Troubleshooters 16.8 - Free Fall (4 page)

 The football boy shifted as far as humanly possible from Adam, who inhaled deeply and then exhaled a long, cleansing breath before he looked at Ben and said, “I flashback to the horrors of my own high school days pretty fucking easily.”

 Ben coughed, and Adam looked up to find a woman standing directly in front of them. Her suit, hair, and make-up all screamed
Respect me!
Her shoes, however, announced her pathetically low public educator’s salary. Oh, honey, no . . .

 “I’m Ms. Quinbey, the vice principal. Are you Mr. Gillman?” she asked, her voice clipped with her implied disapproval of his F-bomb.

 “No, I’m a family friend,” Adam said, standing up, resisting the urge to alliterate further as he introduced himself. Quinbey was taller than he was, and she stood like a former ballerina, shoulders back, head high. “
Petty Officer
Gillman is currently out training with his SEAL team. As is Petty Officer Zanella, Ben’s other legal guardian. Their wives, Jenn Gillman and Eden Zanella, are out of town. That’s why they asked me to come.”

 The football boy laughed snarkishly at that, and when Adam glanced at him, the boy said, “At least I have
real
parents. Christ.”

 Dan, Jenn, Izzy and Eden had all worked liked hell to get Ben away from his abusive “real” parents, and Adam found himself looking at those scars again and wondering how many of them this boy’s “real” father had caused. But that was neither here nor there.

 “There should be a letter on file giving me permission to sign Ben out,” Adam told the stern woman again, “or do whatever it is I have to do to take him to the hospital so he can get properly checked. Have you
seen
the bump on his head? It’s not my place to make decisions about things like this, but I’m sure Ben and his family will be having a discussion about whether to press charges for assault.”

 Them was fightin’ words, and the football player shifted uneasily at that.

 But right on cue, as if he’d seen the good-cop-bad-cop script Adam was using, Ben spoke up. “No one’s pressing charges,” he said. “Adam, that’s insane. Wade and I had an . . . um . . . a
disagreement
that . . . got out of hand.”

 “A disagreement?” Adam repeated. Of course Football’s name was
Wade
. “About what?”

 Ben hesitated, looking over at the football player who was now looking back at them with the tiniest spark of something in his otherwise dead eyes. It might’ve been hope, but it was probably just more fear.

 “That’s between Wade and me,” Ben said. His voice was even but he was looking pointedly at Football while he said it. “It
was
between Wade and me. Very unmistakably between Wade. And me.”

 No doubt about it, Ben was talking in code to ol’ Wade here. It didn’t take much for Adam to guess exactly what had been “between” Wade and Ben as they’d fought. But even though Wade’s face was turning red, Ms. Quinbey remained clueless, so Adam kept his face impassive, too.

 But he couldn’t wait to tell Eden.
Our little Ben was cool as ice while he blackmailed that bully motherfucker, right in front of the vice principal! I was so proud . . .

 “But I’m willing to just let it go and not talk about
any
of it,” Ben continued, stressing that
any
. “Provided that, in the future, Wade keeps his distance from my friends and me. In return, I’ll keep my distance from him. I’ll never talk about him—in fact, I’ll never even think about him again.” He aimed his words at Wade. “Does that sound fair?”

 Wade nodded almost jerkily, but Quinbey was not having it. “School policy requires at least one mediated meeting for the two of you, with our guidance counselor, before readmission.”

 “I don’t have anything to say,” Ben repeated. “But if we have to, we’ll go to the meeting and even sing Kumbaya.” He looked at Wade again. “You’ll have to take the high harmony.” Back to Quinbey. “But there’s nothing to talk about. We’ve resolved our issue, and we’re not going to fight again. Right, Wade?”

 Wade found his voice, cleared his throat. “Right,” he said, looking up at the vice principal. “Ma’am.” But the look he then gave to Ben was not one of thanks.

 The phrase
shooting
daggers
sprang to mind.

 But Ben’s eyes were narrowed as he gazed back at Wade—this kid wasn’t naive.

 Adam stood up. “Well,
that
was fun. Time to take Ben to the hospital.”

 Ben stood, too, and Adam knew just from the way he moved that he was more badly bruised than he was letting on. Still, no point in letting Wade know that. Let him think Ben was made of Teflon, because in truth he was.

 “Have one of Ben’s guardians call me to discuss his return to school,” Ms. Quinbey said.

 “I suspect they’ll want a meeting,” Adam said. “Have you met them?”

 “Not yet.”

 “Oh, you will,” he told her.

 Ben laughed, but then winced and then covered his wince with a smile. Odds were he’d cracked a rib.

 Again, he was not willing to let Wade know that.

 As Adam followed Ben to the door, Quinbey went back into her office with a quiet, “Let me know when Mr. O’Keefe’s parents arrive,” to the receptionist.

 It was as he was going into the corridor, right after Quinbey’s inner office door closed, that he heard Wade mutter, “Fucking faggots should all die.”

 Ben heard it, too.

 As Adam closed the office door behind them, he looked at Ben and said, “Changing hearts and minds where e’re we go. Tra la!”

 Ben laughed. “He doesn’t have to like me,” he started.

 “He just has to stay away from your
friends
,” Adam said as they left the building and headed for his car, parked in one of the visitor’s spots. “So who is he?”

 Ben played dumb. “Who’s who? What?”

 “Yeah,” Adam mocked him. “
What
? Can’t bullshit a bullshitter, baby. You got into this fight with Wade because, why exactly? He was picking on someone, I don’t know, shall we say . . .
special
?”

 But Ben shook his head as he got into the passenger seat. “Wade was just picking on . . . someone. Yes, special, because we’re all special, thanks. But the why is because I’m done pretending I don’t notice.”

 “That’s good,” Adam said, starting his car. “Being done. But just be sure to watch your back, because Wade isn’t done with you.”

 “Whatever.” Ben fastened his seatbelt.

 Adam backed out of the parking spot. “I’m serious, Ben. He’s gonna come for you, although what he’s gonna do when he gets you, I’m . . . not quite sure. I mean,
hello
!”

 Ben met his eyes at that. “I told Wade I wouldn’t talk about—”

 “I know,” Adam said. “And I respect that. But attraction is a weird thing, and at the risk of freaking you out—”

 “Oh, my God,” Ben said.

 “I just want to say that if things got hot and heavy between you and Wade—”

 “You’re definitely freaking me out!”

 Adam just spoke over him because this needed to be said, “—you wouldn’t be the first person in this car to hook up with someone who tried to beat you up.”

 Ben was muttering something now that sounded like, “TMI, TMI, oh, please, please, don’t . . .”

 Adam squared his shoulders and kept going. “But I can honestly tell you that a guy like that is the polar opposite of good boyfriend material. He’s not just a bad boy—he’s dangerous. As in majorly fucked up. Take it from someone who knows.”

 “Can we please not talk about this?” Ben begged. “I mean, I appreciate your openness and honesty—I love you, I do, and I love Tony, too, but . . . Wade? No. No. Nope.” He shook his head.

 “I’m here if you need me,” Adam said. “Tony is, too. I hope. Mind if we, um, go to the doctor on the base?”

 “Uh oh,” Ben said, clearly making note of that
I hope
. “Did the team deploy this morning?” The rest of his question, which was
And you wanna go to the base to attempt to find clues as to where they went
was silent.

 “No,” Adam countered. “It’s not . . . It’s just, you know, a training exercise.” He glanced over to find Ben watching him expectantly, so he said it. “They’re doing HAHO jumps today.”

 Ben swore pungently. “God, I wish I’d known before . . .”

 “Helping a kid in desperate need of rescue?” Adam finished for him. “What, were you just going to walk away?”

 “
Damn it,
” Ben said. “I hate HAHOs. Does Eden know?”

 “Yep.”

 The kid put his face in his hands. “And I went and did this.
Shit
!”

 “It’s not that big a deal,” Adam lied. “I mean, the team does ’em all the time. They’re good at them. Which is a result of them doing them all the time, right? So it’s a good thing. When they do the fucking HAHOs.”

 Ben looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

 “I think Tony likes doing ’em,” Adam explained his convoluted rationalization. “I mean, he pretends it’s a pain in the ass, but . . .”

 “Izzy likes them, too,” Ben said. “Danny doesn’t talk about it. I think he knows Jenn gets freaked out. Jay once told me he doesn’t like ’em, because you have to restrict any diving—deep diving—a few days before going up in the plane, and he’d rather be diving.”

 “Out of all the SEALs I know, and I’ve met a lot of ’em,” Adam said as he headed for the bridge to Coronado, “Jay Lopez is the only sane one.”

****

Chapter Seven

 Jay Lopez was no longer quite so certain about his promotion to chief.

 And after this training op was over and he had a little time to spend reflecting, he was going to give the whole being-a-decision-maker thing his full attention.

 Right now, as he cut away his parachute and tucked his head down into an extra aerodynamic free-fall dive, he could hear Izzy Zanella singing over his radio headset.

 With Izzy, singing didn’t necessarily mean he was feeling hypoxia’s lack of oxygen, but in this case he probably was.

 Jay hadn’t been surprised when Izzy had given Tony access to his oxygen bottle. This wasn’t the first time the big, gregarious SEAL risked his own life for a teammate.

 Izzy had run into a hot zone to rescue Mark Jenkins, and gone into a sniper’s kill zone to save Dan Gillman, who had been on the verge of bleeding out from a direct hit to his thigh. Izzy’d actually given Dan a battlefield infusion, literally opening a vein for him, hooking them together through IV tubing and then nearly dying himself when he gave away a little too much of his own blood.

 Today, it was Tony’s life that Izzy was saving. Tomorrow it was just as likely to be Jay or LT MacInnough, or Ferd the FNG. When Izzy was on your team, he absolutely had your back.

 Right now, Izzy and Tony were tumbling as they, too, fell toward earth. The awkward randomness of their descent slowed them down a bit—just a bit—as Jay channeled his inner Rocketman and pulled his arms minutely closer to his body, in an attempt to increase his speed.

 He was carrying his medical gear—that was good, at least. As was the fact that Izzy was still singing some ancient pop song. As long as he was singing, he was still alive.

 Of course, that was the moment that Izzy fell silent.

 “Stay with us, Iz,” Jay said over his mic, wishing he had hands on the other man. He knew what to do to keep a teammate from bleeding out. He knew how to restart a heart, how to splint a near-catastrophic break. He could probably even deliver a baby in a pinch.

 His training and skill as a hospital corpsman had undergone trial by fire, plenty of times. He had faith in his abilities.

 But if he couldn’t get to Izzy, he wouldn’t be able to help the man.

 But right now, Izzy wasn’t alone. “Tony,” Jay said, raising his voice. “Vlachic! Wake up!”

****

Chapter Eight

 Tony’s first thought was
Whoever this was, he wasn’t Adam
.

 It had been a long,
long
time since Tony had woken up with a big, heavy stranger wrapped around him, and the first words out of his mouth were “What the
fuck
?”

 His initial reaction was to push the motherfucker away from him, but he instantly became aware of the fact that he wasn’t in bed—in fact, he was falling out of the sky, he was fully clothed in combat gear,
and
the motherfucker in question was none other than his teammate Izzy Zanella, who’d hooked Tony into his own oxygen bottle, no doubt to save Tony’s life.

 There was noise over his radio headset—the CO and the chief both calling his name—and as he and Izzy tumbled and turned, Tony caught a glimpse of a stack of HAHO canopies way, way up in the sky.

 He had no idea how he’d gotten here—but logic dictated that at some point in the recent past he’d jumped out of a plane, and evidently hijinks had ensued. Something had gone rather radically wrong. The details of that wrongness, however, could wait.

 Years of training kicked in as Tony grabbed more tightly onto Zanella—who was out cold—even as he checked his altimeter, and announced to the team, “I’m okay, but need info. Hot zone or safe?”

 He had no idea where they were. Was that desert they were falling toward in California or somewhere else entirely? Afghanistan or some other sandy, desolate, dangerous place . . . ? The mountains in the distance didn’t look like A-stan’s craggy peaks, but there were parts of that country he hadn’t yet explored.

 “Safe, repeat you are safe. And I’m right behind you.” Chief Lopez’s voice was calm and even, as it came through Tony’s headset—as if they were taking a stroll on the beach instead of falling out of the sky at a hundred-plus miles an hour.

 Tony did a quick inventory and saw immediately that his main chute was gone—he’d cut away from his HAHO canopy. Or maybe Zanella had cut away for him. Either way, their in-one-piece arrival on the ground was now up to his reserve chute, which was set to pop automatically when he reached twenty-five-hundred feet.

 Izzy’s own AAD or automatic activation device was no doubt set to pop
his
reserve, too, and the last thing either of them needed was for their two chutes to tangle and leave them with none.
Two is one and one is none
was an old SEAL adage, but this case was an exception.