“It’s kind of fun that she speaks Italian to me, and I only speak English. We let our bodies do the talking, know what I’m sayin’?” Mark agreed.
“I know exactly what you’re saying. Sometimes American girls talk too much.”
“On that we agree, my friend,” Mark said as he thumped Jones on the back.
“So, what about tonight?” Jones asked again.
“I’m going to try to find my lady again. If the lady wants to be found, that is.”
“Ah, one of those stories. I know it too well.” Jones was pensive as they continued down the narrow street.
Mark would have been game on any other night. He knew he’d be knocking on her door, and he doubted she’d answer. Just something about how she rushed off told him that.
At dinner, they drank red new wine that was light as punch in color but big in alcohol. The girls showed off what they bought as the men laughed and soaked up the family bond of their brotherhood they would be depending on strongly very soon. No one discussed the fact that they were going overseas in three short weeks. This little trip was partly to bond the Team, but also to complete something Gunny had sparked in all of them.
The old Marine had gotten to know his son Sanouk before he passed away the week of Thanksgiving. Sanouk’s mother even came over from Thailand to tend to Gunny during the last month of his life. Though the former Marine complained, she bathed his shriveled body and changed his bed sheets, and did it as lovingly as if she were tending to a newborn, which in fact Gunny had become.
In the end, they’d all cried when news of his death came to them, just like they did when one of their Team or another branch member fell. In many cases, Gunny was the father some of the guys never really had. He’d driven them home when they were too drunk, and his crusty old gym was a place for former Team guys to rub shoulders with those who carried on in their place. They’d had a party for Sanouk when he arrived, the only one of Gunny’s offspring that littered the world that he actually got to meet. But when Amopep arrived, her quiet beauty and dedication to the wizened old man took their breath away, and they allowed the two of them a reunion beyond anything Gunny had ever expected.
There was no party.
Mark knew it was exactly what Gunny needed, to be reunited with one of the several women he’d married. He’d marry the next one without divorcing any of his previous wives, because he said he believed in marriage, just didn’t believe in divorce. And he wouldn’t have sex with them until the marriage was official. All of the women had been from Southeast Asia. Gunny called himself a serial husband, but everyone knew he was an honorable one. And underneath his tough exterior he had a romantic heart.
Mark watched the faces of his Teammates and their ladies. Even Mia and Fredo shared a laugh over what Fredo was served, thinking they’d ordered him something else.
“What’s this green shit?” Fredo said as he examined his white fish on a bed of sautéed vegetables. Mia leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek, which made Fredo’s eyes bug out.
“I think you’re in danger of becoming a healthy man,” Coop laughed. “Next thing you know, you’ll be ordering tofu and drinking protein shakes.”
Mia was served big red tubes of delicious-smelling pasta ladled with a spicy marinara sauce and covered in cheese.
“That’s more like it,” Fredo announced to the crowd.
“You can have some of mine,” Mia said, and the crowd hushed.
A group of young Russian girls caught Mark’s eye. Rory and Tyler had already started a flirtation. The girls whipped around, looked at the two of them and then quickly turned back to their friends, giggling.
Mark liked that about girls. They could giggle, and it just seemed to lighten the room. He’d liked the way Sophia’s breasts shook when she giggled, especially if she threw her head back. That beautiful, smooth neck, the way her hair went all over the place, all unruly and just-fucked looking. Carefree. Boy, was this an afternoon he’d needed. And here he wanted to make it all complicated by going back for seconds.
He still felt wrapped in the memory of their afternoon together like a warm blanket, and it soothed part of the heartache of knowing he’d never see her again.
But that didn’t mean he’d ever stop trying. He was snagged already.
Chapter 4
‡
THE EMBARKATION PROCEDURE was long and tiring. Mark had seen more orderly operations at a meat packing plant. Groups of people pushed their way through lines that were non-existent, ignoring the gentle urging of cruise ship staff who tried desperately to keep the traffic lanes roped off.
Mark listened to at least a dozen languages, and rarely English, which made this trip something special. That, and the fact that it was the only cruise to the Equator this time of year. The ship was being repositioned from the gentle waters of the Mediterranean to sail around South America, since it was always sunny and summer in some part of the world.
The Russian girls were there, too. Still giggling. Examining their leggings and odd clothes, he realized they were probably part of the on board entertainment.
What a life!
But then there were men who would trade places with him in the killing fields overseas in a heartbeat. Nice to know that people were still out cruising, enjoying themselves, flirting with foreign girls, and having a normal life while they were out there getting shot at and bombed to pieces. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not anything.
He’d go back there and face Dr. Death, and still wear some of the sparkle of their giggles like beads at Mardi Gras, the remembrances of Sophia’s sighs and smooth skin, the pushier tourists trying to board ship first—all of it. He’d take it all in his toolkit, just like he’d take his H&K and his Kimber. He’d use whatever he needed to get through the next four to six months.
The immigration officer who scanned his passport and visa squinted. He was nearly a head shorter than Mark, with island features. Hard, dark eyes bored into him and, without a smile, sized up Mark’s shoulders, glancing sideways at a couple of the other SEALs standing in the line next to him. Mark could tell the man knew who he was. Who they were.
With a curt bow, he presented his papers and passport back and said in unaccented English, “Have a nice day.”
Another security officer grabbed Kyle from behind after he’d made it through the gauntlet of immigration.
“Moshe!” Kyle yelled as he embraced the tall, handsome Israeli. The big guy looked awkward in Kyle’s huge arms for a second before he managed to pull himself away with a huge grin.
“Never thought I’d run into you here in Italy. You’re going on vacation with your lovely wife?” Moshe asked. “You brought the children?”
“Nah, man. Just a little cozy one-on-one with Christy. And I’ve only got one rug rat. Brandon is almost two. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to start him a little brother or sister this trip,” Kyle said and winked.
“Excellent. Lots of time at sea, rocking and rolling. Should make for some good playtime, my friend.”
“Guys, this is Moshe,” Kyle said to the group.
Cooper was next to embrace the Israeli. “You clean up real good, Mosh. I like you better in navy than that sand camo.”
That made the big security officer blush.
“This is Fredo, you remember?”
“Ah, yes, the wrestler.”
“Mark here, he’s newer. Along with our young Lieutenant Jones, and Nick. Back there ogling the girls are Tyler and Rory.”
Moshe shook their hands. Cooper threw his arm over Sanouk’s shoulders. “And this here is our friend Sanouk, our bud Gunny’s son. Came all the way from Thailand.”
“Nice to meet you, son,” the Israeli said.
They all left out the part about spreading Gunny’s ashes at sea. That was a strictly need-to-know factoid. They had it mixed with the strongest potpourri they could find so they could get it through security. Kyle had told Mark he’d hoped Gunny would forgive him eventually.
“So you’re doing security on cruise ships now?”
“It’s what I do.” Moshe nodded.
“How’s the family?”
“She took the kids and moved to New York, my friend, so I need to do a little bit of wandering at sea, if you know what I mean. This is a good job when you no longer have a family to come home to.”
Mark was saddened by what the Israeli told them. It happened to Team guys all the time. Coming home to a pregnant wife in love with someone else. He could never understand why someone would give up on a guy when he was putting his life on the line somewhere in a shithole of a place, but it happened. If Kyle knew him, then they’d worked together, trained together. Been there for each other, and would always be brothers.
“Well, we’ll try to distract you a bit, but not too much, okay?”
Someone from the line of tourists behind them started complaining, so Moshe stepped back, gesturing for them to go forward to embarkation.
Looking over the railing while waiting for their turn with the ridiculous photographers—someone with a whale costume and a clown-like sailor girl in pigtails and freckles—Mark watched the containers loading. Large white storage bins were loaded by forklift. Several pallets of water bottles wrapped together in plastic shrink-wrap were loaded. One of them leaked from underneath and, as it landed on the conveyor belt to the hull of the ship, gushed liquid all over the area.
Standing above the ant-like activity, Mark was glad to see that the actual cruise preparations were more organized than the boarding process.
Christy and the girls posed for pictures, but all the Team guys passed. They kept their shades on the whole time, and knew they would need to do it for most of the cruise.
It didn’t matter how mopey the little clown sailor was, the answer was still no.
They had booked cabins adjacent each other, all with large balconies off the aft. They dodged bags left in hallways as porters delivered to rooms and passengers found their bearings. They found their cabins at the end of the hall. Fredo and Jones shared a cabin, Mark and Sanouk were in the one next door, which adjoined, and shared a balcony. Next to them rounded out the rest of the bachelor group, Tyler Gray and Rory Kennedy. Mia was with one of Christy’s friends from San Francisco at the other end, with Kyle and Christy, Nick and Devon, Coop and Libby, and Armando and Gina between the two groups of singles.
Mark opened the cabin door and saw the baggage for all four of them had already arrived. Both he and Jones checked over contents. They’d each managed to bring along a sidearm, dismantled and tucked into several compartments. Though highly dangerous and illegal as hell, they’d all automatically travel packing for the rest of their lives.
“How’d your evening turn out last night, Jones?” Mark asked.
The big SEAL shrugged. “I’m glad I didn’t convince you to go. She was a no-show. The area she had me meet her was none too pretty, either.”
“Maybe I should have come.” Mark thought about both of them on different missions. He’ rang Sophia’s little buzzer so many times his finger got sore. There wasn’t a light on upstairs, so he figured she’d gone out for the night.
And that thought was okay. Really, it was the way it should be.
He’d heard Jones was unlucky, which was odd, because the guy was built like a sprinter, with powerful arms and shoulders, and thighs so huge he had to have his dress pants custom made. And he was a gentleman, too.
“You suppose they was setting you up for a robbery, took one look at you and decided wasting ten of their own for probably what little cash you had wasn’t worth it?” Mark teased.
Jones chuckled. “Thought about that. Really did. ’Cause she knew I was leaving on the cruise today. But hey, who walks around with a wad of cash all the time these days?”
Then they both looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Christy,” meaning the wife of their LPO. With an upper six-figure income, she was a clotheshorse, never saw a designer bag she didn’t have to own and loved jewelry.
They’d plan to have drinks up top for castoff, and when Mark heard the sharp intercom system blurt out instructions in Italian that was nothing like what his body had heard yesterday, he knew the ship was about to leave port.
Checking outside their cabin door, they laughed to see the rest of the gang had the same thought. The guys followed each other up to Deck 12 to watch Savona sink out of sight.
Nursing draft beers, they stood side by side along the flat, white railing that ran alongside the deck overlooking the blue and white churning wake, while Kyle led them in some personal thoughts.
“Well, gents, we’re all here, most of Gunny’s boys. A few more couldn’t come, but all the important people are here. Here’s to Gunny,” Kyle said and raised his glass.
“To Gunny,” came the salute followed by thirsty gulps of the frothy amber liquid. Sanouk was included and had toasted his father as well, but he quickly turned away from them, but not before Mark saw his eyes tear up. He knew exactly how the kid felt. Meeting his dad so close to the time of his death, the kid hadn’t been able to spend nearly as much time as he wanted getting to know his dad.
Mark stepped next to Sanouk and put his arm around the kid’s bony shoulders. “Your dad is with us, son. He always will be.”
Mark saw Sanouk’s chin wrinkle, and then bravely stiffen as he nodded, but kept staring down at his shoes.
“I wished I’d known Sophie ten years ago. We’d have had some fun.”
Sanouk was stoic, so Mark removed his arm, not wanting to intrude on the boy’s private thoughts.
The boy spoke abruptly. “My mother, she told me to come. She had a kind of vision. She said my father was calling to me. Said he wanted to meet me.”
“That’s nice. I’m sure she must have loved him,” Mark said softly.
The ship started to pull away from port. He felt the loss and the separation all over again. Sophie gone. Sophia lost forever in his dreams. He couldn’t do anything about either one of them.
“She loves him still. She told me that. She’s never loved any other. He was her first, and she gave her heart to him, and it never belonged to any other man. Even when she married my step-dad.”
Mark wondered what kind of wonderful guy would marry her anyway, knowing he had stepped into the shoes of another man who couldn’t carry out the mission. Gunny had the capacity to love, all right. He had just lacked the capacity to maintain.
“She ever tell him?” Mark asked.
“I’m not sure she had to. I think she showed him when she took care of him. She is that way. Right after my Thai father died, she started reading about America. Started taking English lessons, inquiring about positions, even thought about doing a cruise ship. We had little money, but somehow she needed to come back to him. And he never even wrote her one letter.”
Sanouk’s brown eyes searched Mark’s.
“Not one.”
Mark looked back at the town that was beginning to look like a scale model.
“That’s the way of it, Sanouk.”
“What?”
“Love. It’s crazy. Makes no sense. It drives you. It comes back like a homing beacon and makes you right. Makes you do the right thing. In the end, Gunny got what he deserved, a woman who had given her heart to him, even though he couldn’t reciprocate. She did the right thing by you…marrying and helping get you raised right so you could have a life she couldn’t have. She did that because she loved you. But she also loved the part of Gunny that is inside you. That’s partly why she did it, I think.”
Sanouk nodded. He could see the kid was going to take that gym of Gunny’s, and, if they could get the proper strings pulled, he and his mother would make it something totally different than the old, crusty place they’d liked to hang out in. But he knew they wouldn’t touch the equipment, or the name. It would always be G
unny’s.
And any SEAL or man or woman who served their country in uniform would always be welcome there too. One family. Many colors. Many countries.
But one pretty fuckin’ awesome family.
Chapter 5
‡
AT DINNER, MARK brought his little black book, hoping to find an Italian waiter who could translate what Sophia had written for him. He sat in the middle of the long table that had been provided for them. The maître d’ came by, followed by a sommelier to announce the wine selections and the various meal packages available. Mark discovered the sommelier was Italian.
“Please, would you help me?” he asked the older gentleman.
“Si, si, si.”
“A friend wrote this for me, and I wondered if you would translate it for me.”
The heavyset sommelier put on his glasses and held Mark’s black book up to his face and then snatched it away. “Pornographic!” He tried to hand it back to Mark.
“No, no. I really want to know what it says.”
“This is not for polite company,” the gentleman said, eyeing the ladies in the group.
“What the fuck have you done, Marky Mark?” Kyle demanded.
“I got this note and I just hoped he would translate it for me.”
And now he really wanted to know what it said. Nearly everyone was looking expectantly at the sommelier, not wanting to be deprived of some juicy fun.
“Please, sir,” Kyle began in his velvet tongue. “Don’t worry about offending anyone. We are all very good friends.”
“And I’m sure nothing you could say would be considered pornographic to this crowd,” Nick chimed in. The only two people who weren’t paying rapt attention were Armando and Gina. It was a sure bet they wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to have dinner.
Kyle followed the sommelier’s gaze and noticed some hot and heavy going on at that end of the table. “Armani!” he hissed.
Armando surfaced quickly, looking around, dazed, and noticed the LT’s frown.
Cruisin' for a SEAL Page 3