Hunter's Heart (9 page)

Rules were they told only a spouse, significant other or parent they were leaving. Most times they couldn’t even tell them where they were going. He and Celia had been out twice and shared unexpected but very welcome fan-fucking-tastic sex last night—
all last night
and this morning. Great Caesar’s ghost. The memory gave him a full-body quiver. He had the feeling his return would not be met with the same enthusiasm.

Between the time they’d gone wheels up and touched down in Nevada, their training schedule was altered. Instead of training exclusively with the 10th Mountain guys and SOAR, Special Operations Aviation Regiment, some regular Army pukes had been thrown into the mix.

No one was happy about that. The LT got on the sat phone and bitched his objections loud and clear to their CO. Problem wasn’t the 10th and SOAR—they were the best of the best. But regular Army? There was no way to guesstimate.

“We’re screwed,” LT said. “Some Army colonel decided he wanted his men training at a higher level. He knows somebody who knows somebody and had his people inserted into this training. We’re ordered to stay. CO thinks you fuckups need the training.”

Along with a lot of foul language and some creative suggestions about what the Army colonel could do to himself, they unloaded their personal gear from the plane and piled in trucks taking them to their lodgings. Lodgings, was a grand word for the WWII era Quonset huts. The base was an off-the-grid training facility and comfort was not a priority, or even a thought. On the way he and Bambi, chatted up the driver about their new training partners.

“They came in the middle of the night,” the sergeant said, “and none of ’em are making friends.”

“Enlisted
and
officers?” he asked.

“
Yeaph.
Assholes one and all. They came in bragging about how they were going to show the Navy how it’s done. Show all the special operators who was the best. You guys,” he said, turning to look at them, “would soon be showing them respect.”

He and Bambi exchanged glances.
Great.
This was not going to be pretty. They worked with other branches of the military from around the world in training and real world ops. The way you got respect was by fitting in and doing the job
very well
. Working hard and playing harder.

Their Army compatriots wasted no time starting the shit. It began with small bumps and trash talkin’. The trash talkin’ ended pretty quick ’cause nobody can out-trash talk a SEAL. They all have master’s degrees in trash talkin’. Then Army got pissed they couldn’t get their goat. What really sent them ballistic happened at the beginning of the second week. Their lieutenant found out the man he’d be liaising with, Bug, was an E7 NCO. An enlisted man.
Not
an officer. SEALs—officer and enlisted alike—go on deployments together. In a battle, a bullet or bomb doesn’t make rank distinctions. Units work and train together, regardless of rank, so they are all at the highest performance level. Senior NCOs are schooled in leadership positions for battle and DDD—dreaded desk duty.

Many times units don’t display their rank, using only nicknames. This was one of those times. The Army lieuie got in LT’s face in the common room. When he was done cussing, spitting, calling off a list of what he was going to report to his CO, and letting everyone see his hairy ass, LT quietly laid into him.

“So you know,” LT said, standing tall and looking down at the man who was a good five inches shorter, “I’d love to go before a review board and explain how your unit has wasted millions of taxpayers’ dollars coming to training late and unprepared, slowing down units that are ready to participate. Go for it.”

Army’s face turned purple, his mouth moved but no words came out. LT started to turn away then stopped. “One more thing, so you know. I think going into a battle with you or any of your men would be like committing suicide.”

Damn.
The room went real quiet. That was the worst insult you could give an infantryman. LT turned his back on the man, walked over to the boom box and cranked up the tones. That ended that. Army slithered out of the building.

Nights they weren’t training, they joined up with the 10th and SOAR guys at an establishment outside the front gate—the Crossroads Bar—where thousands of their brethren had hoisted a few. It was a revered middle-of-the-last-century place that smelled of sweat, stale beer and testosterone. Sagging wood floors covered with sawdust and peanut shells, held beat-up pool tables. A 40s jukebox that only played decades-old music, had been repaired by patrons for no charge, dozens of times because they didn’t want to see it go.

The yellow-brown patina of the walls attested it was one of the last bars in the country where you could smoke. He’d never had the balls to touch a wall. If the establishment wanted to hang pictures, nails wouldn’t be necessary only slight pressure against the years of sticky smoke build up. No one on the team smoked cancer sticks but they did enjoy a good cigar and it was nice to light up without the PC police coming after them.

The place made their living from the military and they were pretty tolerant of crap the men pulled. But, the Army kept pushing the limits. That morning a SOAR crew refused to take a couple of the pukes in their helo for training. The men were still drunk from the previous night’s drinking and the crew considered them non-functional and a danger to others. That
was
reported.

The incident reflected on their officers, as it should, and on up the line to the colonel—who, must have given the officers shit. And…as everyone knows, shit rolls downhill. That night Army was in a piss-poor mood and taking it out on everybody in the bar. Even the bar bunnies, women who hung around for free drinks and for the vertical and horizontal dancing, had enough and left.

Hunter’s tolerance meter went into the red when one asswipe leaned across the bar and pinched Sherrie, the middle-aged barkeep’s, ample breast. Even though she brought out a wooden paddle and wacked him a good one, Hunter had seen enough. He was ready to put these guys in their place…on their ass, in the dust, outside. He wasn’t alone.

Bug, a twisted smile on his face, shoved past him, with Hobbit close behind. Those two had an informed fight alliance, a SEAL tag team, and were generally first in the fray. He’d never seen them start a fight. He’d seen them finish plenty.

“Nope. Not tonight,” LT said, laying a firm hand on Bug’s arm, effectively stopping him and everyone else from pounding the crap out of the low-life motherfuckers. “Not when I’m here.” He tipped his head the direction of the10th and SOAR guys. “Or any of our buddies,” he added.

Hunter liked the LT. He was one of the best officers he’d worked with. When he came into the unit, he’d been prepared to hate him. Solely because he’d come to take the place of his friend and best officer he’d worked for, LT Mercer, who was killed during an op. eHWhen LT ‘Zoom’ Zunno came into the team, he asked for two things, do their best and never, never get into trouble—as in with the law—when he was around.

LT had no aversion to joining them in a brawl, but someone would have to bail them out of jail and talk the CO out of disciplinary actions. He also knew and acknowledged who ran the SEALs. The senior enlisted. Zoom was a respected leader who took care of them.

“Come on LT,” Bambi protested. “These assholes are begging for it.”

“Not tonight,” LT said. “Last call, frogs.”

LT was calling an end to the night. It was only ten-twenty and it took some effort not to wade into the group, fists flying. But, if they did that it would be their Army buds, not them, taking the brunt of the discipline tomorrow. The Colonel, whoever he was, may know people in the Army, maybe even the Navy, but his reach ended when it came to the SEALs.

Grumbling, they piled into the fifteen-person van they’d been assigned and went back.

Hunter’s room was uncomfortably warm. The
rooms
were plywood partitions, hastily erected twenty years ago in the abandoned Quonset huts. Tiny window-unit air conditioners, almost as ancient, did nothing more than stir around the day’s leftover heat.

Hunter dropped onto his cot and thought of Celia. Conflicting emotions nagging him. They had a scrambled sat phone the guys used to call their families and he could probably use it to call her. But he’d been gone more than a week. “Shit.” He swung his feet to the floor and padded to the head. On the way back he stopped at Bug’s door and knocked.

“Yeah.”

Hunter poked his head in. “Talk?”

“Yeah. Let’s go outside. Hot in here,” Bug said, slipping on his flip flops.

Outside, they lit up the cigars Bug brought out with him. The Herrera Finos were a gift to the team from a diplomat whose ass they’d saved on a South American deployment. The man never failed to keep them supplied with a variety of quality cigars.

Hunter drew in, savored the complex flavor of the tobacco, and exhaled.

“Ya gonna tell me or not?” Bug said as the smoke drifted away.

“A woman. She’s in here.” Hunter tapped his forehead.

Bug leaned against the building. “Not the worst thing that can happen.”

Part of him thought it could be. When he was working or training, he was one hundred percent into the work, the training, being with the men. “How do you keep it from creeping into your thoughts?”

“Has it while you’re working?” Bud asked.

He thought about it. “No.”

“Then you’re good. It’s when it gets in the way of work, you need to worry.”

They were silent for several minutes, leaning against the building, listening to night sounds. A coyote barking. Plane engines cycling up. Music coming from one of the huts.

“That can’t be all,” Bug said.

No it wasn’t. Hunter sought Bug’s advice because the man had run the gauntlet in relationships. Bug’s first marriage ended in divorce. He and his high school girlfriend, both nineteen, married after he graduated Navy boot camp. Things were okay until he went into the SEALs.

It happened his wife didn’t like being lonely. She found any number of sailors in San Diego to keep her company while he was away. After the divorce, Bug drank too much and made it his sworn duty to meet and bed every bar bunny in San Diego, right up to the day a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over for speeding.

Bug fell hard for her. They were together for a couple of years until she stopped to assist a man whose car had broken down. The man thanked her by shooting her in the head. Bug asked for a transfer to the East Coast to get away from the memories. Two days after he arrived in Virginia he met his wife. He asked her out, took her home and never left.

“I didn’t tell her I’d be gone two weeks.”

“How long have you been seeing her?”

“Been out twice.”

“Then what are you worried about? She won’t be feeling very kindly to you when you get back. Once she sees your ugly face she’ll forgive you.”

“Yeah…but,
ehhh
…. The night before we left, I stayed over at her place.”

Bug snorted. “
Fuck
.”

“Exactly,” Hunter said.

“You went out with her twice and you’re this messed up over it?” He shook his head. “Brother you got it
gooood.
May I suggest when you go to see her you wear full protective gear? An angry woman can do more damage than a five-hundred-pound IED. That’s assuming you’ve got big enough balls to see her again.”

“You are not making this any easier for me.”

“Then I’m doing my job.”

“Asshole.”

“Frog, women are a profound, complicated species we men can never understand. All we can do is go to our knees and thank God when we find one who’ll let us in her life. Be there for us. Put up with our truckloads of bullshit. Love us and let us love her.” His voice trailed away and he puffed on the cigar. “Seriously dude, you know you didn’t have a choice.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better. What do you tell Jenny when you leave?”

“I tell her its training or a deployment. She knows where. I’ll call if I can and tell her I love her.” He pushed off the wall and faced Hunter. “This…” He paused and swept a hand around. “This shit is not a problem—it’s easy. We train for every fucking scenario to the point it’s as instinctive as breathing. What we leave behind…”

He shook his head. “That takes guts and ain’t easy. That one woman comes along and smiles at you. All the blood leaves your big head for your small one. The self-control we are all so fucking proud of having….
Pffft.”
He tossed a hitchhiker’s thumb over his shoulder. “Gone. The big mean fighting machine no longer has any fucking idea what it’s doing. My brother, women are trouble—in capital letters.” Bug examined the Herrera then looked over at him. His grin showing white teeth between his dark beard and mustache. “But you know how us SEALs love trouble. And
damn
, women are abso-fucking-lutely worth it.”

The next day the puke, asshole, mother fuckers did everything they could to sabotage the fast rope and extraction training. The day was a waste for the entire unit. Hunter was glad they didn’t have live ammo. LT called them together after chow. “We’re leaving. Pack up. Got a plane out at midnight.”

“Wait a minute,” Hunter spoke up, none too happy. “We’ve taken shit from those Army assholes for days. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m not leaving here without having a
talk
with them.”