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“Yeah, the next day. You’re up next.” Matthew reached for the bottle of whiskey with his good hand and poured everyone another shot.
“Sebastian saved my bacon plenty over the years, but my best memory of him was right here on Lake Hart. We were on leave after a mission in Afghanistan. It had been a rough one.” Jonathan paused, seeming to gather himself.
Garrett remembered that mission. What they saw go down at an elementary school still haunted him. He’d gone home to Idaho for two weeks to see his family and hug his nieces and nephews. As their team leader, Jonathan surely felt the losses of those they couldn’t save even more than Garrett did.
“Anyway,” Jonathan continued. “Sebastian dragged me home with him. We hung out on his boat, drank beer, pretended to fish, and just talked. It helped.” He smiled. “We did manage to catch a few trout, and they were damn tasty when we fried them up. Shit, I’m going to miss him. To Sebastian.” This time, Jonathan raised his glass in a toast.
“I wish we all could have known him as well as you guys did,” Anderson said. “My first memory of him was seeing him working at a little local barbecue stand in the summer. Sebastian was skinny and gangly, but not half bad with a football.” He gestured between himself, Patrick, and Kenton. “We were all in high school at the time, but we could see he was talented.”
“That’s right,” Kenton said. “I saw him play at the Naval Academy. He was damn good.”
“You got that right, and good-hearted, too,” Patrick added. “Did you know he helped build the new playground behind the elementary school?” Garrett remembered that Patrick’s wife was a teacher there. “Pretty unusual to have four Navy SEALs working on a community project, especially in a town this size.”
“I always told Sebastian there must be something special in the water around here,” Garrett said. “That’s a lot of SEALs to come out of one small town.”
“We grow ’em tough around here.” Patrick grinned and flexed his arms, making them all laugh.
“That must be true,” Garrett agreed.
“So… for those of us who weren’t there, what the hell happened?” Kenton asked after the laughter died down. The question didn’t surprise Garrett. It wasn’t an easy subject, but Sebastian’s other friends deserved to have the details—and they had the security clearance to get the full story. He glanced at Matthew and Jonathan. They were all struggling with the aftermath of the flawed mission in different ways.
“It was a shitshow,” Matthew said. “You tell it, Garrett.”
Garrett didn’t want to, but he would, to save his teammates from having to recount the details. “We were tasked with taking down the leader of a drug cartel in Colombia. We’d been gathering intel for over a month, and we’d narrowed the window to take the guy out and confiscate the drugs. We settled on a day for the raid—but the day after the decision was made, and two days before it was scheduled to actually happen, Sebastian and I were on recon, and we realized that the guy was getting ready to rabbit. He knew we were on to him. He’d been tipped off. I don’t know by who.”
“I made the decision to move the raid up.” Jonathan took over the story. “His connections were too good. He’d have been in the wind.”
The other SEALs all nodded. It wasn’t unusual to adjust time frames based on new intel, but it was always a risk, since so much depended on careful planning.
“Sebastian and I had spent the night doing recon, so we’d been up for over twenty-four hours, but I didn’t like the thought of the team going in without me. I made the decision to go on the raid, and Sebastian went with me.” Garrett thought about those moments. They’d both known they should catch some shut-eye, but Garrett had insisted on being included.
If you’re going, I’m going, bro. I’ve got your back. Sebastian’s words would stick with him forever. Garrett could have made a different choice. If he had, his friend would still be alive. But that wasn’t how it played out.
“I needed every man,” Jonathan said. “Every man I could trust, that is.” There were still unanswered questions about who tipped off the cartel. Garrett agreed with Jonathan’s conclusion that it had to be someone on their SEAL team. Whoever it was, they had blood on their hands and one hell of a lot to answer for.
“The raid was a shitshow from the start.” Garrett picked back up the narrative. “The compound was full of people, mostly civilians who were forced to live and work there, processing the drugs. They panicked as soon as they saw us. It was total chaos.” He looked to Matthew, who gave him a nod before speaking.
“I was checking for mines and other explosives as the rest of the team worked to secure the site. I found a bomb that I knew I wouldn’t be able to defuse before it detonated. We had to move, and fast, but people were running everywhere, trying to get away from us, not listening to our warnings that they needed to get out of the building.” Matthew ducked his head and fiddled with the bandage on his hand. He hadn’t run. He’d stayed working on the bomb until the last second, resulting in injuries that might cost him his career. An explosions expert needed his hands in flawless working order—and that might not be achievable. No one was sure if he would be fit for active duty again.
“We’d evacuated our team and as many civilians as we could… but then Sebastian went back in,” Garrett said, wanting to get the worst of it over. “He thought he might be able to get through to those last civilians before the bomb detonated. He didn’t make it out in time.”
There was nothing Garrett could do now to change the outcome, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t carry the burden the rest of his life.
“That sucks, man,” Patrick said with a glance at his own teammates. “Is there anything we can do to help? Does he have any living family? I didn’t see any at the funeral.”
“I understand that Sebastian had recently reconnected with his sister,” Kenton said. “What’s the deal there?”
Garrett knew that all he had to do was ask, and the five men with him would do whatever they could for Sebastian’s sister. He just wasn’t sure what she needed, since he hadn’t met her yet. “I don’t know much. Her name’s Harley Von. Their mom died when they were little, and she and Sebastian were placed in foster care.”
“They got separated?” Patrick asked.
“Different dads, different last names, so any plans for keeping them together fell through the cracks. Sebastian was always looking for her, though—hired a PI and everything once he was able to get the records unsealed. About two months ago, he found her in Florida. They communicated via email and chatted on Zoom once, while we were on the mission.” Sebastian had been so excited about locating his only sibling. He’d talked nonstop about getting to see her once they got back to the States. “He told me that he’d changed his will to make her his beneficiary. I don’t know what all that entails, but he wanted to do what he could for her. He had the impression that she was in a bad relationship, but he didn’t share the details with me. Sebastian’s lawyer told me that she’s coming in a few days for the reading of the will. I guess she wasn’t able to make it for the funeral.”
“Tough break,” Anderson commented. “Find your brother and lose him that fast. If she needs anything, you let us know.”
“I will.” Though he planned on doing as much as he could himself. It was the least he could do for Sebastian. Garrett would stick around long enough to make sure that Harley was set, and then he’d head on out of Hartsville. He liked the place, but it was a family town, and he’d never been interested in finding the right woman and settling down.
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