Embrace The Suck (A Stepbrother Special Forces Novel)

by Kenzie, Sophia

  He shook his head. “Your security clearance didn’t warrant you this knowledge. I’m only telling you now as a courtesy.”

  “And because it’s plastered on the fucking news!” I shouted back.

  “Hannah… please.”

  How could he be so casual about this situation? This was his son we were talking about for Heaven’s sake.

  In that moment, I hated everything. “I don’t give a fuck about your security clearance.” I spat it out without thinking and then rushed out of the room.

  Right before I slammed the door, I heard one of the officers address my outburst. “Do you really need more proof why women shouldn’t be permitted in the Special Forces, Sir?”

  For a brief second I thought about rushing back in to lecture him on how little he understood regarding the contributions women would bring to the program, but instead decided to fight back a different way.

  If none of them were looking for Charlie, then I’d go find him myself.

  There was a bomb that went off… in a city… in Nigeria… thousands of casualties… the hospitals destroyed…

  And then the reporter spoke the words I couldn’t comprehend.

  An American Special Forces Group is missing, presumed dead.

  If none of them were looking for Charlie, then I’d go find him myself.

  BOOK FIVE

  Chapter One

  Hannah

  A search and rescue team was sent to the last known location of Charlie’s group. After two weeks of searching, they came back, empty-handed.

  Yet again, I positioned myself as a viable option on the next tour, but I received nothing but laughs in my face. I was only a trainee… and I was only a girl.

  The second search and rescue team deployed two weeks after that, covering the neighboring villages within a fifty-mile radius of the explosion.

  Again, they turned up nothing.

  So again, I asked Command Sergeant Major Reynolds if I could go and find him myself.

  Or rather… I told him. “You know I don’t need your permission, right? I can just book myself a trip to Nigeria and no one can stop me.” I tried to reason with him.

  “And then what, Hannah?” He barely looked up at me from the desk.

  Since Charlie’s disappearance, Reynolds had relocated to work out of Ft. Bragg. He was insistent on being part of the rescue, and since Charlie’s team was based out of North Carolina, this was the location where all the big decisions were being made regarding any and all next steps. I understood that they were keeping me out of the loop, as my clearance level - or lack of clearance level altogether- didn’t allow me the knowledge, but from what I saw, there were no actual decisions being made. Unless, of course, those decisions were to refuse to be proactive and instead to wait for some sort of divine miracle.

  He took a sip of coffee before continuing. “Is your plan to just buy a ticket on commercial airline flying to Africa, and then march into random towns, and start banging on doors asking people if they’ve seen your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my—!” I almost fought, but quickly ceased my words when he began to shake his head at me.

  “I can’t allow you to go. You’re not an official Green Beret, Hannah. You’re in training. And you’ll continue to be in training until graduation. And if you choose to go on your own accord, not only will I officially remove you from this program, but also I cannot send backup in for you. You would be heading into a war zone without any aid from your country. Do I make myself clear?”

  I wanted to huff out of the room, spouting nonsense about how I obviously cared more than him, but I knew that kind of insincerity would do nothing. We were both on the same side, and I had to trust that Charlie’s father was doing anything and everything in, and even out of, his power to bring home his son.

  But after four rescue missions turned up nothing, my faith began to falter.

  The eighteen weeks of language studies rolled on. Some days went by so quickly, and others so slowly. I felt as though I had been stuck at the camp for years, but then, sometimes in the span of just a few hours, it also seemed like I had started this whole thing only days earlier. Slow-motioned talks were mixed with fast-forwarded study sessions. There was somehow so much to do, not enough hours to do it in, and yet I still had managed to find all the time in the world to fear for Charlie’s survival.

  After I passed my Oral Proficiency interview, I moved on to SERE training. Throughout the three phases, we were drilled on tactical combat skills. And then we were drilled on the fact that this training was only an adolescent preparation for the real thing. Our true training would only come from actual experience.

  We were being trained to fear the unknown: our future.

  Following the initial SERE training, we were then enrolled in SERE Level C, which added to our juvenile understanding of combat skills, and culminated in learning how to resist interrogation.

  That was a bit of an eye opener. Fuck, it all was a bit of an eye opener. They were teaching us things that we would have a very likely chance of encountering during our tenure in the Army, and unfortunately, dealing with interrogation strategies was one of them.

  One night following an intense day of being brow beaten for information I refused to give up as part of an exercise in resisting interrogation, I lied in bed wondering if Charlie had been going through the same punishment. There were two options here: either his team had gone into intense hiding, or they had been taken captive. And if they had been taken captive, well, then they were either being continually interrogated for information, or they had already been killed because they were deemed useless by the enemy.

  I couldn’t picture Charlie as a prisoner. He’s much too stubborn for that. If he’s not the one giving orders, then he’s going to blow a fuse. Hell, I knew that just from being his partner in the bedroom. I couldn’t even imagine if he was dealing with someone he saw as an enemy.

  And he’s much too hard headed to ever give up information. I did know that very fact far too well, and again, just regarding personal information. Think of what he’d be like protecting trade secrets. So, with those outlined points rolling around my mind, I knew I had to live with the knowledge that if Charlie had been taken as a Prisoner of War, then he was already dead.

  And I’m sure his father knew that too. I hated to think that Max Reynolds had given up sending troops to find Charlie’s team because he already knew the outcome, and feared the confirmation of his suspicion. Would he really give up hope that easily?

  Was I the only one refusing to face reality?

  Either way, no more search and rescue teams were sent to Nigeria with the goal of finding Charlie’s group. As far as the Army was concerned, the entire team had already been confirmed dead. I wrestled with that fact time and time again, refusing to believe that Charlie and my story was actually over. Any time the thought passed through my mind, I shot it down; instead trying to think of what it would be like the day he’d come home. It was the only thing that got me through the long days.

  I imagined him showing up at our apartment, just the way he showed up at my apartment that time after he first left, when the only information I had was that his helicopter had gone down. I imagined getting angry at him for not finding a way to let me know he was okay, and then him telling me that the thought of coming home to me was the only thing that kept him going day in and day out. Although I wasn’t there physically, I was his rock, and because of that, he would never let me go.

  Sure, it was silly, and I knew the probability of something like that happening was slim to none, but my little fantasies kept me from breaking down in a pool of tears. I needed him alive for me to keep going. And I accepted that.

  Seventeen months and three days after Charlie left for Nigeria, I was finished my training, save for our final mission: Robin Sage.

  “Whatcha doing?” Amanda peeked her head into my bedroom one night carrying two bowls of ice cream in her hands, and a container of chocolate syrup and can of
whipped cream under her arm.

  “Apparently entertaining the idea of playing out some guy’s sexual fantasy with you.” I teased, pointing out the whipped cream. “Is this being taped?”

  She bobbed her head back and forth, almost laughing at my joke.

  I wouldn’t say that Amanda and I had grown apart, per se. She was still Amanda, and she was still my only friend and the only one I talked to… ever. It just seemed that as the days played on, I talked to her less and less. It wasn’t her fault in the least. Underneath, I think I had been afraid to open up to her about what I was feeling for fear that she would try to lay practicality on me and convince me that I might want to start seeing what was right in front of me. Or that I might want to start seeing a therapist. I’m not saying that she would do that; I just feared that it was a definite possibility, and it was a possibility that I did not want to play into. It was better to keep my distance.

  “I thought you might want some ice cream.” She tiptoed into my room, holding a bowl out to me.

  How could I turn down ice cream?

  I set the file I was staring at on my nightstand and held out my palm as a peace offering. Since we were waiting for some other Special Forces Qualification Course trainees to catch up, we had a few weeks off in preparation for Robin Sage. The final bout of training was usually done with around one hundred potential Green Berets, and since our group of women was now down to nine bodies, we were holding off to be joined by the men. Sure, it was a little embarrassing that only ten percent of the final project would be made up of women, but considering the fact that we started with many less applicants, our odds weren’t too bad.

  I sighed as I took a bite: mint chocolate chip. It reminded me of Charlie.

  “You okay?” Amanda nudged me.

  I shook myself out of my rut. “I’m fine. This is delicious.”

  “So,” she scooted a little closer to me. “Why have you been hiding out in here for the past few days?” And then she added to lighten the air, “I’m tired of drinking alone.”

  I chuckled at her while I weighed the pros and cons of telling her just exactly what I had been doing with my time.

  “Promise you won’t judge me?” I prefaced my admittance, knowing she’d eventually get it out of me anyway.

  “Of course I promise that.” She lightly smiled at me, clearly under the assumption that I was about to be depressing.

  And she was right. The truth was that I hadn’t given up looking for Charlie. Throughout the last sixteen months, since I had seen the news of the group’s presumed demise, I had been collecting any articles and pictures I could that were taken in the area. News reports, documentaries, satellite images… I had kept them all gathered in a file folder that had been growing and growing ever since. Now, on my time off, I decided to take a harder look at the clippings I had collected.

  I swore there had to be something I missed.

  “I didn’t realize…” Amanda tried to answer after I explained my psychosis. “You know what?” She placed her hand on my knee. “He’s lucky to have you.”

  I bit my lip and looked down at my bowl of melting ice cream. “Thank you for not using the past tense.” I murmured.

  “Hey,” she snapped me out of it. “If you have hope, then I have hope. Show me the pictures.”

  Amanda and I managed to stay up all night as I took her through everything I had gathered over the last year and a half. The ice cream, the whipped cream, and the chocolate syrup were in no short supply, and at some point, homemade margaritas found their way into the mix.

  Not at the same time, of course. That would be weird. And gross.

  At times, I forgot that we were looking for a man who could very well have been dead while all these stories surfaced, and instead pictured us playing a really fun mystery game, sorting through clues and identifying the bad guys. It made me wonder why I hadn’t brought Amanda into the story earlier.

  “Why do you keep staring at that one?” Amanda took a picture out of my hands as she gulped down her third margarita.

  “I don’t know.” I stole it right back. “There’s something about it that keeps drawing me in… like I’m missing something.”

  Sure, it could have been the alcohol talking, but I felt like the picture was telling me to look closer.

  “You want another?” Amanda grabbed my glass out of my hand.

  “No, I’m fine…” I was too involved, too focused on the picture to want any more alcohol.

  “Too bad.” She cackled as she ran out of the room.

  Two seconds probably passed, but I swear, it could have been hours.

  “Oh my God.” I blinked through my tiredness.

  “What?” Amanda rushed back in, still holding two empty margarita glasses. Unless we had gone through another round, I was pretty sure it hadn’t been two hours.

  “I found Charlie.” I almost whispered, too afraid that if I said it loudly it wouldn’t be true.

  Amanda rushed to my side as fast as she could, asking to show her exactly where Charlie was.

  “Right there!” I pointed to a body in the foreground of a picture.

  Amanda slumped back against the pillows. “That’s not Charlie. That could be any man. You can’t even see his face. Or the color of his skin for that matter.” Her honesty was blatant now that she was drunk.

  I knew it sounded ridiculous, but I went on. “That’s his bracelet.”

  “His bracelet?” She repeated in haste. “His bracelet?”

  But I knew that bracelet. He never took it off. It was a leather cuff that was given to him by his training officer the day he first became a Green Beret. We joked about it all the time, since he didn’t even take it off when we were having sex. He said it felt like a piece of him now.

  “So, you see, he wouldn’t take it off.” I tried to reason with her.

  “Unless someone killed him and took it off for him.” Amanda shot back.

  And then we both stopped.

  “I’m sorry. Hannah, I’m sorry.”

  I nodded, knowing she didn’t actually mean to hurt me. She was just being honest.

  But I didn’t want honesty. I wanted Charlie. “I think it’s time to call it a night.”

  I never went to bed that night; I just stared at the picture until the sun came up.

  Charlie? Is that you?

  Chapter Two

  Hannah

  I woke up early that morning, hoping to catch Charlie’s father before he headed onto base. I knew it was a long shot, but he was really the only hope I had left for convincing someone that Charlie may still be alive. Everyone else was sure to pass me off as a crazed, helpless, love struck girl. But Charlie’s father still had to have hope.

  At least I prayed he did. Or else, I was really alone.

  “Major Reynolds!” I called out across the parking lot; glad he had arrived early enough to allow me a few moments of his time.

  “Hannah,” his head turned quickly to me. “What are you doing here?”

  I took a breath and walked toward him, ready to make my case for sending another group into the war zone. I had prepared a speech, I had listed bullet points explaining in depth my reasoning, and I had even taken a shot of whiskey in order to calm my nerves.

  But standing in front of him in that moment, I clammed up. I needed this too much. I needed an answer. And Reynolds was the one person that could either allow me to see this through, or he could tell me ‘no’. He had the power to take my eighteen months of searching and completely wipe the table clean. If that would be his answer, it was all over.

  I wasn’t ready to hear those words.

  “Hannah?” Reynolds looked at me with worried eyes, which made total sense considering I had been standing there like a mute imbecile.

  “Sir.” I swallowed. “I just wanted to show you something.”

  I rustled through my bag, for a brief second thinking that I forgot the folder, but in a matter of moments, the open file was in his hands. He silently opened
it up, still keeping his wondering eyes locked on mine.

  “What is this?” He questioned without looking down.

  I didn’t say anything, just lowered my eyes to the picture standing on the top of the stack of papers. I thought I’d need to explain what I’d found. I thought I’d need to justify my reasons for tracking him down before work. I thought I was about to be brow beaten for wasting his time.

  But I was so wrong.

  “Charlie?” He set the rest of the file down on a nearby car and stared at the picture with vigor.

  I watched his eyes, his face, and his entire body change as he stared at the picture.

  “When was this taken?” He finally looked up at me, his eyes begging for a positive, hopeful answer.

  “The geotag puts it at sixteen days ago.”

  It was all he needed to hear. My speech, my bullet points, my preparation… they didn’t matter. He was certain that the picture was that of his son, and his instinct was all he desired. I spent the entire morning going through my file with him, showing him the path I believed Charlie’s team was following in order to not be taken prisoner by the insurgents. We followed seventeen months of rebel attacks, from bombings of police stations, hospitals, schools, and entire small villages, to hostage situations and attempted murders of government officials. And we also followed seventeen months of police raids, ending with the arrest of nearly two thousand terrorists. Those could easily have been orchestrated by Charlie’s team without taking credit.