“Son of a bitch, Commander, you haven’t aged a year since we last saw each other. You on steroids?”
“Nah, don’t touch those things. Besides, you were drunk, Tierney, and you had that little muffin top on your arm, the one with the—” He demonstrated the size of the bridesmaid’s upper torso.
“Shut up.” Garrett never was apologetic he loved girls with curves, the more the better, as long as they could be athletic in bed. He didn’t see it as a flaw in a woman and didn’t understand how some men did. “So how you doin’?” he added as they shook, their eyes connecting.
“Jeez, Tierney, your mitts are like sandpaper. Must work well for those handjobs.”
His gesture was thankfully obscure.
“I’m a farmer now. Raising chickens, planting a garden, going to bed early. If the apocalypse comes, I’m set. Even learned how to make bread. As long as I can defend it, I can stay there forever even if the world goes to hell.”
“Until some asshole decides to blow up California.”
They shared a hearty chuckle.
An airport traffic police whistled for them to move on, which they both heard and very publicaly ignored. There was still that chip on their shoulders from bar fights and disputes with other dispensers of authority.
A brisk fall wind blew through Garrett’s bones. D.C. could be warm this time of year, but today, it was definitely not. Or maybe he was nervous.
“Get in,” Branson barked as he rounded to the driver side.
Garrett dropped his duffel into the rear seat and climbed inside a second before Branson gunned the beast and did a two-lane change without signaling.
“I can see you’re still working on your reputation, Commander.” Branson had crashed his pickup during BUD/S and was nearly rolled back. He’d been stuck with the nickname Crash ever since.
“Haven’t had even a ticket since, I’ll have you know. Not that I haven’t been close.”
Garrett stared straight ahead and allowed the breech of traffic and noise to sink in. He’d forgotten how uncomfortable he was in crowds with too many moving parts. He knew the signs. It was early PTSD. He stared at his hands and they were as steady as granite.
“So where are we headed?”
“Just sit back and relax, Tierney. What we have to say has to be done in controlled space.”
Holy hell. What was I thinking?
“So you’re DHS now?” he asked.
“Don’t you have ears?”
“What? You thinking I’m wearing a wire? With all this activity around us, how could anyone—?”
“Just humor me. We’ll be there in a few.”
Garrett started to get pissed now. He didn’t like this part of government work, the having to be careful about who was listening and what it meant. The not knowing what was behind that smile, the turn of the cheek, or the way someone moved their hands. A stance would trigger him in those days. Now it all came flooding back. He’d underestimated his readiness for this. He should just level with Branson and get back to California.
“You know, Silas, I’m not at all sure I did the right thing coming out here. I’ve been off the grid for so long, out of the game. I’ve turned into my mother’s hippie dreams. This place doesn’t do anything for me except make me want to stop at the bathroom.”
Branson gave him a grin and readjusted his military-issue sunglasses. Without looking back at him, he said, “And that’s why you’re perfect for this job, Garrett. You were the first one I thought of.”
So much for secrets.
“In about five minutes, you’re gonna have a nice, clean men’s room to use, my brother.”
It had been a half-hearted try, Garrett realized too late. Now he was sounding like a whiny kid. No one forced him to take that ticket and get on the plane. To wash all his clothes, clean his weapons and go to the target range yesterday and not today so he wouldn’t have any residue that security checks would pick up and question him about. He’d checked out all his bills and made sure Snooker had enough food so Geronimo could feed and tend to him while he was away. Those were the things he used to do before deployments. It set off in motion the rest of the things he would need for a mission.
His mind had to be like steel, focused and hard. He had to prune and clip his emotions like he did his beard this morning, being careful not to draw blood when he shaved. He had eyes in the back of his head as he left his driveway, making sure he hadn’t attracted someone’s special attention. He turned off the auto-answer feature on his home phone, so it would just ring, like he was out in the garden and couldn’t come in to answer. Nothing was to look like he would be gone for any length of time. He didn’t need to have anyone know he wasn’t there to retrieve a message or pay a bill.
In the old days, he didn’t hesitate. One step led to the next and the next until he was in full battle gear, sound and ready to react when the time came. Just like he’d been trained. He’d deployed without even knowing what country they’d step out onto when they arrived, so why was this spooking him so much?
He was still the same man. He was ready. He could handle it. He’d seen enough death and dying, blood covering himself and others around him to be ready. He’d held the dying, the men he wanted to save. He’d made love to women trying to excise his demons and only heard the screams of war instead. Intense lovemaking was a close second, but it didn’t dull his memories or the understanding of how fragile life was. He’d tasted the sweet efforts of his home-grown cooking and understood now why he fought so hard. But he fought before he even knew any of that. So why was now so different?
It wasn’t.
“You miss those days, Garrett?” Branson asked him as the truck droned on.
“What days? The weddings? The funerals? The—?”
A memory flashed by him. He was holding Connor Lambert in his arms, and although Connor was a big man, it was harder to control his crying than to hold the man’s dying body. They shared that look that they’d see each other again, and if it was reversed, Connor would have held him until his last breath was taken. They didn’t have to speak; they just looked. It was afterward when the tears and the regrets of not telling him what it was going to feel like missing his best friend began. Nothing came close to that day. Not the day his father was killed in service when Garrett was a boy, not the day his mother gave up her struggle with cancer in the midst of her grief, and not the day his sister went off with some guy she met and never returned. Connor was the only family he’d had. That day would forever be embedded in his psyche.
Damn, Branson!
“I try not to, Si.” He wondered if he was too blunt. “I don’t miss what we did. We never knew why, so that doesn’t figure. I miss the guys, especially the ones who didn’t come home.”
Branson was quiet, chewing on something, locking his jaws, and then biting his lip. “I hear you. The Boneyard of Bone Frogs. That’s a scary place.”
He was getting irritated again. “I really didn’t come out all this way to talk about that. Most days, I just take what comes.”
“Yeah, I know.”
They remained silent the rest of the way to the three-story glass office building. The sign out front read Office of Health, Education and Welfare. Garrett turned to his buddy. Before he could say anything, Silas interrupted his thoughts.
“Hang in there. I gotta get you passed at the gate. Just be yourself.”
Garrett gave him a goofy, cross-eyed grin and drooled.
“Nice.”
They drove into a line of cars waiting to clear a sentry station. Garrett thought it was unusual this building would be guarded by a Marine contingent. He signed for the pass that was issued, and he clipped it to the front of his shirt while the young sentry watched carefully. They were shown where to park—in the precise number they were given.
“All will be explained, Tierney. Very soon now.”
Garrett noticed the uniforms first. He counted three branches of service represented, including a Navy Vice Admiral, wh
o addressed Branson and frowned at Tierney. He was not given an introduction.
They peeled off into a large room manned by a secretary who logged them in, made note of the information on Garrett’s visitor’s badge, and then asked him for any electronic devices he was carrying. He handed her his cell with the cracked screen. She asked them if they wanted water or coffee, and he accepted a cold bottle of water. Then she buzzed them in.
He’d been in controlled rooms before. This one was not as nice as some of the ones he’d been in at the State Department. The long table down the middle was made up of various colors of government-issue grey and tan smaller tables, lined end to end. The chairs were also a mismatch. He saw the computer screen lights peeking behind cabinet doors and knew this could be a war room if the occasion warranted it. A wiped-clean whiteboard was off to the side with two markers in the tray below.
“Sit,” Branson commanded.
Garrett did so, unscrewing the top of his water and downing half of it. Branson took a delicate sip from his bottle.
“You need a restroom, first? Sorry. Should have asked you earlier.”
“Is this going to take long?” Garrett asked.
“Depends on you, but I don’t think so.”
“Let’s get the party started, then.”
“I’m going to just give you a little background. I’ve been with DHS for about two years now. They recruited me just after—”
“I’m sorry about your boy, Commander.”
“No more ‘Commander.’ Please call me Silas, or Branson. We don’t identify as former military unless we’re known. Understood?”
“Sure.”
“My wife left me, which was the last straw. I wanted to go back to the teams in the worst way, but you know how the Navy is. They got eyes even in the men’s room, I think. I’d have to re-qualify, and I had a back injury I’d been covering up. But this injury kept me out.” He pointed to his heart.
Garrett felt his blood pressure rise. Branson’d had a string of bad luck. He wondered how he would be able to deal with that double tragedy. It was one of the reasons he wasn’t drawn toward the altar himself.
“Look, Branson, I just want to say, I’ve got huge respect for you and how you’ve dealt with all this.”
“Shut up, Tierney. I didn’t bring you all the way out here to get sympathy from you—especially you of all people.”
Garrett considered whether he should continue and decided he did, for his own piece of mind. “I just want to say that I’m glad you’ve found something—”
“Something to believe in again?” The smile on Branson’s face seemed brittle.
“Not exactly. But go ahead. I’ll shut up.” Garrett crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, determined to keep his mouth shut and keep his emotions clipped.
“We’ve had some disasters recently, mostly because they hired the wrong men and women for the job. You know how I feel about our brothers on the Teams. That’s how I got tasked. They’ve formed a new division of Homeland Security. We call it Bone Frog Command.”
“So everyone dies.” Garrett knew that the symbol of the Bone Frog was one of the most sacred symbols of the Teams, equal to the Trident.
“We’re pulling guys out of mothballs. Guys who were distinguished SEALs, all Commanders or Lieutenant Commanders. We want men of this caliber to run an inter-departmental team to handle security threats to the homeland. Special projects.”
“Mission Impossible? Like the ‘Director will disavow any knowledge of you should you fail—’”
“Everything is a joke to you now, is it? You don’t fool me one bit, Tierney. I know you miss the Teams.”
Their eyes connected. Garrett knew Branson understood him right down to his toenails.
“You had a rough go with Connor. I remember pulling you out of bars, as did several of your guys. We were relieved when you walked away. You were a danger to yourself and anyone else around you. You were about to blow a decent retirement. I can say this because I was the same way.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice, clasping his hands in front of him. Garrett let him get adjusted.
“This mission is about something so sensitive it cannot go outside this room should you turn me down. And if I thought you’d do that, I wouldn’t have asked you to fly out here. We’ve had some colossal fuckups lately. We’re not sure who we can trust here in D.C. We have some internal threats to our way of life. There are even guys in the Head Shed that think the Teams are a bunch of overgrown footballers who can’t get it up anymore. Jealousy is ripe. The stench of politics is everywhere.
“And then there’s the public, for whom we fought and died. Views have changed. Sometimes the ones we’ve saved are no longer grateful, not that we did it for that. But it sucks.”
“I don’t watch the news so all of this doesn’t make sense, Si.”
“You’re a filthy liar, too, Tierney.” He grinned, which made Garrett do the same. Branson continued. “The bad guys are here at home. They’ve always been out there, but our overburdened police, FBI, HS and other departments are overloaded with organized crime and drug enforcement caseloads, stretched so thin they might catch up in the next century. And we want guys most people wouldn’t expect would lead a team inside the United States to do some special things. We want guys who get ’er done. In the face of impossible odds.”
“Impossible? We never thought anything was impossible.”
“Exactly. That’s not part of our vocabularity. That’s why we want former SEALs. Used to leading a command of misfits from all over the place, welding them into a strong cohesive unit. We need a strike force that goes in, gets the job done, and then fades away into the surf, as the commercial goes. Are you in?”
“Well, it would help if I knew what this impossible feat is.”
“Yes, I knew you’d say that. But no can do. So, Garrett Tierney, are you in? You think really long and hard before you answer me because I’m not asking again. And I know I’m asking before you know what the mission is.”
Garrett felt the blood rushing to his fingers, which exploded with heat. The pulsing behind his ears sent hissing frequencies to his brain. His gut was empty and wrapping around itself. His balls shrank but his dick was hard. His thighs tensed and wanted to run ten miles or do a hundred pushups. Drips of sweat traveled down the sides of his torso. His breathing was controlled, deep, and his chest full of the excitement of the possibilities being given him.
“Hell yes, I’m in.”
Chapter 2
Mimi Wagner examined the desk three rows back and two rows from the outside wall in her empty classroom. She thought if she concentrated hard enough she could conjure up the face and body of the attractive red-headed girl who used to sit there. Her student Georgette Collier was fond of staring out the window, or dreaming of something while setting her chin on her upturned palm, elbow resting on the desk top. She’d look right at Mimi, but her mind traveled millions of miles away—in some other galaxy.
Georgette enjoyed two things—after boys with good looks and cocky attitudes, that is. She loved science fiction and poetry. Mimi had selected the next series of lessons with Georgette in mind.
Except the young girl wasn’t there anymore, and no one revealed when she’d return.
Mimi was used to the cryptic reasons some of her students were pulled out of school. Teaching at Washington Academy, where all the brightest and richest of Washington’s special families sent their kids, had not only been a dream job, but a lifesaving event. She loved the interaction, with the young spawn of her country’s political and financial elite, as well as the sons and daughters of Ambassadors and captains of industry who would one day be leaders in this or their own countries. But right now, they were kids, kids with raging hormones and all the things that kids did before the crush of responsibility and reputation would grind some of them to a pulp. She’d seen it happen.
But that’s why Georgette’s absence was so unusual. She shone brightly with a h
opelessly romantic view of the world, just like Mimi had been at one time in those golden days before her Navy SEAL father came home in a closed casket.
In her Junior year at the Academy, Georgette had colleges and universities all over the world courting her, and subtlety whispering suggestions to her parents: The president and First Lady of the United States.
If the president or his wife wanted to take Georgette out of school for some special trip or function, who was she to complain? But something about the occurrence didn’t sit right with Mimi. The security at the school had been beefed up. There was a flurry of new rules about pickups and deliveries, even for shipments of school supplies. The new classroom observer in didn’t dress at all like a teacher. She looked like a well-trained and lethal cop who studied every word she uttered.
Even her friend Carmen didn’t speak to Mimi unless in private, as if they were both concerned about being watched.
Something was definitely up.
Her mother had called, inviting her to a weekend in San Diego, even offering to pay for the flight. Mimi guessed she wanted to introduce her to a new potential step-dad. There had been a half-dozen of them in the ten years since her father had come home. She’d stopped visiting the grave site to inform him of the new guy and unload her feelings about how lacking he was compared to her father.
When Mimi was recommended for the exclusive Washington Academy, and got the job, she took it on the spot. Anything to save her from looking out at the ocean and not seeing her father traverse the beach with his surfboard, outrunning most his other Team buddies. Those golden, endless summer days had been the highlight of her life. Now, the challenge of the new school, exclusive student body and interesting international faculty, benefactors and parents kept her mind busy on the here and now.
Those days are gone.
She knew she was strong enough to handle a trip back to Coronado but just wasn’t sure she wanted to. Still, her mother was excited when she agreed.
“Wonderful! You can have your old room, and—”
SEAL Love's Legacy (Silver SEALs Book 1) Page 2