In the middle of the shivering, so hard I thought I was going to die, something clicked. Wallace was right. Only a fourth of the people that come into BUD/S actually finish, and I wasn’t about to scrub out. I wasn’t going to quit or fail at something again, like so many other times in my life. After that, the next seventeen weeks flew by, as I trained in undersea and land warfare, learning how to engage in hand-to-hand combat underwater, or how to rappel silently in a small brush of trees. At the end of it all, I was standing in front of my friends and family in my Navy Uniform, graduating from the program and meeting the teammates who would have my ass in the SEALs for years to come.
The next day, I was given my assignment. I’ve been bouncing from location to location since then. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been successful at. Sometimes I think it could be the thing that changes me for good, that leads me back to Arie. But that’s all wishful thinking. The humiliation on her face is still crystal clear in my mind after all this time.
Tonight, I have no idea where we are. Once we left the airspace above Bahrain, we could have been anywhere. They usually don’t give us full mission details until we’re airborne, but tonight seems especially covert, which means it’s likely a high-stakes situation. Our mission leader, Daniels, is focusing exclusively on his briefing packet, and isn’t paying any attention to us, so we’re all trying to get in the right headspace for whatever may be lying ahead. There is no question that we’re nervous, but part of being a SEAL is shoving down those nerves and choosing instead to run on pure adrenaline. At the moment, I’m having trouble accessing the adrenaline, so it helps when Daniels finally looks up and addresses us.
“All right, guys. Time to rally. ETA to destination, ten minutes. We’re going to enter the facility from the water underneath. Giles, you’re on demolition. You’ll be blowing the gate blocking our entrance. Minimal noise if we can help it. Want to stay as stealth as possible. Cochran, you’re on mapping. Coordinates have already been uploaded to your tracking device. Once Giles blows the entrance, we’re going to follow you in. You have ten minutes to full prep. I’m sorry for the last minute debriefing, but nothing about this was planned.”
Giles straightens her shoulders and leans forward. “Sir, what exactly are we after tonight?”
Daniels turns around his tablet and shows us a photo of a well-dressed man standing next to a fireplace. He’s also American, which gives all of us pause. You can feel the mood in the Nightstalker change.
“This is Foreign Minister Archibald. According to our intel, Archibald has been using his position as a government ambassador to broker arms deals with some very bad people. All you need to know is that it is our job to get into this manufacturing plant and stop him from completing his latest deal. If we can snatch and grab without running into anyone else, all the better. If not, so be it. But our mission is to get Archibald, and bring him back to the good old USA to answer for his crimes. Understood?”
“Sir, yes sir!” we all respond in unison. Everyone goes quiet again as we begin to read over the details of the plan. Odds are good that this plan has been carefully staged down to the last possible eventuality, but it’s not normal for us to be kept out of the loop until the final moments like this. That makes me uncomfortable. But when the helicopter begins hovering over the water a solid half mile from our destination, my feelings don’t matter anymore. It’s time to suit up, jump out of the idling bird, and swim the rest of the way to the arms facility, all the while hoping no one sees us approach.
The swimming is the easy part, despite the chop of the water around us. We stay in a tight formation, ignoring the burning in our lungs, in our muscles, and focusing only on doing our job. After what feels like an hour, we can see the base of the massive building start to come in to view. Giles gestures for us to hang back as she swims onward to set up the underwater charges. Once she gets them in place, she’ll have less than a minute to swim away as fast as her legs can carry her, and this is after the distance we’ve just swum to get to the gate.
Everything happens in an instant. All at once, Giles is swimming double-time back in our direction, and a billowing cloud of water chases after her. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that the gate isn’t equipped with an alarm. In a single-file line, we swim through the hole that has been blown in the gate, and one-by-one, surface, removing our re-breathers. I reach into the pack on my back and pull out my mapping device. It starts blinking gently, showing us the way through the underground vents we are currently in and up into the room where, apparently, the meet is going down.
I gesture for everyone to follow me forward once we’re properly armed, and we inch through the knee-deep water, step-by-step, until we come to a set of stairs leading up. The door blocking the stairwell is locked, but our newest recruit, Morrison, is on it in a flash, using a handheld blowtorch to destroy the lock. I pull back in front, and we make our way up the stairs, down a series of dimly lit corridors. Everything is quiet as we approach what the map tells me is the main holding area for the weapons facility.
In fact, it’s too quiet.
I barely have time to raise my hand to let the rest of the team know that I want them to retreat before gunfire descends on us from above.
It’s an ambush, and whoever gave us the intel for this mission was badly prepared, because Archibald is nowhere in sight. Instead, we are surrounded by men we can’t see, shooting automatic weapons at us faster than we can get out of the way. In my peripheral, I see our second-in-command Amari fall to the ground, and Giles grabs his arms and drags him back into the last corridor we exited. Morrison gives up any guise of stealth and begins yelling for air support, when out of the corner of my eye, I see Archibald, sneaking around a corner and out a back door with a briefcase in his hand.
My instincts kick in, and I make a move to chase after him. Whatever is going on here, I refuse to walk away from this clusterfuck empty-handed. But I don’t make more than a few steps away from my team when I collapse in a heap on the cold cement floor. Nothing makes sense; I can’t seem to separate one flashing light from another. The Nightstalker is outside the building now, firing directly into the catwalk above us where our attackers are stationed. But why am I on the ground?
Why can’t I feel my leg?
Why can’t I move?
The last thing I see before I lapse into unconsciousness is Morrison’s face, and his voice shouting at me, “We’re going to get you out of here man! Just hold tight! Giles! Get me something to stop the bleeding or he’s going to lose the leg before we can get him on the chopper!”
After that, everything is dark.
Arie
New York City, 2016
It’s four in the morning, and I wake up to the sound of crying. Again. Except this time, it isn’t Chloe, my little girl. My own tears stir me from a miserable, nightmare-fueled sleep. For the last view months, I’ve been dealing with horrible stomach and back pains that leave me curled up in a ball on the floor. At first I thought it was the stomach flu, but then I started losing weight and the pains just wouldn’t go away. It’s been steadily getting worse, but between trying to take care of Chloe and working at the garage full-time, I’ve done my best to ignore it.
I can’t ignore it anymore.
I get out of bed and check on Chloe, who is sleeping peacefully in her crib next to me. We live in a studio apartment, so I have to tip-toe to the kitchen to avoid waking her up. As has become my ritual, I drink down half of a bottle of goopy pink stomach medicine to try and combat the pain. But the vile liquid stopped working a while ago, so I’m not sure why I even bother.
When Chloe was born, my family didn’t understand why I refused to tell Pierce about her. I’m not sure why they were confused. Pierce can barely take care of himself, so I knew telling him about the baby would just add a whole lot more drama to both of our lives. Besides, she’s my responsibility, and he’s away with the SEALs, which is exactly where he needs to be to take care of his responsibilities. I vowed to raise her myself — whatever it took. Yet now, as I lay on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, I can’t help but wish I had backup, someone to help me as I try to deal with my body betraying me to this misery.
Three days ago, my aunt and uncle forced me to go to the doctor, concerned about my rapid weight loss and the fact that my skin was starting to tinge a strange shade of yellow. They scraped up every penny they could to pay the bill. They even said they’d take care of the bills after that, but that didn’t exactly make me feel better. It’s like they knew something was wrong. Really wrong. The doctor ran all sorts of blood work, then sent me for a CAT scan and a really uncomfortable biopsy. Even though it was all over in the course of a few hours, I knew the medical bills would be obscene. As I leave the doctor, I realize I’m already more terrified about the money than what the results might show.
In four hours, I have to pack up Chloe and all of her things and go back into the city to find out the test results. I can already hear her cooing in her crib, starting to wake up. My favorite part of the day is when she wakes up, all smiling and happy, excited to start the day. I always kiss the inside of her neck, where it smells like sweet milk and baby powder. It always makes her giggle, and she gives me that toothless grin, perfect and pure. It almost makes me forget about the creeping dread I feel at the idea of being sick, at not knowing how we will make rent. She is the only thing that keeps me going.
Should I have told Pierce? No. I’ll never be able to count on him.
Chloe lets out a little whimper, and I drag myself up off the floor to get her morning bottle ready. My pain doesn’t matter. Only Chloe matters, and it’s time to start the day.
Chloe and I are sitting in a sterile doctor’s office in downtown Manhattan, waiting in silence after a nurse has taken my vitals. The nurse is extremely kind, almost treating me like a China doll, and it makes me nervous. Chloe is on the floor, trying to lift up on her knees and crawl. I take her and sit her up when the door budges, holding her steady. I bend my body in half to keep her steady, ignoring the creeping pain in my body. When Dr. Arnold walks in, he wears a strained smile on his face. He sits on a rolling stool across from me and sets his hands on his knees, making extended eye contact, as if he’s steeling himself for something. My stomach curls into a snake of anxiety.