by S. E. Lund
If you Fall
A BRIMSTONE SERIES NOVEL
S. E. Lund
Copyright © 2016 by S. E. Lund
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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CHAPTER ONE
Beckett
Before…
The plain manila envelope was tucked under my torn and bloody camos at the bottom of the cardboard box holding my gear. Sent back after the accident, the box sat unopened in the old brownstone I owned for almost eleven months. The envelope had been folded up several times and secured with a thick rubber band. The edges of the envelope were frayed, and the paper torn where the rubber band dug into it. The name Dan was scrawled on the outside.
I assumed it was short for Daniel – Daniel Beckett Tate-McNeil.
Curious, I opened it only to find a stack of letters written on thin airmail paper, folded up and fastened with some blue foil ribbon. The letters and photos had been stained with blood. I untied the ribbon and tucked in the folds of several letters, I found photographs of a beautiful young woman with long auburn hair and freckles on the bridge of her nose. Wide hazel-green eyes were framed with thick eyelashes. The photos must have been of the woman who wrote the letters.
There were no envelopes – just several dozen letters, the script small and regular. A woman’s handwriting.
I opened up one of the letters, holding the photo in my hand.
My dearest Dan…
I was at a loss. The letters clearly weren’t written to me since I had no girlfriend while I was in Afghanistan. No girlfriend really, not since Sue.
No one called me Dan so how the hell…
I hadn’t gone by Daniel since I was a child and my parents went through a very messy divorce. When my mother separated from my father, she took me with her to Louisiana and then California. We left behind our ties to my father and his family, name included. I was named after my grandfather, who had been part of the old Westies gang in Hell’s Kitchen in the 50’s and 60’s – Daniel “Danny Blue Eyes” McNeil. A small-time thug in the infamous Coonan family. So Daniel McNeil was a name associated with the side of my family my mother wished to escape.
After my mother cut all ties with my father, we moved just outside New Orleans where I began using my middle name and my mother’s maiden name Tate. Beckett was my other grandfather’s name, on my mother’s side. So, at the ripe old age of ten, I became Beckett Tate and never looked back – not until I had to join up and use my legal name again. No one except my closest family knew my first name was Daniel, and only my father’s side of the family called me Dan so I had no idea why the envelope would be addressed that way.
I sorted through the letters, organizing them by date to see what the woman had written, laying out the photos that went along with the letters. There might be clues to the identity of the real owner inside.
The first letter was dated over a year earlier and included a photo of the woman in an antique wedding dress overlain with lace, like something you’d see in the roaring twenties. She sat on a park bench in Central Park, a bouquet of wildflowers in her hand and twined in her long hair. On the back of the photo was a date of the wedding – May 5th of last year.
The first letter was dated only a week later.
May 12
My dearest Dan,
I miss you already and it’s only been an hour since you left. I knew when I agreed to marry you that you’d be taken away from me almost as soon as the ink on our marriage certificate was dry, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Our week together on our ‘honeymoon’ was far too short and now I won’t see you again for months...
I know you said not to write too often, since you’re never sure where you might be sent on a mission, but I remember finding my grandmother’s letters to my granddad that she wrote back during World War II and how much she treasured those letters, so I want to write you as much as possible. I’ll only send one letter a week like we agreed, but it will be seven letters rolled up into one longer letter. It’s really no trouble and makes me feel like you and I are having a conversation, even if it is one sided. Please, don’t feel pressure to respond – I know you and your team are very busy.
I wanted to give you time to get situated back in Afghanistan before I wrote but this letter and the others should be waiting for you once you do arrive. I did what you suggested and am going to stay for the summer with your family in Topsail Beach, to take my mind off your leaving me again and get some work done. I have to finish up some revisions to my final paper in criminal psychological assessment. Being out here will be a nice vacation from the bustle of Manhattan. Your mom and I plan on spending time in the garden, now that the planting season is underway and the flowers are beginning to bloom. I may even pull a few shifts as a bartender at Oceanside. Your dad’s back is bad and he isn’t able to pitch in when a shift needs to be covered. He needs the help.
We’re all really proud of you making the Special Operations Forces and hope that your tour of duty is easy and that nothing too dangerous happens while you’re there. One day, I hope this war will be over so you won’t have to leave me again, but I know it’s probably not going to end any time soon. Maybe this will be the last time we have to be separated, if you do decide to get out once this deployment is finished.
I miss your touch, your smile, and most of all the fun we have together. You make me brave.
All for now,
Love, me
I checked out the second and third letters, and they were pretty much along the same lines. She didn’t sign her letters except Love, me. She wrote of her time with ‘Dan’s’ parents in Topsail Beach, about the flower garden, about the restaurant his parents owned, about the characters at the bar where she worked, and about her paper.
I quickly googled Topsail Beach and saw that there were far too many restaurants for me to know which one was attached to the woman who wrote the letters. I’d have to find some other way to discover her identity so I could return her letters.
The letters were from a young bride to her bridegroom, who had gone away to war only a week after their wedding. He was in Special Operations Forces, so I had my first clue about the identity of the mysterious Dan. Armed with that information, I might be able to dig a bit, contact a few people I still knew in the service to find out why, other than the name we had in common, these letters were sent to me instead of to his family. By the blood on the letters, I had a suspicion that Dan was killed in action but other than that, I had no evidence.
The last letter was dated August 15th, and then there was no other. That final letter was sent less than a week before my incident – the incident that got me my only scar from my time in Afghanistan, other than incidental cuts and scrapes that are part of everyday life on deployment in a war zone. I thought it might be a coincidence, but the date and the blood stains on the letters was too much to let go. The connection nagged me, so I read through the letters, noting down everything she wrote in case there was any other clues to her identity.
I felt incredible sympathy for the beautiful young woman I knew only as love, me. The letters might be all she had left of her new husband, judging by the blood on the th
in airmail paper.
I knew what I had to do. I had to find her and return her letters. I’d do some sleuthing, find out who the young SOF was who lost his life, and FedEx the letters to his beautiful young widow.
It was the right thing to do.
The mysterious young woman, whose letters I was reading for clues to her identity, seemed ethereal to me. I imagined her with flowers woven into her long auburn hair the way it was in her wedding portrait. For all I knew, she might be a tall Amazon of a woman, but she didn’t come off that way in her letters to her new husband nor did her photos suggest height. She came off as someone who needed him, his strength, his fearlessness – as someone who fought her fears, wanted to confront them, and was glad to have a husband who was brave.
After reading her letters, I had an image of a stalwart young man named Dan, with a square jaw and whitewalls, who towered over her protectively in his military camo. From what I read, he took her places that she would never go on her own. Mountain climbing in the Rockies. Parasailing on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Flying in a small plane to a secluded mountainous area in Peru to explore ruins. Fly fishing in the Montana wilderness.
Without you, I’m a chicken. With you, I’m brave. Please be careful over there. Don’t always do the bravest thing. Do the safest thing. Stay safe, please. Come back to me…
It’s impossible to do the safest thing when you’re in a war zone. You do what keeps you alive, if you can, or what saves your brothers-in-arms. You need quick wits and fast responses when you’re in a firefight or on a dangerous mission. Sometimes, there’s no time to think. You just respond, using muscle memory and routines drilled into you so that they become second nature. Sometimes, there’s not even time to respond.
Like when an IED blows up your supposedly mine-resistant armor protected vehicle, or MRAP. I’d learned that all too well during my last trip to Afghanistan, when I got my scar and almost lost my life.
Later that night, I sat in my office and tried to recover after the business meeting from hell when I had to tell half my team that the other half had just been fired, explaining the half-empty boardroom.
Graham McKenny, my business partner and best friend forever, had been killed in Malaysia on a job two weeks earlier and as a result, half the capital we relied on for collateral was gone to his estate and to his brother. Not to mention the lawsuit we faced by the widow of one of the customers who was killed along with Graham. Despite the waiver he signed, I might add.
We had business insurance on Graham because he worked in dangerous places as a war tourist guide, but it was his collateral that kept us afloat and helped fund our projects. Along with my other friend Brandon, Graham and I were in the same Marine Recon unit over in Iraq during the last year of the surge. Then, Graham and I had been in Special Operations Forces, deployed in Afghanistan.
Short and pugilistic with a shaved head and a southern twang that he cultivated despite living in Hell’s Kitchen for most of his adult life, Graham was the best friend I had on earth. His death hit me hard.
Real hard.
Not only did I fire half my staff as a result of the sudden drop in our financial worth, I cleaned out their offices myself, and then sat alone in the darkened office space after everyone else left, wondering how I was going to hold it all together.
So, despite the fact it was the week from hell in which I tried to patch up the holes left in my business from Graham’s death, I had to find out who wrote the letters.
About seven thirty, my cell rang. When I checked, it was Terry, a contact I had in the Marines Special Operations Command and the only person I could trust to tell more than the most basic of details of the incident. I was with MARSOC in Afghanistan, testing out our prototype comms system I’d developed for the CIA’s Special Activities Division. I’d put in a call earlier to Terry to try to find out who sent me the package of letters.
“Hey,” I said when I answered. “Thanks for returning my call.”
We exchanged pleasantries, called each other old bastards and giant pricks as Marines are wont to do. Finally, we got down to business.
“Hey, Beckett,” he said, his voice finally serious. “It’s great to shoot the shit and all but why did you call me, anyway?”
“I need help tracking down who sent my stuff back from Afghanistan. I was embedded with a Special Operations Forces unit last year testing a prototype Brimstone developed under a DARPA contract.” When he said nothing, I continued. “I was with that Marine Special Ops team that went down in a chopper crash last year.”
I waited for his response. He must have heard about it through the grapevine even though the nature of our mission had been kept out of the headlines. It was in August. We were embedded with a Recon team that hit an IED while testing my prototype in enemy territory. A Special Ops team came to our rescue and then the chopper crashed in a sandstorm.
“Holy shit,” he said finally. “You were part of that? Oh, man. I had no idea…” He paused for a moment. “I remember hearing some talk about it, but it was pretty hush-hush,” he said, his voice hesitant as if he was trying to decide whether to admit he knew of the event.
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought maybe someone from the team might have sent my kit back. I found something that doesn’t belong to me and I’m trying to return it, but I have no idea who it belongs to.”
“I don’t remember hearing your name mentioned.”
“You wouldn’t. Our mission was classified. I was with SAD at the time.”
SAD – the Special Activities Division of the CIA. Black Ops, off the books, operating in enemy territory, doing things that would break international law. Our little ‘incident’ was recorded as an accident due to weather inside Afghanistan. Two Marines and a Navy hospital corpsman were killed when their chopper went down in a dust storm during a routine training mission. That was the official story, anyway. I was one of the five who got out with our lives.
I had an eight-inch scar on my neck to show for it and a month-long gap in my memory surrounding the whole event due to a brain injury.
He clicked his tongue. “Then I can’t help you. SAD stuff’s black. You’ll have to go to your original contacts. How did you get with SAD anyway?”
I laughed. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to shoot you. But like I said, we had a DARPA contract, so…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Burn before reading.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Why don’t you contact your SAD handler?”
“He’s no longer with SAD. They’re kind of sticky about forwarding addresses.”
“Good luck finding out. If you were with SAD, they’re pretty closed to your casual enquiry. I can ask around discretely but I doubt anyone will talk if you were with SAD and especially if you were part of that.”
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “Next time you’re in Hell’s Kitchen, look me up.” We said our goodbyes and I hung up, turning the envelope containing the letters over in my hand.
My call with Terry got me thinking that perhaps, in the mayhem that ensued when a Marine team came to recover us, my things and one of the team’s personal effects were mixed up after the crash. Because I was with a SAD team, it would be next to impossible to get names. I only knew my primary contact and the first names of the rest of the team – all former spec ops from various services – SEALs, Rangers, MARSOC.
I needed to know who was involved in our rescue so I could track down the owner of the letters. I was beginning to realize that it would be very hard to find out through official channels. So I turned to the news, and read back issues of Marine Corps Times, the Corp’s news source on any Marine deaths. I went back to the week we crashed – something I’d avoided doing that past year, not wanting to dredge up everything that happened.
Then I saw it.
Hospital Corpsman Daniel Lewis, Wilmington, N.C. Training accident.
Left behind was his new wife, Mira Lewis, (nee Parker) of Queens, NY and loving parents, Scott and Jeanne Lewis of Topsail Beach…<
br />
Mira… I picked up the photo of her in her wedding dress, her hair braided with wildflowers. She must have been named after Mira the star, also called Omicron Ceti, a red giant located in the constellation of Cetus. About two hundred light years from Earth, Mira was a binary star and one of the only non-supernova variable stars known.
How do I know all this about Mira?
I was that geeky kid with the backyard telescope who spent my nights trying to chart all the major stars in my science notebook instead of staying inside to play whatever video game was the latest amongst my peers. I often considered going into astronomy instead of computer science, but my love of building things – mostly computers – was stronger than my desire to sit in a lab in front of a computer screen and look at numbers. Which was what I ended up doing anyway, studying computer systems at Stanford.
Life is funny that way.
I read the obit and the family forum entries offering condolences. There was an article in the local paper about Hospital Corpsman Lewis, and how he was a medic with Force Recon…
I knew then it was the same team that came to rescue us when our MRAP hit an IED...
When the armored vehicle I was riding in was hit by a roadside IED, I was almost beheaded by a ragged piece of shrapnel that embedded itself into my neck. Two choppers were sent in to rescue us, and I was loaded in one, while the other chopper picked up everyone else. My only memories are of a grim-faced medic kneeling over me while I was loaded into the chopper. In the ensuing dust storm, our chopper went down and Lewis’s stuff must have been mixed up with mine when they pulled me out of the downed chopper.
I thought I’d put that part of my life behind me. Now, here it was, staring me in the face. The words of Lewis’s young widow were burned into my memory.
Please be careful over there. Don’t always do the bravest thing. Do the safest thing. Stay safe, please. Come back to me…