Out in the room, Gina and Emma had managed to gather the other sheets from the beds, and Sam and Robin now wrapped themselves in white, too.
“If I tell you to do something,” Sam said, kissing Ash’s sweet-smelling little head before handing him over to Robin, who put him into Alyssa’s frontpack, “you do it. Is that clear?” He looked from Robin to Gina to Emma, including the little girl.
She nodded as Sam picked her up and handed her to Robin, who was sweating, but still managed to smile at Sam. “Let’s do this thing.”
C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
Afghanistan
“Best way to help,” Alec MacInnough told Jules and Max and Alyssa, “is to not get killed. It’ll be over before—” He laughed as Commander Lew Koehl came through the door. “Looks like it’s already over.”
“We got ’em,” Koehl said, actually cracking a very satisfied smile.
Max was not as happy. “How long have you known about this?”
“Long enough,” Koehl said, “for you to be pissed.
I’d
be pissed if I were you.”
“You put my team into danger.”
“That’s not why I’d be pissed,” Koehl countered. “You were never in danger. And even if you were, what? You’d rather we’d sent a USO tour in your place? Your
coming out here was necessary. It was business as usual.
I’d
be pissed about the fact that some of our allies are not in truth our allies. The information we share gets shared in turn with the very same people who want to kill our soldiers.
That’s
why I’d be pissed. Because we have to pretend to be friends with those who side with our enemies. In order for our diplomats to keep up the charade, you
couldn’t
know. You had to be in the dark.” Max was silent.
“I’m okay with being bait under these particular circumstances,” Jules said.
“The good news,” Koehl told Max, “is that the President never intended to visit a FOB as part of his trip. That was misinformation.”
“Oh, thank God for that,” Alyssa said.
“So what just happened here?” Max asked. “A team of your SEALs inserted … how?”
“HALO jump,” Koehl said, which Jules knew stood for High Altitude Low Opening. And
that
meant that a team of SEALs had jumped out of a plane way,
way
high up in the sky, up where they’d needed oxygen masks and tanks to keep from suffocating. And after leaving the plane, they’d gone into freefall for a ridiculously long amount of time, only to open their parachutes relatively close to the ground, under all radar, where they could coast to a landing, undetected.
They’d then, no doubt, dug in despite the bad weather, forming a perimeter around the forward operating base, and waiting for the bad guys to show up with the newly purchased rocket launcher.
At which point, the SEALs crushed them like the amateurs that they were.
Mission accomplished.
“Let’s get the generator back on line,” Max said. “We need Internet access to—”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Koehl said, “that’s going to take a while. We had to let them get close enough to take out our SAT towers. And one of their snipers took a very lucky shot at the main generator, and … We’ll need to wait for the weather to clear before we can switch that out with the backup generator.”
Max looked from Alyssa to Jules, and Jules knew that Max was thinking about Gina and his kids, stuck in besieged Tarafashir with Sam and Ash and Robin.
“Sam’s the best,” Jules reminded him. “And Robin’s with him.”
This was what it was like to be assigned to one of these remote outposts. Every now and then, in fact, probably more often than not, they’d lose contact with the outside world, and every person stationed here would have absolutely no idea how their loved ones were faring.
And yet they’d put their heads down and do their jobs without complaining.
It was humbling. And inspiring.
“How can we help now?” Jules asked both Koehl and MacInnough. “I imagine guard duty is going to be stepped up over the next few days. And as long as we’re here, we’re available to assist.”
C
HAPTER
N
INE
Tarafashir
“Give me Emma and cover Ash’s eyes,” Sam gruffly told Robin, who immediately knew that whatever had happened out in that alley, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Don’t look,” Sam told Emma as he covered her head with the sheet that Gina had been holding for him while he made sure their path to freedom was clear.
It was now.
Robin was aware of the figure of a man lying face down in a greasy puddle of …
It was raining, but not that hard—a light misting that made the empty street seem almost to shine.
“Are you okay?” asked Robin, moving closer to Sam, whose answer was a curt nod and a hard look.
Shhh
.
They had to be silent, and to move as swiftly as possible.
Ash was going for baby-of-the-year award, having fallen back to sleep in the frontpack Robin wore beneath his monk-costume-sheet. Sam, superhuman that he was, was not only carrying Emma beneath his disguise, but was now also helping Gina carry Mikey, with an arm of support around her waist.
The good news was that Gina and Emma were no longer throwing up.
The bad news was that Sam and Robin were going to leave an unmistakable trail behind them.
But Sam was already on top of that, and whenever Robin couldn’t take another step farther, Sam seemed to know it, and he steered Robin toward the gutter, which was already disgusting. And when Robin was done, Sam covered up what he’d left behind, which had to be hell for Sam.
But onward they moved, every turn taking them further into the center of the city, and farther from the hotel.
And then, seemingly arbitrarily, Sam stopped them, tucking them more deeply into the shadows by ducking down behind a pile of trash—an old, sodden mattress and broken furniture. Finger to his lips, he set Emma down, wrapping her in the sheet that he took from his shoulders.
Then he turned, giving his attention to a small door
that Robin hadn’t even realized was there among the battered bricks of the building’s foundation. It was hobbit-sized, made of blistering and warped wood, with a big rusting metal lock sealing it shut.
Sam took out a knife, the blade flashing as it caught a stray bit of light, and Robin realized that he must’ve taken it from that guard in the alley.
He used it now, not to pick the lock as Robin had first assumed, but instead to pry off a set of hinges that connected the door to the brick wall. The nails popped easily out of the damaged wood, and Sam lifted the entire door from the wall.
And that was why they’d stopped here, at this particular building. It had a seemingly secure door leading into its basement—a door with hinges on the outside.
Sam held up a hand, signaling for them to wait while he went through that door first.
Time seemed to hang as Robin worked his way through a long list of what-if scenarios. What if Sam didn’t come back? What if he came back shouting
Run! Run!
What if, while he was gone, someone discovered them, crouching there? What if Ash or Mikey or Emma started to cry? What if Gina passed out—she was looking pretty pale. What if Robin passed out—but he couldn’t pass out. He wouldn’t. He had to be ready in case Sam came bursting out of that basement, telling them to run.
But then, thank God, Sam appeared in the doorway. He reached his arms out, gesturing for Robin to give him Emma. Gina and Mikey went in next, then Robin passed Ash in to Sam, so that he could muscle the door back into place behind them.
It was dark in there, but Sam used his cell phone as a flashlight, the light from its screen bright enough so Robin could see the rough-hewn walls and the dirt floor, the ancient pipes overhead.
Like most basements around the world, it was cluttered with cast-off and long-forgotten junk. A half a bicycle, a semi-truck tire, a broken cricket bat, a pile of ancient and dust-covered empty bottles, a set of broken and rusty gardening tools, and a whole lot of less easily identifiable trash.
There wasn’t much there they could make use of, at least not that Robin could see.
Sam, however, seemed fascinated by what looked like an ancient circuit breaker box in the corner across from a long-cold coal burner—no doubt about it, this place now featured only cold-water flats.
Robin’s stomach churned and burbled, and he dug for his own phone to use it to light his way to the far corner of the room, stopping to grab a rusting shovel. But right before he turned away, he realized what it was that Sam was looking at.
Those were
telephone
wires coming into the building—wires that led up through the walls to the various apartments above them.
And as Robin quickly dug a shallow hole in which to place his continuing misery, so to speak, he realized that rescue—via a quick phone call to Troubleshooters Incorporated—was close at hand.
Sure, they were going to have to break into one of the apartments and either use the phone or steal a phone. But that seemed simple enough compared to what they’d already done and where they’d been and—
“Holy fah … leh-lah, leh-lah,” Sam said.
“What’s wrong?” Gina asked.
“No,” Sam said. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s good, in fact, it’s great.” He laughed. “Someone in the building has a nonsecure wireless network. I don’t have phone service, that’s still down, but I can use my phone to access the Internet through this open wireless system, and send an email.”
“I’ll dictate,” Robin said, using the shovel to cover up his deposit before he used his cell phone to light his way back to the others. “Dear Dave and/or Decker, Please come and get us ASAP. Love, Sam. P.S. Don’t kiss us on the mouth when you greet us because we are fah … leh-lah contagious.”
“I’m paraphrasing,” Sam said dryly. “With luck, they’re already looking for us and … Yeah, Dave was definitely standing by and thank you sweet baby Jesus. The SEALs have retaken the airport.
And
the Embassy. We’re safe, but Dave recommends we stay put, out of sight, until they can send someone out here to pick us up.”
“Is there any way we can get a message to Max?” Gina asked, her arms tightly around Mikey and Emma. “He and Alyssa and Jules must be going crazy, worrying about us.”
“I’m on it,” Sam said, his thumbs flying across his phone’s keyboard. He’d put Ash into his frontpack, but after he sent the email, he gave the baby a hug. “You are
such
a good boy,” he told his son.
Who mewed once and then vomited down Sam’s shirt and jeans.
“Robin,” Sam said quietly.
“I’m right here,” Robin said. “I’ll take him.”
“Thank you.”
He took the baby, and Sam took the shovel. And ran.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Robin said, as Ash started to cry. “You’re okay, Big Guy. It’s four
A.M
. You’re right on schedule. Mikey’s next.”
“I’m pretty sure Mike had it first,” Gina told him. “I thought it was just normal baby spit-up, but in hindsight …”
“Really?” Robin said, using a piece of one of the sheets to clean off Ash. “Yay.”
C
HAPTER
T
EN
Greek Isles
Jules found Robin sleeping on the beach, beneath an umbrella. “Hey, babe.”
Robin sat up so fast he almost fell out of his lounge chair. “Oh, my God! You’re here!”
“Yeah, we caught an earlier flight.” Jules laughed as Robin enveloped him in a hug and kissed the bejesus out of him.
God, yes, this was exactly what he’d needed …
But then Robin pulled back to look at him. “Two
weeks
earlier?” he asked.
“The assignment took less time than we’d originally thought.”
Robin ran his hand self-consciously across the dark stubble that covered his head. “I thought I’d have more time to, you know, grow this out.”
“It’s actually adorable. And amazing,” Jules said, “and it makes it kind of impossible to ignore what happened to you, and Gina, and Sam and the kids—God, when we heard, we were sick, we were so worried.”
“No, actually,
we
were sick,” Robin quipped.
But Jules wasn’t ready to laugh. “What a nightmare and Jesus, all I could think was this kind of worrying is what I put you through, this is what I willingly do to you, every time I go out there and put myself in danger.”
“No, babe,” Robin said, pulling him close and enveloping him in his arms. “No, that’s just not true. I mean, yeah, it can be scary, but I know—I
know
, in fact, I’ve just had the ultimate reminder that you can take care of yourself. I mean, I knew that, I did, but now I
really
know that you’re super-safe, as safe as you can possibly be, especially when someone like Sam or Alyssa or Max is by your side. Watching Sam deal with everything and
anything that got thrown at us …? He knew exactly what to do, where to go, how to handle it.”
“He told Alyssa he couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jules said, gazing searchingly into Robin’s brilliant blue eyes.
Robin smiled and shook his head. “That’s just more of Sam being Sam,” he said as he held out his hand so that he and Jules could intertwine their fingers as they walked back to the resort. “If he’d had to, he would’ve figured out a way to carry both me and Gina
and
all three kids.”
Jules laughed, because he knew it was true. “The whole stomach flu thing must’ve killed him. Sympathy vomiter and all.”
“He was hurting,” Robin agreed. “And yet he won a knife fight. Won in a major way, like, after it was over, he was in possession of the knife and he wasn’t the unconscious one.”
“That’s our Sam,” Jules said. “How many stitches?”
“Ten,” Robin reported. “Although I had no clue he was hurt, let alone that he needed stitches, until we were in Germany.” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Jules. “Did you need any stitches in the past week and a half?”
Jules shook his head. “Nope. But I caught Mikey’s flu.” Robin laughed. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yeah. Max did, too. We passed it along to pretty much all of the FOB.
And
the CO of SEAL Team Sixteen,” Jules reported. “He was
really
happy about that. Alyssa’s got it now. She was feeling funky on the plane, and soon as we took off …” He made a face as he shook his head.