Seal Team Seven (11 page)

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. “Lamb!”

“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.

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 seaborne 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 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 HAHO 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 Torrey 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.