The Defiant Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Good, you’re here.” Locke turned to find Senior Chief Wolchonok talking to her. “Briefing in three minutes—we’ve got to take out the GIK members who are watching the motel so their rivals, the Extremists, can contact Meg Moore. Lieutenant Paoletti wants you in with the rest of the team.”

  Locke nodded. “Thanks, Senior.”

  He was about to move past, but he hesitated. “Everything okay?”

  There was nothing ugly or knowing in his eyes. Just genuine concern. Locke forced a smile. “Headache.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It’s not that flu that’s going around, is it?”

  “No, Senior Chief, it’s not,” she said quickly. That would be just her luck—to get kicked off the team before she’d even had a chance to get on it. “Really. My sister had a baby yesterday,” she lowered her voice to explain. “I celebrated a little too . . . enthusiastically last night.”

  Wolchonok didn’t smile, but she knew he wanted to. She could see amusement in his eyes. He pulled a bottle of Tylenol from his pocket and gave her three, as if he’d dispensed hangover remedies a time or two before as part of his job.

  “Welcome to the human race,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Water cooler’s in the corner. Briefing’s in the room right next to it. Hope you packed your jumpsuit.”

  She got herself a cup of water, not daring to hope the senior’s comment about her jumpsuit—the black utility uniform the FBI counterterrorist team wore in the field—meant she was going to see some action with the boys.

  Still, it was possible. Lt. Tom Paoletti had put her in the field before. He knew she was good. He knew she was reliable.

  It was also possible that he knew she’d slept with Starrett last night, God help her. And if he knew that, that tabloid-worthy fact could prejudice him and overpower both good and reliable.

  Locke washed down the pills and crumbled the paper cup, tossing it unerringly into the trash can next to the cooler. Squaring her shoulders, she went into the room Wolchonok had pointed out.

  The rest of the team were already present and accounted for. They sat in rows of chairs that faced the front, where Tom Paoletti was in deep discussion with his XO, Jazz Jacquette, and the FBI’s Max Bhagat.

  Sam Starrett was there.

  She spotted him immediately, her gaze drawn to him as if he were some kind of magnet that she couldn’t avoid even if her life depended on it. He was sitting in the back next to Jay Lopez, who was laughing at something Starrett had said.

  Starrett was laughing, too, but he turned to look directly at her, as if he’d somehow felt her watching him, and instantly both his laughter and smile faded.

  For about three seconds, he just stared at her, his eyes filled with . . . hurt?

  No. Couldn’t be.

  He quickly looked away, looked down at the floor, looked anywhere but at her.

  Lopez greeted her, though. Warmly. “How’s it going, Locke? Long time, no see. Congratulations—I heard you’re with the FBI now.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Counterterrorist. Although I’m sure Starrett’s filled you in.”

  Lopez looked at Starrett in surprise. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

  Starrett looked up at Locke, his gaze coolly impersonal now. “We don’t,” he said. “Not really.” His nod dismissed her. “Nice seeing you again, ma’am.”

  Starrett hadn’t told. At least not Lopez.

  Or Wolchonok.

  Or Karmody.

  Locke sat down on the other side of the room, careful not to jar her head.

  And he’d actually called her ma’am.

  “Okay,” Lieutenant Paoletti said from the front of the room. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Someone starts shooting, you get behind me,” John murmured as she led him into the office of the Seagull Motel. “Remember?”

  “I remember,” Meg said. She remembered everything he’d told her over the past few hours. Everything. I’m still in love with you.

  “Breathe,” he told her. “Don’t forget to breathe, Meg.”

  She was leading him. He was pretending to be Razeen, pretending to be heavily drugged and leaning on her, but his arm was warm around her waist. Warm and strong.

  He was holding her up.

  His touch was more than just supportive, though. It was intimate, laced with a warmth of a completely different kind. He wasn’t just touching her, he was touching her.

  “Almost there,” he murmured. “Once we get inside the hotel room, it’s almost all over.”

  Almost over.

  That was usually what the dentist said right before it hurt the worst.

  God, there was so much that could go wrong. The plan was for Meg to go into the office with John just as another car was pulling up. A SEAL who was nicknamed Jazz—the executive officer of John’s team, a powerful looking black man—would come into the motel office right behind them, along with a female FBI agent named Alyssa something.

  Locke. She’d been part of the team that had taken Meg out of the men’s room in the K-stani embassy, too. She was outrageously pretty, despite the fact that she didn’t expend much effort smiling—probably not a lot to smile about in her job. Still, she’d taken the time to pull Meg aside and reassure her that this part of the operation at least was going to go off without a hitch.

  Meg wished she had that kind of confidence. “Don’t you die,” she whispered now to John. “Whatever happens, don’t die.”

  He looked at her, straight in the eye, and she knew that if they weren’t in public, with twenty-five SEALs and FBI agents and God knows how many GIK terrorists watching them, he would have kissed her.

  And she would have kissed him, too—a hot, fierce, desperate kiss that would have ended from necessity far too soon. She wondered if he could see an echo of that kiss in her eyes as clearly as she saw it in his.

  “This is going to go like clockwork,” he told her. “We’ve got the entire squad of Troubleshooters out there. And just as many FBI. This part will be a piece of cake. Trust me, remember?”

  Trust him. She had to now. But she noticed that his reassurances came with no promises or guarantees. Just a lot of unspoken hope.

  It was hoped that Jazz and Alyssa’s presence would keep the GIK from trying to snatch back the man they thought was Razeen right there in the parking lot, in the late afternoon.

  Meg was in disguise, too. She wore a cheap blond wig and a lot of makeup—it was believed the GIK would be suspicious if she came back without attempting to hide from them by changing her appearance. The wig added that final touch of oddness to an already surreal experience. Like Marilyn Monroe showing up in a Sylvester Stallone movie.

  The desk clerk was skinny and balding, an odd stick of a man with more than a passing resemblance to a praying mantis. He was faster than Pregnant Girl had been, thank God. Meg completed the paperwork, paid in cash for two nights in advance, and he stretched out an antenna and handed her the room key.

  Jazz and Alyssa were arguing rather convincingly about the best route to Jacksonville and Jazz stormed out to his car to get a map as Meg and John pushed back out the door.

  “Keep me between you and the street,” John murmured. “You’re the target at this point, remember?”

  “I just want to get inside the room.” They were almost there, and the hard part, the dangerous part—at least for now—was almost done.

  “We need to make sure we take enough time so they can ID me as Razeen.” He tried to make a joke. “Not that I don’t appreciate a beautiful woman rushing to get me inside her motel room.”

  She didn’t laugh. None of this was even slightly funny.

  He stumbled slightly—on purpose, of course—and the coat he had around his shoulders swung open, revealing the cuffs on his wrists. Meg pulled him up, and he leaned against her, blocking her from the street with his body, as she unlocked the door, and then, thank God, they were both inside.

  John locked the door behind the
m as Meg made sure the window was latched and the curtains tightly closed. The cuffs had never really been fastened, and he tossed them aside as easily as he did the coat. It was too warm for a suit jacket, let alone a coat, and he took that off, too, along with the body armor he was wearing, and in his shirtsleeves, he cranked the air-conditioning.

  The room was standard cheap motel. Two double beds with garish spreads, mediocre artwork on the wall, beige telephone on the table between the beds.

  John saw her looking at it, and nodded. “Now we wait for the phone to ring.”

  And Meg knew that she’d been wrong. The danger might’ve been over for now, but the hardest part—the waiting—was just beginning.

  The woman was upset. More upset than usual.

  The tension in the old house was sky-high, too, and Eve knew that it was going to have to be tonight. She and Amy—or maybe even just Amy—were going to have to get up to that bathroom and go out that window.

  Even if it were raining, even if the roof were slick with water, even if lightning were crackling overhead. It had to be tonight.

  Because the woman wanted them gone. As in dead and gone.

  “What’s happening?” she dared to ask the Bear, praying that it wasn’t already too late.

  He just scowled and shook his head.

  Eve gave another piece of butterscotch to Amy, who was trying hard not to flinch every time the woman’s voice got louder.

  “Where were we in the story?” she asked, hoping to distract her.

  “You went to France to see Ralph,” Amy said, “but he wouldn’t talk to you. He just ran away.”

  “That’s right,” Eve told the little girl, smoothing her hair back from her face. Amy could use a good hour in a bathtub. She herself could use a good soak, too, for that matter. Lord, her every muscle ached, every bone hurt. She hadn’t felt this bad since she’d tried to run the Boston Marathon back in 1972. “I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I thought it had gotten about as awful as it could get. But that’s always a very bad thing to assume.”

  The Bear had taken his seat. He was listening, as usual. Was all her endless talking doing any good at all? Eve searched his eyes, looking for some obvious sign of humanity, some trace of gentleness and compassion. If it were there, he kept it well hidden.

  “It was just a few months later that Hitler invaded France,” she told them. “Nick and I were glued to the radio, listening to the news. It was shocking how fast the reports came in of cities that had fallen. It didn’t seem possible, this lightning-fast advance of tanks and troops, this Blitz. I was scared to death. Because somewhere out there, facing those deadly German panzers, was Ralph.

  “I remember I was in town, trying to find information on the whereabouts of his regiment, when I saw ships and boats of all sizes gathering in the harbor. Someone told me that the call had gone out for all available ships and men to meet in Ramsgate, that the Royal Navy didn’t have enough ships available to evacuate the BEF from France, so we were going to do it ourselves.

  “I drove home as fast I could, and I got the Daisy Chain and sailed her to the harbor. But there were far more boats than able-bodied men. I must’ve expected it, because I had dressed in trousers and one of my father’s old shirts. And I’d tucked my hair up under Ralph’s old hat—it was still on board, just where he’d left it—exactly as I’d done when I’d played Romeo nearly a year earlier. And I set off with the rest of the little ships for Dunkirk.

  “It was terrifying. The city was on fire, and great clouds of smoke rose like some terrible monster above the French coastline. From a distance—it was the oddest thing! The men, the soldiers lining up on the beaches, looked like rows of sticks. It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized just how many men were there, all waiting to be evacuated.

  “The German air force—the Luftwaffe—were overhead, shooting at the men on the beach, shooting at us. Artillery pounded the beaches—there were bodies everywhere. It was awful.

  “It was war.”

  Eve looked at the Bear again, and this time, there was something in his eyes. Something terrible. Something she recognized from looking into her bathroom mirror.

  He’d lived through such a battle himself. He’d known that awful gut-wrenching fear.

  She reached for him, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it. Letting him see that she knew he understood.

  And then—there! A glimmer of something. She could have sworn she’d seen it in his eyes, right before he pulled his hand away.

  Or maybe she’d just wanted it to be there.

  “I brought the Daisy Chain in all the way to the shore,” she continued. “She wasn’t as big as some of the other boats, and I could take her almost right up to the strand. I took aboard as many soldiers as I could, asking everyone I saw about Ralph’s Anti-Tank Regiment, the Fiftieth.

  “No one knew a thing, they barely knew their own names. I heard all kinds of rumors—that the order had come down, ‘Every man for himself.’

  “For a while I set to work using the Daisy Chain as a ferry, taking men from the shore out to the larger ships that couldn’t get in close to the beaches. The piers had all been bombed by the Germans. The entire harbor at Dunkirk was an obstacle course, filled with debris. But then all the larger ships departed, so I took on as many men as I could—about fifty, riding low in the water—and headed back for England, too.

  “The trip across the channel took about two hours on the best of days under the best of circumstances. And German U-boats torpedoing the larger vessels was hardly what I’d call the best of anything. I returned to Ramsgate, and then went back again—I was too small to be a target for the submarines, thank God. Too small to do much of anything but bring back fifty men. And then another fifty men. And another. Asking all the time about Ralph.

  “I finally found a man who thought he’d heard that the Fiftieth was one of the regiments holding the Germans at bay, making the evacuation of all these men possible. Despite the ‘every man for himself’ order, the Fiftieth had stuck quite literally to their guns. They—Ralph among them—were fighting still.

  “I had walked into hell to save Ralph, but apparently he wasn’t ready to come out yet. I heard all kinds of rumors about the panzer attacks, too—about the terrifying invincibility of those tanks that Ralph and his unit were fighting against. Some of the men spoke in hushed tones of a secret weapon that the Germans had—some mysterious force that caused the British and French guns to be unable to fire.” She laughed. “I think it was called fear.

  “I heard rumors of the Germans being horribly angry with the British soldiers who resisted their advance. It was said they were taking no prisoners, that they were lining up their captives and shooting them as punishment. The word had gone out among the BEF not to surrender, but instead to fight to the death.

  “And each time I returned to Dunkirk, there were more bodies. Bodies everywhere. Littering the beach, floating in the ocean. They were stepped over, stepped on, pushed aside. And still the evacuation went on.

  “I crossed the English Channel more times than I could count, through that day and the following night. And the only reason I stopped was that one of the soldiers I had rescued realized that I was a girl. He put me out at Ramsgate, wouldn’t listen to my arguments, and took the Daisy Chain back to Dunkirk himself.

  “I went to work in Ramsgate then, helping the wounded off the ships that came in, searching, always searching, for anyone who knew or might have seen Ralph.

  “Hundreds of thousands of men returned to England by that armada of little ships and boats. We fed them, and held them in our arms while they cried. We welcomed them back home, back to life, and put them on trains sending them farther inland, so they could regroup. Many of those poor battered souls went home first, before reporting back for duty. I left a note on the door of the estate—everyone, even Nicky, was in Ramsgate helping as best they could—hoping that Ralph would somehow make it there.”

  “But he never did,” Amy
said. “Did he?”

  “No,” Eve told the little girl, told the Bear. “He never did. I searched for him for days. I even phoned his mother to see if he might’ve gone there. But he didn’t make it out of France. The Fiftieth Anti-Tank Regiment stuck to their guns until the bitter end.

  “338,226 men were rescued from Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940,” Eve told Amy and the Bear. “It was a miracle so many had been saved—a miracle that Ralph and the Fiftieth had helped to come about by holding off the German advance. It was every man for himself, but the Fiftieth and the other antitank regiments weren’t fighting to save themselves. They had to have known they’d be left behind. Surely they knew, and yet they held fast to their hills, keeping the Germans from those beaches and those virtually defenseless ships and men. They were the true heroes of Dunkirk.

  “For a while I was really mad at Ralph for that,” Eve admitted. “For being so blasted heroic. I didn’t want a hero, I wanted him back in England and safe.” She could smile about it now—just barely, still wistfully. “At sixteen years of age, I’d already faced so many hardships in my life, but nothing, by far, was as hard to bear as this.”

  “What did you do then?” Amy asked softly.

  “I did what everyone else did,” Eve answered. “I fought on. We fought on. We British—and oh, yes, I was one of them now—we dedicated our lives to making darn certain that the sacrifices that Ralph and the other men of the BEF antitank regiments had made were not in vain. Winston Churchill made a speech right after the miracle at Dunkirk—we called it a miracle and a victory even though it really was a crushing defeat. But we’d saved so many men at such impossible odds, it was hard not to feel triumphant. We shall defend our island, Churchill said to all of England, to all of the world, whatever the cost may be. But oh, what a cost had already been extracted from my very heart and soul.

  “Dunkirk was just the start,” Eve told them. “But it was the first act of defiance in a long and bloody war filled with defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It wasn’t until 1945 that the Nazis were finally completely defeated, but I know that their defeat started in 1940, at Dunkirk. I know that I helped save the world. Or rather, I helped Ralph and his brave fellow soldiers save the world. His sacrifice was not in vain—I was convinced of that. But it didn’t make it any easier to bear late at night when I missed him so terribly.”