Chapter 16 Daniel
DANIEL
On the sidewalk outside, Julie said goodbye to her husband, who’d barely let her out of his arms the entire night. The woman was the picture-perfect military spouse—steadfast, understanding, encouraging.
“Take care of yourself. Let me know where you land if possible,” she said.
Foster nodded, but said nothing. He kissed her deeply, then dropped his forehead to hers.
“I love you. I wish you’d go home to Texas, but I know you won’t.
You and Lillian take care of each other.
Remember, you’re not Superwoman. Hire a nanny, or a housekeeper, or whatever you need, or call in Mama and Daddy if you prefer.
Do not wear yourself thin. I mean it, Jules. ”
Julie nodded. “I promise. Somehow I think I’ve got the easy job, though, even with eight-week-old twins adding two more to the three we already had under five. You watch your six, and bring your sexy ass back to us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her another deep kiss.
Walker hugged his brothers, wrapped his arm around Julie, and walked her away with Lillian in the lead.
“Let’s go, boys,” Foster said, smacking his brother on the back and pushing him toward the parking lot.
We split ourselves between the cars and trucks the team arrived in, making sure the guys who’d been drinking weren’t driving, and headed to base.
The trip was a quiet one. Foster and Parker sat up front with Xander and me in the back of the quad cab truck. I’m sure everyone’s mind was on the coming deployment and invasion, but for me, the man sitting beside me took center stage.
I worried.
About everything.
How he’d react when the bullets really started flying.
How we’d deal with being on ops together.
If there was anything to deal with.
Just doing the job.
Keeping the team safe.
Parker looked at me, then over his shoulder at Alex. “From this moment forward, you have three rules, Alex: front sight focus, stick close to your battle buddy, and watch your six and his. Got it?”
Alex nodded.
“I know you’re the strong, silent type, but I need words.”
“I got it, Parker.”
“Good. You’ll partner mostly with Sammy or Dom, but the situation is fluid, so be prepared to switch when necessary.”
“Got it.”
Foster piped up from behind the wheel, “You’re getting thrown into the deep end, kid, kid.
Remember your training. It’s a three-foot world outside the wire.
For all of us, myself included. I won’t be thinking about my kids, who are too young to remember me if something happens, or my wife, who’d be left holding the bag.
I’ll be thinking about my men. The guys to my right and my left. ”
They weren’t speaking to me, but they spoke to me. I needed that reminder myself because spending energy worrying about my unsettled situation with Xander when I had a job to do spelled disaster. And Alex needed to keep his mind on keeping his ass alive.
That meant I needed to let Xander be Alex, no matter how much I hated to do so.
The gates of NAB Coronado loomed ahead. We all pulled out our IDs as we got in line for entry. My phone rang as Shore Patrol checked the car.
I answered, “Lennox.”
“Where are you?” Commander Turner barked.
“At the gate, Commander.”
“You got a go bag?”
“Yes, sir.” Not with me, but I kept one at the base just in case we got a wheels-up call.
“Good. You’ll be getting a call from Langley. I requested you deploy with us. You’ll be working with Navy Intelligence. I want target packages before we hit the ground.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Turner?” Parker and Foster asked, their voices so in sync they almost sounded like one person.
I nodded. “Looks like you’ll be hitting the ground running.”
“Good. I’d hate to think the Navy pulled me away from my eight-week-old twins to hurry up and wait,” Foster grumbled.
“I’ll do my best to make sure you stay busy.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I’m confused,” Alex admitted.
“That’s a given, new guy. What’s all muddled in that baby SEAL mind of yours?” Foster asked.
“Two things: you’re a SEAL, right?”
Parker and Foster laughed. “Yes,” Foster said. “I’m on Team 3. I head up Charlie.”
“You said there were two things,” Parker said.
“Yeah, what the hell was the test? I get I passed, but what the hell did I do right?”
“And now you’ve passed another one,” Foster said.
Parker finished, “The test was not needing a reminder that you owed the team drinks. And the one Foster just mentioned was being smart enough to ask a question when you weren’t clear about something.”
Foster pulled into the parking lot, as did the other two vehicles the group had piled into at the bar.
Doors opening and slamming shut covered the silence of operators walking into and through the building to the war room.
The beeping of the locks echoed off the concrete.
The door swung open, revealing chaos inside.
Commander Turner looked up. “Good, you’re here. We go wheels up in an hour. Get yourselves ready.”
The team and Foster nodded, leaving the room as a unit, headed to the cages, if I had to guess.
I moved to my office. I needed to call my family, but Langley came first. I pulled out my chair, sat down, and logged into the system.
I quickly checked my email, locating the orders to deploy with Team 3 and to call once on the ground.
I checked the time. Fuck. Fee would have a shit fit for waking her, but if I didn’t, who knew when I could let her know where I was.
I dialed the phone, listening to it ring while pulling together the shit I needed to take with me. Luckily, I kept things organized.
The call connected, and my sister Fiona’s groggy voice grumbled as she said, “You better be dead, dying, or bleeding to wake me up at…holy mother of Christ, Danny, it’s not even six a.m. If this is about a hookup, I will kick your rear end.”
“It’s not, Fee.”
Fabric rustled. “Give me a second.”
Gone were the groggy words.
“Fiona, babe, get back in bed.”
“It’s Daniel, Joe. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
“Tell him I said hi and that you need your rest.”
More salt for the wounds that watching Walker and Foster Holt with their wives tore the scabs from. I didn’t want a bunch of kids, but I wanted a partner to share my life with. Who knew me the way Julie and Lillian knew their husbands. The way Joe knew Fiona.
The things I wanted to explore with Xander.
“Okay, I can talk. What’s up?”
“I can’t give you any details…”
“It’s happening.”
“All I can say is that I’ll be out of the country for the foreseeable future. No clue when I will be able to call.”
“Fuck. This is…it’s scary, Danny boy. Really fucking scary.”
“You’re gonna have so many Hail Marys and Our Fathers to say for that,” I joked.
“Don’t make fun. I’m seriously scared.”
“You should be. I am.” I took a deep breath. “But I do this work to keep the family safe. To keep the country safe. We failed. Horribly. I can’t let that happen again.”
“I love you, little brother. Take care of yourself.”
“You too. You have my email address. I expect pictures. I love you.”
She repeated the words again, and I hung up, pushing back from the desk and dropping my elbows to my knees. I chucked the hat and buried my hands in my hair.
“Was that your sister?”
I spun toward the voice, fighting to keep my face from softening at the sight of Xander standing in my office doorway.
“It was. Did you call your family?”
His face turned sad, but then he smiled. “No worries there. I don’t have any family.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Not on you.”
He fell silent after that, and being where we were kept me from offering the comfort I wanted to.
“Look, I…”
He shook his head and looked over his shoulder before shutting the door and flicking the lock. “I liked everything…”
“Liked?” I asked.
“Okay. Loved, love, but…”
“Work comes first. I get that. You go be Alex. I’ll wait for Xander to make an appearance when he can.”
“That you’ve picked up on the difference between the two…”
I moved across the room to him, pulling him into my arms despite his protests. “No one knows you’re here, and you locked the door.”
He melted against me. I dropped a hand from his waist to his ass, using the other to cup the side of his neck, my mouth hovering over his.
“My ass is so sore,” he whispered.
“Was I too…”
“God, no. I’m thankful for it. The memory of it will have to get me through.”
“We will figure things out.” I didn’t know how, but determination gave me hope. Although only a bit. “Now kiss me before we have to press pause for who knows how long.”
His eyes danced as if he were memorizing my face.
Mine probably looked the same. His hands slipped into my hair, his teeth pinching his bottom lip.
Squeezing his ass, I aligned our groins and swallowed the sigh that left his body.
His tongue met mine, and they twisted together slowly, licking at one another until our dicks made themselves known.
Knowing we didn’t have time or space for anything more, I ended the kiss I never wanted to end, dropping a quick, hard press of my mouth to his.
“Please be careful.”
He smiled, his thumb brushed my mouth, and his eyes locked on the movement. “I’ve not done anything yet.”
“I know, but I won’t always be able to say it before you head outside the wire.”
An uptick in activity filtered through the locked door, forcing us apart. Xander kissed me quickly and disappeared through the door, leaving me staring after him.
Shaking my head of the fog he put me in every time we were alone together, I grabbed my go bags from the closet, packed my BlackBerry, laptop, and the rest of my gear before leaving the office behind for who knew how long.
Powerful engines rumbled as the military transport propelled us across the planet, hurtling everyone inside toward war.
Now that we were, I glanced at my watch, twelve hours into the flight that would change our lives, I wondered if this would be like the prequel.
Somehow, I didn’t think it would. Something told me this would last longer and be bloodier than anyone estimated.
The call came in much sooner than I expected.
I’d known it was coming. Hell, everyone on Earth knew the order to invade would come.
I thought for certain we had a few more days.
Parker and I had argued about the timing several times; he said it would come closer to Thanksgiving.
I knew the country wouldn’t wait that long, but I expected it closer to Halloween.
I wanted those fucking days with Xander.
To cement something between us before war tore us apart.
Luck had never been my friend. Now, I sat in the back of a plane with the rest of the straps, as the military called us.
Technically, we weren’t attached to the team and were only there to provide specialized, non-combat skills, or in my case, intelligence, and we rode hanging onto the straps.
When you thought about it, we were basically a strap-on cock.
We got pulled out to serve a purpose, then we got stuffed in the drawer when they no longer needed us.
A zipper of pops echoed in my head as I twisted my neck. Riding strap fucking sucked. My body always turned into a two-week-old pretzel.
“Damn, I wish I could get my neck to pop like that,” the guy on my right said.
I didn’t know the guy from Adam. If I remembered correctly, he was part of the Logistics unit at the start of the trip when he attempted to chat my ear off. While he started yammering away again about, fuck me, did he just? He did say elf. More exactly, he said, Elven wizard.
The team congregated deeper in the plane. The operators all slept in hammocks, the lucky fuckers. I guess they earned the comfort. They did the heavy lifting with the dangerous shit.
“Agent Lennox!” The call came from You’re needed up front for an intel briefing.”
I followed after the ensign as we moved to the front of the plane. The intel unit and the platoons from Team 3 stood gathered around a pallet of equipment.
“Looks like the gangs all here. What did I miss?” The words came out as a joke as I intended but I was a bit pissed they’d started the conversation without me.
Given the number of darted glances, I failed to the the mark. I didn’t give a fuck. I got pushed onto this plane with very little prep.
Parker, after glancing at Foster and Commander Turner, said, “Not much other than we’re being dropped into a shit show with no place to call home.”
Turner sighed, “Lieutenant Holt…Parker…we’re the advance team. That makes it our job to scout out the locations we’re told, find the U.S. Military a safe haven to set up shop, clear out the riff raff. Do you have a problem with that?”
“So that means our teams are sleeping in shifts on the ground, eating MREs, all with no backup?”
“Welcome to war, son. Ask your daddy about it.”
Ouch!
Parker laughed, “I didn’t know you loved us, sir. It’s like you rolled Christmas and all our birthdays into one big ass present.”
I laughed along with Turner and others in the circle. When everyone settled down, I asked, “Multiple recon missions along with some site explorations before we turn the exterminators loose to clean house.”
“Ding ding ding! Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Give the spook a cookie.” Dom Vinetti said and I shook my head.
A few hours later, I sat in my seat in the back with the rest of the straps, all of us masked up.
Team 3 stood in a stick, jocked up in the red glow of the cargo ramp jump lights.
I watched Parker do this any number of times, both before we hooked up and after.
But my heart never lodged in my throat like it did now, watching Xander and the rest of Echo Team check each other’s gear as they waited for the light to go from red to green.
The light changed.
I sucked in a deep breath as the team went through the pre-jump ritual.
The door opened.
The stick of operators moved forward, one by one they fell forward into the abyss. When Xander tumbled into the darkness, my stomach went with him.