this story ended. It wasn’t possible that a quarter of a million men had been taken across the English Channel by an armada of small boats. They might’ve saved a few thousand, sure, but . . .

  “I’m called the Bear,” he told them, hoping he wouldn’t get onto Maram’s blacklist for admitting that.

  “I’m afraid I can’t say pleased to meet you, Mr. Bear—for obvious reasons,” Eve told him. She looked down at Amy. “Where were we?”

  “You tucked your hair up under your hat.”

  “That’s right.” She gave the Bear another smile. “This is her very favorite part. I’d learned to navigate the Daisy Chain the summer before, so I gave her full throttle and made the crossing myself. Now, I’ve made that channel crossing many times, but—and I’m awfully glad to say it—I’ve never made a crossing quite like that, before or since then.

  “There were mines in the channel—too deep to do any damage to the Daisy Chain, but that didn’t stop the larger ships from being blown to kingdom come. German U-boats—submarines—were out in force, as well. Again, they didn’t target us small potatoes. But the Luftwaffe—they were a different story. They bombed and strafed—shot at—the men waiting on the beaches, and us, as well, as we approached. But not one of the little ships around me turned back. Not a one.

  “As we approached, we could see the smoke from the battle. Dunkirk was burning, and it looked as if all of France were on fire.”

  He could picture her behind the wheel of a boat, chin held high as she sailed into a smoky storm of bullets and bombs.

  “We worked for days. I ferried men from the beaches to the larger ships, until those ships were filled. And then I took on as many soldiers as I could and headed back toward Ramsgate. I can’t even tell you how many trips I took across the channel. The evacuation went on until the fourth of June—it’s all rather a noisy blur.”

  “How many men were saved?” Bear couldn’t keep himself from asking.

  The little girl spoke up. “Nana helped save at least five hundred of them herself.”

  “Possibly as many as five hundred,” the old lady corrected her gently. “Do you remember the total number of Allied troops evacuated?”

  “Three hundred and thirty-eight thousand,” Amy announced, “two hundred and twenty . . . seven?”

  He snorted his disbelief. “No way.”

  “Two twenty-six,” Eve said. “It’s true.” She sighed. “But what I wouldn’t have given for that number to have been higher.” She glanced at him before she looked down into Amy’s eyes. “True confession time. I didn’t really cross that channel because I wanted to save all those stranded British soldiers. At least not at first. I first crossed the channel because I wanted to save one soldier in particular. I never told you this before, Amy, but even though I was only sixteen, I was married—and I had been for a year. The man I wanted so desperately to save was the man I loved. He was my husband.”

  Amy sat up, her eyes losing some of her fear. “You were married when you were sixteen?”

  “Fifteen, actually,” Eve admitted.

  “But . . . I’ve seen your wedding pictures. You told me you got married right after the war.”

  “Well, I did,” Eve said calmly. “I was married—for the second time—right after the war, when I was twenty-one. My first marriage wasn’t exactly legal because I was so young at the time. And of course it was never consummated.”

  “What’s consummated?”

  He was unfamiliar with that English word, too, but he could guess what it meant from the context. He studied his boot, wondering how the old lady was going to handle the question.

  “Do you know where ba
bies come from?” she asked the girl. Good start.

  “Of course I do,” she scoffed. “Girls can get pregnant if they have unprotected sex with boys. Mommy talks to me about it all the time because some of the sixth grade girls in my school tease the fifth grade girls about still being virgins.”

  “Dear God,” Eve said. She swiftly collected herself. “Well, in that case you know, then, that when two people get married, part of their relationship as man and wife is a sexual one, right?”

  Amy nodded.

  “That’s what consummated means. It’s when two people who love each other enough to get married make love for the first time. In the olden days, it sealed the marriage, made it even more binding. When I was fifteen, I thought I was old enough to marry this man because I loved him so much. But when our wedding night came, well, some people might think I chickened out, but I like to look at it as being brave enough to admit I’d made a rather large mistake. Of course, when my new husband found out how old I truly was, that I’d basically tricked him into marrying me, he was furious and . . .” Eve laughed softly. “If I’m going to tell this story properly, I should start at the beginning, shouldn’t I?”

  “But did you save him?” Amy asked. “Your first husband? At Dunkirk?”

  The old woman sighed and shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. “I didn’t.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Six

  ENSIGN STARRETT WORE only a pair of shorts.

  Alyssa Locke tried to focus on the video monitor, but the well-muscled, too-damned-handsome-for-his-own-good SEAL had positioned himself directly beyond it, right smack in her line of sight.

  Of course the shorts were a big improvement over the barely there towel he’d had wrapped around his waist when he’d first come out of the bathroom.

  If he’d been surprised to step out of the shower to find that the hotel suite he was supposed to be sharing with Lt. John Nilsson had become command central for this op within an op, he hadn’t let on. In fact, upon hearing the news that Meg Moore’s daughter and grandmother had been kidnapped by K-stani Extremists and that they had to keep all information about this from becoming public knowledge for their protection, Starrett had merely nodded and drawled, “Thought it had to be something like that.”

  Locke was glad Nils had brought her over here. She was pleased to be part of this top secret operation, glad to be already in position when Max Bhagat was brought into the room and brought up to speed, glad to be working in a small team with Lt. Tom Paoletti again.

  But she wasn’t glad that Sam Starrett was part of the team, with his bimboy body, his redneck prejudices, and his smart mouth.

  Sweet thing.

  As if she’d ever, in a million years, fall prey to his questionable charms. Sweet thing, pah. She wasn’t sweet and she was no man’s thing.

  WildCard Karmody looked up from where he was figuring out how to create the equivalent of a digital tape loop with his computer.

  “The Welsh singing thing was very smart,” he said, taking a moment to stretch and run his fingers through his already messed, mad-scientist hair. “Meg’s using her brain. And it makes sense for her not to want to just stand there and have a whole conversation in Welsh with Nils. Anyone listening in would know right away that there was an exchange of information going down. But this folk song thing was brilliant. Have I mentioned that I think I’m in love with this woman?”

  “Yes.” The answer came in unison from Starrett, Wolchonok, and another SEAL Locke had just met, a shiny young ensign with a pretty face named Mike Muldoon.

  Without yet having had the chance to talk with her further, Nils’s theory was that Meg had created this entire hostage situation as a way to get the FBI’s attention. This way, she could get their help without putting Amy at risk.

  And as unlikely as some people might think it would be for the Extremists to have infiltrated the K-stani embassy in Washington, Nils seemed convinced that such a thing was possible. Locke suspected he was being overly cautious, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he’d spent a considerable amount of time in the Pit.

  Surveillance of the men’s room would continue across the street at the makeshift FBI headquarters in the K-stani embassy. To the K-stani officials and anyone else there that might be listening in, it would appear as if the FBI and SEALs were continuing with their plan to sit and wait. To try to starve Meg out.

  Meanwhile, over here at Troubleshooter Central, this new, secret team of SEALs and FBI agents were hard at work, devising a method of getting Nils into that men’s room undetected so he could talk to Meg.

  The plan was for Nils to deliver the handcuffs Meg had demanded, and somehow communicate to her that he would be coming back again, very soon, but not through the bathroom door this time.

  The plan was then to jam the surveillance coming into the FBI’s HQ over at the embassy—to replace the actual video and audio from the bathroom with a digital version of a tape loop.

  The K-stani officials at the embassy would continue to see Meg and her hostages sitting in silence—the footage from the tape. They wouldn’t have a clue that in reality, Lieutenant Paoletti’s Troubleshooter squad would be covertly gaining access to that embassy men’s room from the room directly above it. They’d be dropping in, so to speak, on Meg Moore and her captives. And Nils would be able to talk to her and get the complete, nonspeculative version of her story. He’d find out who exactly had taken Amy, and what were their demands.

  Somewhere in the room a pager went off, and everyone checked their belts.

  Locke herself nearly jumped out of her seat. On her recommendation, Jules Cassidy had been called in to assist, and she could feel his eyes on her now, from his seat in front of the other video monitor, across the room.

  She glanced at him and shook her head, no. It wasn’t her pager. She’d heard nothing from her sister all day. Which was just as good. If she got a page now, telling her to come to the hospital, she wasn’t in a position to get up and go. Not without kissing her career good-bye.

  “It’s mine,” Senior Chief Wolchonok called out. “It’s a heads up code from Lieutenant Paoletti. Johnny’s getting ready to go in.”

  As Locke watched on the video screen—surveillance footage pirated from the same signal being watched by the FBI and K-stani officials across the street—Meg lifted her head and glanced toward the door. She refreshed her grip on her handgun, aiming it at her hostages.

  “Come in slowly.” Her voice was remarkably natural-sounding over the speakers. This was one expensive setup that Paoletti had managed to conjure at such short notice.

  “Lieutenant Nilsson is coming into the room,” Locke announced.

  Starrett pushed himself up off the couch and came around to look over her shoulder.

  Locke kept her eyes on the screen. “Would you mind putting on a shirt?”

  “Actually, I would,” he said in that infuriating Texas drawl. “This is my room and I’m still taking a break.”

  “I don’t have any trouble with it,” Jules commented blandly.

  Locke had to work to keep a smile from slipping out as Starrett turned abruptly and went into the other room to get a shirt. Thanks, she mouthed to Jules, who blew her a kiss.

  On the video monitor, Nils was cuffing Meg’s hostages to the sinks. This was good. After he left, they’d get about fifteen minutes of footage of all of them sitting there. WildCard would make that digital loop from that video, and then they’d be on to phase two.

  “They’ve been asking me a lot of questions.” Nils’s voice came over the speakers as she sensed Starrett’s overwhelmingly large presence behind her again. At least now he was dressed. “About us. I mean, no one can quite believe we didn’t have some kind of hot affair three years ago.”

  “Oh, God.” Meg shook her head. “I’m so sorry if I’ve gotten you into trouble.”

  “You haven’t.”

 
On the surface, they were having a simple conversation, but Locke—because she knew what to look for—could see that Meg and Nils were having an entirely different conversation with their eyes.

  But were the hidden messages they were sending about this current situation? Or did it have more to do with the real truth about what went down between them three years ago? Locke smiled. She was one of the people who didn’t quite believe Nils and Meg Moore had been “just friends.”

  Look at the way he looked at her.

  Of course, maybe that was just friendship she could see in his eyes, and she, Locke, was the twisted one. Maybe she’d lived so long with men calling her sweet thing, she could no longer recognize genuine friendship between a man and a woman.