“I have a thick skull.” Her voice came out sounding breathless and odd. It was all she could do not to close her eyes, to lean back into his hands and pretend he was touching her that way, holding her head in place, because he was about to kiss her.
Stan pulled his hands away from her, killing the fantasy. He stood up, helping her to her feet. “Lopez!” he shouted.
“I don’t care if one of the terrorists looks like your favorite uncle Frank,” Starrett was continuing his tirade. He was still right in Muldoon’s face. “I don’t care if one of ’em is a seventy-year-old gray-haired lady. Head shots, Muldoon. Double pops. Without hesitation.”
SEAL Team Sixteen’s medic, Jay Lopez, was already right there, next to the senior chief. He had a flashlight that he used to check Teri’s eyes, and then it was his turn to touch the back of her head, feeling for a bump or a bruise.
“She all right, Senior?” Starrett asked Stan.
“I’m fine,” Teri said again. “Really.”
“She looks good, Lieutenant,” Lopez announced.
Stan leaned closer to Starrett. “Next go round, have Muldoon take out Howe again—or Locke. He needs practice eliminating female targets. We might as well take advantage of having Howe and Locke around.”
“Good idea, Senior.” Starrett raised his voice. “Who’s got the details of what just went down?”
Stan looked at Teri, leaned closer to speak directly into her ear. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Letting your team get practice killing women?” she murmured back. “Why ever would I mind?”
“What we do isn’t pretty,” Stan said, speaking softly enough so that only she could hear him. “But it doesn’t do anyone any good to think about terrorists as anything but targets that need eliminating. Some of the men have trouble with the female targets. My personal hell is when children are involved. Twelve-year-olds with Uzis. Babies used as human shields. But if you hesitate, you’re dead. Or worse, your teammate’s dead.”
Babies. Teri looked at him, but he’d already moved slightly away from her and he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Estimated seventeen passengers would have been killed or injured.” WildCard Karmody had access to some kind of Palm Pilot. “One SEAL death—Muldoon—courtesy of the vicious terrorist Teri Howe. The senior chief got Taggett with a double shot, O’Leary got Ian from out in sniperland—right between the eyes, and Starrett took down Howe. Hey, here’s a fun fact. Howe’s weapon was discharged the most number of times. Congratulations, Teri. You actually took out two of the other tangos—Locke and Cassidy—within two seconds of the flash bang. You’re responsible for most of the civilians killed as well. Hoo-yah, girl.”
“You scored points for both sides,” Lieutenant Starrett told her with a grin. “Way to go.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling her cheeks heat. God, she didn’t ask to do this. “I thought I’d dropped the gun. I didn’t even realize I was pulling the trigger. . . .”
Stan was back, standing beside her again. He touched her—a brief squeeze of her arm. “Hey, you did good. Your reaction was far more realistic than anyone else’s. Most tangos have no experience in this kind of thing—chances are they’re going to drop their weapons, too. What we’ve got to do is move faster going in so there’s no time for anyone to spray the cabin with bullets.” He looked around at the team, landing on Muldoon. “Right?”
“You going to hesitate on me ever again?” Starrett asked Muldoon.
The ensign looked determined, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “No sir, I will not.”
“Good, let’s do this at least three times more before lunch.”
Stan lingered as the other SEALs went back outside. “Now that you know what the flash bang sounds like—”
“I’ll manage to stay on my feet next time,” Teri reassured him.
“No, I want you to do the same thing—”
Crack!
The sound came from outside, from the port side of the plane, and Stan went to one of the windows to look out. “Ah, Christ!”
Teri looked, too. The port wing had broken clear off. She could see Lieutenant Starrett on the ground, his face grim as he surveyed the damage.
He looked up, directly at Stan. “Will you please fucking go and fucking get me a real fucking World Airlines 747, Senior Chief? Right fucking now?”
Stan looked at Teri. “Looks like I’m going to need a ride to the airport.”
“Don’t you mean the fucking airport?” she asked, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
God, she loved making Stan laugh.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eleven
The pretty pilot—the lieutenant with the dark hair and eyes—had said something to make Stanley Wolchonok laugh. And there it was again. Marte’s smile.
Helga sat in the shade of the observers’tent and watched as the pair walked toward the waiting helicopter.
Stanley was a gentleman. No doubt about it, Marte had raised her son well. This beautiful young woman was drawn to him. It was obvious in the way she spoke to him, in the way she stood, in the way she looked at him.
She adored him.
And yet he treated her with complete respect.
Most men would strut with a woman like that walking beside them. Most men would want to make sure every other man around knew that a woman like that wanted him. Most men would broadcast the fact loudly and clearly.
Yet there was nothing even remotely possessive or arrogant in Stan Wolchonok’s body language.
Sure, it might’ve been due to the fact that she was an officer and he was enlisted. He had to treat her with respect and maintain a distance from her. Fraternizing was still frowned upon in the U.S. Armed Forces—a throwback to the British army, when officers were peers of the realm or some such nonsense.
Helga would have thought the Americans—those bold, loud, outrageous Americans—would have tossed aside such an archaic salute to the masters and servants class system ages ago.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Stanley—unlike wild Marte—simply had the self-control to be discreet. It was possible that as soon as he found a spot of privacy, he would pull the pretty pilot into his arms and kiss her, finally able to express everything he’d worked so hard to hide from the rest of the world.
The way Helga had once seen Hershel kissing Annebet, in the shadows of her mother’s garden. The night of a dinner party celebrating her mother’s birthday.
It was summer, the days long and warm, with an evening light that went on and on forever.
Fru Gunvald was cooking in the hot kitchen. Marte had come to help her, and Annebet was one of three girls hired to serve the food to the guests.
Despite the fact that Hershel had been seated next to the extremely buxom Ebba Gersfelt, he spent the entire meal distracted and restless, watching the door to the kitchen for any sign of Annebet.
When she was in the room, serving the soup or clearing the dishes, Hershel breathed differently. It seemed remarkable to Helga that no one else—not even Annebet—seemed to notice.
No one except Ebba Gersfelt, that is.
Helga watched Ebba watch Hershel watch Annebet, who kept her eyes carefully down as she placed more of Fru Gunvald’s freshly baked rolls on the table.
Helga saw it all through the open French doors into the dining room, from her perch on the stairs. She was too young to attend the grown-ups’party but old enough to escape the confines of the nursery to watch the glitter below.
With Annebet’s hair up under her cap, with her eyes properly downcast, it was difficult to tell her apart from the other two serving girls. Unless Helga watched Hershel.
Or Ebba, who either seethed or leaned closer to whisper into Hershel’s ear whenever Annebet came into the dining room.
Once she leaned so close that her enormous bazoombas—as Marte called them—pressed against Hershel’s arm.
Only then did Annebet look up, with a flash of her usual fire in her eyes. But it was directed at Hershel, not Ebba.
And fifteen minutes later, as the party was moving out into the other room, as Helga was heading for a better position in the tree right outside the open parlor window, Hershel caught her by the back of her dress.
“Mouse, you’ve got to help me.” His face was pale and his mouth was as grim as she’d ever seen it. “I need a message delivered. It’s of the utmost importance, do you understand?”
Helga nodded, her blood turned to ice in her veins. Although her brother had never said as much, she knew he was part of the Danish resistance. Would the Nazis hang a ten-year-old for delivering a message? Of course they would. They were Nazis.
Still, she squared her shoulders, forcing herself to think like Marte. That was only if she were caught. She would not be caught.
Hershel quickly folded a piece of paper into quarters and then quarters again.
No, Marte would not be caught. Helga would no doubt trip and fall and . . .
“Give this to Annebet in the kitchen,” Hershel commanded. “Only to Annebet, not Fru Gunvald, not anyone else. Do you understand?”
The kitchen. Helga’s dangerous and death-defying mission was to go to the kitchen with a note for Annebet.
The relief made her light-headed and clumsy, and she caught her shoe on the threshold of the kitchen door and tripped. She landed hard on the wooden floor, banging her knees and her hands and even her chin. The note flew out of her grasp and skittered across the floor, next to the sink.
Marte helped her up. “No wonder your parents don’t let you go to their fancy parties, you stupid ox. I get to go to all my parents’parties, you know.”
Helga knew. Marte had told her that, many times before. The Gunvalds’parties were loud, friendly, casual affairs filled with laughter and music and dancing that went on into the wee hours of the night.
Marte’s insulting words stung worse than Helga’s bruised knees, but Annebet had explained to her in the past that her little sister sometimes said hurtful things because she was embarrassed to work as a servant in her best friend’s house. Marte was envious of the Rosens’wealth.
And it had been a long time since the Gunvalds had been able to afford to have any kind of a party.
Marte pulled Helga over to the sink to run cool water on the smarting heels of her hands. “You tore your dress,” she informed Helga, not without some satisfaction.
She had. Her mother would send her to her room to mend it. And although Helga was good at reading and writing and mathematics, when it came to needle and thread, she was all thumbs.
“I’ll help you fix it,” Marte said. “She’ll never know.”
“I’ll help you wash the dishes tonight,” Helga promised her friend. Of course, she would have helped anyway. Marte had the ability to make anything fun. Even scrubbing pots.
“What’s this?” Marte asked, bending down to pick up the folded note.
Oh, no. “That’s for Annebet.” Helga reached for it.
Marte snatched it back, out of her reach. “From Hershel?” she asked, delight dancing in her eyes, the last of her jealousy instantly evaporated.
“Marte, give it!”
“Annebet’s clearing the table. Quick, into the pantry! It’s our big chance to find out if they’ve fallen in love!”
Helga followed. “Marte, don’t!”
But Marte had already unfolded Hershel’s note. “How will we know how best to help them if we don’t read this—oh!”
Helga couldn’t help herself. “What does it say?”
“ ‘Meet me by the roses in the garden in ten minutes,’ ” Marte read. Her face glowed. “I knew it! A lovers’tryst.” She refolded the paper. “Quick, bring this to Annebet. Tell her . . . Tell her Hershel was trembling when he gave it to you—just to make sure that she shows up. I’ve read some of the books she likes, and the lovers are always trembling about something or another. Then meet me in the garden.”
“Why?” Helga asked, dreading the answer.
Marte didn’t answer. She just pushed Helga toward the door.
“Why,” Helga said, five minutes later, in the garden, behind the thick tangle of rosebushes, “are we here? I don’t want to spy on them again. It’s not right.”
“We aren’t here to spy,” Marte informed her. “We’re here to make sure no one else tries to spy on them. What did Annebet say?”
“Nothing.” She’d turned away to read Hershel’s note. She’d frowned slightly. “She thanked me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Hershel asked me to give it to her. That he said it was important,” Helga reported.
Marte nodded. “Important is good. Not as good as trembling, but— Shh! Someone’s coming.”
It was Hershel. His face was shadowy in the twilight, but it was definitely Helga’s brother. He paced for a moment, then sat down on the marble bench across from the roses and lit a cigarette.
The evening air was warm and still, and the scent of the tobacco soon mixed oddly with the sweet smell of the roses. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant, sitting there with the night closing in. The whirring and clicking and buzzing of insects made it seem as if they were in the jungle instead of Helga’s family garden, not far from the village street.