BoneMan's Daughters (2 page)

“Sucks, don’t it?” Tony carefully slipped his two pictures back into the wallet he’d taken them from. “Being over here.”

“Yes.”

Unlike Tony here, who had nothing to live for but a wife and child back home, Ryan had chosen a far more complicated path.
Not that he didn’t care for Celine and Bethany—in some ways he missed them terribly. But sacrifices had to be made.

For him that sacrifice had been made when he’d made the decision to accept a post in Saudi Arabia ten years ago despite his
wife’s refusal to accompany him. He was the best at what he did, and his work in Saudi Arabia had saved more lives than anyone
could know.

He’d returned to San Antonio, where they’d lived at the time, and became immediately aware that for all their efforts to put
up a good front, he and Celine could not be as close as they had once been. She couldn’t understand his world and he had no
interest in being a socialite. Nevertheless, he’d remained at his post in San Antonio for two years before accepting another
overseas post, this time in Turkey.

By the time he’d shipped out for Iraq, his relationship with Celine existed solely for the sake of their mutual commitment
to marriage and family. If Ryan wasn’t able to provide his wife with the kind of intimacy and personal friendship she desired,
he would at least provide her with his loyalty as husband, protector, and provider.

Generals didn’t have to be in love with their troops to be good generals. Truthfully, he didn’t miss Celine. Bethany, on the
other hand…

The thought stalled him for a moment.

“You think it’s worth it, sir?”

“Depends. You have a job to do, right? Mission first, men second, everything else comes in third.”

The man stared out the dusty window. “I just never thought about what it would cost them, you know?” He shook his head. “A
kid changes everything. God, I miss her.”

“She’ll be there when you get back.”

His guilt came from not sharing the same kind of ardor in the mind of this young sergeant who longed to be home with his wife
and daughter more than anything else in life at the moment.

Then again, Ryan
did
love his wife and daughter in a far more important way. Not a love demonstrated in gushing words or heart-wrenching desire,
but by loyalty and steadfastness for not only them but for his country, for the world. The cost of separation was an acceptable
sacrifice for such a noble and worthwhile calling.

Still, seeing a man like Tony here, filled with eagerness to return to his very average-looking wife, had awakened that hidden
sense of guilt.

Interesting.

“I know it’s hard, Tony, but what you give up today will come back one day. You have to believe that. We’re not the first
to pay the price.”

“Price for what, sir?”

“For freedom.”

“Is that what we’re doing here?”

He was briefly tempted to tell the sergeant to check his loyalty, but he doubted Tony had a bone of disloyalty in his body.
He was simply a young man stretched between loyalties.

He shifted his body armor to ease that itch by his left breastbone again. Last time he’d worn full combat gear had been over
a month ago. Ryan asked, “How many soldiers asked that same question during the Civil War? Or the Revolutionary War?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of Vietnam,” Tony said.

“Sure, Vietnam. But it’s hard to see the forest when you’re in the trees. History will one day get us far away enough from
this mess to tell us what we did here. Until then you won’t do yourself any favors by second-guessing your mission. Make sense?”

“Yes, sir, it does. But it doesn’t make it any easier, if you don’t mind me—”

Whomp!

“Crap!” The driver, who had been fixated on the convoy’s tracks, slammed on the brakes. “Crap, down, down,
down
!”

Ahead, the road was shrouded by dust—from the lead vehicle’s wheels or from the detonation, Ryan couldn’t tell. But there
was no mistaking that sound. Either a rocket-propelled grenade or an antitank mine—he didn’t have the field experience to
know which was which any longer.

“Get on the fifty!” the driver screamed. “RPG, RPG, incoming fi—”

Whomp!

This time behind them.

“Move, move!” Tony yelled. “We’re sitting targets!”

That they were under assault was not a matter of question. The driver slammed his foot on the accelerator. “Hold on, we’re
going through.”

The Humvee surged forward into the boiling sand and smoke. Ryan instinctively crouched as much as the back of the seat in
front of him allowed him to, but he kept his eyes ahead, where a cloud of dust and smoke now plumed skyward.

The driver keyed his radio and veered to his right using one hand to drive. “Convoy Echo-One, this is Three, come back. What
the heck’s going on?”

The radio crackled static.

“Crap.” Into the radio again. “Convoy Echo-One… this is Three. Caboose, you got me?” Over his shoulder, to the sergeant,
“Get up in the fifty, Tony!”

“I can’t see anything!”

Still nothing from either the lead vehicle or the one trailing them.

The dust directly in front of them cleared enough to reveal a plume of black smoke boiling to the sky ahead. Orange fire licked
at the hot desert air.

“Crap, hold on, hold on!”

The Humvee swerved a wide right, then hooked to the left in a tight U-turn. Ryan grabbed the door handle to keep himself from
plowing into the sergeant, who was plastered against his window. Most vehicles would have tipped with such a sharp turn, but
the army’s workhorse loaded with nearly a half ton of armor wasn’t easy to roll on flat ground.

Odd how different minds work in moments of sudden, catastrophic stress. Ryan’s tended to retreat into itself, baring the cold
calculation that had served it so well in his intelligence training. He had no clue how to extricate them from the present
crisis, but he could analyze the attack better than most chess players leaning over the board on a cool summer day.

One:
They were taking enemy fire, a combination of shoulder-fired RPGs and machine-gun fire now slamming into the armor like pneumatic
hammers.

Two:
Both the lead vehicle and the Humvee that had brought up the rear had likely taken direct hits.

Three:
The absence of radio chatter likely meant that—

The glass next to the driver imploded. Blood sprayed across the far window. The Humvee swerved off the road, into a short
ditch, and slammed into the far embankment.

Four
: The driver of the second vehicle, the one in which Ryan was riding, had been killed, and the Humvee had plowed into a ditch,
where it would be hit at any moment with an RPG.

Silence settled around him with the ticks of a hot engine.

Ryan lunged over the seat, grabbed the radio, and spoke quickly into the mic. “Home Run, this is Echo-One Actual, on convoy
to Fallujah. We’re taking heavy fire, anti-armor, small weapons. All vehicles down, I repeat, all three Humvees are out, over.”

A moment’s hesitation, then the calm, efficient response of a dispatcher all too familiar with similar calls. “Hold tight,
Echo-One, we are clearing close air support, and medevac en route. ETA seventeen minutes. What’s your sitrep, over?”

“Assuming all personnel are KIA. My Humvee is sideways in a ditch, four klicks north of the highway. You can’t miss the smoke.”

“Roger. Hold tight.”

It occurred to him that he’d heard nothing from Tony. He spun back, saw the soldier slumped in his seat, one hand gripping
his M16, the other stretched toward the canopy, as if still reaching up to deploy the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, topside.
No blood that he could see. Could be a nonvisible wound from shrapnel, could be the impact had knocked him out.

“Sergeant!” Ryan slapped the man’s face several times, got nothing, and quickly relieved him of his weapon. Images of flames
crackling through the cabin pushed him to the brink of panic. He took a deep breath.

This is no different. Just another mission. One step at a time.

Never mind that this particular mission didn’t involve a pencil or a computer, it was still just one step at a time.

Ryan reached over the driver’s corpse, took the modular radio from the console, grabbed his door handle, cranked it open,
and rolled to the sand, relieved to be free of the coffin. He lunged back into the Humvee, grabbed the sergeant by his belt,
and dragged him out. The soldier landed on the ground and groaned.

Still, no more gunfire. Their objective was now simple. Stay quiet, stay down, stay alive. Survive, watch, wait for the helicopters.
Air support was now the only link to survival for either of them. Rising smoke from the wreckages would be visible from a
long way off.

“Where are we?” Tony had come to.

“We were hit,” Ryan whispered, scanning the desert for any sign of the enemy. Unlikely. They’d perfected the art of hitting
and running, knowing that when the Apaches showed up, any attempt at fight or flight was doomed to failure. Insurgents with
the skill to remain hidden in a flat desert (likely under the sand) and take out three Humvees definitely had the brains to
bug out so they could fight another day.

“We have support coming,” he said, turning back.

Something black, like a sledgehammer or a rifle butt, slammed into Ryan’s forehead. Pain shot down his spine and he fought
to hang on to something, anything.

Another blow landed, and only now did his calculating mind wonder if it was a bullet rather than a sledgehammer or a rifle
butt that had struck his head.

BETHANY EVANS SCANNED through her Hotmail account, looking for a callback from her agent at Tripton, the modeling agency she’d
signed with three months earlier. The jobs had been fairly small—mostly clothing catalogs, everything from StyleWear to Sears.
Two television spots, including working as an extra: toning her body for a Gold’s Gym ad and one of three high school babes
to kiss a guy in the lip gloss piece for Severe Lip Service—a rather funky brand name, if anyone was asking her.

This time it was a
cover
. A clothing catalog cover for
Youth Nation
. Assuming that she got it, which her agent, Stevie Barton, had all but guaranteed, over five million buyers who received
the fall catalog would see
her
face.

“Is it there?” Patty asked.

Bethany shifted her cell to the other ear. “Hold on. Good
night
, can you believe the junk that gets through these days?”

“Whatever. It’s probably all the huge fashion magazines throwing free products at you to get you into their stuff.”

“Gimme a break.”

“Seriously, you know that’s what happens. You make it and they start to send you free stuff. Like football players getting
free shoes, that kind of thing.”

“I’m a model, Patty. One in a thousand faces in a million magazines. We’re not talking Angelina Jolie here.”

“Where do you think she started? I swear, Beth, you gotta get me in there. I still can’t believe all this is happening to
you. You’re going to be freaking famous!”

Bethany’s hand paused over the mouse. Famous? The word had an odd ring to it. She’d never agreed to her mother’s urging to
take a few modeling classes and build her portfolio out of any desire to be famous. She was only sixteen years old, for heaven’s
sake!

Famous
.

She wasn’t even sure what that word meant anymore. It wasn’t like she was going to Hollywood or taking up singing lessons
any time soon. She was simply making her way on her own, as her mother put it. Making good on what was given her. Which just
happened to be decent looks, a pretty smile on a body that looked eighteen, albeit a
short
eighteen.

“Don’t say that,” she said.

“Whatever. You’re gonna be freaking famous and everyone knows it.”

“Shut up! I’m serious, Patty. I’m going to be a doctor, not some face everyone can…”

She caught her breath as the email scrolled into view.
From the desk of Stevie Barton. The Tripton Agency. Austin, Texas
.

Patty noted her pause. “What? You got it, didn’t you?”

“Hold on.”

She double-clicked on the email and read it quickly.

Bethany—

Congratulations, sweetie! You got it. They want you in New York in three weeks for the photo shoot. One week, $20,000 as discussed.
You’re going to be the poster child for
Youth Nation
this fall. This is just the beginning. Call me.

Stevie.

Bethany blinked. Heat drained from her face as the realization of what this could mean settled over her. Perhaps she’d been
just a tad too quick to dismiss a life of stardom. She nearly dropped her cell phone.

“You got it?” Patty demanded.

“I…” Bethany couldn’t help herself now. She squealed. And despite her loathing of little girls who jumped up and down
with their fists clenched, she did just that. Squealing like a little girl.

Patty’s voice squealed over the line with her. “I knew it, I knew it, I freaking knew it! Read it to me.”

Sitting back down, out of breath and feeling slightly ashamed of her display of emotion (thank God no one had seen her), Bethany
read the email to Patty.

“Uh-huh, just the freaking beginning, what did I freaking tell you?”

“Is everything
freaking
with you?”

“Heck yeah! Now it is. And I’m going with you.”

“To New York?”

“Where else? Broadway, baby.”

The complexities that might result from this small trip to New York to become the next poster child for
Youth Nation
began to present themselves to Bethany. For starters, it was now late August and school started next week. School meant cheerleading,
and she’d landed leader on the varsity squad. Leader had to make every practice; the rules were clear and Coach Carter wasn’t
the kind to bend them for a magazine cover.

“When is homecoming this year?” she asked.