“N-not yet, Doc,” Rusty garbled when he saw what was in Doc’s hands “Not until you all p-promise me t-to—”
Again, Rusty was unable to go on, coughing up life-sustaining blood that flecked the front of Leo’s grubby fatigues. With each convulsion, Leo could feel warm, sticky fluid spurt against the hands he was still using to plug as many holes as he could, though doing so only prolonged the inevitable.
“Anything, man,” he whispered to Rusty, his choked voice a parody of its usual timbre. Then he realized Rusty hadn’t heard him above the rhythmic hum of the overhead rotors, so he tried again, this time yelling, “We’ll promise you anything you want!”
“Don’t re-up,” Rusty pleaded, referring to the practice of signing another contract with the military after one’s old contract expired. “Don’t let them have one more…m-minute of your time,” he managed to finish after dragging in a shallow, hacking breath.
And even though great gusts of wind were howling through the chopper’s open door, Leo recognized that sound for exactly what it was. He’d read somewhere that it was referred to as a “rale.” Which pretty accurately summed the sound up since it was a cross between a hair-raising wheeze and a bone-rattling clatter. But regardless of what name you gave it, the fact remained that terrible noise meant just one thing. Death…that bloody, fickle, heartlessbastardwashoveringsomewherenearby.
ChillseruptedupthelengthofLeo’s spine in opposition to the heat of the air around him. He sucked in a tortured breath that brought with it the smells of sweat, aviation fuel, and the iron-rich tanginess of vast amounts of congealing blood. Shuddering at the terrible clarity of it all, he knew this moment, right here, right now, would forever be etched into his brain, scored into his soul as if it’d been carved there with an oyster knife.
“Promise me,” Rusty insisted, his voice steadier in these, his last few moments. It usually happened that way, the body filled with one final burst of energy, the mind brimming with a strange terminal lucidity. “Promise me you won’t bleed anymore for the flag.” As if to prove his point, he swiped a hand through the puddle of blood on the chopper’s floor and lifted it up. Rivulets of the stuff ran down his wrist.
Christ almighty!Leounderstoodforthefirsttimeinhislifewhatitwastobeheartbroken. And what surprised him most was that the condition came with actual physical pain. His chest hurt so bad he could barely draw a breath.
“Promise me you’ll all quit the Navy and live your l-lives. Live them for me b-because I—” Rusty couldn’t go on then, tormented as he was with a spasm of coughing.
Itwasallsohorrific. The most awful thing Leo had ever borne witness to. And that was saying something, considering the stinking shit-piles of things he’d seen.
“I promise, Rusty,” he swore, no longer trying to hold back the sobs that shook his body. “I promise you!”
“I promise!” Wolf yelled a second later.
“I promise, too!” Mason and Bran chorused in unison.
LeolookeduptofindMadDogtoweringabovethem, hands braced on an overhead rail. The big man’s face was crumpled in on itself until it looked like a piece of wadded-up paper. “Mad Dog?” Leo pleaded, knowing there wasn’t much time.
“I promise you, you big, beautiful sonofabitch!” Mad Dog yelled, his deep voice booming around the interior of the helicopter, drowning out the rhythmic hum of the massive engine.
LeoturnedtofindRomeostaringoverhisshoulderatthem. And even through the haze of his tears he could see Romeo struggling to make the pledge. Of the eight of them, Romeo was the only one who claimed to be a lifer, a Navy man until the day he died.
Ofcourse, Leo also understood that was Rusty’s whole point. That death was going to find them all sooner rather than later if they stayed on their current path. Their luck wouldn’t hold out forever. And Rusty was trying, here at the end, to save them from themselves, save them from the Rambo mentality—the belief in their own invincibility—that SEALs seemed to acquire when they’d grown too long in the tooth. Still, Leo couldn’t command Romeo to make the promise if it wasn’t something he wanted to do, and—
“I promise!” Romeo yelled back, surprising Leo. “I motherfuckingswearit!”
AsmilespreadacrossRusty’s face, made horribly macabre by the blood staining his teeth. “Okay, D-Doc,” he whispered, all the tension and fight leaving his body in an instant. He’d only held on this long to wring that vow from them. “I’m ready now.”
Jesus H. Christ.
“LT?” Doc asked quietly, waiting for the go-ahead from his commanding officer.Leowasleftwithnorecoursebuttonodhisconsent. It was the hardest order he’d ever given, and it felt like a little piece of his soul ripped away with each dip of his chin.
“Okay. All right,” Doc said, tears pouring from his eyes. Despite his shaking hands, he gently inserted first one, then another syringe into Rusty’s thigh. “I got what you need right here, buddy. You’ll feel better in just a second.” After pushing the plungers home, he softly removed the needles and tossed them out the open door.
“Thank you, Doc,” Rusty whispered, already succored by the high-powered analgesic, his eyelids fluttering closed, his mouth going slack.
Then, the six of them—no, seven; Romeo had left his position in the copilot’s seat to join them there on the floor—did what they always did. They worked as a team and gathered Rusty into their arms. Holding him close, each of them whispering words of love, friendship, and farewell, they gave what little comfort and support they could. And with one last rattling breath, Rusty’s life whispered out of him, gone just that quickly. A second later, his bladder released, tainting the air with the sharp smell of urine.
Deathwasn’t just a bloody, fickle, heartlessbastard—it was a demeaning, humiliating, contemptible one aswell…
“And me coming here, luring you back into another mission, is making you break that promise to him,” Olivia whispered, her lips curved down into a frown so deep it furrowed her brow.
Leo blinked at her, disoriented at having been yanked back into the present. The smell of blood and urine was replaced by hints of wild jasmine, the look of death on Rusty’s face superseded by the vibrant life shining in Olivia’s.
It took him a second to catch his breath, to squelch the tears gathered behind his eyes and calm the somersaulting of his stomach.Damn, that memory always kicked like a mule in heat. Eighteen months later, he was hard-pressed not to double over and puke his guts up from the impact of it. And he might have done just that had he not been completely distracted by the feel of Olivia’s cool fingers running over his tattoo, tracing the five letters:ForRL.
Blowing out a covert breath, he squeezed her fingers before quickly fisting his hands behind his back. They were quivering like the branches of a palm tree in a tropical storm, and he sure as shit didn’t want her to see. Not if he had any hope of maintaining his guise as a hard-ass, hard-core fighting man.
“At first glance, sure, it might seem like we’re goin’ back on our word,” he managed, his voice remarkably steady considering his insides felt like hammered shit. “At least that’s how I was lookin’ at it when you first made the offer and I turned you down. And hot damn, turnin’ you down went against everything in me. You got to know that, right? It was a sort of a hip-shot reply at the time because I thought I’d be breakin’ my promise.”
