Castaway Cove (2 page)

To Maureen Hallett. (This time I got it right!)
Once again, to all our military men and women and their families for their service and sacrifice.
Also, with admiration and great affection to Operation Write Home, Cards for Soldiers, and Cards for Hospitalized Kids, who deliver so much handmade love with every card.
And, as always, to Jay, who reminds me every day why I write romance.

Once again, I want to give thanks and
a huge shout-out to the best publishing team in the business:

At NAL: publisher Kara Welsh, for her unwavering support over so many years; editor extraordinaire Kerry Donovan, who’s not only too sweet and supportive for words, but hands down the most brilliant brainstorming editor ever; Jesse Feldman, who’s always been there to take care of details and does the best tweets; editorial director Claire Zion, who rescued my manuscript from her slush pile one memorable fall day in 1982 and literally changed my life; Mimi Bark, who, with watercolor illustrator Paul Janovsky, has wrapped my Shelter Bay stories in such beautiful covers; Erin Galloway, who takes care of publicity with such aplomb; and all the other super people in production, sales, and marketing who actually get my books onto shelves.

And last, but certainly not least, publishing matchmaker, lunch maven, stellar agent, and friend Robin Rue, and superwoman Beth Miller, who’s always kept everything running so smoothly!

I truly heart you all and I hope you’ve had as much fun working together these past years as I have!

Afghanistan

Disney Drive, the main drag of Bagram Ai
rfield, was about as far from the Magic Kingdom as a person could get.

A river of bumper-to-bumper vehicles was headed out of the base, packed together like salmon swimming upstream.

“I swear it’d be easier to just get out and walk,” Staff Sergeant Mac Culhane remarked to the cameraman and the female Airman correspondent from the American Forces Network who were traveling with him.

“Is it always this crowded?” asked the journalist from the
Seattle Examiner
, who’d been waiting for Mac when he arrived at the radio station that morning.

Apparently someone above Mac’s pay grade had decided that some positive, warm-and-fuzzy Stateside press was in order, which was why they were traveling to the village for a meet, greet, and schmooze photo op with the locals.

“Actually, you’re seeing it on a good day,” Mac said. “At least we’re moving.” Though at nothing near the posted twenty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit.

“So, is there a story behind why this street’s named after Walt Disney?”

Jeez. You’d think the guy would’ve at least done some homework on the flight from the States.

“It’s not. It’s named for an Army specialist who died here when some heavy equipment fell on him,” the AFN reporter said. Although her voice remained neutrally polite, Mac could tell from the very faint edge to her tone that she was as irked by the guy’s question as he was.

“You definitely don’t want anything on this base named for you,” Mac said. “Because that means that you’re dead.” Another example being the Pat Tillman Memorial USO.

Mac might be a deejay, assigned to play songs and impart news and information, but like all the others he worked with, he took the AFN motto—Serving those who serve—seriously. Whenever he could, he’d go outside the wire and travel to some of the world’s most dangerous war zones to entertain the troops and to film footage that was not only shown on AFN television but also sent home to family and loved ones.

He was now on his second tour in Afghanistan, where along with entertaining with music and banter, he also delivered the news of troop deaths. More during the surge, but lately the bad guys had stepped up their game.

“Damned if you didn’t jinx us by saying we were moving,” the cameraman complained as the river of vehicles on the lane leading out of the base came to an abrupt halt.

In less than a minute, the driver of one of the white pickups that civilian contractors tended to drive leaned on his horn.

Yeah. Like that was going to help.

Not wanting to be left out of the fun, a utility four-wheeler, looking like a combat golf cart behind Mac’s MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle) got into the act, adding his horn to the cacophony, which wasn’t helped by the roar of jets streaking overhead.

Meanwhile, pedestrians were packed as tightly together as the vehicles. Military personnel jockeyed for some semblance of personal space with civilian contractors and Afghans. Some, trying to speed up the process, had taken to walking or jogging in the street.

Finally, they got beyond the gate and headed out into the countryside, where the roads were even more of a joke. Bagram was definitely not a country club base—rocket attacks came so often that diving into bunkers became routine, not to mention the constant threat of insurgent attacks, and more recently “green on blue” violence from Afghan forces—and Mac often thought that you really took your life in your hands by traveling on any of the narrow, winding roads.

The base was in a valley surrounded by the Hindu Kush, where sunshine had the snow on the mountains gleaming like diamonds. There’d been a time, a thousand years ago, when Bagram was a wealthy, bustling city on the silk route. These days it was a village dependent on farming, base employment, and fighting.

Still, the drive past the fields with the mountains in the distance could have been pleasant were it not for the metal signs warning of land mines leftover from Soviet occupation hanging on wires along the road, and the constantly blowing sand that had the consistency of talcum power. Even when you couldn’t see it, you could feel it in your eyes, nose, and throat whenever you went outside.

The market was bustling. Children, some of the boys wearing blue Cub Scout uniforms supplied by one of the officers at the base, who’d set up a scouting program for the local population, dodged the traffic as they ran through the streets. Giggling, remarkably carefree girls jumped rope and played hopscotch with stones on courts drawn in the dirt.

Women in dark burkas were focused on their shopping, while local police, trained by allied forces, patrolled past the food stands. As the translator gave the reporter the tour, Mac chatted in his less than fluent Dari with the shopkeepers and his fans, who, every time he came to town, treated him like a celebrity. At first he’d been surprised by that; then he came to realize that while Freedom Radio might consider the troops its target audience, a good portion of the civilians listened as well. And even if they couldn’t understand all the banter, music proved universal.

As he bought some goat meat and yogurt from an elderly man whose eyes were nearly black in his dark, sun-weathered face, a brightly colored vehicle, locally referred to as a “jingle truck” because of the bells drivers put on the top of their cabs, pulled up to deliver a load of
kaddo bourani
, Afghan pumpkins.

Which led to Mac telling the Seattle reporter how he and his crew were going to set up a catapult for Freedom Radio’s Thanksgiving pumpkin-hurling competition. He was just thinking how much he freaking loved his job when the world exploded in a fireball that sent him flying through the air.

Mac didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious. But when he heard the Airman calling his name over the ringing in his ears, he managed with difficulty to open his eyes, which were even grittier with sand than usual. He hoped that explained the fact that trying to focus on anything was like looking through fractured glass.

“I’m okay,” he called out.

If you didn’t count the crushing headache, the nausea, the blood he could feel pouring down his face, and the fact that he felt as if his body had been peppered with fiery birdshot.

He wasn’t sure whether he’d managed to get the words out of his mouth or had just thought them. And although he could sort of hear the Airman shouting, either she’d begun speaking in a foreign language or his brain wasn’t decoding what she was trying to ask him.

As disoriented as he was, one searing thought flashed through Mac’s mind.
Please, God, let my brain not be permanently scrambled.

“Okay,” he repeated, flinching as he turned his head to try to look around.

His left eye seemed to have been flash-blinded, while the vision in his right was hazy, but that didn’t keep him from seeing that the explosion had ripped through the heart of the market, clearing a wide swath. At the periphery, burned and bloody bodies were piled up like so much cordwood.

He heard the cries and moans, but was grateful that along with the obnoxious ringing in his ears, whatever had happened to his hearing made the voices sound distant, like when his grandfather had taught him to listen to the sound of the sea inside a conch shell.

A mob of distraught people was rushing toward the scene, trying to dislodge the bodies, desperately searching for the living.

The Airman and her cameraman lifted him up and ran toward the MRAP vehicle.

He had wanted to assure them that he was fine, that they should leave him and go help the civilian women and children, when his right eye caught sight of what appeared to be a small arm wearing Cub Scout blue stretching out from beneath a jumble of human pickup sticks.

As he felt himself being carefully placed into the vehicle, a burning pain began washing over him in hot waves. Even as he fought against it, as the MRAP roared away, horn blaring loudly enough that even he could hear it, Mac surrendered to the darkness.

•   •   •

After having shrapnel painstakingly picked out of his arms and legs, and being treated for second-degree burns by the medical crew, he was airlifted from Bagram to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

“So, here’s the deal,” the doctor, a captain from next-door Ramstein Air Base, told him. “You were lucky.”

The weird thing was that although every part of him hurt like one of the lower circles of hell, even through the IV drugs they were pumping into him, Mac knew she was right.

At least he was alive, unlike the Afghan translator he’d worked with for the past eight months, or the newspaper reporter, who’d had the bad luck of joining the growing ranks of journalists killed while covering the war.

“You’ve got lacerations on your chest and arms, and shrapnel in your thighs, legs, and shoulders, but fortunately your helmet, armor, and fire-retardant uniform prevented serious injury to your body.”

“What about my eyes?” Which were currently wrapped in sterile gauze.

“It’s too early to tell.” Mac listened for optimism in the female doctor’s tone, but heard only exhaustion. “But they’re intact. Which is really amazing, given how close you were to the blast, even with your ballistic goggles, which I heard were toast.”

“I should’ve seen it coming,” he muttered.

“Yeah, with your X-ray eyes and superhero powers,” she said dryly. “I know it’s difficult for you warriors to get it through your heads, but you are, when it comes right down to it, human beings. Like the rest of us.”

“I’m not a warrior. I’m just the guy on the radio.”

He’d always been aware that his job was a walk in the park compared to those of so many others he’d served with. The troops worked damn hard, some risking their lives every minute of every day. His job, as he viewed it, was to always be there for them. To provide a little bit of home and bring some semblance of normal to a life that was anything but.

“Yet you were blown up, which I doubt would’ve happened if you’d chosen to remain a civilian deejay working in Albuquerque or Topeka.”

Despite the pain, Mac smiled at that. “And how boring would that be?”

“Just what I need. Another adrenaline junkie.” She sighed as she pulled back the sheet and began examining his wounds.

“Explosions can work in inexplicable ways,” she said. “We never know what we’re going to be looking at when we get the call for incoming.

“At the instant of detonation, shrapnel and heat rush out at supersonic speeds. They should have been picking pieces of you out of the dirt into the next century. But there’s no order to explosions. Some areas are thick with shrapnel. You could have just as easily been cut in half by a door or the hood of the truck that suicide bomber set off. But you happened to be standing in a partial seam that was empty of any lethal debris.”

Unlike his translator and the reporter. Mac knew that if he lived to a hundred, he’d never be able to unsee the images of the bombing’s aftermath.

“The surgery released the swelling in your brain,” she continued. “We’ll keep an eye on you for a couple more days, to make sure you’re out of the woods, then ship you back to CONUS for continued treatment.” CONUS being military-speak for Continental United States. “Your liaison will be visiting as soon as I leave, but wanted you to know that your father called. My suggestion, not that you asked, is unless you feel you need immediate family support, it makes more sense for him to meet up with you at Travis, where you’re ultimately headed.”

“I’m fine,” Mac lied, as he had been doing since he’d found himself lying on the ground surrounded by chaos. “If I’m only staying a couple days, there’s no point in having him fly all the way here, only to turn right around and fly back again.”

“That was my thinking.”

Mac debated asking if his wife had called. But he figured the doctor would have mentioned it if Kayla had felt moved to contact the hospital.

Maybe his father filling her in was enough. Perhaps she was still speaking to her father-in-law, even though she hadn’t e-mailed or Skyped Mac for three months.

Two days later, he left Germany, spending a one-night layover at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland before continuing on to David Grant USAF Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base in California.

His father was waiting there for him.

His wife was not.

Three weeks after his arrival at Travis, two weeks after he’d begun climbing the walls, he was transferred to outpatient status.

Although the bandages had been removed, his vision was still blurry. The retina tear on his left eye had been repaired and the doctors assured him that with a cornea transplant, his right eye should be as good as new.

His father had wanted to accompany Mac to Colorado Springs, where Kayla, having landed a part-time job as a Saturday news anchor, had moved with their daughter, Emma.

Not knowing what type of reception he’d receive, and needing to concentrate on repairing his wounded marriage, Mac insisted on going alone.

His wife had a right to be pissed, since after promising her that he would come home he’d reenlisted yet again. Mac realized that he was going to have to pull off some serious groveling to repair his fractured marriage.