Course of Action: Crossfire (19 page)

Chapter 10

W
hen a combat rescue team went in hot, their goal was an hour max to locate, stabilize and transport a Code Alpha to a field hospital. As the new superintendent of the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, Pete counted those grim minutes numerous times during training exercises at his home base and a month-long deployment to war-ravaged Kenya.

He and his men were back in Florida just ten days when Hurricane Eloise roared into the south Caribbean and devastated the island of Dominica. Within hours, elements of the 23rd were loaded up and ready to roll. As Pete and the team filed into the belly of the MC-130 Combat Talon aircraft that would transport them to Dominica, however, he conducted a separate and very personal countdown.

Fifty-nine down.

Thirty-one to go.

Fifty-nine days since he'd departed Oman, much to the disappointment of Prince Malik and displeasure of the US State Department. Forty-six since Riley agreed to step in for an ailing diva and perform the title role in the San Francisco Opera Company's production of Richard Strauss's
Salome.
She was in California now to begin rehearsals. Pete's belly tightened every time he visualized her slinking out of those seven veils.

They'd stayed in contact these past two months. Phone calls, emails, texts. Sharing details of their separate lives and careers. Learning small details about each other by long distance. Pete kept waiting for some sign she was regretting their pact. Some indication the firestorm they'd ignited in Oman had cooled, or even died.

No cooling on her part yet. And sure as hell none on his, he thought wryly as he settled his sixty pounds of personal gear and strapped in. He'd pretty well kicked himself once a day, every day, for the past two months. He didn't even want to think about the nights.

Fifty-nine down.

Thirty-one to go.

Then the MC-130's engines revved and he put his personal deadline out of his mind and focused instead on the mission ahead.

Initial satellite reconnaissance indicated the situation on Dominica would be as grim as any Pete had ever encountered. The capital city of Roseau had taken a direct hit. Dozens of other towns, fishing villages and resorts had been flattened or washed out to sea. Mudslides and mile-wide debris fields blocked roads. All forms of communication were down. An estimated thirty to forty thousand desperate islanders and tourists were cut off from food, water and any kind of medical care.

International agencies were already mobilizing to provide disaster relief. They couldn't get in, however, until the airport reopened and port facilities were cleared of overturned ships and storm-twisted docks. US Southern Command had dispatched two US Coast Guard cutters to assess damage to the ports. A hospital ship and two navy frigates were also on their way. The 23rd STS, however, would be the first unit to put boots on the ground. The next hours, days and weeks, Pete knew, would be a bitch.

* * *

They were even worse than he'd anticipated.

The island's infrastructure was completely destroyed. Bridges had collapsed, roads were washed out, hospitals sat roofless and without power, vehicles had been tossed around like matchboxes.

Working with local first responders, the 23rd's PJs helped organize triage and trauma centers in the hard-hit capital, Roseau. They also set up tents, issued urgently needed medical supplies to docs and nurses and assisted in emergency operations. At the same time, the team's combat controllers worked shoulder-to-shoulder with still dazed locals to clear a runway. As soon as it was open, the controllers used their modular tactical systems—lightweight, rugged radio/computer systems integrated into their uniform packs—to call in aircraft.

One thousand US Marines landed in the first wave to assist with rescue and recovery. Troops from Canada, Venezuela and neighboring islands arrived hard on their heels. Follow-on cargo aircraft delivered tons of medical supplies, water, food, generators and heavy equipment. US Seabees blew up mangled docks and constructed temporary port facilities. Dredges from Venezuela, Colombia and Panama pumped around the clock to clear the shipping lanes.

Within twenty-eight hours, a combined UN/Dominican Command and Control Center had been set up to coordinate the activities of the many civilian relief agencies that now began to arrive. As one of the senior noncoms on scene, Pete was detailed to the CCC to coordinate the USAF units providing disaster relief. Including, he discovered, the just-arrived elements of the 26th Special Tactics Squadron out of Cannon AFB, in New Mexico.

Taking his first real break since he and his men had touched down, Pete jumped in a utility vehicle and rattled over the newly cleared road to the airport. He found fellow Sidewinder Dave Carmichael and his team still unloading their gear from the belly of a C-17.

“Yo, Duke!”

Carmichael broke into a wide grin. Cutting through the pallets of off-loaded equipment, he hammered Pete's back.

“Winborne, you ugly son of a diseased coyote. Heard you flew in with the 23rd.” His sun-bleached brows waggled. “Also heard some wild tale about you playin' footsie with that hot babe who sang at Josh and Aly's wedding. You'd think someone that classy would have better taste.”

“You'd think.”

“Anna told me to get all the details if I ran into you down here and she'll pass 'em to the rest of the wives.”

“What, are they all on some kind of news loop or something?”

“Facebook,” Duke said mournfully. “They've got their own page. The Sidewinder Follies or something like that. It's private. So private none of us guys have been able to hack into it yet.”

“How is Anna? She still with DIA?”

“She is. Got a promotion when she nailed that systems administrator job at Cannon.” Grimacing, Duke rubbed the side of his nose. “Next assignment for both of us will probably be the Pentagon.”

“What about Jack and Josh and Travis and Dan? Seen or heard from any of them lately?”

“Saw Jack a few weeks ago at Fort Bragg. Travis and Dan are still back in Texas, and Josh is pulling down big bucks with that high-powered engineering firm in Hawaii. But get this. Anna texted a while ago that Aly and Caitlin have volunteered their services with one of the big civilian medical relief agencies here in Dominica.”

“No surprise there. They're both highly skilled in their own fields. And if they fly in, you know Josh and Dan will come with them. Hell, we could have a mini-Sidewinder reunion right here.”

“Be something, wouldn't it?” Never one to be sidetracked for long, Duke refocused his sights. “Back to this opera singer. You two for real seeing each other?”

“Maybe. We're supposed to reconnect in...” He took a quick look at his watch. “Twenty-nine days, eight hours and some minutes.”

“Whoa!” Duke blew a slow whistle. “Sounds to me like there's not much ‘maybe' in your end of things, pardner.”

“A lot less than I thought when we left Oman,” Pete admitted wryly. “And I'm the idiot who proposed we take some time to make sure that wasn't just a near fatal case of horniness.”

“You didn't actually use those words, did you?”

“Pretty much.”

Duke shook his head. “You are one smooth dude, Winborne. C'mon, let's go over to the TOC and grab some coffee. You can bring me and my guys up to speed on what resources we've got to work with here.”

Pete knew most of the men from the 26th. Air Force Special Ops was a small and extremely select community. When he left to head back to the Command and Control Center, Duke walked him to the utility vehicle and thumped him on the shoulder. “That took some time off your countdown.”

“Right,” Pete drawled. “One whole hour.”

* * *

A week later, Pete and his team were packing up for their return flight to Florida. The devastation was still horrific, but most of the homeless were now sheltered in tents, the sick and injured were being treated, mortuary teams were processing the dead and hundreds of cubic tons of relief supplies were arriving daily.

Pete and his men had put in sixteen-and twenty-hour days. Waded through snake-and-rat-infested water. Rescued stranded families from homes and villages cut off by mud and debris. Helped direct the steady stream of aircraft ferrying in supplies and equipment. So he was ready to shake off the dust of Dominica when Duke showed up just hours before his team's scheduled departure and demanded Pete accompany him to what was left of the Roseau soccer stadium.

“They've rigged a big screen with satellite hook-up. Anna says they're going to broadcast from studios in New York, LA and London.”

“Who's going to broadcast?”

“A whole slew of rock stars and country singers. They're doing a concert to raise money for Dominica, like the one they did after the Haiti earthquake and Japan tsunami.”

“Good for them.”

“Willie Nelson's headlining.”

“Can't do it, pal. We've got wheels up at nineteen thirty.”

“I'll get you back in time.”

Pete thought about it for another moment, then caved. After all the death and heartache of the past week, he and his team needed to kick back for a few minutes with a good ol' Texas boy.

“Let's go.”

Duke's team was crammed into one utility. Pete's piled into a second. They had to navigate mountains of uprooted trees and demolished cars but eventually made it to the soccer stadium. Like everything else in Roseau, it had taken a major hit. Bulldozers had shoved the debris to the far end of the field to make room for a hastily erected giant screen and wooden stage. A crowd of thousands desperate to escape the devastation around them for a few hours sat hip-to-hip on pieces of cardboard or plastic bags. Thousands more squatted on the hillside above the stadium. The sun was already starting to sink behind the island's chain of volcanic mountains, throwing the stage in stark relief.

The program was aleady underway when Pete, Duke and their men parked on the sidelines and climbed out of their vehicles. Some rapper wearing a bright red Dreams for Dominica T-shirt was broadcasting from a TV studio in Rockefeller Plaza in New York. Next came the cast of a hit London musical, all in the same red shirt, followed by a twelve-year-old Dominican who walked out on stage and brought everyone to their feet when he belted out a gospel song with a distinctly Caribbean flavor.

Pete glanced at his watch, thinking that he'd have to miss Willie after all, when the singer's craggy face flashed on the screen.

“Hey, y'all.”

In his gravelly rasp, Nelson promised the Dominicans that he and the millions watching all around the world would help them dare to dream again. The crowd was with him all the way when he launched into two of his biggest hits—“On the Road Again” and “Whiskey River.”

“Now that was worth waiting for,” Pete said with the pride of a fellow Texan. “We'd better make tracks now.”

“Wait,” Duke urged. “He's not done.”

Pete turned back around to hear Willie say he was proud to be doing a duet with this next performer, a pretty young gal who was a big hit in her own field but would surely be making her mark in country. Then the ponytailed star strummed a few chords on his guitar and sang the opening lines to Kris Kristofferson's “A Moment of Forever.” The melody was haunting, the sentiment in the lyrics stripped down to the basic.

Pete echoed the words in his head, thinking it really was the hand of destiny that had thrown him and Riley together. Then a second voice joined the chorus, and the object of his thoughts walked out on the stage in Dominica.

“What the...?”

Dressed for the occasion in jeans, tennis shoes and the red T-shirt, she sang to the man on the screen first, her clear, soaring soprano somehow blending perfectly with his weathered sound. She then turned to the audience for a repeat of the first and second stanzas. Then she went solo. Willie accompanied her on the guitar, his head nodding to the beat, his blue eyes admiring.

When Riley got to the line about how good it was to know dreams can still come true, she made everyone in the crowd—Pete included—feel as though she was singing to them.

Well, damn! She
was
singing to him.

Took him a moment to realize Duke and his guys had flipped on the utilities' headlights. He was caught like a deer in their cross beams, clearly visible to the performer on stage.

That was pretty much his last coherent thought. He didn't hear the final chorus. Didn't listen while Willie said something about a new country star in the making. Barely registered the grin plastered across Duke's face. Every atom of his being was focused on the woman who blew Willie a kiss, took the stairs at the side of the stage and wove her way through the crowd.

“Hello, Cowboy.” Her smile cut straight to his heart. “Surprised?”

“Like you wouldn't believe.”

“I know we still have three weeks left on our ninety-day contract. I couldn't wait them out.”

She cocked her head, her long hair shining in the glow of the headlights. Her brown eyes brimmed with a laughing challenge.

“How about you? Still need the extra time to be sure?”

He didn't hesitate, couldn't think how he'd kept his hands off her this long. With a low growl, he caught her upper arms and pulled her against him.

“No way in hell!”

Pete feasted on her warm lips and the hot, sweet promise of things to come while his troops hooted their approval. When he raised his head, both he and Riley had to fight for breath.

“Okay, here's the deal,” she breathed after a moment. “Aly says the church in Rush Springs is available the third of next month. I talked to your parents and that date works for them. Anna said she'll contact the other wives and make sure they can make it. Duke here will take care of coordinating with the guys.” Her nose wrinkled. “I even left a message for my mother, so she would know where and when.”