Suzanne Brockmann – Tall, Dark and Devastating: Harvard's Education (страница 20)

“There was a meeting with the base commander that I absolutely couldn’t miss.” Harvard rolled his eyes. “It was vital that I go with the captain to listen to more complaints about having the squad temporarily stationed here. This base is regular Navy, and SEALs don’t follow rules. We don’t salute enough. We drive too fast. We make too much noise at the firing range. We don’t cut our hair.” He slid his hand over his cleanly shaved head. “Or we cut our hair too short. I tell you, there’s no pleasing some folks. Every week it’s the same, and every week we sit there, and I take notes, and the captain nods seriously and explains that the noise at the firing range occurs when we discharge our weapons and he’s sorry for the inconvenience, but one of the reasons Alpha Squad has the success record it does is that each and every one of us takes target practice each day, every day, and that’s not going to change. And then the supply officer steps forward and informs us that the next time we want another box of pencils, we’ve got to get ’em from Office Max. We appear to have used up our allotted supply.” He shook his head. “We got lectured on that for ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes? On pencils?”

Harvard grinned. “That’s right.” He turned toward his office. “Joe’s right behind me. He should be back soon—unless he gets cornered into sticking around for lunch.”

Lucky made a face. “Poor Cat.”

“This is what you have to look forward to, O’Donlon,” Harvard said with another grin. “It’s only a matter of time before you make an oh-six pay grade and get your own command. And then you’ll be rationing pencils, too.” He laughed “It’s not just a job—it’s an adventure.”

“Gee, thanks, H. I’m all aquiver with anticipation.”

Harvard pushed open his office door. “Do me a favor and dial the captain’s pager number. Give him an emergency code. Let’s get him out of there.”

Lucky picked up the phone and quickly punched in a series of numbers. He dropped the receiver into the cradle with a clatter.

“So where’s everyone this afternoon?” Harvard called as he took off his jacket and hung it over the chair at his desk. “I stopped by the classroom on my way over, but it was empty. They’re not all still at lunch, are they?”

“No, they’re at the airfield. I’m heading over there myself in about ten minutes.” Lucky raised his voice to be heard through the open door.

Harvard stopped rifling through the files on his desk. “They’re where?”

“At the field. It’s jump day,” Lucky told him.

“Today?” Harvard moved to the door to stare at the younger SEAL. “No way. That wasn’t scheduled until next week.”

“Yeah, everything got shifted around, remember? We had to move the jump up a full week.”

Harvard shook his head. “No. No, I don’t remember that.”

Lucky swore. “It must’ve been the day you went to Boston. Yeah, I remember you weren’t around, so Wes took care of it. He said he wrote a memo about it. He said he left it on your desk.”

Harvard’s desk was piled high with files and papers, but he knew exactly what was in each file and where each file was in each pile. It may have looked disorganized, but it wasn’t. He’d cleared his In basket at least ten times since he’d taken that day of personal leave. He’d caught up on everything he’d missed. There was no memo from Wesley Skelly on that desk.

Or was there?

Underneath the coffee mug with a broken handle that held his pens and some of those very pencils the base supply officer had been in a snit about, Harvard could see a flash of yellow paper. He lifted the mug and turned the scrap of paper over.

This was it.

Wes had written an official memo on the inside of an M&M’s wrapper. It was documentation of the rescheduled jump date, scribbled in barely legible pencil.

“I’m going to kill him,” Harvard said calmly. “I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him.”

“You don’t have to look far to find him,” Lucky said. “He’s with the finks in the classroom at the main hangar. He’s helping Blue teach ’em the basics of skydiving.”

Harvard shook his head. “If I’d known the jump was today, I would’ve made arrangements to skip this morning’s meeting. I wanted to be here to make it clear to the finks that participating in this exercise is optional.” He looked sharply at O’Donlon. “Were you there when Blue gave his speech? Do they understand they don’t have to do this?”

Lucky shrugged. “Yeah. They’re all up for it, though. It’s no big deal.”

But it was a big deal. Harvard knew that for P.J. it had to be a very, very big deal.

When he’d figured out yesterday that she was afraid of heights, he’d known about the skydiving jump, but he’d thought it was a week away. If he’d known otherwise, he would’ve warned her then and there. He could’ve told her that choosing not to participate didn’t matter one bit in the big picture.

The purpose of the exercise was not to teach the finks to be expert skydivers. There was no way they could do that with only one day and only one jump. When they’d set up the program, the captain had thought a lesson in skydiving would give the agents perspective on the kind of skills the SEALs needed to succeed as a counterterrorist team.

It was supposed to underscore the message of the entire program—let the SEALs do what they do best without outside interference.

Harvard looked at his watch. It was just past noon. “O’Donlon, is the jump still scheduled for thirteen-thirty?”

“It is,” Lucky told him. “I’m going over to help out. You know me, I never turn down an opportunity to jump.”

Harvard took a deep breath. More than an hour. Good. He still had time. He could relax and take this calmly. He could change out of this blasted dress uniform instead of screaming over to the airfield in a panic.

The phone rang. It had to be Joe Cat, answering his page.

Harvard picked it up. “Rescue squad.”

Joe covered a laugh by coughing. “Sit rep, please.” The captain was using his officer’s voice, and Harvard knew that wherever he was, he wasn’t alone.

“We’re having a severe pencil shortage, Captain,” Harvard said rapidly, in his best imitation of a battle-stressed officer straight from Hollywood’s Central Casting. “I think you better get down here right away to take care of it.”

Joe coughed again, longer and louder this time. “I see.”

“So sorry to interrupt your lunch, sir, but the men are in tears. I’m sure the commander will understand.”

Joe’s voice sounded strangled. “I appreciate your calling.”

“Of course, if you’d prefer to stay and dine with the—”

“No, no. No, I’m on my way. Thank you very much, Senior Chief.”

“I love you, too, Captain,” Harvard said and hung up the phone.

Lucky was on the floor, laughing. Harvard nudged him with his toe and spoke in his regular voice. “I’m changing out of this ice-cream suit. Don’t you dare leave for the airfield without me.”

The half of a chicken-salad sandwich P.J. had forced down during lunch was rolling in her stomach.

Lieutenant Blue McCoy stood in front of the group of SEALs and FInCOM agents, briefing them on the afternoon’s exercise.

P.J. tried to pay attention as he recited the name of the aircraft that would take them to an altitude from which they’d jump out of the plane.

Jump out of the plane.

P.J. took a deep breath. She could do this. She knew she could do this. She was going to hate it, but just like going to the dentist, time would keep ticking, and the entire ordeal would eventually be over and done with.

“We’ll be going out of the aircraft in teams of two,” Blue said in his thick Southern drawl. “You will stay with your jump buddy for the course of the exercise. If you become separated during landing, you must find each other immediately upon disposing of your chute. Remember, we’ll be timing you from the moment you step out of that plane to the moment you check in at the assigned extraction point. If you reach the extraction point without your partner, you’re automatically disqualified. Does everyone understand?”

P.J. nodded. Her mouth was too dry to murmur a reply.

The door opened at the back of the room, and Blue paused and smiled a greeting. “About time you boys got here.”

P.J. turned to see Harvard closing the door behind him. He was wearing camouflage pants tucked securely into black boots and a snugly fitting dark green T-shirt. He was looking directly at her from under the brim of his cap. He nodded just once, then turned his attention to McCoy.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. It wasn’t until he moved toward the front of the room that P.J. noticed Lucky had been standing beside him. “Have you worked up the teams yet, Lieutenant?”

Blue nodded. “I have the list right here, Senior Chief.”

“Mind doing some quick revising so I can get in on the action?”

“’Course not,” Blue replied. He looked at the room. “Why don’t y’all take a five-minute break?”

P.J. wasn’t the only one in the room who was nervous. Greg Greene went to the men’s room for the fourth time in half an hour. The other men stood and stretched their legs. She sat there, wishing she could close her eyes and go to sleep, wishing that when she woke up it would be tomorrow morning and this day would be behind her, most of all wishing Harvard had given her some kind of warning that today’s challenge would involve jumping out of an airplane thousands of feet above the earth.