Headed for Trouble

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tarafashir

Robin came back almost immediately.

“It’s just me,” he said, and it was good that he did, because when Sam heard the key in the lock, he’d immediately ratcheted up his personal defcon level.

“We’ve got a problem,” Robin then said, going over to the carry-on bag and pulling out Alyssa’s baby-carrying frontpack. He tossed Sam’s larger model over, too, then adjusted the straps of Lys’s to make it big enough to fit him, no doubt so that he could carry Mikey hands-free. “We’ve got to get out of here. Those sirens were a warning about a terrorist attack at the airport. And over at the American Embassy. There’s a hostage situation there, too.”

Sam curbed the urge to vomit at Robin’s news as he slipped on the baby-pack, and picked up his phone. Still no bars.

“Cell towers are down,” Robin reported. “At least in this part of town. And this hotel doesn’t have a landline.”

“Gina, wake up.” Sam went into the other bedroom, where Max’s wife was curled around Emma.

The little girl’s eyes opened first, so Sam held his hand out to her, his mind racing. They had to leave, but where would they go? He didn’t know this part of the city, his GPS wouldn’t work with the towers down, he didn’t have a weapon, he needed a weapon, there were men with weapons no doubt standing guard outside the airport, which wasn’t that far from here. Whatever they had was his for the taking. All he had to do was find a guard or a pair of guards who were isolated from the others. Disarming them and arming himself would be as easy as plucking Uzis from the idiot tree.

Except, Jesus he felt sick.

Sam forced himself to focus on the task at hand. “Em. Come on, hon, I need you to get up and use the bathroom, then I’m going to help you put on your clothes, okay, sweetheart?”

Emma looked down at Gina, who was still sound asleep, then up at Sam again before she nodded and solemnly took Sam’s hand.

“Good girl,” Sam said as he helped her up. “Need help in there?”

Emma shook her head no, pushing the bathroom door closed behind her.

Gina stirred then, looking up first at him and then over at Robin, who’d come to the doorway, packing a sleepy Mikey into the baby carrier he was now wearing.

“What …?” she said.

“There’s been a terrorist attack,” Robin said again. He turned to Sam, even as he found several bottles of water. He handed one to Gina before giving the baby a sip from the other. “I was asking the desk clerk about the sirens, and at first he said it was nothing, but there was a TV on, and the news came on and even though it wasn’t in English, I could see that there was a problem at the airport, so he told me about it and about the hostage situation at the Embassy, too, but I knew that if I hadn’t seen it on TV, he wouldn’t’ve told me. And I also knew—I just knew—that if I hadn’t played it cool and just been like, Wow, thanks for the info, I guess we won’t go to the airport tomorrow after all, we’ll just sleep in and wait for the problem to be resolved, the entire gang of ’em would’ve jumped me and tied me up and …” He took a deep breath. “We’ve got to leave—now—and not through that lobby. Because when I turned back to the stairs, one of the women said, Have a good evening, Mr. Robin, sir.”

“Shhh-yoot,” Sam said, as Gina scrambled into the bathroom, pushing past Emma, who was listening, of course, her eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Robin agreed as he handed Emma’s still-damp jeans to Sam. “They recognized me. Hey, bunny-girl, let Sam help you get these on, okay?”

“Come here, Em.” Sam crouched down next to the little girl. Her life was in his still-trembling hands, and she was looking at him as if she knew it. “We’re going to be okay,” he told her, told Robin, too. “There’s a back stairway, out into the alley.” It was possible that it was being guarded, but even if it was, Sam could handle the guards.

Even sick as a dog, he could do this with his eyes closed.

Meanwhile Robin continued, “The people who own this hotel probably have no connection to the terrorists, not politically or religiously, but a guy who pimps out children is gonna see this—me being here—as just another way to make a quick buck. I’m pretty sure he already sent someone over to the airport to try to sell me to the bad guys as the most recognizable hostage in all of Tarafashir. Most recognizable on CNN, that is. Of course, once they realize they have Max Bhagat’s wife and kids …”

That was going to be a goatf*ck of a whole different color.

“That’s not going to happen,” Sam said. Once out of this building, they were going to have to get out of the city, too. There were caves in the nearby mountains where they could hide indefinitely. Except, forty miles was “nearby” only to a former SEAL. There was no way Gina was going to manage a four-mile hike, let alone forty miles on foot.

Sam mentally moved on to Plan B: Find a place to hide here in town.

Step one: Find someplace with a working landline, so he could call Lawrence Decker over at Troubleshooters Incorporated. Deck would call in backup, as well as an extraction team. It would be expensive, but Sam didn’t give a shit.

“We gonna go?” Emma asked him as she bravely put one chubby little leg and then another into her pants, wincing only slightly. “S’cold.”

“Yeah, I bet it feels good since it’s so hot in here, huh?” Sam said.

She looked at him, like, That was stupid, it feels icky and you know it, but instead asked, “Mama an’ Mikey an’ Ash an’ Unca Wobin gonna come, too?”

“Yes, they are,” Sam said as he adjusted the elastic band around her tiny waist. “We’re all gonna go together, but we have to be really quiet, okay?”

She nodded, looking up at her little brother, who was fussing in earnest now in Robin’s frontpack. “Mikey wants Mama.” She looked over toward the bathroom, where Gina had emerged. “Mama, Mikey wants you.”

“I should feed him,” Gina said staunchly, even though she needed to lean against the doorjamb. “I can feed him while we go.” She looked at Robin. “That way you can carry Emma.”

“I can carry both of them,” Robin said.

“But you can’t feed Mikey,” Gina argued.

“All we need is to get stopped by the police because you’re breast-feeding in public,” Robin said. “Besides, you’re probably dehydrated—”

Sam let them duke it out as he went into the other room. He put all the water he could carry into the pockets of his cargo pants and made sure he took his phone charger, too. Still, what he wouldn’t give for a weapon, any weapon …

He scooped the power bars, powdered milk, and Cheerios from his bag into one of the pillowcases from the bed, making it all easier to carry. Everything else, they’d have to leave behind.

On second thought, he added several disposable diapers.

He then tied the pillowcase to his belt, and lifted a sleeping Ash from the bed. “Time to go.”

In the other room, Gina had wrapped one of the white sheets around herself, completely concealing Mikey. She’d draped part of it over her head as well, to cover her hair.

“Mama’s a monk,” Emma said as Sam stared.

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” he said, and put Ash down on the bed.

“ ’Cept she don’ have a shiny head.”

“That’s okay, baby,” Robin called quietly from the bathroom. “I’m giving myself a shiny head.”

And indeed, Robin was in the bathroom, already a step ahead of Sam, using the ridiculous disposable razor from the hotel’s overnight-pack to shave the hair from his head.

“I cut my hair all the time to play a role,” Robin said to Sam as he looked into the mirror and attempted to manipulate the razor.

Sam reached to take it from him. “It’ll be easier and faster, if I …”

“Thanks.” Robin sat down on the closed toilet. “I’m thinking this is probably the most important role of my life. It’ll grow back. It grows fast. I’d suggest you do it, too, and Gina, even, but I don’t think we have the time. But let’s definitely take the razors, in case we land somewhere with running water.”

“You’ll walk in front,” Sam instructed. “Hood back. We’ll keep ours up. Stay in the shadows. Like you said, it’s all illusion and this one will work.” It would have to.

Sweat dripped down Robin’s face. “Hurry, man.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Sam said. “I don’t want to cut you.”

“Should we try to seek sanctuary at a monastery?” Robin asked.

“That’s an option,” Sam told him. “But our main goal is to find someplace where we can hack into the phone line—the landline. And FYI, I’m going to need you to carry both Ash and—”

“F*ck! Shit, turn away, turn away!”

Sam stepped back as Robin stood up, turned around, lifted the toilet seat and, yes. Robin joined the ranks of the extremely ill.

It was too much, too close, too real, too awful, and Sam joined in for the chorus, leaning over the sink. But his contribution was little more than dry heaves, since there was nothing left for his body to expel.

Still, his eyes watered, and his hands shook, and his body strained.

Robin finally flushed. “Sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

“We all knew it was just a matter of time.” Sam turned on the water for him.

Robin only briefly splashed his face before returning to sit. “Hurry. Please.”

“I’m going to need you to carry both Ash and Emma at first,” Sam said, as if there’d been no interruption as he swiftly finished the job and used a towel to wipe the remaining hair from Robin’s head and shoulders. “While I make sure there’re no guards in the back alley, and dispatch them if there are. Can you—”

Robin didn’t hesitate despite his shaking hands and watering eyes. “I can. I will. Whatever you need.”

Out in the room, Gina and Emma had managed to gather the other sheets from the beds, and Sam and Robin now wrapped themselves in white, too.

“If I tell you to do something,” Sam said, kissing Ash’s sweet-smelling little head before handing him over to Robin, who put him into Alyssa’s frontpack, “you do it. Is that clear?” He looked from Robin to Gina to Emma, including the little girl.

She nodded as Sam picked her up and handed her to Robin, who was sweating, but still managed to smile at Sam. “Let’s do this thing.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Afghanistan

“Best way to help,” Alec MacInnough told Jules and Max and Alyssa, “is to not get killed. It’ll be over before—” He laughed as Commander Lew Koehl came through the door. “Looks like it’s already over.”

“We got ’em,” Koehl said, actually cracking a very satisfied smile.

Max was not as happy. “How long have you known about this?”

“Long enough,” Koehl said, “for you to be pissed. I’d be pissed if I were you.”

“You put my team into danger.”

“That’s not why I’d be pissed,” Koehl countered. “You were never in danger. And even if you were, what? You’d rather we’d sent a USO tour in your place? Your coming out here was necessary. It was business as usual. I’d be pissed about the fact that some of our allies are not in truth our allies. The information we share gets shared in turn with the very same people who want to kill our soldiers. That’s why I’d be pissed. Because we have to pretend to be friends with those who side with our enemies. In order for our diplomats to keep up the charade, you couldn’t know. You had to be in the dark.” Max was silent.

“I’m okay with being bait under these particular circumstances,” Jules said.

“The good news,” Koehl told Max, “is that the President never intended to visit a FOB as part of his trip. That was misinformation.”

“Oh, thank God for that,” Alyssa said.

“So what just happened here?” Max asked. “A team of your SEALs inserted … how?”

“HALO jump,” Koehl said, which Jules knew stood for High Altitude Low Opening. And that meant that a team of SEALs had jumped out of a plane way, way high up in the sky, up where they’d needed oxygen masks and tanks to keep from suffocating. And after leaving the plane, they’d gone into freefall for a ridiculously long amount of time, only to open their parachutes relatively close to the ground, under all radar, where they could coast to a landing, undetected.

They’d then, no doubt, dug in despite the bad weather, forming a perimeter around the forward operating base, and waiting for the bad guys to show up with the newly purchased rocket launcher.

At which point, the SEALs crushed them like the amateurs that they were.

Mission accomplished.

“Let’s get the generator back on line,” Max said. “We need Internet access to—”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Koehl said, “that’s going to take a while. We had to let them get close enough to take out our SAT towers. And one of their snipers took a very lucky shot at the main generator, and … We’ll need to wait for the weather to clear before we can switch that out with the backup generator.”

Max looked from Alyssa to Jules, and Jules knew that Max was thinking about Gina and his kids, stuck in besieged Tarafashir with Sam and Ash and Robin.

“Sam’s the best,” Jules reminded him. “And Robin’s with him.”

This was what it was like to be assigned to one of these remote outposts. Every now and then, in fact, probably more often than not, they’d lose contact with the outside world, and every person stationed here would have absolutely no idea how their loved ones were faring.

And yet they’d put their heads down and do their jobs without complaining.

It was humbling. And inspiring.

“How can we help now?” Jules asked both Koehl and MacInnough. “I imagine guard duty is going to be stepped up over the next few days. And as long as we’re here, we’re available to assist.”

CHAPTER NINE

Tarafashir

“Give me Emma and cover Ash’s eyes,” Sam gruffly told Robin, who immediately knew that whatever had happened out in that alley, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Don’t look,” Sam told Emma as he covered her head with the sheet that Gina had been holding for him while he made sure their path to freedom was clear.

It was now.

Robin was aware of the figure of a man lying face down in a greasy puddle of …

It was raining, but not that hard—a light misting that made the empty street seem almost to shine.

“Are you okay?” asked Robin, moving closer to Sam, whose answer was a curt nod and a hard look. Shhh.

They had to be silent, and to move as swiftly as possible.

Ash was going for baby-of-the-year award, having fallen back to sleep in the frontpack Robin wore beneath his monk-costume-sheet. Sam, superhuman that he was, was not only carrying Emma beneath his disguise, but was now also helping Gina carry Mikey, with an arm of support around her waist.

The good news was that Gina and Emma were no longer throwing up.

The bad news was that Sam and Robin were going to leave an unmistakable trail behind them.

But Sam was already on top of that, and whenever Robin couldn’t take another step farther, Sam seemed to know it, and he steered Robin toward the gutter, which was already disgusting. And when Robin was done, Sam covered up what he’d left behind, which had to be hell for Sam.

But onward they moved, every turn taking them further into the center of the city, and farther from the hotel.

And then, seemingly arbitrarily, Sam stopped them, tucking them more deeply into the shadows by ducking down behind a pile of trash—an old, sodden mattress and broken furniture. Finger to his lips, he set Emma down, wrapping her in the sheet that he took from his shoulders.

Then he turned, giving his attention to a small door that Robin hadn’t even realized was there among the battered bricks of the building’s foundation. It was hobbit-sized, made of blistering and warped wood, with a big rusting metal lock sealing it shut.

Sam took out a knife, the blade flashing as it caught a stray bit of light, and Robin realized that he must’ve taken it from that guard in the alley.

He used it now, not to pick the lock as Robin had first assumed, but instead to pry off a set of hinges that connected the door to the brick wall. The nails popped easily out of the damaged wood, and Sam lifted the entire door from the wall.

And that was why they’d stopped here, at this particular building. It had a seemingly secure door leading into its basement—a door with hinges on the outside.

Sam held up a hand, signaling for them to wait while he went through that door first.

Time seemed to hang as Robin worked his way through a long list of what-if scenarios. What if Sam didn’t come back? What if he came back shouting Run! Run! What if, while he was gone, someone discovered them, crouching there? What if Ash or Mikey or Emma started to cry? What if Gina passed out—she was looking pretty pale. What if Robin passed out—but he couldn’t pass out. He wouldn’t. He had to be ready in case Sam came bursting out of that basement, telling them to run.

But then, thank God, Sam appeared in the doorway. He reached his arms out, gesturing for Robin to give him Emma. Gina and Mikey went in next, then Robin passed Ash in to Sam, so that he could muscle the door back into place behind them.

It was dark in there, but Sam used his cell phone as a flashlight, the light from its screen bright enough so Robin could see the rough-hewn walls and the dirt floor, the ancient pipes overhead.

Like most basements around the world, it was cluttered with cast-off and long-forgotten junk. A half a bicycle, a semi-truck tire, a broken cricket bat, a pile of ancient and dust-covered empty bottles, a set of broken and rusty gardening tools, and a whole lot of less easily identifiable trash.

There wasn’t much there they could make use of, at least not that Robin could see.

Sam, however, seemed fascinated by what looked like an ancient circuit breaker box in the corner across from a long-cold coal burner—no doubt about it, this place now featured only cold-water flats.

Robin’s stomach churned and burbled, and he dug for his own phone to use it to light his way to the far corner of the room, stopping to grab a rusting shovel. But right before he turned away, he realized what it was that Sam was looking at.

Those were telephone wires coming into the building—wires that led up through the walls to the various apartments above them.

And as Robin quickly dug a shallow hole in which to place his continuing misery, so to speak, he realized that rescue—via a quick phone call to Troubleshooters Incorporated—was close at hand.

Sure, they were going to have to break into one of the apartments and either use the phone or steal a phone. But that seemed simple enough compared to what they’d already done and where they’d been and—

“Holy fah … leh-lah, leh-lah,” Sam said.

“What’s wrong?” Gina asked.

“No,” Sam said. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s good, in fact, it’s great.” He laughed. “Someone in the building has a nonsecure wireless network. I don’t have phone service, that’s still down, but I can use my phone to access the Internet through this open wireless system, and send an email.”

“I’ll dictate,” Robin said, using the shovel to cover up his deposit before he used his cell phone to light his way back to the others. “Dear Dave and/or Decker, Please come and get us ASAP. Love, Sam. P.S. Don’t kiss us on the mouth when you greet us because we are fah … leh-lah contagious.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” Sam said dryly. “With luck, they’re already looking for us and … Yeah, Dave was definitely standing by and thank you sweet baby Jesus. The SEALs have retaken the airport. And the Embassy. We’re safe, but Dave recommends we stay put, out of sight, until they can send someone out here to pick us up.”

“Is there any way we can get a message to Max?” Gina asked, her arms tightly around Mikey and Emma. “He and Alyssa and Jules must be going crazy, worrying about us.”

“I’m on it,” Sam said, his thumbs flying across his phone’s keyboard. He’d put Ash into his frontpack, but after he sent the email, he gave the baby a hug. “You are such a good boy,” he told his son.

Who mewed once and then vomited down Sam’s shirt and jeans.

“Robin,” Sam said quietly.

“I’m right here,” Robin said. “I’ll take him.”

“Thank you.”

He took the baby, and Sam took the shovel. And ran.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Robin said, as Ash started to cry. “You’re okay, Big Guy. It’s four A.M. You’re right on schedule. Mikey’s next.”

“I’m pretty sure Mike had it first,” Gina told him. “I thought it was just normal baby spit-up, but in hindsight …”

“Really?” Robin said, using a piece of one of the sheets to clean off Ash. “Yay.”

CHAPTER TEN

Greek Isles

Jules found Robin sleeping on the beach, beneath an umbrella. “Hey, babe.”

Robin sat up so fast he almost fell out of his lounge chair. “Oh, my God! You’re here!”

“Yeah, we caught an earlier flight.” Jules laughed as Robin enveloped him in a hug and kissed the bejesus out of him.

God, yes, this was exactly what he’d needed …

But then Robin pulled back to look at him. “Two weeks earlier?” he asked.

“The assignment took less time than we’d originally thought.”

Robin ran his hand self-consciously across the dark stubble that covered his head. “I thought I’d have more time to, you know, grow this out.”

“It’s actually adorable. And amazing,” Jules said, “and it makes it kind of impossible to ignore what happened to you, and Gina, and Sam and the kids—God, when we heard, we were sick, we were so worried.”

“No, actually, we were sick,” Robin quipped.

But Jules wasn’t ready to laugh. “What a nightmare and Jesus, all I could think was this kind of worrying is what I put you through, this is what I willingly do to you, every time I go out there and put myself in danger.”

“No, babe,” Robin said, pulling him close and enveloping him in his arms. “No, that’s just not true. I mean, yeah, it can be scary, but I know—I know, in fact, I’ve just had the ultimate reminder that you can take care of yourself. I mean, I knew that, I did, but now I really know that you’re super-safe, as safe as you can possibly be, especially when someone like Sam or Alyssa or Max is by your side. Watching Sam deal with everything and anything that got thrown at us …? He knew exactly what to do, where to go, how to handle it.”

“He told Alyssa he couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jules said, gazing searchingly into Robin’s brilliant blue eyes.

Robin smiled and shook his head. “That’s just more of Sam being Sam,” he said as he held out his hand so that he and Jules could intertwine their fingers as they walked back to the resort. “If he’d had to, he would’ve figured out a way to carry both me and Gina and all three kids.”

Jules laughed, because he knew it was true. “The whole stomach flu thing must’ve killed him. Sympathy vomiter and all.”

“He was hurting,” Robin agreed. “And yet he won a knife fight. Won in a major way, like, after it was over, he was in possession of the knife and he wasn’t the unconscious one.”

“That’s our Sam,” Jules said. “How many stitches?”

“Ten,” Robin reported. “Although I had no clue he was hurt, let alone that he needed stitches, until we were in Germany.” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Jules. “Did you need any stitches in the past week and a half?”

Jules shook his head. “Nope. But I caught Mikey’s flu.” Robin laughed. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yeah. Max did, too. We passed it along to pretty much all of the FOB. And the CO of SEAL Team Sixteen,” Jules reported. “He was really happy about that. Alyssa’s got it now. She was feeling funky on the plane, and soon as we took off …” He made a face as he shook his head.

“Ah, God,” Robin said. “So she’s just at the beginning of it. Poor Sam.”

“He’s Sam,” Jules said. “He’ll deal.” He smiled at Robin. “But we’re here, and we’ll definitely help.”