SEAL Firsts

by Sharon Hamilton

  “She knows you’re like a brother, T.J. She knows you would do anything for me, even die for me, you know? Who else could be that baby’s godfather?”

  “Anyone but me.” T.J. had said, but in the end he’d agreed. He remembered the wedding and how nervous Frankie had been, so worried about ruining Shannon’s perfect day. And now he was going to be a father.

  But he knew Frankie, unlike T.J.’s own father, would never abandon his child. Frankie would be there to make sure that child had everything possible. And he’d do it out of love. He wouldn’t farm an infant to some hellhole in another state, allowing him to be raised by sadists and mean women and their asshole husbands. Or raised in an institution like juvenile hall. Left like a leaf floating on the current of a river of no return. Nobody could call himself a man and do that to a child. Unforgiveable.

  Six months later, T.J. was thinking about Frankie’s wedding day while he and the rest of SEAL Team 3 sat in a bombed-out building, waiting for nightfall so they could proceed to the rendezvous. The target hadn’t been where they were told he would be.

  In fact, this was the third time in as many days that the intel had been inaccurate, which wasn’t a good sign. Each day, they were sent further out into the rural parts of the city of Goan. There hadn’t been a shot fired, but the eyes of the people they’d seen were hard.

  T.J. had tried warming up to their new interpreter. Not everyone on the team trusted him. He was no Jackie Daniels, the interpreter they’d used during their last deployment, who had literally saved their lives. This guy was shifty, didn’t look him in the eyes when T.J. spoke to him, and that spooked the hell out of him. The terp was edgier than he’d seen kids on speed in juvie.

  The unease was beginning to rub off, even before the terp told him in clipped English. “Something’s not good here.”

  Well if that wasn’t the fuckin’ understatement of the year. “So tell me the good news, Sherlock.” T.J. preferred using the name more similar to his Pashtu common name, a word no one, even the few of them well-schooled on the language, could pronounce. He was hoping for something slightly positive to compensate for the hairs standing out on the back of his neck, the ache he was getting in his shoulders from crouching quickly to take cover. The terp was doing it ten times more, eyeing corners and turning around to check for follows.

  “No good news, boss. All bad here. Must be very, very careful.”

  T.J. heard several of their platoon swear openly and wished not so many had heard him. He decided to lessen the load on Frankie, who had been uncommonly quiet, as if he had a premonition. He’d thought Frankie was scared the day he married Shannon. That was a joke now.

  “You remember that day when you passed out, Frankie? Your face is at least as red as that day.”

  “That’s because it’s fuckin’ hot, man. Can’t wait for midnight.”

  “I think it was because of all the tequila we drank. And everyone in their Sunday finest.”

  “That was a fuckin’ nightmare of a day, except for the fact I married the girl of my dreams.”

  “That you did, my man.” T.J. leaned to the left to peer out of the hole in the rubble. He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling about this place. He didn’t like the howling wind, the way everyone avoided being anywhere close to them, like they were lepers. Sand was getting into everything. He was getting a huge blister where one of his socks had a hole, his boots unforgiving.

  An RPG hit barely six feet from them, exploding out a cloud of rubble, sending all of them into the air. While pebbles and body parts rained down on them, T.J. saw they’d lost at least two men—and Frankie was hit. He checked himself and discovered he still had twenty and didn’t hurt anywhere, and then he went to tend Frankie. He’d landed on his back, blood pouring from his mouth. T.J.’s gut tightened but he worked to hide the concern he felt for his best friend.

  “Shit, Frankie. You bite your tongue?”

  “No, man. Got hit in the back. Can’t feel my legs, T.J. What the fuck?” Frankie brought his hands out from behind him. He’d been sitting on them. His fingers were dripping with his own blood.

  T.J. rolled Frankie to the side, far enough to see a metal piece imbedded in Frankie’s lower spine. The blood was bubbling, watered down by what T.J. assumed was spinal fluid. Fredo was radioing for extraction. T.J. swung around so he could hold Frankie’s head up slightly while he checked for combatants.

  “Got Marines on their way, gents,” Kyle yelled out over the cries of their CIA embed, who had been hit as well. T.J. shared a look with his LPO, something he knew Kyle had seen many times before. His Team leader’s tight jaw and unwavering eye contact commanded him he’d better hold it together for Frankie. That’s when he understood Kyle knew Frankie wasn’t going to make it, but they had to convince Frankie he would.

  Sonofabitch. He took a deep breath and barked, “Frankie, getting you home. Bird is coming now. Hang tight. I’m going to go see if I can help out some of the others.”

  “No. Don’t go. I don’t want to die alone, man.”

  “Frankie, you’re not going to die.”

  “T.J., you’re a fuckin’ bad liar. Always have been.”

  “Shut up, Frankie. I gotta stop the sound effects or they’ll know right where to send the next one, and we’ll all buy it.”

  “Trust me, they know. They’re looking to get themselves a turkey. Why mess with a sparrow?”

  T.J. knew Frankie was telling the truth. It still sucked.

  It was happening more and more, light injuries requiring evacuation, and then the combatants went after the helo and got everyone. Of course, that was if the SEALs or a sniper on the chopper didn’t pick them off first. But fifty percent of the time it worked, which was much worse than it used to be.

  “T.J., please hang here for a minute while I finish this mission.” Frankie’s eyes were kind, tears running down his cheeks. “If there was ever anyone in the whole world I would want to take care of my Shannon, could ever see her fuckin’ besides me, it would be you.”

  “Frankie, stop it. I’m not going to fuck Shannon.”

  “Your loss, you dumb shit. She’s going to be a widow, and someone needs to watch over her and the baby. I want you to raise my little girl, T.J. I want you to beat up the first asshole who tries to get in her pants. I want you to hold Shannon’s hand while she’s in labor. And I’ll be right there with you, man. Just not in this body.”

  “Frankie, stop it. This isn’t helping your situation.” T.J. could hear the chopper approaching, but he knew it wasn’t what Frankie needed right now. Frankie needed a miracle, and T.J. couldn’t do anything but watch his friend die. He wanted to hug the big dufus who he’d joked and played around with, slap him in the face and tell him to wake up, that the play was too realistic and was creeping him out. Take the man for a beer and laugh about scaring each other. He wanted to be anywhere but here, doing this thing right now, and not being able to say the things he’d never gotten to say to Frankie. Because if he lost it, Frankie would too. “Hear that? That’s the sound of home, and apple pie, and you getting well and telling her all those things yourself.”

  “Love you, man. Do it, T.J. You promised. You’re our little girl’s godfather, man. You promised, man.” Frankie’s lethargic gaze showed nothing but love. T.J. never had a real brother, that he knew of, and now he was losing the only man in the world who had been more than a real brother to him.

  “Do what?”

  “Promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of Shannon and the kid.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Do it, goddamn you!”

  T.J. nodded, gripping Frankie’s hand, which didn’t grip back. His blue eyes were as glazed as they had been on his wedding day. Except this time he wasn’t going to wake up. He was already on his way to his next mission—in heaven.

  Chapter 4

  Shannon wasn’t supposed to, but she was painting the baby’s room. They’d been told the little one, due in three months, would be a girl. Frankie
had been thrilled, and it warmed Shannon, remembering that Skype call that day when she relayed the news. She’d chosen the name Courtney, and hoped Frankie would like it as much as she did. He hadn’t called her last night at their scheduled time. But that wasn’t unusual.

  The baby was getting very active, so she made a mental note not to hobble up and down the ladder so much. Although she was steady on her feet, she didn’t want to risk a fall.

  The doorbell rang and she put down her light pink roller of paint, wiped her hands on an old paint-smudged hand towel and barefooted it over to the front door. Standing with the backdrop of a sunny, blue-sky San Diego day were a man and a woman in white Navy uniforms. The officer removed his hat and tucked it under his arm.

  With a lump in her throat and heart pounding, she barely heard the news, delivered with unwavering eyes filled with compassion. It was a difficult job for them, she could see. It wasn’t a job she’d want, or be able to do as well as they did. But she was thankful they were polished and professional.

  She inhaled at first, ready to explode with tears on the exhale, but there was the baby to think of. Any upset she was feeling would affect Courtney, and that was, thankfully, her primary concern.

  She thought about Frankie, the way he didn’t like sand in his eyes, never told any of his buddies he hated the beach, the worst part of the wet and sandy they all had to endure during BUD/S. And yet, that’s where he died, in a sand hole somewhere far away from her and her loving arms.

  Her eyes stung and her lower lip quivered. The hole in her chest seemed bottomless, but as she let her breath out and mentally calmed herself she slowly came back to present day, this day she would always remember, and asked if they’d like to come in for a glass of water. They accepted, and entered her little bungalow. She puttered around in her bare feet, getting three tall glasses of ice water, filled to the brim with ice as she was lately fond of doing so she could crunch the tension of Frankie’s deployment between her molars.

  They did look a little uncomfortable. They answered questions, but didn’t volunteer anything. She knew they’d done this many times before. The questions were probably the same, How did he die? Did he suffer? Was he alone when he died? Who was with him?

  The answer to that last one was like a slap across the face.

  “We understand your husband’s best friend, Special Operator T.J. Talbot, was with him when he died.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m Frankie’s best friend. No one loves him as much as I do.” She wasn’t going to start using the past tense until she had to.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the gentleman said. “We understand that. However, SO Talbot was with him at the end. He did not die alone, ma’am.”

  The baby started kicking again, and she worried that her emotions had pumped adrenaline into her daughter’s system. She took a long drink of water and closed her eyes, willing calm. If she weren’t pregnant she’d be moaning and huddled in a heap on the ground, pouring her heart out. But with little Courtney in her belly, she wasn’t going to take that chance. Somehow, it wasn’t what she wanted to do, anyway. Her daughter was a strong reminder that life went on. It sucked, but it went on.

  Just not with Frankie.

  They rose to go when the conversation dwindled off into nowhere, and she began paying more attention to the pink nail polish on her toes. She was wearing pink every day now. Pink pajamas, the ones she could still wear, pink bed sheets (until Frankie came home), pink nail polish, and she even managed to put a hot pink extension in the side of her hair as if a little bit of Courtney was coming through.

  The woman gave her a card to the Navy counseling group. Shannon already knew she’d go see Libby’s dad, who had helped a lot of the SEALs with their emotional issues, not to mention the marital strains they experienced. And death. They’d all lost someone they loved. There wasn’t anyone in the community who didn’t know someone who hadn’t come home. Today it was her turn.

  “Mom. He’s gone,” she said into the phone before the Navy messengers of death had pulled from the curb outside, escaping to do another mission.

  “What do you mean gone? I thought he was—Oh, my God, Shannon. No!” her mother said in a voice strained and brittle.

  “Yes. They just left.”

  “I’ll be on the next plane.”

  “No thanks, Mom. Give me a day or two, please. I’ve got friends here who can help. You come out soon, though. Give me time to be alone, but please don’t think I don’t appreciate what you want to do. I do. I need to do this first part alone and with a few of the other wives here. You have Dad.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s what a mother does. I’m still coming.”

  “No. Really. I need to be alone.”

  Shannon knew her mother was a little hurt, but would recover. Next she called Frankie’s parents, who were out. She left a message without saying it was bad news. Only that she needed to talk to them right away. Important. Involving Frankie. It was the last phone call she had to make.

  She put the glasses—the ice cubes hadn’t melted yet—into the dishwasher, added soap and turned it on. The paint towels she tossed into the washing machine. She rinsed out the brush roller, the paint in the sink looking like the strawberry-flavored milk she’d loved so much as a child. She tapped the lid onto the paint can. Arched back to give herself a good reverse stretch and looked at the pink glow in the room, the walls she would finish soon, but probably not tomorrow.

  Tomorrow she’d go get that white crib she liked with the dust ruffle in pink camo. She’d put up pictures of animals and buy fuzzy teddy bears and maybe a frilly dress or two. A headband with a bow on it. Some pink ruffled socks and Mary Janes.

  The phone rang in the late afternoon, waking her. Gloria, Frankie’s mom, was calling.

  “We’ve been notified as well. I’m so sorry, Shannon. I can only imagine what you must be feeling.”

  “Oh, Gloria. He was your boy. I can’t imagine how it must feel to lose the boy you raised, the boy who turned out to be a fine and loving man.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, giving Gloria time to compose herself.

  “We’ll get through this, Shannon. We’ll do it together. Your baby will want for nothing, sweetheart. Of that you can be sure.”

  “I know it, Mom.” Using the term “Mom” must have touched Gloria, and she sobbed, handing the phone over to Shannon’s father-in-law.

  “Hey, sweetheart. Only thing I’m thinking about is that Frankie was doing what he always wanted to do. And doing it with the guys he loved so much, his brothers, Shannon. God help me, I’d rather go out that way. Not stuck in a nursing home that smells of piss or alone in a hospital ward. They told us T.J. held him at the very end.”

  There was T.J. again, inserting himself in her life. Her second thought was more compassionate as she realized he was grieving, too. How would he show his grief? How would he deal with it? He had no family, at least no one who wanted him, anyhow. Which was one of the things Frankie could never understand. How anyone could throw away a little boy’s life like that?

  T.J. was hard as nails because he’d had to leave behind his childhood before he was old enough to know how else to deal with it. She had to admit she felt a tinge of sorrow for him. A carefully guarded tinge, wrapped in camo duct tape. Something private, dark and never to be revealed to anyone.

  They said their good-byes and she returned to face the house again, where she and Frankie had been so happy. There was still so much to look forward to, but all those bright sunny days now seemed like a burden. Everything she’d planned for her and Frankie was suddenly over. Why hadn’t she thought about that before? It just never occurred to her that he wouldn’t come home. Things like that always happened to other people, not to her.

  It still felt like Frankie would walk in any minute, telling her it had been a joke, T.J.’s idea of funny. But no, even T.J. wouldn’t play this trick on her. The walls were bare and unfinished. The room smelled of paint, but had a nice warm feel to it, although empt
y.

  But her belly, unlike her heart, was full of life.

  It wasn’t fair. But that was the way it was.

  Chapter 5

  T.J. processed out Frankie’s things and signed the paperwork, taking ownership of his buddy’s personal property. Part of him was angry with Frankie for leaving him with all his shit to have to deal with. He cursed under his breath at what an asshole he was to have even that thought.

  Wasn’t like Frankie had rejected him, like had happened to him so many times over the years. Frankie had touched a part of him that had been vacant and hollow and had filled it with admiration, respect, and trust.

  He remembered those days in the group homes when a couple would come by to look at the “older” orphans, and they were made to shower and dress up in the one set of pants and shirt and tight black shoes handed down from some more fortunate boarder at the home. He’d stand in line like all the other boys, looking at them. Probably smirking. Which is why he was never chosen. He saw the other boys react, trying to look sweet and adoptable. And even though a tiny part of him felt the same way, he knew he showed that he didn’t care, because that’s what he told himself.

  Screw them all. If your own parents didn’t want you, who cared about anyone else?

  Nah, it wasn’t fair to blame Frankie for that, but T.J.’s anger still wasn’t satisfied. Besides, Frankie made the request he was forced to honor, giving him such a fuckin’ impossible task, to bring these things that had been important to Frankie, and hand them over to Shannon, who hated the ground T.J. walked on. Might even blame him for being the one who came back. Like T.J. had used up the quota of survivors for the day, thus abandoning his friend.

  And he knew exactly how she felt. He felt the same way. He blamed himself for living, blamed himself for causing so much worry on the part of Frankie’s widow. He blamed himself for not trusting his sixth sense over there—that funny feeling he got that said things were all fucked up. He’d kept that knowledge to himself this time. Why? Usually he told his LPO about situations he thought were extra dangerous.