“You mean you kept the appointment with your rehab doctor?” Chay raised an eyebrow. “Will wonders never cease?”
The gibe was well earned. Tanner had blown off half his scheduled appointments. Why deal with her when he’d come up with his own rehab workout routine? “I had some papers to fill out. I’m sure I handed them in. Pretty sure, anyway.” A wave rolled in, soaking both men to the knees. “I can’t think of what Blake would want.”
“Maybe he just can’t get through the day without seeing your ugly face.”
“Or…” Tanner all but skidded to a halt.
Chay stopped, too, and swung toward him. “Or what? You look as if the sun just came out after a long winter.”
“Maybe I aced that checkup.” He ran his hands through his dark hair. “I mean, I know I did pretty well. Ran the treadmill for fifteen minutes. Did fifty squats. Passed some stupid balance tests. Don’t look at me that way. I know I didn’t look so good a few minutes ago, but I was fine in the doc’s office.”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely.” Tanner grinned. “Maybe it’s over. Yes. I bet it is. Blake’s gonna return me to full duty.”
“I hope so, but you don’t really know. I mean, he said to report to him ASAP, but—”
“Forget the but’s, Olivieri. I’m on my way back to duty. I know I am.”
Tanner’s smile turned into a grin. He held up his hand. Chay hesitated, then high-fived him. Then Tanner swung away from the ocean and ran towards the STUD compound.
CHAPTER TWO
The compound sprawled over a forty acre stretch of what would have been prime Southern California real estate, but the land Camp Condor sat on was untouchable, a gift donated by a patriotic billionaire who also just happened to be a former STUD. His massive beach house, all glass and stone set on a low rise, was now the admin and classroom building.
There was no class in residence, so the place was quiet. If there’d been a class going through its sixteen-week training session, men would have been sweating hard and generally working their asses off.
Downtime was rare for STUD newbies.
Tanner remembered what his four months here had been like.
The weeks he’d put in at Condor had been as tough as any he’d lived through during BUD/S at Coronado. Tougher, maybe, because at BUD/S, you were working your tail off to prove yourself worthy of becoming a SEAL. Here, you were already part of the best-specialized ops force in the world, which meant the obstacles you had to overcome to become a STUD were even more difficult.
There were some guys on campus, a handful rehabbing the way he was, others taking advanced courses in everything from Arabic to esoteric forms of close-quarter combat with poetic names that suggested ancient Asian lineage. After Tanner had been schooled in several of those methods, he’d decided the fanciful names were meant to distract you from the reality of being taught how to put your opponent down, up close and permanent.
He greeted a couple of people, but he kept moving.
Blake was about to return him to the land of the living.
Why else would he want to see him?
Tanner ran up the four steps of the admin building, paused on the porch just long enough to tuck his socks in his pockets and jam his bare feet into his boots, then opened the front door on a foyer that probably still looked pretty much the way it had when the place had been its billionaire donor’s weekend retreat. Italian tile floors, high ceilings, chandeliers that would have looked right at home in Versailles.
The captain’s offices were to the right, the classrooms to the left.
Tanner’s first morning here, Blake had shown up to welcome them. They’d been a small group, twenty hard-bodied, hard-eyed men exchanging wary glances. A couple of guys knew each other. Tanner and Chay, for example.
They’d all jumped to their feet when Blake entered the room.
He’d waved them back into their seats.
“We don’t stand on formalities here, gentlemen,” he’d said. “We’re equals, no matter what our rank.” Then he’d grinned. “Except, of course, for me.” They’d all laughed and relaxed a little, which Tanner figured had been the point of the mild joke. Then Blake had turned serious. “Welcome to the Special Tactical Units Division of your country’s armed services. In other words, STUD—and yes, that’s one hell of an acronym. It’s also accurate. A stud, according to the dictionary, is a rivet. It provides strength and purpose to the whole. It is also a term for a stallion, and stallions are known for having courage as well as heart. We will expect you to have it all, gentlemen. Strength. Purpose. Devotion. Courage. And, perhaps most of all, heart. Show us those qualities and we will welcome you into the toughest, smartest fighting force in the world. Show us you lack even one of those things and you’re gone. Coming in second best here is not an option. Clear?”
The oldest recruit among them, a SEAL who was ancient at the age of thirty, had jumped to his feet.
“Clear, sir,” he’d said.
They’d all shot to their feet, barking out “Clear,” but Blake had held up his hand.
“You’re not loud enough, gentlemen. I want to hear a decisive answer.”
“Clear, sir,” The men had roared, and Blake had grinned and dismissed them.
And Tanner was now about to give that response to the order he’d been waiting for. Are you ready to return to your unit, Akecheta? Blake would say, and Tanner would salute, smile and bark out the word that was already on the tip of his tongue.
Was he ready? Man, was he ever. He could hardly wait.
Tanner strode down the marble-floored hallway toward his captain’s office. This time next week, he and his unit would be in—well, in a place where American forces were not supposed to be, but they’d been in lots of places where American forces weren’t supposed to be.
Not officially, anyway.
Pakistan. Iraq. Syria. He’d put in time closer to home, too, on the doorstep of the U.S. of A in the jungles of small but vicious banana republics in Central America where drug-smuggling, kidnappings and human trafficking were a way of life.
His guys would be as glad to have him back as he would be to ship out with them.
“Kowalski can’t hit the side of a barn, dude,” one of them had said during a Skype call, while Kowalski grinned in the background. “We need you.”
Yeah, he was a damned fine shot. But so was Kowalski. So were all of them. The one certainty was that he sure as hell needed them. They were his brothers, his family, and the fucking truth was that the thought of being unable to be part of that family again had scared the crap out of him.
He paused outside the open door to Blake’s suite of offices. Damn. He was a sweaty, sandy mess; he’d been so eager to get here that he hadn’t thought to stop for a shower and a change of clothes. He looked like something that had been washed up with the tide, and probably smelled like it, too.
“Lieutenant Akecheta?”
Too late. The captain’s aide, a pleasant-faced young ensign, had spotted him.
“Please go right in, sir. They’re waiting for you.”
Tanner stepped through the outer door and hesitated. “I’m, ah, I’m kind of ripe, Ensign. I’ve been out running. Maybe I should take five minutes to shower and—”
“They said to send you right in, sir.”
They? Who were ‘they?’ Tanner knew better than to ask. Instead, he nodded, ran his hands through his hair in what he figured was probably a useless attempt to tame it and followed the aide to the closed door of Blake’s private office. The aide knocked once and opened the door.
The office was large.
Vast might have been a better word. The size of it always awed him.
Tanner figured that it had probably been the former owner’s study. Lots of glass, a couple of big ceiling fans, a long stretch of pale hardwood flooring. The sofa, loveseat and club chairs at one end of the room were the kind that were expensive, but the desk at the other end was a big chunk of wood, pretty beaten up a
nd scarred.
It had probably traveled with Blake from his last posting.
Normally, the room was filled with light.
Today, all the white vertical blinds had been drawn against the sun, creating an artificial darkness. The captain leaned, hipshot, against one corner of his desk. Another man stood lost in the shadows several feet away. Was he military? Tanner couldn’t see what he was wearing. He couldn’t see his face, either, only that he was tall and trim, with military bearing and posture.
“Lieutenant.” Blake stood straight, gestured to his aide to leave the room. The door snicked shut and Blake walked toward Tanner, hand outstretched. “I see you’ve been on the beach, working on your tan. Am I right?”
A joke, like he and Chay had shared, except this time, for no discernible reason, it fell flat. Still, Tanner gave the expected smile and response as he shook the captain’s hand.
“I was, yes sir.”
Blake chuckled, but the chuckle seemed no more real than the joke. Tanner was getting a bad feeling. Maybe this wasn’t about redeployment with his unit. Maybe, Jesus, maybe he was about to be dismissed from service.
“Listen,” he said quickly, “listen, Captain Blake…”
“You’re probably wondering why you’re here, Lieutenant.”
Yes. He sure as hell was. Who was the stranger standing in the shadows? And how come Blake had twice referred to him as Lieutenant when at any other time, he’d have simply have called him Akecheta or even Tanner?
“Lieutenant?”
Tanner cleared his throat. “Yes sir. I am.”
Blake gave him a long, unreadable look. Then he turned to the stranger and nodded. The stranger stepped out of the shadows and started towards them.
The guy was Army.
More than Army. Four gold stars glittered on his shoulders.
Shit! He was a fucking general.
Tanner slammed his heels together, stood straight as an arrow, and saluted.
“Sir!”
The general nodded. He was in his late fifties, maybe a little older than that, streaks of silver at his temples, but he was still vigorous-looking and handsome, a recruiting poster come to life.
Tanner recognized him. Why wouldn’t he? The world was not overflowing with four-star generals. He just couldn’t come up with the name.
“At ease, Lieutenant.”
A command to give, Tanner thought, but not to obey when he had no idea in hell what was happening here.
“I understand you’re recovering from a pretty bad wound.”
Talk about rotten timing… His leg was throbbing like a bad tooth.
“Not really very bad at all, sir,” Tanner said quickly.
“And that you got that wound in a firefight in Afghanistan.”
Tanner shot a glance at his captain. The captain nodded. Tanner looked at the general again.
“Yessir. That’s correct.”
“I understand, too, that you sustained your injury when you went after one of your men who’d been hit and was pinned down by fire from half a dozen insurgents.” The general raised his eyebrows. “It was a brave thing to do, Lieutenant, and it almost cost you your life.”
“I was nearest to him, sir, that’s all.”
“Of course.”
Tanner glanced at his captain again. Blake looked away from him. There it was again, that bad feeling in Tanner’s gut. He took a breath, let it out, and looked straight at the general.
“Sir. Why am I here? Begging your pardon, but I don’t get what this is all about.”
The general nodded. “No. How could you?” He extended his hand. “I’m John Hamilton Wilde.”
Of course. John Wilde. General John Wilde. Distinguished military career. D.C. hotshot. And the owner of a Texas ranch the size of a small kingdom. A man of money as well as power. And here he was, offering a handshake. Just one average Joe greeting another.
Tanner’s survival instincts went on full alert as he took the outstretched hand and shook it.
“You mean, you’re General John Hamilton Wilde,” he said. “U.S. Army.”
Wilde laughed. “They told me you were direct and to the point, Akecheta. I like that in a man.”
“I’m happy to hear it, sir, but I’d still like to know what’s going on here.”
“Akecheta. That’s Lakota Sioux, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir. It is.”
“Means warrior, if I’m not mistaken.”
Tanner didn’t answer. What was the point? The general had it right.
“We just might share some blood, Akecheta. There’s Native American in my DNA, too.”
Tanner didn’t answer that time, either. What in hell would be an appropriate response? I’m Sioux; what are you? Did our ancestors maybe slaughter each other in the glory days of the American West?
The general looked expectant. Apparently some sort of response was expected.
“Yessir. I suppose we might.”
Wilde nodded and turned to Blake. Tanner could almost hear his thoughts. Polite chitchat was over. Time to get down to business.
“Jim?”
Blake cleared his throat.
“Tanner. I know how eager you’ve been to get back to duty.”
Here it was. His medical clearance. But what did it have to do with a four-star general?
“Yes sir.”
“General Wilde has a, uh, a proposition to offer you.”
A proposition? Was he going to be washed out of STUD and handed over to the army like some kind of booby prize?
“Sir. Captain. If it’s all the same to you—”
Blake strode to the door.
“I’ll be outside, John. On the porch.”
“Thanks, Jim. I’ll see you in a little while.”
The door swung shut. Tanner could have sworn he felt the room grow smaller.
“Lieutenant? Shall we sit?”
The general headed for a loveseat. Tanner didn’t move.
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d appreciate knowing what this is about.”
Wilde’s mouth thinned. Tanner knew he’d overstepped. Asking wasn’t done, but neither were closed-door meetings between a STUD lieutenant and a four-star general.
A couple of seconds went by. Then the general nodded.
“Yes. Of course. Jim Blake tells me you were deployed to Central America.”
“That was a while ago.”
“Where did you serve?”
“Guatemala. And Honduras.”
“And a small hellhole called San Escobal.”
“Yes, sir. That’s correct.”
“Guatemala and Honduras are quieter now, but San Escobal…” Wilde cleared his throat. “Blake tells me you were outstanding in handling such situations.”
“What situations, sir?”
Tanner knew there was an edge to his voice. Stupid, yes, but impossible to control. Wherever this was leading, it wasn’t about returning to his unit. Was he going to be offered another desk job? Liaison to some unit in Central America? A warrior whose weapons had been reduced to issuing bullshit directives?
No way would he accept that kind of ball-less assignment.
“Situations that involve operating in dense jungle, dealing with insurgents who call themselves freedom fighters when they’re really savages who value human life only in terms of how much money kidnapping, torture and ransom can bring.”
Wilde’s tone was raw. His jaw was tight, his hands fisted.
Tanner narrowed his eyes. “General. Begging your pardon, sir, but what in hell are we talking about?”
Wilde pulled in a deep breath, expelled it, and walked to Blake’s desk. He picked up a leather briefcase, opened it, took out a folder and offered it to Tanner.
Tanner didn’t move.
It was crazy, but he had the damnedest feeling that taking the folder was going to be one enormous mistake.
“Take it,” the general said sharply.
Eight years in the service, Tanner knew
an inescapable command when he heard it. He took the folder and opened it to a sheaf of documents.
The first was a New York Times article about a group known as Bright Star. Estrella Brilliante. The reporter described it as “a growing presence” in the “uncertain political climate” of the small Central American nation called San Escobal.
The second document was from a right wing think tank in Europe. It called Bright Star a Maoist terror group.
The third was from a left wing organization in South America. It labeled Bright Star a force for freedom.
Tanner looked up. Wilde was watching him closely.
“Sir?”
“What’s your opinion, Akecheta? Freedom fighters or terrorists?”
“Neither, General. I know this bunch. They’re bandits with a taste for blood and money. They use the one to obtain the other.”
“But they’re well-armed. Well-financed.”
“Yeah. They are. It suits the political needs of others to support groups like Bright Star, no matter the consequences.” Tanner closed the folder and offered it to Wilde. “Look, sir, I’m flattered you think my knowledge might be helpful, but I have no desire to become a desk jockey. So, thanks, but no thanks. I’m determined to rejoin my unit ASAP, and—”
“Turn to the next document, Lieutenant.”
“Sir. With all due respect…”
“Turn the page!”
Son of a bitch. Tanner felt his jaw tighten, but an order was an order. He flipped to the next document.
And froze.
He was looking at a photograph. Of a woman.
An incredibly beautiful woman.
Clear blue eyes. Dark lashes. Elegant nose. A mouth turned up at the corners in a smile so real that he wanted to smile in return. Her hair, the color of wheat ripening in a sun-filled field, tumbled to her shoulders in a riot of soft-looking curls. She was wearing a dress that was almost the same shade of blue as her eyes. It was what he thought women called a sundress, the top a halter-like thing that exposed strong, graceful shoulders and arms, the skirt belling out from her slender waist and stopping just above her knees.
She’d been photographed standing on the porch of what seemed to be a handsome old house, one hand on her hip, the other wrapped around a post.
Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) Page 2