by Aiden Bates
"I'm busy. I've got to find someone else to take this job up in Norway, haven't I?" Dad hung up the phone without any other salutation.
Mal shook his head. Dad had very clearly been raised by wolves.
Morna reappeared. She carried two cloudy glasses with her. "Ouzo," she explained, passing it over. "I figured you might need it after talking to Da."
Mal grimaced, but accepted the offering. "You know, I've never been this much of a drinker. Especially not during the day."
"There's something about the air here that does it to you. I was thinking about getting a little hammock for up here the other day." She huffed out a little laugh. "Like we're going to be here long enough to put our own furniture out, right?"
Mal gave her a sideways glance. "Would you want to be? Usually you're chomping at the bit after a day or two of downtime. I figured you'd be raring to go as soon as Da called."
Morna slouched in her seat and gazed pensively over the water. "I know. We should be out there working. There's so much to be done. There are people to save, plots to thwart. But I'm also just grateful for the respite. It's been a while since we've had a chance to just sit back, relax, and take stock. When's the last time we had a vacation?"
Mal ran his tongue along his teeth. "Remember that time Da got shot, and he sent us off to stay with Mum until he recovered?"
"Ugh." Morna wrinkled her nose. "That was not a vacation. Nothing about Belfast is a vacation, and nothing about living with Mum was a vacation either."
"Learned a lot about bomb making from her." Mal took a sip from his ouzo.
"Fantastic." Morna pointed to a scar on her arm. "That's where that burn comes from, you know."
"I remember. I was there." Mal made a face. "Do you ever think that maybe there was another way to grow up? Or there's another way to do this?"
Morna looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Did you get hit in the head during one of our little sorties with the SEALs? Should I not be letting you drink so much? Do you have heat stroke or something?"
Mal gave her the two-fingered salute.
Morna relaxed a little. "Look, it's not an easy life, no. But it's the way we live, okay? We give something up so that other people can be safe, secure, and free. You taught me that. And it's right! Sometimes it gets lonely, yeah. And it would be nice to meet someone who shared our priorities." She put her free hand on Mal's arm. "You're not thinking about settling down, are you?"
"What, in a tiny apartment in Souda?" Mal scoffed. "Perish the thought."
"Be serious, would you?" She punched his arm, but not hard. "We don't get to settle down. Having kids would be cruel. You're right, we voluntarily give up parts of ourselves so other people can live free and happy, but you're also right when you say that was no life for a kid. Always worrying about whether or not their parent was going to come home, constantly training and studying for the fight, never having or learning anything extraneous or outside the fight — it was cruel, Mal. I understand why we did it, but I'd never want that for a child. And I can't think you would either."
Mal rolled his eyes. "You're jumping awfully quick from 'another way to do this' to 'moving to Blessington, settling down, and raising three children.'" He sucked back a gulp of ouzo.
"Well, what exactly were you thinking, Mal? Joining a monastery? They don't take omegas." She narrowed her eyes and raised her chin. "Or maybe you weren't thinking of moving to Ireland at all, Republic of or no. Maybe you had your eyes on someplace across the seas, in Virginia."
Mal knew his cheeks had pinked up. He'd grown a beard to hide his blushes, or at least to make them less obvious. "Come on, really? What in the hell would I do in America?"
"Not much." Morna sat back. "You know there's no future there."
"I'm aware."
"I mean it. It's nice that he's making you happy for the moment. Really, I'm happy for you." Morna's mouth tightened for a moment. "You've definitely got better taste than I ever did. But Mal, he's not thinking of the long term any more than you should be. You're from completely different worlds and you'll never be more than a fling to him."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Mal met his sister's eyes. "I get that we're from different worlds, and there are a million and three obstacles." He waved a hand. "You don't need to sell me on it, or why it would be a doomed relationship from the start. I'm not a fool. But tell me, Morna. Why do you think he's not thinking of me as anything more than a fling? What makes you think you have some sort of sacred, inner knowledge that I don't have?"
Morna looked down and away. "They think we're terrorists ourselves, Mal. Close enough to it."
Mal gripped his ouzo glass tighter. "Excuse me?"
"Remember how I was stuck on the team with their charming Master Chief while you were off getting shot at? Their boys talk. They talk a lot. You hear things, Mal. Those men are a team. They live in one another's pockets, day in and day out. If one of them breathes in, the other one will breathe out for him. Do you honestly believe they don't know exactly how one another feels?" She shook her head. "We're trash, as far as they're concerned.”
"And Mal, while Trent might be willing to run around with 'a jumped up terrorist who thinks he's doing right,' at the end of the day he's one of them." She sipped from her drink, catching Mal's eyes and holding them for a minute. "It's okay to want more, I guess, but don't get your hopes all bent around him. That's all I'm telling you, okay?"
Mal nodded slowly. "We're not supposed to have hopes anyway, Morna." He made himself grin. "Hazard of the trade, right?"
Her answering grin was a little sad, but she still made the effort. "Damn straight. We fight the fight."
They clinked glasses and finished their drinks, watching the sea. Mal didn't dare tell his sister he'd already gotten more attached than he wanted to. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
~
Trent got back to base at 2259. His curfew was at twenty-three hundred. He'd always been good at squeaking in right at the deadline. He thought it was one of his better attributes. His uncles had other ideas about it, as had his teachers and most of his commanding officers, but Trent himself had always been pleased by his ability to just meet that deadline.
If the look on Chief's face was anything to go by, he was one of the ranks of the less than impressed. "Cutting it awful close, aren't you, Kelly?" He leaned against the door to Trent's temporary housing, a nameless room in an anonymous building.
Trent stood to attention. "Still made it, Master Chief."
Chief rolled his eyes and gently smacked Trent in the gut. "Come on, sailor. Let's go have a chat. Unofficial, like."
Trent frowned, but he followed Chief. Chief had never failed to act in his men's best interests. He'd stood up for Floyd when someone had accused him of stealing. He'd stood by Toledano during his crisis of faith. If he wanted to talk to Trent, Trent knew he should follow.
He couldn't shake his nerves, but he knew he should follow anyway.
He followed his commander into a lounge area not currently in use. The ashtrays had recently been cleaned, and the place only kind of reeked. It was funny to Trent how quickly he'd gotten used to smoke-free environments once he joined the Navy.
Chief sat down and gestured to one of the other seats. "You and Mal," he said, without preamble.
Trent blushed. "Chief, I know it's not exactly encouraged, but —" He cut himself off when the Master Chief raised a hand.
"Son, I don't give a good goddamn where you put your dick, so long as you wrap it, and everyone involved is a consenting adult human. We're all adults here. We're alphas. We have needs, okay? And O'Donnell's a good looking kid. Smart, too. If he'd grown up in the States, he'd have made a damn fine sailor."
Trent blinked. That was high praise coming from Master Chief Boone. Mal couldn't have been a SEAL, because omegas couldn't be SEALs. At least, no omega had ever become a SEAL before, and word on the street was that top brass thought it was a bad idea. Still, if any omega could make the cut, it would be Mal
. "He fought with us, Chief. He held his own."
"He did, him and his sister both. They impressed me. I kind of wish we could bring them home with us." Chief looked out the window for a moment.
Trent rubbed at his neck. "I'm not sure they'd be willing. They've got some funny ideas about the US, Chief. They like individual Americans, but not, you know...Americans."
Chief looked up at the ceiling and bobbed his head from side to side. "Just between you and me, Kelly, I can see why some folks who aren't American aren't exactly waving the Stars and Stripes sometimes. Still the greatest country in the world, and there's still no place I would rather live, but we act in our own interests, not theirs, and they've got a right to get pissed about it."
He pressed his lips together and tightened his jaw. "I don't begrudge enemy soldiers," he continued. "I don't. I've got a lot of concern about folks that take the law into their own hands and decide what's best for others on an arbitrary basis, like they just know what's right. Like a vigilante, or a terrorist. There's a fine line, you know?"
A stone formed in Trent's belly. "Chief, he's a good man."
"I know he is. I like him. I even trust him, which is the hard part." Chief shook his head. "I've been doing a little digging while you've been off canoodling for two weeks. Assuming your boy really is Malachi O'Donnell, and assuming he really is part of Europa's Wolves, he's eyeball deep in a pretty shady organization that goes back to the end of the Second World War."
Trent closed his eyes and clenched every muscle in his body. "Please don't say they're neo-Nazis."
Chief snorted. "They're not neo-Nazis, son. They were formed after the war as a kind of pan-European anti-fascist organization. They were never too careful about their methods, and they operated completely outside of any governmental control or accountability. They started out hunting down Nazis and collaborators, and they did good work. They also got some false positives, and it didn't work out too well for those folks."
Trent flinched. "Yikes."
"Yikes is right. They've been working under the radar here and there ever since. They helped fight Franco in Spain during his reign. They've been working all over Europe on terrorism and against racism. They fight human traffickers, too. They free people being trafficked for sex and migrants being trafficked as labor. They've freed so many people from migrant camps set up to warehouse them that they've been declared terrorists in three Central European countries, and heroes in two Western ones."
"Huh." Trent pursed his lips. "Okay. I can kind of see that. Mal definitely has a streak about him. But that doesn't necessarily make him a bad guy."
"No. Blowing up terrorists, instead of bringing them in for interrogation, does. Don't you think it's better to bring them in and learn more about them and what they're planning than to turn their den into a crater?" Chief raised an eyebrow.
"I don't give the orders, Chief. I just carry them out." Trent straightened himself up. "I mean, we've been sent in with take no prisoner orders plenty of times."
"Yeah. True. We have oversight. We don't just decide." Chief held his hand up again. "And I'm pretty sure Mal has oversight too. If he is who I think he is, he was raised in the Wolves. Him and his sister both. His mother was part of a splinter IRA faction and gave information as part of a deal to get out of prosecution after a bombing in Antrim."
"Charming." Trent pushed down the spike of rage that jolted through him. "Some mother."
"You expected better? Her kids were raised to be terrorists. Vigilantes. Whichever. Anyway, there is just no way the Navy is going to give the thumbs up to us bringing him and his sister back to the States or hiring them on as long term consultants. We're allowed some leeway in working with local groups during an operation, but we can't make accommodations for someone like the O'Donnells. I'm sorry."
Trent blinked. "So what are you trying to say?"
"I'm trying to warn you not to get attached. I don't want you to wind up heartbroken when we pick up stakes, head back to Virginia, and leave the Irish duo here in Crete. Don't get me wrong, Crete's a nice place. They might decide to renounce vigilantism and take up, I don't know, kayaking or something. But they'll be doing it here, in Europe, and not in the USA."
Trent pursed his lips. There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to rail against the decision, because wasn't his great-grandmother a war bride or something? But this wasn't a decision, it was Chief warning him about a fact. He wanted to get mouthy with his commanding officer, but he couldn't afford to do that. He liked the guy, and he knew the Master Chief was only looking out for him.
Besides, Chief was right.
"I have to admit," he said, after a long moment, "I'm a little more attached than I should be. Mal, he's just so competent, you know? I don't know anyone else who can do what he can do. He's not a SEAL, he's something else, and it just makes my jaw drop.
“But you're right, Chief. Mal isn't someone our commanders are going to let me bring home. And I don't think he'd want to come home even if they would. He's a great guy, but I don't have any reason to think he'd be as attached to me as I am to him. And the whole Navy thing would probably be a deal breaker." Trent gestured to the space around them. "I'm pretty sure we all know that the Navy, the SEALs, and this team come first. Yeah, Mal's hot. Yeah, he's smart, and yeah, sex with him is like nothing I've had before."
Chief pulled a face and looked away. "TMI, Kelly."
Trent didn't even feel bad. "Sorry, Chief. Anyway, none of that can make up for my country, or for these guys who have been there for me and with me."
"Good man." Chief patted Trent's shoulder. "I'm glad we had this talk. It's good to make sure we're all on the same page."
"Roger that." Trent could probably have lived the rest of his life without this talk, but if it made Chief happy, he'd take it.
They separated, and Trent headed off to bed. He lied to himself and pretended he didn't have dreams about bringing Mal back to the States.
He kept visiting Mal at night. Sure, he couldn't bring Mal home with him. He couldn't stay with Mal, either. He could still have fun while they were both together. It could be fun while it lasted, for both of them. Mal certainly didn't bring up the idea of staying together after Trent got pulled back to the States.
A few days after Chief ambushed Trent, Chief summoned Mal and Morna to base. This was nothing like their interactions on ship. On the ship, Mal and Morna had the run of the ship. Any room off limits to them was guarded. On base things were different. Mal and Morna had to be guarded at all times. They even had a female sailor escort Morna into the bathroom.
Neither of them batted an eye at this kind of treatment. Trent was more bothered by it than Mal seemed to be. "They're treating you like animals!" he hissed. "Like criminals!"
"Trent," Mal said, brushing his fingers across Trent's hand, "it's okay. Souda Bay is a NATO installation. The admiral here isn't necessarily friendly—he's not going to be okay with a couple of civilians wandering around willy-nilly. Besides, we are criminals, technically."
Mal winked, but it didn't lessen the impact of Mal's statement. Mal and Morna were criminals, and Trent was going to have to leave them behind to face whatever consequences came of their liaison alone.
The SEALs escorted them into a conference room, where they were able to sit on much more relaxed footing. "All right," said Lt. DeWitt, as they gathered around the table. "It's been two and a half weeks since we got to Souda Bay. I think it's probably time for an exchange of information. What do you think?"
Trent hadn't known there was any information to be exchanged, but Mal and Morna exchanged nods. Mal pulled out a file folder. "I think that makes sense. Up until our encounter, my organization wasn't familiar with the more militant arm of White Dawn. They've spent some time making inquiries. White Dawn is headquartered out of Montenegro, but their primary source of funding is a bank in Indianapolis."
Chief frowned. "All we could get was a bank in the Caymans."
Morna yawned. "Please, Chief
. Remember what my brother does. While you need a warrant, we do not."
"Right." Chief glanced over at Trent. Trent couldn't possibly mistake his meaning. "Carry on."
"At any rate, their primary source of funding is a bank in Indianapolis. I included the account and routing numbers in this dossier. The account is linked to Luke Smolak, but that doesn't mean anything. I could link an account to Queen Elizabeth if I felt like it."
"Really?" Buelen paled, just a little bit.
"Don't worry, Buelen, I only use my powers for good." Mal smirked at him. "At any rate, we did get to find some of the names of people involved with the organization. The man on top is called Patrick Wolf. He's an American from upstate New York. He's got criminal convictions for domestic assault and for attempted murder with a hate crime attachment to the charge. I don't know how that works in your legal system but it looks to me like he did a good amount of time before getting out. Once he did get out, he disappears from the sources for a while and then he shows up again in the Czech Republic, and then again in Montenegro."
