The Price of Valor

by Susan May Warren

“Signe, who was the person who came to the camp? The one who you said was from the US government?”

  She looked up at him. Her jaw tightened.

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Ham. I just don’t trust the people you might work for.”

  “Why?”

  She paused. “I believe there is a rogue CIA faction that was working with Tsarnaev. And that faction is trying to kill me.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why? Are you Superman? You can stop speeding bullets, see through walls, be everywhere at once?”

  “No. I’m your husband! I’m going to protect you!” He didn’t mean for that to emerge quite so hot, but he had a very thin hold on his emotions and—

  “You can’t protect someone who doesn’t want to be protected!”

  He stared at her.

  “I’m a big girl, Ham. I know I asked you not to forget me, but really, that’s the best thing for you to do—forget me. Because as soon as we get out of here, I’m gone—”

  “You’re going to leave Aggie.” It was more of an incredulous statement than a question. “You’re going to walk right out of her life, like your mother did you.”

  Signe drew in a breath, and for a second he thought she might slap him. “This is nothing like my mother. I am doing this for Aggie. For you. Believe me. If I could, I would go home with you.” Her voice broke. “Ham. You’re the love of my life. Don’t you think I want to be with you?”

  He just blinked at her.

  “You don’t, do you? Do you believe anything I’m telling you?”

  He nearly reached out to her, her words resounding over and over inside him. “I love you too, Signe. I would give my life for you. And I want to trust you. Help me trust you. Tell me who came to your camp.”

  She studied him. “I can’t, Ham. People—you, Aggie, . . . me. It could cost lives.”

  “Sig. Let me protect you. Protect Aggie. Give us a chance.” He made to take her hand.

  She pulled away and seemed like she might be trying not to cry.

  “You don’t have to be afraid, Shorty.” And he wondered if maybe he said it as much for himself as her. “You don’t have to be brave or strong or anything . . .” Just be my wife. But he didn’t say that because he didn’t want to scare her. His voice quieted. “You’re not alone anymore.”

  Her expression softened. “I really did miss you, Hamburglar.”

  She put her hand on his face, leaned in and kissed him.

  And he just didn’t know what to make of it. It lit a fire inside him, something he didn’t quite have control of, but he didn’t move.

  Maybe he was dreaming.

  Maybe this was a kind of test. Especially since her kiss was sweet, absent the passion that had always accompanied their romance.

  He didn’t have the strength to stop himself from kissing her back.

  And maybe he needed to remind her what they had before it was too late.

  So he ran his hand behind her neck and pulled her closer, putting a little of that fire into his touch.

  She tasted of pizza, and the sense of it hearkened him way back to the beginning. The first time they’d kissed, right after a football game on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River.

  The first time he realized that he would always and forever belong to her.

  Signe. He was winding his fingers into her hair when she leaned away, ran a thumb over his lips. “You remember our first kiss?”

  “Of course I do. I never forgot you, Sig. And now that I found you, I am bringing you home.”

  She closed her eyes, and his heart nearly exploded when she nodded.

  Mission accomplished.

  Miracles did happen and people did survive the impossible.

  At least, that’s what Orion wanted to believe as he motored up the murky waters in the dark-as-night streets searching for survivors.

  He’d seen it with his own eyes—while serving as a pararescue jumper in Afghanistan, and today.

  Watching from the third-floor balcony of an apartment building overlooking the sea.

  He’d practically tossed the two boys he’d carried over the gate cordoning off the yard—mostly because he had nowhere else to go. Then he scaled the wall himself, ran up an outside stairway, and just as the water thundered onto shore, he kicked in a door and took cover in the apartment.

  He found a terrified mother and her three-year-old daughter hiding in the bathroom. Shoving the boys in with her, he went to watch from the balcony.

  The sea bubbled and roared as it swept past them, rising to the second floor, and he nearly went after the woman to bring them to the roof. But the waters spread out, into the city, and instead he fixed his gaze on the catamaran, tumbling like Styrofoam through the tumult. It hit the stone stairway, bounced off, turned, then was carried up over it and into the garden of a nearby house.

  Most of the one- and two-story houses along the seaboard were under water or destroyed, boats piled up in gated areas. The sea was a lethal soup of destruction, the air smelled like ash, and all Orion could think was . . .

  Jenny. Please be alive.

  His heart lurched when he spotted the man emerge on the catamaran deck, probably from where he’d taken cover inside, and begin to search for an escape. He wore a life jacket, a silly headlamp, and Orion remembered his words about a wife and a daughter.

  One pontoon was wedged into the balcony of the house, shattering the window. The waves tossed it but couldn’t dislodge it. Orion traced an escape route for him—if the man was to climb along the pontoon, he could maybe grab the upper rail of the balcony above and pull himself to safety.

  Perhaps he had the same idea because he started to inch out on the pontoon.

  He slipped. The man’s cry echoed into the air as he tumbled off the pontoon. His hand closed around one of the lines, but the water gobbled him and yanked him away from the boat.

  “Help!” He bobbed in the water, trying to haul himself in.

  Orion’s heart nearly stopped when a woman wearing a life jacket stepped out onto the deck. A little girl, maybe age five, gripped the back of her jacket.

  The woman pushed her daughter onto the hard-topped Bimini. The little girl screamed as the woman left her there, trying to make her way down the boat toward her husband.

  She was going to fall, and then that child would be stuck, and scared, and alone, and . . .

  Orion went into the bathroom to check on the family. He found the woman sitting on the floor, singing to the kids. “Stay here. I’ll be back for you.” He hoped she understood English.

  He’d spotted a dinghy stuck in the garden and sprinted back out to the balcony. The water roiled, the currents lethal, but he eased down, managing to get a leg over the edge of the craft. It was bouncing against the wall, between the balconies, but it looked seaworthy—the motor up, as if it had been brought to shore.

  Oh God, don’t let them die.

  Orion tumbled into the boat, grabbed the front seat.

  A life jacket was still shoved underneath. He pulled it on.

  Ham would be proud of him.

  Ham. Shoot. He’d tried his cell phone a couple times, but no signal. Please, God, let Ham be alive too.

  Orion glanced at the catamaran. The woman had gotten ahold of her husband’s line, was trying to tow him in.

  Inches from going in herself. Her daughter was screaming, the waves pounding the cat against the building.

  Orion put the motor down, aware of the litter swirling in the water. Please start. He ripped the cord, and the motor coughed to life, gas stirring in the already toxic air.

  “Hang on!” Of course, the people couldn’t hear him, but it just helped him stay focused.

  Helped him not give in to the desire to turn the dinghy toward the hotel.

  He opened the throttle and tore over the wall, kicking up grimy spray as he gunned toward them.

  The noise alerted the woman and she looked up. Shouted, waving
. Orion searched the water.

  There. Yellow life preserver. He was fighting to stay up.

  Orion measured the current, then cut the motor just as he came up beside the man.

  “Grab my hand!”

  The man stretched up his hand. Orion grabbed it and fell back, using his weight to pull the man over the edge.

  He rolled into the dinghy, breathing hard.

  Orion grabbed the throttle, gunning it toward the cat.

  The woman had run up the pontoons to rescue her daughter. By the time he reached the port side, the man was on his feet, reaching for the railing. His wife passed their daughter over to him and he set her in the middle of the boat, safe.

  The current slammed the boat against the pontoons, then away.

  “Get closer!” the man yelled.

  Orion fought to direct them back to the boat. The man held open his arms. “Jump, honey!”

  The woman stared at him, a look of horror on her face.

  The cat jerked in the waves and she fell. Her husband caught her and pulled her to himself, nearly weeping.

  “Get down!” Orion said, and backed up the dinghy, away from the thrashing cat.

  He fought the current, the debris, and his own emotions as he returned them all to the apartment.

  “I gotta go find my girlfriend,” he said to the man as they climbed out. “I’ll be back.”

  Orion turned the boat out into the water.

  He guesstimated he was less than a mile from the hotel, but as he drove along the shore, he couldn’t seem to find it in the row of buildings. He remembered it as a tall blue four-story building with balconies on the front. He motored all the way down to where the harbor curved, all the while fighting the swirl of the confused water.

  When he motored back, he searched again for anything that seemed familiar. Just debris, broken fishing vessels, wrecked sailboats, homes half-destroyed, others completely off their foundation and disintegrating into the sea.

  The hotel was old—so old it had an ancient elevator and questionable plumbing.

  So old, maybe, the foundation had worn away. The realization came to him like poison in his veins as he trekked the route a third time, along the seawall, and back.

  The hotel was gone.

  Just vanished, gobbled by the sea.

  No.

  He just stared at the way the waters engulfed the shoreline, all the way up the hill, and he knew.

  Jenny was gone.

  Orion was numb by the time he returned to the apartment. He tied up the dinghy and found his way inside.

  The family sat with the woman and her daughter in the main room of their home. The man rose when Orion came through the door, walked over, and without a word, embraced him.

  Orion just stood there.

  “Thank you,” the man said. “I thought we were dead.”

  Orion’s chest tightened. He couldn’t speak.

  “My name’s Keith. This is Renee, my wife. And that’s Jack and Finn and this is Katie.” He picked up his daughter and kissed her cheek.

  Orion tousled Jack’s head. He guessed the kid might be nine. Too young to watch his family die.

  “Did you find your girlfriend?” Keith said. He had long hair, now slicked back and dirty. They were all filthy, covered in ash and grime and stinking of the sea and sulfur.

  “No. I don’t know where she is. Our hotel . . . it’s . . .” He looked away, out the window, toward the sea. “It’s gone.”

  Silence.

  He closed his eyes.

  Keith’s hand touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.”

  Breathe. Just . . .

  He opened his eyes. “Yeah, well. We probably need to get you guys to safety. I don’t know how long this building is going to stay up with all that debris smashing into it.”

  Keith nodded and that’s when the women of the house—Irene and her daughter, Noemi—suggested the church on the hill.

  “We will go to St. Mary’s and pray,” Irene said.

  It didn’t sound like a terrible idea. Especially when she added, “They have a medical center and a school. It is where we go at times like these.”

  And maybe where Ham and Jenny might go, if they’d survived.

  By the time they arrived two hours later, the place was packed, people sitting on pews, more in the school gymnasium and on the floor of the hallways, and even more in the tiny medical clinic that was designed for the students more than the general public.

  Orion walked past people with broken bones, lacerations, contusions—too many wearing despair.

  He should probably add himself to the line.

  The bell had fallen into the center of the church, but a small group of men were working on hauling it into the courtyard. An assembly of women worked in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to feed people.

  He found Keith with his family in the cafeteria.

  “Is she here?” Keith asked.

  “No.”

  Keith glanced at his family—Finn and Jack sat at the table eating a bowl of cold oatmeal. Renee held Katie on her lap, a blanket over her shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” Keith said. He picked up his headlamp.

  Orion frowned at him.

  “Let’s go look for her. Get the dinghy and we’ll go down to the harbor. I heard a couple people say they heard shouting from rooftops and balconies—”

  “The hotel is gone!”

  “But maybe she got out. Or maybe”—Keith clamped a hand on his shoulder—“a crazy man showed up in a dinghy to save her life.”

  Orion wanted to smile, but his chest hurt and really, he just wanted to shout, maybe throw his fist into something.

  “Take a breath, son. Just take a breath.”

  For some reason, Orion obeyed him, pressing his hand to his chest. “I just don’t know what to do.” He sank down onto a nearby bench. “I just found her again after losing her for three years and . . . I can’t lose her now.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Hands touched him. He looked up and Keith’s hand was on one of his shoulders, Renee’s on the other.

  “I don’t know if you believe in God, Orion, but you are never helpless when you are in God’s hands. God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. Which means we do not despair. We do not let the enemy take control of our hope. Hope is the weapon of the Lord, and right now, we are going to wield it, in Jesus’s name.”

  Orion just stared at him. The man was channeling Ham.

  “Now get up, we’re going to find your woman.” Keith glanced at his wife. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

  Orion had the strangest urge to weep. Or maybe high-five someone.

  They’d left the dinghy on the sidewalk, where the water stopped two blocks before the church, and now found it in the darkness. Keith flicked on his headlamp.

  They got in and Orion pushed off, the waters dark and thick with wreckage. He waited until they were free, then pulled the motor.

  It growled to life.

  He drove them down to the harbor and discovered he wasn’t the only one looking for survivors. The Italian coast guard and local Catania police lit up the shoreline with searchlights, and he passed a couple rescue boats helping people to safety from their apartments.

  “Where was your hotel?”

  Orion pointed to a darkness between a couple apartment buildings.

  They pulled up to the front of one of the buildings and tied up the dinghy, and Orion shouted up into the darkness. “Hey, anyone there?”

  No one shouted back.

  “Jenny!”

  “Maybe they’re on the roof,” Keith said.

  Orion looked at him.

  “Sometimes we just need a different perspective.”

  It took everything Orion had to climb onto the balcony. Keith followed him, guiding their way with the headlamp.

  So maybe it wasn’t silly.

  The doorjamb was busted, as if someone had broken in, but the flat was
vacant. They took the stairs up and emerged on the roof.

  Orion walked to the edge. “I think the hotel was right here.” He pointed to the water, and Keith looked down, shining his light on the ruins.

  Indeed. Rubble filled the space, a mound of tile, stone, wood, and probably dead bodies.

  As if he could hear her voice, a cry lifted in his heart. Orion!

  He closed his eyes. Heard it again, an echo deep inside. “Help!”

  “You hear that?” Keith said, and Orion turned.

  “Really?”

  “Shouting.” Keith turned his light across the water, to the next building, then around to the other side.

  Nothing.

  Orion took a breath, tried to listen.

  Nothing but the splash of water, the dark pang of despair.

  “Let’s go,” Orion said, and returned to the stairwell.

  He was halfway down the stairwell when he heard it again. “Orion! Help!”

  He turned back, his heart in his throat as he ran back up the stairs.

  Keith was already at the back edge of the building, waving.

  Please, please— Orion sprinted over to the edge.

  For a second, he didn’t recognize the people standing on the roof on the house behind the apartment. The water had lipped over the edge of the three-story building, but it was on higher ground, and they stood on a small enclosed stairwell.

  The woman was dark skinned, her hair in braids. She stood with an elderly gentleman, and Orion thought he recognized him as the concierge.

  Nori?

  “Mr. Orion! Mr. Orion!” Nori waved at him.

  “You know her?” Keith asked.

  “She was a waitress at our hotel.” Orion waved back, not sure what to do with the emotions that bubbled inside him. “Hang on! We’ll come around and get you!”

  He and Keith scrambled down to the dinghy, untied it, and motored it around the block, Keith’s light dragging along the fencing until they found the house. Orion brought the boat up to the edge of the building, and Keith helped the concierge and Nori into the dinghy.

  Nori curled her arms around herself. She wore her black skirt and a grimy blouse, her tennis shoes. Keith put a life jacket on her, and she shivered. Only then did Orion realize the temperature had dropped.

  The older man sat next to her.

  Probably they should bring them back to the church, get them warm.