Eight Years: A Novel (Trident Trilogy: Book One)

by Donna Schwartze

  “No. This is just a one-time thing. She’s been tracking this guy. Has all of the intel. She’ll work with Raine,” Culver says. I’m noticing something weird about the way he’s talking about her. I can’t put my finger on what it is yet.

  “You ask Raine about her?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, she’s a rising star in D.C. Mainly an interrogator, but supposedly a very effective one. Broken some big targets, especially for her age. She’s just in her mid-twenties.”

  “She ever worked outside of D.C.?”

  In general, I hate everyone from D.C. They usually bring a lot of red-tape bullshit with them. I’m not a very patient person, but I’m guessing most people have already figured that out.

  “Yeah, she’s been in-country extensively, but never attached to one of our teams. I think she just comes in after the HVT is in-house. Here’s her file.” He pushes it across the desk.

  I flip the file open and review it quickly. I’m not all that interested if she’s just going to be with us for one mission. Millie Marsh. Age 25. NYU and George Washington graduate. Fluent in Bosnian, Spanish, Pashto. Semi-fluent in Farsi and Bari. Fine. Whatever. Sounds like your average agent.

  I leave Culver’s office more frustrated than when I went in. I didn’t join the teams to sit on my ass, and I definitely didn’t join them to go after some soft target in Bosnia. The teams have been nonstop for almost two decades. The War on Terror has kept us busy, but it’s slowing down now. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s frustrating. I feel like fifteen years of my life are coming to a crashing halt.

  Our next deployment is still a month away, and I can’t wait for it to get here. When I’m home, I have too much time to think. Thinking is a bad thing. I need distraction, and I need it quickly. My non military friends, all two of them, think I’m crazy when I tell them I want to be in Iraq or Afghanistan for three or four months at a time. And, they’re not wrong. I mean, it’s not exactly fun.

  The best way I can describe it is, you know that vacation feeling? The night before you leave, you’re all hyped up, can’t wait to get there. And then the first few days are great, just how you imagined. But by like day four, you realize you’ve gone too hard—you’re hungover, sunburned, and all your clothes are dirty, so you start thinking that going back home won’t be so bad. Then, you get home, you wash your clothes, your sunburn fades, and all you want to do is go back on vacation. That’s how deployment has always felt for me. Can’t wait to get there to do the job I fucking love. After a few weeks of it, I’m exhausted and dirty, and can’t wait to get back home. After being back home for a few days, I’m bored and twitchy, and can’t wait to get back on deployment. It’s a vicious cycle.

  My family doesn’t understand my life choices either. My brother followed my dad into the family business. They run a liquor wholesaler in Houston. I probably would have done that, too, but when my mom died when I was ten, my life turned upside down.

  I remember my dad showing me a dilapidated house in our neighborhood when I was about that age. He told me to stay away from it. That the guy living there had been injured in the Vietnam War, and had gone a little crazy. As I got toward my teenage years, I started resenting my dad and doing the opposite of whatever he asked of me. So, the perfect rebellion was to visit the crazy man’s house. I went over there when I was twelve or thirteen. Just walked right up to his door and knocked. I was already almost six feet tall by that age. I wasn’t afraid of much. Frank answered the door with a beer in his hand. It was ten in the morning. He asked me if I wanted one. I said yes, mostly out of confusion. We sat on his front porch and drank our beers, and he started telling me about being in the navy, and about being one of the first-ever SEALs.

  From the second he started talking, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. He didn’t make it sound romantic. In fact, he made it sound like hell. But I saw the way his face lit up when he talked about his team, his brothers. I knew I wanted that. Against my dad’s wishes, I joined the navy right out of high school. I got my trident by the time I was twenty. That makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. It was hell. But, it was perfect hell—dirty, exhausting, painful. Everything Frank told me it was going to be.

  I’m thinking about all this on my way home and it’s not sitting well. I do a U-turn toward the bar. All the guys are there already when I walk in. Pete has my whiskey ready by the time I walk by the bar. I join the rest of my team over by the pool table. They’re all jawing at each other about something. More of the same. I sit on a stool drinking, looking around at tonight’s offerings. They’re everywhere. The Frog Hogs. That’s what we call them. The girls that come to the bar just for us. It’s not a very flattering nickname, but believe me, they earn it every night. They’re all carefully orbiting the pool table, not having the nerve to just walk over and start talking, but making sure we see them when we’re ready. I don’t see anything worthwhile, so I just keep drinking. Eventually, that will make the offerings start to look better.

  I’m about four whiskeys in by the time Butch and I finish off our last victims. No one beats us at pool, and we never let anyone break up our team. Why mess with perfection? Butch is trying to convince someone to lose another hundred to us. As usual, I let him do the talking. It’s what he does best. As I’m sitting back on my stool, something at the door catches my eye. And that’s when I see her. For the first time in weeks, my adrenaline starts surging.

  Chapter Seven

  Outer Banks, North Carolina

  2000

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to stay away from those lilac bushes, Millicent. They’re just thick with bees this time of year,” Camille said as she clamped down on Millie’s arm, now red and swelling from bee stings.

  Camille was frustrated by everything about this child. Millie was trusting, optimistic, and silly—the exact opposite of her. Camille had tried from day one to discourage those qualities in Millie, but they just kept popping back up like the short-lived weeds in Camille’s meticulous garden.

  “I was just trying to get them to sit on my arm like the butterflies do,” Millie said insistently.

  Millie played in the yard for hours talking to any friend she could find—birds, squirrels, butterflies. Camille told Mack she thought the child was half simple but, as usual, Mack encouraged Millie’s behavior. It drove Camille crazy that Mack wasn’t raising Millie to recognize the harsh realities of the world. Camille looked forward to when Mack was on deployment for three or four months at a time. That gave her the opportunity to really work on correcting some of Millie’s more annoying behaviors. But then Mack would always come back, and the two of them would ruin all the hard work Camille had put in.

  “Sit still, Millicent.” Camille pushed Millie down on the lawn chair as she tried for the third time to apply the baking soda paste to the stings. “Let the paste dry before you get up,” she said as she turned swiftly to go back into the house, the screen door slamming definitively behind her.

  Millie laid back on the lawn chair, and closed her eyes. She hated when Camille called her Millicent. It was her given name, but she thought it sounded mean, especially the way Camille said it. She liked the name Millie. That’s what her daddy called her. The chair’s polyester straps were digging uncomfortably into her bare legs, but she didn’t dare move. She knew Camille was watching from the kitchen, waiting for another reason to scold her.

  I’ll just wait here for Daddy, she thought. Millie heard Camille on the phone with him last night. As usual, Camille told him he didn’t need to come, but Millie knew he’d show up. He always did.

  Mack didn’t bother going in the house when he arrived. He had to be back in Virginia Beach in a few hours. He didn’t want to waste any of his time on Camille’s nonsense. He found Millie on the porch sleeping uncomfortably on a lawn chair. Her little arms had turned as red as the persistent strawberry streaks in her golden hair.

 
“Millie, sweetie.” He shook her gently.

  “Daddy!” She leaped out of the chair and into his arms.

  Mack carried her to the shade of the overgrown oak tree in the front yard. He tried to put her down on the grass, but she maneuvered herself until she was sitting on his lap. She rested her head against his broad chest and, as usual, his heart melted.

  “Sweetie, you can’t fall asleep in the sun. You’re getting a sunburn and little blisters,” Mack said, running his big, calloused hands lightly over her little arms.

  “Oh no Daddy, that’s not a sunburn. The bees bit me.”

  “Oh, sweetie, do they hurt?” Mack lightly kissed them, making her giggle. Mack wanted to record that sound and take it with him everywhere he went.

  “Were you under the lilacs again?” He already knew the answer. That was her favorite place in the yard.

  She shrugged and nuzzled in closer to his chest. He never got mad at her like Camille did, but she liked to make sure. She knew her daddy liked to snuggle.

  “Sweetie, you have to stay away from those bushes in the summer. I told you that last time.”

  She sighed like the weight of the world rested on her little shoulders. “Why are the bees so mean to me? I want them to like me. The butterflies like me.”

  “Millie, bees aren’t like butterflies. They’re workers. They have a job to do, and that’s all they want to do. They don’t have time to sit on your arms.”

  “They can take a break like everyone else does,” Millie said.

  The world is so simple to her, Mack thought. And that’s the way he wanted to keep it.

  “They don’t want breaks, sweetie. They like their work, and they just want to do nothing but that. If you try to get in their way, you get stung.” Mack smiled as he realized he was basically describing himself.

  “Everybody likes breaks,” Millie said, sighing dramatically at such a crazy notion.

  “Bees don’t. It’s just the way they’re built. God made them that way. It’s not right or wrong. It’s just how they are.”

  “Butterflies take breaks,” Millie said defiantly. “They don’t work.”

  “Well, they do some work, but they don’t work very hard. They just fly around from flower to flower and only work when they want to. They don’t really have a plan. Butterflies just land on whatever flower looks nice to them and makes them happy.”

  Millie sighed as she let the hot summer breeze begin to lull her back to sleep. “Daddy, I’d really rather be a butterfly.”

  “You are, sweetie. You’re a butterfly,” he said as he gently stroked her head. He couldn’t imagine how she was going to survive in the world, but he loved her spirit and encouraged her to be carefree—something he hadn’t felt one day in his childhood.

  Mack knew Camille wasn’t a good influence on her. He thought several times about moving Millie to Virginia Beach, and hiring a nanny when he worked. But he knew he’d just be trading one evil for another, and shockingly, Camille was the lesser of the evils. Mack didn’t want Millie anywhere near his professional life. When he was in Virginia Beach, he ate, slept, and breathed his job. The minute he crossed over the Virginia-North Carolina border on his way to see Millie, he transformed into a different person. He needed to keep that separation for his sake, as much as hers.

  Unless he had a career-ending injury, Mack figured he had about ten years left of being an operator. He could retire with full pension before he was forty. He planned to move with Millie somewhere near the naval base in San Diego, maybe teach a few classes to new recruits. Millie could go to college in California, and they’d go surfing in her free time. He had it all figured out. Now, he just had to get there.

  Chapter Eight

  Millie

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  2019

  Mills, I’m still slammed at work. Can’t meet you at the bar. Sorry. See you tomorrow. Don’t be late. They’re freaky about punctuality.

  I’ve been staring at Raine’s text in the bar’s parking lot for about five minutes. I can’t decide if I should go in without her or not. I’m not in the most social mood, but I need a change of scenery from the hotel room, and I could really use a drink. What the hell. Let’s do this.

  The bar is already in full swing by the time I walk in. I notice immediately that I don’t look much like the rest of the women in here. They’re wearing the ultimate bar-battle gear: micro-short dresses, full makeup, dazzling manicures, and hair that has been curled and sprayed to perfection. Honestly, I’m a little jealous. Even if I wanted to look like that, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I grew up at the beach. Being in and out of the water that much didn’t lend itself to makeup, managed hair, or manicures.

  I stand at the bar’s door and watch them for a second, the coiffed ladies perched on their barstools, ready to pounce if any man looks their way. Most of their flirtatious smiles and longing gazes seem to be fixed on one place: the pool tables. I look over there to see my new SEAL team holding court. I don’t recognize them immediately. They don’t look much like the official navy pictures in their files, but it’s them. If there was a central casting call for operators, they definitely would fit the bill—scraggly beards, long hair, lean, compact, muscular, tattoos, scars. They remind me of my dad for a second, and that sends an intense shot of pain down my body. I definitely need a drink.

  I’m trying to get the bartender’s attention. Apparently, his name is Pete and boy, let me tell you, Pete is not having a good time. There is a gaggle of drunk girls just to the left of me screeching at him for another round. I feel you, man. They annoy me, too. Finally, Pete makes his way over to me. He just stares at me. I don’t think he likes newcomers.

  “Dirty martini, please,” I say, sincerely hoping it’s okay for me to talk. I’m really not sure from the way he’s looking at me.

  “I don’t make martinis, and I have no idea what a dirty one is.”

  “Just add some olive juice into the martini. . .” It’s just registering with me that he said he didn’t make martinis. He’s glaring at me.

  “How about a Maker’s on the rocks?” I ask quickly.

  “I have Wild Turkey,” he says as he turns around and starts making my drink without asking me if Wild Turkey is okay. It’s not, but I sure as hell am not telling Pete that.

  I turn my stool around to view the pool game. Mason Davis is staring right at me. Maybe he’s already figured out who I am. Raine told me he’s quick. I have to say his official navy picture doesn’t do him justice. He is clean cut in the picture, looking pretty average, but tonight he looks gruff, and intense, and just really, really sexy. His file says he’s thirty-five, but he looks at least five years older. His skin looks weathered, which I remember from my dad is a side effect of the job. He has sandy blond curls coming out the sides of his baseball cap. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in at least a month. His beard is getting scraggly, with wisps of gray hair shooting out here and there. The file lists him as six feet, 210 pounds, but he looks a lot leaner than that. His T-shirt is baggy and untucked, but it’s not doing a thing to hide his absolutely chiseled arms. I notice what looks like the tip of a trident tattoo coming out of his right sleeve. It probably starts on his shoulder. I’d really like to explore this theory further.

  He’s not saying much, but all eyes are on him—men and women. He’s definitely the center of attention. I’m watching as he lifts the front of his shirt to wipe something off his face. I just see the ripped stomach muscles that wind down and disappear into his jeans before he puts the shirt back down. He looks up at me again and smiles confidently. He knows the effect he has on women. He’s so arrogant that it makes me feel a little light-headed. I cross my legs to keep from falling off the stool. I smile and look away quickly just in case he’s staring for other reasons. I don’t want to encourage him. This is strictly business. But, damn, he’s not like anything I’ve seen in D.
C.

  Pete finally makes it over to me with my drink. I down it before he can walk away, and motion for another. He nods. I think sign language is going to be my best bet with Pete. I swivel back around to watch the pool game. It looks like Mason is partnered with Butch. They’re just putting the finishing touches on this game. Butch is talking all kinds of smack with a deep Southern drawl. He’s looking for their next victims and waving around a hundred dollar bill, daring anyone to challenge them. Well, I guess there’s no time like the present to meet the team. I might as well put to use some of the skills I learned in college.

  “I’ll play,” I say as I slide off the bar stool, and walk over to them.

  They all stop in their tracks, none trying to conceal the once-over they’re giving me. In Mason’s case, it’s two or three times over, and it’s definitely making me sweat.

  Finally, Butch speaks up. “You’ll play with us? Not sure you know what you’re getting into, ma’am?”

  Oh, sweetie, I so do. I know everything about you and your friends. And, what I know about all men is they’re rarely paying enough attention to know they’re getting hustled until it’s already way too late.

  Chapter Nine

  Mason

  Virginia Beach, Virginia

  2019

  I see her the minute she walks in. She opens the door, and it’s like someone shines a flashlight into my eyes. Her long, blond hair is glowing through the haze of the bar. She’s tall and slender, and from what I can make out from this distance, her legs start somewhere up around her chest. I immediately think about how they would feel wrapped all around me.

  She starts maneuvering her way expertly through the drunk men. They’re all leering at her. It makes me want to pull out my rifle, and shoot a round of warning shots over their heads. I watch as they brush up against her on purpose. She deftly changes direction every time it happens, ignoring their filthy eyes and hungry greetings. There’s no doubt in my mind this happens every time she walks into a room.