Until We Meet Once More

by Lanyon, Josh

  Sean was smart and savvy and stubborn. No one knew better than Vic how stubborn Sean Kennedy was — if eleven years of radio silence were anything to go by. Sean wouldn’t give up. He’d keep fighting to get to the LZ.

  If he was able.

  And so Vic continued down a ledge that would have given a mountain goat pause for thought.

  There was a clack of stone on stone, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the stillness of the night. Vic froze. The sound came from about twenty meters in front of him. Someone scrabbling up the cliffside. He reached for his combat knife. If this was a fight, it needed to be a quiet one or he was liable to have all of al Qaeda down on him. And if it wasn’t a fight…his heart thudded hard in a hopeful mixture of adrenaline and anticipation.

  Silent and deadly, he sprinted forward, and as he watched, two dirt grimed hands — one wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief — groped blindly along the edge of the cliff.

  Vic was ready, ready for the worst and hoping for the best as the man hauled himself, panting, over the lip of the trail and dragged himself to his feet, swaying as he tried not to put weight on his right foot. Vic saw the sweat dark hair, the stained headband, and the gaunt, bearded face.

  “Sean,” he said in a voice that sounded nothing like his own.

  Sean Kennedy’s head snapped up and he nearly stepped backward off the mountain side. Vic lunged for him, caught his arm and towed him forward. For an instant they were in each other’s arms, clutching tight, and then they were apart, standing on what felt like the edge of the world, teetering, off-balance physically and emotionally.

  “Stoney?” Sean said at last. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah.” Vic was grinning like a fool. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Jee-zus. It is you.” Sean closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and peered owlishly into Vic’s face. “You’re the cavalry?”

  “You were expecting the navy?”

  “Ha.” Unexpectedly, Sean’s legs gave and he half-sat, half fell onto the ribbon of goat track, head dropping back with exhaustion.

  Vic knelt beside him. “How bad are you hurt?” He patted Sean down — any excuse to touch him, if he was honest. To reassure himself that it really was Sean, that he really was alive. All the times he’d dreamed of this moment — none of the dreams had come anywhere near this terrifying reality.

  Sean’s shoulders had broadened and his body was the hard body of a man. Beneath Vic’s searching hands — and the battered body armor — Sean was all bone and muscle. His face was much older…a thousand years older, and something inside Vic grieved for that. The last time he’d seen Sean he’d been a lanky kid with hair the color of autumn and eyes younger than spring.

  Eyes still shut, wincing beneath Vic’s exploration, Sean said, “It’s all relative. Was that my taxi I saw flying away a little while ago?”

  “Just taking her for a spin around the block.”

  “I hope it’s a short block.”

  Vic found where a bullet had grazed Sean’s shoulder, a crease along his upper arm, another nick along his side where he’d been hit beneath the edge of his vest. An assortment of cuts and scrapes and bruises. Nothing vital had been hit and the blood was drying, crusting. It was as though al Qaeda had been chipping bits and pieces out of him for days. “Christ, how many times have you been shot?”

  Sean opened his eyes, frowning into Vic’s face as though he was having trouble focusing. “How far are we from the top?”

  “About two hundred meters. But we’re headed down.”

  “I don’t think we want to head down. I’ve got Taliban fighters on my tail.” He sounded remarkably calm about it.

  Vic let go of him abruptly, pulled his binoculars from around his neck and threw himself down at the edge of the mountain, scanning the dark slopes below.

  Nothing moved.

  Not a flicker of motion.

  “Are you sure?” he threw softly over his shoulder. Not that it was a mistake Sean was liable to make.

  Sean said nothing.

  “Sean?”

  When he still didn’t answer, Vic glanced around and saw that he was sleeping. He turned the binoculars back on the mountainside beneath them.

  Nothing.

  But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there.

  He crawled back to Sean, hesitating for an instant at the sight of that strained and weary face in repose. He rested his hand on Sean’s shoulder and instantly caught the gleam of Sean’s eyes.

  “We got to move.”

  Sean said, “I thought I dreamed you up.”

  “You dream about me a lot?”

  Sean’s laugh was stifled but it was his old laugh, and Vic’s heart seemed to swell.

  “Not anymore. I got bigger boogeymen to worry about than you these days.”

  Yeah, wasn’t that the truth. Vic took the slam absently, already recalculating. “Can you walk?”

  “I got myself this far didn’t I?” And Sean began to gather himself, pushing upright, though accepting Vic’s help to stand.

  “What’s the matter with your leg?”

  “Sprained my ankle like the goddamned heroine in a monster movie.”

  It was just getting better by the moment.

  “Well, we can’t go up. I don’t think anyone knows I’m on the mountain, but they’re going to be wondering what that chopper was doing here. We can’t risk landing topside again, but Grizzly is going to meet us in the valley at oh five hundred.”

  Sean pulled away slightly to examine Vic’s face. “You’ve got a chopper going to touch down in the valley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not kidding?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  Sean was shaking his head in disbelief. “What time is it?”

  “We’ve got two and a half hours to get down there.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t have come up with this plan before I climbed up here.”

  “Sorry. Your line was busy.”

  “Is this pilot in love with you or something?”

  “Isn’t everybody?” Vic wrapped an arm around Sean’s waist. “Put your arm over my shoulders. Can you make it like this?”

  “I can try.” Sean added grimly, “But if I can’t I don’t want you wasting time up here with a chopper crew waiting in that valley for you.”

  They moved slowly down the trail, Sean half hopping, trying not to lean too heavily on Vic.

  “I think our best bet is the north face,” Vic said. “It’ll be a tougher climb but whoever is tracking you won’t be looking for you over there.”

  “They won’t be looking for me coming back down at all.”

  “We’ll have to double back around to the LZ, and we’ll lose some time there….” Vic was still calculating odds. “How much ammo do you have left?”

  “Maybe rounds.”

  SEALs typically carried rounds. Vic nodded, accepting this, not commenting on the battle that Sean had waged to get this far. “If we’re lucky we’ll lift out without a firefight.”

  They traveled along the narrow trail, having to stop at one point to go single file down a ledge that was like a knife edge. It would have been tricky in the daylight. It was harrowing in the dark. Vic kept one hand clutched on Sean’s arm terrified that Sean would slip or misstep. Having finally found him again, no way was he losing him.

  They finally made it across the ridge and Sean slid down. “I’ve got to rest.”

  Blood loss, shock, exhaustion. Yeah, he’d earned a rest. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that kind of time.

  “Take five,” Vic said, although it was going to have to be more like take three. He squatted as Sean slid down the frosty rock face and leaned back. A couple of gentle snow flakes drifted down.

  Fuck.

  Vic stretched his arm out. “Here, let’s conserve body heat.”

  Sean gave a laugh that was mostly a snort, but he leaned into Vic. Vic folded his arms tight around him. He had always dreamed of this
meeting as a new beginning. It was feeling more and more like an ending.

  “I lost my entire team,” Sean said suddenly, the words vibrating against Vic’s chest.

  Vic nodded, not trusting himself to words.

  “We had a direct action. Take out Akhtar Shah Omar. Limited time on target.”

  Not recon then. Assassination. He’d wondered if it was something more like that. He thought of the boy he’d known at Annapolis. His eyes prickled. And how insane was that when he wasn’t exactly teaching Sunday School himself. And anyone who knew him would be laughing their asses off. So much for the Stone Man.

  There was a long pause and he wondered if Sean had fallen asleep again; he was breathing long, steady breaths — and then Vic realized that he was struggling with emotion.

  “What happened?” he whispered against Sean’s cold ear. Tempting to kiss him, but…no. No. He’d lost that right a long time ago.

  “We got walked on.”

  Walked on. Compromised on a mission. He let his ears brush the chilled shell of Sean’s ear. “It happens.”

  Sean said muffledly, “It does. And we all knew what we needed to do. But…it was this little girl. This little goatherd girl. And I couldn’t do it, Vic.”

  “Couldn’t do what?”

  Sean looked up, his eyes looked wide and so clear they looked almost silver in the paling light. “It was my call and I said we had to let her go.”

  Vic said calmly, “Hey, what was the option there? You’ve got to follow the Rules of Engagement. She wasn’t Taliban. She wasn’t al Qaeda.”

  “No, she was fucking Heidi. And I let her go and she ran straight to the mujahadeen militia.” He turned away and wiped at his eyes with his forearm. “And my men ended up dead.”

  For a few seconds Vic couldn’t say anything. Finally, he said unemotionally, “Sometimes they’re on our side. How’d you end up with the Taliban chasing you?”

  “We had to fall back once the mujahadeen showed up. Basic move and shoot maneuver. Pitched battles aren’t our thing.”

  No. SEALs were not main force units. SEALs worked best as shock troops. Stun the target with maximum violence, accomplish the most destruction with minimal effort, and then fade away in the confusion.

  “We were okay, but naturally it made a little noise. The Taliban noticed and decided to join the party. We lost Bobby right away. Voss was our communications guy. He got hit trying to radio for help. They shot him a couple of times, but he stayed on the high ground trying to make comms. Salvio and I went to drag him back and Salvio got hit in the head. He died in my arms.”

  “Close your eyes and sleep for a couple minutes.”

  “No time.”

  But when Vic tugged him back, Sean leaned into him and closed his eyes. His breath was warm against Vic’s throat, his hair brushed softly against Vic’s chin.

  Vic let him sleep ten minutes. About seven minutes longer than he should have but he justified it as a power nap.

  Far down the mountainside he could see stealthy movement, hear the faintest scrape of boots on rock. Every sound carried in this cold, crisp mountain air. Taliban soldiers were slowly navigating their way up the uneven slope. They were being surprisingly cautious. Sean must have made quite an impact on them.

  He had a way of doing that.

  Vic said against Sean’s ear, “Rise and shine.”

  Sean’s eyes opened instantly. He nodded.

  The next two hours were a test of endurance. Somehow they made it across the scraggy face of the cliff, literally crawling at points, and then climbed with excruciating difficulty down a series of boulders. Vic knew he was going to have nightmares about that climb for weeks to come.

  Assuming he still had weeks to come and they didn’t end up in pieces on the mountain in the next half hour or so.

  By the time they shinnied down the final boulder, they were both shaking and soaked in sweat. Sean was needing more and more help although he never asked for it once.

  Reaching the bottom, they dropped on their bellies and tried to recover their breath.

  “Did you ever get married?” Sean asked suddenly, softly.

  “No. You?”

  Sean snorted.

  “I mean…did you find someone…?” Who appreciated you, who treated you like you should have been treated, who had the brains to recognize what you were worth?

  “Oh, sure. I found a lot of people.”

  Neither spoke for a time.

  Sean’s voice was abrupt. “I heard you did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Got married.” He sounded just faintly impatient.

  “No. Where’d you hear that?”

  “Specs Davis. I ran into him a couple of years back. He said you were engaged.”

  “No.” Stoney pointed to the tiny scar between his eyebrows. “As you can see, I’m still wearing your ring.”

  Sean stared at him and then laughed.

  Vic laughed too, threw him a look beneath his brows. “It took two stitches.”

  Bullets raked along the flat-topped stone and they rolled apart. Sean dropped over the side and Vic followed, hearing the crash of him landing in bushes. He pulled his M spraying the hillside behind them, hearing screams of pain. He turned and followed Sean whom he could hear scrabbling down another staircase of stone.

  The next few seconds were chaos. Vic kept moving and shooting — all the while aware of Sean less than a yard ahead. Bullets whined overhead. All at once the enemy was everywhere and the graying night was lit by muzzle flash and mini flares.

  “Down,” Sean yelled and Vic hit the frozen ground.

  He heard the whisper of a suppressed shot and knew Sean was using his MK.

  He crawled into the brush. They both opened fire, ducking down as the Taliban opened fire again with machine guns. They shot, reloaded while the bullets buzzed and whizzed around them, hitting the rocks and ricocheting with lethal force.

  “We’ve got to move,” Vic yelled.

  He felt rather than heard Sean’s assent.

  They took turns firing and covering each other’s retreat the rest of the way down the slope in a run, crawl, walk maneuver.

  They were never going to make it.

  Vic felt a brief and furious grief that they were not going to have that second chance after all. Maybe he didn’t deserve it, but Sean sure as hell did. He determined to take as many of these murdering bastards with them as he could.

  But as they reached the ledge they heard the pound of chopper blades and looked upward to see the Chinook rocking into position above them. Time flies when you’re having fun — and Cheyney was not a girl who liked to be kept waiting. The door slid open and O’Riley was throwing down a line while Matturo and one of the door gunners laid a steady covering fire.

  Sean was turning to cover him and Vic shoved him toward the line. “Climb.” He turned his M on the hillside.

  Sean dragged himself up the line with what seemed to be agonizing slowness while the mountain fighters continued to fire between Vic’s bursts of fire — and the protective fire of the chopper gunners.

  When Sean had neared the top, O’Riley and Matturo leaned out and hauled him into the chopper.

  Vic ran for the line, climbing hand over hand. The chopper was already rising and swinging him away over the mountainside. He continued to climb as from behind the ridge the mortars were launched again. Vic hauled himself onto the cold metal flooring of the chopper and gasped.

  O’Riley and Matturo were beside Sean working fast to stem what looked like a gushing artery from his thigh.

  Seeing that fountain of blood Vic felt the strength go out of him. He dropped down beside Sean whose face was blanched of color in the yellow dawn, his breathing rapid and shallow.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough,” Matturo said. The tourniquet he was trying to fashion was already soaked with scarlet.

  Sean’s eyes opened. They looked black. He tried to smile.

  “Don’t you dare fuck
ing die on me, Sean.”

  Sean asked faintly, “How come you came back for me, Stoney?”

  Vic had to work to get the words out. “I was always coming back for you.”

  oOo

  Present day, , The Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan

  “He’s asking for you,” the weary-faced surgeon said. “Five minutes. Don’t tire him.”

  Vic rose. “Is he —“” He abruptly ran out of air, but the surgeon followed him easily enough — it was a question he was familiar with by now.

  “He’s still critical but…that’s one tough sailor. We’re transporting him to Germany tonight.”

  Vic stepped into the trauma bay. There were four beds and a hell of a lot of state of the art equipment, and then he spotted Sean. He lay in a bed that looked like a miniature space pod and he was hooked up to a confusing web of monitors, an IV and oxygen. He looked very brown against the bleached sheets.

  Vic leaned over the railing. He said softly, “Hey.”

  Sean’s lashes flicked and rose. His pupils were huge with whatever drugs they were pumping into him. “Hey…”

  “You okay?” Vic asked anxiously.

  Sean’s face twisted a little and he bit his lip. “Please don’t…make me laugh.”