The Archer Brothers, page 32
“Hey man, can you head to the zoo and look for my sister? She has my son with her and I just want to make sure they’re okay.”
“Yeah, sure. Do you want me to hang out with them?”
I think about it but realize that Livvie would probably freak out if she thought they were in any danger and that’s the last thing I want. “No, just watch them and make sure they get back to Ryley’s okay.”
“No problem. You’ll fill me in when I get there?” Rask asks. He’s lost too, but differently. When we left for Cuba, he was just a young kid and a year out of BUD/S training. Since our return, his family has disowned him, saying they buried their son. He wants to prove to them that he is who he says he is.
“Yeah, I’ll be here. Please, keep them safe.” I’m not above begging where my family is concerned.
“You know I will.”
Ending my call, I hand Ryley her cell phone back. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to know. Are they okay?”
“They’ll be fine,” I reassure her, using this opportunity to push her hair behind her ear. I let my fingers linger on her skin, enjoying the jolt of electricity.
“When are you going to get a cell phone, Archer?”
I shrug. “Why, babe, do you want to sext me?”
Ryley’s eyes go wide and I laugh. “You’d probably like that.”
“Oh Ry, you have no idea.” I kiss her quickly on her nose and step aside, leaving her standing there. Thing is, there hasn’t ever been a reason for me to believe I would need things like a cell phone or a car. I’ve been using Ryley’s car since I returned, but I’m sure she’s ready to have it back. At this point I don’t even know what I have for money. I should probably sit down with Ryley or my mom and figure that out so I can re-establish myself in society.
As soon as everyone arrives, we gather around the picnic table. I remember when Ryley and I bought this thing. It was barely being held together and I ended up working all weekend to replace the two-by-fours. Ryley would sand down the wood after I finished nailing the pieces together. After she stained it, I carved our initials into the side. It’s the first thing I feel for when I sit down now and it’s enough of a relief to know that they’re still there.
Carole sits down on one side of me while Ryley is on the other. My knee automatically moves to touch Ryley’s leg. I try not to smile when she presses back, but this kind of shit makes me happy.
Cara chooses to sit next to Ryley and part of me wants to thank her, but I don’t know if she’s doing it because they’re friends or if she’s trying to keep Nate from sitting there. When Nate sits across from her, I wonder if he’ll reach out to her after we’re done here today. Does he have residual feelings for her? Will she be his back-up plan? It’s what I want if it gives Ryley a clear conscience. I know she’s afraid of hurting Nate, but her indecisiveness is slowly killing me.
McCoy sits down next to Cara and River is the last to sit down, taking the seat across from him. Cara starts talking first, recounting what she told me last night and we all start taking notes. I have everything memorized but still write things down. I’m hoping that if I read over everything multiple times it’ll start making sense. Right now, it’s just a bunch of names that mean nothing.
“I think I’d like to hear about the day you guys got orders,” Cara says, knowing that she’s asking us to break our silence. Thing is, we shouldn’t, but we haven’t seen our Captain since we got back. No one has called us in. We haven’t been debriefed and honestly, shit is just weird. There’s a Senator running around town, which could be connected or could just be completely random. The Naval Special Warfare Group 1 Commander is lurking, which I find odd only because he’s refusing to question us. And if there’s something up with O’Keefe, where’s the investigation?
McCoy, River and I look at each other. Cara knows some things, but not much and truthfully, we don’t even know everything. We don’t ask a lot of questions when orders are given. We expect that the information we’re provided is the best and not meant to harm us. We expect to encounter hostiles. We expect to exchange gunfire. We expect to be tested to the best of our abilities. We expect to come home. When you put all those together, our mission was exactly as it was meant to be, except for the amount of time it took and why.
Maybe that’s the question, why were we gone for so long on something that seems so simple? Why weren’t we relieved of our duty to have others take our place? I know I asked many times when we were going home. Hell, every time we met for extraction, more orders were given. After a while, you stop asking. You start trying to think ahead of your enemy and figure out their next move and beat them to it. You do anything you can to get home.
Before you know it, time is one continuous moment. One month turned into two, two into four and four into a year. O’Keefe made it possible for me to call home when Ryley had EJ, but I could never get through. I haven’t asked her about that, but now I’m wondering if her number had changed. Was she being so bothered by the news that she needed to shut her life off from them? Or did the number I dialed never go anywhere? Was this mission a set-up to hide something bigger?
I look around at my family and team and know that I’m about to sing like a canary. I want to know who ruined our lives and I want them to pay.
Before I can say anything, River speaks. “Christina Charlotte’s daughter had been kidnapped,” he says, keeping his voice calm. “We were told only the specifics and where to find her. O’Keefe flew with us to Cuba, filling us in, saying we didn’t have time for a debriefing. He told us that due to the upcoming election, she didn’t want it in the press because it could sway voters. We knew when we landed that this would be hard, but O’Keefe kept saying it would be an easy snatch and grab. We weren’t to open fire, just sneak in and get her.
“When we found her, she was tied to a chair and had been beaten. McCoy went through the window and was able to get her out of there before anyone saw us, but the extraction didn’t happen. Hiding in the jungle with a ten-year old isn’t the easiest thing to do, especially when she doesn’t know if she can trust us, she’s hungry and wants her dad.”
“That’s what I found odd,” McCoy says. “She kept asking for her dad when most girls would ask for their mom.”
“Our ride back to the homeland didn’t show up,” I add. “We had to take cover and like River said, being with a kid who’s scared isn’t easy. McCoy stayed with her while Rask and I set up a perimeter around them and River tried to establish communications. When they realized the girl was gone, shit got crazy. They started yelling ‘¡Nos va matar!’, ‘he’s going to kill us’, and when the first gun went off she screamed, alerting them to our position. We hadn’t realized that they had people in our area so our position had been compromised.”
“Who were they referring to?” Cara asks as she scribbles across her paper.
“Tacito Renato,” River states. He leans forward, clasping his hands together and sighs. “He was the leader, but not the mastermind.”
“Please continue,” she says without looking at any of us. McCoy clears his throat and takes over from where River left off.
“We had to move deeper into the jungle, but that put a limit on River’s ability to call for a new extraction point. We weren’t supposed to be there, so it’s not like we could walk into the nearest village and use their open airspace. It was weeks until River could get a valid signal and extraction was on the way. Except it wasn’t. When the helo landed, O’Keefe told us that the girl had been kidnapped for a child sex ring and that there were American children from the database living there and we needed to get them,” McCoy pauses and looks around. “I don’t know about everyone here, but I know I speak for Archer, River and Rask when I say that we weren’t leaving those kids behind and we didn’t.”
Ryley’s ankle wraps around mine in a show of love or support, either way I’ll take it. Having her support means everything to me. I never wanted to miss a single day with her, she knows that and missing EJ’s birth was never on my list of things to do. I know that, had I not been on deployment, the Navy would’ve done everything to make sure I was there or at least on the phone with her.
Carole clears her throat at the same time Cara starts to speak. My eyes go from one woman to the other, waiting to see who will speak first. Carole nods, giving Cara the green light.
“I want to make sure I’ve heard you guys correctly. You say that you were sent to Cuba to retrieve Abigail Chesley, daughter of former Vice President Christina Charlotte?”
“What do you mean former?” River asks.
“I don’t think we knew that she was even elected,” I add.
This time it’s Carole who speaks. “She was elected and died in a car crash about five weeks ago.”
“When did you return?” Cara asks Nate.
“My team left six weeks ago, paving the way for SEAL Team 3 to return without any question,” Nate replies, effectively giving us all something to think about.
CHAPTER 23
NATE
LISTENING TO THE GUYS recount their mission, knowing that they shouldn’t be doing so, I can’t help but feel thankful that they are giving more credence to my statement that something is up. Once the girl was back in our custody they should’ve been out of there. Evan would’ve been home a week later and planning his and Ryley’s wedding. He would’ve been home the day Ryley went into labor and inside the delivery room with her, holding her hand. I still would’ve been pacing because my nephew was being born, but she would’ve had him by her side where he belongs.
And now I’m questioning whether I belong with her or not.
Logic says that Evan called Cara and brought her here to come between Ryley and me, but I know that’s not possible. If I didn’t know how to get ahold of her, neither did he, but I can’t help the fact that it was my first thought. Bringing her here falls in line with his promise of fighting dirty to win.
I never thought I’d be happy to see Cara again. It sounds bad, but the way things ended between us wasn’t something I want to remember. Seeing her standing in the doorway brought back a lot of memories. I met her when she was still in college at a small coffee shop near base. She was here on spring break from Harvard, a poli-sci major hoping to get a job with the CIA. I asked her why she was here in San Diego and not Florida and she said she needed peace and calm from the long winters in Boston, not bikinis and booze.
When I met her I didn’t fumble over my words, in fact I didn’t really say much at all. She approached me as I sat in the corner reading the newspaper asking me if I was military and that if I was, if she could interview me for her term paper. Here she was, on vacation and doing homework. Cara sounded just like me and was everything I was looking for but didn’t know it.
We saw each other every day for a week until she left. Our relationship wasn’t romantic at that point, but it was a definite friendship. She was easy to talk to and she made me laugh. When I deployed, she sent packages once a month and wrote me every day, telling me about school, her day and asking if I’d be back in time for summer vacation. I wasn’t going to be but that didn’t stop us from talking all the time. I called her when I could because hearing her voice gave me comfort. Most of my calls went to voicemail in the beginning. She was busy. I knew that. Cara comes from money and was one of those high society girls at Harvard, attending social events all the time. Coupled with her busy caseload, a phone conversation with her was just about impossible.
It was her letters that made me fall in love with her and two years after we met, when I had an R&R, I flew to Boston and told her how I felt. It was something that had to be done in person and not on voicemail or in a letter. I had her class schedule memorized and I waited outside the Knafel building for her to come out. I sat there with roses in my hand, dressed in my dress whites and smiling like a crazy fool in love.
Telling her was risky. I wasn’t sure how she felt since we never ventured into that territory, but I knew how I felt. I thought about her every day and couldn’t wait for my tour to be over so we could spend some quality time together.
When she walked out of the building, she froze. Her girlfriends giggled and told her that if she didn’t say yes, that they’d be more than willing to marry me. I wasn’t even thinking about marriage, I just wanted to tell her that I loved her and hoped she wanted to get coffee with me.
She did and after graduation moved to San Diego, getting a job with Navy Intelligence. It wasn’t what she wanted, but we talked about her future being in Virginia and when I re-enlisted we’d ask for transfers to the east coast. Being in Intelligence allowed her to hone her craft.
Then Evan died and everything changed.
Cara knew I wouldn’t leave San Diego with Ryley and my brother’s unborn child here. She never asked. What she did ask was for me to be done. To not re-enlist... to not leave her like Evan left Ryley but I couldn’t do that. I tried. I tried, but hated it. I missed being out there with my Team, my brothers. I yearned to protect my country. Ryley encouraged me to go back, against everyone’s wishes, and I did so knowing that Cara would leave me. The warrior in me thought she’d stay and when she couldn’t, I let her go. She moved to Washington DC, landing her dream job with the CIA and I refused to be the one to hold her back.
Now I’m sitting across from her and all I can think about is how everything in my life became so fucked up that she came back to help, except she didn’t because she’s just doing her job. To her, we’re nothing more than an assignment.
Cara speaks with poise and confidence, showing that her education has paid off. I was always afraid I was holding her back from her true potential. That she was here to appease me because of my career. She was right to leave me. Being a SEAL’s wife is no way to live when you have your own dreams and aspirations.
As the facts as we know them are laid out in front of us, I’m one hundred percent positive that the training mission my team was just on was all for show. It was to keep us, or more specifically me, away so that Evan could return to Ryley. Some sick bastard is playing with our lives and I want to know who it is and why.
“My team left six weeks ago, paving the way for fire team from SEAL Team 3 to return without any question,” I say, adding in my own theory. “We were on a training mission in the desert, the Mojave Desert, I believe. We weren’t that far from base. O’Keefe went with us, which I thought odd, but with the recent cuts by the President I didn’t think too much of it until now. O’Keefe told us we were preparing for deployment, that when we came back we’d have a week or two to get our affairs in order and say goodbye.
“The first half of the month we sat in a room staring at maps of the Middle East and going over strategies. It was our last day there, but I didn’t know it and we were out in the field, lying in the sand waiting for the training mission to start. We’d been out there for two days, waiting. The call came in that the exercise was over. A yellow flag went up, but no one would listen. The Team was just excited to get back home, get their business taken care of and prepare for deployment. When we got back to base, I should’ve trusted my instincts when I said something was up.
“Someone was giving commands, but I don’t know who. They came through to Tex. He relayed the information. The first was that we were breaking down and heading back to camp. The second came in that there was no debriefing. No one questioned it but me. The other guys didn’t seem to care. I have one guy going through a divorce and another who is trying to figure out if he’s going to be a dad. One can say these guys were just eager to get home and get shit settled before we left – I can’t say that. Sitting here, listening to everything and after doing my own research, I have no doubt that someone set SEAL Team 3 up, and I want to know why.”
“That’s why we’re here, Nate.” My name rolls off her tongue like it used to when she wanted something. I used to be able to tell by the way she said it what she wanted. Short and high-pitched, she had good news. Short and firm, I was in trouble or she was about to tell me something serious. Soft and drawn out, she wants something and something could be anything.
And right now I want to know what that anything is. Is she only interested in this case because of who it involves? Or was she assigned this case? I want to know. I should be angry with her, but I’m not. She walked out on our life together because she couldn’t deal with my job. Yet, here I sit across from her and wonder how much I missed. Was staying here worth it? Looking at Evan and Ryley sitting by each other, they look at one another trying not to cause suspicion, but to an outsider they look like two people having an affair. You can see the pull they have between them. If electricity had a visual, then they would be it. I know Ryley won’t do that to me, but what am I doing to her? Have I been a constant reminder of what she lost? Did I put my life on hold because I was afraid to let my brother go, hanging on to the last piece of him?
My life with Cara was fun, exciting and worth the heartache. I sought solace in Ryley because she was an easy transition. The door was always open and I was always welcomed. It was Ryley who lent me her shoulder to cry on when I needed it. I tried not to let the fact that Cara left get to me, but it hurt. I failed her when I promised that I’d always be there for her.
And now she’s here for me when I didn’t ask her to be. I don’t care if this is her job or not. My first love has walked back into my life when it’s in complete turmoil and, for the time being, I want to be done talking about this mission so I can take her aside and ask her how she’s been. I want to know what she’s been up to and all that she’s accomplished. And in some strange, perverse way, I want to know if she’s single. Has she found someone to love her the way she deserves to be loved?
The conversation continues around us and I watch Cara in action. She has papers spread out in front of us, pictures of faces that I don’t know. Her words are muffled, and it’s as if my head is under the water and she’s standing above me talking. She tried that once when we were in Hawaii. I let her push me under and she stood above me, laughing.
