CHAPTER ONE
Timeline:SEAL Camp(TDD#12) is setbothin the present day,andabout a year and a half after the end ofNight Watch(TDD#11). Embrace the time warp!
Lieutenant Jim “Spaceman” Slade couldn’t keep up as his SEAL Team ran across the barren desert.
True, his team for this training op was almost entirely tadpoles—relatively new additions to SEAL Team Ten—which meant they were significantly younger than he was.
In a world where you were the “old man” at twenty-eight, Jim’s thirty-four years made him ancient. Especially for a big guy. And like most of the bigger SEALs in the Teams, Jim felt his advanced age most prominently in his rapidly decaying knees.
His men somehow knew he was hurting—his poker-face was perhaps a bit too tight—and they slowed down. For him.
A SEAL Team was only as fast as its slowest member.
And having a member as slow as Jim could get the entire team killed.
Not here, in this SoCal desert, a short helo ride from the Navy Base in Coronado, but out in the sandbox in A-stan and points unknown, for damn sure.
“Yo’kay, sir?” Petty Officer Rio Rosetti slowed to run beside Jim. He was one of those lean, compact, wiry guys. Provided he made chief, he’d probably still be a SEAL—and outrunning future tadpoles—well into his fifties.
But Jim couldn’t hate the kid. He could only hate himself.
The other two tadpoles—Thomas King and David Williston, the newest member of Team Ten—joined Jim on his other side. King spoke up. “How can we help, sir?”
So Jim did something that he wouldn’t’ve been able to do, had this been a Real World mission, and not just a training op.
He took himself out.
“New scenario,” he told them, as he slowed to a stop. He wasn’t out of breath—that wasn’t the issue. He was aerobically fit. But his freaking knee—the left one, the “good” one—was on fire. “Your team leader—me—sustained a direct hit from a mortar round. There’s nothing left; nothing to carry out; nothing to bring home.” He looked at King who, as a lieutenant junior grade, was the highest ranking among them. “You’re now in charge, Lieutenant. Complete the mission, and get your men safely to the extraction point.”
Normally imperturbable, King’s dark brown eyes widened just a little. “Aye, aye, sir, but before I leave you here, outside of the context of this training op, I must ask: do you need medical aid?”
“I can find my own freaking medical aid,” Jim growled at the kid.
Now King didn’t so much as blink. Clearly he’d made note of the fact that Jim had not saidno. “With all due respect, LT—”
Jim cut him off. “I have my phone, I have flares, and I have a shit-ton of pain in my knee that’s going to require another month or two of rest.” At best. He’d just come off of an extended rest period, after having surgery on his “bad” knee, which was now his new “good” knee, which meant it was only throbbing in contrast to the stabbing fire lighting up the other. “Trust me, the few short minutes that I’ll be alone after you leave and before the hospital corpsmen find me will be time well-spent, managing my goddamn frustration.”
But King still hesitated.
Rio spoke up. “I’ll hang back, sir,” he addressed King, “just a bit, until the corpsmen make contact with the LT. Then I’ll run to catch up.”
The kidwasfaster than the rest of the team.
“I don’t need a babysitter—” Jim started, but King cut him off.
“With all due respect, sir,I’min command.” He nodded to Rio—“Do it”—then turned to the rest of the men. “Let’s go, move out.”
And just like that, they were gone. Even Rio, who moved off with the team toward the horizon, where he’d hover to make sure… what? That Jim didn’t get eaten by a giant sand lizard…?
He sighed as he used his phone to call for medical assistance, then sat down in the dirt to wait. The morning was hot and the sky was blue—and some kind of vulture circled closer to check him out.
“Screw you, asshole, I’m not dead yet.”
He already knew what his options were. More surgery. He didn’t have to like it, he just had to do it. But he’d already had both knees done. He’d spent more time in the hospital and physical therapy in the past few years than he’d spent out on missions. And as much as he hated staying behind to heal and rest, he knew he’d hate it more if he went out on an op and couldn’t keep up.
Which meant he’d have to face the idea of pulling himself permanently out of the Teams. Or—worse yet—getting pulled out.
Retirement.
