Hold Fast (18 page)

“You’re weak, Courtney,” she says. “You always were. It’s from your father. He couldn’t ever turn aside from temptation either.”

“What
temptation, Mom? I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“The temptations of the flesh. He- your father-
Bill
… he could never resist. He-
wanted
me. I tempted him. And he succumbed to his lusts, dragging me down with him.” My mother’s eyes flare again, and the hands she’s using to rub my back become claws. “And you were going to throw it all away for, what? Sean Pearse?” She snorts as if Sean was a lower life form and it takes all my willpower not to shout back at her that Sean was worth a thousand of that piece of shit Jeremiah. What has Jeremiah done with his life so far? Nothing! Nothing, that is, but be his father’s son.

Sean? He was a hero. A hero who fought for his country. A hero who fought for me. If I can’t escape, then I will fight for him as well, and I will make sure I join him before Jeremiah can ever claim me as his wife.

“Listen to me, you stupid little harlot,” my mother snarls. “You think I don’t notice when you get lost inside your own head?” And that she does; she always has. It started when I was a very young child, she could always spot it, the very instant my attention waned and I started drifting away. Now that she’s made sure she has my attention, her crazy smile returns.

“Good. I want you to understand,” she tells me, “
this
is your last chance.” I can’t help myself: I roll my eyes. Oh shit, I should have known better, it’s all that she needed to snap! Her hands come down again, but this time I’m ready and move fast enough for her to miss my face.

“How dare you?” she asks catching a fistful of my hair and pulling me up. “Kindness and mercy are wasted on you!” She pulls away from me, the sadness in her eyes at odds with the sneer on her face.

I don’t have the strength to fight any longer. I just want to go back to sleep where I can forget this nightmare, and go back to the world where my husband Sean and my beautiful daughter Jennie live. Please, let me escape this hell!

Escape.

Of all the things I’ve done of late that have been called sin, I can’t think of a single thing that would be more sinful than sitting here. God gave me a few days’ reprieve from my appointment with a sadist, and so far I’ve been wasting it.

What would Sean think of me?

* * *

A
fter two days
, the dizziness and that fucking headache are both—finally—starting to subside. My ribs are still agony, though, and it’s hard to breathe with all the layers of Ace bandages wrapped around my chest to support healing ribs. Individually they may be soft and stretchy, but if you put enough layers together, the bandages might as well be bands of steel.

I need help. The gear I bought at Cabela’s the other day is okay stuff by civilian standards, but if I’m going in to get Courtney by myself, it’s not enough. I need every advantage I can beg, borrow or steal. Fortunately, I have plenty of old friends who might listen to me beg, let me borrow, or look the other way while I steal.

My phone call is answered before the second ring.

“Naval Special Warfare Development Group Quarterdeck, PS2 Larkin speaking, how may I help you, sir or ma’am?” Larkin, a Personnel Specialist, is the one that processed my retirement paperwork, and he sounds somewhere between bored and annoyed. DEVGRU, popularly known as SEAL Team SIX, gets phone calls every day of the week from journalists, cranks, and conspiracy theorists around the country, and even the world. Thank Christ, though, it’s someone I know.

“Hey, Larkin,” I say.

“Pearse!” His voice brightens. “How the hell are you?”

“Better than you,” I say. “I don’t have to stand duty anymore. I’m all comfy up here at home, wrapped up in my DD-214 blanket,” I laugh, pulling out the old joke about discharge papers.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s warm and soft and insulates you from all the bullshit.” Larkin sighs ruefully. “I’ve filled out enough 214s for you guys, I’m starting to look forward to my own. But, yeah, Sean! Good to hear from you, man. What can I do for you?”

“Angela should have the duty today, right?” I keep the question casual. PS2 knows he shouldn’t be talking about scheduling of any sort, but after a momentary hesitation, he answers me.

“Yeah,” he says. “Angela’s the CDO.” CDO. Command Duty Officer. The poor bastard that has to stay overnight in charge of the duty section in case of an emergency.

“Great, thanks,” I say, feeling a definite sense of relief. If there’s anyone I’d rather talk to about this problem than Angela, I can’t think who it might be. “Lemme talk to the CDO then? Actually, no—can you get me a call back? We need to talk offline.” I really don’t want this conversation recorded anywhere. Better for Angela, better for me.

“Offline, aye.” Larkin pauses again. “Everything okay, Sean?” he asks, his voice full of concern.

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about,” I tell him, and he’s off to find Angela for me.

It takes less than a minute for my phone to ring, and caller ID says it’s a 757 area code. Virginia Beach. It’s an off-base number.

“How they hangin,’ Angie?” I say, answering the phone.

“Still one below the other, punk,” says a man with a deep, gruff voice. Chief Special Warfare Operator Max Anghelescu, Angela, to those of us who have fought and bled alongside him. “What’s your malfunction, Pearse?”

“You know how it is, Chief. I think some shrapnel’s shifting around in my shoulder. Hurts like a son of a bitch.” It’s an oblique way of reminding Angela that he owes me his life. He’d been dazed from a near miss in a rocket attack on the air base in Kandahar, and I caught a piece of the next wave while dragging him to safety. “More immediately, though? Bunch of broken ribs and a concussion from hell.” I play the honesty card here. He’s calling me from a cell phone, so we’re probably safe to talk.

“What’s the other guy look like?” Angela grunts in surprise. My reputation in the Teams is
not
as the guy that loses a fistfight.

“Guy
s
. Plural. And they look a lot better than me.” I take a deep breath before continuing. “I need a favor, Angie.”

“Sounds like,” Anghelescu says. “Why don’t we just take a step back here, and you can tell me what the actual fuck this goat rope is that you’ve gotten yourself into?” A brief recap takes only a few moments, and Angela whistles. “You don’t need a favor, shipwreck. You need a
miracle
.”

“Yeah, I sort of figured that part out for myself. You got any up your sleeve? Or maybe in the Lucky Bag?”

Historically, the Lucky Bag was a sort of naval lost and found for unclaimed items owned by sailors who transferred or who died at sea. Today, it’s a
very
unofficial repository for the high-dollar / low-inventory equipment reported as ‘lost in combat’ rather than turned in at the end of deployment for re-issue to another unit. Does it suck for the other guy that doesn’t get the gear he wanted for deployment? Of course it does, but since
his
unit’s got its own Lucky Bag, there’s a lot of trading going on. In the end, everyone deploys with the equipment set
they
think is necessary, rather than the list of items the
Navy
thinks they need.

“What do you have in mind?” He seems skeptical.

“Night vision, that’s the big one. I’ve got a shitty little Cabela’s toy, but I’m going to need the good stuff. I’d like to borrow a set of the 18s, if you can swing it. Armor. Threaded barrel and a suppressor for the Beretta. Blue backing me up?” Blue is one of the four
officially
acknowledged squadrons of the Development Group, alongside Gold, Silver, and Red. I know I’m not going to get any company on this trip, but if you don’t give them the opportunity to say
no
then they also don’t have the opportunity to say
yes
.

“It ain’t
Blue
you need here, Pearse. You want
Black
,” he says, referring to DEVGRU’s semi-mythical fifth squadron, the Keyser Soze of the Special Operations community. Angie sighs on the phone, and I can picture him running a big, callused hand through a high and tight crew cut. “Pearse. Is this gonna be clean? In accordance with the creed?”

“It’s righteous, yeah. ‘Always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves,’” I say, quoting part of the SEAL creed. “‘I serve with honor on and off the battlefield,’ Angie. ‘Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My wo-’”

“‘My word is my bond,’” he interrupts, finishing the line. “Yeah. You’ve never given me reason to question you before, so… let me see what I can come up with, okay? This a good contact number for you?”

“Yeah. And, Angela? I need to go hot on this, and fucking
soon,
man. I don’t have a lot of time to waste.
She
doesn’t have a lot of time to waste. And you fucking
owe
me for Kandahar.”

“I get that, Sean.” His voice is full of sympathy, and it gives me hope that he’s going to come through for me. “I really do. But, you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles. Hold fast, shipmate. I’ll get back to you.”

“I appreciate it, man. I really do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Whatever. I
do
owe you for Kandahar. I’ll be in touch.”

I feel a profound sense of relief when I put the phone down. Chief Anghelescu says he’s going to do something, he fucking
does
it. He might not be able to deliver everything I
need
, and
definitely
won’t be able to get me everything I’d
want
, but he’ll get me everything that he
can
.

“You’re still set on doing things this way, are you?” My mom leans against the frame of my bedroom door. Oh Christ. How much of that did you hear?

“We’ve been through this, Mom,” I say, rubbing at my temples. “You
know
why I have to do this,
and
why I have to do it myself.”

“Yeah, you’ve talked a lot about the danger to
her
, Sean, but what about the danger to
you
?” My mother sits next to me on the narrow bed and takes my hand. “Look, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to Courtney, God knows I don’t. I’ve been lighting candles for her, saying a rosary every day, but you
heard
what Jimmy told you.
Doctor
Moloney.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I was there, remember?”

“And is that what you want?” The beginnings of tears glisten in the corner of my mother’s eyes. She’s really worried about me. “If you don’t take the time to heal properly, you could
die
, Sean! I don’t want to lose you. Not now that I’ve just finally got you back.”

“Then you understand how I feel about Courtney,” I tell her. “I
found
her, Mom. All these years I’ve spent thinking about her, imagining what my life would be like if I hadn’t walked away from her when I was a kid. If I’d just had the balls to tell her how I felt before it was too late.”

“Is it worth the
risk
, though? I
can’t
lose you, Sean.”

“Mom, I don’t
want
to die. I don’t
want
to spend the rest of my life as a vegetable. I’d rather kill myself than live as a fucking
turnip
.”

My mother blanches at the harshness of my tone, as much as the words themselves.

“But every minute
I
spend here healing? That’s more time
she’s
getting put through hell.
My
comfort and safety? They’re not worth a single second of
her
pain and danger.”

“So, either I lose you, or Bill loses Courtney. Again.” The tears that threatened to fall have begun to track down my mother’s cheeks, and she wipes them away angrily with the back of her hand, sniffling. “There’s no good answer here, is there?”

“I’d say we’re at an impasse,” I say, and fold her into my arms. “Mom. You’re only looking at the worst case. I’m
good
at my job. You’re not going to lose me, and Bill’s not going to lose her. Courtney and I will both be back here, and we’ll both be perfectly safe.”

“
Good at your job?
” Her voice is almost a wail, and she roughly grabs my wrist, pulling my forearm up to eye level, pointing out jagged white lines through the tattoos. “You didn’t get these from being
good at your job!”
My mother drops my arm, poking me hard in the side of my chest. “
That
didn’t happen because you were good at your job!”

“The ribs? Yeah,” I say, gritting my teeth from the pain. “Yeah. I slipped up. I underestimated my enemy. But in Iraq? Afghanistan? There were a lot of guys there who were pretty good at
their
jobs, too, after a while. You kill the stupid ones, and all you’re left with are the ones smart enough to learn and survive. It’s Darwin in action. But these pricks? I’m not going to give them a decade and a half to evolve and figure out how to fight me.”

My mother moves to poke at a broken rib again, but I snatch her hand mid-jab.

“I’m not interested in playing that game anymore, Mom. It hurts. And yeah, I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

“I’m sorry, Sean. That was awful of me. But you promise?” My mother pulls back, red-rimmed eyes meeting mine. She really is scared. Intellectually she knows I’m tough, knows I’ve survived worse things than what happened to me Sunday, but she’s never seen me wounded before. I hope she never will again.

“Yeah, Mom,” I say with a kiss on the very top of her head. “I promise.”

“Bill’s not going to lose what?” His voice comes from the hallway, along with the step-thump, step-thump of his prosthetic. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Everything’s just fi-”

“Like hell it is!” Mom interrupts, and turns to her husband. “Bill, can’t you talk him out of this? Talk some sense into him?” Dammit! I thought I was making progress here.

Bill looks from my mother to me, then back to my mother, before his steady gaze settles back on me.

“Melissa, if there were any other way that made sense, I’d tell Sean to scrap his plan and just get the cops in there,” Bill tells her. “But he’s right. It’ll take the police days, weeks even, to watch and figure out what the fuck’s going on, never mind actually getting an operation together and getting my daughter out of there, throwing this Emmanuel character in prison, and putting Heather out to pasture on the funny farm. There are no good options, and Sean’s the best of all the bad choices.”

Bill turns to walk away, but stops, looking back over his shoulder to add one more final—and brutally practical—thought. “Sean’s way is more likely to get my daughter out alive. And it’s probably going to wind up being cheaper than a trial.”

“Men!” Mom’s tears have started in earnest now. “Can you
really
not think of
any way
to do things that doesn’t involve violence? When has that ever solved anything?”

“You should ask King George about that one, Melissa,” Bill says, in a voice like rocks grinding together. “Or the Confederacy. Maybe the Tsar would have some thoughts to share on the subject. Check with Hitler, see what his opinion is.” My mother’s husband turns back to me, clearly finished discussing other options with her. “Sean, I’ve got your old wheels out of the garage. You want to go over with me to get new tires for the Blazer? Maybe tomorrow we can take them up to the camp and put ‘em on the truck? If you’re up to it?”

“Yeah,” I say, untangling myself from Mom’s carefully fierce hug and standing carefully. “It’s gotta get done some time.” My vision blurs momentarily, and there’s a brief flash of dizziness. Not too bad, all things considered. Better than yesterday, for sure. “Let’s get it over with.”