True Devotion

  Went to sleep in the water. Lord, I’m so glad she didn’t tell me before!

  He didn’t break the silence. It was easier if she could choose the words to say.

  “It was so peaceful,” she admitted softly, “and I just didn’t want to go on. I knew it was happening, and yet I closed my eyes and let myself go to sleep. The next thing I knew I was shoved by a wave and toppled over, and the adrenaline scare got me moving again. The panic was enormous. For that woman to have drowned—”

  He cut her off. “You survived.”

  “She didn’t.” Kelly set the blanket aside. “Why did God help save me and not her?”

  Kelly didn’t need theology at 2330 hours; she needed to set aside a horrific memory and get some sleep. “Even if you could get an answer to the question ‘why me,’ I doubt you could accept it. The bottom line is still the same. Let it go, Kelly. You don’t need survivor’s guilt.”

  She looked hurt at his answer but eventually nodded. “Fine, we won’t talk about it. Would you like some decaf coffee?”

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Kelly, honey, trust me. I’ve seen mad. You’re mad.”

  “I’m . . . upset.”

  No, she was mad, but he would concede the point. “Okay. Then I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She looked at him, shook her head, and went to get their coffee.

  Joe knew the problem. Theology had always been a subject they disagreed on. She loved to ask why, and he preferred to just apply common sense. Some questions were not worth the effort to ask—for some things there were no answers in Scripture besides “I am God.”

  He had seen her spend three years asking questions, making herself miserable. Why did Nick die? had been the first question and it had gone on from there. Kelly thought by asking the questions she would get answers, find peace. She was wrong. What she got was more heartache because she didn’t get an answer she could accept. The Bible said God’s ways are at times unsearchable. She wasn’t going to find an answer to explain Nick’s death that she could accept. She needed to set aside trying to understand and instead lean against the character of the One who had made the decision. God was trustworthy.

  When she came back with the coffee, her expression had steadied. “This was not the end to our first date I expected.”

  The subject had been set aside, as she said it would be. That fact made him feel like he’d kicked a puppy. “No, it didn’t end as planned.”

  “Thanks for taking the actions you did. I’m glad I wasn’t alone when I found her.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The situation shook me up too, Kelly.”

  “You’ve seen people die before.”

  He didn’t answer that question; he couldn’t. The positive answer made him wish he had a different profession. Like David, he served God with a faithful heart, but also like David, he was a warrior with blood on his hands. Tonight he wished his path had been different, that he could tell Kelly no.

  “Tonight was my first time.”

  “You handled it.”

  It was after midnight before Joe was convinced Kelly would be okay left on her own. When she encouraged him to go home, he reluctantly got to his feet. She walked him to the front door.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow evening after work.” He studied her face one last time in the light that came from the hall behind her.

  “I would appreciate it.”

  “You’ll sleep?”

  She nodded and smiled slightly. “I’ll probably take my new teddy bear to bed with me.”

  Her reply made him reach out and pull her to him, wrapping her firmly in a hug. “Really? I’m jealous.”

  She rubbed her chin against his shirt and laughed softly. “I’ll consider changing his name if you really feel strongly about it.”

  “I can live with Bear.” He reluctantly released her and stepped back. “You’ll call if you need me? if you have a bad dream?”

  “Yes.”

  She probably wouldn’t but he had to hope. “Then good night, Kelly.”

  He drove home feeling somber. That could have so easily been Kelly found drowned, tossed back to the beach by the surf. She’d been in the water long enough she’d fallen asleep once that she could remember. The odds were good it had happened more often than that. She hadn’t been alert when he found her. Had she been in the water much longer she would have been found washed up on the shore somewhere along these miles of beach.

  Who was she, the lady who had drowned? She’d been young, pretty, and someone tonight was pacing the floor waiting for her to return home. Instead they would get a phone call and a visit from a police officer.

  Joe turned on the radio, wondering how long it would be before the news broke. He hoped Kelly’s name stayed out of it. The last thing she needed was more press attention.

  Seventeen

  * * *

  “What do you think you are doing? You killed my inside source!”

  “We know who they’re sending. She had become a liability to you. My men said she was talking,” the general arrogantly replied.

  Charles watched the television coverage as word of the drowning led the morning news. He wanted to curse this man’s actions. Yes, platoons Echo and Foxtrot had deployed to Okinawa, and from there his own careful inquiries had revealed they were going on to Seoul. But they were reacting to a diversion he himself had created. He needed the SEALs and their equipment spread thin so this shipment could get through, and the diversion with North Korea and South Korea had been carefully planned. None of it led back to him and this deal.

  All of that careful planning was gone because of the general’s rash actions. Charles’s own anonymity was shattered—the casualty happened right in his figurative backyard. He had also lost a crucial source of data he might still need. “Why did you decide on your own to kill my contact?”

  “She jeopardized this deal.”

  “She didn’t know anything!” Another person was dead. Another innocent person was dead. This situation is spiraling out of control. “Back off and let me do what you’re paying me to do.” There was no way to reason with this man.

  “If this shipment is intercepted, you will pay for the mistake.”

  “It will be delivered. Just don’t touch my remaining source. I need her.”

  “We’ll be watching.” The phone call ended as abruptly as the last one.

  This was the first time Charles truly couldn’t live with a shipment being intercepted. He thought about the lady who had died and felt sick. She had been caught in crosscurrents she wasn’t even aware of. He paced to the windows, feeling the noose of events tighten around him.

  He needed to turn this around, but it was already too late. He could feel his feet sinking down in the quicksand of what was happening. He wanted to pray for help but couldn’t gather the courage to say the words. He knew the truth. He was reaping what he had sown from years before and appealing to God to intervene . . . Charles thought it unlikely help would come. Everyone lived with the consequences of their choices and he was living with his.

  His wife, Amy, had died when Ryan was four, and his grief had manifested itself in anger. He had begun to steal again during the last stages of her cancer, at first as a way to get desperately needed cash. Then after Amy died, he stole as a way to lash out at God by intentionally crossing the line, going back to doing what Amy had worked so hard to reform him from.

  Mortars had become guns, and guns had become missiles. Diverting shipments had become his specialty. Only it had spiraled out of his ability to control it. Once he’d crossed a line from small things to large, the demands of those he dealt with had become such that he could not step away.

  He was in too deep and he hadn’t been able to say no when his buyers wanted more unconventional weapons. He had begun tipping the Americans off to the weapons, providing detailed shipping information. It was better to have the weapons intercepted than to say no to the de
al and let his buyers get a hold of the devices from someone else.

  But then Nick Jacobs had been killed in a recovery mission that should never have gone bad, and Charles had finally been able to get out. Even moving his business from Hong Kong to here had been calculated to help him disengage. It let him keep an eye on the SEALs, make sure his tracks stayed cold.

  When this situation was over, he would find a way to ensure that this could never happen again—even if it meant selling his business and cutting all his contacts. If he had done that before, the general would never have been able to pressure him into this situation.

  He already owed Kelly; he had Nick’s death on his conscience, and now one more debt had been added to that pile. He’d been forced to use her as a way to watch Joe and without intending it had just placed her life in danger.

  He would have to use the extra days he had built into the schedule, and not as he had first planned. Any idea of tipping off the SEALs early, before this deal was complete, could be forgotten. The general had made his point. Killing Iris had been a simple reminder that next time it might be his son. Or Kelly.

  He would have to make sure the SEALs could not disrupt this shipment. It had been three years since he had been in the business. There were always leaks. If the SEALs picked up through other intelligence assets that the device was moving . . . He needed a decisive way to take the SEALs out of play.

  * * *

  Kelly found the sand warm under her feet. She had slipped off her shoes; they dangled in her left hand. It was a sunny late afternoon, and children were laughing as they built elaborate sandcastles in the smooth sand at the water’s edge. Ryan, his dad having a meeting over at the Naval Air Station North Island, had called and asked if he could stop by after school. Kelly was enjoying their walk together, even if the conversation was quite serious. What happened last night had shaken not only her but also Ryan.

  “Her picture was on the news. She looks familiar; I think I’ve seen her.”

  “Coronado is a small place. I would be surprised if you hadn’t seen her around.”

  “I wish we knew what happened, why she died.”

  Kelly heard the tension in Ryan’s voice and understood it. “So do I.” From the morning newscast, Kelly now knew the lady’s name: Iris Wells. She had lived in an apartment complex at the south end of the strand. The police were not offering any details of what had happened. That puzzled Kelly. If it had been an accident, the details would be made available by now.

  “We almost died the same way she did.”

  “Yes.” It was hard to be the adult, to sound matter-of-fact about it when she felt that same lingering fear.

  “The kids at church were asking about what it was like to almost die.”

  Kelly was surprised at that until she thought about it. She hadn’t faced those questions, but only because adults would hesitate to ask. “What did you tell them?”

  “Not much.”

  “I was scared,” she offered. Terrified was a better word, but scared worked.

  “Me too.”

  She didn’t know Ryan well enough to read what he wasn’t saying, but she guessed it was probably what he most wanted to talk about. “Were you worried about what would happen if you died? Do you really, in your heart, know Jesus? Or are you going to church because of your dad?”

  “I accepted the Lord as my Savior and was baptized when I was ten. It’s not the question of heaven or where I would spend eternity.” Ryan glanced at her. “What it made me wish is that I knew Jesus better. Does that make sense?”

  The maturity in Ryan impressed her. “I made that same decision,” she replied quietly.

  “Really?”

  “I call it my quest.”

  “I need to do something like that. I felt . . . I don’t know, kind of hollow. That up until now my faith had all been a game. It suddenly became very serious.”

  “There’s a wilderness camp being planned by my church youth group next week. You ought to think about going along.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I seem to remember that trying to climb a sheer rock face got me pretty close to Jesus,” Kelly pointed out.

  “That sounds perfect. I’ll ask my dad.” Ryan hesitated for a moment. “Dad was really shaken up by what happened, the lady who drowned. I’ve never seen him like he was this morning when he saw the news.”

  Kelly wrapped her arm around him and gave him a hug—the boy was about as tall as she was. “He’s your father; that’s to be expected. He nearly had that happen to you.” Ryan was embarrassed at the attention but also looked pleased. “Enough serious stuff. Let’s talk about you. Do you have plans for the summer?”

  “Not many. Dad wants us to travel some—probably to London, Paris, and maybe a visit back to Hong Kong.”

  “That will be fun.”

  Ryan shrugged. “I’ve seen those places before.”

  They had entered the stretch of beach where the volleyball nets were set up. There were two games going on. Kelly noticed the glances being sent their way by some of the high school girls. She wondered if Ryan had a girlfriend yet. There would be several girls asking her later to make introductions.

  Ryan was noticing it too and looked a little embarrassed. “You have a crowded beach.”

  Kelly nodded. “I like it this way. Listen, your dad said you might be interested in some surfing pointers. Want to come hang out on my beach tomorrow? It’s supposed to be a calm day. I’m working, but I’ll be free at lunch and on breaks.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “You’re a local celebrity around here. You need to get back on a surfboard soon, and I like to teach.”

  “You’re on. Thanks.”

  Kelly was aware of the whispers now going on among the spectators of the volleyball games. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like a few introductions?”

  Ryan glanced at her. “Maybe.”

  “I know someone you would really like. Her name is Lynnette. Two n’s, two t’s, and if you’re really sweet, I bet she’ll ask for your autograph.”

  Ryan’s face turned red, and his voice slid up part of an octave. “You’re serious?”

  “She asked me for mine this morning.” Kelly was enjoying this immensely. Ryan was a good kid, and she would like to see him go out with Lynnette. He struck Kelly as a little lonely, having been dropped back into the States after so long overseas. “Come on, I’ll introduce you as my surfing buddy.”

  Eighteen

  * * *

  “Bear, your problem is you haven’t been running in those boots long enough to get them broken in.”

  “Boomer, just pass me the ice.” He’d run eight miles on the sprained ankle today, and he didn’t need his AOIC’s humor. They had a sweat now or bleed later attitude toward training in the SEALs, and the last seven hours out at Chocolate Mountain had been intense. He was glad to be back at the base.

  Joe probed his swollen ankle, rotating it, ignoring the pain the movement caused. The muscles were tightening as he sat and the ankle was stiffening.

  If it had been one of his men who went out on a dangerous training mission with less than four hours of sleep and his mind not fully focused on the task, Joe would have ripped a strip off his hide and seriously considered yanking him from the roster for lack of judgment. He had already given himself the verbal dressing down; the question now was what else he was going to do to rectify the situation. It could never be allowed to happen again. He had let a situation in his personal life be a distraction at work. It wasn’t just bad form; it was what got SEALs killed.

  The lack of sleep had been unavoidable. There was no way he could have left Kelly rather than stay and talk until she was over the shock. But today, losing his concentration during the op as he wondered how Kelly was doing—he was lucky it had cost him only a sprained ankle and not a broken one. Only a first-jump rookie took his concentration off the l
anding site during a parachute jump, and Joe had been jumping with a full load in the dark. He had managed to land on rocks. Joe scowled as he wrapped the ice in place with a bandanna. He had spent the rest of the day paying for that mistake.

  “You were the one who decided the extraction helicopter was grounded due to mechanical problems,” Boomer reminded him.

  “Don’t laugh too hard; next time the sprain might be yours,” Bear growled back.

  The training mission had gone well otherwise, re-creating a hostage rescue mission the Israelis had executed a year before.

  After the low altitude jump into the target area, Cougar had done a good job of leading them through the rugged terrain in the dark. The assault at the close quarters battle house, rescuing a hostage affectionately known as Elma, had taken five minutes too long to execute in the first pass. The second pass had gone better.

  Joe had decided just before they left the base that on this mission their extraction helicopter was going to be grounded by mechanical failure and they would have to get out of the hostile area by their alternate route. Hence the last long hike on a sprained ankle to end the day.

  Working, he could ignore the pain. Now his ankle was barking. He reached for his soda and two ibuprofen. “The guys are improving.”

  “Not only the mission, but they handled that curve you threw them without complaint,” Boomer agreed.

  Joe grunted. “What they did was set out to run me into the ground, and you know it.”

  Boomer laughed. “I noticed you didn’t let them.”

  The squad medic, a young guy from Kansas, who shouldn’t even have been able to swim let alone practically run his L-T into the ground, had just about done it. Joe had ignored the glances among the men when the pace picked up and simply let them try. Authority came from more than words. The entire platoon had been struggling for wind by the time they reached the alternate recovery site. The old-timers had looked at him and just grinned while the newbies had shaken their heads, not sure how he had done it.