Seal Team Ten

by Brockmann, Suzanne

  Frank had been easygoing, almost to a fault, and Helen' had been intensely driven, determined to completely finish every last little project she started. Jake had inherited her drive but had learned to disguise it with his father's laid-back attitude. He'd learned that in a command position, his men trusted him implicitly because of this—because of his relaxed air, his ability to exude the fact that everything was—or would be—okay.

  "So you joined the SEAL units because you wanted to keep traveling?" Zoe asked.

  "I joined for a lot of reasons. One of them was because I had friends in Vietnam. I spoke the language, I...felt like I could make a difference, maybe help end the conflict." He smiled. "And of course, there's that age-old reason kids join the SEAL units—I had a fascination with explosives. I liked to blow stuff up. You know, SEALs can make a bomb from just about anything. Let me loose in a kitchen, and I can make a powerful explosive from the junk I can find under the sink." He grinned. "And I can have fun while I'm doing it."

  Zoe laughed. "That's interesting," she said, "because in my line of work, I tend to try to keep things from blowing up."

  "Maybe that's why we work well as a team," Jake said, "It's that yin and yang thing."

  "Ying and yang. Female and male." He shouldn't have said

  that, shouldn't have made the comparison. He held his breath, hoping she wouldn't go there again. Her last remark about stress had been about all he could take.

  "I'm not used to working in a team," Zoe told him, neatly ignoring his potentially sexually loaded comment. "I'm used to going in someplace, completely on my own, and getting the job done without having to ask permission or wait for orders."

  "Well, for someone who's not used to it, you're doing a damn fine job working on my team."

  She chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. "Does this mean you forgive me for trying to force your hand the other night?"

  The night he'd gone to Mel's and had been told she was out sick. The night he showed up at her trailer to find her bags already packed, Zoe ready to go to the CRO com­pound one way or another. With Jake. Or with Christopher Vincent. The thought still made his stomach hurt.

  "Zoe, I—"

  She held up one hand. "No, don't answer that. I know I was way out of line, and that's not something that can be fixed by only an apology."

  Jake had to smile. "It would help at least a little if you . actually did apologize."

  "Oops." Zoe's answering smile faded as she gazed into his eyes. "I am sorry, Jake."

  "But not sorry enough not to do it again if you had to."

  Her eyes were completely subdued, level and sober as she looked at him. "Sitting out here like this, it's easy to forget why we're in the CRO fort. But if we don't find that TripX soon..."

  "I have an appointment with Christopher Vincent on Tuesday morning," Jake told her. "And if I can't convince him to appoint me as one of his lieutenants and let me in on the birthday party plans, I'll take a trip into town. On my way out of the gates, I'll give the rest of the team a signal. Cowboy and Lucky will go into Mel's while I'm

  there, and they'll 'recognize' me as former Admiral Rob­inson—wanted by FInCOM. I'll make it back to the com­pound, but within an hour, the place will be surrounded. We'll be in siege mode, but /'// be the catalyst, not the Trip X. The CRO still won't know the Finks know about the nerve gas—they'll think this is only about catching me. It'll buy us more time, because no one—and nothing—will leave the fort until the situation's resolved."

  Zoe nodded. "And you don't think being surrounded by FInCOM agents might make Chris decide to try out the Trip X?"

  "I'm willing to bet he won't. Of course that's something we'll have to monitor carefully from inside. And as the FInCOM target, I'd hope I'd be privy to any plans Chris­topher has to resolve the issue." Jake paused. "Again, this is the backup plan. First we wait and I go in and try to talk to Christopher."

  "But not until Tuesday." Zoe sighed. "I feel as if this waiting is all my fault."

  "It could be worse," Jake pointed out. "There could be a four-week honeymoon period instead of four days."

  "I'm not very good at waiting," she admitted. "Some­times even four minutes seems way too long."

  "Back in Nam," he told her, "my team once got pinned down by these VC builders who came in and— It was the weirdest thing, Zoe. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and they started digging pits and building wooden flooring for tents literally feet from where we were hiding in the brush. We were pinned there until nightfall, and then, in­stead of getting the hell out of there and going back to civilization, we hung out for nearly four days. It drove the guys mad—we were just sitting there—but I had this hunch, and sure enough. The VC were building a POW camp. The tents were for their officers and guards. The pits were for the prisoners, mostly Americans. We just sat tight and watched as they brought in about seventy-five of our

  soilders"

  "My SEALs started to hand signal me." Jake moved his hands, making the signals that enabled a SEAL team to communicate without speaking. "Now? Attack now? And I just kept signaling wait. Wait. We were way outnumbered. There were too many VC, and there was no way we could've taken them all out without killing some of the POWs in the crossfire. Besides, I had another hunch."

  Zoe nodded. "God bless those hunches, huh?"

  It was the funniest thing. He was telling this story—one of his stories about a triumph in a war that had far too few triumphs, and he knew that Zoe understood everything he was saying. He knew she understood everything he'd felt. He'd helped to kill dozens of enemy soldiers that day, but in doing so, he'd saved over seventy Americans who oth­erwise would never have come out of that jungle alive.

  It was crazy. In a way, this twenty-nine-year-old child understood him completely. He looked into her eyes, and he knew that she knew his anguish and his exhilaration. Even though she'd never been in quite that same situation, she knew. They were so alike in so many ways. And be­cause of that, Jake had an intimacy with Zoe that he'd never had before, not with any other woman.

  Not even Daisy.

  Especially not Daisy.

  Daisy had loved him, Jake knew that without a doubt. And he'd loved her, too, with all his heart. But despite that, there were parts of himself he'd purposely kept hidden from her. There were parts of his life that he'd simply never shared.

  "So we sat there," he told Zoe, "and we watched while they ordered the POWs into those pits and into the cages they'd made—these little, cramped god-awful..." He ex­haled his revulsion. "One of the prisoners, a Brit, he spoke in Vietnamese about prisoners' rights—and they hung him from his feet and tortured him to death."

  He closed his eyes, remembering, hating the powerless feeling of knowing there was nothing he could do. He knew

  now as well, as he'd known then that if he'd let his men attack, dozens of the other prisoners would be mowed down by the VC's automatic weapons. With those kinds of odds, in a direct firefight, the SEALs wouldn't necessarily win. And if they didn't win, they'd be dead—or worse. They'd be locked in those cages, too, thrown in those pits.

  Zoe took his hand, linking their fingers together, squeez­ing gently. "How many did you save?" she asked. "Sev­enty-four?"

  He nodded, loving the sensation of their clasped hands far, far too much, hoping she'd pull her hand away, praying that she wouldn't.

  "And still it's the one you couldn't save that you dream about, right?"

  He forced a smile. "Funny you should know that."

  "Tell me about the seventy-four," she said, still holding his hand.

  Jake knew he should let go of her hand, maybe even move six inches or so away from her. Somehow they were now sitting close enough for their shoulders to touch, for their thighs to connect. How had that happened?

  "How did you get them out?" she asked.

  Jake drew in a deep breath. "Well, after they...did what they did to the Brit, they just left him hanging there. All the other prisoners went into the cages and
pits without a fight, just completely beaten down both physically and psy­chologically." His voice shook. He couldn't help it, even now, all these years later. "God, Zoe, they were naked and starving—some of them skin and bones, some of them re­duced to little more than animals and..."

  He didn't know how it happened, but Zoe wasn't just holding his hand anymore. She was in his arms, holding him as tightly as he was holding her. Oh, dear God. He buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair, knowing for cer­tain that if she kissed him, he'd be lost.

  He had to keep talking, keep his mouth moving.

  "After they were locked up, the camp commander sent

  a half a dozen men out to stand guard." His voice was raspy, but he couldn't stop to clear his throat. As it was, his lips were brushing the side of her face. "They'd built the camp in this sheltered area on the side of a mountain, and there was only one way in and out. So with the guards posted and the prisoners locked up tight—"

  "Everyone else relaxed." She lifted her head to look into his eyes.

  Her mouth was inches from his. Soft. Sweet. Paradise.

  "We struck covertly after dark," he told her. "And we dispatched the VC soldiers silently, tent by tent."

  She knew what that meant. Dispatched silently. She knew the price he'd paid for those seventy-four lives—he could see her complete awareness in her eyes.

  "The six men standing guard went down just as easily. They never expected to be attacked from within their camp. We armed those POWs with the VC's weapons and walked down that mountain and out of that jungle."

  Zoe pulled away from him slightly to narrow her eyes-at him. "Why do I know it couldn't have been that easy?"

  "We had a few firefights on the way back to our side of the line. But compared to some ops, it was very easy."

  "I would've loved to see your captain's face when you came walking in with seventy-four POWs and MIAs."

  He couldn't make himself let go of her. It felt too good holding her this way. She was so warm and soft against him.

  "I didn't stick around to see anyone's face," Jake said. "We just dropped 'em and went back out there."

  "Because you couldn't bear the fact that you'd only saved seventy-four instead of seventy-five?"

  "We watched them cut him, Zoe. We watched the—" He shook his head, swearing softly. He pulled back and would have let her go, but she wouldn't release him. And he was glad of that. "Look, it wasn't something that I'm ever going to forget. But I swear, I played that scenario over and over and over in my mind—I still sometimes do.

  And there was no feasible way we could have saved him. I made a choice to save the seventy-four." He laughed in disgust. "And in order to do that, I had to turn my back on that one very brave man."

  "But that's the way life works," Zoe told him. Her fin­gers combed through his hair at the nape of his neck, both soothing and nerve-jangling. "Every time you face some­one, you turn your back on someone else. Your team saved my father's life, Jake. His platoon was nearly wiped out, and he and about a dozen other Marines were left for dead, You and your SEALs were the only ones brave enough to try to bring them out. You used explosives and with only seven men, you made the Vietcong believe we'd launched a counteroffensive. It provided enough of a diversion to get a chopper in there and get those men out."

  "You know, I remember that," Jake said. "That was one of the long shots that actually paid off. Your dad was one of those men, huh?"

  "Don't you realize, when you chose to go in after my father's platoon, you turned your back on dozens of other Marines who also needed rescuing that day?"

  Jake didn't know what to say. "I guess I never thought of it that way."

  "It's all a crapshoot," she told him seriously, gazing at him with those impossibly beautiful brown eyes. "Every decision, every choice. You go with your gut, and you've I got to trust yourself. But after it's all said and done, you've got to celebrate life. Seventy-four men went home to their wives and mothers because of you. Seventy-four lives that you directly touched, and hundreds and hundreds that you indirectly touched. Mothers who didn't spend twenty years flying an MIA flag on their porch. Wives who didn't have to raise their children alone. Children who didn't have to grow up without a father—or children like me who would never even have been born."

  "I know all that. I just wish..." He sighed. "It just never seemed to be enough. I always found myself wanting to

  save just one more man. And then just one more, and one more. But the truth is, I could've been bringing five hun­dred men out of that jungle each day, and it still wouldn't have been enough."

  "You told me you weren't that superhero from Scott Jennings's book, that you were just a man," Zoe said. "And if that's the case, you should try to keep your per­sonal expectations down to the mere mortal level." She took a deep breath. "And as long as I'm criticizing, I've got to be honest and wonder why a man who's as alive as you would want to spend all his time keeping company with the dead."

  She wasn't just talking about Vietnam anymore. She was talking about Daisy.

  "Grieve and let her go, Jake," she whispered.

  How was it possible that he could be thinking about Daisy while gazing into Zoe's face and wanting desperately to kiss her?

  Grieve and let her go....

  "We should go back," Jake whispered. "It's getting dark. You must be cold."

  "I'm not cold," she told him, her gaze dropping to his mouth before she looked into his eyes. "Are you?"

  He couldn't stand it anymore. "I really want to kiss you," he whispered. "It's killing me to sit here, holding you like this, and not kiss you."

  "Then kiss me," she said fiercely. "You're not the one who died, dammit!"

  Jake didn't move. He didn't have to move, because she kissed him.

  What he should do and what he wanted fought the short­est battle in the history of the world, and what he wanted won.

  He kissed her almost roughly, completely on fire, sweep­ing his tongue possessively into her mouth, pulling her on top of him so that she was straddling his legs. The heat between her thighs pressed against him, her breasts soft

  against his chest as he lost himself in the hungry sweetness of her mouth.

  He heard himself groan as he touched the smoothness of her back, as his hands slipped beneath the edge of her shirt.

  He might've gone along with it. Might've? He knew damn well he would have. If Zoe had tugged at his clothes, if she'd reached for the buckle on his belt, he wouldn't've been able to fight both her and himself any longer. He would've made love to her, right there on the roof.

  But she pulled back, pushing herself off his lap, nearly throwing herself a solid five feet away from him, breathing hard, and swearing softly under her breath. "I'm sorry." She dropped her head onto arms that were tightly hugging her folded knees, unable to look at him. Her voice was muffled. "I promised you I'd back away, not attack you."

  "Hey, it's not like we both didn't—"

  "No?" she said, looking at him, her eyes a gleaming flash in the rapidly falling darkness. "Then what are you doing sitting over there? Why didn't you follow me over here?" She answered her own question. "Because just let­ting it happen is a whole lot different from making it hap­pen."

  He couldn't deny it.

  "You know I want you," she said softly. "But I want you to want me, too, Jake. I don't want to make love to you thinking that this is only happening because of some temporary insanity on your part, or some chink in the armor of your code of ethics. I don't want to have to feel guilty for seducing you, or overwhelming you, or tempting you, or anything. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you want to make love to me. I want to meet you as an equal. I respect myself too much to accept anything less."

  Zoe pulled herself to her feet, brushing off the seat of her pants. "So," she said. "Unless you want to come over here and take my clothes off, I think I'll head back inside."

  Jake didn't move. "Zoe, I'm—"

  "Sorry," she finished for
him. "Don't be. I know I'm

  asking for too much." She started for the stairs leading down off the roof. "Give me a few seconds before you follow. It can't hurt to give Chris the impression that we're still fighting."

  A few seconds. Jake needed more than a few seconds to regain his equilibrium.

  He stared at the sky and watched the first few stars of the evening begin to shine. The air had grown crisper, colder, and his breath hung in front of him in a cloud.

  Indisputable proof that, as Zoe had pointed out, he was not the one who'd died.

  Chapter 14

  Zoe hummed to herself as she got ready for bed. She hoped if she sounded calm and relaxed, she'd look calm and relaxed, as well—instead of completely, teeth-jarringly, heart-janglingly nervous.

  Jake had watched her all through dinner. She'd sat at the table with the other women, and he'd sat next to Christo­pher Vincent. And every time she'd looked up, Jake was gazing at her.

  She'd laid everything she was feeling out on the table this evening on the old recreation deck.

  Well, nearly everything. She hadn't revealed this feeling of intense warmth she got every time the man smiled at her. She hadn't revealed the feeling of pulse-pounding, diz­zying free fall she got from the desire she sometimes saw in his eyes.

  She had told him how much she wanted him.

  And Jake had turned her down. Again.

  Yes, he was a man, and yes, he was attracted to her, but

  he didn't want her. Not really. Not desperately. Not the way she wanted him.

  Normally, she didn't require being hit over the head with a hammer to receive a rejection. She didn't know why with Jake she insisted upon embarrassing herself again and again.

  She put on her nightgown, wishing desperately that she'd brought something a little less revealing, wishing she'd brought her bathrobe. She'd purposely left it in the trailer, thinking it didn't quite seem like something Zoe the wait­ress would own. It was a little too demure, a little too classy for the part she was playing right now.

  Jake sat on the edge of the bed, untying his boots, the muscles in his powerful arms and shoulders flexing beneath the cotton of his T-shirt and standing out in sharp relief in the low-watt light.