little jeans, and all over her miniature sneakers.
And Sam knew even as he crushed his instinct to run away and instead leapt toward Emma, to try help the little girl …
It was the flu.
They were screwed.
Murphy.
The seventh member of Sam’s little team here in Goatfucklandia was Mr. Murphy, whose written-in-stone law was clearly in play.
Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
Emma threw up again, this time all over Sam’s jeans and boots.
Hoo-yah.
CHAPTER FOUR
Afghanistan
The helo ride to the first FOB had been bumpy.
Apparently there was a late spring snowstorm barreling its way into the mountainous region.
Jules was glad that their luggage had been lost because the jacket he’d packed wasn’t as warm as this replacement he’d been issued.
Alyssa, however, wasn’t as happy as she looked around at the bare bones facilities of the remote camp: the tents, the fort-like walls of the machine gun nests made of concrete and rubble, but mostly rubble.
The desolate, barren surrounding countryside …
“He’s gotta come here first,” Alyssa was telling Max and Commander Lewis Koehl. The CO of SEAL Team Sixteen, Koehl was in on this little recon mission, and three of his men had tagged along as slightly superfluous military might. “Not necessarily here here, but whichever operating base is the one that’s safest on the day that he arrives. He’s gotta land without a fanfare. No Air Force One. In fact, I’d recommend that Air Force One lands very publicly in Germany, to distract and misinform.”
“I agree,” Max said as Koehl, a man of relatively few words, nodded.
Alyssa continued. “Okay. So POTUS comes incountry on a regular military transport. He’s boots-on-the-ground for a nanosecond—less—before he goes directly into the gunship, which brings him out here. And he stays for the shortest amount of time possible.” She looked around again, shaking her head, and sighing again. “Even then …”
“With all the gunships providing additional security, not to mention the ones transporting the Secret Service detail and the press,” Jules pointed out, “we’ll be sending out a great, big We are here, attack us now.”
“There’s not going to be any press,” Alyssa said. “Not for this segment of the trip.”
“That’s good to know,” Jules said, then asked, “How come I didn’t know that?” He looked at Koehl, who seemed preoccupied, his mind a million miles away. “Did you know that, sir?”
Koehl nodded absently, looking at his watch.
“We limit the visit to five minutes,” Max decided. “Get him in and out.”
“Or limit the entourage to the size of a normal USO show,” Jules suggested. “With SEAL Team Sixteen riding shotgun. And just make sure we have Teams Six and Two locked, loaded, and ready to go, in case there’s trouble.”
“I say we recommend all of the above,” Alyssa said as the first flakes of snow drifted down from the pewter-colored sky.
“Excuse me, sir.” A burly red-haired SEAL officer who was nicknamed Big Mac approached Commander Koehl, but then made a point to acknowledge Alyssa, then Jules and Max. “Ma’am. Sirs. I’m sorry to interrupt, but we just got a message that the helo that was supposed to swing past and pick us up has been delayed.”
“Delayed,” Koehl repeated, suddenly fully alert.
“Yes, sir.” The big SEAL’s last name was MacInnough. What was his first name? Jules was drawing a blank.
Still, he met Alyssa’s eyes, because the subtext of that message was unmistakable. “Cat’s on the roof,” Jules said.
She smiled at his reference, but it was tight. “Apparently.”
“What’s on the where?” MacInnough—Alec, his name was Alec—asked as Koehl and Max stomped off to throw their rank and status against the inevitable.
“It’s a joke,” Jules explained. “A bad one that kind of sums up this delayed-helo situation. I heard it from Sam Starrett, so it’s Navy SEAL–approved.” He looked at Alyssa. “Should I tell it?”
She smiled, and in full favorite-thing mode, with the snowflakes on her nose and eyelashes, she looked more like a woman ready for a modeling shoot than one with a high-level security clearance and the ability to hit a target with a sniper rifle from ridiculous distances. “If I said no, would that stop you?”
“Probably not.” He turned to Alec. “Okay. Guy goes on vacation and asks his friend to house-sit, to feed his elderly cat while he’s gone. Coupla days in, he calls the friend to see how it’s going, and the guy goes, Oh, damn, I’m so, so sorry, dude, but your cat died. And the vacation guy gets upset, of course, I mean, his cat’s dead, and he says, What the hell, Gary—I