Detachment Delta (6 page)

Charlie said, “I hope you like roses. I know roses are corny to some, but there is an old quote that ‘roses are the most beautiful thing that God ever created that does not have a soul.' ”

She pulled a deep red rose from the vase Madeleine had put them in and smelled it, smiling coyly.

She said, “I love roses, and I love that quote. Who said that originally?”

Charlie smiled and said, “Me.”

Her breath caught; then she said, “They are beautiful,” and she smelled them again, adding, “Thank you very much, Charlie. All is forgiven.”

He smiled, saying, “How about dinner? It is the least I can do for such a mean trick.”

“I have to shower and change. It has been a long day,” she said. “Where would you like to eat and when?”

Charlie said, “Do you like seafood?”

“I love it,” she said, “but it takes me an hour to get home, an hour to get back, plus I have to change and tidy up. Will that be too late? Seafood, hmmm. Where do you want to eat?”

Charlie said, “I was thinking about room service.”

Virginia's heart skipped a beat, and she found it hard to breathe.

Collecting herself, she said, “I guess I deserved that. I came on so strong in the restaurant.”

“Deserved? Why, did I insult you with that suggestion?”

“No, oh, no,” she said, “I just embarrassed myself with my boldness when I approached you.”

He laughed and said, “I was cursing my luck. You are truly beautiful and entrancing.”

Now she could feel her pulse pounding in her temples, and the air in the room seemed harder to breathe.

Charlie said, “Virginia, I have to go back to Fort Bragg tomorrow morning. We can be painfully honest with each other, or play coy flirting games before I have to leave, and always wonder. Sometimes you just have to let down the protective veneer and open yourself up for possible hurt.”

“Then you would just be picking me up,” she said. “I would be a one-night stand.”

“I am not picking you up,” he said. “I picked you out.”

She got up and walked around the desk, and approached him hesitantly at first, then stepped forward boldly into his massive arms, but as strong as he was, she was amazed at how soft and careful his first kiss was. It was passionate enough to curl her toes, but unlike so many men, he was not immediately trying to play tonsil hockey. The kiss was simply passionate and firm but on the other hand soft. She worried she would faint.

When they stepped back, she smiled and said, “You are very right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You, sir,” she said, “are definitely not gay.”

He kissed her again, and this kiss removed any and all doubt that might have ever existed.

Virginia reached down and pushed a button on her phone.

“Yes, Ms. Hampton?” Madeleine's voice came back very professionally.

“Maddie,” Virginia said, smiling up at Charlie, “I'm leaving early. Clear my calendar for the rest of the day, please.”

She went to her closet and rifled through some clothes, selecting an un-attorney-like form-fitting burgundy dress with a slit up the side of the left leg. The excited attorney also selected a pair of black very high heels, grabbed some smoke panty hose, and went to her bathroom to put together a bag of makeup and toiletries. The pair left for Charlie's hotel, and the paralegals and attorneys from her office who were in the restaurant when she first saw Charlie all took notice that she was carrying clothes and a small makeup bag.

At the hotel, Virginia took a long refreshing shower, fixed her hair and makeup, and left the bathroom with a large white towel wrapped around her. She saw that Charlie had apparently gone into the other bathroom, and she could hear water running.

She sat down on the sitting room couch and wondered what would happen. She kept thinking of his kisses, and she was so excited in anticipation of what might be to come. Would he emerge from the bathroom naked, muscles rippling, and scars probably covering his body, or might he be wearing a bathrobe?

The door opened, and she gave a little startled jump. Charlie emerged in a shirt very close to the color of her dress, a blue tie, tight dress blue jeans, and a burgundy leather sport coat with several long beaded pieces of fringe dangling down the side of each arm from the shoulder. He wore expensive cowboy boots and had his hair now in two long ponytails in the manner of the Lakota or Sioux people.

He walked up to her and took her in his arms and kissed slowly below her ears and ran both hands slowly through her just-dried hair and stepped back smiling.

“You smell wonderful, Virginia . . . Mariella Burani Bouquet of Roses?”

“Yes, it is,” she cooed, and thought
Where did this man come from?
She asked, “And I love your smell, too. What is that you are wearing? I love it.”

“Obsession,” he answered. “Listen, I know I mentioned room service, but I really do not want you to think of me or this as a one-night stand. How about dinner downstairs in the restaurant?”

Virginia said, “Sergeant, you are incredible. How did you learn to become such a . . . a . . .”

“Gentleman?” he interrupted.

“Yes,” she replied. “I have to tell you, there just aren't many anymore.”

Charlie said, “My dad was a raging drunk, but one good thing he used to do was warm my butt if I ever walked through the door in front of a woman or was not respectful to females in any way. He said men are not trained to be gentlemen anymore.”

Charlie looked out the window at the lights of Manhattan and said, “My mom was such a lady and so beautiful, what he said made sense, and it was the way I wanted my mom to always be treated, because Dad was so rough to live with. Those lessons kind of stuck with me, I guess.”

She said, “You are certainly different from any man I have dated. Any man I have known.”

Charlie smiled and handed her her nylons and underwear, which made her blush.

She wanted to drop her towel and let him stare.

Her body was even more voluptuous than he had imagined in his own flirting thoughts. She spent many hours in the gym each week, as well as in a tanning booth.

She said, “If you will give me a few minutes, I will be ready, sir.”

They fed each other seafood, and kept feeding each other all through the meal. After they ate, he held her hand and walked her toward the pool room. It was an indoor pool with two hot tubs at the end of the room. Nobody was in the big indoor pool house, which had large trees everywhere around the outside of the room. Easy listening music played from the ceiling sound system, and Charlie swept her into his arms, and they started dancing slowly, rhythmically to the music. The more they danced, the more they pressed their bodies together, and their lips met. The song ended, and they stepped back, staring into each other's eyes and smiling softly.

Charlie wanted this woman. He had been through the grinder as a warrior, and his lust was tenfold because of the events of the past several days.

She thought to herself that this was a relationship that could go nowhere. He was like the ultimate warrior, but would spend most of his adult life off fighting in wars, while the love of his life would be back home waiting, watching the door in anticipation, the TV news, her computer, her telephone.

Virginia was a woman of action herself, and she knew if she gave herself to this man, it would be for the fantasy, the lifelong memory she would always think back to, but it could not turn into a lifelong relationship. They lived in different worlds. She decided it would be worth it.

He walked over to the window to see if the patio looked like a romantic setting, but it did not.

As soon as he walked away, she smiled and whispered to herself, “Well, girl, one night with a cross between Crazy Horse and Harrison Ford would be worth ten thousand nights with some attorney or accountant. Might as well let go, enjoy yourself, and feel guilty later.”

He returned, and they danced more.

He said, “I really was not looking for a nicer place to dance, Virginia. I needed to catch my breath and think. You and I live in different worlds, but you have me entranced, totally. I am just being honest. If you and I are together tonight, I want you to understand how seldom I might make it to New York City.”

She smiled and said, “I don't want you to think I am a pickup or sleep around, Charlie, but I was thinking, too. I am a big girl, and I believe sometimes in life two people can share and enjoy a common experience that becomes a treasured memory in both their lives.”

She stepped into his arms and kissed him and pressed against him.

Charlie said, “Woman, we need to get you upstairs and off your feet. You have had a long day.”

“Me?” She gasped.

After the first time they made love, they just lay in bed together, talking well into the night. Virginia was amazed to learn that Charlie was a direct descendant of Sitting Bull of the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn, called by many Custer's Last Stand. Charlie used the Lakota term Battle of the Greasy Grass.

The way he described Montana, and his home at the Pine Ridge Reservation in western South Dakota, and the West itself, made her eager to go there to visit.

“Earlier,” he said, twirling a strand of her hair with two fingers, “you called me Sergeant. I assume you know to never call me that in front of anybody?”

“I figured so,” Virginia responded. “Tell me about your work.”

Charlie said, “I cannot. You know how you can never betray a trust with one of your clients?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I have a top secret security clearance and am in a top secret unit,” he explained, “and just like you can never betray a client's trust, I cannot either. It is just that my client is the United States of America and my unit as well.”

“I bet you assume because I am a New York City attorney that I am a liberal Democrat,” she said.

“I did not really care,” he said. “With my job, I am apolitical. I never tell my political views to anybody. I just do what I am told and serve at the pleasure of whoever is the commander in chief.”

She said, “Well, just so you know, I am a conservative registered Republican, and I am even actively involved in politics in my precinct in Manhattan.”

He grinned and pulled her close to him. “You wanna hold a caucus, Counselor?”

She giggled and said, “Ooh, yes, you have my vote. Let me just go into my private booth.”

Chuckling, she slid down under the sheets.

Later, she fell asleep with her head on his massive chest, his arm wrapped around her protectively, just like she had fantasized.

 

CHARLIE
wore the AN, or army/navy, PVS-7 generation 3 U.S. military night vision goggle/binocular system, attached to the front of his K-pot (Kevlar helmet). He was going to be first in the door when they blew it, and his team members were directly behind him. Charlie would go in after the door was blasted and immediately skirt the right side of the room, while Rico, his partner, who was hunched over Charlie's back right now, would immediately move to the left, and Spider would take the center of the room. Their feet would be about eighteen inches apart, knees slightly bent, leaning forward at the shoulders, right hand firmly around the pistol grip, with index finger on the trigger, while the web between the thumb and index finger of the left hand pushed on the upper grip of the pistol, finger wrapped around the right hand, running straight forward parallel to the slide in the Springfield Arms .45 XD, automatic, Charlie's chosen pistol. Normally, it was loaded with Teflon-coated and serrated Black Talon rounds, but now it was loaded with simple .45 automatic wad-cutters.

Charlie saw a figure in the smoke, a pregnant woman wearing a burqa. Her eyes were opened wide in fear. There was a hostage taker next to her, and Charlie immediately squeezed two face shots with the front titanium sight on the hostage taker's forehead, and the rear sight, as always, was slightly blurred.
Bang, bang
—both shots hit the jihadist in the forehead, almost simultaneously, but then Charlie noticed the AK-47 assault rifle pointed directly at him. It was in the hands of the pregnant Iraqi woman.
Bang, bang.
His double-tap followed within a millisecond of the first one. He immediately saw two bullet holes in the forehead of each life-sized silhouette target.

Now he noticed his teammate Royal seated on a bench with an al Qaeda member holding another AK-47, a folding stock model, to his head. The hostage taker was very close to Royal, and Royal was real, no silhouette target.
Bang! Bang!
Charlie put two more rounds in quick succession into the terrorist's forehead. The target vibrated from the bullet shock, and Royal breathed a sigh of relief, although it was much tougher for the shooter than the hostage when each Delta Force teammate took his turn as a hostage in the House of Horrors live-fire exercises. In the old compound, called the Stockade, it was called the Shooting House.

Charlie barely noticed all the shooting going on around him, by his other teammates, but now he had Royal by the arm and was bent over taking him out the front door, having cleared his targets, and the entire team had the room secured.

The team made it outside then, and then took a break to have coffee and water, and one die-hard smoker on the team just had to have his cigarette.

Whether it was one of the rooms in the Shooting House or breaching one of the commercial aircraft mock-ups, whenever the Detachment-Delta team members went through a live-fire exercise with real living, breathing persons mixed in with silhouette targets, it was beyond what would be described as an adrenaline high. These men had incredible trust in one another, so they each did not really worry very much sitting in the Shooting House. But when it came to being a shooter, they had to work hard to keep themselves calm so they would not be off-target with a single bullet. Their partners' lives depended on their ability to perform under such stressors.