Stan came face-to-face with Lt. Tom Paoletti in the stairwell, heading up to the hotel roof where a helo was standing by to take them back to the Kazabek airport.
The phone call from XO Jazz Jacquette had come just as he was sliding into bed.
Just as he was about to close his eyes and slip into blessed unconsciousness.
But then the phone rang. And Stan had his clothes back on inside of fifteen seconds.
Because the terrorists on flight 232 had broken their radio silence. They were talking with FBI negotiator Max Bhagat. And Tom and his top officers—Jazz and Starrett—and his senior chief—Stan—were needed over there, pronto.
Bhagat’s FBI team would be making an evaluation of the tangos’state of mind. Were they pushed close to the edge and ready to snap? Ready to start discharging their weapons and killing their innocent hostages?
If so, the SEALs had to gear up and take down the plane, immediately. Ready or not, here they very well might come.
Truth was, it could’ve been worse. The call might’ve come in before he’d had a chance to eat that dinner Teri Howe had gone to such lengths to provide.
He laughed softly, still amazed that she’d gone to that trouble for him.
“Share it, Senior,” Tom Paoletti ordered. “I could use a good joke right about now.”
“I had a nice dinner tonight, sir,” Stan told his CO. “I was just thinking how glad I was that I’m not hungry. That because of it, I could easily go for another twenty-four hours without sleep. That’s all.”
Tom shot him a look as they climbed the endless flights of stairs. “Isn’t it a little early in the op to be punchy, Senior Chief?”
“Definitely, sir.”
“Does this have something to do with Teri Howe?” Tom asked.
Um . . . “Only very remotely.”
“How remotely?”
Stan looked at Tom. “Very. Sir.”
He was well aware that Tom spoke fluent senior chief, and therefore he knew Stan’s real message was a polite variation of “Stay out of my goddamn business. Sir.”
But Tom chose to play the friend card. “Stan,” he said, laying it out on the table, face up. “I’ve seen you around this girl.”
“You’ve seen what, sir?” Stan tried to bring it back to CO and senior chief.
“Jazz told me that you sat with her on the plane.”
“Next time, sir, I’ll be sure to stand all the way to Kazbekistan.”
Tom laughed. “Lighten up. It’s just . . . You must be aware of potential problems. Fraternizing issues, for one.”
Teri was an officer, Stan was enlisted. “The rules are archaic,” he told Tom.
“I’m the first to agree with that,” Tom said. “But—”
“And they also don’t apply,” Stan said. “She’s Reserve. There’s no issue.”
“Ah,” Tom said. “So you’ve, uh, already checked into this?”
Meaning Stan had anticipated all the potential problems that came with a romantic relationship with Teri Howe.
God damn, he was tired. Otherwise he would’ve seen that coming a mile away.
“I meant there’s no issue with my friendship with her,” he told Tom.
“Does she know it’s just a friendship?”
“Yes, sir.” Despite the odd mix of signals he’d picked up from Teri tonight, despite the fact that he’d come into his room to find her sleeping on his bed, he’d seen her holding Mike Muldoon’s hand, smiling into the ensign’s eyes. “She had dinner with Muldoon last night. They hit it off.”
Tom looked at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t be sorry. I set them up. What’s the word from Jazz?” Stan deliberately changed the subject.
Jazz’s three-man team had run into some problems in their attempt to wire the hijacked plane with microphones and minicams. Hours earlier, Big Mac, Scooter, and Steve had approached from the aircraft’s rear under cover of darkness, with the intention of penetrating the luggage compartment. But everything had to be done silently, and they’d run into an obstacle or two that was really slowing them down.
Once the sun came up, the SEALs would be stuck there, under the plane, in the blazing heat.
“He’s going to keep ’em out there for as long as it takes,” Tom told him.
“Good,” Stan said. MacInnough would glower for a full month if he were—in his estimation—pulled off an assignment too soon. Stan knew that the brawny redheaded ensign would spend two weeks underneath that plane with only MREs to eat and no sanitary facilities before he would willingly quit.
The plane would get wired. Big Mac would see to it. It was just a matter of when.
They went up another flight of stairs before Tom broke the silence again.
“You know, I had to leave San Diego without saying good-bye to Kelly,” he said. “She must’ve been making rounds at the hospital, so I had to do the voice mail thing. The real bitch of it is that I left before I had the chance to ask her if you were right—if she really wants me to resign my commission.”
Stan’s feet kept moving, but his brain was standing stone still. “Tom. You can’t seriously be thinking—”
“You’d be surprised what I’m capable of thinking when it comes to Kelly,” his CO said grimly.
And then they were on the roof, running for the helo.
Shit. Stan knew that sooner or later Tom would leave Team Sixteen. He’d either be promoted up, or he’d reach the point where he didn’t want to play anymore. Being a SEAL, after all, was a young man’s game.
Stan had always figured that when that time came, years from now, he’d go, too. Up or out. With Tom Paoletti.
But he wasn’t ready for that yet. Not even close.
The helo was in the air before his butt was in the seat, and he checked, out of habit, to see if the pilot was Teri.
It wasn’t.
Of course it wasn’t. He’d walked her to her door and beat a rapid retreat back down the stairs to his own room. She was in bed right now, her body warm and soft with sleep and . . .
Christ. He shouldn’t be thinking about her like that.
But it was a much more pleasant thought than that of Tom Paoletti leaving the team. So Stan closed his eyes and let himself drift back into Teri’s room, Teri’s bed, Teri’s arms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ten
Lt. Roger Starrett was good.
Alyssa Locke sat in the shade of a tent that had been provided for the K-stani officials and other observers, and watched him run his team of SEALs through their drill, entering the mock-up of the hijacked plane again and again.
Negotiator Max Bhagat had been on the radio all night, talking to the terrorists through a young American passenger who was pretending to be Senator Crawford’s daughter Karen. The real Karen Crawford had been picked up and whisked away to safety in Athens late last night.
Despite the fact that there was still no direct audio and video from the plane, a team of FBI psychologists had come to the conclusion that the situation on board flight 232 was stable. Still, the SEALs were drilling as if they could be called in to take down the plane at any moment.
As she watched, the SEALs burst inside of the wooden plane using grenades that delivered both a loud noise and a blinding flash of light.
Their timing was even better this go around.
Yes, Starrett was good. Of course, the entire team he was leading was first-rate. They worked as a unit, practically thinking and breathing as one. But to give Roger Starrett credit, he was a good leader. Direct and self-assured. And capable of letting each of his teammates do what they did best without his interference.
Yeah, Roger was excellent.
It helped if Alyssa thought of him as Roger, rather than by his nickname, Sam. Sam Starrett was the impossibly sexy man with the wide smile, brilliant blue eyes, and lean body who showed up in her dreams and had steamy, pulse-pounding sex with her atop
her kitchen table.
As she watched him now, his long, tanned legs were covered by BDUs—Battle Dress Uniform pants—in the traditional olive drab favored by the Army. It was hot out, and he’d taken off his shirt, and his tan-colored T-shirt was stained with sweat, hugging his well-built chest and shoulders. He looked unbearably good.
“Oh, God,” she said.
Sometimes, though, it wasn’t sex. Sometimes he made love to her in her dreams. Slowly. Sweetly. Tenderly. As if he were joining more than their bodies—more, even, than their two hearts.
The kitchen table was part of a drunken memory. Alyssa knew it had happened at least once that way, that night when she’d made such an error in judgment. The other, though, had to be sheer wishful thinking.
“You okay?” Jules asked. Her partner was wearing sunglasses identical to the ones Keanu Reeves had worn in The Matrix. Alyssa kept expecting him to start hanging in the air and moving in slow motion.
They were the only ones sitting there under the tent, so she answered him honestly. “This sucks. Look at him.”
Jules looked. “How does he get away with not cutting his hair? I thought the Navy had all those anal rules about officers and appearances.”
“He’s what’s known as a long-hair,” Alyssa told him. “An operative who can blend in in places where a military haircut would stand out.”
“He’s shaved since last time. Since DC,” Jules realized.
“That means he’s probably been doing a lot of diving. He told me it’s hard for someone with a beard to get an airtight seal around a face mask.” He’d also told her his close friends could always tell what he’d been up to—to some degree—over the past few months by the length of his hair and the presence or absence of his mustache and goatee. Other than that and the fact that he looked as if he’d been working out like a maniac, she had absolutely no clue what he’d been up to.
Had he thought about her at all?
Probably not.
“If it’s any consolation,” Jules told her, “he hates this, too. He’s looked over here only four thousand times this morning. And did you see his face last night when he came into the hotel restaurant and saw you?”
“I’ve handled this badly,” Alyssa admitted to herself. “I should have been friendly.”
“Friendly would’ve put you right back into his bed.”
“Distant and cool,” she countered, “but still friendly.”
“If you want to get with him, then get with him.” Jules believed in being direct and to the point.
“I don’t want to—”
He took off his sunglasses and really looked at her. “Sweetie, I’m not going to judge you.”
“Really.” She took off her sunglasses, too. “I don’t even remotely want to—”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Jules. Hello. I am not going to get hurt. I am not going to ‘get with’ this man. I would never make that kind of mistake again.”
“Okay, good, because he’s coming over here right now—”
Oh, shit. He was. Alyssa hurriedly put her sunglasses back on.
“—with that kind of caveman walk,” Jules continued. “You know, the kind that announces he’s the alpha male around here, so if you don’t want him to grab you by the hair and pull you into his cave, you better run.”
Sam Starrett was at twelve o’clock, heading straight for the observers’tent, his boots scuffing up a small cloud of dust as he came. He was drinking a bottle of water, and try as she might to focus on the fact that, behind him, the rest of his team was taking a break, Senior Chief Wolchonok making sure everyone had water and PowerBars, her eyes were drawn back to Starrett.
With the sun slightly behind him, with the muscles in his arms and chest actually rippling enticingly as he moved—dammit!—he looked like some kind of action hero, despite the baseball cap on his head. Or maybe because of it, she wasn’t sure.
“Maybe I should disappear,” Jules murmured.
“Don’t you dare.” Alyssa stood up, unwilling to let Sam loom over her more than he had to.
And then he was there. Standing directly in front of her.
There was sex in his eyes as he gazed down at her. A silent reminder that they’d once shared bodily fluids, that he’d taken her places she hadn’t even dreamed possible. A reminder that, try as she might not to be, she was flesh and blood. Human—with human failings.
And human needs.
“You want to make yourselves useful?” Starrett asked in his infuriating Texas drawl, no greeting, no pretense of niceties. “Instead of sitting around wasting taxpayers’hard-earned dollars?”
“You bet we do,” Jules answered before she could spit out a scathing retort.
Starrett looked at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, and she knew that he expected her to protest. He wanted her to protest.
So she didn’t. “What would you like us to do, Lieutenant?” she asked as nicely as she could manage, trying to sound friendly. Friendly, yet still cool.
“I need more people to play the part of the terrorists,” he said. “I’ve got two SAS guys coming in, but I’m still three bodies short.” He gestured to Jules with his head. “Can he shoot?”
“He is an FBI agent,” Alyssa countered. She took a deep breath before calling him a less than flattering name. Don’t get mad. Stay cool. And friendly. She forced what she hoped was a friendly smile.
“Yeah, well, in my experience, that means shit,” Starrett said.
“Mine, too,” Jules said easily. “But, yeah, he can shoot. Is he as good as Alyssa Locke? No. Because no one, my friend, is as good as Alyssa Locke.”
Starrett looked at her again, and this time there was something different in his eyes. Something that looked an awful lot like . . . regret?
But then it was gone and he was walking away.
“In fifteen minutes, check in with the senior chief,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “He’ll get you the gear you need. Don’t bother him before then—he’s taking a nap. Hope you brought a hat—you’re going to need it. It’s fucking hot out here.”
Alyssa pulled her gaze away from Sam Starrett’s perfect rear end.
“This is going to be fun,” Jules said. “Watching you kick ass.”
Fun wasn’t quite the word she would have used.
Stan was asleep.
He’d found a narrow bit of shade behind the wooden mock-up of the plane and had curled up, right on the dusty ground.
Except the sun had moved and now half of his face was subject to its harsh rays.
He slept on his side, one arm under his head, the other hand open and resting on his chest. It was strange to see him so relaxed, without that high voltage current of electricity that seemed to surge through him at all times.
Teri sat down next to him as quietly as she could, letting her shadow cover his face.
God, it was hot. And dry as hell.
She set down the last of the bags she’d brought from the hotel. Taking a sip of lukewarm water from her bottle, she looked down to find Stan’s eyes open and watching her.
“God!” she said, startled. He hadn’t moved at all. He’d just opened his eyes and was instantly alert.
“Where’s your flack jacket?” he asked.
“In the helo.”
“Hell of a lot of good it’ll do you there.”
“It’s hot,” she tried to explain. “And I figured I was safe enough out here, surrounded by a SEAL team.”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, brushing the dust from his arm and shirt.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she continued.
“It’s all right.” He checked his watch. “I got ten minutes. That’s better than some days.”
Ten minutes? Now she really felt awful. She’d heard through the grapevine that the senior chief hadn’t managed to make it back to his hotel room at all last night. He’d gone from his session with her in the stairwell to a meeting at the airport, to a m
eeting with Adm. Chip Crowley, who’d arrived in K-stan late last night.
And he’d been back here, with Sam Starrett’s team of SEALs, hard at work at 0400.
The lines of fatigue around his eyes and mouth were more pronounced than they’d been last night.
Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge Page 17