Everyday, Average Jones

“Oh yeah? Me, too. Where exactly?”

“Appleton. It’s west of Boston. West and a little north.”

“I grew up in Hingham,” Harvard told her. “South shore. My family’s still there.” He smiled. “Actually, there’s not much of my family left. Everyone’s gone off to college, with the exception of my littlest sister. And even she heads out this September.”

“I don’t even know your real name,” Melody admitted.

“Becker,” he told her. “Senior Chief Daryl Becker.”

“Did you really go to Harvard?”

He nodded. “Yes, I did. How about you? Where’d you go to school?”

Melody shook her head. “This isn’t working. I know you’re trying to distract me, but I’m sorry, it’s just not working.”

Harvard’s brown eyes were sympathetic. “You want me to be quiet?”

“I want Jones to come back.”

Silence. It surrounded her, suffocated her, made her want to jump out of her skin.

“Please don’t stop talking,” she finally blurted.

“First time I worked with the junior Harlan Jones was during a hostage rescue,” Harvard told her, “back, oh, I don’t know, about six years ago.”

Melody nearly choked. “You’ve been doing this sort of thing for six years?”

“More than that.”

She gazed into his eyes searchingly, looking for an explanation. Why? “Risking your life for a living this way is not normal.”

Harvard laughed. “Well, none of us ever claimed to be that.”

“Are you married?” she asked. “How does your wife stand it?”

“I’m not,” he told her. “But some of the guys are. Joe Cat is. And Blue McCoy.”

“They’re somewhere out in the countryside tonight, hiding from the terrorists, the way we are,” she realized. “Their wives must love that.”

“Their wives don’t know where they are.”

Melody snorted. “Even better.”

“It takes a strong man to become a SEAL,” Harvard told her quietly. “And it takes an even stronger woman to love that man.”

Love. Who said anything about love?

“Does SEAL stand for something, or is it just supposed to be cute?” she asked, trying to get the subject back to safer ground.

“It stands for Sea, Air and Land. We learn to operate effectively in all of those environments.” He laughed. “Cute’s not a word that comes to mind when I think about the SEAL units.”

“Sea, air and land,” she repeated. “It sounds kind of like the military equivalent of a triathlon.”

Harvard’s head went up and he held out a hand, motioning for her to be silent.

In a matter of an instant, he had changed from a man casually sitting in the basement entrance of a burned-out building to a warrior, every cell in his body on alert, every muscle tensed to fight. He held his gun aimed at the door, raising it slightly as the door was pushed open and…

It was Jones.

Melody forced herself not to move toward him. She forced herself to sit precisely where she was, forced herself not to say a word. But she couldn’t keep her relief from showing in her eyes.

“Let’s move,” he said to Harvard.

There was blood on his robe—even Harvard noticed it. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Jones nodded dismissively. “I’m fine. Let’s do it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Melody didn’t want to think about whose blood that was on his robe. She didn’t want to think about what he’d been through, what he’d had to do tonight to guarantee her safety.

There was blood on his bare feet, too.

“Are we going to do this by stealth or by force?” Harvard asked.

“By stealth,” Jones answered. His smile was long gone. “Unless they see us. Then we’ll use force. And we’ll send ’em straight to hell.”

He looked directly at her, and in the moonlight his eyes looked tired and old. “Come on, Melody. I want to take you home.”

* * *

They were halfway to the plane before they were spotted.

Cowboy knew it was really only a question of when—not if—they were seen. It had to happen sooner or later. There was no way they could take a plane from an airfield without someone noticing.

He’d just hoped they wouldn’t be noticed until they were taxiing down the runway.

But nothing else had gone right tonight, starting with his surprising four terrorists in the hangar. He’d had some luck, though—only one of them had had an automatic weapon, and it had jammed. If it hadn’t, he wouldn’t be running toward the plane now. He wouldn’t be doing much of anything. Instead, he was racing across the sun-cracked concrete. He was both pulling Melody Evans along and trying to shield her with his body from the bullets he knew were sure to accompany the distant cries to halt.

He’d dispatched the four men in the hangar efficiently and silently. As a SEAL, he was good at many things, and taking out the enemy was something he never shied from. But he didn’t like it. He’d never liked it.

“You want to clue me in as to where we’re going?” Harvard shouted.

“Twelve o’clock,” Cowboy responded. And then there it was—a tiny Cessna, a mere mosquito compared to the bigger planes on the field.

Harvard’s voice went up an octave. “Junior, what the hell…? I thought you were going to swipe us the biggest, meanest, fastest—”

“Did you want to take the 727?” Cowboy asked as he grabbed for the handle of the door, swung it open and gave Melody a boost inside. “It was this or the 727, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be a sitting duck out on the runway, waiting for those jet engines to warm up.”

He’d run the checklist when he’d been out here earlier, so he merely pulled the blocks and started the engine. “This way, I figured we’d be a smaller target in the air, too, in case the tangos want to give their antiaircraft toys a test run.”