Seal Team Ten

by Brockmann, Suzanne

She could see Mitch, still struggling with Casey Parker, his shirt stained bright red with his own blood. He was in serious danger of bleeding to death—that is, if he didn't drown first.

  Parker was tiring, but then so was Mitch. But at least Mitch was on top—or at least he was until a current of water tossed them, pushing them over and Mitch underneath.

  Oh, God!

  She could see Mitch struggling, fighting and splashing to get free, to get air. But Parker was so much bigger than he was. And Parker wasn't bleeding from a gunshot wound.

  Becca charged toward them, splashing and stumbling through the water, stopping only to pick up a rock large enough to do some damage when it connected with Casey Parker's head.

  But the water was still rising and before she reached them, she was knocked off balance. As she struggled to regain her footing, Parker was pulled under. With a swirl of bubbles, both men disappeared downstream.

  Becca crawled to the side of the now swiftly flowing river, bedraggled and gasping for air, barely getting out of the way of a chunk of wood being tossed along by the water. She remembered the rainbow-colored bruise Mitch had received from what he'd called a "glancing blow."

  As if Casey Parker and his gunshot wound weren't dangers enough, Becca knew that the river could kill Mitch, too.

  She struggled out of the water, and ran toward her truck, water squooshing from her boots. She started the engine with a roar, and drove, following the bend in the riverbed, shading her eyes against the rapidly lightening sky, praying as she searched for any sign of Mitch in the raging current.

  Underwater.

  It was the great equalizer in a fight that Mitch had been afraid he was starting to lose.

  But underwater, the advantage spun once more in his direction. As a SEAL, he was at home beneath the water. And Parker—judging from his current floundering—could barely even swim.

  Mitch went with the force of the river, using it instead of fighting it. He could tell when Parker's air ran out. He could tell by the way the man was twitching that Mitch had to get him up to the surface, to air, quickly, or he'd die.

  It wasn't easy pulling the heavier man out of the current and onto the rocky shore. And the water was still rising, so he had to pull him—with only one good arm—even farther up, away from the running arroyo.

  Parker was breathing. But just barely.

  He was out cold, thank the Lord. Mitch wasn't sure he had another fight left in him.

  "Mitch!"

  He turned to see Becca running toward him. Sweet Becca. With her angel's eyes...

  "Thank God, thank God!" She scrambled down the hillside. "Where were you hit?"

  "Just my arm. Only a nick." Lord, he was cold.

  She was furious. "Only a...! Mitch, this is not only a nick!"

  He'd lost a lot of blood. That would explain the cold.

  "I'm all right," he told her. "Bee, I remembered. I'm a SEAL. A Navy SEAL. Parker has possession of stolen plutonium from a military lab. I've been working a covert op for months, trying to track it down. I'm one of the good guys."

  She took off her T-shirt, which confused him for a moment until he realized she was using it to tie around his upper arm in a tourniquet.

  "Can you make it to the truck?" she asked him, her voice sounding as if it were coming from a great distance.

  Maybe he had lost too much blood. Mitch pushed himself up, forcing himself not to succumb to the blackness that was giving him tunnel vision. "What about Parker?"

  Becca told him in a very unladylike way exactly what Parker could do with himself. ' 'The sheriff can come back for him."

  Mitch shook his head. "No. I've been after him for too long. Get the key from his pocket, Bee. At least let me tie him up."

  He could see from her eyes that she was scared for him.

  "Rope," he said. "Please. I've been after this guy for months. I can't risk losing him now."

  "And I can't risk losing you now," she told him hotly. "You're it for me, Mitch. It's you or no one. If you die—"

  "I'm not going to die."

  "Promise?"

  In his line of work, it wasn't good luck to make a promise like that. In his line of work, any kind of promise was hard to keep. But Mitch wanted to promise her everything he possibly could. "Marry me, Becca."

  He'd shocked her. She stood up. "I'm getting that rope."

  She vanished from the narrowing scope of his vision, and he floated—he wasn't sure how long, seconds probably—until she returned.

  As Mitch watched, she hog-tied Parker with knots that would've made any sailor envious, then searched through the man's pockets for the key. She held it up for Mitch to see when she'd found it, then stuffed it into her own jeans pocket.

  And then she was beside Mitch, hauling him up, nearly carrying him to the truck.

  His arm was starting to hurt, and the pain sent him spinning as she did everything short of throw him into the cab of the truck. He felt her fasten a seat belt around him.

  And then they were moving, bouncing, seemingly soaring across the rough land. His tunnel vision was getting worse, his world turning to shades of gray.

  "Stay with me, Mitch," Becca said, her voice tight. "Talk to me. Tell me what you remember. Do you remember everything? Childhood? First kiss? Senior prom? Where you spent last summer's vacation?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I think so, but..."

  "Tell me what a SEAL is."

  "We're good in the water." Lord, it was such a struggle even to speak. ' 'We go away a lot. Away on missions all the time. Do things I could never tell you about. Leave again, too soon. Not sure—as your friend—I can recommend you marry me."

  She laughed at that. "Do you come back?" she asked.

  "Always," he told her. "For you, I'd come back not just from hell, but from heaven, too."

  "I'm going to hold you to that. Dammit, don't you close your eyes!" She was crying. He hadn't meant to make her cry. "Mitch, we're almost there. I'm going to have the sheriff call for a medical chopper to take you into Santa Fe."

  "Admiral Jake Robinson," Mitch managed to say. "Call him for me?"

  "Admiral Jake Robinson," she repeated.

  "He's—"

  “'Til find him," she promised.

  “Don't forget—"

  "Parker?" she finished for him. "I won't."

  "That I love you," he said.

  Her laughter sounded more like a sob.

  And there was shouting. Becca's voice, loud, calling for medical assistance. Hazel, shrill. The sheriff's deep bass.

  And Mitch gave in to the darkness.

  Becca raked her fingers through her hair as she hurried down the hospital corridor, trying to tame her curls.

  There had been no room for her in the medevac chopper, and she'd driven halfway to Santa Fe. She'd left the sheriff standing in the driveway with Casey Parker in custody, changed her sodden and bloodstained clothes, grabbed her cell phone and headed into the city.

  She'd connected with Mitch's Admiral Robinson on her first try. She'd actually called the Pentagon—it seemed like the best place to look for a U.S. Navy admiral. She'd been put on hold when she'd said she was trying to reach Robinson, put on hold again when she mentioned to the young but very efficient-sounding assistant who came on the line that she was calling on Mitch's behalf.

  And ten seconds later another man had picked up the phone. She'd spoken to him for close to a minute before she realized she was speaking to the admiral himself.

  She gave him the story in a nutshell—Mitch's gunshot wound to the head and the resulting amnesia. His search for his identity. Today's nearly fatal run-in with the real Casey Parker. She'd told him that Mitch had probably already arrived at the hospital in Santa Fe, that she was rushing over there now, via truck. She'd told him she was sorry, but she couldn't talk any longer, she had to call the hospital to make sure Mitch was all right, when he'd asked her the color of her truck and the route she was taking. He told her to watch the sky—he'd send an air
force chopper to scoop her up ASAP.

  The chopper had landed right in the middle of the state road. She'd locked her truck and gotten to Santa Fe in minutes.

  The nurse in the E.R. hadn't given her any information on Mitch's condition over the phone and Becca was running by the time she reached his room and...

  She stopped short.

  The most gorgeous blond woman she'd ever seen was sitting on the edge of Mitch's bed and holding his hand.

  The most gorgeous blonde, nine-months-pregnant woman...

  Oh, God.

  She started to back away, trying to move silently, and ran into a very solid wall of a man.

  "Hey." He, too, was blond—although his hair was more sunstreaked—and nearly as gorgeous as the woman. He was one of the men who had been in the van outside the bus station in Wyatt City. "Are you Becca Keyes? Mitch's friend?"

  Mitch's friend. Becca nodded, unable to speak. It seemed that his marriage proposal had been a little hasty. Apparently he hadn't remembered everything.

  He held out his hand. "Lt. Luke O'Donlon, Alpha Squad. My friends call me Lucky. Although I may have to give the nickname back after the hell of the past few weeks, the fact that Zoe Robinson isn't hovering anxiously at my bedside, and the added injustice that I didn't manage to meet you first."

  He pushed her toward the door to Mitch's room.

  "Come on. We're all under strict orders to bring you right in if we see you."

  "But—" Zoe Robinson?

  "Ms. Rebecca Keyes," the man named Lucky announced loudly as if he were a very proper English butler.

  "Thanks, Jeeves," Mitch said dryly. He was smiling at her from his hospital bed. He still looked pale, but his arm was bandaged and he had an IV tube hooked into his hand.

  And as Becca watched, the pregnant blonde moved gracefully from the bed, crossing the room to stand beside a uniformed man who couldn't be anyone other than Admiral Robinson.

  But then Becca didn't look at anyone but Mitch. She crossed to his bed. "Are you all right?"

  He held out his hand for her, and she took it. He tugged her down, and then he had his good arm around her.

  "I needed a transfusion," he told her. "And afterwards, I felt so much better—"

  "He tried to talk me into taking him back to your ranch," the Admiral interjected. "I'm Jake R—"

  "Introductions later," his wife interrupted. "Everybody out."

  Mitch's hand was in her hair, and she knew from his eyes that he was only waiting for the door to close before he kissed her.

  But she didn't want to wait. She kissed him and kissed him, sweetly at first, then harder, deeper, infused with the fire his kisses always sparked.

  When she pulled back, he was breathing hard. ' 'I have to stay here overnight," he told her as if that were a total tragedy.

  "I can wait," she told him. "I'm good at waiting."

  She wasn't talking about just one night, and he knew it.

  "There are things you need to know about me," Mitch said. "It wasn't fair of me to ask you to marry me before you know—"

  "I know what I need to know." She pushed his hair back from his face. "You love me and I love you. Everything else is inconsequential." Becca laughed. "I never thought I'd get married, but..." She shrugged. "That was before I met you and discovered maybe true love isn't a myth."

  He smiled at that, but his smile quickly dimmed. "I don't want to make you unhappy." He was so quietly serious, so intense.

  "Good," she said. "Because it would make me really unhappy not to marry you. You know when I walked in here and saw what's her name? Zoe? I thought she was your wife."

  He shook his head at that. "I told you, I knew I wasn't married."

  "Yeah, but you also told me that you were this terrible criminal, and you'd spent time in jail and—"

  "I did spend time in jail." He smiled at the look on her face. "It was part of a sting operation. I was trying to get close to the brother of a survivalist group leader. I was inside for nearly a month." His smile faded again. "See, these are the kinds of things that I do."

  "Think," she said, "what fun it would have been knowing that I was there, waiting for you when you got out."

  Mitch laughed. "I'm not sure fun is quite the right word."

  "Yes," she said, "it is."

  She kissed him to prove her point.

  "We can make this work," she murmured. "I know we can. I've got forever—how about you?"

  Mitch surrendered and kissed her. It was definitely worth a try. Because he loved her and she loved him. And like the lady said, everything else was inconsequential.

  9 - Get Lucky (2000)

  Prologue

  It was like being hit by a professional linebacker.

  The man barreled down the stairs and bulldozed right into Sydney, nearly knocking her onto her rear end.

  To add insult to injury, he mistook her for a man.

  "Sorry, bud," he tossed back over his shoulder as he kept going down the stairs.

  She heard the front door of the apartment building open and then slam shut.

  It was the perfect end to the evening. Girls' night out— plural—had turned into girl's night out—singular. Bette had left a message on Syd's answering machine announcing that she couldn't make it to the movies tonight. Something had come up. Something that was no doubt, six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, wearing a cowboy hat and named Scott or Brad or Wayne.

  And Syd had received a call from Hilary on her cell phone as she was pulling into the multiplex parking lot. Her excuse for cancelling was a kid with a fever of one hundred and two.

  Turning around and going home would have been too depressing. So Syd had gone to the movie alone. And ended up even more depressed.

  The show had been interminably long and pointless, with buff young actors flexing their way across the screen. She'd alternately been bored by the story and embarrassed, both for the actors and for herself, for being fascinated by the sheer breathtaking perfection of their bodies.

  Men like that—or like the football player who'd nearly knocked her over—didn't date women like Sydney Jame­son.

  It wasn't that she wasn't physically attractive, because she was. Or at least she could be when she bothered to do more than run a quick comb through her hair. Or when she bothered to dress in something other than the baggy shirts and loose-fitting, comfortable jeans that were her standard apparel—and that allowed the average Neanderthal rushing past her down the stairs to mistake her for a man. Of course, she comforted herself, the dimness of the -watt bulbs that the landlord, Mr. El Cheap-o Thompkins, had installed in the hallway light fixtures hadn't helped.

  Syd trudged up the stairs to the third floor. This old house had been converted to apartments in the late s. The top floor—formerly the attic—had been made into two units, both of which were far more spacious than anyone would have thought from looking at the outside of the building.

  She stopped on the landing.

  The door to her neighbor's apartment was ajar.

  Gina Sokoloski. Syd didn't know her next-door neighbor that well. They'd passed on the stairs now and then, signed for packages when the other wasn't home, had brief con­versations about such thrilling topics as the best time of year for cantaloupe.

  Gina was young and shy—not yet twenty years old—and a student at the junior college. She was plain and quiet and rarely had visitors, which suited Syd just fine after living for eight months next door to the frat boys from hell.

  Gina's mother had come by once or twice—one of those tidy, quietly rich women who wore a giant diamond ring and drove a car that cost more than Syd could make in three very good years as a freelance journalist.

  The he-man who'd barrelled down the stairs wasn't what Syd would have expected a boyfriend of Gina's to look like. He was older than Gina by about ten years, too, but this could well be more proof that opposites did, indeed, attract.

  This old building made so many weird noises during the night. Still, she cou
ld've sworn she'd heard a distinctly hu­man sound coming from Gina's apartment. Syd stepped closer to the open door and peeked in, but the apartment was completely dark. "Gina?"

  She listened harder. There it was again. A definite sob. No doubt the son of a bitch who'd nearly knocked her over had just broken up with Gina. Leave it to a man to be in such a hurry to be gone that he'd leave the door wide open.

  "Gina, your door's unlatched. Is everything okay in here?" Syd knocked more loudly as she pushed the door open even farther.

  The dim light from the hallway shone into the living room and...

  The place was trashed. Furniture knocked over, lamps broken, a bookshelf overturned. Dear God, the man hur­rying down the stairs hadn't been Gina's boyfriend. He'd been a burglar.

  Or worse...

  Hair rising on the back of her neck, Syd dug through her purse for her cell phone. Please God, don't let Gina have been home. Please God, let that funny little sound be the ancient swamp cooler or the pipes or the wind wheezing through the vent in the crawl space between the ceiling and the eaves....

  But then she heard it again. It was definitely a muffled whimper.

  Syd's fingers closed around her phone as she reached with her other hand for the light switch on the wall by the door. She flipped it on.

  And there, huddled in the corner of her living room, her face bruised and bleeding, her clothing torn and bloody, was Gina.

  Syd locked the door behind her and dialed .

  Chapter 1

  All early-morning conversation in Captain Joe Catala­notto's outer office stopped dead as everyone turned to look at Lucky.

  It was a festival of raised eyebrows and opened mouths. The astonishment level wouldn't have been any higher if Lieutenant Luke "Lucky" O'Donlon of SEAL Team Ten's Alpha Squad had announced he was quitting the units to become a monk.

  All the guys were staring at him—Jones and Blue and Skelly. A flash of surprise had even crossed Crash Haw-ken's imperturbable face. Frisco was there, too, having come out of a meeting with Joe and Harvard, the team's senior chief. Lucky had caught them all off guard. It would've been funny—except he wasn't feeling much like laughing.