SEAL Under Covers (SEAL Brotherhood Series Book 3) (9 page)

Disgusting.

Carlos gave Gina his version of bedroom eyes while he snuck a hand up Mia’s skirt. Mia leaned into him to smash her pubic bone against his knuckles, cutting off his advance but giving him a good feel anyway.

The girl had balls.

“I didn’t give you permission, Carlos,” Mia whispered, but Gina could see she was secretly excited by the attention.

“I’m not feeling you. I’m feeling your friend,” he said as he removed his hand and continued to gaze at Gina. “Honey, can I go down on you right here? I got a nice hundred dollar bill and something else if you want it.”

Gina tried not to shudder, but she had to look away.

“Sugar. No need to be shy. I’m good with the ladies. I’m not, like, this bitch’s guy.”

“I’m not Caesar’s bitch,” Mia protested.

“Except you have his kid. No one gonna touch you while Caesar’s alive.” Carlos gave Mia a greasy grin. “He’s in a cage, but he’s still alive.”

Mia turned to the bar, giving Carlos her disgusted shoulder. She ordered a Margarita from the bartender, who was watching everything carefully. He had a hopeful expression. “You gonna let guys get a touch, you might as well dance for me, ladies,” he said.

Carlos used Mia’s distraction to zero in on his prize. Gina could see in his eyes that he intended on having her any way he could. He put a forefinger on her shoulder and drew it down her arm, then down her forearm to the back of her hand. He peeled her fingers away from her drink and gave her palm a tender kiss. Inside she shuddered at his touch, but she worked not to let it show.

“I’ll bet you taste real nice,” Carlos’s words oozed out with syrupy sweetness.

Two other gang members entered the room just before the next dancer began her gyrations. They were enthralled with the skinny girl on stage, who looked all of fifteen years old and was scared to death. Her slender thighs had bruises on them she’d tried to cover up with makeup. Gina knew she was probably a young runaway and a drug user.

Making a mental note to have the girl’s ID checked, calling it in, Gina focused on Carlos again. He looked pleased to be the recipient of her attention.

“How about it?” he asked.

“Sorry.”

“Are you, really?” Carlos looked between Mia and Gina. “You fancy chicks?” he asked Gina.

“No. I’m just not in the mood,” she answered. It was the truth.

“I can fix that.”

Gina made a mental note to watch her drink. She knew Carlos would find a way to slip something in on her if she wasn’t vigilant. She had no intention of getting that close.

Mia came to Gina’s defense. “Hey, get away from my friend. She told you no. What part of that don’t you understand?”

Carlos licked his lips. “I just want a little taste. Or maybe she might like to give me a little something.” Carlos wiggled his eyebrows. Then he turned his face to Mia. “Darlin’ I need a mouth on me quick or I’m gonna spill. You guys got me all bothered.”

Mia pointed to the dancer, “She looks like your type.”

The young girl bent over, giving the sparse crowd a view of her quivering buttocks bifurcated by a silver G-string. Carlos smiled and backed away from the two girls until he got close to the stage. While looking at Gina, he took out what looked like a one hundred dollar bill and placed it under the elastic of the teenager’s G-string. He leaned over to the offered soft flesh of the young girl’s rear and gave her a lick and then a kiss. He rubbed himself and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was staring right at Gina.

Adrenaline pumped through Gina’s chest as she resisted the urge to run away from this, from the police work, this seamy undercover stuff, from Mia and Sam and even Armando. It wasn’t the work that bothered her.

It was that she felt like bait.

Chapter 9

Gunny greeted his son, Sanouk Wattanapanit, at the San Diego airport with Kyle and Armando at his back. Armando felt like they were standing in on the old former Marine’s wedding procession or an official award of valor citation. The tall well-muscled boy of twenty-two was handsome, with Eurasian features and smooth light brown complexion. But his ears identified him as one of Gunny’s offspring. The protuberances stood out and were probably as useful as large, flat handles on a bowling ball. 

Gunny’s first words were, “Holy shit. You look just like your mother.”

Armando noticed the boy’s embarrassment as he bowed slightly and gazed down at his supersized feet, encrusted in torn canvas sneakers without laces. When he finally looked up, Sanouk’s smile became heartbreakingly respectful and contrite.

“Father, I have been waiting my whole lifetime to meet you.” His English was perfect, flawless, with just a hint of accent. He’d been well schooled, Armando thought.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Gunny blurted out. “I thought we’d have to be, like, doing sign language, and I was wondering how that was going to work out.”

Armando shared a smirk with Kyle, and knew his Team Leader had entertained the same thoughts. The sign language obviously hadn’t stopped Gunny from knocking Sanouk’s mother up, after he married her, of course.

As the awkward seconds drifted away, Gunny finally asked his son The Question. “So, how is she?”

“
She
is named Amornpan, and she is well. I have a stepfather she married soon after you left.”

This brought a scowl to Gunny’s face. He grunted acceptance and stepped back a bit when the boy came forward to give him a hug. The young man towered over Gunny by several inches, and though Gunny stiffly accepted the gesture, the boy tenderly held his biological father and patted his back. “Thank you for my life,” he whispered over Gunny’s shoulder.

Armando knew about the loss of a parent. His own father had been gunned down in the line of duty in Puerto Rico shortly before his mother moved him and his sister to L.A. Being the surviving family of a murdered cop wasn’t especially safe in Puerto Rico. Armando struggled with the loss all during his teenage years, years he did things he wasn’t proud of. He made it into manhood with an overwhelming need for revenge, and a desire to protect good people. It was stashed away in the back of the SEAL’s psyche along with his lost childhood. But, as limited as his own father’s time had been, he couldn’t imagine not having known his father at all, like this boy.

Gunny’s hacking cough interrupted his son’s hug. He pulled out a handkerchief with trembling hands, placing it over his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to hide bloody remnants of an earlier coughing attack.

Sanouk eyed the red stain on the handkerchief with alarm, and then drilled a worried look into the two SEALs. “You are my father’s friends?”

“Glad to meet you,” Kyle said as he extended his hand. “Perhaps you can talk some sense into your father. I’m Kyle.”

“And I’m Armando.” They both took turns shaking the boy’s firm grasp. Gunny continued to cough.

“You are unwell?” Sanouk asked his father.

“Rot of the flesh. Nothing more.” It was Gunny’s standard answer whenever he didn’t want to explain himself to a stranger. Armando hoped the coming days would give Gunny a new reason for living. He was hoping the boy could convince Gunny to go back to the doctor for treatment.

Crowds from the arriving planes were shifting all around the group. Sanouk picked up a computer case and slung it over his right shoulder. “I have bags,” he said as he started to follow the signs to baggage claim. Obviously, the boy was used to traveling.

Father and son walked next to each other in awkward silence as Kyle and Armando trailed behind. Sanouk carried himself like an athlete. His long limbs appeared powerful despite the lithe gait. Unlike other Thai men Armando had met, Sanouk had a western frame, not only in height, but thickness too. And from the shape of his broad shoulders and long arms, Armando could tell he was in perfect physical condition and probably worked out on a regular basis.

“He’s not at all like what I expected,” Kyle whispered to Armando.

“No shit.”

“Thank God he must take after his mother,” Kyle continued.

“Yeah. Except for the Dumbo ears.”

The two SEALs chuckled, causing Gunny to turn and give them a worried frown.

Armando thought it odd Gunny was suddenly lost for words. He noticed the side-glances the older man gave his son, checking him out whenever the boy looked elsewhere. Since Gunny had always been a loner, it was odd to see the early forms of attachment, the fatherly bonds Armando knew were unfamiliar to Gunny. He’d spent years making wisecracks about the women he had married and children he must have fathered.

The baggage turnstile coughed up Sanouk’s bags like one of Gunny’s attacks. Armando was surprised the two bags consisted of an overstuffed black duffel and a set of golf clubs, which Gunny tried to pick up but Kyle grabbed away from him.

Everything was piled into Kyle’s black Hummer. Sanouk rode shotgun admiring the vehicle. He was every bit the typical American kid, and when Kyle turned on some hip hop, Sanouk began to make some dance moves.

Gunny was breathing heavily as he sat next to Armando in the back seat. His eyes watered from the coughing or something else welling up inside. Armando guessed it was the latter. The old Marine couldn’t stop staring at his son.

Armando gave the thumbs up as the Hummer wound its way back to Coronado. Gunny’s expression was somewhere between shock and meltdown, that look Armando sometimes saw on young servicemen after they’d taken their first hit and were being medevac’d out.

A short time later they pulled up to Gunny’s gym. A small crowd of ex- and current SEALs, as well as other military and civilian personnel, had gathered inside the place. Someone had brought a couple of large tubs of ice with water bottles and long-necked beer stuffed inside. Three large delivery boxes of pizza were stacked up on Gunny’s duct-taped, empty display case. Several of the Team guys had brought their wives and babies. Kyle stood behind Christy and their kid and wrapped his arms around his family.

“Welcome to San Diego, Sanouk. We’ve sort of adopted your father, here,” Kyle said.

Gunny searched the audience and nodded his appreciation for the turnout, but Armando had never seen him so uncomfortable. He fisted and un-fisted his ham-like hands, rubbed his palm up over his forehead to wipe the sweat away, and seemed to totter whenever he walked. His labored breathing was of most concern. Armando slapped him on the back.

“You okay, Gunny?” he whispered in the man’s ear.

“Right as rain. I’m just wondering who’s gonna clean up the mess,” Gunny said, deflecting the conversation.

“I’ll get you some water. You go introduce Sanouk to the group,” Armando suggested. Gunny nodded.

“Everyone, thanks so much for coming. Sanouk here came a long way to check out his old dad, and I appreciate the turnout. I hope you’ll help me show him around, but keep him away from the ladies, and let’s temper the barhopping, okay? My only requests.”

The group erupted in huzzahs and waters and beer bottles were raised. Several older SEALs came forward and slapped the young Sanouk heartily on the back, buffeting the young man back and forth as he tried to smile and address each one of them. Armando could see the boy’s eyes widen with admiration, and it made Armando proud, too.

After all, Gunny was one of their community and any offspring, no matter the roots or origins, no matter if he’d been created in a steamy jungle because of his father’s fondness for Asian women who didn’t speak English, he was still family. To them all.

Gina called in the runaway she’d spotted at Babes, and Kozinski promised he’d have two child welfare workers stop by to check on her. Then he asked if she’d buried the hatchet with Sam.

“Not yet, sir. I know we need him. I just don’t understand why he has to show up when I’m on duty. It places the operation and me at risk. Can’t you see that, sir?”

“Look, I go back nearly twenty years with Sam. I don’t have any reason to question his judgment…”

“Except for the little stunt he pulled with me,” Gina blurted out.

“From the way I hear it, you were about as hot for him as a lioness in heat. Sorry, darlin’, but I take Sam’s side on this one. He’s only a man.”

Who thinks he’s God’s gift.

“He was a married man. He never told me. None of you guys did.”

“Take that as a compliment, Gina. Take it to mean we think you can handle yourself. Not like the first time anyone in the department has gotten involved in an affair outside of work. It’s ruined a lot of careers. You guys handled it well. It was over before I had to do anything. Now I want to just forget about it.”

“But Sam won’t.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it. Roll with it, Gina. He thinks he’s acting a part that works. So part of it is true. So what? Use it.”

“But I don’t want to play his girlfriend.”

“Okay, but let him tease you a bit. Let him be the jilted one. Work it however you want to, but work it. These guys will be the only ones to bail your ass out of a really bad situation if it goes wrong. Remember that. The Scorpions kill people for petty, stupid reasons. You’re dealing with some dangerous dudes. Be grateful.”

That last comment grated on her more than all the rest.

Grateful? More like enduring. So, it was going to be a test. She’d used up her allotment of complaints and anything further would be just perceived as whining. She was on her own.

Gina decided to try one last time to reason with Sam. Though she’d written it off as a very bad idea, the near-confrontation at Babes with Carlos caused her to reconsider. She needed Sam’s intel. Tito, one of Carlos’s runners, was a kid Sam had busted earlier, and he had given the task force everything they needed to catch the gang in a couple of sting operations. But Carlos had always eluded them, and he was the prize. Gina knew it would be nearly impossible
not
to have Sam involved and still complete the mission.

If he could just stop making references to their shadowy past, there was a part of Sam she thought she could still trust. But his need to totally control her, confine her, stop her, was getting in the way. That, and her own fear.