Code Word

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  Quinn and Tristan searched the rooms across from them, Brent holding his position in the hall. The whimpering grew louder as they continued forward. Jay touched his ear and signaled to Seth before pointing to the room where the sound had originated.

  Seth nodded and moved into position. Using the wall as a shield, Jay pushed the door open. Then he and Seth entered in tandem, their weapons drawn as they stormed in. Three children ranging in age from six to ten were huddled with a woman in the corner. Seth spoke to them in Arabic while Jay checked the room for explosives or weapons.

  He spoke quietly into his headset. “This room is clear, but we’ve got prisoners. Where are we holding them?”

  Before Brent could answer, gunfire sparked in the hall. Jay pressed up against the wall by the doorway. “Status?”

  “We’ve got a shooter two doors down on the right,” Brent told him. “Give us some cover fire. He’s got us pinned down. And Seth, secure the prisoners. We’ll come back for them.”

  Seth quickly tied up the woman and the three children to the low-lying wooden bedpost. Jay didn’t have to look to sense their fear. He could smell it. Seth’s face held a look of distaste as he completed the unwelcome task, ensuring that the woman and children would stay safely out of the battle zone.

  As soon as Seth moved into position, Jay squatted down and then swung his weapon into the hallway, sending off two quick bursts. The gunman returned fire, bullets impacting the wall and doorframe.

  Jay fired again, his shots quickly followed by his teammates’ rounds. The minutes drew out, neither side able to gain an advantage.

  “I’ve had about enough of this,” Seth grumbled beside Jay.

  Brent’s voice was clipped. “Quinn and Tristan, clear the roof. See if you can reach the window and flush him out from the other side.”

  “You got it.” Quinn’s impatience hummed through the headset.

  Several more minutes passed, the bursts of gunfire growing shorter as their target presumably began conserving his ammunition. Finally, Tristan’s western drawl told them what they wanted to hear. “We’re in position. Tell us when.”

  Seth shifted beside Jay. Brent squatted in the doorway across from them and held up his hand, signaling the countdown with his fingers. When he reached one, he gave the order to Tristan and Quinn. “Now!”

  Gunfire and the sound of shattering glass vibrated through the air. A moment later, Quinn’s voice came through the headset. “Shooter is down.”

  They could hear through their headsets that another squad was working their way through the hall parallel to them and encountering heavy resistance.

  “Quinn, stay with the prisoners. Tristan, search these rooms for intel,” Brent ordered. “Jay and Seth, let’s move. We’ll see if we can give these guys some help.”

  Jay and Brent took the lead, and Seth fell in behind them. They reached the end of the hall, where they could see two gunmen positioned between the two doors. One guard was already down, but the other was rapidly shooting bullets toward the adjoining hall. Brent shot twice, taking out the second guard.

  Four members of the other squad emerged from the hall opposite them. Through hand signals, the other squad prepared to charge the room behind the closed door to the left. The Saint Squad positioned themselves to storm the one on the right. Brent held up a hand to hold everyone in position and nodded to Seth. Seth shouted out in Pashto then repeated himself in rapid Arabic, and again in Urdu.

  A chance to surrender. They were ordered to give the man in charge that chance despite his horrific crimes against the United States and her citizens. Angry voices shouted back. Jay looked to Seth inquisitively for a translation. Seth shook his head in response, and bullets sprayed at both doors to punctuate the meaning. They weren’t surrendering.

  Brent counted down on his fingers before one of the other SEALs and Seth kicked in the two doors in unison. Bullets immediately sprayed toward them. Seth stepped out of the line of fire and held up four fingers indicating the number of targets inside. Brent motioned to Seth and Jay, indicating the plan of action.

  “We got him!” A voice shouted from the other room. Jay didn’t have time to wonder if the him was the man they had come for. His focus was entirely on the gunfire still sparking toward him and his squad.

  When Brent gave the signal, the three members of the Saint Squad moved as one. Two armed men were to the right of the door, and another man stood behind them. The moment the SEALs entered the room, Brent fired at the figure on the right as Seth took out the one on the left.

  Jay’s eyes swept the sparsely furnished bedroom to see only one man still standing, his hands free of any weapons. A woman sat a few feet away, her expression an odd combination of shock and indignation. Seth shouted out in Arabic once more, another offer to surrender.

  The man in front of them shook his head and reached down for a weapon that had fallen to the floor.

  Jay pulled his trigger as the woman screamed and jumped in front of the man, directly into his line of fire. Jay saw the sheer hatred in her eyes as his bullets struck her body. A split second later, Brent fired his weapon and ended the man’s life.

  “Clear the room,” Brent ordered Seth and Jay. Brent then pulled out a camera and started snapping photos to document the mission and confirm their targets’ identities. The photos would be filtered through facial recognition software to make sure everyone was accurately identified.

  Seth started on the far side of the room, pulling open the doors to the wardrobe cabinet to make sure no one had hidden inside. Jay moved into the center of the room and kicked a fallen weapon away from one of the men who was now sprawled on the floor. He looked down at the bodies and got his first good look at the person he had shot. The woman he had shot.

  Her long dark hair covered her face, and Jay pushed it aside to check for any sign of life. Then he looked down at where her loose clothing was already saturated with blood, indicating that at least one of his bullets had nicked an artery.

  Her eyes stared up at him, half open. Jay pressed his fingers to her neck, but he suspected he wouldn’t find a pulse. The color had already started to fade from her face, confirming what he had dreaded. He had killed an unarmed woman.

  “It’s not your fault.” Seth’s hand came down on his shoulder, his southern drawl attempting to soothe. “You didn’t kill her,” Seth continued and pointed at the man she had tried to protect. “She died because of him.”

  “I pulled the trigger.”

  “And she made her choice.”

  Outside, an explosion rocked the ground, followed quickly by another.

  Brent stepped beside them. “We’re going to have to double up on the other helicopters. They’re destroying what they can of the one we came in on.”

  Jay’s eyes were still on the woman, his chest tightening.

  “Come on, Jay.” Seth nudged his arm. “We have work to do. We still have to search this place for intel.”

  Jay nodded, forcing himself to stand. Then rapid chatter down the hall pierced his thoughts. The words echoed through the night, words everyone had waited to hear. “Bin Laden is dead. We have confirmation. Osama bin Laden is dead.”

  2

  Pete Wellman stood on the pool deck in the early morning light, his cell phone gripped in his hand. His eyes were on the swimmers in the water, on the few elite athletes he had agreed to train. He made a mental note to talk to Bianca about her hand placement on her freestyle even as he willed his phone to ring.

  The news spread everywhere—the radio, the Internet, the newspapers. Osama bin Laden was dead. A group of Navy SEALs had killed him. SEAL Team Six to be exact.

  The patriot in him rejoiced over the successful mission. The Marine in him wondered about the details. The father in him just plain worried. His son Jay was assigned to SEAL Team Eight, but Pete knew that the difference between reality and what was in the news was often a lot wider than most people realized. Even though the press claimed that SEAL Team Six had carried out th
e successful mission, Pete knew from his time with the Corps that the unit unofficially known as “Team Six” had been renamed years ago and its new designation remained classified.

  Pete had already calculated how long it would have taken the SEALs to extract from the assault mission and then go through the initial debriefings. Barring a communications blackout, he estimated that the earliest any of those involved with the mission could get to an open-source phone or computer was twenty minutes ago. And, of course, there was no reason he should think that Jay had been on this mission. Except for the silence.

  Pete looked down at his phone again. Jay should have called by now. Or texted. Or something. Always before when the SEALs had been in the news, Jay had found some way to let him know that he was okay. Typically, his communication method was a text message that included a code embedded among the letters. The simple misspelled word would go unnoticed by anyone but him and would confirm that it wasn’t someone else sending him the message.

  Approaching footsteps distracted him momentarily, and he turned to his right to see Bianca’s older sister heading toward him. As always, Carina looked like she belonged in a window display in Milan instead of on a pool deck, her designer dress accenting her tall, willowy frame. Her dark, chin-length hair was perfectly styled, hanging straight except for a few soft curls that complemented her high cheekbones. Carina glanced over her shoulder at the parking lot behind her before closing the distance between them.

  “Good morning, Coach.” Her dark eyes narrowed slightly, and she motioned to the phone he held in his hand. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” Pete said gruffly before stepping closer to the pool, where Bianca had just come to a stop. She rested her arms on the side of the pool, a strand of her red hair poking out of her swim cap, her long body dangling in the water. Pete’s voice was brusque when he motioned to her right arm. “You’re still pulling wide on your freestyle.”

  Her dark eyes met his, and she nodded toward the phone. “You expecting a call?”

  “Ten two-hundred freestyles.” Pete’s eyes swept over the seven swimmers in the water before he waved toward the far end of the pool. “Go.”

  Bianca gave a little shrug of her shoulders. Then she dipped down in the water and pushed off to start the new set behind Amber, the only other girl in the group.

  Beside Pete, Carina folded her arms and stared after her younger sister. “I wish she’d move that fast when I ask her to do the dishes.”

  Some of the tension eased out of him, and Pete fought to keep his lips from curving up. “You might try telling instead of asking.”

  Carina shook her head. “That doesn’t work very well either.”

  He swallowed a chuckle and shook his head as she moved to one of the poolside tables and pulled out a chair. As she did each morning, she pulled her laptop out of her sleek computer bag and started tapping away on the keys.

  He didn’t know much about the Channing girls’ living situation, except that Carina had been granted custody of her two younger sisters at some point before they had shown up on his pool deck. The middle sister, Gianna, had returned to college shortly after the girls had moved from Phoenix to Miami, leaving Carina alone to care for sixteen-year-old Bianca.

  Pete hadn’t expected to get to know Carina any better than the rest of his swimmers’ families, but over the past few months, he had come to realize she didn’t scare as easily as most people.

  Generally, the parents and family members of his athletes steered clear of him. Personally, Pete preferred it that way. If he was being paid to make these swimmers the best they could be, the least the families could do was stay out of his way and let him do his job. Yet his gruff manners and no-nonsense military attitude didn’t seem to affect Carina. She acted like he was the most cordial person in the world, and she always took the time to offer a greeting and some lighthearted conversation.

  Pete still wasn’t quite sure how Carina had convinced him to take on the responsibility of training her sister. He hadn’t planned on picking up any new athletes, especially since three of his six athletes had already competed in the world championships and had the potential to make the Olympic team.

  He supposed the call he’d received from CJ Whitmore had been the thing that ultimately swayed him. If it hadn’t been for CJ, Pete never would have come back to coaching. They had gone to the Olympics together, swimmer and coach, despite some overwhelming obstacles.

  More than once during those Olympic games, he had watched her step up onto the podium to receive a medal. He had stood on that podium himself a few decades ago, but receiving his own gold medal hadn’t prepared him for watching his athlete stand in the spotlight. The feeling of awe had been overwhelming, the knowledge that he had played a part in her success.

  From that point on, he’d been hooked. CJ had stepped away from serious competition a short time later, but it hadn’t taken long before some of the nation’s top athletes had sought Pete out, choosing to train in Miami so he would be their coach.

  Originally, Pete had planned to work with no more than six athletes at a time to make sure they all received the personalized attention he felt they deserved. Planning three practices a day, six days a week, was a daunting task even before considering his athletes’ demanding competition schedule.

  Carina’s determination and CJ’s persistence had ultimately persuaded him to take Bianca on as the seventh. After four months together, he couldn’t say he was sorry. Already he was seeing significant progress, even more than he had expected.

  Bianca wasn’t likely to go to the Olympics, but he was pretty certain he could help her achieve her goal of winning a swimming scholarship to college.

  She was starting her fifth two hundred when his phone finally vibrated in his hand.

  Pete lowered his eyes to the screen, a sigh of relief when he saw that the text message was from Jay. Then he saw the code embedded in the short message, confirming that Jay was okay. Pete went over the time line in his mind once more. Even though his son would never admit whether he was one of the men who had gone in after bin Laden, Pete was starting to wonder if SEAL Team Six had really been the only SEAL squad on the assault mission in Abbottabad.

  * * *

  Jay struggled to surface from the edges of the dream. He was standing in the hallway in bin Laden’s compound, his finger on the trigger as he prepared to storm into the bedroom. He knew what was coming and tried desperately to stop it. He willed himself to shift his weapon, to keep from firing when the woman threw herself into the path of his bullets.

  He thrashed against the lightweight covers on his bed, twisting and pulling until he could get his arms free. The woman’s face flashed in front of him, her eyes bright with hatred.

  His finger pressed against the cold metal of the trigger. He moaned out loud as he tried to stop it, tried to prevent the spray of bullets from leaving his weapon. Then the scene shifted, and he felt the vibration of the helicopter on its way down. He saw the ground coming toward them, felt that falling sensation despite the harness holding him in his seat. They were going to crash, only this time he was certain the controlled landing wasn’t going to work. This time the impact was going to kill him and all of his friends.

  Another moan escaped him, this one jarring him awake. Abruptly, he pushed himself up, a sheen of sweat on his face, his heart pounding.

  It took him a minute to find his bearings in the sparsely furnished room of his apartment in Virginia Beach. His duffel bag leaned against the wall, the same place he had dropped it when he arrived home the day before. His shoes lay haphazardly by the door because he’d been too lazy to put them away.

  Jay pushed himself out of bed and made his way down the hall to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face but didn’t look in the mirror. Instead, he used his sleeve as a towel and headed for the kitchen.

  In contrast to the bedroom, the simple L-shaped kitchen and adjoining living room were spotless except for the layer of dust that had accumulated
during his three months in Afghanistan and the time spent training for the bin Laden mission. A well-worn couch stretched along the far wall and was nearly long enough to accommodate his six-foot-six frame. Opposite the couch, a flatscreen TV hung on the wall, and a cherry coffee table sat between them.

  A single bookshelf leaned against the wall across from the front door. Framed photographs and a few hardbacks occupied the shelves, as well as five copies of the Book of Mormon, all gifts from his various teammates. He was going to get rid of them eventually. He just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  He considered the irony that the only copy of the Bible he owned was the miniature one Seth had given him shortly after he had joined the squad. Each of his teammates had one just like it, along with their extra set of scriptures. Of course, they all made it a point to go to church every Sunday that they could manage. Jay believed in God, but he didn’t understand what the big deal was about belonging to an organized religion.

  He ran a hand over his face once more, still struggling to push aside the remnants of his dream. He stepped into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. More out of habit than hunger, he started lining up ingredients. He dumped some spinach, strawberries, and orange juice into his blender. Then he added some protein mix and two bananas before putting the top on and hitting the puree button.

  A minute later, he poured his breakfast into the large cup he had bought from the local smoothie place and stuck a straw in it. He skirted the counter and sat down on the barstool closest to where his computer was charging on the kitchen counter. His normal routine was to look over the morning news while drinking his breakfast, but today he pushed the laptop aside.

  He already knew what the headlines would say. He had seen them all, even though he hadn’t wanted to. Osama bin Laden Is Dead. Osama bin Laden Killed by Navy SEALs in Firefight. The Secret Team that Killed bin Laden.