Текст книги "Because of The Brave"
Автор книги: ZA Maxfield
Соавторы: Laura Baumbach,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 10 страниц)
“Oh, fuck, Robin,” Peter whispered, his mouth dry from breathing hard. His heart stuttered like he’d run for miles. He let his hands drop to his sides and Robin held him fast. “Fuck.”
“My soldier man, let it all go and follow me, yeah?”
Robin’s hips jerked as he arched and twisted, slowing down and holding Peter still. Peter’s orgasm built in his spine and he gave it up with a shout that shocked him as it issued from his mouth. He shot ropy jets of cum between their bodies, going limp, hanging from Robin’s arms formless like silken fabric.
Robin shook him a little.
“What?”
Instead of saying anything Robin pressed him for a kiss and they stayed like that until Robin was forced to grab his cock and the condom on it before it slipped out.
Peter rested his head lazily on Robin’s shoulder. “I could stay like this forever.”
“Could you?” Robin gazed at him and Peter knew it wasn’t a casual question.
“Yes.” Peter told him honestly. “Except…”
Robin tilted his head. “Except?”
Peter looked down at the spunk between their bodies. “Except I can’t see blowing off the job I trained hard for, one I’m really damned good at, because some fucktard wants to blackmail me.”
Robin became quiet. “You’re going back.”
“I have to. People count on me. I’m part of a team.”
“Your mom said she thought you’d be deployed again soon.”
Peter nodded. “I want to be straight with you.” Peter realized what he said and rolled his eyes. “Honest. I want to be honest. I’ll be gone. Maybe for a long time. It’s what I do.”
“It’s who you are.” Robin brought his hand up to caress Peter’s cheek. “I would expect nothing less from Shelley and Jonathon Hsu’s son.”
Peter leaned into Robin’s caress. “It’s the first time I’ve had regrets.”
“No.” Robin frowned. “No regrets.”
“I could get used to this, being with you. I want to see your smile first thing in the morning. I’ve never had that. Never wanted it.”
That very smile appeared on Robin’s face, only a little sadder and Peter sighed. “What are you going to do now that…?”
Robin took his time answering. “I think I’ll take Lyndee up on her kind offer of a job.”
“Yeah?”
“I like her. I like the work; the town’s not too bad. The cities are close by.”
“You could stay here.” Peter watched surprise travel over Robin’s face.
“What?”
“You could live in this house if you want. I’d know where to look for you when I came home. With you here it could be home.”
Robin toyed with the fingers on Peter’s hand. “You want that, Peter Hsu?”
“Yeah. Yes. If this were a straight thing I’d be asking—”
“Don’t get nuts.” Robin nipped his chin. “Are you planning a long career?”
“I’m not planning on quitting now, just because some asshole thinks he can make me pay for my lifestyle. I may not have a career when I go back, they may already be planning separation proceedings. But if they still want me, I have to do my job. I’m not going to let anybody down.”
Peter brushed his lips against Robin’s and was rewarded with a deep kiss but Robin was frowning when they broke apart.
“Except maybe you, huh?” Peter asked Robin.
“And here I was worried you’d only be half the man your mama said you were.” Robin shook his head. “Turns out we may have both underestimated you.”
Peter blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”
Robin stood, dumping Peter onto the floor. “It means, my soldier man, that you need to get off me so we can shower. If I’m going to be an army wife I need to keep you clean and shiny, and there’s meals to cook, clothing to press…”
“Army wife?” Peter blinked. That sounded… How did that sound? It sounded all kinds of good, as long as Robin continued looking at him with love in his eyes.
“Army wife.” Robin held out his hand to help him up. “I’ll bet there’s all kind of handbooks and manuals on the best way to care for uniforms and send care packages and survive deployment. And you know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“I get the keys to the Road Runner.”
Until We Meet Once More
Josh Lanyon
Z.A. Maxfield, Josh Lanyon, Laura Baumbach
Anchors Aweigh, my boys,
Anchors Aweigh.
Farwell to foreign shores,
We sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay.
Through our last night ashore,
Drink to the foam,
Until we meet once more.
Here's wishing you a happy voyage home
-Anchors Aweigh
Lt. Charles A. Zimmerman
Because of the Brave
Present day, 0001, Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
“What we don’t want,” Lt. Colonel Marsden said, “Is another Robert’s Ridge.”
“Understood, sir.”
Army Ranger Captain Vic Black was thirty-two, a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair prematurely silver at the temples, and eyes a color a former lover had once referred to as “jungle green.” Those light green eyes studied his commanding officer as Marsden, his face lined with weariness, looked instinctively at the silent phone on his desk.
Vic understood only too well what Marsden was thinking. The parallels between this rescue operation and the disastrous Battle of Takur Gar –commonly known as Robert’s Ridge – were painfully clear. In the Battle of Takur Gar the rescue of a Navy SEAL had resulted in two helicopters getting shot down and the deaths of seven U.S. Soldiers – including the Navy SEAL, Petty Officer First Class Neil C. Roberts. Yeah, the last thing anyone wanted was another Robert’s Ridge.
Marsden admitted, “I know what you’re thinking, but we’re in better position to get their man out even if they didn’t have their hands full with Akhtar Shah Omar on the other side of the valley.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Vic said woodenly. Well, it was one of the things the rangers were there for. Rapid response. Rescue. Whatever was needed. Like the SEALs, the Rangers were an elite special operations force, highly trained and able to handle a variety of conventional and special op missions –everything from air assault to recovery of personnel or special equipment. This missing Navy SEAL seemed to qualify as both of the latter.
“No QRF. No TACP. No USAF. Just a three man rescue team carried in by a MH-47 Chinook and inserted at 0200 hours 1000 meters on the Arma mountain range.” Marsden pointed to a place on the map.
“Has there been any further communication from the surviving SEAL?” Vic asked, scrutinizing the map. Those impenetrable mountains were riddled with Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Another enemy was the weather – it was winter now – and the brutal terrain. The Shah-i-Kot valley and surrounding mountains provided natural protection. For the last 2,000 years Afghan fighters had successfully resisted everyone from Alexander the Great in 330 B.C., to the British Army in 1800’s to the Soviets in 1980.
“No,” Marsden replied. “But this is a valuable man with valuable intel. They – we – need him back.”
“That’s what rangers do. Kick down the doors, take care of business, and bring the good guys home safe and sound.”
Marsden met Vic’s gaze – reading him correctly – and grimaced. “I know, Vic. I know. He may be dead. But his IR strobe is still active and a Predator drone live video feed showed him on his feet and making for the landing zone as of two hours ago.”
“Good enough,” Vic said. And he did mean that. If there was a chance of getting that poor bastard off that fucking mountain in one piece, he was willing to try.
“If we’re all very, very lucky, you’ll be in and out before the enemy ever knows you dropped by.”
Vic nodded curtly. They would all certainly be very lucky if it went down like that. If he developed that kind of luck, he might take up betting on the ponies fulltime when he got back to the States next month. “Does this frogman have a name?” he inquired.
“Lt. Commander Sean Kennedy.”
The wallop was like…looking both ways only to get hit by a passing freight train.
“Sean Kennedy?” Vic repeated faintly.
“You know him?”
Marsden was staring at him, and no wonder. Vic’s nickname wasn’t “Stoney” for nothing. He managed to say evenly, “If it’s the same man. Yeah. I knew him. A long time ago.”
“Sean Kennedy is a common enough name.” Marsden was still eyeing Vic curiously. “Well, it’s a small world, and that’s a fact. Good friend, was Kennedy?”
“Yes.”
The best.
And more.
“Funny how things work out,” Marsden said, apparently in one of his philosophical moods. “Well, whether this Kennedy is your Kennedy or not, it looks like it’s your job to bring him home. You deploy at oh one hundred hours.”
Twelve years ago, 0005, Beneath the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
Eerie blue light bathed the marble sarcophagus of John Paul Jones.
“Jee-zus, you’re one crazy sonobabitch,” Midshipman Second Class Sean Kennedy said admiringly – though this was very much the pot calling the kettle black. “Remind me not to gamble with you again.” He looked around the chamber with awe.
“Yeah, yeah. Pay up.”
“You want a blowjob in a crypt?”
Hell, provided Sean Kennedy was the guy at the other end of his dick, Vic would have welcomed a blow job inside the sarcophagus.
“Are you chickening out?” Vic asked in a hard voice because if Sean was, Vic was liable to strangle him out of sheer frustration and murderous disappointment.
Ever since he’d seen fellow plebe Kennedy laughing down at him from the top of Herndon Monument – sunlight gilding his chestnut hair and honey-colored skin, turning his hazel eyes gold – he’d wanted him. Wanted him so bad it kept him up at nights. And it hadn’t helped when they’d become friends. Or roommates. And if it hadn’t been for the presence of their other bunkmate, Midshipman “Specs” Davis…
But then Vic had known he had a problem from the time he was fifteen. He was eighteen now. Oh, he liked girls okay. But not the way his friends did. In fact, he felt a little queasy listening to the stuff his friends talked about wanting to do to chicks. Vic liked to jack off in front of the mirror in his bedroom at home – position himself so he couldn’t see his face, just watch his hand moving on his dick, watch his dick thicken and lengthen, and pretend it was someone else’s hand and someone else’s dick.
And then he’d met Midshipman Fourth Class Sean Kennedy and figured out whose hand he wanted – and whose dick. Because it turned out that Kennedy had the same problem.
“I’m not chickening out,” Sean said evenly. “You won your bet.”
Yep. He’d won his bet – and if they got caught, they were both out. Finished. Washed up. And goddamn if it didn’t feel worth the risk standing there in the creepy darkness of the crypt beneath the chapel, Sean’s eyes gleaming as they watched him. Not trusting himself to speak, hands shaking a little, Vic unzipped his uniform trousers.
Sean’s shadowy figure dropped to its knees before him and Sean’s mouth –lips so soft and tongue so hot and wet – closed around Vic’s cock.
Vic groaned. He couldn’t help it. But the sound reverberated off the marble floors and stone walls like old John Paul Jones had just noticed what was going on.
Sean disgorged him, spat out, “Shut the fuck up!”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not bilging out two years from graduation. Copy that?”
“Copy that. Shut up and suck me.”
He felt the huff of Sean’s laugh against his groin. “Bastard.”
And then, to his abject relief, that marvel of a mouth closed around him again. Vic closed his eyes and concentrated on that wondrous wet tongue licking and lapping at the head of his dick. Vic shifted, stepped further apart to give
Sean better access. Sean’s mouth closed around him and he began to suck in earnest. So good. So humblingly good that fierce draw following the slow, reluctant repel, hard and soft, wet and hot.
Vic opened his eyes. It gave him a sense of power too; staring down at Sean’s bent head, the dull gleam of his chestnut hair, the dark crescents of his eye lashes, and his mouth…
Oh, that mouth.
His gaze fell on one of the four giant bronze dolphins that braced the marble sarcophagus. The dolphin seemed to be sticking its tongue out at him. In the eerie blue light from above Vic could just make out the name “Ranger” carved in the marble floor above the “John” in John Paul Jones. All seven of the ships Jones had commanded were listed there.
Two things eventually occurred to Vic: never again was he going to be satisfied with a girl blowing him – and Sean had done this before.
In fact, Sean gave head like a he did it for a living. Like a professional whore. It made Vic angry and it made him crazy for more because it was so good. ‘Good’ being a feeble word for the best goddamned thing in the world.
That beautiful sucking pull, that wet slide…a sweet tension was building, building with every synchronized pulse of heart and dick, building…
Oh yeah, and there it was, rolling through his nerves and muscles…bones and blood and every cell in his body…picking up weight and energy like a tidal wave surging up and then crashing down in wave after wave of shuddering sensation that sent sparks shooting behind his eyes.
Vic slumped against the black and white marble column. His legs were shaking so hard he wasn’t sure he could stay on his feet. “Christ.” His whisper seemed to echo in every corner of the crypt.
Sean was kneeling at his feet, breathing hard like he’d run a marathon, and Vic suddenly wanted to do it to him. Not just to taste him – although he did, to his shame, want to taste Sean’s cock – but to give him that. That…rush.
But that hadn’t been the bargain.
Anyway, Sean was pushing to his feet. Vic straightened, groped for his handkerchief and wiped himself off. He was astonished to see Sean unzip his pants and mop his own groin and genitals.
“You came watching me?”
Sean laughed a little unsteadily, nodded.
And because he was weirdly moved and excited by that, Vic said arrogantly, “Yeah, I have that affect on a lot of people.”
“Making plebes pee their pants isn’t the same thing, asshole.” But Sean was chuckling, and something about him, about that husky laugh in the intimate gloom and the scent of him – sex and soap and an aftershave that was too old for him – Vic grabbed him, nearly knocking him down, and kissed him.
Caught off guard, Sean’s mouth opened right up. Probably intending to protest, but Vic’s mouth covered his. Sean’s lips were warm and tasted of salty-sweet. A taste that was just a little too close to tears. Vic kissed him harder and kept kissing him until he recollected that officers and gentlemen did not kiss other officers and gentlemen.
At the same time, Sean pushed him away. .“Down boy.”
“You know you like it,” Vic said aggressively.
And to his astonishment, Sean flicked him a funny look. “Yeah. I do.”
When they finally went up through the chapel Sean pointed at the one of the stained glass windows facing the altar. Sir Galahad with his sword raised. “Hey,” he whispered. “Notice a resemblance around the jaw?”
To put him in his place, Vic said, “No way. You’ve got a mouth like a girl.”
This seemed to hit Sean’s funny bone – he always had a weird sense of humor. “Not me, asshole. I was kind of thinking he looks like you.”
Present day, 0100, Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
Afghanistan in November was a cold day in hell.
At one o’clock in the morning the Chinook was spinning up on the tarmac, the craft shaking like a giant living, breathing bird. Warm exhaust gusted into Vic’s face as he climbed aboard after combat controller Tech Sergeant Bill O’Riley and Specialist Paul Matturo.
This was Vic’s handpicked rescue team. In addition to his mini quick reaction force, the Chinook helicopter was manned by five crew members including the pilot Major Kate Cheyney. Every one on this mission – code name operation Blue Dolphin – was a combat-seasoned veteran.
They buckled in and the chopper rose, whirling them off toward the snowcapped mountains.
They had a hundred and fifty mile flight to the rendezvous point. Everyone had their job and settled down to it, planning what to do when they hit the ground. The basic plan was to land, set up a perimeter, extract the Navy SEAL, and bug out.
Vic put on headphones and listened in on the radio chatter between Bagram and the battle zone. Well-armed, well-outfitted al Qaeda mountain fighters were well entrenched around their target. In other words, business as usual.
“So what the hell is this SEAL doing out here on his lonesome?” O’Riley asked, when Vic finally put the headphones aside.
“He was part of a recon team looking for Akhtar Shah Omar.”
Akhtar Shah Omar was a Taliban leader in the Kunar province whose so-called Mountain Devil fighters had been delivering heavy casualties to the marines operating in eastern Afghanistan.
“Someone should have told them Omar’s on the other side of the valley.”
Vic nodded curtly. It was obvious they didn’t have the full story yet, but that was par for the course. What he had been able to learn was that Sean had been leading a four man team. The three other SEALs had been killed after an extended firefight when their position had been discovered by mujahadeen militia. Sean had managed to survive and keep moving and was now within range of the landing zone, although there was no telling what kind of shape he was in.
“By now everybody in the fucking province, including Osama Bin Laden, will be looking for him. And they’re going to be waiting for us,” O’Riley said.
Vic looked from his weathered face to the dark, intense face of Matturo. “Yep. The Taliban knows we always come back for our own. If they can, they’ll lay a trap for us, but we’re coming in fast and we’ve still got the advantage of darkness.”
Cheyney’s calm voice came over the intercom. “Six minutes out.”
As Vic unbuckled and moved into kneeling position, he could hear the pilot briefing her crew who were already on their feet, watching the windows, looking out for RPG launches.
Far below Vic could see the pale glimmer of the snowy slopes of the whaleback western ridge of the Shah-i-Kot Valley.
Cheyney finished, “Anybody have any questions? No? Let’s rock and roll.”
Eleven years ago, 1515, Village Motel, Annapolis, Maryland
“Let’s lock and load, baby,” Sean said, squirting a shiny glob of lube on his hands. He rubbed his fingers together, warming the gel.
Vic shifted, trying to get comfortable – like that was even a possibility.
Sean ran his hand lightly over Vic’s ass, stroking him, and then he parted his buttock cheeks, tracing a light finger down his crack – not quite teasing, but not invasive either. Delicately he touched the tight – and clenching tighter –entrance to Vic’s anus.
Vic sucked in a breath. Fists punching sharp indentations in the slick, flowered bedspread and mattress beneath, he looked uneasily over his shoulder. “I don’t know about this.”
Sean’s finger stopped that little stroking motion that was sending butterflies swarming into Vic’s hot, tight belly. “Are you welching on your bet?”
Was he?
Vic stared at Sean’s hard face. Sean would be pissed…but, yeah, he’d let Vic back out of it.
“Fuck no. I just…you do know what you’re doing, right?”
“A damn sight more than you knew when you shoved that canon up my ass the first time.”
Vic blushed. He’d heard loudly and at length how he needed to work on his technique that first time. Well, practice made perfect, and he didn’t get any more complaints about his performance these days. Far from it. Nothing Sean liked better than taking Vic’s dick up his skinny ass.
So why he’d had to suddenly make this into a big deal, turn everything around, insist on that goddamned bet on the Army-Navy Game – and why Vic had had to lose the bet.
“A deal’s a deal,” he said gruffly.
He faced forward again, uncomfortable at the way Sean’s face colored up and his eyes shone more brightly in the subdued hotel lighting.
“You’ll like it, Stoney,” Sean whispered and Vic shivered as Sean’s lips pressed briefly, like warm velvet, to his spine. “You’ll see.”
Cocky sonofabitch. No way was Vic going to like this, although he had to admit to a little curiosity given the way Sean carried on when Vic was fucking him. Racked and helpless – like it was just the best thing in the world to have Vic’s dick shoving in and out of him. He’d even cried a little the first time – and not because Vic had hurt him. They’d both pretended not to notice.
Sean started fingering him again in that embarrassingly intimate, knowing way. Vic jumped.
“Jesus, would you try to relax?”
“I am relaxed!”
Sean laughed, and Vic reluctantly laughed too although he was a little angry at being forced into this.
Okay, in fairness he wasn’t being forced. Sean would accept it if he said he’d changed his mind. He wouldn’t be happy but he’d take it. And he’d still let Vic have him. But…Vic couldn’t do that to him because clearly this meant something to Sean. Proved something. God knew what.
He could feel Sean’s dick, rigid as a snub-nosed lance brushing against his buttocks. His own dick was soft as a limp noodle. In fact if his genitals retreated any further from this assault he’d turn into a girl.
Actually…that felt kind of good, the way Sean’s finger was touching him there, stroking so lightly. The tip of his finger was slippery with oil and it pushed gently into Vic and then pulled out; he was getting a sort of rhythm going and Vic made himself relax into it. His sphincter muscle automatically gripped Sean’s finger – biology kicking in – but the friction wasn’t so bad. Wasn’t bad at all, if he was honest.
Yeah, that was nice…
And Sean was patient. And careful. He pushed his finger in deeply and continued stroking until Vic was actually relaxed enough to permit another finger to slip inside – definitely a weird feeling, but after the initial uncertainty of whether his body would permit this transgression…it sort of felt good. Sean was touching him expertly as though feeling for something…
Vic gasped as a jolt of pure pleasure lit up inside him. All hands on deck. Sean nipped his shoulder, and oddly that felt good too.
“Do that again,” Vic ordered, unevenly.
Sean did it again and Vic gulped. Sean took the opportunity to slide another finger inside Vic’s body.
He was sort of getting used to it now, and he liked the way Sean’s fingers were twisting and stroking inside his body – weird though it was. He’d always liked Sean’s hands.
Sean pulled his fingers out. The bedsprings squeaked beneath as he moved into position, and Vic felt the alien brush of latex as the blunt head of Sean’s dick pushed at the door of his body.
The condom changed everything, made him self-conscious, made him remember what they were doing, what they were risking. He tensed, but Sean
was soothing him with whispers and a caressing hand on his cock. Vic forced himself to relax, he wanted to get this over with now. Sean pushed in.
It hurt. Bright pain flashed behind Vic’s eyes and he briefly considered murdering Sean for raping him, but even as the red tide of fury rose, the pain was easing and a strange quivering awareness replaced it. Not exactly pleasure but…well, not like anything he’d ever felt before.
“Sorry, sorry. It’ll get better, you’ll see,” Sean was whispering, and his hands petted and fondled until Vic’s dick was hard again, and he was relaxed.
The fullness, the sense of being overwhelmed by another body, was disconcerting, but even that wasn’t…bad exactly. Just strange.
Sean moved, sliding in a little further, then pulling out. He cautiously rocked against Vic and Vic cautiously pushed back against him. Sean’s thrusts grew stronger, and Vic shoved back harder, and now they had the rhythm of it, the push pull, the rise and fall.
There was a temptation to wrestle for control, but he could feel Sean’s urgency, his need, and after all, this was about giving Sean what he wanted, so Vic let go and just went with it, let Sean drive it, letting it build speed like a steam engine picking up until it was rocketing along on its own momentum and he couldn’t have stopped it if he’d wanted to.
Strangely, he didn’t want to.
Sean’s cock thrust in and out, faster and harder, and then he changed the angle and Vic felt something like a fireball of intense, fierce physical delight roll up his spine and burst in the back of his skull. At the same time orgasm rushed up through him and he came in hard spurts of milky white.
Sean was still humping against him, making small, desperate sounds, and Vic, still telling himself he just wanted this over and forgotten, rolled his hips and tried twisting back. Sean arched, slamming in and out until he suddenly shouted and Vic could feel that pulse of liquid heat – contained – but there nonetheless.
They collapsed together, a sweating tangle of arms and legs, gasping for breath. Vic felt a crazy sort of triumph that he had managed this, managed to give Sean what he wanted. After he’d caught his breath, he rolled over, groggy with release and weariness, reaching for Sean, pulling him close. Sean crawled clumsily into his arms, burying his head in the curve of Vic’s shoulder and neck.
He was murmuring something hot and emotional into Vic’s skin, the meaning half-blurred by the thundering pulse in Vic’s ears.
“What did you say?” Vic asked uneasily.
But Sean shook his head, denying the words.
Present day, 0220, Somewhere in the Aram Mountain Range, Kunar Province, Afghanistan
The chopper set down in a sparkling power of fresh snow. Vic was the first one down the ramp and out into the thin, cold air, M4 held at ready. His team followed on his heels.
The silence in the makeshift LZ was almost eerie. Moonlight spotlighted snowy pine trees and surrounding rocky crags. Nothing moved.
“Where the hell is he?” O’Riley asked at last.
Vic shook his head, eyes raking the barren plateau for any sign of life. “Let’s fan out. Have a look for him. He’s supposed to be on his way”
They spread out, moving quickly across the mountain top. Not so much as a ground squirrel stirred.
Vic jogged to the edge of the clearing, looking down the mountain side. He could see the nubby carpet of pine trees and conifers. Not a glimmer of light from anywhere but the moon overhead.
“Where are you?” he asked softly.
The wind made a ghostly sigh through the funnel of rocks.
Out of the corner of his eye, Vic saw the flash of white light. A blast rent the night. Vic turned as a giant, invisible hand seemed to gouge into the earth in front of the nose of the chopper sending snow and rocks flying his way. He hit
the ground as shrapnel slammed into the side of the chopper and pinged against the rotary blades.
Mortar fire.
He looked for his guys and saw them flattened behind cover. Matturo yelled across the clearing, “Two o’clock. The bastards are firing mortars from over that ridge.”
The ridge was on the other side of a gorge separating this mountain from the next.
One of the chopper’s door gunners returned fire with his M60 machine gun, though it was doubtful he had a viable target.
Vic considered the ridge as another flash indicated a second mortar was being lobbed their way. Light, probably hand-held mortar, and far enough away to make that strike near the nose of the chopper more a matter of luck than strategy – which wouldn’t help Vic’s team if that luck held and they ended up stranded on this mountaintop – surrounded by al Qaeda. He remembered Marsden’s words about not wanting another Robert’s Ridge. Marsden was going to piss himself when he got word of this. Although anyone could have predicted what would happen putting a chopper down in the middle of these mountains.
Not like there was any choice about it. From the moment Vic had heard Sean Kennedy was the fox in the snare, he’d been determined to go.
The second mortar hit beneath the mountain top. Snow and rocks and shrapnel flew into the night and then rained down while Vic, Matturo, and Riley hunkered under what cover they could find.
Matturo was swearing a blue stream when he popped his head up again. “If this frogman doesn’t show up, how long are we planning on hanging around here?”
“Working on it.” No small arms fire. So far, so good. The dividing gorge between this mountain top and the ridge where the insurgents were holed up would slow al Qaeda down only briefly. And these mountains were filled with
bad guys to whom the sound of those mortars and machine gun fire would be reveille.
“Looks like they were waiting for us,” O’Riley shouted.
Vic shouted back, “If they were waiting for us this place would be swarming with al Qaeda.”
“Well, it won’t be long now.”
That was sure as shit true.
Another mortar exploded in the mountain below them. Vic could feel the mountain shake as the round thudded into its face.
“Any sign of our boy?” O’Riley called again from his position behind a scraggy evergreen that looked like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. “I got nothing. Any sign of him?”
Vic looked across to Matturo. Matturo shook his head.
“Let’s give him a little while,” Vic said. “Maybe traffic was heavy on the 101.”
O’Riley guffawed.
Every fifteen seconds another mortar round hit the hillside, usually beneath the crest but occasionally striking the cliffside above. Given the randomness of the impacts, Vic suspected the mortar team lacked a forward observer. What they did seem to have was an endless supply of ammo and boundless enthusiasm for their mission.
If Sean was trying to get up this mountain, the mortar fire would be one hell of a disincentive. And if he wasn’t trying to get up this mountain…
In the lull between rounds, Vic jumped up and zigzagged back to the Chinook, boots pounding gravel. Taking shelter on the other side of the ramp, he yelled into the chopper, “Somebody get on the radio and contact base. See if one of the CIA’s drones can give us Kennedy’s coordinates.”
In the distance he could hear the mortar firing. The longest minutes of his life ticked by while he waited for an answer.
When it came, it was not good.
“They’re not picking anything up.”
Sean. Don’t do this to me.
“He’s not moving or they can’t find him?”
Another eternity while he waited.
“They can’t find him.”
Okay. That could mean a couple of things. If one word defined the SEALs it was silence. And the fact that Sean had gone silent could mean the drone wasn’t positioned where it needed to be or there was a problem with it or with the live feed. It could mean Sean was lying low somewhere where the surveillance drones couldn’t see him.
