SEAL's Code (13 page)

“Yessir,” both he and Jeffrey answered.

“Parker, we want you to work with Fredo and Rory. Follow everything they do, if you can. Fredo runs our explosives and operates the communications. Does all our hookups and Invisios and shit. Begay, I’ve assigned you to Armando, our shooter. You get to watch an A-1 sniper at your side. You better hope we don’t need him, just like Fredo here, because it means we’re in serious shit.”

“And if you get operated on by T.J., you better hope he sews your ears on frontwards and gets your dick on straight,” Brady boasted.

T.J.’s booming voice shook the air. “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t do vasectomies or sex changes on weekends.”

Everyone laughed. Danny was relieved by how free-spirited the team was. He could see the respect they all had for LPO Lansdowne. Some of the apprehension he’d had began to dissipate.

Jeffrey was grinning widely, nodding, and shaking hands and fist-bumping the other guys. Team guys had heard about Jeffrey’s invention and wondered if he’d thought about making an action game based on their training. SEALs had been busted for doing so several years ago.

“That’s what they did wrong and it got them busted,” Armando stated.

“Shoot, that’s what all the homies want, Armani. They wanna feel like they’re playing with the big boys,” Fredo quipped.

Danny knew Jeffrey had an answer for them. “Not to worry, guys. I do Zombie Apocalypse. We use all futuristic weapons—cyborgs with lasers embedded in their skulls. My worlds have humans and cyborgs working together to destroy the zombies.”

A brief hush fell over the room as it became clear Jeffrey had instantly become the most popular member on the team. Then everyone started talking at once.

During the weeks that followed, consistent with a protocol they were told they’d get used to, they did a variety of training including daytime jump school, midnight HALO jumps, building search and hostage rescue, and intensive deep water rescue and ship boarding. They also did a week in the Nevada desert “shooting zombies” as everyone started calling it while barreling across the sand in various vehicles at high speed, firing off more rounds than most Marine divisions used in a month. The end of the day exercises began to take on Mad Max proportions when the serious work of the day was done.

When he could, Danny tried to call Luci at home.

He and Jeffrey rented an apartment together with a balcony overlooking the ocean. The rent on the place was more than several of their members’ house payments, and at first, Danny didn’t want to take Jeffrey’s offered generosity.

“You helped get me through BUD/S, big guy. We do this thing, and we do it together. Only thing I won’t do is sleep with your girl. Or change little Griff’s diapers.” Jeffrey’s smile followed just about every statement he made.

“I’d say it was the other way around, Jeffrey. I’d not have graduated without you.”

Jeffrey waved it away.

Their apartment was outfitted with a couple of game machines Jeffrey was beta testing for a Silicon Valley firm and quickly became the hangout for all the newbies and several of the unattached regulars. It was known as the Zombie Bachelor Alliance. The new Alliance members got their frog prints tatted on their forearms, like all of Kyle’s team, but with bloody outlines, indicating they were part of the new Zombie Alliance, not one of Kyle’s old regulars who sported neat little black prints.

Jeffrey even helped Danny with some tickets to fly Luci out for a long weekend before they deployed.

Luci was interested in their life and fit in well with the other SEAL ladies. She especially got close to Mia and Gina, Armando and Fredo’s wives.

Those were some of the best days of Danny’s life. He woke up in the morning, Griffin making a hot, sweaty scene in the middle of their bed, but he liked sleeping with the baby even though he’d have preferred sleeping next to Luci. Griffin was comfortable around him, rewarding him with smiles, his dark eyes dancing. At night sometimes he woke up, and Griffin would be lying there watching him. Although too young to really know, Danny sensed the baby knew he was his father.

They had a beach bonfire with the kids and wives the last night before their travel. Danny noticed it was hardest on the guys who were headed for their fifth or sixth deployment, like Kyle, Cooper, Fredo, and Armando, all of whom were married and had at least one child, most of them two. He wondered how they found the ability to put their families second to the service of their country. It gave him courage to see these men of steel be tender with their kids and ladies, knowing what they were feeling inside. It wasn’t common to lose a SEAL or one of the support teams, but when it happened to a couple of SEALs on Team 5, he understood how it impacted all the Teams. Everyone grieved. All the families were embraced.

Not that that was enough, of course.

“I promise you I’ll come back, Luce. I keep my promises.”

“Danny, just want you to know, I love all this. I can see us living here, doing this. Your friends, the ladies and wives, they’re awesome. I love how all the little ones play together.”

“That’s the way it is. Someone doesn’t come back, everyone else helps out.”

Luci had stiffened.

“Not going to happen, Luce. I’m coming back. I mean it.”

He’d bought a co-sleeper bed for Griffin so he could properly say goodbye to Luci their last night together. Her long, hot body filled all the cracks and fissures in his psyche. His fears were smoothed over with her kisses and the feel of her thighs against his as he loved her all night long. The gentle singing spoke to him in rhythm.

This woman holds your soul, your spirit. Take from her only what she gives. Leave something for her in return. Make her feel the love burning in your heart for her every night until you return. Make her remember. Give her the gift of your dreams of love.

If she was scared, she didn’t show it. In the morning, they lolled in bed. He was stunned when she rolled to the side, picked something up from the lamp table, and handed him a little package, wrapped up in parchment and tied with straw.

“Should I open it?” he asked her as she snuggled up, wrapping her legs around him as he took the packet carefully.

“No. Keep it intact. Hold it close to your heart, Dine man. It contains the pollen of our People, a lock of my hair and that of Griffin’s. We go with you on your great mission. Do not forget us.”

They hadn’t talked about the future. He didn’t want her agreeing to something out of pressure because he was going into harm’s way. But now seemed the perfect time. He turned to lay sideways against her naked body. “Marry me, Luci, when I return. Will you do this?”

“I will wait until you ask me when you return, so I can properly say yes. We have no time now.”

He flipped her up on top of him, holding her hips, allowing her to rub her sex against his groin, which was stiff and becoming stiffer.

“Marry me, Luci,” he said as he found her opening, holding her in place with just the head breaching her peach. He felt her vibration, felt he was at peace, home with her. Wanted to stay one with her forever.

She smiled and leaned over, her large breasts touching his chest, her long hair covering him. She pushed herself harder so his hands could not hold her hips, and she hungrily swallowed him deep between her legs.

“Marry me, Luci,” he said as he began to pump, thrusting up inside her, rocking her pelvis on his thighs. Her eyes were closed, her mouth forming the “Oh” he loved to see as she began to shudder.

“I need you to say it, Luci.”

“Yes, Danny, I am yours. Forever and ever.”

‡

D
jibouti was a
much busier place than they’d been told by returning teams, who had spent a lot of time playing video games, doing short training missions, and hours of P.T., or physical training.

Barely a week there and they were called on a Special Ops covert night mission. They’d flown to Turkey and, with the help of Kurdish fighters took a midnight drop into Northern Iraq to rescue a high-value target and friend of the United States who had garnered some critical intelligence. He’d been a former Iraqi military officer who’d been trained by them on previous deployments, whose family had been slaughtered in the recent bloodshed. The man was buying his freedom and that of the life of his only remaining living family member, a young son four years of age.

They met in an abandoned soccer stadium which gave Yazen and his son, Ali, shelter and occasionally clean water. He even had power from time to time on an intermittent basis, enough to charge a cell phone and other batteries. The Iraqi had constructed a bunker that was impossible to trace from the outside, and only went out at night to forage for supplies, sometimes food.

The Team was waiting for information on extraction once contact had been made with Yazen. The SEALs went out in pairs along with one Kurdish fighter, carefully surveying the surrounding area for bad guys and verifying no one from the village a few hundred yards away was interested in them or the stadium. Several hovels remained of what used to be a sports complex and neighborhood shopping district. Dead animals were left to rot in the streets. Wild dogs roamed, skittish and distrustful of anyone. Goats from untended flocks and chickens survived by eating anything they could and were the onIy animals that looked healthy.

It was planned that the center of the soccer stadium, with pinkish puddles from some chemical spill instead of green lawn, would make a good rendezvous point for the birds.

Danny watched young Ali and wondered about his own son, safe at his mother’s breast. This little boy slept in his father’s arms, covered by a crudely skinned hide on dusty rags and stained prayer rugs.

Later that day, he could read in the boy’s dark eyes the damage from seeing carnage and horrors of war. Yet, he watched as, incredibly, the youngster played with colored rocks and shell casings he found. He would pile them up, sorting by color and size. He began making necklaces from strips of string and leather and colored glass from broken bottles. He made pretend medals with bits of wire, lanyards, guns, and knives small enough for the boy’s tiny hands.

Yazen had killed a goat then dried and stored the meat, hanging the intestines in the sun on one of the bleachers in a haphazard manner to avoid interest from eyes above. Danny noted how, like his ancestors, this former military man was using every part of the animal, even using the goat hooves as blades on a trowel for digging small caches under the soil, or using their sharp edge to sand and whittle wood for stakes.

Kyle spoke to him as he watched the father and son work on stitching together two stiff pieces of goat hide. “Most of these men, even the generals, are only one generation from the desert bands who traveled like Bedouins, herding their food behind them. Very skilled guerilla fighters, if their will is strong. Their strength is in adapting to the harsh environment and completely living off the grid, off the land of their ancestors.”

Danny completely understood and felt a strange kinship. Two generations ago, his People lived in mud and animal skin hogans, or out in the high desert, and not in houses or even the luxury of mobile homes like today.

He fashioned the boy a slingshot made from pieces of a discarded inner tube from a burned-out military van and goat intestines he found drying. He sat one long afternoon and showed the boy how to use it, all the while under the watchful eye of his father, who seemed to have lost the capacity to smile. Danny instructed young Ali the right size and shape of pebbles to use for different trajectories, and how to pull it out of his clothes quickly without making a sound.

While most of the men seemed more relaxed in the daytime, Danny felt more comfortable at night. His eyesight was well suited for the dark, and he used a single scope goggle he’d crafted so he could rely on his own eyesight, but have the use of the night-vision resolution when he needed it.

This land reminded him of the land of the Four Corners back home. He’d roamed the desert floor with his grandfather, using the moonlight as their guide, listening to small animals, snakes, and night birds. They’d sometimes sleep out there for a week.

The smell of the soil in Iraq was not the same. It didn’t have the sweet smell of adobe soil of his homeland when wet. But the texture of the sand when the night wind blew reminded him exactly of what it was like sleeping out on the desert floor with the stars so thick he imagined them to be a wooly blanket that kept him warm at night. He could remember how their brightness almost hurt his eyes as a child.

Danny showed Ali shapes in the night sky, using a small penlight to demonstrate drawing these shapes in the sand with a pointed stick they’d whittled together. There was a coyote—although not the same stars he saw in the Southwest—a bear, a snake, and jackrabbit, something Ali could not understand. When Danny tried to explain the long ears and powerful hind legs of the jackrabbit, Ali kept insisting it was a goat.

“Maa’ez,” Ali insisted, creating horns that came up out of the top of his scalp with his little fists, trying to imitate a goat. T.J. Talbot had learned the Arabic word for rabbit, and although not a jackrabbit with the long ears, finally Ali understood, and laughed. He motioned back to Danny the folly of the pretend floppy ears a rabbit in Iraq would have, wrinkling his nose in disgust and disbelief that such a lowly animal would take such a lofty place in the heavens.