First to Burn (3 page)

“Captain Deavers came down a little hard.” He looked at the floor as if struggling with how much to say. “I’m sorry. The team’s sorry.”

It sounded like a genuine
I’m sorry
, and her stomach muscles unclenched, the tension replaced by a feeling almost like the euphoria that came from eating dinner after having missed lunch. Sergeant Wardsen had apologized for the humiliation she’d felt talking to a bunch of men’s rears.

“He’s receiving rough email from his wife. She’s not coping well alone with their new baby. He’s worried she has...postpartum depression?” He said the words as if using a foreign language guidebook.

“Thank you for telling me.” The awareness that Chris had bigger problems, and yet she’d hounded him about medical records, embarrassed her enough that she wanted to slink into a hole darker than Tora Bora. To be successful in private medical practice next year, she’d have to clue in better to patients’ unspoken needs. “Maybe I can help?”

* * *

“Please. That would take a worry off the team’s minds.” Wulf suspected the doctor fulfilled her promises. The way she’d barreled across the gym for his paperwork told him she was determined, and the glare when she’d ordered him to stop involving flight medics in his team’s escapades had rivaled desert heat. “Maybe you could be subtle?”

“You don’t want your commander to know you talked to me?” Captain Chiesa spoke over her shoulder as she carried her tray to the beverage dispensers.

If he didn’t want to shout loud enough for the guys to hear, he had to follow the damp ponytail bouncing in front of him. She’d tucked her dark hair under and up in one of those styles used by female soldiers. It made some look like bobbed horses, but on her it highlighted her cheekbones and eyebrows. “The captain’s a private guy.”

Captain Chiesa rolled her eyes. “And I had the impression you were all over-sharers.” Humor added cinnamon and cloves to her brown eyes, and the dimple that flashed in her cheek turned the steamroller into somebody’s girl-next-door. But not his. He couldn’t afford a soft spot for a woman.

“His wife’s in charge of the family support group.” If he prolonged the conversation, he might catch a whiff of her shampoo. Women’s hair had mesmerized him since he had watched his mother plait her braids. “Might reflect badly with higher-ups if she can’t hold it together.”

“Can your wife help her?”

Centuries had blunted the ache of losing Zenobia enough that he didn’t clench his fists or lock his jaw or betray with his eyes what that word had once meant. Instead he lifted his mouth in a half-assed smile. “If the army wanted me to have a wife, they’d issue one.”

“I wasn’t asking...” Her olive skin darkened at her cheekbones, broadcasting embarrassment with a color lighter than the angry flush she’d shown in the gym. “So, what post are you guys from? Maybe I know someone who—”

“Fort Campbell.” He handed her a bottle of water to cut her off. She wouldn’t like to be caught babbling. Bits of frizz softened the sharp widow’s peak of her hairline, and he wanted to trace the heart-shape with his finger. Better to grip his tray. “The lieutenant’s wife should be able to reach the captain’s wife. Shall I get their emails from the LT?” He bit his tongue as she nodded. Now he was the babbler, because of some straying hair and the fact that she cared enough about people to jump in and help a flight medic. Damn. Even if army rules didn’t prohibit touching to find out if those curls felt as soft as he suspected, he could never get close to a doctor. Faster than other women, she’d notice he was different.

“I’ll remember your assistance.” He withdrew two steps, a strategic retreat, but his stomach flipped as the distance between them stretched greater than his reach. “Thanks.”

“Don’t get shot for real.” Her wish sounded so damn sincere. Her smile seemed so damn wholesome. Her tilted head revealed the curve of her neck and a smooth expanse of skin so damn
vulnerable
that he couldn’t help sucking air between his teeth.

“If I do, I’ll make sure my paperwork’s complete.” He laid a hand over his heart.

Her eyes followed the gesture. When she looked up, her gaze didn’t rise past his lips.

He could almost feel her fingers brush across his mouth. A woman’s touch was a rare treasure in this hole.

No
. He shook his head and broke whatever linked him to Captain Chiesa. He didn’t know her first name, but already he’d built a fantasy that risked the life he’d constructed.

She blinked twice and muttered something that sounded like, “My food’s getting cold,” before she walked away.

He nearly sagged against the counter as he filled two glasses with milk, but her reflection on the stainless-steel dispenser kept him standing tall. She crossed the room to her friend, probably another doctor. They stuck together as much as his A-team did. The army was a big gathering of small clans who spent their days working and eating and bunking together, which made it easy to hide in plain sight. Like the doctors, his team stayed apart from most others except the Night Stalker aviators. His men’s silence, their separateness, protected him.

His tribe had gathered midway from the flat-screen television. Tonight the commander and lieutenant had chosen to eat with other officers, so nine pairs of eyes stared as he sat in the last-man seat closest to the door, with his back to the room. Nine brothers, each as concerned as his blood kin at the chance he’d be exposed, but he couldn’t rewind ten minutes to skip his conversation with Captain Chiesa. Even if he could, he wouldn’t. He liked the spark he’d felt when he looked at her hair and eyes, and he’d liked it especially when she told him off.

“Took you long enough.” Sergeant Kahananui broke the silence. “Cruz volunteered for recon patrol.”

Ignoring the big Hawaiian, he bit into his corn on the cob. Chewy, no crunch. Frozen too long between an American field and this dining facility fifty klicks from the Pakistani border.

“That doc jacking you?” Sergeant Cruz started to rise, but Wulf shook his head.

“Don’t think our high-speed leader is getting jacked. Yet.” Kahananui had usurped Wulf’s usual spot, from which he could observe the whole mess. “Need us to run interference?”

“I’m fine.” He hadn’t told the doc anything that was an actual lie. With luck, he’d deflected her questions. He chomped another bite. Spray-on butter instead of corn flavor, but it was still good fuel.

“Mmm-hmm.” Kahananui raised both black eyebrows and curled his lips, like he’d pulled the pin on a grin and was about to let it rip. “Had a funny view from this seat.”

Men’s stares ping-ponged across the silent table between him and Kahananui, but he wouldn’t talk with his mouth full.

Cruz took the bait in his place. “What?”

“Saw a wolf separate a doe from the herd,” Kahananui said.

The guys always joked that Caddie’s three dozen women traveled in packs and never gave a lonely soldier a fighting chance. Most of his team had stable marriages, wives and kids waiting stateside, so they loved to flip shit at guys who didn’t, like him and Cruz.

“Didn’t know he was on the prowl, did we?” the Hawaiian added.

The three men closest to the Big Kahuna snorted. Another one fluttered his eyelashes and murmured a falsetto, “Oh, Wulf, want to taste my Italian dessert? It’s a tir-a-
miss-you.
”

“Knock it off,” Wulf said. Another mistake, but no stupider than trying to catch a whiff of Captain Chiesa’s shampoo.

The rest hooted while Kahananui whooped like a pickup backfiring in subzero. “Got a live one, boys.”

“Look, I convinced her to drop the medical records request.”

“Hardship duty, huh?” Kahananui flashed a shaka hand sign at Wulf, thumb and little finger sticking out from his fist. “Capital H-A-R-D—”

“Enough already. She’s an officer. And a doctor.” Noise buried his last words as the engineering NCO lifted his palms across the table for high fives. Wulf sank his face in his second glass of milk. Fine. Better they think he was flirting with the doctor, which he wasn’t, than that he’d asked her to help the commander.

* * *

Glad that her legs had brought her to the table without buckling, Theresa slipped into the seat across from her roommate.

Jennifer looked up from her phone. “What took you so long?”

“You didn’t see?” How could Miss Nosy have missed this? Sergeant Wardsen had stalked her through the chow line in full view of the entire room.

“Text from my sister.” Her friend leaned across the table. “What’d I miss?”

“One of the special ops guys.” For the rest of this deployment, she’d savor the way that phrase froze the other doctor in her chair.

“What?” Jennifer’s eyes bugged as if she needed a Heimlich.

“Sergeant Wardsen, he of the missing papers, wanted to talk.”

“One of those ginormous mystery men spoke to you? Actual words? Wait—he exists?” She pointed her empty fork at Theresa. “You’re shamming me.”

“Am not.” As she cut into her chicken, a rivulet of melted cheese pooled on the plastic plate, the way she liked it. A damn fine Tuesday. “He stopped me in line to apologize for his commander’s rudeness in the gym. He said, and I’m quoting, ‘I’m sorry. The team’s sorry.’”

Jennifer’s mouth dropped open for a long moment until she put a fork full of pasta in it and chewed. “So, was he cute?” She started to turn in her seat.

“Stop!” Theresa pinned her friend with a glare. Talking about men in the abstract, in the what-will-I-look-for-after-I-leave-the-army way, passed the time. But she drew the line at staring at
real
men. “Don’t you dare look.”

“Why not? A guy chatted with you. You’re blushing. I want to check him out.”

Theresa rolled her eyes. “He’s a sergeant, Jen.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is for me. It is for the army.” They both knew the fraternization rules.

“And you’re a short-timer, so why not? Human catnip, huh?”

“I’m not answering that.” His pants had fit noticeably well, and when he smiled his bottom lip had curved with invitation, but she couldn’t RSVP
yes.
Men were off-limits out here, and once she was back in civilization, she’d be so close to her final separation date, she wouldn’t have time to think about dating until she was settled in the next stage of her life.

“And he speaks in full sentences?”

“Please, thank you, the works.” Sergeant Wardsen’s eyes had warmed as they talked, as if she’d thawed something inside him. She speared a tomato to stop the flutter in her stomach.

Jennifer sighed. “A sensitive warrior.”

“Skip the melodrama.” She’d never admit that Sergeant Wardsen’s struggle to describe his commander’s problem made her agree, so she ignored her roommate and ate another bite.

“You exchanged what? Three sentences?”

“More like...” Theresa replayed the conversation while she crunched the chicken’s thyme-seasoned crust. “At least a dozen.”

“With that much chitchat I’m surprised you don’t know his Social Security number.”

“I asked if he was—” A crumb stuck in her throat, and she had to gulp water to stop coughing. “Married.”

“I couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.”

She covered her forehead and eyes with one hand. “You did.”

“No effing way.” Through her fingers, she saw Jennifer’s shirt front droop into leftover red sauce as her friend leaned halfway across the table. “Is he?”

“Nooo.” The single stretched sound might have been an answer to the question or a plea to drop the subject or even good advice to herself. She couldn’t decode her emotions.

Jen whistled without a sound and shook her head. “When you go for it, you don’t mess around. And a
sergeant.
”

How did her friend know exactly the tone her grandmother had used when good Italian girls dated outside the faith? “That’s why we forget it.” Her gaze drifted to the special ops table where guys were high-fiving each other while Sergeant Wardsen sat with a stiff spine at the end of the row. “He’ll never talk to me again.”

“Oh, I don’t think those dudes give up easily.” Jennifer gulped her cola. “If you won’t let me stare from here then I need a refill.”

“Please be subtle.
Please.
” That was like asking a surgeon to thank you when you provided a clamp, so she slipped lower in her seat as Jennifer marched to the drink bar.

* * *

Claiming a seat by the door usually improved John Draycott’s odds of a pleasant dinner, since none of the thugs currently working for Black and Swan wanted their backs exposed with every entrance or exit. A decade of Afghan operations had weeded the decent guys out of the organization, leaving men who increasingly resembled the manager of Bagram Airfield. Efficient and ruthless, to be sure, but not men with whom Draycott wanted to dine, so in addition to choosing a bad seat, he always read a book as a barrier to company.

Tonight the printed page didn’t hold his gaze. Only forty years of clandestine training kept him from blatantly studying the soldier who sat across the mess hall with the Special Forces. He was the spitting image of another man, one Draycott had met in Mogadishu in 1968.

Despite Draycott’s attention, America’s finest didn’t show a flicker of return interest. Soldiers barely glanced at civilians unless they were the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders or surrounded by a security detail. Since he had neither tits nor an entourage, merely extra chins and a comb-over, he chewed—and occasionally glanced at a certain table—unnoticed.

Although his vision had degenerated along with his waistline, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t make out a name on the staff sergeant’s shirt. A professional never forgot the face responsible for a failure, and certainly not the face responsible for his
first
failure.

While he cut his meat, he remembered Somalia. Beautiful place in ’68, when the station chief had sent him into the capital’s slums to find a Belgian gun for hire. His agency boss had wanted a photo that allegedly linked a local mercenary and a World Bank official.
The days of simple photos and film negatives
. He’d assumed he was on a haze-the-new-guy snipe hunt to acquire an envelope full of Asian porn or Monopoly money. Assumed, that is, until he’d returned from the jakes to find his Belgian and a stone-faced blond stranger pointing guns at each other. One breath later, all assumptions had died as his contact choked on a knife.