That was only seven hours away. And Rome was marginally closer to Athens. Sam spoke up. “We’ll take it.”
“But … alas, my friends, only two seats are available.”
Of course. “Please find the next flight with the number of seats that we need.” Sam forced himself to be patient and to not jump over the counter and look at the computer monitor himself.
“Two-seventeen p.m.,” the man said but his triumph quickly faded. “But, oh, that takes you back to London.”
“London works,” Robin said. He looked from Gina to Sam. “I was there just a few months ago. I know a great hotel where they’ll upgrade us to the presidential suite. I mean, if it’s not occupied. We can take a few days to decompress, take showers please God, get some sleep and some real food, and then, when we’re human again, we can get a direct flight to Athens.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sam said.
“But we’ll need to get our luggage now,” Gina chimed in, “and the name of a safe hotel near this airport, where we can spend the night.”
Sam shook his head. “I know it’s not ideal,” he told her, “but it’s best if we just hunkered down—”
Gina was already shaking her head.
Sam lowered his voice, leaned toward her. “Gina, I know it’s not going to be easy to—”
“Oh, God.” Gina pivoted and thrust Mikey at Robin. “Take him, take him, take him. Emma, stay with Robin and Sam!”
As they all watched—Counterman was wide-eyed, too—Gina bolted for the ladies’ room. Halfway there, she realized she wasn’t going to make it, so she veered toward a trash can and …
A group of about a half a dozen monks had been walking serenely past, but now they all did a very sharp about-face and stepped up their pace, hustling away.
It was almost funny.
But Emma started to cry.
And Sam turned away. He had to. He was a sympathy vomiter—puking people were his kryptonite—and his last few badly cooked and too-greasy meals were flashing before his eyes. That cheeseburger, those onion rings … Holy fuck, this was going to be bad.
But Robin knew Sam pretty damn well. “Let’s get the kids more mobile so I can go help Gina,” he said, morphing smoothly from outraged drama queen to calm, efficient team leader, as he handed Mikey off to Sam. “You focus on getting the luggage and some hotel recommendations from Mr. Mumbles.”
It was a good idea—at least the part in which Robin played nurse and Sam avoided playing nurse. He burped and tasted fish and chips. “We should stay here, in the airport,” Sam started to say, refreshing his grip on both babies.
“That’s not an option, Sam,” Robin said flatly as he expertly unfolded Gina’s double stroller. “Not anymore.”
This was going to be noisy. Ash was still in that cry-at-the-drop-of-a-hat place, and Mikey was in full-on pre-wail, having been passed from his mom to Robin to Sam, his mouth in that telltale infinity symbol shape of doom. Putting the boys into the stroller was going to detonate both of them. Guaranteed. But it would free up Sam’s hands, and he was going to need his hands while Robin’s were full of Gina.
“Have you seen those public bathrooms?” Robin continued. “Forget about the fact that there are probably laws forbidding men going into the ladies’ room, I am not letting Gina near that toilet. We need two rooms with two private bathrooms, preferably bed bug free but even that is negotiable at this point.”
Sam had to ask, “Is Gina …?” Pregnant again? He didn’t say it, but Robin understood.
He made an I honestly don’t know face as he helped Sam secure both Mikey and Ash with the stroller’s seatbelts.
“Please God, don’t let it be the flu,” Sam muttered, and Robin actually laughed.
“Oh, wouldn’t that be great,” he said then raised his voice. “Emma, come here, pumpkin-girl. We’re gonna need you to push the scream-team in a big circle, around and around and around our luggage. Can you do that for me, buddy? So I can help your mommy with her tummy ache?”
Emma nodded, still sniffling. “My tummy hurts, too.”
“I know, baby,” Robin said soothingly. “We’re all tired and hungry and a little bit cranky. So why don’t you just rock ‘em instead. Just back and forth, like this. Okay? And maybe you could sing them that song I taught you, remember …?”
“We’ll need our luggage,” Sam told the man behind the counter, raising his voice to be heard over Mike’s and Ash’s indignation, which was—hallelujah—fading a bit with Emma’s help.
The little girl was singing, “All the single ladies, all the single ladies …” and Sam turned to give Robin a really? look, but Robin was busy tying back Gina’s long, dark hair.
Sam swiftly turned back to the counterman. “And the names and numbers of the nearest hotels.”
“May I see your luggage tags, sir?”
Sam found his boarding pass and held it out so the man could see the sticker with the info about his checked bags.
The World Airlines rep’s fingers clicked on the keyboard, and then he made a sound that Sam didn’t want to hear.
It was an oh, and it was not a happy oh. It was, for sure, a bad news oh.
But the man tried to spin it. “It seems your luggage is still in London, sir. But that’s good, since you’re now going to London …?”
God damn it. Sam resisted the urge to put his head down on the counter. But there was one last option they hadn’t checked. “Can you look to see if there’s any other airline, with enough seats for all of us, flying out of Tarafashir tonight, preferably to Athens or London, but we’re open to other possiblities …?”
As the keyboard again clicked, Sam took out his phone and fired off a quick text to Alyssa, updating her as to their snafu.
But then Mikey and Ash’s chorus of woe kicked up a notch, and Sam looked over, just in time to see that Emma had stopped singing and rocking them. She stood there, silently staring at him, doing her mini-Max imitation.
And then she puked. She didn’t lean over, she didn’t otherwise move. She just opened her mouth and out it came, a volcano of nastiness—down her tiny shirt and little jeans, and all over her miniature sneakers.
And Sam knew even as he crushed his instinct to run away and instead leapt toward Emma, to try help the little girl …
It was the flu.
They were screwed.
Murphy.
The seventh member of Sam’s little team here in Goatfucklandia was Mr. Murphy, whose written-in-stone law was clearly in play.
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.
Emma threw up again, this time all over Sam’s jeans and boots.
Hoo-yah.
Chapter Four
Afghanistan
The helo ride to the first FOB had been bumpy.
Apparently there was a late spring snowstorm barreling its way into the mountainous region.
Jules was glad that their luggage had been lost because the jacket he’d packed wasn’t as warm as this replacement he’d been issued.
Alyssa, however, wasn’t as happy as she looked around at the bare bones facilities of the remote camp: the tents, the fort-like walls of the machine gun nests made of concrete and rubble, but mostly rubble.
The desolate, barren surrounding countryside …
“He’s gotta come here first,” Alyssa was telling Max and Commander Lewis Koehl. The CO of SEAL Team Sixteen, Koehl was in on this little recon mission, and three of his men had tagged along as slightly superfluous military might. “Not necessarily here here, but whichever operating base is the one that’s safest on the day that he arrives. He’s gotta land without a fanfare. No Air Force One. In fact, I’d recommend that Air Force One lands very publicly in Germany, to distract and misinform.”
“I agree,” Max said as Koehl, a man of relatively few words, nodded.
Alyssa continued. “Okay. So POTUS comes in-country on a regular military transport. He’s boots-on-the-ground for a nanosecond—less—before he goes directly into
the gunship, which brings him out here. And he stays for the shortest amount of time possible.” She looked around again, shaking her head, and sighing again. “Even then …”
“With all the gunships providing additional security, not to mention the ones transporting the Secret Service detail and the press,” Jules pointed out, “we’ll be sending out a great, big We are here, attack us now.”
“There’s not going to be any press,” Alyssa said. “Not for this segment of the trip.”
“That’s good to know,” Jules said, then asked, “How come I didn’t know that?” He looked at Koehl, who seemed preoccupied, his mind a million miles away. “Did you know that, sir?”
Koehl nodded absently, looking at his watch.
“We limit the visit to five minutes,” Max decided. “Get him in and out.”
“Or limit the entourage to the size of a normal USO show,” Jules suggested. “With SEAL Team Sixteen riding shotgun. And just make sure we have Teams Six and Two locked, loaded, and ready to go, in case there’s trouble.”
“I say we recommend all of the above,” Alyssa said as the first flakes of snow drifted down from the pewter-colored sky.
“Excuse me, sir.” A burly red-haired SEAL officer who was nicknamed Big Mac approached Commander Koehl, but then made a point to acknowledge Alyssa, then Jules and Max. “Ma’am. Sirs. I’m sorry to interrupt, but we just got a message that the helo that was supposed to swing past and pick us up has been delayed.”
“Delayed,” Koehl repeated, suddenly fully alert.
“Yes, sir.” The big SEAL’s last name was MacInnough. What was his first name? Jules was drawing a blank.
Still, he met Alyssa’s eyes, because the subtext of that message was unmistakable. “Cat’s on the roof,” Jules said.
She smiled at his reference, but it was tight. “Apparently.”
“What’s on the where?” MacInnough—Alec, his name was Alec—asked as Koehl and Max stomped off to throw their rank and status against the inevitable.
“It’s a joke,” Jules explained. “A bad one that kind of sums up this delayed-helo situation. I heard it from Sam Starrett, so it’s Navy SEAL–approved.” He looked at Alyssa. “Should I tell it?”
She smiled, and in full favorite-thing mode, with the snowflakes on her hair and eyelashes, she looked more like a woman ready for a modeling shoot than one with a high-level security clearance and the ability to hit a target with a sniper rifle from ridiculous distances. “If I said no, would that stop you?”
“Probably not.” He turned to Alec. “Okay. Guy goes on vacation and asks his friend to house-sit, to feed his elderly cat while he’s gone. Coupla days in, he calls the friend to see how it’s going, and the guy goes, Oh, damn, I’m so, so sorry, dude, but your cat died. And the vacation guy gets upset, of course, I mean, his cat’s dead, and he says, What the hell, Gary—I guess I’ve named the house-sitter Gary. That’s not how you tell someone something like that. You ease into it, over the course of several days. Like when I call and say ‘How’s it going?’ you say, ‘Well, not great. The cat’s on the roof. I’m trying to get him down.’ And the next day, I call and you’re like, ‘Cat’s in the tree, now. I’m sorry, man, it’s looking bad.’ And only then, when I’m psychologically prepared for it, you drop the bomb and tell me the truth.”
The snow was coming down even harder now, and together they moved toward the main shelter where, yes, they’d be spending the night.
Oh, joy.
“Coupla days later,” Jules continued, “guy calls back, and Gary answers the phone, and the guy says, How’s it going? and Gary says, Not great. Your grandmother’s on the roof. Bah dump bump.”
“That,” Alec said, chuckling, “is awesome. And you are completely right. Helo’s delayed? The cat is, without a doubt, on the roof—because that helo’s not coming. Not today. And? FYI? Last time I was out here at this time of year, and we got weather like this …?”
“This is going to be great,” Jules told Alyssa, who actually laughed.
“It started as an ice storm, which knocked out all power and communications,” the SEAL informed them. “And then we got about three feet of snow on top of it. Total charlie-foxtrot. We were stuck here for nearly two weeks. They had to airlift in supplies.”
“Fantastic,” Jules said, as the skies opened up, not just with more snow, but with a very definite wintery-mix of icy rain.
They all ran the last few yards to the shelter, which was warmish and more dry, but smelled like summer camp: a cross between a wet yak and a boys’ locker room that hadn’t been aired out in a decade or two.
But it could’ve been worse.
There was coffee brewing, and as Jules pulled Alyssa with him toward the pot and collection of chipped mugs, Alec followed.
“How is Sam?” the SEAL asked.
Chapter Five
Tarafashir
Sam was asleep.
The former SEAL was sprawled out on one of the two rather ratty mattresses that lay directly on the worn hotel room floor, both baby boys fast asleep beside him.
Robin sighed as he did another silent inventory of their bottled water. No matter how many times he counted, he came up with the same number—not enough.
Right about now, they were supposed to have been checked in to their suite at Chez Bella, a lovely, gay-friendly resort in the Greek Isles.
Right about now, Robin was supposed to have helped Sam and Gina get the little ones into their rented cribs, so that the grown-ups could enjoy a lovely room-service dinner on their lovely private balcony that overlooked the very lovely Aegean Sea.
Instead, they were crammed into two dimly lit, seedy adjoining rooms in a run-down fleabag hotel in a third world country that, while pro-American, was extremely anti-woman and decidedly anti-gay.
“One room for the contagious,” Sam had announced when they’d checked in at a front desk in a lobby that also apparently served as the local brothel, “and one for the rest of us.”
Although, really, the logistics of that were challenged when both Gina and Emma needed access to a bathroom at the exact same time.
Robin had played nursemaid while Sam had kept himself and the babies properly distracted. And, eventually, the fireworks had stopped, and their two casualties fell asleep, exhausted, on the ratty mattress in the adjoining dimly lit, seedy room.
Sam then spent the best part of an hour cleaning the bejesus out of both bathrooms and washing out his jeans and Emma’s clothes while Robin sang songs and played peek-a-boo with Ash and Mikey.
But now all three were asleep, leaving Robin as last man standing, which meant …
“Don’t even think about it.”
Robin turned to find the former SEAL watching him, apparently not-so-much asleep after all.
“Don’t think about what?” Robin asked, injecting a whole load of innocence into his voice. He may have been a crappy liar when talking to Jules, but he was a very good actor, so he now acted like he didn’t know what Sam was talking about.
But Sam wasn’t fooled. “Leaving the hotel to get supplies,” he said, his voice low so as not to wake the babies.
“We’re almost out of disposable diapers, we definitely need more bottled water …” The front desk only offered beverage choices of beer, wine, and whiskey, along with their main menu consisting of women and children of all ages. “And I don’t know about you, but I could use something to eat.”
Sam sat up. “Yeah, but you’re not the one to go out shopping. Not in this city, by yourself. I think I have some Cheerios in my bag.”
“Dry Cheerios,” Robin repeated. “Yay, but, no thank you.”
Sam shot him a look. “I have powdered milk, too, but I meant for Ash, and even Emma, in the morning, if she’s up for it.” He pointed with his chin toward the bag that sat on the sad-looking dresser. “I still have some power bars. And chocolate. We can make it—ration the diapers—until we’re on the plane tomorrow.”
Robin had to laugh, but he did
it quietly. “You seriously believe we’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Oh, yeah. Come hell or high water, we are getting on that plane.” When Sam said it like that, complete with his trademark Texas twang, it rang of absolute-factness.
It would’ve been so easy to buy into the former SEAL’s military-officer-grade conviction. Still, Robin knew better. “The way I figure it, Ashie’ll start throwing up some time around four a.m. Or Mikey. Or both of ‘em, just to make life interesting. After which it’s only a matter of time before you and I fall. We need to have enough food and water here in this room before that happens, because as much as you don’t want me going out there, I don’t want Gina going out there.”
“I won’t fall,” Sam said with that same written-in-stone tone.
“Dream on. You’re already looking green,” Robin countered.
“I’m not saying I won’t lose my lunch. That’s coming, believe me, I know that. It’s amazing it hasn’t happened yet. But what I’m saying is I won’t fall when I do. Trust me, I’ve been sick before while out in the world,” Sam told him. Out in the world was slang for out on a SEAL mission. “And this situation sucks, for sure, but it’s nothing like that was. I’ll be able to get us the food and water we need.”
He said it with that same grim certainty, but Robin was not convinced. “If you’re dehydrated and delirious—”
“I won’t be.”
“—then it’s gonna be on me,” Robin said. “And I’d rather go out and get the supplies now, rather than having to leave both you and Gina alone with—”
“And I’m saying no.” Sam held up his hand, his eyes tightly closed, as if he were willing away whatever awfulness he was feeling. Apparently, it didn’t work, because he whispered, “Ah, fuck,” and then scrambled for the bathroom.
“Okay, so I was wrong with my doomsday scenario,” Robin admitted, even though there was no way Sam could hear him over the unpleasant noise he was making in that bathroom. “It’s not Ash who throws up at four a.m., it’s you who yukes at right-nowo’clock, followed by Ash and Mike, simultaneously, at four a.m.”
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