SEALed Forever

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  “Pleased to meet you,” he rumbled in a voice the color of midnight.

  Bronwyn suspected he was anything but. In fact, except as an item to be catalogued along with the rest of the room’s contents, she doubted if he saw her at all. She could almost see him classify her as human—female—small—unarmed and then move to the next item. He wasn’t cold so much as disconnected.

  Because she had seen it before—her fiancé Troy had been an undercover cop—she recognized the look of a man caught up in the dark thrill of his job’s dangerous demands. The ordinary world was a stage on which he acted a part, but it was no longer real for him. People had become a concept to him. She averted her eyes while she tried to pull air into lungs that were suddenly a couple of sizes too small.

  When she could look at Garth again, to her surprise she realized that he was in pain, too, though why she hadn’t noticed before, she didn’t know. That his leg hurt should have been obvious—he was leaning on a cane. JJ had told her both men had been wounded in the same action in Afghanistan.

  Bronwyn felt a little guilty that she hadn’t sensed the pain until now, and guiltier still that she had been caught up in her own visceral reactions to a past she had no desire to revisit. She sought for something suitably polite to say.

  “Wave,” Mary Cole instructed, stroking lip gloss onto Bronwyn’s mouth. “Y’all can chat later. I’ll be done here in a minute. JJ, stay here and we’ll put your veil on. You boys, go and supervise setting up the chairs in the entry hall, please, like we discussed.”

  In the mirror, Bronwyn watched “the boys” exchange amused glances. The smile the lieutenant gave his friend was surprisingly full of warmth. David, she concluded, was still real to him.

  As if they had communicated telepathically, they snapped off salutes and left the room.

  Mary Cole put the finishing touches on Bronwyn, then had JJ sit at the vanity so she could anchor the fingertip Alençon lace veil to JJ’s hair with bobby pins.

  At last Mary Cole said, “I’m going to get everyone into place and start the music. Are you sure you don’t want Lucas to walk you down the stairs?” she asked JJ. “He’s your grandfather.”

  JJ rose, her habitual grace marred by cold stiffness. “I am sure. If I’m getting married, I will do it on my own and on my own terms. He has given me away quite enough.”

  Mary Cole nodded and let herself from the room.

  Bronwyn wondered what she should say, could say. You don’t have to do this sprang to mind, but she’d already said that, more than once. There was no point in reiterating; JJ knew it. JJ had looked at all her options and decided marriage to a man she hardly knew was her best choice. JJ would go to any lengths, accept any sacrifice to care for those who depended on her. But JJ wasn’t this cold automaton Bronwyn saw before her.

  “JJ, is there any chance you can be happy married to David?”

  “You want me to be happy?”

  “You know I do!” Except, apparently, JJ didn’t.

  Guilt rocked Bronwyn. JJ was her best friend, and she had failed her. She had been so wrapped up in her own problems she had offered JJ little in the way of emotional support.

  She grasped JJ’s hand, willing her to feel her sincerity. “I love you, and I don’t care what you do or who you marry. I kept telling you, you had other choices. I should have told you to choose what would make you happy.”

  “But, it won’t bother you…?” JJ let the fact that Troy was dead and Bronwyn’s happiness destroyed trail away unspoken.

  “If you can be happy, I can be most sincerely happy for you. In fact, I’d love it if you would be happy enough for both of us.”

  JJ’s lips crumpled. She looked down at their clasped hands while she gave a jerky little nod of assent. Emotional scenes were not JJ’s style.

  In the past, Bronwyn might have backed off in the face of JJ’s discomfort. But in the past she hadn’t been following her heart. Now she knew she was going to. Wherever it took her. She squeezed JJ’s cold fingers tighter. “JJ, how do you feel? About him?”

  JJ looked down, almost shyly. “He’s a good man. I, uh…”

  Bronwyn couldn’t have said where the sudden insight came from—maybe from years of knowing her friend. “You trust him, don’t you?”

  The smile that curved the perfect bow of JJ’s lips was a little surprised, a lot thoughtful. “I do.” She cocked her head, listening. “Mary Cole has started the music. That’s our cue—oops, our bouquets!”

  “Wait. We might not get another chance to talk today, and there’s something I want to say. Even if Troy had lived, we wouldn’t have made it as a couple. I think that’s why my grief has been so hard. Not only was he taken away from me violently, I also feel like I’ve been through a breakup.

  “You have found a good man—one whom you trust. That’s a very good start.”

  Chapter 3

  All war is based on deception.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Garth scanned the sky and checked his watch. The plane was two hours late. In the southwest, liver-colored clouds massed. He studied the orange windsock sticking up from the peak of the small, blue sheet metal hangar. The sock’s tail still angled downward indicating gusts in the negligible, four- to six-knot range.

  Garth wasn’t reassured. Despite the rain earlier, the late-May afternoon was hot again. The air was thick with the smell of moisture and the sharp, green odor of soybeans in the flat fields adjacent to the runway. Another thunderstorm was coming. The sooner the plane touched down the better.

  And not just for the safety of the pilot and passengers. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to take Henry MacMurtry’s smirking interest in how he ran the airfield before he decked him.

  Last November when Garth had been offered a temporary attachment for a couple of months to a counterespionage outfit that “consulted” with the CIA, he had jumped at it. An officer who intended a naval career always strategized two promotions ahead.

  Limited duty while he waited for his leg to finish healing wouldn’t have advanced his career at all; proving himself in a different arena would. SEALs worked closely with the CIA in many corners of the world. Garth could demonstrate that he could operate solo and get himself noticed in a way that could lead to plum assignments later.

  Noticed? What he’d gotten was buried. Performing duties an E-4 enlisted man with the right technical skills and security clearance could have managed. In fact, maintaining an airstrip where small planes could land unobserved was the kind of job done more and more by private contractors, companies hired to provide the support structure that military and intelligence agencies had once provided for themselves. He was cleared for active duty now. He’d asked for reassignment. Any time he tried to find out what was keeping new orders from coming through, all he got were stalls and runarounds.

  Briefly, Garth had been glad to see MacMurtry. He had seen no one he knew for months, and at first, any familiar face had been welcome.

  MacMurtry was killing time while he waited to pick up passengers on a flight that had most likely originated somewhere in South America. The passenger list wasn’t part of Garth’s “need to know.” VIPs must be aboard, if they rated an officer escort.

  Like Garth, MacMurtry was a lieutenant in the navy, a SEAL, and like Garth he was in civvies, but that’s where the resemblance ended. MacMurtry was a ring-knocker, a Naval Academy graduate.

  The fit of MacMurtry’s summer-weight blue business suit on his stocky frame announced familiarity with world-class tailoring, while Garth’s khaki cargo shorts and brilliant orange-and-red aloha shirt told the world, if the grease on his hands didn’t, that he was a working man.

  The cotton Hawaiian shirts were Garth’s uniform these days. They had been issued when he took this job—someone’s idea of what would make him blend with the populace of South America—and were tailored with th
e left armhole larger than the right to disguise the presence of a weapon. To date, he hadn’t been sent to South America. He no longer thought he ever would be. The loose cotton shirts were comfortable though, so he wore them.

  Once he had realized that MacMurtry, under the guise of “catching up,” only wanted to needle him, Garth had deliberately kept MacMurtry—and his business suit—outside in the heat while he made preparations for the incoming flight. Call him petty, but watching droplets of sweat bead under MacMurtry’s cold-coffee eyes satisfied him immensely.

  “Hey, you caught the marriage curse yet?” MacMurtry drained the last swallow from his Coke can, crushed it, and lobbed it into the trash barrel outside the hangar.

  Marriage curse. Garth snickered a little. Talk about a stupid gambit! Watching MacMurtry jump through hoops to get his attention satisfied Garth even more than watching the ass-kisser sweat. “What are you talking about?”

  “The marriage curse.” MacMurtry laughed, showing large white teeth. “You’ve been in North Carolina so long, I figured it had you for sure.” Despite the bonhomie, MacMurtry’s eyes coldly assessed Garth’s reaction to his taunts.

  Garth shrugged. “I’ve been stuck down here in Podunk, aka Sessoms’ Corner, NC. Guess I didn’t get the memo.”

  Garth knew he was smarter than MacMurtry and a more able operator. But he had to admit MacMurtry probably had more of what it took to be promoted up the chain of command. Garth had proved his ability to lead operations, but those who rose higher than lieutenant had to win the acceptance of the officers above them.

  In theory, Academy graduates were not given preference at promotion time. In reality, they had an edge. Academy graduates had been bred by the very people they had to fit in with. They understood how every string attached to every favor and knew exactly how to pull those strings. Garth had worked hard to learn those things, but they didn’t come naturally to him.

  An idea for how he could find out what was holding up his requests for transfer bloomed in Garth’s brain, though he allowed no trace of the sudden surge of hope to show on his face.

  If anyone had his ear to the ground, knew the score, and had an inside line on everything the brass was up to, it was MacMurtry. If anyone might have a line on why Garth had been stuck in Podunk, it would be MacMurtry. Knowledge was power; no one exploited that maxim more than MacMurtry.

  But Garth knew MacMurtry from way back. If MacMurtry’s strength was that he was always in the know, his weakness was that he loved to use insider knowledge to lord it over others. He had always felt intensely competitive with Garth. MacMurtry could probably be induced to spill, if given an opportunity to dig at Garth in the process.

  Garth decided to give MacMurtry all the opportunities he could.

  “There’s a curse on North Carolina weddings?” Garth feigned interest in knocking the sandy, gray mud off his boots. “Is that what they’re saying?”

  “Not the weddings. The curse is on any SEAL who attends a wedding in NC. He’s likely to find himself married within a year.”

  Garth snorted. “Come on!”

  “Some guys are seriously spooked. Look at the evidence. It all started when Graham got married down here. Dulaude was best man at Graham’s wedding. He was married within a year. David Graziano was at that wedding and at Dulaude’s, and damn if he wasn’t a married man in twelve months’ time. You, you were at Dulaude’s wedding and the best man at Graziano’s.” MacMurtry turned his orthodontically perfected smile to high. “You know what they say: ‘Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.’ You’re a goner.”

  MacMurtry was definitely feeling triumphant—exactly the setup Garth intended. But it was important not to let him win too soon. Not until Garth had set his own hook. He smiled a little dismissively. “You are so full of it, MacMurtry. It’s no wonder your eyes are brown. Lots of SEALs were at both Graham’s and Dulaude’s weddings. Are they all married now?”

  “It’s like the flu. Not everybody catches it. But you still want to be careful about who you hang around with.”

  Who he hung around with—was that a veiled warning? Or was MacMurtry looking for something to taunt him with? Garth was no damn good at cat-and-mouse games. He stuck with his purpose of frustrating MacMurtry. He made himself smile and laid on his Western drawl. “Hell, if I could find the right woman, I’d get married in a heartbeat. Be nice to have a wife, home, kids.”

  He wasn’t bullshitting. He should have listened when Commander Kohn had visited him in the hospital and urged him to take a desk assignment. While Garth was on LIMDU, stuck in one place, he should find a nice girl and get married, according to the commander. Kohn had had lots of good reasons, not the least of which was that the right wife was a huge career asset.

  But the thought of yielding his choice of wife to his ambition hadn’t set well. Garth had always assumed, without giving it much thought, that the woman for him would just be there one day. He would recognize her, and that would be that. It’s what had happened for his father and grandfather.

  And he had another problem. No SEAL had to go without sex, but he’d never been a ladies’ man. Women looking for a walk on the wild side frequently told him they loved what one had called his “dark aura.” But women he could imagine as the mother of his children? Those he couldn’t get to first base with.

  Still, he knew the commander’s advice was well intentioned. Setting aside all the ways a wife could enhance a man’s career, if an officer hadn’t married by a certain age, the brass wondered why.

  Of course, he wasn’t going to say any of that to MacMurtry. “You ought to be thinking about giving up bachelorhood yourself,” he told him instead. “At promotion time, the Chain of Command likes to see a man married. You know what they say, ‘A solid marriage makes a good SEAL a better one.’”

  Confident he’d frustrated MacMurtry enough to have him ready to snap at any bait, Garth set the hook. “If there is a marriage curse, I say, bring it on. My problem is, how am I going to meet eligible women stuck here?”

  “That’s not your problem.”

  “No?”

  “Your problem, my man, is you’ve been iced.” MacMurtry didn’t bother to hide his triumphant smirk. “Word is, your last operation embarrassed higher-ups when your platoon was ambushed.”

  “We were following up on intel that the Taliban was using the village.”

  MacMurtry tsk’d. “That’s what you’re bound to say, isn’t it?” His head wagged in false commiseration. “Bro, you ruined a lot of people’s day when you got out of there alive—but too bunged up to be sent back down range.” Down range meant sectors where bullets were flying. “Better for everyone if you’re put somewhere you can’t ask questions.”

  Chapter 4

  “For God’s sake, be careful out there!”

  “If I were going to be careful, I would have joined the Coast Guard.”

  —From the movie, Navy SEALs

  Garth was grateful for the impassive countenance he had cultivated until it was a habit. Without it, MacMurtry would have seen that the bottom had just dropped out of Garth’s world.

  When Garth tried to see where he had gone off track, his mind always went back to Afghanistan. Everything had been fine until that day. He and his men had distinguished themselves; and a field promotion to lieutenant commander had been a real possibility until, because of bad intelligence, he had led his platoon into an ambush. The surrounding mountains had blocked radio transmission. Only the fact that he had sent the platoon’s medical corpsman to a different village on a mercy mission had saved them.

  Bad intelligence happened. There was no reason to think it had been anything but an operation in which Murphy’s Law had reigned supreme. Though Garth had gone over and over that day, trying to see the decision nodes at which he could have taken different action, he hadn’t considered a perspective from which what ha
d gone wrong was that he and his platoon had survived.

  That was over a year ago. A SEAL officer’s career was built on distinguishing himself on operations. For months, on paper, Garth had done nothing. If MacMurtry was not just pulling his chain, Garth’s career hiatus wasn’t a snafu. It was part of a plan to marginalize him, and it had worked. His career wasn’t stalled; his ambition to serve his country by leading Special Operations, and all the hopes he had pinned to that ambition, were dead in the water.

  Clear-eyed cynicism was necessary to gain enough rank to institute his vision, and Garth had worked hard to acquire the armor of distrust that fit so easily on men like MacMurtry that they didn’t even feel it. Even so, Garth had suffered “a career-limiting event”—the kind of colossal mistake that guarantees an officer will never be promoted again—but the mistake he’d made was failing to recognize he was being screwed by someone on high.

  When he’d come close to dying, Garth had questioned if he had been the kind of SEAL he wanted to be. Now he didn’t know if he was a SEAL at all. On paper, he wasn’t even in the navy anymore. His background had been scrubbed. Anyone who checked him out would learn he had retired on medical disability. His checks came from a dummy corporation.

  If someone had deliberately diverted him away from the Teams, then he couldn’t be sure what he was doing or for whom. And when you came down to it, he didn’t know who MacMurtry was working for either.

  Everyone is potentially under opposition control according to a list of precepts for spies, the so-called Moscow rules. The story that the CIA had developed the list during the Cold War specifically for agents operating in Moscow was probably fiction, but the rules themselves were real. Every secret agency, every group that operated undercover had some version of them.