The Unsung Hero (2 page)
The landscape below was barren and dry, a desert filled with unfriendly-looking rocks and not much more than a whole lot of dust. It looked more like the moon than the lush New England countryside where Tom had grown up.
“Brace!” Tom shouted as he wrestled the helo down to the ground. The landing was bumpy—hell, it was just short of a crash. Anything not strapped down went flying. “Jazz, get Mrs. H. outta here! Move!”
His men were already in motion. Jazz and Jenks each had Mrs. Hampton by an arm. As they lifted her out of the Seahawk and across the bone-dry ground to shelter behind an outcropping of rocks, she was shouting and struggling, her voice nearly hoarse.
Lopez and WildCard took the pilot, and Nilsson, Starrett, and O’Leary had already filled their arms with as much gear and water as they could carry away.
Tom was the last one out the door, and he hit the ground running, thinking, shit, that speech he’d given hadn’t done a whole hell of a lot to shut Mrs. Hampton’s flapping mouth.
And then he heard what Mrs. Hampton was shouting about. Her purse. She’d left her frigging purse behind.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he heard Jazz say, “you’ll have to do without it. That thing’s a time bomb, it’s going to—”
“My heart pills are in my purse!” Mrs. Hampton’s raspy voice seemed to echo against the rocks, slapping up among the walls of the gently sloping hills.
Heart pills.
Shit.
The world went into slow-mo. Tom saw Jazz step out from behind the rocks, heading back toward him, toward the helo. But Tom was at least thirty yards closer. He tried to execute a half-court pivot, but skidded in the dust, scrambling to keep his speed up as he raced now back toward the helicopter.
Ten steps, and he was inside, searching for the goddamned thing. It was invisible, like most women’s handbags when you really wanted to find them fast. He dropped to the metal floor, searching under the seats and . . .
Jackpot. It was beige leather and it must’ve slid forward when he’d landed. He grabbed it and was out the door in a matter of heartbeats, running as hard and as fast as he possibly could.
Tom was at least twenty yards from the shelter of the rocks when he heard the Seahawk blow behind him, felt the force of the explosion send him hurtling through the air. The ground came up to meet him far too quickly.
Damn, he thought as he tucked Mrs. H.’s handbag against him, protecting it with his body, this was going to hurt.
And then he stopped thinking as his world went black.
________________________________________
One
8 August
TOM SWUNG HIS duffle bag down from the overhead rack and shuffled slowly with the other passengers off the commercial flight and out into Boston’s LoganAirport.
Moving slowly was good, especially since—like right now—he still had bouts of dizziness from that head injury that had nearly taken him out of action permanently.
Outside the terminal, the city skyline was muted by the hazy morning sky. Welcome to summer in New England.
The humidity would lift, Tom knew, as he headed toward the tiny NorthShore community of Baldwin’s Bridge. The stiff ocean breezes kept the temperature down and the skies blue in the picture-perfect tourist town.
Tom was staying only until Sunday.
He had thirty days of convalescent leave to fill, which pissed him off. He didn’t want thirty days, dammit. He’d just spent far too much time in the hospital, too much time away from his command. Of course, thanks to Rear Admiral Larry Tucker, at this point he wasn’t sure he even had much of a command to return to.
Was it any wonder he’d lost his temper when he’d found out that while he was in a frigging coma, Tucker had tried to make SEAL Team Sixteen a line item to be deleted on the upcoming fiscal year’s budget? And when Tom had found out that Tucker had taken Sixteen’s SO squad, the elite group of men that Tom had taken years to handpick—nicknamed “The Troubleshooters” by some and “The Troublemakers” by the non-SEAL brass like Tucker—and scattered them to the ends of the earth . . .
But Tom had only lost his temper with the rear admiral. He hadn’t thrown the man through the fourth-story window of his D.C. office. He hadn’t even slapped the self-satisfied smirk off the bastard’s face.
All he’d done was list his objections perhaps a little more strenuously than he normally might have.
And for that, he’d lost another week of his life undergoing psych evaluations, as teams of medical doctors and psychiatrists tried to decide whether or not his outburst was directly related to his recent severe head injury.
Tom had tried to assure them that, indeed, his loss of temper was merely a side effect of dealing with Tucker.
But his doctor was a captain—Howard Eckert—who was up for promotion and eager to please Rear Admiral Tucker, and Tom’s excuses didn’t fly. Eckert gave him thirty days’ convalescent leave in an attempt to recover further from the head injury. The doctor and the shrinks warned Tom that with such an injury it wasn’t unusual to experience some temporary and slight changes in personality. Aggressive behavior. Feelings of persecution and paranoia. And of course there was the dizziness and headaches. He should try to stay calm and relaxed. Because after thirty days, when he returned to the naval base in Virginia, he would undergo a similar set of psychiatric tests, after which his fate would be decided.
Would he be given a medical discharge and cut adrift, or would he be allowed to continue his career in the U.S. Navy?
Tom didn’t want choice A, but he knew that Tucker would be pushing to have him safely retired. And that meant Tom needed to spend these next thirty days doing everything he could to get as rested and relaxed—and as sane—as possible.
He knew himself well enough to know that going home for more than a long weekend would be a major mistake as far as staying sane went. And Tuesday through Sunday made for a very long weekend.
But a short visit would be good. He wanted to see his great-uncle, Joe. He even wanted to see his sister, Angela, and his niece, Mallory. Mal had graduated from high school this year. Her teenage years were proving to be as rocky as his and Angie’s had been.
Apparently it still wasn’t easy to be a Paoletti kid growing up in highbrow Baldwin’s Bridge, Massachusetts. Hell, there were members of the police force who still bristled when they saw Tom coming.
He was thirty-six years old now, a highly decorated and respected commanding officer in the U.S. Navy SEALs, yet all those old labels—troublemaker, fuckup, “that wild Paoletti kid”—persevered.
No, as much as he missed Joe’s solid company, a weekend in Baldwin’s Bridge would definitely be long enough. But maybe he could talk Joe into going to Bermuda with him for a week or two. That would be cool. And if Joe insisted, Tom would even bring Charles Ashton along on this trip.
Mr. Ashton was Joe’s crotchety best friend or arch nemesis, depending on the two old men’s moods. He was a contender for Mr. Scrooge and the Grinch all rolled into one delightful, alcohol-soused package. But Joe had known the man since the Second World War. There was a lot of history behind his loyalty, and Tom could respect that. Besides, any man who’d managed to father Kelly Ashton couldn’t be that bad.
Kelly Ashton. Tom thought of her every time he returned to Baldwin’s Bridge. Of course, he thought of her when he wasn’t there as well. In fact, he thought of her far too often, considering it had been more than sixteen years since he’d seen her last.
What were the chances she’d be visiting her father this week, while Tom was in town?
Slim to none. She was a doctor now, with a busy, full life that didn’t include sitting around, waiting for Tom to come home.
And sixteen years was surely enough time for him to stop thinking about her. She’d obviously stopped thinking about him, considering she’d been married.
Of course, now she was divorced.
Which meant exactly nothing. For all he knew, she’d already remarried. Stop thinking about her. She wasn’t going to be there.
Tom worked his way through the crowded airport, heading toward the overhang where the shuttle to the subway—called the T in Boston—would pick him up. He passed the luggage carousel, weaving his way through the throngs of people who were surging slightly forward now that the conveyor belt had started moving.
The crowd was made up mostly of vacationing families and older travelers waiting for their suitcases. The businessmen and -women had all packed lightly enough to carry on their bags and they were long gone.
But there was one dark-suited man in the crowd, about Tom’s height, his light brown hair streaked with gray. He reached down to pick up his bag from the conveyor belt, turning to hoist it up onto his shoulder in a strange twisting move that made Tom stop short.
No way.
There was no way that, out of all the places in the world, Tom should run into the man known only as “the Merchant” in LoganAirport.
His hair was too light, although that’d be easy enough to change.
His face was different—although it was roughly the same shape. But his nose and cheekbones were softer, less pronounced, his chin slightly weaker than Tom remembered. Could a plastic surgeon do all that? Was it even possible?
Tom moved closer to the man, trying to get a better look.
His eyes. The color was different. They were a muddy shade of blue and brown—that funky no-single-color that brown-eyed people could get when they bought blue-tinted contact lenses. But it didn’t matter what color they were. Tom would have recognized those eyes anywhere. Still, he’d only gotten a glimpse.
God, was it possible? . . .
The man moved with his duffel bag still on his shoulder, heading for the door, and Tom followed more slowly, hampered by the crowd.
Now that he was walking, the man moved differently than the Merchant had, but a man who was the subject of an international manhunt would no doubt have worked to change his walk along with his face and his hair color. Still, that one twisting move . . . Tom had seen that many times on several different pieces of video—rare footage of the Merchant in action. And as for his eyes . . .
Tom still saw the Merchant’s eyes in his sleep.
As Tom followed him, the man pushed open the door, heading toward a taxicab waiting at the curb.
Tom tried to get outside, doing some fancy footwork to keep from stepping on a toddler who’d escaped from his parents, then dancing around a pair of elderly ladies.
By the time he reached the door, his head was throbbing and the Merchant had gotten into the taxi and was driving away.
What now? Follow that cab?
There were no other cabs available.
Strains of the rock song “Paranoia” echoed in Tom’s head as he made a mental note of the departing taxi’s ID number—5768—stenciled in black letters on its trunk. He glanced at his watch. Nearly 0800.
But if this really was the Merchant, calling the cab company to find out where cab number 5768 dropped his 0800 fare from Logan wasn’t going to do a hell of a lot of good.
The Merchant wouldn’t go directly from the airport to his final location. He would make sure he was dropped downtown, he’d wander a few blocks, then pick up another cab. He’d do this several times until he was certain he wasn’t being followed, that his path couldn’t be traced.
On the other side of the overhang, the shuttle to the T was pulling up.
“Paranoia” played a little bit louder until Tom shook his head, pushing away both it and the dizziness that still seemed to intervene whenever he stood up for too long.
Yes, it was going to sound frigging crazy when he tried to explain. “Hi, I think I just saw the international terrorist that I spent four months tracking in ’96 taking a cab out of LoganAirport. Yeah, that’s in Boston, Massachusetts, that teeming hotbed of international intrigue. . . .”
Yeah, right.
Tom got on the shuttle.
He would call. Crazy as it all sounded, he had to call someone. He’d call Admiral Crowley—a man who’d trusted Tom’s crazy instincts before. But Tom would make the call from the comfort and privacy of his uncle Joe’s cottage in Baldwin’s Bridge.
He jammed his bag beneath his feet and sat near the window, putting his head back and closing his eyes. Rest and relaxation.
He could assume the position, but he couldn’t keep his mind from racing.
Tom had no clue—no clue—what he was going to do if Tucker got what he wanted and kicked him out of the Navy.
The tile was cold against his cheek.
It actually felt rather nice, but Charles Ashton didn’t want to die, like Elvis, on the bathroom floor, with his pajama bottoms down around his ankles.
Where was the dignity in that?
“Come on, God,” he said, struggling to pull his pants up his legs. “Give a guy a break.”
He’d been on a first-name basis with God ever since that day Joe Paoletti had driven him to Dr. Grant’s and the much too young physician had used the words you and have and terminal and cancer in the very same sentence. Charles had figured his and God’s relationship was going to become far more personal and hands on in the very near future, so he might as well get friendly with the guy.
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