ChapterFive
Lieutenant Chris Flyte needed to get his shit together. He took several deep breaths. There was no room for distraction here.
The sadistic trainers who’d come up with this exercise deserved a special place in hell. HALO jumps were risky enough, but executing them right before a storm, with their target being a thirty-five-degree lake, was a special treat.
No way was this a “generic” training as laid out by command. HALO jumps usually weren’t even allowed in this area, but they’d gotten special permission for this one exercise. They were practicing for a specific op that required a frigid lake HALO jump right before a storm.
And damn, but he couldn’t think of any mission that was worth that risk. Bin Laden had been dead for over a decade.
He stood in the open back of the plane and checked his gear with the rest of the team. Oxygen mask secured. Gear he’d need for the next five days packed in a heavy, watertight pack. Every inch of his skin was covered—protection from the balls of ice he’d meet when he dropped through the cloud layer that was between the plane and Lake Olympus.
As he went through the vital, lifesaving checklist, he also tried to box away Pam’s betrayal to a dark corner of his mind. He couldn’t afford to give her any of his headspace until after the training was behind him.
He should have withdrawn from this exercise, but that wasn’t exactly an option. He’d only learned his wife was having an affair two days ago and had zero time to process the utter destruction of his life before flying north to Whidbey.
For the last forty-eight hours, he’d been on autopilot, doing his job and trying not to think about the end of his eight-year marriage. And now here he was, ready to jump from twenty thousand feet into a frigid lake, all to rescue a fake hostage.
The only easy day was yesterday.
Yesterday was the day he’d learned who his wife had been fucking for the last eighteen months.
Yesterday had been total and utter shit.
The signal came. Go time.
Deep breath. Get centered. Time to lead his team.
He pitched and rolled forward off the ramp. Wind buffeted him, roaring in his ears, blocking all other sound. He turned to face upward. The plane grew smaller as the last of the platoon rolled off the ramp, dots above in the night sky.
Satisfied his team was in free fall, he rolled to face the cloud cover below him. The plane would return to Whidbey. They were on their own and would treat this as a real op until the first task was complete and the trainers called a halt to debrief on their successes and failures.
There was an exhilaration to free fall that didn’t go away, even when he had hundreds of jumps under his belt. But today, the feeling was muted.
He dialed in, checking his altitude. There was no room for a wandering mind here. Even with every patch of skin covered, it was damn cold as he plummeted toward earth. The lake would be even worse.
He hit the cloud layer and felt the sting of ice pellets as they pummeled his thick wet suit.
Thankfully, the storm hadn’t quite started yet, and beneath the cloud canopy, his chute opened without a hitch and the wind wasn’t so wild as to throw him off course.
All around him, chutes bloomed as the others pulled their cords.
The quiet that came after the chute opening always brought a sense of peace, but in a low-opening jump, there wasn’t a moment to enjoy it. This was an op, and he was about to go into battle.
He released the chute as his feet touched frigid water. The water was hellishly cold, but the insulating layers of wet suit did their job, keeping the worst of the cold at bay, and his body heated the trapped liquid.
He made his way toward shore, weighed down by the heavy gear bag. He was going to kick Rivera’s ass for coming up with this nightmarish scenario. Didn’t matter that they’d been friends for years. The paces the team was being put through were bullshit.
Without warning, a memory surfaced. A barbecue on the beach two years ago. He’d been there with Pam. Rivera had Lynn at his side. Everyone on the team had been there, including Brock.
Had that been when the affair started? Or had it been later, after the op that had sent Rivera to the hospital and Forsythe and Adams to the morgue?
Do I even want to know?
Not really.
He’d told no one on the team about Pam’s affair, and apart from the SEALs, he had no other friends. No family. No life beyond his marriage and his work. He’d been alone in his miserable thoughts as he prepped for the training.
Betrayed by his wife and a man he’d considered a brother.