by Cliff Happy
In the distance, she could make out the lights around the Seawolf. But the submarine no longer held the allure for her it once had. The price to serve was too high. Her right hand pulled a folded handkerchief from her pocket. It was the handkerchief he’d given her that night on the sail to dry her tears. She held it to her nose, breathing in his essence once more, and feeling the stabbing pain of loss. She loved him. No matter what he said to her, she still loved him. What was worse, she was quite certain that for as long as she lived, she would never love another.
A few cars passed behind her as she stood against the security fence looking out at the submarines tugging gently at their mooring lines. She couldn’t help but second guess herself, wondering if she’d scared him off somehow. Had she been too abrupt? Should she have waited until they were off the Seawolf? Did he truly have no feelings for her? She looked across the waves at the submarine resting peacefully. The thought of returning to the Seawolf without him on board caused the tears to threaten again. She wiped them away on her sleeve.
“Hey, good looking!” Kristen heard someone from a car filled with sailors call to her as they pulled up a few yards behind her at the curb. “You need a ride?”
Kristen turned, shook her head, and then looked back out at the wharf. She stared at the water, feeling the chill wind trying to bite through her leather flight jacket. She could hear the wind whipping through the leaves of some low bushes and a seagull call. Then she heard the throaty rumble of a motorcycle approaching. She didn’t turn her head at the sound, her grief-stricken thoughts not registering the deep-throated grumble. But Kristen became aware of it as she heard it slow and come to a stop behind her. For a moment she allowed the foolish, stupid little girl within her the fantasy, imagining he was behind her. Kristen waited for the latest sailor to offer her a ride, but after several seconds, she still heard nothing more.
Kristen turned slowly, not daring to hope. Then she saw Brodie seated on the back of the motorcycle. His helmet hung from the handlebars and his left leg was cocked over the seat. He was wearing his riding leathers with jeans, boots, and a sweater under his leather jacket. His thick, beautifully unruly hair was blowing in the wind, beckoning her fingers to try and tame it. Kristen caught her breath, not entirely certain she wasn’t hallucinating.
“You’re a hard person to find, Lieutenant,” Brodie broke the silence softly.
“Sir?” Kristen asked numbly.
“I’ve been riding all over the base for the last five hours. I was beginning to think I’d never find you,” he told her honestly.
She stepped toward him tentatively. “Why…” Her voice cracked, and she paused to clear her throat, struggling to control her emotions. “Why would you want to find me?”
“Well,” he shrugged easily, “I thought I might ask you a couple of questions.”
“Okay.” She stopped barely a foot from him. “You found me.”
Kristen felt his eyes on her once more. But this time it was different. Looking into his eyes, she could feel what she’d never been certain of before. The utter loneliness she’d felt since their last meeting faded. Without him saying a word, she knew she’d been right. The mask of command was gone. There were no more regulations standing between them. No more expectations of professionalism.
The cold wind warmed slightly.
“Would you like a ride, Kris?” he queried as his eyes held her gaze and reflected what she felt.
“Are you sure?” she asked, unable to bear it if he wasn’t. “Because if you aren’t…”
Brodie nodded firmly. “I’m sure,” he told her honestly. “I don’t think I was willing to admit it to myself until today when I knew I’d probably never see you again.”
“But…” she hesitated, afraid now to take a chance after their conversation in the torpedo room. “But, I thought you said…”
“I couldn’t let you resign, Kris,” he told her simply. “You have your whole career ahead of you. Mine is over.”
“But, you could be an admiral,” Kristen reminded him.
“I don’t want to be an admiral,” Brodie told her sincerely. “I never did. And now, after twenty years of giving it all to the Navy, all I want is you.”
Kristen felt her lip quiver slightly as she stepped forward. She took his offered hand and slipped up behind him on the bike. Brodie handed her a helmet. She wiped away a few tears on the back of his jacket and then pulled on the helmet. She then slipped her arms around him, pulling her body close to him and letting the tears of joy fall as they may.
“What was the other question?” she asked him lovingly.
“Where to?” Brodie responded as he balanced the bike and prepared to start it.
She kissed the back of his neck, nestled against him, and offered in a hoarse whisper, “How about wherever life takes us?”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.”
Epilogue
Puget Sound, Twelve Years Later
“Good morning, Captain Brodie,” Ensign Tara Neal reported as she came up on the bridge to relieve the current lookouts so they could go below and get some lunch before the galley closed.
Her captain offered a reassuring nod in greeting. The captain was seated on the sail behind the bridge and looking toward the south as they moved past the last point of land before clearing Puget Sound and entering the broad blue Pacific.
Tara was one of three female officers on board the USS California, the newest SSBN in the American arsenal. Although a bit intimidated by the living legend seated on the sail, she counted herself fortunate to have gotten assigned to the California. Any officer who hoped to one day gain a submarine command of their own fought tooth and nail to be assigned to the California for one reason: a stamp of approval from the paragon of the submarine forces who currently commanded the California would all but guarantee a fast track to command.
Tara recalled her first meeting with the skipper in the captain’s stateroom when she’d reported aboard, literally trembling with nervous energy. The captain’s stateroom walls were covered with numerous pictures of skydiving, sailing, motorcycle riding, fishing expeditions, camping, and family vacations from seemingly everywhere. Each picture included the captain and the man she assumed was the captain’s husband. He had thick, slightly graying hair that appeared to always be blowing in the wind, and many of the pictures also included a pair of young boys.
But, the most interesting picture had been one of the captain taken years earlier in front of the old USS Seawolf. The picture showed the captain holding up a bulletproof vest with a pair of Navy SEALs beside her. She’d heard rumors of the captain’s past exploits, and Tara knew her captain had a rather impressive list of decorations including a Navy Cross from one of her clandestine missions.
“What’s the latest project, Skipper?” The Chief of the Boat, Master Chief Gameroz asked from where he sat perched beside the captain.
The captain looked through her binoculars at a house nestled high on the bluff. Mount Olympus formed the backdrop for the grey cottage-style home overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As she looked, a broad smile crossed her face. “Oh, you know, Sean,” she replied. “It’s supposed to be a surprise, COB.”
“I bet it’s a game room,” Gameroz suggested.
“Nope,” she answered. “He built one during our last patrol.”
“What is it, COB?” Tara asked only aware of rumors about her legendary captain’s exploits and not privy to her personal life.
Gameroz pointed toward the house on the bluff. Tara raised her twenty-power binoculars and saw the beautiful home, complete with a white picket fence. She followed the steps down to the beginnings of a dock where a man, with wild flowing hair, stood. Beside him, two boys, one perhaps ten and the other a couple of years younger, stood and waved at the passing submarine. The man leaned calmly against the railing, a stack of lumber behind him and a wooden tool box at his feet with hammers and handsaws visible. “The captain’s husband likes to surprise her with new additions to their home af
ter every patrol,” the no nonsense, hard-as-nails Chief of the Boat explained.
“It damn well better not be another nursery,” the captain replied with a playful smile.
Tara glanced back at her captain, who was usually a rock of self-control. She then saw the captain tear up momentarily as she put her fingers to her lips and waved the two boys and the man a kiss. Tara glanced back, looking through her binoculars to see the two boys still waving goodbye as the man returned the kiss across the waves.
The End
Books by Cliff Happy
The Friends From Damascus Series
Friends from Damascus
The Pelindaba Conspiracy
Hunter of Gunmen
The Merchant of Death
Absence of the Normal (Coming Summer 2013)
The Seawolf Series
Seawolf: Mask of Command
Seawolf End Game
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Friends From Damascus
Book 1 in the Friends from Damascus series
Haunted by a past she can’t escape, CIA’s top assassin Talia Cavalieri is facing her most dangerous assignment to date. She must neutralize an international team of eight special ops commandos. Known simply as the friends from Damascus, the rogue unit continues to elude her on a world-wide chase. Talia uses every trick in her considerable arsenal before the final showdown. When things get personal, she must make a decision that promises to change her life forever.
Read an Excerpt
The Ural Mountains, Russia
The military convoy weaved its way up the narrow mountain pass. Sheer, rocky slopes dominated both sides of the road as the trucks labored up the steep grade. Major Andre Popov had made the trip a hundred times—always the same route, always the same number of vehicles, always the same number of security troops. He’d made the long, boring trip so many times he found himself slumbering in the cab of the lead truck.
“Complacency kills,” Popov had once told his men, and it certainly did in his case. As his driver shouted in sudden alarm, Popov managed to open his eyes long enough to see the streaking RPG round just before it struck his truck. Popov and half of his fifteen men in the vehicle were killed instantly.
More rocket propelled grenades rained down on the trucks loaded with Russian security troops as withering fire raked across the vehicles, finishing the job. The soldiers who managed to escape the fiery trucks were cut down in a well-prepared crossfire by the Chechen rebels hidden among the rocks on both sides of the road.
The three vehicles in the middle of the seven truck convoy were hardly touched. But with the road in front and behind now completely blocked with burning troop transports, the large tractor-trailers had nowhere to go and stopped. The drivers were civilians who simply drove the trucks, and realizing what was happening, they saw no point in resisting, hoping to be spared the fate of Popov and his security troops.
The leader of the rebel force opened one of the sealed containers in the rear of the lead tractor-trailer to verify its contents. He saw the single stainless steel pressurized canister surrounded in a cocoon of foam. The warnings on the canister made clear what it contained. The thirty nerve gas canisters the convoy had been carrying were just the latest in a series of shipments to a destruction facility high in the mountains and far away from a population center. The guerillas handling the cases wore gas masks in hopes of protecting themselves in the event of an accident. But the leader of the rebels knew better and wore no mask. If someone was careless, and one of the canisters ruptured, no gas mask would protect them from the topical nerve agent. Less than five micro liters on the skin would be enough to kill and there was no antidote.
“Well?” The Chechen leader heard a familiar voice.
He looked down from the bed of the truck and saw the American mercenary who’d helped plan the operation. The American—whom the Chechen guerrillas knew as “Andric”—had a chunk of his left ear lobe missing, and his nose looked like someone had smashed it with a meat cleaver some years earlier. He’d also noted that when it got cold, the scar-faced American limped slightly. The rebel leader knew “Andric” was little more than a well-paid mercenary, but he’d been instrumental in every step of the planning for the operation as well as the training of the guerrilla force.
“They are all here,” the Chechen leader admitted, a bit surprised.
“Good.” Andric was dressed like the guerillas, but instead of an assault rifle he carried just a pistol on his side and a double-edged commando knife in his boot. Of course, the Chechen leader thought, the American needed no weapon. He’d seen him kill a Russian intelligence agent who’d almost uncovered their operation when it was still in the planning stage. The American had killed the agent with his bare hands, striking with such cold efficiency the Chechen leader would hardly have believed it possible.
“Tell your men to finish off the drivers, and get those wrecks out of the way.” The American glanced at a stop watch around his neck. “I want to be rolling in fifteen minutes.”
“The drivers aren’t soldiers,” the Chechen leader pointed out. “They are civilians.”
Andric nodded in understanding. But the Chechen saw the man’s lifeless eyes turn to the helpless men in the ditch. As if to make his point, the American walked over to the ditch where the three drivers were down on their knees in the snow with their hands on their heads. Without a hint of pity or compassion, he drew the automatic pistol at his side, racked the slide, and shot all three in the head as they pleaded for their lives.
The Chechen leader watched in shock from the back of the truck. He hated the Russian Army for all the devastation they had brought to his people, but even he had not yet brought himself to be so ruthless. He was about to speak but the scarred face turned toward him, the eyes angry.
“Now, either get your men off their dead asses, or I’ll find someone who will!”
Eleven minutes later, the last truck filled with deadly nerve gas was turned around and headed back down the mountain.
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The Pelindaba Conspiracy
Book 2 in the Friends from Damascus series
Former Mossad operative Gideon Meltzer: Founding member of Friends from Damascus. To eliminate extremists bent on destruction, this no-nonsense terrorist hunter and his crack black-ops team will go anywhere and risk anything. The daring theft of highly enriched uranium by religious fanatics forces Gideon’s team to partner with an unlikely ally: a beautiful, blind, Persian computer genius named Alaleh Koyunlu. On the run from both the intelligence agencies who think she orchestrated the theft and the terrorists who set her up to take the fall, she leads the team on a world-wide hunt for the missing material. With the clock ticking and millions of lives on the line, they’ll stop at nothing to bring down their prey.
Read an Excerpt
Pelindaba Nuclear Research Facility, South Africa
He had feared rain.
The forecast for the evening called for showers, but the front moving through hadn’t produced any, and Farid Raad could see a few stars poking through the cloud-filled sky. The last two nights his team had been forced to cancel their plans because of weather. His men had trained to a razor’s edge. They were ready. Hiding in a small Pretoria warehouse for nearly a week, then delaying the operation for forty-eight hours had affected their mental preparation. They’d had too much time on their hands contemplating exactly what their mission meant: both its importance and the fate that awaited them once inside the facility.
The team was handpicked from thousands of believers. All sixteen members had extensive experience fighting the American-led infidels that overran Afghanistan. They’d trained in Malaysia, deep in the jungle at an aging and long-abandoned airfield from World War II.
All of the men were skilled with small arms before being considered for the great honor of joining Farid’s team. Even so, they’d spent nearly a month on nothing but wea
pons training. They’d fired tens of thousands of rounds at targets placed along the edge of the jungle airstrip, literally cutting trees down with a hailstorm of machinegun, assault rifle, and pistol bullets, as well as rocket propelled grenades. Even the New Zealand mercenary who’d trained them admitted Farid and his men were “ready for anything.”
A three-dimensional model of the target had been prepared in an army surplus tent. Then, after hours of fine-tuning the plan, rehearsals had been conducted on a full-scale mockup constructed on the airstrip using metal stakes and white engineering tape. All the work was done at night, and although it was believed the American spy satellites wouldn’t notice the slender engineering tape on the field, Farid had taken the precaution of removing the tape after every practice to avoid discovery of their activities. They’d trained each night for over a month, meticulously going through every possible detail. Breaching teams had been designated, rocket teams, snipers, demolitions… they’d worked tirelessly until every man could fulfill his duty blindfolded.
Infiltration into South Africa from Zimbabwe had been potentially hazardous, but the Zimbabwean contact took them across the border without any trouble. It wasn’t until they reached Pretoria that Farid’s men learned of their target. Even now, as they saw their objective brilliantly lit before them, Farid was still the only member of the elite force who knew the full extent of their mission.
He checked the luminous dial on his watch.
It was time.
Farid turned to his comrades lying hidden around him in the tall grass. He pointed toward the breaching team. These men had received additional training and were equipped with everything they would need to safely infiltrate the compound.