by Susan Stoker
Rocco agreed one hundred percent. He was as pissed as Phantom, but the shit of it was, they had no options other than to simply fly around and search for their friend and teammate. “Look, we all know Bubba. He’s a tough son of a bitch. Remember when we were captured by those assholes over in the Middle East on that one op? He was the one who managed to hide his fucking KA-BAR well enough that it wasn’t found when they searched us. He had so much shit in his pockets that even our captors were impressed. I don’t know what happened to Bubba up in Alaska. But what I do know is that if there’s even a one percent chance of surviving whatever it was, Bubba would’ve done it. And he’s probably got a fucking tent in one of his pockets that he’s using to hole up in. I don’t care if we have to search every fucking square inch of the state, I’m not giving up until we find him, dead or alive.”
One by one, his fellow SEAL teammates nodded their agreement.
Except for Phantom.
The man looked extremely angry and frustrated and, as usual, Rocco couldn’t read what he was thinking.
Finally, he spoke. “Something is very fucked here. It’s way too coincidental that Bubba flew up to Alaska to find out about his inheritance and he disappeared without a trace. Someone wanted him dead, probably so he couldn’t collect whatever his dad left for him. We all know sex and money are the two things that make seemingly normal, law-abiding citizens lose their minds. Do we know anything about this Zoey chick who was with him?”
Gumby picked up a piece of paper and read from it. “Zoey Knight. Thirty-one years old. She moved to Juneau in the tenth grade and has lived there since. Mother’s in Anchorage and her father’s not in the picture. Hasn’t been for years. She works part-time in one of those kitschy tourist shops downtown in the summers. She’s also been helping out Colin Wright for ten years or so. She’s been renting a house from Colin, and she makes just enough money to live on. She’s got about a thousand dollars in her accounts. No big deposits or withdrawals in the last four months. She was in Anchorage visiting her mother when Colin passed away, and the lawyer asked her to come in for the reading of the will as well. Since she was in Anchorage, he arranged for her to be on the same flight as Bubba.”
“So she could be in on whatever happened to him,” Phantom concluded. “Maybe she was dating Bubba’s dad, and he told her what he was going to leave her. She’s pissed that she didn’t get more in the will. If Bubba wasn’t paying attention, she could’ve gotten the drop on him and killed him, then worked with the pilot to dump his body somewhere before they both disappeared.”
“At this point, that’s all irrelevant,” Rocco said.
“How can you say that?” Phantom asked. “You know as well as I do that no one is innocent until we’ve found proof they aren’t involved.”
“I’m saying it’s irrelevant because our first concern is finding Bubba. If she’s with him, fine. If not, fine. But we’ve got time to figure this shit out…after we find our teammate. Believe me, Phantom. If we find out that his disappearance is anything other than a freakish accident, I’ll be at the front of the lynch mob to take down whoever dared try to hurt him. But until then, all I care about is finding him. The longer we sit around here with our thumbs up our asses, the longer it’s going to take to bring him home. And if he’s injured or trapped in the wreckage of a plane, we need to get eyes in the sky now. Everything else can wait.”
Rocco stared into Phantom’s eyes for a long moment, not willing to back down. Yeah, they could call Tex and get him working in the background to find out the whys and whos—and in fact, he’d already done that—but as for the team, at the moment, their priority was Bubba.
Finally, Phantom nodded. “You’re right. We’ll have time to figure this shit out after we find him.”
Rocco gave his friend a chin lift, then turned to the others. “Wheels up in two hours. Go home, pack, say goodbye to your women and do what you have to do. We’re not coming back until we find our teammate. SEALs don’t leave SEALs behind. Ever.”
Everyone chimed in with their agreement and filed out of the room. Rocco gathered up the papers before taking a deep breath. He pressed his lips together and couldn’t help but send a silent plea to his missing friend.
Wherever you are, Bubba. Hang on. We’re coming for you.
“That’s it. You’ve almost got it,” Bubba praised as he watched Zoey try to start a fire for the fourth time. She was struggling to get the hang of the flint. It took a lot of practice to be able to get the sparks to land right where they needed to, then coax those sparks into a flame.
She sighed in frustration and sat back on her heels, holding the flint and striker out toward him. “Forget it. I can’t do it.”
Bubba didn’t reach for the fire-starting tool. “You almost had it that time. Try again,” he urged.
Zoey shook her head. “No. I suck at this. I’ll just go and collect more wood. You’re in charge of the fire and shelter. I can gather wood instead.”
Bubba reached out and grabbed her biceps to keep her from standing. “Don’t give up, Zoey.”
She looked at him, and he could see the defeat in her eyes and hated it. “Mark, I appreciate you trying to teach me new things, but I’m tired. And hungry. And the only way we’re going to get to eat that fish you caught today is if we get this fire started. Please. Just do it, and I’ll go get more wood for later.”
Knowing if he continued to push her, it could do more harm than good, Bubba nodded before she gave him a tired smile and got to her feet. As soon as she was a good distance away with her back to him, he leaned over and used the flint to get the fire started within seconds.
She’d helped him with their shelter for the night, and while she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the exact way to bend the twigs and sticks to get them to stay together, she was getting better. He had no doubt by the time Rocco and his team found them, she’d be an expert. She was frustrated now, yes, but most of the time he could see the determination in her eyes not to be a burden and to learn as much as possible so she could carry her own weight.
It had been three days since they’d been abandoned in the wilderness, and if she’d been a four on a scale of one to ten when it came to outdoor stuff when they’d been stranded, she was at least a six and a half now.
Bubba admired her. She didn’t let her frustrations get the better of her and most of the time she stayed upbeat and positive. He wasn’t surprised that she was flagging now. They’d had to take cover for much of the day, since it had been raining. The worst thing that could happen to them was to get soaking wet. They had no clothes to change into and even though it wasn’t the middle of winter, it wasn’t exactly warm. Wet clothes would leech out their body warmth and they could get hypothermia, even though the temperature wasn’t below freezing.
The rest of the evening went by fairly quickly. They’d eaten their dinner, which consisted of the salmon he’d caught and more berries and mushrooms. The fish had been delicious and a welcome change from the tough meat of the squirrels he’d caught. But Bubba could tell Zoey was having a hard time shaking off her frustration.
When they’d finished their meal and had built up the fire as far as they’d dared, Bubba held out his hand. “Come here.”
She looked at him questioningly, but put her hand in his and let him pull her over to where he was sitting. He situated her in front of him and put his arms around her. His legs were outstretched on either side of hers, and it felt like they were literally the only two people in the world at this moment in time. Resting his chin on her shoulder, they sat cheek to cheek, staring at the fire for a few minutes.
He didn’t like to talk about the past events he was preparing to share with her, but he thought at this point, she needed to hear it.
“I told you before that I’d been held captive by the Taliban.”
He felt her jerk slightly in surprise in his arms, but she didn’t pull away, just nodded once.
“Rex and Ace had been injured, and even with the oth
er four of us healthy and able, we couldn’t take on the twenty men who’d surrounded us, so we allowed ourselves to be taken.”
“Holy shit, really?” Zoey asked.
“Yeah. We probably could’ve gotten away, but we weren’t going to leave Rex and Ace. No way in hell.”
Zoey turned her head to look at him, but he stared straight ahead at the crackling flames. He wasn’t sure what she saw, but after a moment, she turned back around, curled her hands around his thighs and held on tightly.
He sighed silently, loving her hands on him, but needed to get his story over and done with.
“They searched us, and much like this time around, I had a ton of shit in my pockets, and they were too busy laughing at me and my huge assortment of supplies to really do a thorough search.”
Zoey inhaled sharply. “What’d they miss?”
Smiling because of how quickly she’d caught on, he said, “A knife. It was tucked into a secret inside pocket of my pants.”
“So you used it to kill them and get out of there?” she asked.
Shaking his head, Bubba said, “No, unfortunately. They were pretty excited to have us at their mercy and spent the first twenty-four hours beating the shit out of us. They tied us all up in separate rooms—actually, they were more like stalls…there were walls but no doors—next to each other and went from room to room, beating us.”
Zoey inhaled sharply and her fingers tightened on his thighs, but she didn’t comment.
“We could hear what was happening, but couldn’t see each other. We’ve been trained to withstand torture, so it wasn’t the beatings that got to me. I could handle the pain. It was the worry over Rex and Ace that almost broke me.
“I remembered back when we were in Hell Week together. It’s the third week of BUD/S training, before the navy makes an expensive investment in SEAL operational training. It’s five and a half days of literal pure hell. Four hours of sleep the entire week, running, swimming, paddling, sit-ups, pushups, rolling in the sand, slogging through mud…you name it, they put us through it. The sand was chafing me in places I don’t want to remember, and the saltwater from the sea was making the cuts and scrapes on my body burn. We had to perform evaluations that required us to think, lead, make good decisions, and functionally operate while hallucinating, having hypothermia, and while sleep-deprived.”
“That sounds horrible,” Zoey said. “Why in the world would they do that to you?”
“Because they want to know who really wants to be a SEAL. They want to know who has the physical ability and mental fortitude to make it through the training and possibly save their own life, and the lives of their comrades, when shit gets real on a combat mission.”
“And you did,” Zoey said simply.
“Eventually, yes. But I had gotten to the point where I was done and about ready to ring the bell.”
“Ring the bell?” Zoey asked.
“Yeah, quit. The instructors for Hell Week take great pride in doing their best to entice the trainees to quit. They use a bullhorn to basically mimic our inner voices that tell us we can’t do it. That we’re no good. That it’s too hard. They make it seem logical, even honorable, to quit. To come out of the cold, ring a bell that signifies defeat, and to enjoy doughnuts and a cup of hot coffee.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. But only because of Rocco, Gumby, Ace, Rex, and Phantom.
“See, Hell Week is more about making it through mentally than physically. The instructors could get anyone to quit if they really wanted to. They truly want people to succeed. But the trainees have to have the mental strength to see it through. To ignore the pain and the inner voice that wants them to quit. That says they can’t endure anymore. And my teammates helped me find that burning desire deep within me to be a SEAL. To not quit. To not give up and ring that fucking bell.
“I thought about that when I was being beaten by those Taliban assholes. They wanted me to quit, to ring the bell. To give in to the shit going on in my head. I remembered what my teammates had done for me in Hell Week, and I returned the favor. Every time I was hit, instead of groaning or swearing, I yelled out a word that reminded me of Hell Week. Loud enough for my teammates to hear. Sand, cold, log, paddle, boat, food, sleep…it went on and on. My entire concentration was on thinking up new words to use instead of thinking about what was happening to me, or my injured teammates.”
Zoey was as still as a statue in his arms. He wasn’t sure she was even breathing. Wanting to finish up his story so he could think about something else made him talk faster.
“How long they fucked with us, I have no idea, but eventually they left. We were all still in our own stalls, and I’m sure they’d thought they’d broken us. After a while, I managed to slip my hand out of the rope they’d used to tie me up.”
Bubba didn’t tell Zoey that he’d had to dislocate his shoulder and use his own blood to lubricate his wrist in order to do it.
“I got the knife out of my pocket and cut myself free. Then I went from stall to stall and freed the others. We did our best to stabilize Ace and Rex and get the fuck out of there.
“My point with this long, rambling story is that it’s okay to get frustrated. To feel like you want to quit. But you can’t. Even when things seem horrible and you think you can’t continue, you can’t quit. I know this isn’t easy for you, Zoey, but trust me when I tell you that you’re doing great. So you can’t start a fire, big fucking deal. You’re more than pulling your weight. You’re making this so easy on me, I almost feel guilty.”
“Easy?” she said so softly, he almost couldn’t hear her. “You’ve caught all our food, made the fire and shelter, and you had all the things in your magic pockets that we’ve needed to survive. I feel like I’m a giant anchor that’s holding you back.”
“But that’s just it, you’re not. And I’m not lying, Zoey. No, this isn’t a walk in the park for you, and you’re out of your element. But you’ve gamely trudged on and done the absolute best you can. You haven’t freaked out much. Most importantly, you haven’t given up, forcing me to carry you. And yes, before you ask, I totally would carry you if I had to. And most importantly, you’ve talked to me. I’ve learned more about my dad in the last three days than I knew about him in the last thirteen years. Thanks to you, I feel as if I know him once more. I regret not finding it all out on my own, but I’ll always be grateful for you giving that to me. Your strength lies in distraction, so we aren’t constantly thinking about how cold and miserable we are. How hungry. How dirty and in need of a hot shower. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Please don’t quit and ring that bell on me. I need you, Zoey.”
Bubba held his breath. He’d taken a while to get to his point, and he wasn’t sure he hadn’t just rambled on about shit that made no sense, but he hoped like hell she understood what he was saying.
It took a few minutes. A very long few minutes, during which Bubba mentally berated himself for bringing up his capture and Hell Week. She was probably missing his dad just as much as he was, and it had been a mistake to bring him up too.
“I’m not going to quit,” she said, making Bubba close his eyes in relief.
“This sucks. And it’s harder than anything I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t think my fingers and toes will ever thaw out. I’m scared to death no one is going to find us and we’re going to die of scurvy or something, but I’m not giving up. If you’re willing to let me keep trying, I’m gonna make that flint and fire my bitch one of these days.”
Bubba couldn’t help it, he laughed. “First, scurvy is caused by an elimination of vitamin C from your body and it takes at least three months for symptoms to occur. Since we’re eating lots of berries and leafy greens, I think we’re good. And second, I have absolutely no doubt that you’re gonna get the hang of the flint. You almost had it tonight.”
Zoey relaxed against him, giving him her weight, and something inside Bubba clicked into place. Having her in his arms was nice. Sleeping next to her
made him relax and feel comforted. But when she leaned against him, trusting him to not let her fall, he felt ten feet tall.
He tightened his arms around her chest. She brought her hands up and gripped his forearms hard. It was probably ten minutes later when she said, “I’m sorry that happened to you and your friends. They sound like they’re all pretty amazing.”
“They are. And you’re going to meet them when they find us.”
She hesitated, then said, “You’re really positive they’re going to, aren’t you?”
“Find us? Absolutely. I know I didn’t do that good of a job explaining what we went through in Hell Week, but it’s a bond that’s deeper than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I know I could call them anytime, anywhere, and they’d be there for me. No questions asked. Me disappearing without a word won’t sit well with them, and they’ll move heaven and earth to figure out what happened. They’re coming for us, Zoey. We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing until that happens.”
“That’s good because my mom wouldn’t have the first clue where to start to try to find me…if she even knows I’m missing.”
“I’m sure she does and is probably frantic.”
Zoey shook her head slightly and sighed. “My mom is…not like other moms.”
“In what way?” Bubba asked.
“She’s always been kind of selfish. Don’t get me wrong, I love her…but she’s always put herself first. We moved around a ton before I got to Juneau, and it was always because she was following a new boyfriend. She never thought about how moving around could be hard on me. She wants to be loved by a man so badly, that she’ll give up anything to make it happen. But so far, all she’s gotten is heartache.