Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “It was just a few months later that Hitler invaded France,” she told them. “Nick and I were glued to the radio, listening to the news. It was shocking how fast the reports came in of cities that had fallen. It didn’t seem possible, this lightning-fast advance of tanks and troops, this Blitz. I was scared to death. Because somewhere out there, facing those deadly German panzers, was Ralph.

  “I remember I was in town, trying to find information on the whereabouts of his regiment, when I saw ships and boats of all sizes gathering in the harbor. Someone told me that the call had gone out for all available ships and men to meet in Ramsgate, that the Royal Navy didn’t have enough ships available to evacuate the BEF from France, so we were going to do it ourselves.

  “I drove home as fast I could, and I got the Daisy Chain and sailed her to the harbor. But there were far more boats than able-bodied men. I must’ve expected it, because I had dressed in trousers and one of my father’s old shirts. And I’d tucked my hair up under Ralph’s old hat—it was still on board, just where he’d left it—exactly as I’d done when I’d played Romeo nearly a year earlier. And I set off with the rest of the little ships for Dunkirk.

  “It was terrifying. The city was on fire, and great clouds of smoke rose like some terrible monster above the French coastline. From a distance—it was the oddest thing! The men, the soldiers lining up on the beaches, looked like rows of sticks. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized just how many men were there, all waiting to be evacuated.

  “The German air force—the Luftwaffe—were overhead, shooting at the men on the beach, shooting at us. Artillery pounded the beaches—there were bodies everywhere. It was awful.

  “It was war.”

  Eve looked at the Bear again, and this time, there was something in his eyes. Something terrible. Something she recognized from looking into her bathroom mirror.

  He’d lived through such a battle himself. He’d known that awful gut-wrenching fear.

  She reached for him, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it. Letting him see that she knew he understood.

  And then—there! A glimmer of something. She could have sworn she’d seen it in his eyes, right before he pulled his hand away.

  Or maybe she’d just wanted it to be there.

  “I brought the Daisy Chain in all the way to the shore,” she continued. “She wasn’t as big as some of the other boats, and I could take her almost right up to the strand. I took aboard as many soldiers as I could, asking everyone I saw about Ralph’s Anti-Tank Regiment, the Fiftieth.

  “No one knew a thing, they barely knew their own names. I heard all kinds of rumors—that the order had come down, ‘Every man for himself.’

  “For a while I set to work using the Daisy Chain as a ferry, taking men from the shore out to the larger ships that couldn’t get in close to the beaches. The piers had all been bombed by the Germans. The entire harbor at Dunkirk was an obstacle course, filled with debris. But then all the larger ships departed, so I took on as many men as I could—about fifty, riding low in the water—and headed back for England, too.

  “The trip across the channel took about two hours on the best of days under the best of circumstances. And German U-boats torpedoing the larger vessels was hardly what I’d call the best of anything. I returned to Ramsgate, and then went back again—I was too small to be a target for the submarines, thank God. Too small to do much of anything but bring back fifty men. And then another fifty men. And another. Asking all the time about Ralph.

  “I finally found a man who thought he’d heard that the Fiftieth was one of the regiments holding the Germans at bay, making the evacuation of all these men possible. Despite the ‘every man for himself’ order, the Fiftieth had stuck quite literally to their guns. They—Ralph among them—were fighting still.

  “I had walked into hell to save Ralph, but apparently he wasn’t ready to come out yet. I heard all kinds of rumors about the panzer attacks, too—about the terrifying invincibility of those tanks that Ralph and his unit were fighting against. Some of the men spoke in hushed tones of a secret weapon that the Germans had—some mysterious force that caused the British and French guns to be unable to fire.” She laughed. “I think it was called fear.

  “I heard rumors of the Germans being horribly angry with the British soldiers who resisted their advance. It was said they were taking no prisoners, that they were lining up their captives and shooting them as punishment. The word had gone out among the BEF not to surrender, but instead to fight to the death.

  “And each time I returned to Dunkirk, there were more bodies. Bodies everywhere. Littering the beach, floating in the ocean. They were stepped over, stepped on, pushed aside. And still the evacuation went on.

  “I crossed the English Channel more times than I could count, through that day and the following night. And the only reason I stopped was that one of the soldiers I had rescued realized that I was a girl. He put me out at Ramsgate, wouldn’t listen to my arguments, and took the Daisy Chain back to Dunkirk himself.

  “I went to work in Ramsgate then, helping the wounded off the ships that came in, searching, always searching, for anyone who knew or might have seen Ralph.

  “Hundreds of thousands of men returned to England by that armada of little ships and boats. We fed them, and held them in our arms while they cried. We welcomed them back home, back to life, and put them on trains sending them farther inland, so they could regroup. Many of those poor battered souls went home first, before reporting back for duty. I left a note on the door of the estate—everyone, even Nicky, was in Ramsgate helping as best they could—hoping that Ralph would somehow make it there.”

  “But he never did,” Amy said. “Did he?”

  “No,” Eve told the little girl, told the Bear. “He never did. I searched for him for days. I even phoned his mother to see if he might’ve gone there. But he didn’t make it out of France. The Fiftieth Anti-Tank Regiment stuck to their guns until the bitter end.

  “338,226 men were rescued from Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940,” Eve told Amy and the Bear. “It was a miracle so many had been saved—a miracle that Ralph and the Fiftieth had helped to come about by holding off the German advance. It was every man for himself, but the Fiftieth and the other antitank regiments weren’t fighting to save themselves. They had to have known they’d be left behind. Surely they knew, and yet they held fast to their hills, keeping the Germans from those beaches and those virtually defenseless ships and men. They were the true heroes of Dunkirk.

  “For a while I was really mad at Ralph for that,” Eve admitted. “For being so blasted heroic. I didn’t want a hero, I wanted him back in England and safe.” She could smile about it now—just barely, still wistfully. “At sixteen years of age, I’d already faced so many hardships in my life, but nothing, by far, was as hard to bear as this.”

  “What did you do then?” Amy asked softly.

  “I did what everyone else did,” Eve answered. “I fought on. We fought on. We British—and oh, yes, I was one of them now—we dedicated our lives to making darn certain that the sacrifices that Ralph and the other men of the BEF antitank regiments had made were not in vain. Winston Churchill made a speech right after the miracle at Dunkirk—we called it a miracle and a victory even though it really was a crushing defeat. But we’d saved so many men at such impossible odds, it was hard not to feel triumphant. We shall defend our island, Churchill said to all of England, to all of the world, whatever the cost may be. But oh, what a cost had already been extracted from my very heart and soul.

  “Dunkirk was just the start,” Eve told them. “But it was the first act of defiance in a long and bloody war filled with defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It wasn’t until 1945 that the Nazis were finally completely defeated, but I know that their defeat started in 1940, at Dunkirk. I know that I helped save the world. Or rather, I helped Ralph and his brave fellow soldiers save the world. His sacrifice was not in vain—I was convinced of th
at. But it didn’t make it any easier to bear late at night when I missed him so terribly.”

  Amy held Eve tightly. “I miss Mommy terribly,” she said.

  “I know, sweet.” Eve looked at the Bear. “I miss her, too.”

  It was going down as if it had been choreographed.

  The GIK, despite their pricey costumes—the raincoats and shades, at twilight for crying out loud—were standard issue dumbfucks. They came creeping out of their van like a pack of kids playing ninja, as if the setting sun made them invisible.

  Sam was right next to WildCard, who was having trouble not laughing aloud. Sam would’ve had the same problem if it weren’t for Alyssa Locke.

  Despite his efforts to stay as far away from her as possible, she’d somehow ended up right beside him. She didn’t want to be there anymore than he did—he could see that news bulletin clear as daylight in her eyes.

  When the order came to go, to move stealthily forward and out-ninja the ninjas, he was more than ready for some action.

  But it was unsatisfyingly easy. The GIK tangos were totally outmatched by the team of SEALs and FBI. They were down on the ground, their weapons taken from them, in a matter of seconds.

  And somehow—Jesus Christ, give him a break, please—Alyssa was right beside him again. Close enough to catch a whiff of her clean-smelling shampoo.

  Apparently one of the tangos caught a whiff of it, too. The son of a bitch no doubt took one look at Alyssa’s pretty face and slender physique, and pegged her as the weak link in the chain.

  Lopez had grabbed the bastard’s Uzi out of his hands, and Muldoon had delivered a blow that should have sent him face first onto the driveway, but the fucker bounced. He was up again in an instant, hitting Alyssa hard, with a bone-jarring crunch, right in the chest.

  She went down, and Sam turned fast. They’d taken the dumbshit’s Uzi, but Jesus, he could have a hunting knife or a switchblade. Or he could be one of those commando wannabes who’d managed to learn to break a neck with a single swift twist of an opponent’s head.

  Alyssa hit the pavement with another solid-sounding thud and a muffled, pain-filled shout.

  If he’d stuck her with a knife, this fucker was going to die.

  But Sam didn’t have a chance to extract revenge. Alyssa took the tango down with her, despite the fact he was nearly twice her weight. It only took a heartbeat, a few short seconds, tops, and she was straddling the guy, shouting for him not to move, her side arm jammed neatly up beneath his chin.

  It was difficult for the bastard to not move seeing that he was writhing in pain. Seeing that Alyssa had kicked him in the balls so hard he was going to need a doctor to pull ’em back down from where they’d lodged near his spleen.

  Sam faded back, fast, so that she wouldn’t see he was one of the men who’d leapt to her aid.

  The FBI cleanup team was fast. They had those assholes searched, cuffed, Miranda-ed, and loaded into a properly nondescript van in record time. Another agent impounded the tangos’ vehicle, driving it swiftly away.

  Alyssa didn’t look at him as they got themselves the hell out of there, too. She was breathing hard, she’d torn the elbow of her jacket, and she was trying to hide a limp.

  It took every last ounce of willpower he had to keep his distance. But he knew he was the dead last person she’d want checking up on her right now. As he watched, she shook off Lopez, the team medic—just brushed right past him.

  “Man,” WildCard said in admiration. “Did you see that? Let that be a lesson for us all. Don’t ever, ever, get Locke mad at you.”

  Too late.

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

  Twenty-two

  NILS PACED AROUND the motel room, double-checking the fact that the room had only one entrance.

  No, there wasn’t a window in the bathroom. There was actually a small coin-operated machine attached to the wall that sold condoms—classy place—but no window.

  He went back into the other room, where Meg looked ready to jump out of her skin.

  In fact, she did jump when Nils’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open, turned it on. “Nilsson.”

  “Yeah, it’s Paoletti. We just bagged seven GIK terrorists in the parking lot. So far there’s been no sign of any more of ’em, but we’ll be out here watching for as long as it takes.”

  “Thanks, L.T.”

  “We’ve got surveillance set up to record and trace any phone calls that come in, and we’re continuing to keep watch, but that’s it.”

  In other words, this room didn’t have any cameras or listening devices.

  “I thought you’d appreciate that information,” Paoletti continued. Lieutenant Tactful.

  “Yeah,” Nils said. Meg was watching him, dying to find out what the phone call was about. She was sitting on the edge of the bed that was farthest from the window, her body pointed toward that beige telephone.

  Please, Jesus, for her sake, let the Extremists call this evening. Let them call now.

  The phone didn’t ring. And then it still didn’t ring.

  “Thanks, L.T.,” Nils said again. “Look, Lieutenant, I know I owe you an explanation for—”

  “You do,” Paoletti interrupted. COs could get away with interrupting whenever they wanted. “After this is over, you will be spending a good long time in my office. With the door closed. While I go down a list. A very long list.”

  “L.T., I am sorry—”

  “Yale, right, Nilsson?”

  “Uh, yes, sir, I went to Yale.”

  “In that case, Ivy League Genius, do you really need me to define after for you?”

  Nils closed his eyes. This was going to be okay. He was going to get yelled at. Or even worse—he’d get Paoletti’s quiet “I’m disappointed in you” speech. It would be hard to stand through, but he could endure anything short of getting kicked out of the Troubleshooters squad. And as long as the CO was calling him faintly insulting names, he was still at least slightly beloved. “No, sir, you do not.”

  “Good.” Paoletti was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “You do know, Johnny, that in the next twenty-four hours you could well be facing the ultimate no-win scenario. That little girl could be dead. She probably is. And I know you’re good—you’re one of my best officers. I know you’ve got this ‘nothing is impossible’ mentality, and I applaud it, you know I do—even when it gets you into trouble. But even you can’t bring a child back to life.”

  “I know that,” Nils said. “I’m counting on luck and maybe even a miracle, sir. I’m counting on getting there before she’s harmed.”

  The lieutenant didn’t argue. He just sighed again. “Tell Meg my prayers are with her and her daughter and grandmother tonight.”

  “I will, L.T. Thank you.”

  Paoletti cut the connection, and Nils snapped his phone shut. “They got all the GIK out of the way,” he told Meg.

  “That fast?”

  “Yeah. We can relax a little bit.” He sat down across from her, on the other bed. She looked like the poster girl for high stress. “It might be a good idea to try to get some sleep.”

  She glanced at that beige motel telephone. “You can turn out the light if you want.”

  And leave her sitting bolt upright on the other bed, strung too tight even to close her eyes? No way. As bone tired as he was, he wasn’t going to do that.

  “If the phone rings, I’ll hear it,” Nils told her gently. “Even if I’m asleep. I promise.”

  She had her arms crossed in front of her as if she were cold, or as if she were holding on to herself for dear life. She looked at the phone again.

  “They’ll call,” Nils told her. “They will. They want Razeen. They’ll definitely be in touch with you.”

  “I know that.” Meg nodded. “I understand that. I just . . .” She shook her head. “What if they don’t? What if they just never do? How long are we going to wait here? A day? Two? A week? A month?”

 
She was starting to shake, and she tried desperately to stop, tried holding herself even more tightly.

  “What have I done?” she said. “What if the Extremists find out I’ve turned Razeen over to the FBI? They’ll kill Amy and my grandmother right away. This is a mistake, John. I don’t think I can do this.”

  Nils crossed the little aisle between the two beds and sat next to her. “Yes, you can,” he told her. “Don’t start thinking about worst case scenarios. Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “I can’t help it.” She was trying hard not to cry and her breathing was ragged. “I just keep thinking, what if they don’t call? Or what if they do call, and God! What if they kill you then, too?”