Four days ago, before the helo crash, he got a call like that from Alyssa. And for five minutes while he spoke to her, he could breathe again. She had been safe, and he knew it.
For those five minutes.
It ended far too quickly, and as soon as he hung up the phone the anxiety came screaming back.
Alyssa had been scheduled to be away for just a short time. SEALs, however, often went out for months. Sam absolutely couldn’t imagine living like this for more than a few weeks.
“Jules said it would be a while before he called again,” Meg gently reminded him.
“Have you tried cleaning the refrigerator?” Savannah suggested. “I’ve found it helps a little if you just keep moving.”
Sam sat down, wearily rubbing his forehead. Jesus, his head ached. “I did the fridge the night Alyssa’s flight left,” he said on an exhale. “Then, in the morning, I took an axe, went out in the yard and removed this old stump we’d been talking about getting rid of.” He’d chopped the crap out of it in about four hours.
“I usually stick to cleaning out closets.” Savannah was impressed. “I’ve never tried anything that involves an axe.”
“I have,” Meg said dryly. “Don’t bother. It doesn’t help.”
Nothing helped.
“If you want,” Savannah suggested, “we could help you organize your closets. It’ll keep you busy. And you’ll also win big bonus points when Alyssa comes back.”
When Alyssa comes back. They were sitting there, all three of them, pretending that if Alyssa came back wasn’t what she really meant.
God, he hated this. But the alternative was sitting in his kitchen by himself. Or trying to fool Haley into thinking everything was all right, and sneaking into the bedroom every ten minutes to turn on CNN, to see if there was any new information that made it to the cable news station first.
So he told Savannah, “I did the closets on the second night. It took a while, but I wasn’t going to sleep, so . . .”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Meg asked, clearly working to keep the conversation going. “Just how much junk two people can accumulate in a short amount of time?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I found this old hat—a baseball cap—that I thought I lost years ago and—” He broke off. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry, I can’t stand it. I’m just sitting here, so freaking helpless—I can’t do a thing to help her. Even if I got on a plane . . .” It would take him at least forty-eight hours to get to Ikrimah. He closed his eyes. “Right now, she could be dying. Right now. Right now. And I can’t help her.”
Meg took his hand. “I know,” she said quietly. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
Sam looked at her, and he knew that she knew exactly what he was feeling. “How many times have you done this?” he asked.
“Thought John might not be coming home?” she clarified. She didn’t wait for him to respond. “There’ve been, oh, I guess three or four times somewhat similar to this situation. But, you know, every time he’s out there and there’s some news report about a helicopter crash or a suicide bomber or . . .” She laughed as she shook her head. “Believe me, there’s a lot of prayer involved when you’re married to a SEAL.”
“And a lot of really clean refrigerators,” Savannah added.
“Pristine closets.”
“Well-gardened yards . . .”
“You see, John knows where he is when he’s on an op,” Meg told Sam. “He knows when he’s safe and when he’s at risk. But all I know is he’s somewhere dangerous and . . .” She shrugged. “It sucks.”
No kidding. “I had no idea,” Sam admitted. “Before this, I just . . .” He shook his head. When he’d gone wheels-up with the team he’d understood that it was no picnic for the wives, girlfriends, and significant others they left behind. But he’d had no clue just how awful it could be.
Joan appeared in the doorway, cordless phone in her hands. “That was Mike,” she told them. “The Team’s training exercise’ll be over in an hour. He and John and Ken’ll bring dinner when they come.”
The phone rang again, and Joan retreated toward the living room. “Starrett and Locke residence,” Sam heard her say. But then she gasped. “Oh, my God!”
Sam was up and out of his chair, and he nearly collided with her as she came racing back into the kitchen, thrusting the phone at him.
“Jules,” he said as he clasped it to his ear. Please God, let this be good news. “What’s the word?”
“It’s not Jules,” Joan said, but he waved for her to be quiet, because all he could hear was static, and then . . .
“Sam, it’s me—I’m all right,” Alyssa said—beautiful, wonderful, vibrant, and so-very-alive Alyssa—her voice suddenly clear as day.
“It’s Lys,” Joan announced, which was good because try as he might, Sam couldn’t get the words out.
“Ah, Jesus, thank you, God,” was all he could manage, and even that was little more than a whisper.
Meg and Savannah both leapt to their feet. Meg pulled one of the kitchen chairs behind him, and Savannah tugged him back into it, Joan pushing his head down between his knees—as if they thought he might actually faint.
“Hey!” But, shit, he was dizzy and on the verge of falling out of the chair, so maybe they were onto something there. But before he could thank them, they all left, hurrying out into the backyard to give him privacy.
“The SAS came in and . . . Gordon MacKenzie, remember him?” Alyssa asked him. “His team pulled us out. He remembers you—he wants to know what you think of his SAS boys now.”
Gordon MacKenzie . . . ?
“Gordie told me his SAS team did some training exercises with SEAL Team Sixteen, back a few years,” Alyssa continued as Sam desperately tried to regain his equilibrium. “He said they learned a lot from you—that you used to rate them on a scale from one to ten. But you never gave them anything higher than an eight.”
Yeah, he remembered that. MacKenzie had gotten in his face and accused him of being a hard-nosed asshole. Actually arsehole was what he’d said in his quaint Scottish accent. Sam had countered by standing his ground and saying he’d give them a ten when they fucking deserved a ten. And no sooner. Maybe they’d earn it next year, he’d told MacKenzie when the exercise had ended.
“Sam, are you still there? Can you hear me?” Alyssa was saying through the phone.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yes. Lys, are you really all right?” Frickin’ Gordie MacKenzie’s team had helped save Alyssa’s life. Next time he saw the dour bastard, he’d kiss him on the mouth. “Where are you?”
“The helo just landed on an aircraft carrier,” she said. “We’re safe.” She sounded exhausted, and she exhaled hard. “Those of us who made it out alive.”
“Are you hurt?” he asked, heart in his throat.
“Just a little tired,” she told him—she always had been the queen of understatement. “Well, yeah, okay, I could use a few stitches—just a few, don’t get upset, I’m fine. We’re pretty dehydrated, though. They’ve got us all on IV drips.”
“I am so freaking glad to hear your voice,” he told her, and she laughed. “You have no idea . . .”
“Yeah,” she said. “Actually, I do. Although, don’t be jealous. I have to admit, as glad as I am to talk to you, I was even more glad to hear Gordie MacKenzie’s voice this morning.”
No kidding. “Tell Gordie that I love him,” Sam said.
Alyssa laughed again. “Those aren’t the three little words he’s longing to hear from you, Sam. Seriously, what they did was . . . It was remarkably courageous. We were trapped and . . . I honestly didn’t think anyone was coming for us—that anyone would be able to . . . I thought . . . It was bad,” she said quietly.
Sam had to put his head back down between his knees. Alyssa, who never gave up, who wouldn’t dream of quitting, had honestly thought she wasn’t going to survive.
“He doesn’t need me to give him a ten,” Sam told her. “He knows.”
“Still
. . .” There was a storm of static. “. . . ignals fading—I have to go. Sam—”
“I love you,” Sam told her. Thank God, thank God, thank God . . .
“I know.” Alyssa’s voice was fading in and out, but he could still make out her words. “There was a point where it would have been easier to, you know, just . . . have it over and done, but . . .”
“Thank you,” he said, hoping she could still hear him. “For not giving up.”
“How could I?” She sounded as if she were a million miles away. “You were with me, you know. Every minute. I could feel you by my side.” Sam could just barely hear her laughter over the static. “Ready to give me shit if I so much as faltered. Gordie told me you have a permanent spot on his shoulder, too—whispering into his ear. And here you thought you were taking it easy, sitting around the kitchen with your feet up.”
Taking it easy. She had no idea.
“I love you,” he heard her say right before his phone beeped.
He looked at it and, yeah, the signal was gone.
Sitting around the kitchen . . . He’d been on dozens of dangerous missions. He’d risked his life more times than he could count.
None of it had been as hard as the past few hours.
Sam dialed Jules Cassidy’s phone number, left a brief message. “Alyssa called. She’s all right.”
Through the kitchen window he could see Meg and Joan and Savannah out in the backyard with Haley and the other girls.
Sam punched Johnny Nilsson’s cell number into his phone. The SEAL lieutenant was still out on a training exercise, so he left a voice mail. “Alyssa’s safe—I just got off the phone with her. But that’s not the only reason I’m calling. I think it would be smart if you brought your wife an armload of flowers when you came home,” he told his friend. “Tell Mike and Kenny, too. Not just tonight, but every night for the rest of your lives.”
It was already a half hour past Haley’s bedtime when Sam sat on the edge of her bed. He’d promised she could watch a little bit of the football game with him, only it had started later than he’d thought.
“You want Duck or Hippo in there with you tonight?” His daughter frowned, and he quickly added, “Or both, on account of it being a special occasion.”
“Because Alyssa’s okay?” Haley asked.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling into her anxious blue eyes. “And because she’ll be home the same day as your mama.”
Haley nodded, taking that in. “Amy said we had to stay outside in case you wanted to cry and say bad words,” she told him. “Did you?”
“I think I said a few,” Sam admitted. “And, yeah, I might’ve cried a little.”
Haley nodded, so seriously. “If you want, I could put my fingers in my ears, like when the fire truck goes by.”
Sam struggled to understand. “You mean . . . so you won’t have to hear me cry? Haley, I’m not going to—”
“In case you say more bad words,” she explained.
“I won’t,” he told her, struggling now not to laugh. “How about giving me a hug and kiss good night, Cookie Monster?”
“Sometimes there’s nothing to do but have a good ol’ cry,” she said, repeating his words from the night before. “If you want, I could cry, too.”
“No.” Sam smoothed back her hair and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, but no.” He tucked both Duck and Hippo in with her.
“If you want,” Haley suggested, clinging to his fingers, “I could hold your hand. Keep you company until you fall asleep. I’m not very tired.”
But her eyes were all but rolling back in her head. Amy had done quite a job, running Haley back and forth across the yard playing Tag and Red Light Green Light and Follow the Leader and other games Sam didn’t even know the names of.
He’d keep that in mind tomorrow. Maybe they’d take a ride over to Coronado, buy a kite, and run up and down the beach a few thousand times.
“I love you, Haley,” he whispered, but she was already asleep.
Sam left her door open a crack and went into the living room, where he turned on the TV and watched the football game right to the bitter end.
He then watched the news, where the anchors solemnly reported that five members of Eugene Ryan’s delegation to Kazbekistan had died when their helo was shot down.
Five families had gotten the kind of phone call he’d been dreading. They had been given the message Meg and Savannah and all of the other wives of the SEALs in Team Sixteen prayed they’d never receive.
Their husband, wife, son, or daughter was never coming home.
It was entirely possible that any tears that Sam may have shed were the result of the Cowboys losing the game.
But probably not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target Page 56