by Mel Odom
“Goose,” Remington said in a quieter voice, “I need you there. The Syrians launched a wave of short-range missiles eighteen seconds ago. Glitter City is one of their targets.” He paused. “Do what you can to save whatever’s left of them, Goose.”
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 11:57 P.M.
“Mommy, I don’t want you to go! I don’t want you to go!”
Megan’s heart shattered at the unhappiness in her five-year-old son’s plaintive cries. She wiped tears from Chris’s cheeks and looked into his china blue eyes that were so much like his father’s.
“It’s going to be all right, little guy,” Megan said as she carried Chris in through the double doors of the staff support building. She’d called ahead to arrange emergency baby-sitting. She’d also left messages on Joey’s pager and forwarded all incoming calls to her cell phone.
“Daddy calls me little guy,” Chris said petulantly. “Not you, Mommy.”
“I know. I just felt like calling you little guy. So you can be my little guy the way you are for Daddy. You’re just going to be here a little while. Then we’ll go home.”
Megan carried Chris on her hip, surprised at how big he’d gotten since the summer. The thought that Goose wouldn’t even recognize his son when he returned from his current tour swept into her mind and brought new pain.
Extended absences during active tours were a hazard of the kind of soldiering Goose did. He and Megan had talked long and hard about those absences, about how much they affected a marriage as well as any children of that marriage. That was the biggest fear Goose had had about getting married. He’d seen military careers destroy families, and he believed too much in what he was doing to back away until he had finished the career he’d promised himself to deliver.
And compromise was a hard thing for Goose. He loved his family as fiercely as he loved his country. Having to choose between them would have destroyed him, and Megan knew that. So she chose to be strong for him, to be the woman she had trained herself to be after her first husband had abandoned Joey and her, and to wait for the time that Goose would be home again.
God willing, she prayed softly. Please, God, be willing. She always kept Goose close in her prayers.
“No, Mommy! No!” Chris wailed. He butted his head against her shoulder in frustration.
“It’s going to be all right, Chris,” Megan said. “It’ll only be for a little while. Then I’ll take you home and we can cuddle in my bed. I don’t work in the morning, so we can watch your favorite videos together. I’ll make pancakes. I promise.”
Right after I get through grounding your brother for the rest of his natural life, Megan thought. Leaving Chris asleep in his own bed would have been so much easier than getting him up, getting him dressed, and getting him upset. If Joey had been home when he was supposed to be, she could have done just that. Her frustration and anger at her older son grew.
“Okay,” Chris said sleepily. He lay against her more contentedly, and his breath whispered soft and warm against the hollow of her throat. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, baby,” she told him.
One of the three women on duty in the emergency baby-sitting facilities met her at the door. Since Megan had used the services before and was on file, all she had to do was show her military ID to check Chris in. Megan politely refused the young woman’s offer to take her son and carried him inside the room herself.
The room was filled with cradles and small beds. The constant state of readiness around the world was taking a terrible toll on military families. Emergency baby-sitting had become a necessary thing in these troubled times.
As Megan looked around, she was surprised to see that most of the beds were filled. She glanced at the woman who had checked her in. “Busy night, huh?”
“Yeah. Military support personnel got called in a few minutes ago,” the young woman said. “There’s been some kind of attack.”
A cold rush in Megan’s chest took her breath for a moment. “Where?”
“Turkey,” the woman said.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I heard the news from one of the men who dropped off his daughter a few minutes ago.” She looked at Megan. “Do you have someone over there?”
“My husband.” Megan held Chris tightly. It hurt to think about putting him down and walking away from him. With Goose in danger, and Joey gone, she couldn’t think of being absent from her younger son.
But Gerry’s in danger, too, she told herself. Reluctantly, she placed Chris in one of the empty beds and pulled the sheet over him.
He looked up at her with those wide, blue eyes. “Night, Mommy.”
“Good night, baby.” Megan was surprised at the lump in her throat. “I love you. Say your prayers, honey.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Chris said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
“He will, darling. He will.” Megan ruffled her son’s hair and kissed him.
“I’m just going to sleep for a little while, Mommy, so you can come and get me soon.”
“I will, Chris. I’ll be right there for you. Promise.”
Yawning, his little nose wrinkling, Chris rolled over on his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in the space of a drawn breath.
Megan kissed her son once more, thankful for such a precious gift, and left the nursery. Her thoughts spun, filled with Gerry and Boyd Fletcher, wondering where Joey might be, and hoping that Goose was all right, because if she knew her husband, he would be in the middle of things.
4
The Mediterranean Sea
USS Wasp
Local Time 0657 Hours
Alone with the dead man in the small, refrigerated room next to the medical department that was sometimes used as a morgue, U.S. Navy Chaplain Delroy Harte gazed at the stationery before him and prayed that the proper words would come to him. God, help me. How do you write to a woman and tell her that her husband is dead? How do you write to his children and tell them that their father no longer lives?
Those were things agencies within the Department of Defense had been set up to handle. Even knowing that those agencies had already contacted the dead man’s family didn’t help him. Dwight’s family would expect a letter from his chaplain and good friend; a sad announcement would carry a more personal touch than the standard military communications. But the emotional cost of writing that letter was higher than Delroy had believed possible. He’d never, in his years in the military, been put in the position of writing one like it before. Letters for the dead, yes; he’d written those. But never a letter for someone who’d been his best friend.
The chaplain closed his eyes, aware of the familiar noises of Wasp coursing all around him, and tried to remember how his father had handled deaths within his small Baptist congregation in Marbury, Alabama. But Delroy Harte found no solace there. Josiah Harte had known every member of his congregation, all those souls who sat in the pews every Sunday to hear the hard-fisted, hellfire-and-brimstone sermons his father had delivered. His father had also known all of the townspeople who never darkened the door of the church till they were carried inside in a box.
Delroy had known the man who now lay in the black body bag on the stainless steel table a few feet away. Known him well and admired him greatly. He shifted and gazed at the body bag, hoping that an answer would somehow appear there. But it didn’t.
His father had been ten times the pastor Delroy had turned out to be. Josiah Harte had watched over his congregation and his family with love and wisdom, leading them with a stern hand and a gentle touch, guiding so many of them to fulfilling lives enriched with a sense of purpose.
Tense and fatigued, a condition that was hard to get into and almost impossible to escape, Delroy stood and stretched his legs. He stood six feet six inches tall. In high school, he’d been a power forward, one of the greatest basketball players the school had ever seen.
People had believed he’d never make it through college without being drafted by the NBA. But that had been before he lost his father. Somehow in the deep and terrible confusion of that loss, Delroy had found the Lord in ways he had never imagined.
But you didn’t stay walking close to the Lord, did you, Delroy? No, you turned away from Him. And you are too afraid to tell anyone because you don’t know what would become of you without this mission in your life.
He rubbed his chin. The stubble that had grown there let him know he’d been at his task much longer than he would have guessed.
His eyes burning with exhaustion, he gazed at his blurred reflection in the stainless steel table where he’d been working. His skin was dark, nearly blue-black, and his image flowed like a dark pool across the metal surface. His hair was cut military style, high and tight, as it had been for thirty years, since the day he’d entered the navy. He wore his chaplain’s service dress blue uniform, but he’d left his white gloves and his tie in his pocket. The tie would go back on before he left this room.
Officially, he was off duty right now. Writing the letter to the dead man’s family was something he was doing at the request of the dead man himself. Back in sick bay, before the emergency surgery that had been ordered after Dwight had complained about severe chest pains and shortness of breath late last night, Dwight had asked him to take on this task—just in case …
Waiting in the medical department while the medical personnel worked on his friend, Delroy had expected to sit for hours till the doctors and nurses performed the surgery and got Dwight stabilized. The medical staff told Delroy there was nothing to worry about outside of the normal risks of bypass surgery—and given Dwight’s comparative youth and overall fitness, those were pretty small. At least, that was what they told him before they started cutting.
Delroy had believed them. Dwight had been in great shape, he was only fifty-two years old—only three years Delroy’s junior—and the doctors were top-flight military surgeons tempered by previous service in combat conditions. When she was in home port in Norfolk, Virginia, Wasp was counted as the fourth largest hospital in the state. She was part of the state’s disaster relief plan. Military medical aid didn’t come much better than the facilities on USS Wasp.
But the doctors were wrong this time. Fifteen minutes into the surgery, Chief Petty Officer Dwight Mellencamp had died on the table. Thirty minutes after the surgery had begun, the surgeon had been out in the waiting room, explaining everything to Delroy, and despite his personal grief, the chaplain had followed most of the medical jargon. The docs had done their best.
But it was still nearly impossible to understand that Dwight was gone. No longer would he play chess or share historical mystery novels or argue religion with the chaplain. Dwight had been a Christian of the old school—believing every word of the Bible as the literal truth. The book of Revelation had been a hot topic between them as they tried to imagine what the world would be like after the Rapture. Dwight was convinced that they were living in the end times, that the world had reached the point of no return when believers and nonbelievers would be separated by God’s own hand.
Delroy didn’t believe that, and their arguments had sometimes grown heated because Dwight believed so fiercely. Dwight had accused Delroy of hiding his head in the sand, of denying a truth so obvious that any child should be able to see it. Dwight had been growing in his faith, seeing things and making connections that Delroy was just unable to accept. Delroy thought that by debating the future with Dwight, he was defending the faith. Sometimes, though, after one of their discussions, he wondered in the dark of the night if Dwight was right. Perhaps he was the one hiding the lack of strength of his faith. Maybe he was only giving lip service to the beliefs his father had taught him so long ago.
“God help me, Dwight,” Delroy said in a choked voice. “I am going to miss you so much.” He placed a hand on the body bag, knowing that a few of the young Marine corpsmen and navy sailors on board Wasp would never have thought of willingly touching a corpse, even through the body bag.
Being with the dead man didn’t bother Delroy the way he knew it had bothered some of the other men who helped carry the corpse into the room. Back home in Marbury, the farming community he had grown up in, sitting up with the dead before the burial was a long-established practice. Delroy had sat up many nights, with his grandparents and his father and the people of his father’s parish.
But you didn’t get the chance to sit up with Terrence, did you? Despite the long years that had passed, tears stung Delroy’s eyes. Remembering was so confusing. Images of Terrence as a baby, as a gaptoothed four-year-old holding a chamois and helping Daddy wash the family station wagon, as a young man playing high school basketball, and finally as a Marine corporal in a dress uniform festooned with ribbons and medals. No chance at all.
Five years ago, his son, Lance Corporal Terrence David Harte, had come home from the Middle East sealed in a box that had never been opened. The military had handled the burial with pomp and splendor and brevity. Delroy, stationed elsewhere, had been flown home in time for the funeral.
After the funeral and most of the requisite bereavement leave, Delroy had opted to return to his post sooner than required. His wife had never understood that he couldn’t stay there in the home that he and Terrence had remodeled. Terrence had been everywhere in that house—in the pictures hanging on the wall, in the sink stand that was a half-inch longer on the right than it was supposed to be because Terrence hadn’t cut the exact center from the countertop. The mistake had been his and Terrence’s, and they’d waited years for someone to notice. Delroy’s wife never had.
Tenderly, Delroy folded the old memories and put them away. He enjoyed them because they were all he had left of the son he’d loved so much, but he resented that they could intrude into his thoughts, into his life, without warning and sometimes without provocation.
Today, though, there had been plenty of provocation. He returned to the tall stool next to the stainless steel table where he had been composing the letter Dwight had charged him to write. It had almost been a joke between them last night as Dwight was prepped for surgery.
“Write to her, Chaplain Harte,” Dwight had said. “Write to my wife and my kids. Tell them how much I love them. If this thing goes sour, I want them to know that I was thinking of them. And that I’m sorry I couldn’t be there more.”
Delroy had tried to allay his friend’s fears. Serious military man that Dwight was, he had been torn between family and duty all his life. He had always said God would let him know when he’d had enough of the navy—or when the navy had had enough of him.
Someone rapped on the door to the small room.
“Come,” Delroy said. He set his face, automatically reaching for the tie in his pocket in case the length of time he’d spent with the dead man had attracted the captain’s attention. Captain Mark Falkirk was a by-the-book navy officer, but he was also a man who realized his crew and staff were human.
The door opened and a hesitant young man stuck in his head. “Chaplain Harte.”
“You know I don’t stand on formality when I’m not at post, Tom.” Delroy’s military rank was commander, but the proper verbal address for all military chaplains remained Chaplain.
“Yes, sir.” The young midshipman stepped into the room. Tom Mason was one of the aides Falkirk had assigned to coordinate between the chaplain and the staff. “It’s just that …” He looked at the sheet-covered corpse, then back at Delroy. “You’re working.”
Delroy shook his head. “I’m just doing a favor for an old friend. Come on in.”
The midshipman held up a cup. “I brought you coffee. Cream, two sugars. Shaken, not stirred.” It was an old joke, but he meant well.
“Bless you.” A real grin twisted Delroy’s face. He accepted the cup Tom handed him.
Tom stood between Delroy and the door, coming no closer to the corpse than he had to.
Delroy sipped his coffee, finding
it sweet and hot. “You don’t have to be nervous, Tom. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you.”
Tom scratched at his shirt collar with more than a little nervousness. “I know that, Chaplain Harte.”
“You watch too many horror movies.” Delroy knew that several of the crew passed DVDs around the ship, sharing and trading with each other as they did with books and video games. Tom was a horror movie aficionado.
“Yes, sir,” Tom agreed. “I do.”
The men aboard Wasp had seen a lot of action in recent years, even if most of it had only been lying in wait off the coast. They were familiar with death, but most of them weren’t comfortable with it.
The matter wasn’t helped by the fact that Chief Petty Officer Dwight Mellencamp had been aboard ship for years and was a personable man. Over twenty-six hundred men and women crewed aboard Wasp since the ship had been retrofitted with fem mods, upgrades that allowed the quartering of the female Marines and sailors that amounted to 10 to 25 percent of the crew. But most of that crew had known Dwight, or known of him.
Delroy put the coffee cup down. “What brings you here?”
“Captain Falkirk.”
Delroy examined the paper in front of him. He’d chosen not to use the notebook computer he had back in his quarters. A message like this needed the personal touch. Dwight would have wanted a letter, not a fax or an e-mail, sent to his family.
“And what did the captain want?” Delroy asked. He thought Falkirk was going to suggest strongly that he stand down for a time.
“A eulogy,” Tom answered.
Delroy frowned, feeling overwhelmed.
“A lot of people knew Chief Mellencamp,” Tom explained. “Captain Falkirk feels that addressing the situation, what happened to the chief, with a small service would be better than letting the crew deal with it alone. As big as Wasp is, we’re like a community. The captain believes everybody aboard ship would feel better if we said a proper good-bye to the chief.”
Despite the additional pressure the situation put on him, Delroy had to agree with the captain’s assessment. The situation along the border between Turkey and Syria was gut-churning for Marine troops and navy crew, who lived with the fact that they might be called into immediate service at any time. Wasp, with nearly twenty-seven hundred souls aboard her, not counting the crews of the other six support ships in the ready group, held almost the same population as Marbury, Alabama. But the crew aboard Wasp lived on a world that measured 820 feet long and 106 feet wide, a very small island. Marbury was spread out considerably more, and folks still managed to keep up with each other’s business. When Delroy had been a boy there, all the funerals were standing room only, the pews packed with family and friends.
