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“Copy that.”
9
Shark faced Garcia. “Who are you?”he asked. Shark wanted to tell him it was none of hisgoddamnedbusiness, but he couldn’t. Telling a SEBIN assassin in broad daylight surrounded by Ramos’s sworn troops that he was Garcia’s executioner wouldn’t go over well. He was dancing on a knife’s edge. If Garcia asked him for identification, he didn’t have it. He’d be worse than blown.
Juan said, “He’s my cousin. Diego Acosta.” Shark swore under his breath. Now Juan was committed. If Shark was discovered, Juan would go down too.
“I don’t remember seeing you at El Helicoide.”
“Ah, man, he just started. I’m showing—”
Garcia turned to look at Juan, stopping the man’s words in their tracks. “I wasn’t talking to you,pendejo. I was talking to him,” he said, his voice deceptively soft, still playing with the hilts of his knives. There were three of them. Two Bowie hunting knives, Kratos ZF products, each with a 4.7-inch handle with a pronounced guard at the base, perfect for control and stability. That kind of grip helped a wielding hand through any kind of use, especially skinning where blood could make a handle slick. With a 7.5-inch fixed blade and twenty-five-degree double bevel-edged steel, long-lasting and corrosive resistant, they were lethally sharp twelve-inch blades. The other knife was tactical, a Fox RCST01 R.C.S.T. Folgore. The very same knife he carried in his tack rig. It was a folding knife with a 4.36-inch Tanto with a sawback blade, including a glass breaker and a seatbelt cutter. Shark suddenly wanted to break this guy’s neck. That knife he carried was most likely taken off Cole.
Garcia’s eyes narrowed even more when he turned back to Shark and saw where he was looking. Garcia pulled the knife and held it up. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, his voice low and menacing. “I just recently attained this knife. Want to go a few rounds?”
Shark was so tempted to put this guy down, but that wouldn’t help Easy or Crazy Choos. He used all his willpower to refrain from direct action violence. Shark let a sheepish grin break across his face, holding up his hands in supplication that, for a Navy SEAL who was sworn to put down their enemies, enemies who had murdered one of their own, it was like a knife to his heart. “No. I’m just a guard, man, doing my job tracking down Ramos’s bitch. I don’t want no trouble.”
Garcia smirked and sheathed the knife, his eyes devoid of any kind of humor. “Then maybe you should get back to work,” Garcia said, turning his back and walking away. Shark noticed the SEBIN assassin had three throwing knives sheathed on his waistband.
* * *
Jack had been watchingthe sky for some time now, while Easy had been horrifying her and impressing the hell out of her with his stories of surf torture, log PT, small boat evolutions, the O Course, and, God help him, Hell Week.
After spilling her guts to Easy about her painful, shameful, and deepest secrets, something that she would have denied could ever have happened before her nice little jaunt into Venezuela, she was getting increasingly nervous and feeling a bit sick inside as well as disgusted and enlightened. Nervous because of the impending storm, and the rest because she hadn’t gone through any of that, but she had still buckled under her mother’s yoke.
The sky was darkening to a really scary gunmetal gray. She was from Texas, and she’d remembered some storms that were epically infamous. She stared at the threatening sky and thought absently she would have sworn she would keep her personal vault of humiliation and shame locked and secured with titanium steel.
But there was something so compelling about Easy, his calmness, and for a lack of a better character word, his heroism. That word hadn’t meant a lot to her. Sure, she’d seen the news, knew her military had been fighting in Afghanistan and why, but that was about it. She’d never really thought about who these guys were or why they did what they did. Or that they had families, dreams beyond the military, friends that worried about them. She felt ashamed about that. She suspected there were many more Americans like herself.
So, now, heroism meant so much more than a word that was used during veteran holidays, and for speeches about fallen soldiers, or associated with medals pinned to their chests or coffins. It meant respect for a man who kept his cool and his sense of humor through some freaking scary and trying episodes…one after the other, adding to the burgeoning meaning of that word as Easy had persevered through it all. Then it was skill, a shitload of skill: with weapons, hand-to-hand combat, procuring vehicles with his own personal possession, obviously treasured, and protecting her body with his own. Sacrifice was right up there, too; not only about the watch, but about the sheer number of hours this man must have trained to be the elite operator he was now. She had been blindsided by him and she couldn’t be upset about it, not really.
“You love what you do, right, Easy?”
There was a horrendous clatter, then a metal-to-asphalt sound. She looked behind her to see the truck’s rear bumper roll to a stop. Then the tailgate flew off.
“They’re going to be able to find us by our rusty breadcrumbs,” she said, then turned back to him. He was still completely calm, shrugging.
“Hey, we're still moving forward. Car parts. Who needs them?”
From her janky side view mirror, the back fender was next to go. She shook her head. “Back to my question.”
He gave her a wry look, then said, “Hell yeah. What’s not to love? I get to jump out of airplanes, shoot weapons at bad people to protect my country, play with tactical toys, pit myself against some of the harshest environments, jump from helicopters onto speeding boats, rescue beautiful women from danger over and over and over—”
He laughed when she hit him on the arm. “And?” she asked, craving more about him, then had to shake out her stinging hand. It hurt her more than him. Geez, he was rock solid. Suddenly, questions popped up in her mind that she had never thought about before. Who was she? Was she really nothing without her achievements? Oh, God, was she a fraud?
“Hang out and drink with guys just like me.”
She shoved him as she laughed, those questions rolling around in her head. “Be serious. So that’s who you are?”
“No. Not everything. Sure, I’m a cog in Uncle Sam’s wheels, but I’m a brother to siblings and a son to my parents. I love cave diving and photography, sunsets over water, tropical settings, the vast oceans on this amazing planet, and marine animals. I hate beets, raspberries, and mushrooms. Men who hurt women and that, sometimes during combat, I might lose a brother.” He glanced at her as more clouds moved in. “I’m more than what I do. I’m a whole human being with my own likes and dislikes, opinions, and triggers.”
“Being a SEAL is what you do, but not only who you are,” she said.
“Right. My profession is just an extension of myself, really.”
“And your parents supported you, allowed you to join the Navy?”
“Yes, and decidedly no.”
