True Devotion

by Dee Henderson

  “The house is okay.”

  “Just okay?” she asked, amused at the perspective of youth.

  “Our home in Hong Kong was more exotic, but we had to leave three years ago when the lease expired.”

  “On the house or the country?”

  He laughed; it was weak but there. “The country actually. Dad’s British. He had to move his company headquarters to San Diego when Hong Kong reverted back to China.”

  Having never traveled outside of California, Kelly felt a little envious. Hong Kong sounded intriguing. “That must have been fun for your mom.”

  “It’s just Dad and me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I barely remember my mom, Amy. She died when I was little.”

  Even though his words were matter-of-fact, she heard the wistfulness in his voice. He missed not having a mom. And in that simple brief exchange, Kelly felt like she took a step toward understanding him. He would hide the depth of his grief, hang out with friends, and wonder why they thought their moms were the worst when he thought their moms were pretty great. Kelly knew it was after the loss that you missed what had been taken for granted. “My mom died about five years ago. It’s rough.”

  Ryan looked toward her. “Did she—” His hand slipped from the float, momentarily dropping his head below the surface. His panic was instantaneous.

  Kelly suddenly found herself pulled down as Ryan tried to claw his way back to the surface using her, his hand pressing down painfully into the nerve in her shoulder, his knee catching her in the calf. She broke to the surface, grabbing him from behind and wrapping her forearm under his chin. “Easy!”

  “We’re going to drown out here!”

  She yanked the float board back by its rope. “Hug it across your chest and stop moving,” she ordered, treading water for both of them, knowing just how precarious their situation was.

  Ryan went still but he was crying now, the sound of his sobs carrying across the water, the fear overwhelming him. Kelly’s heart broke at the sound, knowing for a boy his age, tears would be the last thing he wanted someone to see. She smoothed her hand over his hair trying to comfort without embarrassing him. “It’s going to be okay. Just relax. I won’t let you drown.”

  His grip on her arm finally eased enough so circulation could return. “How can they find us in the dark?”

  She looked around, deciphering in the flickering moonlight that the waves were increasing in size. There had been a low front coming through this evening and its front edge of wind was already reaching them. “Spotlights. Searchlights. The boats will be out, even helicopters.” She didn’t add what she knew and feared. Even with the resources, finding them before morning would be difficult if not impossible.

  No. She couldn’t let herself doubt.

  Joe would find them.

  “Kelly, I would like you to meet my new boss, Lieutenant Joe Baker.”

  She turned at the touch of her husband’s hand on her shoulder. Standing beside Nick, Joe seemed dwarfed, a good four inches shorter, the same powerful muscles but less bulky. But then at six feet four Nick broke the rules for what made a good SEAL physique. Joe could have been the prototype. He was a triathlete if she’d ever seen one. He had the warm copper tan of a man who spent most of his days outside.

  Joe had nice eyes. She always looked there first because nothing told her more about a soldier than his eyes. Joe’s were blue, like the sea she enjoyed watching at dawn, and they were calm. He held her gaze as she looked at him, doing his own study. She knew the man was brave. He was known in the SEAL community as one of the best, and that said a lot among men who didn’t give accolades until they were earned. He also looked kind. The fact he was taking time to come and meet the families of his men said a lot. She offered her hand with a smile. Her husband would be in good hands.

  “Lieutenant. Thanks for coming to the cookout.” She felt the warmth as his hand closed around hers and could feel the texture of calluses, the strength of a man who could fight hard and yet still touch with tenderness.

  “I never turn down an invitation to good cooking, Mrs. Jacobs.”

  Kelly was very happily married, but she wasn’t immune to the man; she felt the impact of being the focus of his smile and the warmth in those eyes. Her single friends in Coronado would certainly take notice of the new boss. She was going to enjoy introducing him around. “Please, it’s Kelly.”

  “If you’ll make it Joe.”

  “I’ll be glad to. No handle?”

  The eyes she liked twinkled with his smile. “Occasionally I get called Bear, but that’s only if I’m in a bad mood.”

  A grizzly bear—oh, it was perfect. She laughed at the image. “I like it. Nick goes by Eagle, unless he doesn’t see something, then the guys call him Buzzard.”

  “Kelly . . .” Nick winced, but Joe just laughed.

  Joe had been her husband’s commanding officer, but he had also become her husband’s best friend. The men had clicked that first afternoon, sharing a common bond that went deeper than work. They had similar perspectives and priorities in life. Nick had led Joe to Christ. She had often thought of Nick and Joe as her example of a modern-day David and Jonathan. Best friends. Warriors. Men passionate about their God.

  Joe’s grief over the loss of Nick was different than hers, but just as deep. The men had spent a lot of time together; now Joe spent large portions of his time alone. He’d lost a best friend and those were not easy to replace.

  Since Nick’s death Joe had been watching out for her.

  He would find them.

  * * *

  The sea, for years his friend, was tonight his enemy.

  Joe checked the compass on his wrist and then the GPS readout. The longitude reading as marked by the global positioning satellites made him frown; this current was moving him rapidly out to sea.

  Almost an hour had passed since word had come that Kelly was in trouble. Neither he nor the other members of SEAL Team Nine’s Golf Platoon had felt like leaving the search up to just the Coast Guard. Normally the Coast Guard asked for help, but in this case, who asked and who offered would get blurred in the reports. The Navy understood what made good public relations—and it didn’t look good if a civilian lifeguard and a teen drowned within the immediate vicinity of one of the largest naval bases in the country.

  But even if there had been no formal protocol for the help, the military brass would still have backed their involvement. They understood taking care of their own. Not to help the widow of a SEAL who had gone down in combat would insult the honor of an entire SEAL community. For Joe it was much more personal. He had to find Kelly.

  He had elected to become a human buoy, to find out firsthand where the riptide began and which way it moved. It had been easy to find and it was vicious. He had felt the sudden pull of the water about forty feet from shore.

  Once in the riptide a swimmer could struggle to swim back into shore until his strength was gone and he would never get any closer. If he stopped to tread water he would be pulled out to sea at a rapid clip. The only way to break free was to turn and swim parallel to the shore until clear of the unpredictable current.

  Finding the boy, pulling him with her—Kelly would never have been able to get out of this current. Joe prayed she had been smart enough not to try. If she had already burned through her energy . . .

  Joe activated the waterproof microphone. “Boomer, I’m getting pulled into grid six.” Boomer, given name Chet Walker, was the AOIC—Assistant Officer In Charge—of Golf Platoon.

  “The riptide is still holding together?”

  “It’s still intact. They’ve been pulled out much farther than we assumed.”

  “I’ll redirect the boats and come pick you up.”

  Joe saw the spotlight of the search helicopter veer west, moving farther out to sea. Fifty minutes. It was an eternity. The search area expanded with every minute that passed. Kelly was out in this somewhere, unprotected from the cold, trying to s
ave her life and the boy’s. They had to find them soon. The cold was already reaching through his wet suit, and he trained for these conditions. He could only imagine what it was doing to Kelly and the teen.

  He heard the Zodiac slow as it approached his coordinates. The boat appeared abruptly from the darkness. He reached up with his right hand and was pulled aboard by Boomer. Joe perched on the side of the craft, the taut, thick rubber familiar to his touch. There were no lights on board the six-by-fifteen-foot Zodiac. They were accustomed to working in the darkness, and a light would only destroy the distance they could see naturally and with the aid of their night vision goggles. “Take me to grid nine.” The SEAL manning the muffled outboard motor nodded and turned the craft west.

  Boomer handed over a pair of NVGs. “We’ll find them.”

  Joe accepted the night vision goggles and simply nodded. Sixteen volunteer SEALs plus the Coast Guard—not finding them was inconceivable. Whether they would find them in time remained to be seen. They could already be too late.

  It was his job that was supposed to be life-threatening, not hers. He had to force himself to relax and unclench his jaw—something he didn’t have to do in combat. He was lousy at accepting a civilian in danger, especially a friend. Feeling helpless was an emotion he worked hard to avoid and getting it flung at him tonight was hard to take.

  Kelly was going to be embarrassed when they found her. It would sting her pride a bit, knowing Alex had been able to get back to shore with one of the surfers and she had not. Joe held on to that image of the small laugh and the flushed cheeks that were hallmarks of Kelly when she was the center of the attention; it was better than the alternative.

  He prayed she lived long enough to be embarrassed.

  * * *

  “Ryan?” Kelly grabbed for the float board as it slipped from Ryan’s hand.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Ryan, wake up.” She shook him hard, trying to rouse him. “Ryan!”

  She couldn’t bring him around. The cold had finally won. She felt for his pulse and found it slow but steady. How long before that changed? Twenty minutes? Thirty? She struggled to secure the float board against his chest with the straps, using it to ensure Ryan would float on his back.

  His slow, steady kicks had been helping in the fight to keep them steady against the current. The effort to keep treading water for them both was exhausting. The muscles in her legs burned from the strain, adding a painful agony to the mix as her skin grew icy. It felt like she was trying to kick through thick cement; there was nothing gentle about the water now. She wanted so desperately to take a break.

  How had Nick ever made it through Hell Week? She had always known her husband downplayed the effort required by his job. She had never realized how much he downplayed it.

  Anyone who wanted to be a SEAL had to first get through six months of training known as BUD/S, and the basic underwater demolition/SEAL training routinely eliminated most of the candidates. The fifth week had earned being called Hell Week. After four weeks of pushing the men in intense physical training, the instructors for those who would be SEALs set out to find out who in the class intended to be a SEAL and who only wanted to be one.

  For five days and nights, with only four hours of sleep, the men were pushed to the limits—cold ocean swims, constantly lugging a telephone pole or carrying their rubber boats over their heads, conducting explosive ordinance drills, night landings in the pounding surf through the rocks off the historic Hotel del Coronado—all the while the instructors pushing, encouraging them to quit.

  By the end of Hell Week, 70 percent of Nick’s class had voluntarily withdrawn.

  Nick had made it. Kelly could still vividly remember him walking through the door that Friday, given forty-eight hours of liberty. He had collapsed on the bed—sand, grit, grime, and all, and had not moved for twenty-two hours. Blisters, torn muscles, sunburn, exhaustion—her husband had survived the first step to becoming an elite warrior. She had been so proud of him.

  She wished she had better understood then what it felt like to be pushed to the limits of your endurance. Her appreciation for what Nick had accomplished had just escalated, and she would never be able to tell him. She was hitting the wall of what she could endure. Nick, how did you do it?

  SEALs never give up. There is no secret. SEALs simply never quit.

  She would love to give up. Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, Kelly forced herself to find a rhythm for her kicks. SEALs trained to be able to take this kind of physical punishment. That had to be part of their secret. All the mornings she had blown off running, all the days she had ignored her normal exercise routine, were delivering their revenge without mercy. She would never tease a SEAL again about the constant workouts.

  “I thought you were going shopping with Liz.”

  Kelly looked up from the clothes she was putting away to see Nick leaning against the doorjamb to the master bedroom. She smiled. “We’re going later. I thought you and Joe were going running.”

  Nick didn’t move out of the doorway as she joined him. She slid under his arm and wrapped hers around his waist, taking him with her, enjoying the closeness. She loved this man. It wasn’t often he got a few free hours on a weekday. The guys were going out to the Chocolate Mountain Test Range later in the day for a nighttime training op. Nick didn’t have to report until 1300 hours.

  Her husband chuckled. “Honey, we’ve already been. I left two hours ago.” His arm dropped across her shoulders as they headed toward the kitchen.

  “I can tell. You’re wet.” She said it with a grin, for it was more salt water than sweat. Joe and Nick must have been doing their five-mile run on the beach down at the surf line—SEALs trained, played, and lived in the sand and sea like it was their second home. From the lifeguard tower she would often see the men in the early morning silently challenging each other, racing up the sand, turning everything into a competition—the best friends among them were the worst. “Who won?” She picked up a clean T-shirt from the laundry basket of folded clothes on the counter and tossed it to him.

  Nick’s grin was quick. “I let him.” Nick stripped off the wet shirt, then took one step back into the hall and tossed it into the laundry room. He pulled on the clean one. “We’re heading to the gym to work the weights. You want to come spot for me?”

  It was an appealing offer, for her husband working out was a sight to enjoy. He tended to show off just a bit if only with a wink before he lifted a loaded barbell off the bar. She could appreciate later the results as he easily swept her off her feet, but she couldn’t totally forget the reason he was so diligent about the workouts. They were preparations for battle.

  It wasn’t something to tease him about on a day when he had just lost in a footrace at the beach to Joe. There were priorities, and then there were priorities. “Thanks, but I’d be invading a guy’s domain.” She joined him and rested her hands against his biceps, leaning into him to share a kiss. “Go get back to work. And don’t come home till you out-rep him or something.”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kelly forced herself back to the present. She couldn’t afford to let herself drift down memory lane; hypothermia-induced sleep would overtake her too. And it did her no good to remember, for the memories were too bittersweet to enjoy. Nick would never again be around to flirt with, to tease, and that realization cut inside every time she had to face that fact.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to get a stronger grip on Ryan. If she timed the swells, she could make two strong kicks and ride a crest down, giving herself a pause before she needed to make the third kick. It helped, but not enough; she could feel her kicks growing weaker, no matter how hard she tried to keep them steady. She needed help to come soon.

  She didn’t realize at first that it was a rescue light. It came from the east, traveling west toward her, so slow it appeared almost not to move. Then the sound of the helicopter rotors reached her, forming a deep heartbeat that grew and
pounded the air in a welcome beat. She frantically searched for something to signal with. She had nothing shiny. She untied the float board and took on Ryan’s full weight, keeping him out of the water with one arm while doing her best to wave the float board with her free hand, using all the strength she had left in a desperate attempt to get noticed.

  She watched the light trace over the water.

  They were drifting away from where the light would pass over.

  With that realization came fear. If the helicopter crew didn’t see them, it could be hours before this grid was searched again. Ryan would never make it, and it was doubtful she would either. She struggled to swim against the current into the path of the light, pulling Ryan with her. The spotlight passed five yards beyond them, the helicopter moving steadily on. Kelly lowered the float board when it became obvious they had not been seen. The sound faded.

  She started crying.

  Two

  * * *

  Joe went back into the water at the east edge of grid nine, absorbing the shock of the cold water, then ignoring it. The rubber of his wet suit sealed a layer of water against his skin where it warmed, creating a blanket of protection around him, but it could not prevent his fingers from turning to ice or his face from feeling the sting of the waves. The equipment vest and gear felt heavy now, but comfortable, for they were familiar weights. In an odd way it was better to be in the water than the boat, for it clarified matters, added urgency. Kelly was going to freeze.

  He let himself drift, watching the GPS and calculating his speed.

  The riptide had ended. “Boomer, head north. The current has changed.”

  “It will put us out of radio range.” The answer came back through broken static. Joe had sent the boat on to cover the western edge of the grid.

  “I’ll use a flare if I need you. Come back on a parallel track to these coordinates in thirty minutes.”

  He began a steady swim with the current, pausing often to scan the ocean. Kelly was comfortable in the water, wasn’t the type to panic, but he could feel the pressing reality. Anything could happen in this cold sea.