Seal Team Seven

Tuesday, 10 May

0930 hours (Zulu -5)

Headquarters, SEAL Seven

Little Creek, Virginia

There was a sharp triple rap on the door, and Captain Phillip Coburn looked up from the battered gray metal government-issue desk from which he ran SEAL Seven operations. "Come."

He was pretty sure he knew what was about to happen.

Electrician's Mate Second Class Charles "Chucker" Wilson opened the door and centered himself before the desk. The young SEAL was immaculate in his whites, with his white hat neatly folded and tucked into his waistband. Uncovered, he did not salute, but he stood at attention with his eyes focused on the big print of the Bon Homme Richard fighting the Serapis on the bulkhead at Coburn's back.

"Sir!" Wilson snapped out. "Request permission to speak to the Captain, sir."

"Aw, knock off the boot-camp crap, Chucker. Stand easy and tell me what's on your mind."

Wilson relaxed, but only slightly. "Uh, yessir. I mean, thank you, sir. I..."

Coburn sighed. "Spit it out, son."

The petty officer fumbled for a moment with the gold Budweiser on his white jumper. Damn. Coburn had thought this was why Wilson had requested the interview, but he'd still been hoping he was wrong.

Wilson dropped the SEAL badge on Coburn's desk. "I want to put in for a transfer. To the fleet."

"Shit, Chucker, you know what you're saying?"

"Yes, sir. I think I do."

"You just got your Budweiser... what? A month ago?"

"I didn't deserve it, sir."

"Bull. The officers who reviewed your record after your probationary assignment didn't agree. You questioning their judgment?"

"With respect, sir, they weren't at Shuaba."

"You don't want fleet duty."

"Yes, sir. I do."

"A SEAL? Scraping paint and flemishing lines? You'll be so bored you'll be climbing the bulkheads inside of six weeks. What the hell makes you think you want to stop being a SEAL?"

"Sir, I was the guy tasked with going through that control tower at Shuaba. I don't know what happened, but somehow I missed a hostile. And that hostile nailed the L-T."

Coburn tipped his steel, straight-backed chair, balancing on the two rear feet as he considered how to answer. "Chucker, we went through this at the inquiry last week. What happened was not your fault. It was not Lieutenant DeWitt's fault, it wasn't anybody's fault. There weren't enough men with Blue Water's ground element to adequately search that tower. As I see it, you did your best, you..."

"Begging the Captain's pardon, sir, but I was there. That last room we checked... I should've gone in and taken a harder look."

"You told us all of that at the inquiry."

"Captain, that whole building was dark and empty. It, well, it felt empty, and I must have gone in assuming that it was empty."

"Okay. So you screwed up. Made a bad call. That doesn't mean you can't be a SEAL. Even SEALs make mistakes."

"I screwed up, and the best officer I've ever known bought it. Sir, I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm looking at it like this. What happens next time I'm on a combat op? With some new platoon leader? I'm going to be there trying to keep my mind on the mission, and I'm going to be thinking about Shuaba. Maybe spend too much time checking a room. Wondering if I'm going to screw up again. Sir, you know as well as I do that you can't stop to think about stuff in combat. If you do, you're dead. And maybe some good guys are dead with you."

"And you think dropping out of the SEALs is the answer?"

"Yes, sir. I do. It's... what's best. For me. And for the Team. Look at it from the guys' point of view, Captain. They know what I did at Shuaba, and they know what I didn't do. Think they're going to want to go into a free-fire zone with a fuckup like me backing them up? I sure as hell wouldn't."

"Bullshit, Wilson," Coburn snapped, dropping the father-figure approach in a sharp change in tactics. "The Navy's got eighty-some thousand bucks tied up in your training, and you want to chuck it all the first time you run into some rough sailing? What are you, a quitter? If Hell Week didn't make you chuck it all, why should this?"

"This is different, sir."

"Bullshit. Once you're a SEAL, you're always a SEAL. I don't think you'd be happy any place but with the Teams!"

"Maybe not, sir. But I think it's better if I get out."

Coburn considered the youngster for a long moment. Wilson was just twenty-three years old, and though he had the lean and deadly look worn by most SEALS, there was a vulnerability about him as well. As though something inside had snapped. Maybe the kid knew himself, knew what was best for himself and his buddies after all.

"Mmm. Tell you what. I'll approve a transfer for you, Wilson, but not back to the fleet. There're plenty of spots open in the Teams where you can make yourself useful. Admin. Intelligence. Parachute packing. How about the SDVs?"

Wilson's lip curled at the mention of the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle teams. Most SEALs thought of an assignment to the SDVs as real dead-end to their career tracks, a purgatory to be escaped at the first opportunity. "I'd... prefer to go to the fleet..."

"Since when does the Navy give a shit what you prefer, mister? You claim you're thinking about what's best for the Teams? Well, so am I. We have a lot invested in you, son. You have a lot invested in you too. I'm not going to let you throw it all away, at least not without a chance to think about it. You read me, son?"

"Y-yes, sir." He looked broken, as though he'd just been sentenced to life at hard labor. "If you say so, sir."

"I say so. I'll have personnel draw up your orders this afternoon. I will also write up a recommendation for your next CO that you be allowed to return to a direct-action team once you've had a chance to think things through. Because I think you're combat SEAL material, and you won't be happy doing anything else."

"Yes, sir."

"Now get out of here." He tossed the badge back to Wilson. "And take this thing with you."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Coburn sat there, rocking back and forth on his chair for a long time after Wilson had gone. The kid would be back, he was sure of that much. But in the meantime, he'd left Coburn with yet another administrative headache, an open slot in Third Platoon's Gold Squad.

The real problem was Third Platoon's morale, which had been at rock bottom since Cotter's funeral. They would be lucky, Coburn thought, if Wilson was the only team member who quit.

He reached out and touched a button on his intercom. "b!"

"Yes, sir," replied the voice of his yeoman in the outer office.

"What do we have in the replacement pool? E-4 or E-5."

"Not a thing, sir. I'm afraid the cupboard's bare. At Little Creek, anyway."

Damn. He'd been pretty sure that that was the case. "Okay. Looks like we'll have to tap Coronado." He wondered who Seven would draw as a replacement for ET2 Wilson.

1045 hours (Zulu -8)

La Jolla, California

This early on a weekday the beach on the rocky coast north of San Diego was nearly deserted. Though the southern California sun was warm, a chilly breeze off the ocean had kept all but the most dedicated sun worshippers at home. The coastline here consisted of smooth, sandy beach stretching out from the base of a rocky bluff. North, at the top of the bluff, the roof of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was just visible behind a screen of palm trees and shrubs. South, the shore grew swiftly steeper in a rugged headland rising in a sheer, black and red cliff above the crashing surf.

Machinist's Mate Second Class David Sterling was a SEAL... almost a SEAL, at any rate. He'd completed his twenty-six weeks of BUD/S and several weeks more in airborne training at Fort Benning. Now he was assigned to SEAL Team One's headquarters platoon at Coronado, where he was serving out his six months of probationary apprenticeship before winning the coveted eagle-trident-and-pistol Budweiser.

This week, he was standing night duty, which left his days delightfully free. He'd brought Christine Jordan, his girlfriend of the past two months, to the beach for a picnic. She was nineteen and a freshman at San Diego State, a gorgeous, tanned California girl with fantastic long legs, long, sun-blond hair, and a face and body right out of Playboy. His tactical plan for the day called for considerably more than lunch and a swim. So far, their relationship hadn't passed the heavy petting and fondling stage, though they'd talked about going further often enough. With no other beach-goers closer than half a klick off, Sterling had decided that now was the time to make his move. He might show up for duty tonight without having slept in thirty hours, but what the hell? He'd done worse stints during Motivation Week, and man, this was going to be worth it!

"C'mon, babe," he told her. They were lying face to face on a beach blanket. Minutes before, he'd coaxed Christine into slipping off her black and red bikini top, and for emphasis now he reached over and delicately kneaded her left nipple until it popped up like a bullet. "SEALs do everything in the water! You know that!"

"David," she said, dimpling. "You are absolutely nuts!"

"That's what you love about me, right?"

"But suppose someone sees us!"

"Who's to see? The beach is deserted! We've got the place to ourselves, at least until school lets out."

"Gee, David, I don't know."

Bending his head to her breast, he gave her nipple a long and lingering kiss. Chris moaned, her head back, her mane of long blond hair spilling across the beach blanket.

"Ooh, David... you are persuasive."

"Come on, Chris! Let's get naked and get wet! It'll be fun!"

Impulsively, Christine stood up. She stood there for a moment, hesitating, her arms crossed protectively over her bare breasts as she looked first one way up the beach, then the other. Then she stooped, skinned off her bikini briefs, and scampered toward the water, her long brown legs scissoring in the surf.

"Yes!" Sterling tugged off his own swimsuit, dropped it on the blanket, then raced into the waves in close pursuit. She squealed as he grabbed her from behind and dragged her down. A wave crashed over them, knocking them together as he encircled her with his arms. Their lips met.

Clinging to one another, they made their way to a point about one hundred yards off the beach, beyond where the surf was breaking. Each wave lifted them high as it surged beneath them, then sent them plummeting into its trough, a wild and exhilarating ride with Christine shrieking in his arms. It was probably too rough today for any serious sea-borne docking operations, but the clinging and grappling were tremendous fun and promised better things for later.

He was trying to maneuver himself between her thighs despite the ocean surge when Christine gave another scream, this one of a sharply different timbre from the others. "What's wrong?"

Eyes wild, her wet hair plastered across her face, she pointed past his shoulder toward the beach. "David, look!"

Turning, he saw the people winding down the path from the road where they'd parked Sterling's VW. It was a fair-sized crowd, five or six adults and at least that many children. Some of them carried beach umbrellas, coolers, blankets, and the other paraphernalia of an afternoon's outing at the beach. A teenager sent a frisbee sailing across the sand, and a small dog yapped after it.

They were setting up shop less than five yards from the towels, picnic basket, and swimsuits that Sterling and Christine had left on the beach.

"Oh, God, David!" She was trembling in his arms. "What are we going to do now?"

"That's okay. They can't see anything but our heads out here.

"No! I mean what about our clothes! We can't go back now!"

"Why not? We just go ashore, walk over to our stuff, get dressed, and leave. What can they do?"

"David!" She pushed back against his embrace, staring into his face. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm perfectly serious."

"I can't walk up onto the beach in front of people naked!" A wave carried them higher, and she turned to stare at the beach again. "Oh, God, no! NO!"

"Now what?"

"I know some of those people! They're from my church! And that... that's Pastor Kline! David! It's a church picnic! What am I going to do?"

"Okay, listen. I'll tell you what. You stay here. Just tread water. I'll swim back, get our suits, and bring yours out to YOU."

"No!" The word was nearly a scream.

"Why not?"

"They might know you! They know I've been going out with you! If they saw you come out of the ocean like this, they'd know I was with you, and they'd know what we've been doing! You can't!"

"Well, we sure as hell can't stay out here all day." The water was pretty cold. Sterling was feeling fine so far, but Christine's lips were already blue, and her teeth were starting to chatter. "Look, it's easy. Just ignore them. What can they say? Just go up and..."

"God, David, sometimes you can be so damned arrogant!"

He blinked. "Arrogant? Me? I'm just being practical! Christine, you're freezing. Come on. I know you're a bit embarrassed, but..."

"It's so humiliating! David, I can't possibly let my pastor see me like this! I'll never be able to show my face again! He'll tell my father! Oh, why did I even listen to you? I knew this was a mistake!"

Sterling sighed. Impasse. Christine wasn't going back to the beach, she wasn't going to let him go back to the beach, and if she stayed where she was she'd succumb to hypothermia in thirty minutes or less. Her fingertips and the dusky aureoles around her nipples were already starting to wrinkle up like prunes.

There had to be another solution. A SEAL solution...

"Okay," he told her. "I've got it."

Turning in the water, he presented his back to her. "Grab hold. Hold onto my neck."

Reluctantly, she slipped her arms around his neck, and he felt her body pressing against his back and buttocks. "What are you going to do?"

"We're going for a little swim, babe."

Launching into a powerful breast stroke, Sterling began swimming south, moving parallel to the beach and in the general direction of the La Jolla headlands, which rose from the sea about half a mile away.

It would have been a stiff swim for anyone but a SEAL, but Sterling made it seem almost effortless, hauling Christine through the water with a sure and practiced ease. As they drew farther and farther away from the picnickers on the beach, he could feel her starting to relax a little.

The rough part came when he reached the surf line just below the cliffs, where the waves broke in savage, white fury over the boulders scattered along the beach. "Wrap your legs around my waist," he called to her. "And for God's sake, hang on!"

Somehow, he plunged out of the crashing water and sprinted up a narrow shingle of wet sand without being smashed against the rocks. In the distance to his left, the picnickers were visible as a cluster of colored dots, too small for faces to be made out. South, around the headland, Sterling had thought he'd glimpsed some fishermen on the rocks as he'd come in, but if they'd seen the two swimmers they gave no sign. And apparently Christine hadn't seen them either. Her face was buried against the back of his neck.

"Okay," he told her, straightening a bit and bracing her legs with his hands. "We're ashore, but I want you to stay where you are. We have a little climbing ahead of us.

"Why? If we find someplace to hide in the rocks..."

"Babe, in another hour or so this beach is going to be wall-to-wall people, okay? Besides, I can feel you shivering. We've got to get you warmed up before you catch pneumonia."

It was a grueling climb up a slanted rock ledge that ran along the face of the bluff like a narrow path. Fishermen had probably used this route for years to get down to the beach from Torrey Pines Road, which followed the headland around its crest, overlooking the ocean. Or it might have been a beach maintenance access path, a part of La Jolla Heights Park. Christine weighed perhaps 120, close to the weight of a SEAL's full RAHO gear, and it was a struggle to keep moving.

"David, where are we going?"

"We left the car on the road," he told her. "It's just a hundred yards or so up the road. All we have to do is get to the top of this hill."

"And walk down the road like, like this?"

"I don't see too many options, Chris. Should be okay, though. The traffic won't be heavy this time of day." He staggered on, hot rocks and gravel pressing against the bottoms of his bare feet. He thought of all the long, long runs — as much as fourteen miles in the sand — supporting a 300-pound log with six other guys, and knew he could make it. Piece of cake.

At last they reached the top, where a metal guard rail separated Toffey Pines Road from the edge of the cliff. Far down the road to the north, Sterling could see his blue Volkswagen parked where he'd left it in the shade of a palm tree. He let Christine down, but picked her up again when half a dozen steps on the hot gravel at the side of the road reduced her to tears and a slow and painful hobble. Carrying her piggyback again, he trotted along the side of the road. A truck thundered by, the driver happily leaning on his horn. Sterling could feel Christine trembling against him, hiding her face, certain that the whole world was staring at them.

And she may have been right. There were lots of houses in view up here, mostly the elegant, architectural dream homes of the wealthy southern Californians who inhabited this strip of prime, ocean-view property. If any of them happened to be looking out those big, expensive picture windows now, Sterling thought, they were getting one hell of a great view.

"David!" Christine wailed. "I just remembered! We locked the car! Your keys and everything are down on the beach!"

"Don't worry about it. I'll get us in."

A Cadillac drove past, and the driver beeped his horn. "Oh, this is awful!"

At last they reached the VW. Sterling let Christine down, and she immediately scampered for the partial shelter behind the car's body. "How... how are we going to get in? Can you pick the lock?"

"Easier than that, Chris. I left the trunk open." Walking to the front of the car, he opened the hood. "Shit," he said conversationally. "I thought I had a blanket stowed in here. Guess not."

"David, what are we going to do?"

He hesitated, faced now with the moment of truth. That battered, blue VW was something of a classic, an ancient car dating back to the years when they actually manufactured the VW Beetle in the United States, lovingly preserved and rebuilt through a long succession of enlisted Navy and Marine personnel, passed down from owner to owner each time a tour of duty was up. Sterling had lavished hundreds of hours on the vehicle until it ran like a Swiss watch. Damaging it was a kind of sacrilege.

"David!" Fists clenched, face red, Christine bounced rapidly up and down on her toes, a movement that communicated her urgency while doing delightful things to other parts of her anatomy. "There's a bus coming!"

He sighed. "Okay." Balling up his fist, Sterling smashed through the back of his glove compartment, a dark brown box shaped in thick, heavy cardboard like the material egg cartons are made of. Reaching into the hole from the trunk side, he fiddled with the latch for a moment until the glove compartment door popped open. Then, leaning in as far as he could, he reached through the open glove compartment and pushed open the small ventilation window on the passenger's side. "I hated it when they stopped putting these on cars," he said conversationally as he moved to the side of the car, reached through the open window, and unlocked the door. Christine slipped in through the door just before a yellow high school bus loaded with cheering students roared past. It looked like a field trip of some sort. Sterling cheerfully waved as the bus groaned past them and on up the hill. Christine was huddled on the VW's floor, possibly in an attempt to crawl beneath her seat.

Sterling reached across to unlock the driver's side door, walked around to the trunk, where he fished out a screwdriver, then slammed the hood shut. Sliding into the driver's seat, he turned his attention to the VW's ignition.

Damn but he hated doing this. Well, it could be repaired. In seconds, as Christine watched from the floor with wide eyes, he popped the ignition mount out, engaged clutch and gas, and pressed two lengths of bare wire together. The VW's engine gunned into life.

"Thank God," Christine said. "Now what?"

"Now we get you home," he said, backing into the road, then turning south. "I'll let you out in your driveway where it's pretty well screened from the street. You run in and get dressed, then bring me something to wear. A pair of your brother's shorts maybe."

"Okay."

"Then I'll hightail it back here, grab our stuff, and pick you up in plenty of time for us to have lunch. How about Delaney's? Sound good?"

"David Sterling! If you think I'm going out with you after what you've just done to me, exposing me to the whole world and humiliating me in front of God knows how many people..."

"Hey! Would you rather walk home? You can get out now, if you want."

"No! You wouldn't!"

"Try me!"

Christine lived in La Mesa, a San Diego suburb twenty miles from La Jolla, nestled into the hills between Route 8 and Route 94. Once they pulled onto the main highway, traffic was fairly heavy. Christine got off the floor and onto her seat, but she held her arms awkwardly to cover her breasts and lap. The VW was pretty low to the ground, and plenty of truck drivers seemed to be doing their best to peer down at her from their cabs as they drove past. The last part was the worst, when they actually had to drive through downtown La Mesa, getting stopped by three traffic lights in a row.

At last, Sterling turned into Christine's driveway. Her home was a small, neat ranch house where she lived with her parents. Turning in his seat, Sterling checked the street at their back.

"Okay. Looks clear. Go!"

She slipped out of the car and scampered up the walk toward the door. Just as she reached it, the door opened wide. Her father was standing there waiting for her, his face like a darkening thunderhead.

"Oh, shit!"

Sterling had a feeling that Christine wasn't going to be bringing her brother's shorts out to him. As Christine's father advanced down the walk, he decided that a tactical withdrawal was definitely the order of the day. Throwing the VW into reverse, he backed swiftly onto the street, straightened out the wheel, then headed back the way he'd come.

Forty minutes later he was parked once more on Toffey Pines Road, just above a beach that had grown considerably more crowded in the past hour and a half. He really had no alternatives now, for he couldn't get back on base without showing his ID card to the sentries at the gate, and that was in his wallet on the beach with his clothes.

Climbing out of the VW, he started picking his way down the path toward the beach.

The police officer who arrested him a few minutes later was very nice about it. At least she allowed him to get dressed, but she was most unreasonable when he tried to suggest that the incident had been perpetrated by a couple of Sterling's friends who'd stolen his clothes and abandoned him on the road as a crude prank. Apparently, there'd been a number of complaints from residents in the area about a couple of nudists along the highway.

Eventually, and after a long and unpleasant phone conversation with the Officer of the Day at Coronado, the La Jolla police agreed to relinquish the case to the military authorities. The Navy would deal with David Sterling.