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“Sorry chief. This is all just so… exciting.”
He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left his mouth. I saw it in his expression.
“Exciting?” I hissed.
The man lowered his eyes, but wisely said nothing. At least he knew that much.
“Your first blowjob is exciting,” I told him sharply. “Scoring the winning touchdown in overtime, that’s exciting. Do you need more examples?”
“No sir.” After a moment’s silence, he nodded. “I— I get it.”
Maybe he got it, maybe he didn’t. I sized him up anyway, trying to determine which. I’d seen experienced men die painfully of decompression sickness, from nothing more than a ten-second hypoxic lack of judgment. I’d watched another SEAL raise his arm overhead to prematurely high-five his comrade after a firefight, only to have a sniper turn his hand into a thin pink mist.
The point was, all people made mistakes — even professionals. Sometimes a mistake meant you were dead. Other times it could leave you with nothing more than a thumb for a right hand. I remember our commanding officer calling that particular soldier “Fonzie” after that, which was a reference I didn’t understand. After looking it up and realizing how brutal it was, I felt even worse.
“Look, it doesn’t help anyone if you sprint headlong into Bashir’s men and we’re too far back to even know it happened,” I told Vaughan. “Right?”
He nodded curtly, then cleared his throat. “Won’t happen again, sir”
I felt a sharp sting as the jagged edge of my father’s dog-tag bit into the skin at the base of my neck. Which was weird, because it hadn’t done that in years.
“Good,” I said, now a bit distracted. “Now get back up there with Christian. He’s going to pick something up soon, if he hasn’t already.”
I watched him go, trying to remember how I’d behaved during my first mission. Shit, it seemed a thousand years ago. A few veterans held the other end of my leash back then, and I remember rolling my eyes at them as they tried to rein me in. But now that I was on the opposite end of the equation, I finally understood.
“Did you tell him to slow the fuck down?”
Maverick had moved into step beside me during all this. His eyes were still on the horizon.
“Yeah. More or less.”
“I thought I heard something about a blowjob?”
I laughed into my hand. “I promised you’d give him one if he found Bashir before Christian did.”
Maverick grunted and shot me a dirty look. “That ain’t gonna happen. Either way.”
“I know. Christian’s too good.” I shrugged and smirked. “Sorry though, if you were looking forward to—”
A shrill whistle stopped us both, mid-insult. It could’ve been a bird, or some kind of insect. We both knew it was neither.
Up ahead, face-down along the next ridge, Christian made the hand-signal for everyone to stop. Our training took over. Wordlessly, soundlessly, we each blended into the nearest tree.
Our scout pointed, and I saw the same thing he did: a spiral of lazy white smoke, rising against the sky. It was high up on the next ridge, a good four clicks away.
“Get Travers up here,” I muttered to Maverick. “He’s got the Zeiss.”
Not a minute later I was staring through the top-of-the-line range-finding binoculars, watching the anomaly Christian had previously spotted. The smoke wasn’t an active fire, but the remains of one. A cooking fire, most likely.
“They’re moving,” I told the others. “Which means we are too.”
Travers squinted up at cliff ahead of us, so young and green there wasn’t a single line on his face. To his credit he looked entirely unfazed.
“Climbing gear?”
I nodded grimly. “It’s the only way.”
Forty-Eight
