“I don’t know, how about Catalina? I mean”—she laughed—“the good part, like Avalon, where there are hotels and restaurants and snorkeling.”
“Hmm.” He started to kiss her again, then stopped. “Hey, let’s go to New York. My dad has a penthouse apartment there.”
She blinked. “Your dad has a penthouse in New York?” Of course he does.
“I haven’t told the old man to shove his offer up his ass, yet, so maybe he’ll be all about schmoozing me.”
“Okay.” Cool, New York. “Ooh, I can shop while I’m there. I want to buy some woman stuff. Skirts and dresses, things with lace.”
Eric perked up. “Lingerie?”
“Definitely.” She leaned into him, pressing the full length of her body to his. “What’s your favorite color, flyboy?”
He lowered his mouth to hers again and smiled against her lips. “Purple.”
* * *
Author’s Notes for BEYOIND THE CALL OF DUTY
There is an island off the west coast of Colombia called Isla Gorgona, but as far as I know there isn’t a hacienda or a mountain on it.
FARC does exist, and did guard drug routes and protect cocaine labs for certain drug cartels, including the Medellín Drug Cartel, which also used to exist. Carlos Enrique Lehder-Rivas was a leader of that terrorist group until he was extradited to the US in 1987 and sent to prison. The character of Alejandro Carrera is imagined.
DEA sea takedown procedures have been significantly scaled down in this novel for the sake of the story. DEA requires new agents to sign a mobility agreement upon leaving the academy, so, in reality, Nicole wouldn’t have been able to choose not to move in her job as a DEA agent.
The flight described in the beginning of this book of two pilots trying to land in zero-zero conditions is an extremely pared down version of something that actually happened. I’ve spent twenty-five years around naval aviators, listening to their “war stories,” and have drawn liberally from true-life accounts in the creation of my Wings of Gold novels. Yes, during that zero-zero flight, the helicopter’s rotor blades almost hit the tower window, sending a man diving down the back stairs. The near disastrous outcome of this flight played a part in changing the requirements and procedures for aircraft early warning weather notifications, as well as the way the U.S. Navy conducts emergency low visibility approaches to the back of small ships.
* * *
ANOTHER Free novella offered to Tracy Tappan’s subscribers…
The dramatic conclusion to Eric and Nicole’s story.
THE RECKONING DAY
She’s been on the run her whole life and now…
Nicole Gamboa’s true identity has been compromised by the Jiménez brothers’ discovery of her WITSEC file. Despite the danger, Nicole chooses not to go back into the witness protection program…but her day of reckoning arrives. She will be made to pay for her father’s betrayal of the Medellín Cartel.
Now the future she’s dreamed of having with Eric O’Dwyer is lost.
Or…will help come in the guise of a most unlikely ally…?
**Available in mobi, ePub, and pdf.**
Click HERE to download your FREE copy!
ALLIED OPERATIONS
BY
Tracy Tappan
Book Two in the Wings of Gold Series
ALLIED OPERATIONS
Starring Lieutenant Kyle “Mikey” Hammond and Samantha…
In the fight to save four American hostages held deep in the harsh terrain of northern Pakistan, a newspaper reporter and a Navy pilot face off with a dangerous terrorist group…and each other!
* * *
“The emotional growth that takes place for one of the main characters is nothing short of brilliant.”
~ Romantic Fanatic
“You will go through every possible emotion, and then some, while reading. I laughed, cried, held my breath, cried again, and loved these characters to pieces.”
~ Badass Blogettes
“This book shares the heart and soul of those who fight for the weak, and the heartache of those who never come home. It is not something you will want to miss.”
~ Typical Distractions Book Blog
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Captain Randy Borges, United States Navy, former commanding officer of the HSC-85 (Helicopter Sea Combat 85) Firehawks, for his invaluable guidance on SPECIAL OPERATIONS Warfare aviation.
My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Tricia and Mark Eoff for sharing their amazing story of both tragedy and triumph. (I never would’ve known about the dye marker stains without Tricia!). More on them at the end of the book…
All mistakes are my own.
* * *
Congratulations to Trish Jones for winning the birth date contest to honor her father, Army Sergeant Pat Tomaro.
Pasquale Frank Tomaro
Pat won the Purple Heart for an act of incredible bravery during the Korean War. He was on point one night during a blackout/radio silence, and his battalion suddenly came upon a cliff they couldn’t see in the dark. He flipped his jeep on purpose to stop the vehicles behind him from going over, and ended up sliding down the cliff and getting pinned under his jeep. He was paralyzed as a result, and doctors told him he would never walk again or have children. But Pat eventually proved them wrong. In his later years, his right leg was amputated due to vascular deficiency, but even that never held him back from living his life to the fullest.
He passed away eighteen years ago, but not a day goes by that his daughter Trish doesn’t miss him. “He was my hero! He never let the PTSD he suffered from conquer him, and was the best daddy to me and my sister. I know he remains with me in spirit, watching over and protecting me, because that’s the kind of man he was.”
** To honor Sergeant Pat Tomaro, his birthday, November 27th, has been chosen as the birthday of a naval aviator in this book, Lieutenant JG Steve “Jobs” Whitmore.
“They say if you stay in this business long enough, you will lose a friend. I guess that’s true. I’m no hero. Just an average guy doing a tough job. My friend and copilot is a hero. He gave everything he had for something he believed in. I will miss him.”
Mark “Clutch” Eoff, USN, Retired
Mark “Clutch” Eoff, crash survivor
To the men and women who’ve given their lives
doing a job they believe in.
Prologue
September, seven months ago. San Francisco, California.
Kyle rolled over on the mattress and slowly lifted his eyelids. Rumpled sheets, empty bed… Quieting his breathing, he honed in on sounds. Nothing. Only silence. No one was messing around in the bathroom. No one was anywhere in this hotel room.
Except for him.
He closed his eyes again, but not before confirming there wasn’t a carefully folded note deposited sweetly on the pillow next to his. She left me without a single word… And he was an idiot. Not just any sort of idiot, but on a level with a lobotomized Mr. Magoo, or Mr. Bean after ten years of glue-sniffing. That was him, Kyle “Mikey” Hammond, Lieutenant, United States Navy—on the idiot scale of one to ten, he was the googolplexian. Because here he was again, lying in bed with a broken heart. Repeat: again.
Then a familiar sound drifted to his ears…
The Universe tsking at him.
Kyle shifted onto his back, locked his hands behind his head, and gave the ceiling a hard stare. If he could stand up and defend himself to the Universe—not that the Great and Powerful U would even listen to any more of his yadda, yadda, yadda—he would cite “extenuating circumstances” for this, yet another round of cyclical stupidity, and claim he’d never experienced his ex-girlfriend, Sienna, like he had late-morning yesterday.
In the little over six years he’d dated Sienna Kelleman—starting in his junior year of high school and ending shortly after he’d gone to flight training in the Navy following college—he’d always had to scramble like a dog on all fours for every meager bestowal of attention he receiv
ed from the gorgeous, though mean as a hissing cat, blonde. But yesterday, when both of them were heading down the tiled corridor of San Francisco General Hospital, Sienna made the first move ever toward him. She slipped her hand in his and gripped it hard, as if she needed—no, was relying on—his strength and support. Him, the guy she’d always complained was a man she could never rely on.
“I’m really nervous,” she whispered.
He shot her a startled glance. “You’ve never met him?”
“No,” she’d returned in a choked whisper. “Not even the day he was born.”
The way she’d looked at him then… Her expression, her tone… He’d never known callous, demanding, impossible-to-please Sienna Kelleman could be vulnerable.
A lump pushed into Kyle’s throat, and he squeezed her hand back while they walked toward room 254 of the pediatric ward.
A couple, clearly a husband and wife, waited for them by the door, introducing themselves as Stanley and Marie Coleman.
The man was dark-haired with a prominent widow’s peak, and wearing glasses. He was of medium height and slender. The woman was short and a little plump, with a face that was probably jolly and apple-cheeked when she wasn’t so pale and scared-looking.
The lump in Kyle’s throat grew. He would guess his face didn’t have much blood left in it, either.
Mr. Coleman gave Kyle a long, intense inspection, and his complexion paled a whiter shade than his wife’s. Finally he spoke. “Thank you both so much for coming. The doctors are waiting this way to take a sample of your bone marrow.” He gestured down the hall.
Kyle hesitated. “But…” Was this how it worked? “Aren’t we going to see the boy first?”
Mr. Coleman frowned. “Do you think that’s wise?”
The Universe spoke loudly and clearly directly into Kyle’s ear. It is probably the worst idea ever created by man. But Kyle chose to do what he always did when he didn’t like the answer. Not listen. He glanced at Sienna.
Her eyes were pooled with tears.
Screw it. Kyle drew himself up. “We want to see him.”
Mr. Coleman paused some more.
But what could the man say? He needed Kyle and Sienna’s help.
A bored-looking orderly lumbered by with a crash cart. Chogga-chogga-chogga…one of the wheels was lopsided.
“All right,” Mr. Coleman conceded. “But we haven’t told Brodie he’s adopted yet. Please,” he directed at Kyle, “say you’re a colleague of mine from work.” Mr. Coleman led them inside the room.
It took every particle of willpower Kyle could muster to walk normally—not to stop dead in his tracks at coming face to face with his own son—to keep a normal expression—not to stare in appalled horror at all of the tubes running out of the seven-year-old boy—and to keep his jaw levered in place—not to let it drop all the way to China, because Brodie Coleman, with his sandy-colored hair, blue eyes, and bone structure that could’ve been formed from a plaster cast right off Kyle’s own features, looked exactly like Kyle. Not just a little bit, not even much like Sienna, but exactly like Kyle.
It was a total earthquake moment.
Considering how much seismic activity had been turning his life ass-over-fuck lately, that was no small thing. Case in point one, half a dozen hours ago Sienna had confessed that the sex-capade she and Kyle enjoyed right before he left for flight school had gotten her pregnant. Two: her anger over the unwanted pregnancy was the reason she’d broken up with him. Three: she’d given up their son for adoption. Four: Kyle was never supposed to have known any of this. And whopper number five: he never would have known if Brodie Coleman hadn’t become gravely ill with cancer, and Kyle and Sienna, as the boy’s biological parents, needed to donate bone marrow for his treatment.
“Hi,” the kid said.
Weird how one simple word could feel like a punch straight to the gut. “Hey.” Kyle let go of Sienna’s hand to step forward and offer his palm to Brodie. “I’m Mr. Hammond.”
The kid reached out and shook Kyle’s hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Polite words, a firm grip. This was a good boy. As Kyle stepped back, emotion stung the backs of his eyes, and for an absurd moment, he wanted to kiss Sienna for giving up Brodie. The boy was a better kid than if Kyle had been given the job of rearing him. Kyle probably would’ve raised him into a surly, hate-the-world-and-everything-in-it kind of person who spent his days shooting at stuff with a BB gun.
“I’m Sienna.” Sienna moved forward and set her hands on the upraised bed rail. “We’re going to get you out of this bed real soon.”
“Definitely,” Kyle agreed in a voice that felt strangled. “Get you back out to doing… uh…” He forced a smile. “What do you like to do? Sports?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which ones?” Please don’t say baseball, please don’t say—
“Baseball.”
Kyle’s stomach cramped. Baseball was his sport. So he’s like me in that way, too. Or…you know…maybe… “I bet your dad taught you, right?” Kyle felt his smile start to fray. Actually, I’m your dad.
Brodie’s eyes flickered toward Mr. Coleman.
Mr. Coleman shifted his feet. “Brodie and I practice the cello together.”
The…cello?
“What instrument do you play?” Brodie asked him politely.
Kyle raised his brows. “Me?”
“I told Brodie,” Mr. Coleman jumped in, “that the man coming to the hospital to help him is a visiting musician for the San Francisco Philharmonic.”
So that’s what Coleman does for a living. He plays the cello in a professional symphony. “Yeah…” Kyle put all his weight behind getting some words passed his throat blockage—violin, flute, the kazoo, bagpipes, a fucking squeeze box—but he couldn’t do it. I’m a naval aviator, and I’M YOUR DAD.
“The trumpet,” Sienna answered for him.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hammond are only here for one day,” Coleman added pointedly.
Kyle nodded, the movement pressing down on his throat-lump. That’s right, one day to see my sick-as-a-dog biological son, and then out the door I go.
A nurse entered the room wearing purple scrubs. “Time for lunch,” she singsonged, like they were at Magic Mountain, instead of the pediatric oncology ward.
“No.” Brodie threw a desperate glance at Mrs. Coleman. “Mom, please…”
“Brodie—”
“Eating makes me throw up.”
“You have to try and keep your strength up, sweetheart.”
Tears started to run down Brodie’s face. “But, Mom,” he whispered.
Kyle’s knees went slack and his belly watered down. He whipped around and took two short steps for the door before it hit him, what he was doing. Leaving…
The memory came at him in such a violent rush, it snapped the bones in the back of his neck, making it so all he could do was bow his head. Kyle had been the exact same age as Brodie, also in a hospital, having just come into the ER with a broken arm from falling off his bike. His mom showed up ten minutes later, lines of strain on her face…not for Kyle’s injury. No, he recognized that expression of hers well enough. It was because Kyle’s broken limb was too much for his father to deal with, so Matthew had taken off again. For weeks? Months? Who knew? Kyle, his mother, and younger brother sure as hell never did. The last time Matthew Hammond had found the door, he’d been gone for two months…and all it’d taken was Kyle’s birthday to roll around, requiring Matthew to buy a present for his oldest son, or maybe blow up a few balloons. It didn’t take much responsibility to be placed on the old man’s shoulders for him to take a powder.
Exactly like Kyle was doing…
Jesus, no. Somehow getting his brain to command his muscles and tendons to act, Kyle turned back around. He stood in place, his throat full of sand. A couple of months ago he’d been in a Colombian jungle, fighting three drug-running banditos for his life. He’d been stabbed twice, nearly got his forearm broken, and was strangled until his
eyeballs had partially mushed out of their sockets. And he’d go back there right now, in a second, do it all over again, rather than watch his kid cry.
Mr. Coleman came to Kyle’s rescue, ushering everyone toward the door. “Let’s give Brodie some privacy,” he said quietly.
Kyle nodded, like, ’course, that’d been his plan all along.
It was nearly eight o’clock at night by the time Kyle and Sienna arrived at the downtown Travelodge, located only two miles from the hospital. He’d let Sienna do the talking at the front desk, and when she ordered one room instead of two he hadn’t argued. He started to catch flak from the Universe, but he was beyond numb, so the U got a one-fingered-salute. He couldn’t stand the thought of being alone right now anyway, and Sienna probably felt the same.
The room was clean but small, consisting of not much more than a television on a dresser, a bathroom, and a queen-sized bed, the bedspread a collage of differing beige shades of nondescript.
Kyle tossed both his bag and Sienna’s into a corner of the room, then sank down heavily next to her on the foot of the mattress.
Outside, an eighteen wheeler’s horn blared, then faded to nothing on the 101 freeway just south of the motel.
“You must be tired,” he said. Last night Sienna had taken a red-eye flight from Virginia to San Diego, reaching Kyle’s place in the early morning hours on Friday to drop her multiple bombshells. Soon after that they’d both hopped on a plane for San Francisco, met their kid, and finally each of them had gone under local anesthesia to endure having a hollow needle thrust into the back of their pelvic bones.
“And sore.” Sienna grimaced as she carefully shifted her rump on the mattress. “Are you?”
“A bit.” But who cared? He would’ve endured a lot worse—anything—if it meant a chance to save Brodie. “I went to the cafeteria while you were finishing up and bought a couple of to-go sandwiches. You hungry?”
Wings of Gold Series Page 26