Find A Way Or Make One (3 page)

Kylee had been twenty at the time, and had left her home in Georgia about six months before I met her
because she needed a change. The sadness that had ove
rtaken her eyes when she had quietly stated
she had just needed a change always caused me to pull up short of pressing her for more information. H
onestly, I wouldn’t have been able to survive hearing about her suffering at someone’s hands. Later I realized I
had been right. Knowing that she had
been hurt nearly killed me. Knowing that
I
had hurt her had completely and totally eviscerated me.

We had been seeing each other for about five months when General Mathers, the commanding officer at Quantico, called me into his office.
The adopted daughter of a Middle Eastern informant in Yemen had gone AWOL, and the informant had asked the United States for help in finding her after he had traced her to the U.S., but refused to give a picture of the
girl. The unrest in the Middle East at that time was even more violent than usual, and if it became common knowledge in some circles that he had actually been helping the United States, he and
his family were dead
. So I
understood the reasons that he didn’t want to give us any pictures to work with, but it made identifying the girl virtuously impossible without her actually stating her identity or getting “close enough" to her to see her scar.
Most of the higher ranking officials knew that this was
a nearly impossible task to complete.
The only reason the U. S. was taking this request seriously was that this informant had been a very reliable asset in the fight against Al-Qaida, and they wanted to be able to rely on his assistance in the future.

Based on the information that the informant
would
let us have (twenty years old, short, physically fit, brown eyes, highly intelligent, well versed in seven languages, and a scar on her lower left back), Naval Intelligence had traced her to
Virginia, and reports had placed her in Quantico. Her identity had now been narrowed down to one
possibility. An obvious
unnatural
blond, twenty years old, who was hesitant to give information about her past, but obviously came from money, was short and acted as if money had never been a real concern to her. The belief that she was the girl was further intensified when no background information on her could be found.

Mathers needed me to get “close” to the girl to confirm her identity, either by seeing the scar or by lover’s confession
. I
tried and tried to get out of it, but Mathers had been insistent.
When I told him that I was seeing someone, he had told me that it was a fairly new relationship, and then asked me if my family had met her. When I told him no he had laughed and said that I obviously wasn’t serious about the girl so this would just give me an easy out. Reluctan
tly, I complied like a goo
d little soldier. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that if Kylee knew about the order from Mathers, she would leave me,
and I had no plans of lett
ing Kylee go. So in a flash of blinding
stupidity, I decided to keep
the mission on the DL. I
began seeing Catherine, while still seeing Kylee. I reasoned with myself that as soon as I had required information
I would be done. I
even justified that as long as I didn’t actually have sex
with Catherine, it would be ok. Funny, how even when you know something is wrong you can always justify it by stipulations such as, “as long as” or
,
“it will be ok if I”.

After a week of searching I located Catherine and another doing recon, I was confident on how best to approach her. This was followed by a month of flirting and texting. Believe me, this was no easy task; even if I had been single it would have still been beyond frustrating
.
Catherine was
completely self-absorbed. Everything had to be about her and everyone had to bow down and worship at her feet. This had to be
the informants adopted daughter I told myself. I based this on the informant being from an extremely wealthy Middle Eastern family that sounded like the perfect breeding ground for the ever conceited and self-absorbed Catherine. When I finally got her to agree to go out on a date, I was so relieved that this would soon be over and done. I knew that I had been neglecting Kylee and I needed to make it up to her.

I was completely unprepared for Kylee to call me and ask me to meet some of her friends that were in town for the night. I was overly harsh when I had told her that I had night maneuvers that night and that I wouldn’t be able to meet any of her hick friends from Georgia. When Kylee had gotten really quiet and said, “ok” and softly hung up the phone, I knew that I had majorly FUBARed
. I just didn’t know that
I had
fucked up beyond all recognition
in a permanent way
.

I took Catherine out to dinner that night, and while I wined and dined her like a real champ, she still wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know, no matter how I asked. Hoping to get her to spill the goods and not have to get any closer to her, I took her to a bar in hopes that alcohol would get her to slip up and tell me something
. We
headed to Aces N Eights, a bar in Quantico that saw almost no cu
stomers that were military. I
didn’t want this shit getting back to Kylee before I could talk to her about it, and even though she was only twenty and couldn’t go to a bar, if others saw me with Catherine they would make it their personal mission in life to let her know about it
.

But wouldn’t you know Kylee would be at Aces N Eights that night. I guess she had been with her friends, but there was no one there that I would have thought that
she would have as friends. That night,
Jagged Pill
, a rock band from England that had just hit the big time was there and any other girls that were there without dates were obviously groupies.

I had my arm around Catherine’s back, and she was snuggling up to me when Kylee had suddenly appeared in front of us.

“Night maneuvers. Really, if you wanted to end this, you should have just said something.”

I panicked. I had to shut Kylee up, so that I could get the information I needed and be done with this. Assuming that I would be able to go see Kylee the next day and explain things, I decided to play it off like she was a disgruntled ex. To this day I can still see the look of emotional devastation in her eyes as I delivered the last words I
would ever say to her. “
Look Babe, did you really think that we were going
last? I mean, you’re a good lay, but you wouldn’t really fit in with my fa
mily and friends back home
.” I had never mentioned my fam
ily’s wealth or connections. Actually,
I had been trying to make it on my own, without the Ma
sters name to fall back on. I
don’t know why I used my family that night, but I had. The next morning when I had showed up at Kylee’s small apartment I began to realize that throwing my family’s wealth in Kylee’s face and telling her she wasn’t good enough might not have been the best move
I could have made. After fifteen
minutes of knocking on the door, I looked in the window my world immediately turned gray. It was completely empty. When I went to the book store she worked at, they told me that she called early that morning that she cited a family emergency for the abrupt reason she had to quit.
The community college that I
assumed she had been attending when she had talked about the classes she was taking had never heard of Kylee Everson. I looked everywhere but she had vanished. It was then that I realized that I was in love with her, and that she had disappeared, taking my only chance at happiness with her

Full of despair and regret, I threw myself into getting the information that I
needed. It was tricky, because lord knew Catherine had turned o
ut to be a sexual deviant, but I never could force myself to actually have sex with Catherine.
I couldn’t even force myself to get close enough or drunk enough to confirm her scar. A month later, I found out that everything I had lost had been in vain.

Feeling sure that Catherine was indeed the informant’s daughter, I set up a meeting with the informant, two of his sons, and General Mathers.
As I
entered the restaurant with Catherine, the older man of obvious Middle Eastern decent that I assumed was the informant became agitated. “I thought you had found my daughter, where is she?”

I felt my heart plummet.
“Is this not her?”

“No, it is not. I should have known that if my little girl wanted to hide, she would remain lost. Now all I can hope is that she decides to return to those that love her.”
He motioned for his sons and the
y
all left the restaurant.

Realizing that our relationship, such as it was, was a sham
, Catherine had attempted to snuggle into my side.
“
I don’t know what is going on, but whatever it is it will be ok. It brought us together so we could fall in love.”
Catherine said as she reached up to kiss me.

I just stood there for a long minute, p
rocessing everything, including what I had lost. Suddenly I couldn’t take being
even remotely near Catherine, let alone having her hands or lips
on me. I jerked
away from Catherine’s cloying hold.
“Hell no we didn’t! The only thing I have found is peace knowing I never have to listen to your self-absorbed ass again! And to think what I lost, because of you!”

“What, that dark haired skank?
You said that she was nothing more than a good lay!
”
Catherine’s eye’s narrowed as she crossed her arms over her chest and began tapping her feet.
It was at that moment that I fully realized what I had lost. When Kylee had gotten angry and don
e
the same thing when I called her a midget, she had been funny and had touched my heart. Now, looking at Catherine, all I could see was a petulant child who caused me to lose the one thing no man should ever lose. His heart,
his soul, his reason for being, and I had lost it all for nothing..

To say that I lost my cool would be like saying the
Titanic
was a pretty little boat.
“She is NOT a skank
and she was NOT just a good lay, she was EVERYTHING! Kylee
is the best thing that has ever happened to me! And I los
t her, because of you!” I
slammed my hands down on the table so hard I spilled the Sheikh’s water, and walked out the door.

I missed going to work with people that actually wanted you to do well, and were not just waiting for you to fuck up
, so they could get higher on the corporate ladder. I fell
out of touch with the guys in my platoon and squad mostly because it was hard to see their closeness and know I wasn’t a part of that close-knit group anymore. Recently I found Cale on Twitter and had started keeping up with some of what the guys had been up to. I had been checking his Twitter account in an attempt to ignore Sable when I had seen the post that he was going to the warehouse to train, and then going to hang at
La Rassa
, a famous club in Morocco, later tonight. I jumped up and rushed out of the suite, leaving Sable completely disgruntled, with her shirt almost all the way unb
uttoned. Damn, I’m
going to
have to find a way to get rid of her. On
ly last night she came into my room in an itty bitty nightie, asking me if I had anything to get rid of a headache. I barked out a laugh, and told her that if I did have something I
would have already taken it to get rid of the continuous headache she caused. She had tried to
get all pouty and flirty, but I just told her to get the hell out of my suite. Yeah, she didn’t take that too well judging by the slam of the door!

As I was heading out, I put in a call to Cale’s mom, knowing that if he had put where he was on Twitter, that it wasn’t confidential and she would know how
to get in touch with her youngest son.
She talked my ear off, but it was finally confirmed that Cale and some of the others from the platoon were working on a joint training exercise in Morocco. She said the best way to get in touch with him was through Alvin, who had been dubbed Chip in BUD’s training. Personally, I thought the Alvin and the Chipmunks reference a
little cheesy, but se la vie. Hadn’t my swim buddy, a black man whose skin was extremely dark, been dubbed Sunny?

When I got a hold of Chip, he was just getting out of bed and the noises in the background to
ld me he wasn’t alone. After telling him what
BUD’s class I was in, what team, platoon, and squad, he relented and told me that the guys on this mission beside himself were Cale, Sunny, K
en, and Crow. I
knew and got along with the first three; Sunny had been my Swim buddy in Buds, but Crow was new. Chip told me that he had been on the team for about six years, so I assume he was my replacement.
Aw
kward, but what the hell? I figured that if I could handle it so could the new guy, right? The guys had already gone to the training facility, an old warehouse that a new shipping company,
RRP Shipping
, had let the European Union use for this training. I had heard of
RRP
. They were taking Europe by storm, largely due to the connections that the owners
had. The ten owners were the
sons of five of Europe’s wealthiest Royal families and two sons and a daughter of a Bani Ark sheikh in Yemen, and the twin sons of a former United States Vice President. They definitely had some clout and some might
y strong connections, which only helped them in gaining access to ports and gaining shipping contracts.

I realized before coming here, that I needed to get in touch with them and have a meeting, to see if there was
any way we could work together.
Even though
Masters and Family
still was involved with the ship part of shipping, we were now becoming a dominant force in moving shipments over ground, by either planes or trucks
. By joining these two business factions,
Masters and Family
would soon begin
to push UPS and FedEx out.
RRP
would profit as well from the possible stream lining of shipping goods from overseas.