Countermeasure (Shadow Team #7)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

September 2020, Germany

J essica Courtland swallowed hard. She couldn’t cry. She didn’t dare. Sitting in the empty surgery lounge at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany was the last place she thought she’d ever be. Jess slowly rubbed her dirty face with hands that, until a few hours ago, had been covered with blood. The blood of Navy Chief Dan Callahan, her boss. She wanted to forget what had happened, but the firefight between the Taliban and the Seabee crew, paired with the A-Team of Special Forces, raged behind her tightly shut, green eyes. Tears leaked out anyway.

She felt the grit of the fine sand of Afghanistan still on her face, clinging there because of the sweat from the terror and adrenaline rush she’d gone through as she’d tightened a tourniquet on Dan’s left thigh. A Taliban bullet had found him, cracking his femur, cutting the main artery, blood spurting out in an almost hypnotic rhythm from the open fracture. Jess had been closest, firing her M4 rifle at the horsemen charging like wild men toward their position near that village on the slopes of the Hindu Kush Mountains. They’d been there two days, bringing in a well-drilling truck and other necessary equipment via crane helicopters, all to provide the suspectedly pro-Taliban village with fresh water. Their only source of water was dirty, full of worms and other parasites. It killed babies, young children and the elderly.

She was sitting on a green plastic couch in the small surgery’s lobby area. Outside, she could hear nurses talking in low voices at their nearby desk. Was Dan going to make it? She’d sat, numb and in a daze, on that C-17 medical jet that had taken off from Bagram Army– Air Base and flown them to Landstuhl. It was the place badly wounded, or dying, military personnel were taken for the most advanced medical treatment available in this part of the world. Jess was grateful to have been able to accompany Dan, who’d been unconscious all the way in. She felt fiercely that he shouldn’t be alone. Not through this.

Her hands draped tiredly across her thighs. Three hours. For three hours they’d been in surgery with Dan. On board the specially modified C-17, Dan had been one of eight wounded men and women on their way to the American hospital in Germany. The physician on board, a woman doctor, had sat with Jess at one time, giving her an update on Dan’s status. She’d said it didn’t look good. Jess had felt her eyes burn with tears but had gulped them back down. She’d hoarsely thanked the doctor, leaning back against the bulkhead in her nylon seat, uncomfortable physically and hurting emotionally.

Jess sat up, bringing herself back to the present, realizing she had to get cleaned up. There was blood on her desert-colored blouse and cammie trousers. The coppery smell made her nauseous. It struck her all over again that it was Dan’s blood: His life that had been spilling out onto the sands of Afghanistan. Her black hair had come undone from its ponytail, and was dirty and dusty, laying limply around her shoulders. Torn, Jess didn’t want to leave the lounge. It was as close as she could get to the operating theater where Dan had been taken. It was crazy, but she felt if she left, he’d die. He had to live. She prayed so hard for just that one thing. He had a wife and three beautiful children. Dan had been attached to the Port Hueneme Naval Mobile Construction Battalion with her for five years. They’d dug wells in Iraq and now, Afghanistan, helping improve people’s lives. This hurt so much. She worried about Dan’s wife, Sophie. They had been married when they were eighteen and he was now thirty-five. Oh, God …. Jess knew Sophie had been told that Dan had been wounded. She was waiting at home, not knowing, either…

Jess was so internalized over Dan and Sophie that she almost failed to realize someone had silently entered the surgery lounge. It wasn’t a noise that alerted her. She’d been in the Navy Seabees since she was eighteen and, over the decade since then, had developed a strong survival intuition. And it red-flagged her, even though she had tipped her head back against the wall, eyes closed. Sitting up, she opened them and saw a tall, lean Navy SEAL walk past her. She saw the hard look on his square face with its three-day growth of beard. His hair was dark brown, longish, his cammies also bloodstained, dirty, and his boots, the same. He wore a drop holster, holding what Jess was sure was the signature SEAL Sig Sauer P226 pistol, riding low on his right thigh. There was nothing weak about this man, his hands covered with dried blood and, like hers, mud. He sat down opposite her, never meeting her eyes.

Her heart tugged as he wearily slumped into the seat, his long-fingered hands slowly rubbing his dirty face. He’d just come out of combat, no question. They shared bloodied uniforms. Jess didn’t have the emotional resilience to say even a simple greeting to him, much less start up a conversation. The SEAL looked as internalized as she felt. Neither of them had any strength left within them to push into the outside world now and be social. Grief made everyone withdraw deeply into themselves. Shock was funny, Jess thought sluggishly, having gone now forty-eight hours without sleep, only reacting, not even thinking once to clean her hands and face. It numbed her out emotionally, made her feel like a robot. But she knew there was a deep well of emotions writhing like a tempest, somewhere yet unrevealed within her. She could feel it in her knotted stomach that ached with a phantom pain all its own. Her eyes would burn from time to time, and she’d force the tears back that wanted to fall. But even though she didn’t know this SEAL, his presence still gave her a sense of camaraderie, if nothing else.

Logan Randall felt himself falling apart internally as he took the elevator up to the surgery floor at Landstuhl Medical Center. His swim buddy and fellow SEAL shooter, Steve Dorsey, had been shot in the head during a firefight with the Taliban. In his dual role as combat medic, Logan had had the responsibility to do what he could for his friend, who’d had a bullet pass laterally through the rear of his skull and then exit out of it. Their Master Chief, Ken Carter, had ordered him to go with Steve to Germany. Logan had been more than grateful to fly with his best friend to Landstuhl. They did everything together. Even this.

He’d been a combat medic too long. By age twenty-nine, he’d tended all kinds of wounds among his platoon mates. This one was the worst. Brain wounds were rarely survivable, and he tried to, somehow, gird himself for that eventuality. Even if Steve survived surgery, he’d almost certainly be a vegetable, and that cut into Logan’s gut, tears burning in his eyes as he choked them back down deep inside himself. He hadn’t expected to see a woman in blood-soaked combat cammies sitting alone in the lounge. She had her head tipped back against the wall; eyes closed. His heart somersaulted out of grief into… something else… something he couldn’t even begin to define. Even sitting down, she looked tall, maybe five foot ten inches or so, her black hair dust covered, loose around her shoulders, framing her oval, blood-and-dirt-covered face. Her black lashes were long on her high cheekbones, her skin washed out from stress and, more than likely, shock. His sharpened gaze missed nothing: There was blood all over her legs, too, and on her right sleeve. The desert cammies she wore, dirty. As well as the dust in her hair, there were thick smudges of it on one cheek. It was the way she held those full lips in a compressed line that reached deeply into him. She was struggling with trauma, no question.

Like me.

And when she suddenly sensed him, her head snapped up and her green eyes opened. Logan saw the cloudiness in them, saw tears that hadn’t fallen. Yet. He wanted to cry but had struggled throughout the flight to hold it all in his kill box. Her hair had flowed forward, framing her attractive face even more so. She wore no makeup, but Logan enjoyed the naturalness of her. He wanted to stop to find out who she was, but his own grief pushed him past her and he headed toward a dark green chair in the opposite corner. Who was she waiting for? Praying for? Running the firefight, she’d just survived hours, or an eternity, earlier through her head again? Looking at her actions and decisions? Wondering if she couldn’t have done more for her buddy in the field? Like he was doing? Guilt weighed heavily on Logan’s shoulders as he sat down and rubbed his gritty-feeling face.

A doctor in blue scrubs entered the room. He looked around, his gaze settling on Jess.

“Petty Officer Courtland?”

Jess sat up, suddenly tense, trying to read the doctor’s face. “Yes, sir?”

“Chief Callahan didn’t make it. I’m sorry,” and he gave her a kind look of sympathy.

It felt as if someone had punched her in the center of her chest. She let out a little gasp. Maybe a cry of denial. “But—,” Jess stammered, slowly standing.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said more firmly. “We did everything we could for him. It was a very bad wound. His heart never recovered from the initial loss of blood. He died of cardiac arrest on the table. We worked nearly forty-five minutes afterward trying to resuscitate him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to call his commanding officer. His family back in the States needs to be informed.”

Jess stood, feeling numb. She wavered a little, as if she were going to lose her balance. For whatever reason, she turned toward the SEAL. He was sitting tensely, his hands in fists resting on his thighs. He was staring hard at her. And she saw raw care burning in his eyes for her. Something… Jess didn’t know what or why, pushed her in his direction. She gave him a wobbly smile and reached out, briefly touching his broad shoulder. “I hope your friend makes it….”

Tears burned in her eyes and, this time, Jess didn’t try to stop them, feeling the warm trails moving swiftly down her face. She saw sudden emotion in the SEAL’s previously grim expression. His game face dissolved. There was such agony in his blue eyes that it totaled her emotionally. His chiseled mouth thinned into a tight line, as if he were battling against his own feelings. And then, she saw tears in his eyes which he struggled with and pushed away.

“Thanks,” he muttered gruffly, looking up at her. “I’m sorry you lost your friend… Take care of yourself, will you?”

Nodding, Jess allowed her hand to drop back to her side. Her throat closed and a huge lump started forming in it. Turning away, she moved as if in an unfolding nightmare, putting one foot woodenly in front of the other. Dan was dead! She touched her wrinkling brow, trying to think. Trying to do something… anything… but she felt frozen in time. Frozen with pain. Grief, so sharp and serrating, ripped up through Jess. And then she began to shake. First it was an inward quivering. And then, as she raised her hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, her fingers were trembling, too. Feeling as if she were falling apart, Jess numbly stumbled out of the lounge. She headed for the elevators opposite the nurses’ desk. For a split second, Jess wanted to turn around, run into that SEAL’s arms and be held. She needed somewhere to hide, to let down, to cry. But, somehow, Jess knew the SEAL would hold her, sooth her, and give her that sense of protection she so desperately needed right now.

It was a crazy thought. Completely off the wall. And yet, she felt so much around the SEAL, as if spilling out of him. His focus on her had made her heart fly open. Her emotions started tumbling out of her like a dam letting out thousands of gallons of tears. Even more, she felt the cloak of his protection wrapping around her, as if from afar. Imagination? There were so many impressions hitting her in the midst of the grief that was tearing her wide open. Jess wasn’t sure what she was making up, what she was projecting on him in her present emotional state, or what was honestly real. But there was something to that man, the SEAL, and Jess was drawn so powerfully to him that it had shocked her out of her grief for a moment. Probably because they had both experienced the horrific physical trauma of someone they cared for very much. Misery did love company, she sourly reminded herself.

This was Jess’s first time to the sprawling medical center on the hill. They had given her a room on the hospital grounds. She made her way downstairs, in a daze. The early-evening sunlight was striking through the huge windows in the lobby. It looked beautiful out there. Hopeful. But, as she walked toward the visitors’ desk, she was haunted by the knowledge that Sophie Callahan would be getting a visit from two Navy officers bearing the bad news. Jess knew Dan and Sophie’s children, ages 15, 10 and 6. When they’d all been back at the base, Port Hueneme, she’d babysat for the couple whenever they’d gone out on their monthly date night. Her tears wouldn’t stop.

At the desk, a fifty-something woman in a bright pink suit gave her a map of the medical center grounds and directed her to the small apartment that was hers to use, all the while rattling off some of the local flavor. Jess had a clean set of cammies and even some civilian clothes in her ruck, and was grateful to hear there was a shower, towels, and clean sheets on a real bed waiting for her. Thanking the staff lady, Jess left the building, trying to think through her grief and find the place on the hill where she was to stay. As she walked out into the low-slanting sunshine, warm against her wet face, the birds singing, the hardwood trees stately and tall, it all looked so pastoral. Peaceful. But Jess felt anything but peaceful. What she wanted was a hot shower to wash off forty-eight hours of adrenaline-charged terror, Dan’s blood, and Afghan grit. And wash her hair like a human being. She should get something to eat, but she didn’t feel like eating anything. The only other thing that appealed to her was trying to get some sleep. And, although she rarely drank, right now a shot of whiskey seemed like a damned good idea. Quietly, the SEAL entered her mind, and she wondered if his friend was going to be all right. She hoped so.

It was 1900, military time, when the neurosurgeon appeared at the door of the surgery lounge. Logan had been dozing, head against the wall, exhausted, but when the doctor entered, he instantly snapped awake, tense, on full alert. His gaze shot to the doctor who wore a green cap on his head, his face mask hanging around his neck, his green scrubs meticulously pressed and neat. He gave Logan a frown. And Logan knew: Steve had died.

He slowly unwound out of the chair, every joint in his body aching like hell. Stiffness had set in and the tension thrumming through him added to his discomfort. “Steve?” he demanded; his voice hoarse.

The doctor shook his head and approached him. “I’m sorry. We couldn’t save him, Petty Officer Randall. Just too much damage to his brain. We did everything we could… and it just wasn’t enough.”

Giving a jerky nod, Logan whispered, “Thanks, Doc,” and he offered his hand to the sad-looking surgeon, and then walked past him, heading out of the hospital. There was nothing else Logan could do. Not a friggin’ thing! And rage boiled up inside him, eating at his gut. He fought tears as he blindly made his way outside and headed to the barracks for military personnel nearby. Right now, all he wanted to do was get a shower, shave, put on some civilian clothes and go get friggin’ drunk in the town of Landstuhl, about fifteen minutes away, down at the bottom of the hill.

The dusk was deepening. Logan dragged the clean, fragrant smell of fresh air deep into his lungs. For whatever reason, he thought about the Navy woman in the lounge. How was she handling her grief? Logan felt such a powerful lurch in his chest for her, and it completely caught him off guard. He didn’t even know her full name or where she was stationed. Afghanistan would be a safe bet, given the desert cammies. But where? Suddenly, he wanted to see her again. As mad as it seemed, even to him, she felt like the only positive in his world now. Something living. But she was gone, and the best way he could think of to perhaps calm that nest of snakes in his gut was a drink of whiskey. He’d buy two drinks. One for himself. One for Steve.

Pulling his phone out of his cargo-pants pocket, Logan dialed Master Chief Ken Carter who ran his platoon stationed at FOB Bravo. He had to let his SEAL mates know what had happened. They were all worried. Upset. And he didn’t like placing the call, but Logan wanted it to come from him, not some Navy pogue who didn’t even know Steve, or that he had been the best friend a guy could ever have. His heart clenched as he thought of the two SEAL officers who would show up at Annie’s house. Steve had been married for seven years with one child, a little boy, Sean. It was going to devastate Annie. Logan had never seen a love so powerful, so good, as the love between those two people. He’d always kidded Steve that their love was the kind found in a romance novel: a happy ending. But, hell, this was anything but a happy ending. Rubbing his face, Logan slowed his pace along the empty sidewalk bracketed with neatly cut green lawn on either side. It hit him all over again: Steve was dead.

***

Jess couldn’t sleep. She’d gotten a hot shower that had helped the tension she’d carried in her shoulders. And, finally , had been able to wash her hair. She had crashed on the bunk in her temporary quarters, but sleep evaded her. Staring wide eyed up at the light green ceiling, was all that happened. Too wired, too grief-stricken. She even found, to her chagrin, that she couldn’t even cry after the initial tears had rolled down her face in the surgery lounge. Her mind wouldn’t shut off. So many incidents and experiences she’d had with Chief Callahan in Iraq and then Afghanistan, sinking wells for so many villages, kept replaying in her numbed mind. His jokes. His laughter. Him showing the latest photos of his kids that Sophia had sent him via email. Worse, Dan was like the big brother she’d always wished she’d had. As an only child, she’d often wished for a sibling. A playmate. Someone to confide in. Laugh with. Go exploring together with and get into all kinds of kid trouble. He would have been her lifelong playmate and dearest friend, but it was not to be.

Rolling over in her bunk, Jess got up, disgusted with herself. She’d tried to eat earlier and promptly threw it up. Not her idea of how to grieve. Her stomach had finally settled down, but her head was going ninety miles an hour or maybe more like a gerbil running on a wheel, unable to stop.

At 1900, she decided to hell with it. Climbing into a pair of well-worn jeans, a dark blue tee and her old, favorite Levi jacket that had kicked around with her since she joined the Navy, this was going to be her civilian uniform for the night. Slipping into a pair of worn Nike tennis shoes, Jess combed her hair until it shone like a raven’s wing. The strands curled slightly at the ends, brushing her shoulders, and she never had to do anything with it except the basics, thank goodness. Her job as a construction Seabee meant her hair was in a ponytail ninety-nine percent of the time, but not tonight. She picked up her small ruck that was more like a day pack and hitched it across her shoulders. The woman at the visitors’ center had given her the bus schedule for the medical area and a map of where the bus stopped in the town of Landstuhl down below the hill.

There was the popular bar located in the town of Landstuhl, fifteen minutes south of the airbase. The woman at the visitors’ desk had said if she liked American atmosphere, good beer and Nashville music, that was the place to go. Right now, Jess wanted those sad Nashville songs that made the heart ache. The bar was owned by an American who had been an Army Ranger at one time, a native of Ft. Worth, Texas. It seems he’d married a German girl and settled down but missed his home state and decided to create an American bar for the many soldiers who made Ramstein Air Base their home away from home. It sounded good to Jess.

She caught the bus, which was right on time. She could see a storm was coming their way, the western sky dark and swallowing the sun. In twenty minutes, the bus made a stop right in front of the bar. As Jess got off, she saw it was a nice bus stop with intact, graffiti-free glass on all three sides and a good roof to protect those waiting from inclement weather. The streets were clean. The bar was right in the center of downtown Landstuhl. Many of the buildings were painted white with red-tiled roofs. She saw two steeples of two different churches nearby. There were single-story homes, mixed among those with two stories or more and, looking further down the main strip, there were many smaller, narrow asphalt roads branching off, lined with houses squeezed together. They reminded Jess of row houses she’d seen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some were painted white, pale green or yellow, and the sidewalks were paved in red brick. There were masses of ivy climbing on some of the sides of the homes. Towering, mature trees were everywhere, giving the town more of a country feel to Jess. The storefronts had oval or square signs hanging outside, proclaiming who and what they were. Cars were all parked on one side of the street.

It was easy to spot the Texas Bar. It had a big cowboy hat on an oval sign out in front of the red-brick entrance. When she entered the bar, she saw it was huge, crowded with men and women younger than her. Jess would guess all of them were either Army, Air Force and a few, like her, from another branch of service. A sad honkytonk song was playing and the square, wooden dancefloor was filled with at least twenty-five couples. She stood to one side of the two brass-and-glass doors, simply absorbing the festive, noisy atmosphere. There were plenty of square tables with white linen tablecloths and fresh flowers in vases, and waitresses in tasteful black dresses and white aprons were bringing food to the customers seated at them. Off to the left, she spotted a darkly lit bar. Just what she was looking for: somewhere to hide, to be alone, to nurse a whiskey and hope like hell it shut off her mind.

Jess made a guess that sixty percent of those in the bar were male. The rest were female. That was good. The odds of being hit on were tremendously less than if it had been a complete bratwurst-fest, she thought with an unexpected inward grin. She felt old in this crowd of young people. Most looked to be in their late teens or very early twenties. She was twenty-eight and felt somewhat like a trespasser in this hangout of the youth. Jess had learned long ago to not make eye contact with interested males. It was an invitation to them and she had no wish to talk to anyone tonight.

The shadows were deep at the small, out-of-the-way bar, nestled in one shadowy corner. It was much quieter there. The bar looked like it came out of a John Wayne cowboy movie, with its long, L-shaped mahogany top with brass around the edge. The stools were four-legged, padded with black leather, and there was nothing but men on them. These were older men, late twenties, early thirties. Hopefully barflies, as interested in private indulgence as she was. The shadows were so deep that Jess couldn’t really tell much about the faces along the bar as she walked down to its far end. The L portion of the bar was where the two women waitresses, both in the same black dresses and white aprons, had their station right next to an empty stool. Jess didn’t want to sit between two men. That could be a buzzkill. She could already feel heat on her back; men looking at her, sizing her up. She hated the feeling. Dammit, not harmless barflies, then! Regardless, doggedly, Jess headed for the seclusion of the single barstool next to the waitresses’ station where they picked up bar drinks for their patrons.

The bartender, in his fifties, dressed in cowboy duds and a Stetson, wandered down toward her.

“What’ll it be, little lady?” he rumbled, wiping the countertop off with a damp cloth.

“Boilermaker,” Jess said. She saw the bartender, with his long, black handlebar mustache, raise one eyebrow and then he nodded. Yeah, it was a helluva drink combo, Jess knew. Whiskey chased with beer.

He brought a bottle of whiskey and put down a draft beer in a cold glass frosted with beads of water in front of her. Taking a shot glass, he filled it with the amber liquid.

Jess laid out a U.S. twenty-dollar bill. He picked it up and left.

“I want change,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he rumbled back over his shoulder.

Jess took a deep breath, tipped her head back, and slugged down the whiskey. She set the glass down, teeth clenched, sucking air in between them as she reached for the ice-cold beer with its good head of foam. The burning sensation of the spirits was like a red-hot snake slithering down her gullet and then hitting her stomach with a fiery explosion. It was like a bomb going off, the warmth radiating outward in tentacles, and already, Jess could feel the tendrils of heated relaxation beginning to chase her inner tension away. Sipping the beer, she closed her eyes, focused on the whiskey unwrapping her like a ball of too-tightly-wound yarn. She was vaguely aware of more sad, soulful honkytonk music being played. It felt depressing and heartbreaking. Just like she felt. Sad songs with sad endings.

Jess had just finished the cold beer, and had closed her eyes, starting to feel the shock being deluged by the alcohol. It was also making her feel the exhaustion of forty-eight hours without sleep.

“Hey,” a male voice murmured near her ear, “that’s a serious combo. What you need is a man like me around to make it all feel better.”

Jess opened her eyes. The dude was tall. Over six feet. Muscled. Her nostrils flared as she smelled the sour odor of alcohol on him. He was dressed in civilian clothes, cocksure of himself, a grin on his face that told her he was an arrogant asshole. “Trust me,” Jess growled, “there’s NOTHING I want from you. Take off.”

She watched his black brows draw downward, the set of his mouth becoming an inverted crescent. “Unhappy” would be the word to describe the bastard in dark blue chinos and a crisp, white college shirt, sleeves rolled up to just below the elbows. Jess just bet he was a Ranger. She’d seen his type before. Not all Rangers were like this dude, but some really strutted their stuff, and it turned her completely off.

“Hey, sweet thing,” he growled, “no need to get so hostile.”

Gritting her teeth, Jess hated the look he gave her, undressing her with his eyes. “Go hit on someone else. I’m not interested.” She saw him glare at her and then turn away; his male pride hurt.

“Another Boilermaker, ma’am?”

“Yes,” Jess muttered to the bartender. She hated going into bars, but where the hell else, in a foreign country, was she going to get drunk enough to forget the last two days of her life? Maybe this had been a bad idea. But Jess LIKED the fact she was finally getting off the precipice of that cliff inside her. The grief had finally been muted, and she was eternally grateful for that. She didn’t feel like crying, either. Amazing. Relief tunneled quietly through her. One more boilermaker and then she’d get the hell out of this bar and grab a bus back to the medical center. Then, she knew she would be able to fall asleep.