Kitabı oku: «Forever Blue»

PROLOGUE

Lieutenant Blue McCoy was the point man, leading the six other men of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad across the marshlike ground. He moved painstakingly slowly, inch by inch through the darkness, touching, feeling the soft, loamy earth; searching for booby traps and land mines before actually putting his weight down on any one spot.

He watched the shadows, scanning the brush in front of him, memorizing the placement of each faintly silhouetted leaf and branch, alert to even the most minute movement.

The sounds of the night surrounded him. Insects buzzed and clicked; a dog barked maybe a mile away. An owl called through the darkness, its eerie cry proclaiming itself lord of this nocturnal domain, king of this night world.

It was a world in which Blue McCoy belonged, a world where he could lead a group of men so silently and invisibly through the darkness that the crickets at their feet didn’t sense their presence.

It had taken them more than an hour to cross the open field. Five more yards and they’d be in the cover of the brush. They’d be able to move faster then. Faster, but no less cautiously.

Blue listened, so in tune with the land around him that he was the night. His heart beat slowly in time with the silent, age-old rhythm of the earth and he thought of nothing—nothing but survival. All the noises and sounds of the air force base where Alpha Squad had been just ten hours earlier had long since evaporated, leaving only the night. There were six other men behind him, but Blue heard not a sound from any of them. He knew they were there only from faith, but it was a faith in which he had no doubts. The other SEALs were guarding his back as he led them forward. He knew they would die to protect him, as certainly as he would give his life for them.

Blue sniffed the air and froze, catching a faint, musky odor. But a second sniff convinced him that it was only an animal, some kind of rodent that moved as silently through the night as he did. It wasn’t a human smell, and human animals were the prey he was hunting tonight.

Directly through the woods, dead ahead at twelve o’clock, forty yards distant, was a cabin. According to the spooks from FInCOM—the agents from the Federal Intelligence Commission—inside the cabin was United States Senator Mike Branford’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Karen. The latest infrared satellite photos of the cabin revealed that at least four members of the terrorist group that had kidnapped her were inside the cabin with her. Another ten people were sleeping in a second structure, twenty yards to the northeast. And two five-man units of terrorists patrolled the surrounding woods. Only minutes ago, one of the units had come within four feet of Blue and the Alpha Squad. The unit commander had lit a cigarette, tossing the smoking match inches from Blue’s hand before ordering his men to move on.

With their faces painted green and black, and with their intensive SEAL training, experience and discipline, Alpha Squad was invisible, embraced by the darkness, enshrouded by the cloak of night.

As the SEALs positioned themselves in the brush that surrounded the cabin, Blue turned to look at his commanding officer and good friend, Lieutenant Joe Catalanotto. Blue could barely see Joe Cat’s face in the darkness, but he saw the man’s nod.

Time to go.

Out of the corner of his eye, Blue caught the stealthy movement of Cowboy, Lucky, Bobby and Wes as they faded toward the northeast and the second structure. They were going to secure that building and neutralize the terrorists inside.

That left Joe Cat and Harvard cooling their heels outside the main cabin while Blue crept inside to snatch back the girl.

H. stood guard while Joe and Blue scanned the exterior of the cabin, in particular the window that was to be Blue’s insertion point, his way in.

There were no booby traps, no alarms, no extra security. That was because the quarter mile surrounding the cabin was loaded with booby traps, alarms and armed security patrols. It was also because Aldo Fricker, the terrorists’ leader, had forgotten the number-one rule: Never assume. The terrorists had left their vulnerable underbelly unprotected because they’d assumed that no one would be able to penetrate the fiercely guarded outer perimeters of their compound.

They were wrong.

Al Fricker, meet SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.

As Blue watched, Joe Cat quickly and quietly cut the pane of glass from the cabin’s window. Harvard gave Blue a boost up, and he was inside.

Blue did a quick scan of the interior with his night-vision glasses, quickly locating the senator’s young daughter. She was curled up in an old brass bed in the southeast corner of the room. From what he could see she was still alive. The four guards were in sleeping bags or stretched out on the bare floor near the door. Blue took off his NVs and waited several seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark again, listening to the quiet breathing of the sleeping guards. It wouldn’t do any good to wake the girl up while wearing the NVs, looking like some kind of alien from outer space. She was going to be frightened enough as it was.

He took four syringes from his battle vest and moved silently through the room, giving each of the guards a carefully dosed guaranteed good night’s sleep. He sealed the needles back up and packaged the now-empty syringes in a bag marked Bio-hazardous Waste. A quick search of the cabin convinced him that no other guards were lurking, so he moved toward the senator’s daughter.

He flicked on his penlight, shielding the light in the palm of one hand as he looked down at the sleeping girl. She was curled in a fetal position, knees tucked into her chest, one arm up, wrist attached by handcuffs to the brass headboard of the bed. Her hair was tangled and knotted, and dirt and blood from abrasions streaked her face and bare arms and legs. She was wearing a pair of blue shorts and a sleeveless top. Both were badly torn.

The bastards had hurt her. Karen. Her name was Karen Branford. They’d beaten her. Probably raped her. Christ, she was fifteen years old.

Rage filled him. Hot, molten and deadly, Blue felt it seep through his body, under his skin, spreading out all the way to his fingers and toes. It was a familiar sensation in his line of business. Normally he welcomed it. But tonight his job wasn’t to fight back. Tonight his job was to take this battered little girl out of here and get her to safety.

When he adjusted his headset, pulling the lip microphone closer to his mouth, his voice was steady. “Cat,” he said almost silently to his commanding officer. “They hurt her.”

Joe Catalanotto cursed. “Bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Can she walk?”

“I don’t know,” Blue said.

He turned toward the girl again, sensing from the change in the sound of her breathing that she was awake. Awake and terrified.

Quickly he knelt down next to her, holding the penlight so that it lit his camouflaged face.

“I’m Lieutenant Blue McCoy, miss,” he said in a low voice. “I’m a U.S. Navy SEAL, and I’m here to bring you home.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, taking in his uniform, his gun, and he knew she didn’t understand.

“I’m an American sailor, Karen,” he said. “I’m a friend of your daddy’s, and I’m gonna get you outta here.”

At the mention of her father, understanding and hope flared simultaneously in her brown eyes. She had been clutching at her torn shirt in a futile attempt at modesty, but now she removed her hand to cover his light.

“Shh,” she whispered. “You’ll wake the guards.”

“No, I won’t,” Blue said. “They’re not going to wake up for a while. And when they do, they’re going to be in jail.” He extracted his lock pick from the waterproof case in his vest and set to work on her cuffs. Three seconds was all it took, and the lock snapped open.

As she rubbed her wrist, Blue slipped off his pack and battle vest and quickly unbuttoned the camouflage shirt he wore underneath it. It was damp with perspiration and probably didn’t smell too good, but it was the best he could offer her under the circumstances.

She accepted it silently, slipping it on and buttoning it clear up to her neck.

Blue had to give her credit. After her initial surprise and fear, she now gazed back at him unflinchingly. Her eyes were clear and brave. He’d seen brown eyes like hers somewhere before, a lifetime ago. The owner of those eyes had been fifteen years old, too….

Lucy. Little Lucy Tait. Hell, he hadn’t thought about her in years.

Blue glanced at his watch, double-checking to make sure his pack was secure. According to the plan, diversionary tactics should be just about ready to start. Blue took a deep breath, looked down at Karen and quietly asked, “Can you walk?”

The young girl stood up. The tail of Blue’s shirt came all the way down to her knees. “Better than that,” she said stoutly, “I can run.”

Blue smiled for the first time in what seemed like hours. “Well, all right. Let’s go.”

They were halfway through the brush, when Blue heard the first shots ring out. Joe Cat and H. were right behind him, and he sensed them both turning toward the sounds of the skirmish, wondering which men of Alpha Squad were involved, wishing they could go toward the fighting and provide backup.

“This is the wrong way,” Blue heard Karen gasp. She pulled free from his grasp, looking wildly around.

He took her arm again. “No, it’s not—”

“Yes, it is,” she insisted. “I tried running this way before. There are nothing but cliffs. There’s no path down to the ocean. We’ll be trapped!”

The kid had tried to escape. Blue marveled at her guts. She was tough. Again he couldn’t help but think about Lucy Tait. He’d been a senior and Lucy had been a little freshman, and the first time they met, she had been getting the stuff kicked out of her by a gang of kids. She was bloody and clearly the odds were against her, but she had a defiant lift to her chin and a “you can’t beat me” glint in her brown eyes.

Cowboy’s voice came in over Blue’s headset. “Cat! About four tangos broke free. They’re heading in your direction!”

“Copy that,” Cat replied. He turned to Blue. “Go.”

“We’re going to parasail down to the water,” Blue told Karen. “There’s a boat waiting for us.”

She didn’t understand. “Parasail? How?”

“Trust me,” he said.

Karen hesitated only a fraction of a second, then nodded.

Then they were running again, this time without Cat and Harvard on their heels.

The forest opened up into a field, and Blue felt vulnerable and exposed. If one of the terrorists broke through Cat and Harvard’s ambush… But they wouldn’t.

“Knock the hell out of them for me,” he said into his lip microphone, and he heard Joe Catalanotto chuckle.

“You bet, buddy.”

Blue stopped at the edge of the cliff and made adjustments to his pack so that Karen could be latched against him and they could parasail down to the water together.

She didn’t complain, didn’t say a word, although he knew that the proximity of his body to hers had to remind her of the brutalities she’d endured over the past four days.

But he couldn’t think about that; couldn’t wonder, couldn’t focus on her pain. He had to think about that ship bobbing in the darkness, made invisible by the night.

He flipped on the homing device in his vest, reassured by the series of blips and beeps that told him the ship was indeed out there.

“Hold on,” he said to the girl, and then he jumped.

* * *

Blue was on the deck of the USS Franklin when the chopper carrying the rest of Alpha Squad touched down.

He looked closer, trying for a quick head count. It was a reflex from the time all those years ago when Frisco had gone down. He hadn’t been KIA—killed in action—but he may as well have been. He still hadn’t recovered from his injuries. His leg had damn near been blown off and he was still in a wheelchair—and still mad as hell about it.

Frisco had been Alpha Squad’s unofficial goodwill ambassador. He had been friendly and lighthearted, quick to talk to and make friends with everyone around him. He had a sharp sense of humor and a fast wit—he soon had strangers laughing and smiling wherever he went. And his friendliness was sincere. He was a walking party. He always had a good time, whatever the situation.

In fact, Alan “Frisco” Francisco was the only SEAL Blue knew who actually enjoyed basic training’s endurance test called Hell Week.

But when Frisco was told that he would never walk again, he’d stopped smiling. To Frisco, losing the use of his leg was the worst thing that ever could have happened to him. Even worse, maybe, than dying.

Blue watched the men jump down from the big bay doors of the helicopter. Joe Cat—his dark hair worn longer and tied back in a ponytail, his stern face relaxed in a smile nearly all the time now that he was married. Harvard—his shaved head gleaming like a coffee-colored bowling ball, looking big and mean and scary as hell. Bobby and Wes—unidentical twins, one big and tall, the other wiry and short, yet they moved in unison, finished each other’s sentences. Lucky O’Donlon—Frisco’s swim buddy. And the new guy—Cowboy. Harlan “Cowboy” Jones—temporary replacement first for Lucky on the same rescue mission that had injured Frisco, then temporary replacement for Frisco. Except it had been years and years, and it sure as hell looked as though temporary had turned pretty damned permanent.

They were all there, and they were all walking and breathing.

Joe Cat spotted Blue and moved in his direction.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Blue nodded, heading with Joe toward the stairs leading below deck. “The doctor checked out the girl,” he drawled. “She’s with the shrink and the support staff right now.” He shook his head. “Four days, Cat. Why the hell did it take them so long to let us go in after her?”

“Because the average politician and top-brass pencil pusher doesn’t have a clue what a SEAL team can do.” Joe Cat unfastened his battle vest, heading directly toward the mess hall.

“So a fifteen-year-old girl is brutalized for four days while we sit around with our thumbs up our—”

Cat stopped walking, turning to face Blue. “Yeah, it bugs me too,” he said. “But it’s over now. Let it go.”

“You think Karen Branford is gonna just let it go?”

Blue could see from Cat’s dark eyes that the CO didn’t like the answer to that question. “She’s alive,” he said quietly. “That’s much better than the alternative.”

Blue took a deep breath. He was right. Cat was right. He exhaled loudly. “Sorry.” They started walking again. “It’s just… The girl reminded me of someone I used to know back in Hatboro Creek. A girl named Lucy. Lucy Tait.”

Joe Cat eyed him with feigned astonishment as they turned the corner into the mess hall. “Yo,” he said. “Am I hearing you correctly? You actually knew other girls besides Jenny Lee Beaumont in Hatboro Creek? I thought the sun rose and set with Jenny Lee, and all other girls were rendered invisible by her magnificent shine.”

Blue staunchly ignored Cat’s teasing tone. “Lucy wasn’t a girl,” he said, pouring black, steaming coffee into a paper cup. “She was just…a kid.”

“Maybe you should look her up while you’re back in South Carolina for the wedding.”

Blue shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Cat took a mug from the rack, regarding Blue speculatively. “You sure you want to go to this wedding?” he asked. “You know, I can arrange for Alpha Squad to be part of some vital training mission if you need an excuse not to be there.”

“It’s my brother’s wedding.”

“Gerry’s your stepbrother,” Cat noted, “and he happens to be marrying Jenny Lee, your high-school sweetheart and the only woman I’ve ever heard you talk about—with the exception now of this Lucy Tait.”

Blue took a swallow of the coffee. It was strong and hot and it burned all the way down. “I told him I’d be his best man.”

Joe Cat’s teeth were clenched as he gazed at Blue. The muscle worked in his jaw. “He shouldn’t have asked you for that,” he said. “He wants you there, giving him your stamp of approval, so he can stop feeling guilty about stealing Jenny Lee from you.”

Blue crumpled up his empty paper cup, then tossed it into the garbage. “He didn’t steal her,” he said. “She was in love with him right from the start.”