Everyone dropped to the ground again, like some kind of funky dance.
And, as Muldoon had hoped, the decision and gestures became unanimous. They’d head to the safety of the cave. At a dead run. Last one in was a rotten egg.
Two more bombs hit on either side of the trail. Yes, that’s right. This was a full-scale attack. Run, you terrorist scum. Run for your lives.
But they were bottlenecked until they reached that clearing ahead. They pushed and jostled and jockeyed for position, no love lost between ZZ’s and Angry’s men. It was just the kind of ugly chaos he’d been hoping for.
With one last nod at Jenk, Muldoon slipped out from his hiding place and into the severely distracted crowd.
He had his weapon held at ready as he kept the woolen scarf wrapped securely around most of his lower face. It wasn’t a good idea to go for a walk in a crowd of Taliban-supporting terrorists with a clean-shaven chin, but there weren’t a whole lot of options here.
Muldoon shouldered his way through the crowd toward the prisoner, who was having a hard time keeping up while he had what virtually amounted to a bag over his head. Itchy and Scratchy had begun pushing the guy, united at last in their attempt to make him move faster. It was inevitable, but still, the timing was perfect—the reporter tripped over his long robe and fell smack on his burqa-covered face right at Muldoon’s feet.
It was a gift from heaven, and he didn’t hesitate. He hoisted the squirming reporter up and over his shoulder as Itchy and Scratchy shouted at him.
“Don’t fight me,” he muttered in French into the burqa’s heavy folds. “I’m here to help you.”
The struggling didn’t stop, so Muldoon just gripped the reporter more tightly and focused on the shouting. The two guards might have been speaking a dialect he didn’t know, or maybe they were simply talking too fast. Either way, he didn’t catch a single word.
When in doubt, shout back. And shout louder.
“Go,” he screamed at them in Pashtu. “Run. Now!”
But it wasn’t until he started to run, too, that the shouters turned the volume down a notch. Although Scratchy, to his right, had a glare that was filled with suspicion.
The good news was that the Frenchman couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds. It would have been laughably easy to carry him if he weren’t trying his best to get away. Something solid kept jamming painfully into Muldoon’s back, just hard enough to keep him thoroughly pissed off. It seemed improbable that the terrorists had let this guy keep his camera, but he couldn’t figure out what else it might be.
“Stop,” he finally ordered in French. The promise of help hadn’t worked, so he tried the alternative. “Stop fighting, or I’ll kill you right now.”
The reporter’s immediate surrender was a relief, especially since the scarf around Muldoon’s very American chin was starting to come undone.
He tightened it back up and then there he was, in the clearing that he’d noticed when his team had first crept up the trail. But he was there earlier than he’d anticipated. And the next bomb—the most important one of them all; please God, don’t let it kill his men—hadn’t yet struck its target.
So he tripped and went down onto one knee, much harder than he’d intended. He landed right on a rock, right on what must’ve been his knee’s freaking funny bone. Oh, shit, it hurt like hell, with waves of pain that rolled through him, really ringing his chimes. Still, it did the trick of slowing him down.
The reporter started struggling again, making it that much harder for him to get back to his feet.
Scratchy was tugging at him, shouting again. Itchy was long gone.
Muldoon didn’t need to make a show of pulling himself painfully up and then—
Ka-boom!
It was the bomb that he’d been waiting for, and it hit so close the concussion knocked him back on his butt. And probably onto that same freaking rock that his knee had connected with. Son of a bitch.
It rained dust and debris and, still clutching the reporter, he scrambled to his feet and ran for cover.
Due west.
Scratchy was shouting yet again, and this time Muldoon caught the words he’d hoped to hear.
Land mines.
But he didn’t slow as another bomb hit, again shaking the ground. He vaulted over an outcropping of rocks—and almost directly into Cosmo’s and Silverman’s open arms.
They half carried, half dragged both him and the reporter to safety behind yet another ridge of rock, while somewhere nearby WildCard thumbed a switch.
Boom!
It sounded convincingly like a weight-triggered land mine, but it was quickly drowned out by the din of more bombs falling.
Scratchy apparently had some amount of common sense, because he raced after the last of his al-Qaeda buddies.
There was no time for Muldoon’s knee to still hurt like hell, but it did. God, it felt like it was the size of a watermelon, like it was starting to swell. But that was absurd. A banged funny bone didn’t swell. You hit it, you writhe with pain and you scream for two or three minutes, and then life goes on. But try as he might, he couldn’t seem to get past the writhing part.
He pulled himself to his feet, ridding himself of the extra clothes, refusing to consider the possibility that he’d actually injured himself in that fake fall. So what if it hurt? So what if it swelled? He was a SEAL. He’d worked through pain plenty of times before.
“Get that thing off of him,” he ordered Silverman, who was untying the burqa-covered reporter.
“Sir!” It was Jenk, with the radio. “It’s 0337, and the F-18s are still on course. The helo’s picking us up four clicks down the trail, but we’ve got to hustle to get there before the real bombs start falling.”
“Let’s go,” Muldoon ordered.
“Whoa,” Silverman said. “The French guy’s a girl.”
“Americans,” the reporter spat in heavily accented English. She was indeed a woman. “I should have known.”
“Are you all right, ma’am?” Muldoon asked her.
Her hair was dyed a ridiculously fake-looking shade of black, and the glare she gave him was venomous. “Do you know how long it took me to arrange an interview with Abdul Mullah Zeeshan? And you have to go and rescue me. Thanks a lot, Captain, but no thanks. I’m going to that cave.”
It would have been funny, the way she started marching back toward the trail, if only they hadn’t been on such a tight deadline. If only his knee hadn’t felt as if it were about to explode, and the only thing keeping it in one piece was his now too tight pants. If only it wasn’t hurting so much that a river of cold sweat poured down his back with every other step he took.
“In about fifteen minutes, that cave is going to be destroyed,” Muldoon told the young woman.
“Bullshit,” she countered, with the kind of withering glance that only European women could deliver with such authority. “Your own government has issued statements admitting that these caves are bombproof.”
“They were lying,” he said. “It’s called misinformation. They wanted Osama to feel nice and safe right where he was.”
She said something in French filled with accusations, and turned and ran. Up the trail. Toward the cave.
And wasn’t that just what he needed?
She was small and fast, but Muldoon had her tackled in fewer than five steps. His knee was on fire, but he managed to land on his left side, keeping his leg from connecting with the ground as he took her down. It hurt, but it was nothing like it could’ve been—until, as she flailed harder, trying to get free, she managed to kick him.
Whammo.
Right in the knee.
“Shit!” It was remarkable. Part of him watched from above, disassociated and completely dispassionate, as he damn near retched from the pain.
Don’t let her get away!
He held her tightly, even managing to cover her as one of the last of the bombs that he’d ordered sprayed them with more dirt. She was screaming about something, but he
couldn’t understand. She might as well have been speaking Martian. All he could do was cover her mouth, hope she didn’t bite him too hard, and hang the hell on.
And then WildCard was there, thank you, glorious God, keeping the reporter from sprinting farther up the mountainside.
“Gag and carry her if you have to.” Muldoon managed to form words into a direct order to the chief.
“I’ve got her, sir.”
“Breathe,” Izzy told him. “Just breathe and you’ll be all right, Lieutenant. I promise, it’ll get better soon.”
Zanella thought he’d gotten whacked in the balls. Muldoon had to laugh. If only…
“You okay, sir?” Lopez hovered above him anxiously.
“Yes.” Muldoon pushed himself up onto his elbows, up so that he was sitting, up all the way to his feet. Shit, shit, shit, shit. “Yes, I am.” He said it again, mostly to convince himself that it was true.
“Sir,” Jenk said. Tick tock.
“Let’s run,” Muldoon ordered them, ordered himself. “Come on, let’s move out of here. Now.”
He could do this. Down the trail, one step at a time. Eventually he’d reach the helo and someone would give him some ice and the pain would start to recede.
“Can you really run, Mike?” WildCard was back beside him then, slowing to Muldoon’s pace. It was probably the first time in his life he’d lowered his voice to be discreet.
“Yes.” Muldoon didn’t want to talk, not to WildCard, not to anyone. He needed all of his energy focused on moving forward. But he was in command. He couldn’t just disappear. “Where’s—”
“I passed her off to Cosmo,” the chief told him, anticipating his question. “I thought maybe after she realizes we really did save her life, she’ll be eternally grateful and he’ll finally get laid.”
Muldoon had to laugh. “You’re a good chief.”
“You bet your ass I am. I take care of my men.” He looped Muldoon’s arm around his shoulders. “It’s the right leg, right, sir?”
“I’m okay.” Muldoon wanted to pull away, but the truth was that putting some of his weight onto WildCard let him move faster. And the faster he could move, the faster his team would get to safety. A SEAL team was only as fast as its slowest member—which right now was him. Which pissed him off, royally.
“You’re not okay. You said shit,” WildCard pointed out. “Nearly two years in Team Sixteen, and you finally said a four-letter word. In fact, I think it was ‘shit, shit, shit, shit.’ A quadruple. So what is it? Ankle?”
“Knee.”
“Twist it?”
“No. I don’t know. I landed on it, and…I’ll be fine.”
“Fucking hurts like a bitch, huh?”
“I’m okay,” Muldoon said again. “Let’s kick it faster.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
WildCard somehow knew to be silent then. And the night became a blur of bombs still falling, of Jenk’s reports every thirty seconds of how much time they had left, of his and the chief’s ragged breathing, of red-hot, searing pain.
He heard the helo before he saw it, and then there it was—one of the most beautiful sights he’d ever seen.
Muldoon counted heads as his men climbed aboard, then the pilot swooped up and into the sky and got them the hell out of there.
The pain caught up with him as Lopez cut open his pants to look at the watermelon that had once been his knee. He puked quietly into one of the helo crewmember’s helmets until, much to his intense embarrassment, his world tunneled, and he fainted.
He woke up groggy and disoriented as the helo landed. WildCard was there, and Muldoon grabbed his sleeve.
“Everyone okay?”
“Yes, sir. We’re safely back on the carrier, Lieutenant. Mission accomplished.”
“Good.” His head felt so heavy, but his knee didn’t hurt anymore, thank goodness. He tried to sit up, but WildCard and then Lopez was there, holding him down.
“Hey, hey, Mikey, where do you think you’re going, man?”
“I’m okay,” Muldoon said.
“He’s fucking trying to walk off the helo,” WildCard said over his head to Lopez.
“Sir, I don’t know for sure,” Jay Lopez told him, “not until we get you into X ray, but I think you probably fractured your patella.”
“Fractured…what?”
“Remember the time Captain Muldoon ran down a mountain in Afghanistan with a broken kneecap?” WildCard said.
His words didn’t make sense. “Meant to tell that reporter—I’m not a captain.”
“Lieutenant, I gave you something for the pain,” Lopez said, speaking slowly and clearly, “because you broke your kneecap.”
“And then ran a few miles,” WildCard added.
No way.
“But I’m okay,” Muldoon said as the ship’s hospital corpsmen carried his stretcher off the Seahawk. There were intravenous tubes attached to the back of his hand. It was surreal. “No, really, you guys, I’m okay.”
“That you are, Lieutenant,” WildCard said.
His men watched as he was carried past. As usual, Cosmo said it best, giving him the Navy SEAL equivalent of a full salute. “Hoo-yah, sir. Glad you’re on our side.”
ONE
Months later
IN THE SPACE of forty-five minutes, White House public relations assistant Joan DaCosta had been demoted from an admiral all the way to a lieutenant, junior grade.
She tried not to take it personally, or as a quantitative measure of her perceived importance here on the base, but rather as a crash course in U.S. Navy rankings.
Interestingly, not only did the face time get shorter and shorter with each step she was pushed down the chain of command, but the men inside the gleaming white uniforms got younger and more handsome.
Not that the admiral wasn’t worthy of his own page in a hunk-of-the month calendar with his thick salt-and-pepper hair and that solid mix of both laughter and worry lines around his eyes. Since he was the Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command—or CDRNAVSPECWARCOM in Navyspeak—Joan would have been concerned if he hadn’t had a worry line or two.
He’d greeted her upon her arrival in Coronado, and she’d instantly relaxed. She’d met Admiral Morton “Call me Chip” Crowley several times before on her own turf, back in Washington, D.C. He was that rare type of person who actually listened while others spoke.
But her sigh of relief proved to be a little premature when Crowley gently and almost apologetically passed her off to Rear Admiral Larry Tucker, the base commander.
Tucker was a bona fide dumbass, and she knew it even before he opened his mouth. In her job, she’d met enough self-important dumbasses to accurately ID them at first glance. And Tucker, with his too-handsome face and his impeccably combed hair—each strand inventoried and strategically placed to hide the fact that it was thinning—was a textbook case.
He was also a slimeball. He held her hand much too long after their handshake, his gaze lingering on her breasts, with a smile that said, “We both know you want me, because I am, after all, Mr. Wonderful.”
Ick. He was wearing a wedding ring, which was a great big double ick.
Joan wanted to wash her hand as he bombastically reassured her that he would personally take charge of security on the base for the President and his daughter’s upcoming visit.
She didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or horrified at that news. Did it mean Tucker would be too busy Being Important to deal with the day-to-day details, i.e., all those little things on her agenda? Or did it mean that he’d be getting out his Krazy Glue and permanently bonding himself to her side?
The glue stayed in his desk, thank God. And she was far too relieved to be insulted when Tucker clearly got a rush of superiority as he lobbed her in the direction of one significantly lower ranking Lieutenant Commander Tom Paoletti, who was merely the commanding officer of SEAL Team Sixteen.
Merely.
Team Sixteen was the group of SEALs the President had specifically reque
sted meeting during his upcoming visit. Team Sixteen was the group of SEALs with the incredible record of outstanding bravery and efficiency and ingenuity and stamina—all those things that made a huge difference when fighting a war against terrorism.
The rear admiral went off to be superior somewhere else as Paoletti ushered Joan into his office with a brief handshake.
And, oh my God. Wasn’t he delicious? He was a Man, with a capital M and no hint of smarm about him. The broad chest, the jawline, the glint of intelligence in his hazel eyes…
Joan managed to keep herself from checking out his butt in those cute, pristine white uniform pants they all wore. She’d hated it when Tucker had done it to her, and she was determined not to disrespect Paoletti in the exact same way.
But, oh dearie, dearie me.
The commanding officer of Team Sixteen was about her age, maybe a few years older. His hair—or lack of it—was doing that Bruce Willis thing, and he took it just like Bruce. Like a real man, he was just going to let it disappear without a fuss. It so obviously didn’t matter to him. And why should it? With a body like his…
She forced herself to focus on his face. On his hands. No wedding ring.
Stop it, Joan!
He was talking in a smoky voice about how honored the team was to be chosen to receive a presidential citation. “I understand the President’s wish to visit the men on the base here in Coronado. And my team and I, of course, will be willing to give him a complete tour, if he should, in fact, decide to come—”
Joan cut him off. “Excuse me, Commander, I guess you haven’t heard, but the visit is on the official schedule, and has been for quite some time. As far as I know, President Bryant will be here only for the morning, to present the citation and observe a demonstration, but his daughter will be arriving in a few days. And she’ll definitely be taking a tour.”
The muscle jumped in his jaw as he looked at his watch. He was not a happy camper. Joan wasn’t sure why, although she suspected she knew. President Bryant’s daughter Brooke, from his first marriage, was known throughout the world as “the wild child” despite the fact that she was pushing forty.
Into the Night Page 2
