Katie nodded. “Yes. That I did.”
“And we’ll be using an actual Army guy for the shoots, just like we used BB because he was a real Special Operative for the last one?”
“Yes.”
The joy nearly bubbled up through Emily’s chest. She tried but didn’t quite control the squeal of happiness that escaped her lips. No diva queen models of either sex for her first real assignment. Nope. She was getting to work with a real man. One of Uncle Sam’s finest for her very own. Emily was more than ready for that.
Maybe she would get to pick the guy. Emily imagined a long line of uniform bedecked soldiers, dog tags jingling as they all waited to meet her approval. Having to meet dozens, maybe hundreds, of men had to put the odds in her favor.
The thought that stumbling upon fairytale love, the kind Katie and BB had found, had her smiling even broader…until Katie’s insistent head-shaking ruined her good thoughts.
“What?” Emily whined, hating to have her fantasy ruined, especially by a woman who already had her own hero cast.
“I just don’t think you should be daydreaming about this particular soldier.”
This particular soldier
. Disappointment warred with anticipation within her. “You’ve already picked him?”
“Not me personally, but yes, he’s been chosen.”
Was that a smirk on Katie’s face?
“Who chose him?” And he had better be right, not only for the ad campaign but also for her!
“BB.”
Emily considered that a moment. Former underwear model turned Special Operative turned military recruiting poster boy, BB Dalton was so good looking he bordered on beautiful. He must know some really handsome guys in the military, right? Did really hot guys hang out together the way gorgeous yet bitchy female models did? In any case, being a former model himself, BB would know the importance of having the right look for the ad campaign.
“Okay.” Emily nodded slowly.
This might work out alright. And BB was the sweetest man on earth, the perfect gentleman. No way would he pick a jerk for Katie and Emily to work with. The happiness bubble returned.
Emily flipped open the folder and shuffled through the few papers inside. “Is there a picture in here?”
“Not in the client folder, no. The model was a…uh…recent decision and actually, I’m not considering that it’s totally a done deal yet. BB said he is one hundred percent sure he’ll be the one but the guy hasn’t even received the info for the assignment yet. He’ll get it when he gets back to his garrison. Until then, I’m not convinced he won’t back out, but we’ll know I guess by tomorrow for sure.”
Emily pouted. “So there is no information on him at all?”
Katie smiled at her. “Relax. Check the printer.”
“The printer?”
“Matt, BB’s computer genius friend, sent a few background documents directly to our printer.”
“How the heck…?”
Katie shook her head, “Honestly, I don’t know how he did it and quite frankly, I think I don’t want to know how Matt hacked into our wireless network from Europe and sent a document directly to our printer.”
Katie was probably right. Some things were better left unasked.
“But I think there might be a picture of our potential model there.”
That sent Emily flying across the room, skidding to a stop and grabbing at the pages waiting innocuously for her there in the printer tray.
“Damn. There’s no picture, but there is a spec sheet. Staff Sergeant David Hawkins,” she read aloud.
Mmm. That was a nice name. Emily Hawkins. Emily Price Hawkins.
She continued reading. “He’s thirty years old and seventy-two inches tall. That’s…” Emily squinted at the ceiling, doing the math, until Katie interrupted her effort.
“Six feet.”
Oooo, good. Emily liked tall men. He’d look good next to her five foot five, even if she wore heels.
“Hazel eyes,” she went on to read. “That’s good. If we put him in Army green, it will bring out any green tint in his eyes for the photos.” Her head spun with the possibilities.
“Really, Em. I don’t think you should expect too much.”
Emily frowned at Katie. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The big sigh her boss released, accompanied by her guilty look, did not bode well.
“The soldier selected may not exactly be happy about this assignment.”
“Is that all? You told me BB wasn’t happy when he was ordered to do the recruitment campaign either and that worked out fine.” More than fine. Katie had never been happier since meeting BB.
Nope. Emily was not about to cancel her dreams of happiness over one disgruntled soldier pouting over a few photo shoots. She’d win him over fast enough and prove to Katie she could handle a big, supposedly difficult, assignment all on her own.
Big
. Mmm. Most likely her soldier was big and muscular, as well as tall and handsome. This day was turning out pretty great and it was still only morning.
“I just wish there was a picture.” Pouting, she looked accusingly at the printer…and noticed the blinking red light indicating it needed more paper.
“Oh my god! There are more pages!” Flying into action, Emily nearly ripped off one short pale-pink polished fingernail tearing into a fresh ream of white paper and loading it into the printer tray.
Tapping her foot while Katie laughed at her across the room, Emily waited impatiently for the next page to print.
“Come on, come on,” she urged the printer, which was obviously not listening to her judging by how slowly it chugged along.
Emily glanced up at her boss and spat with frustration, “This is taking forever! We need a new printer.”
Katie smiled indulgently, but did get up and come over to wait with her as a color photo emerged ever so slowly from the machine.
Close shorn, dark hair appeared first, followed by serious, piercing eyes, a strong, square chin and then a chest so broad and forearms so thick they could have easily belonged to a lumberjack.
David Hawkins’ features would never be considered perfect like BB’s, but instead, he was ruggedly handsome and yes, all manly man. BB had chosen for them the quintessential warrior to represent the US Army.
Emily started grinning before the printing finished. Eyes never leaving the photo, she asked, “When do I meet him?”
Chapter Five
First was the humiliation of having to hike down the mountain alongside Task Force Zeta as they relived each and every kill among themselves, sometimes even stopping to enlighten Hawk and his men about what Hawk’s squad had done wrong during the mock slaughter.
Then Hawk had the pleasure of having to, while still wearing the game-ending paintball stain on his back, meet with Commander Miller once again back at the base camp. Miller apparently had gleefully watched and listened to every step of his golden boys’ victory courtesy of Matt “Call Me Computer God” Coleman.
And now this, the topper at the end of one hell of a shitty day, having drinks with Zeta, an invitation from Miller for him and his men that Hawk thought best not to refuse even though the dead last thing he wanted to do was “bond” with frigging Task Force Zeta and “discuss the exercise”. At least they’d gotten to eat some chow first. Hawk definitely could not have faced this on an empty stomach.
“Losing is more important than winning, if you learn from your mistakes,” Commander Jimmy Gordon had told him in a southern accent so thick Pennsylvania-born Hawk had nearly needed a translator to interpret for him.
“Come on. We’ll go over with you exactly what you did wrong,” Gordon had the nerve to say when they’d arrived at the bar while smiling and truly looking like he meant every frigging friendly word.
But the beer was German, dark and strong, and the pool table actually had all of its balls. All in all, since they couldn’t fly out until morning, this might not be such a bad way to spend an evening,
if
he hadn’t had to sit there and listen to Zeta recap what he and his men had done wrong.
They didn’t do anything fucking wrong,
he wanted to shout at them. They were outmaneuvered by technology, nothing more and that sucked, but worse, it scared the shit out of him.
“Hawkins?”
Leaning against the pool table, sighting his next shot, Hawk didn’t even look up at Miller when he bit out a most likely less than polite, “What?”
Hawk finally glanced up in time to see the training commander’s smirk. “Nothing. Just you’re about to sink a striped ball.”
“Yeah, so?”
Miller raised a brow. “So, you’re solids, not stripes.”
Shit.
With a deep sigh, Hawk stepped back from the table, planted the cue stick on the ground and hung his head.
“What’s wrong, son?”
The last thing he wanted to do was admit to Miller what he was about to, but he was a real man and so he would face reality. “That loss to Zeta today shook my confidence, sir. I mean, when I said I wanted Zeta to play full out I didn’t realize what that meant. The implants, the computers… We’re not ready, sir.”
He looked up at Miller and told him, with as much conviction as he could put into his voice, the absolute truth. “We’re not ready for Afghanistan. If the insurgents come at us with anything like Zeta did today…”
Hawk shook his head and continued his confession. “What if I can’t bring them home alive? What happens when all that red in the snow isn’t paintballs but our blood? What if my men fall in those mountains in Afghanistan just like they all fell to Zeta today?”
“They won’t,” Miller said simply with a confidence Hawk could only wish he felt.
“But…”
“No
but
about it. Do you really think the Taliban has access to the kind of training and equipment our teams have?” Miller asked.
“They might.”
“They don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s my job to know. And besides that, we’ve faced them, right there in their own backyard. I can’t tell you much more except that I haven’t always been a training commander, son. A few years ago, I took Zeta into those exact mountains where you’re headed, and I brought them all back out again. Alive. And if you repeat what I just told you, I’ll deny every word.”
Hawk couldn’t care less that Miller and his SpecOps had sometime in the past most likely trespassed in a country they shouldn’t have been in. He was more worried about his guys and keeping them alive. But at least now the strangely close camaraderie between Miller and Zeta made more sense. Miller obviously used to be their commander, sometime before Gordon took over.
“No disrespect, sir, but with those men and that equipment, I’m not surprised you and Zeta all came out alive. Unfortunately, I’ve only got my normal, human men and crap for equipment.”
“First, Hawkins, the guys on Zeta are regular guys, just like you, and when you stop wallowing and get to know them better, you’ll find that out,” Miller chastised, pulling no punches.
Hawk bit his tongue to keep himself silent after the “wallowing” comment, true though it may be.
Miller continued on, undeterred. “Second, I can tell you this about what you’re walking into in Afghanistan. The remaining Taliban factions survive only because of a thriving drug trade. If they were based anywhere else besides in the largest poppy-producing region in the world, they’d have little to no funding and be totally screwed. Yes, I’ll concede that is one point in their favor.
“However, they are also in a region in constant strife. It’s occupied by foreign powers but ruled by a newly created government as well as, unofficially, by the local warlords and tribal elders. Having too many heads like that leads to confusion and chaos. Sometimes that climate will help the insurgents get a rare but small victory, but ultimately it leads to their defeat. Their own allies turn on them, when they’re not turning on each other. The Taliban is living in chaos and squalor in those mountains. And believe me, they
don’t
have anyone like our Matt Coleman.”
The mention of Coleman aside, Hawk listened closely as Miller spoke. Now that he knew the man had been there, his words held more weight, though he said nothing that Hawk didn’t to some degree already know.
“You and your men are good, Sergeant Hawkins. You held your own better and for far longer than I anticipated today. You will have the advantage in those mountains. Trust me.”
Hawk managed a nod.
“I’ve had about enough of chasing balls around a table. How about a beer?” Miller offered.
Now
that
was one thing Hawk could totally agree with Miller on.
“Yes, sir. I’d love one.” But once Hawk was leaning against the bar, strategically placed there by Miller, he realized Miller’s sudden craving for beer had nothing to do with thirst and everything to do with throwing him in the path of Zeta’s “normal” guys just to prove his point.
Miller introduced him to a dude named John Blake—no rank or service branch specified, Hawk guessed these guys were above that—and then he disappeared.
Noticing the Blake guy grinning when Miller had mentioned Hawk’s branch and rank during the introduction, he decided he’d had about enough for today without this guy and his attitude, too.