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“My pa, Floyd William Thorn, died when he was forty-nine,” she told him, sadness in her tone. She placed a picture of her father before him. “He was a coal miner and got black lung. With the herbs she collected, Mama kept him alive many years longer than he should have lived.” Her voice grew low with emotion. “I miss him so much....”
Gabe picked up the photo, studying the man with a long, unkempt brown-and-silver beard. He wore an old green baseball cap and was proudly standing with a rifle over his shoulder. Bay had his long straight nose and high cheekbones. “I’m sorry you lost him. That’s too young to die.”
Bay took the photo from him and carefully placed it back in the ziplock bag. “He was a good man, Gabe. He taught me how to hunt and we had so much fun together. Pa was always laughing and joking around with us. And he was very kind. There were a number of elderly folks on our mountain who needed help. Pa would go over and chop wood for them, take it to their cabins so they’d have fire to cook with and keep them warm at night during the winter. Each spring, Pa would till their gardens with our mule, Betsy, to help them get in their garden so they’d have food to eat and can in the fall.”
Gabe digested her softly spoken words, saw the grief lingering in her eyes. “He sounds like a helluva good man. Responsible.”
Bay pressed her lips together, feeling the loss of her father. “Hill people stick together. Sometimes we’d go out and hunt deer for these elders. We’d kill one or two, gut and skin them. Then we’d carry them back and spread the meat between these families. Pa believed you took care of your family as well as the people around you.”
“And now you’re taking care of people around you, too. Looks like you have the genes on both sides of your family.” Gabe saw the sadness in Bay’s eyes and found himself wanting to do something to cheer her up. Again, he stopped that desire. This was a dangerous edge to walk with her.
“I love helping people,” Bay said, lifting her head and managing to tuck her sadness away.
“I’m blown away you’re an 18 Delta corpsman. We’ve had SEALs go for that training and wash out. Some made it, but most didn’t. From what I’ve heard, it’s eighteen months of unrelenting hell.”
“It was,” Bay said. “But I loved it. I’d been a corpsman in Iraq and already been under fire, doing my job. By the time I got to 18 Delta, when they’d put you into a situation where you had to work under bullets and explosions going off, it didn’t rattle me one bit. It did a lot of other guys, though. They were really great combat corpsmen, but they couldn’t think through the chaos to stop bleeding or perform lifesaving field operations.”
“What made you so cool, calm and collected under fire?” Gabe asked, going back and starting to spread strawberry jam over six pieces of toast he had piled up at one end of his aluminum tray.
“I don’t know. My mom was always cool as a cucumber when things got tense.”
“You said you were hunting with your dad at an early age? I wonder if the sound of gunfire was something you grew up with.” He chewed on the toast. “I was raised near the woods in Pennsylvania. I was hunting with my father when I was your age. He was a big-time hunter and I got used to being around gunfire.”
“Maybe,” Bay murmured. She watched him enjoy the toast and jam. Gabe was tucking away a lot of food, but she knew these men who were out on long patrols would easily burn through twelve thousand calories. “I find I focus so much on the guy who’s wounded that I don’t hear anything else around me. I’ve been in firefights where the guys on my team would tell me bullets were singing all around me as I was delivering medical aid to a downed soldier, and I wasn’t even aware of it.”
“That’s a handy reaction to have,” Gabe agreed. Inwardly, he began to feel some relief. Bay had the experience and calm that would be needed should they get into a firefight. And it was a given, in their business, they would.
“Why do you think the chief assigned you to me?” Bay wondered, tilting her head and holding his gaze.
Disconcerted, Gabe grinned. “You have a helluva way of getting to the heart of the matter, don’t you?”
“In my business, it’s always the bottom line.” Bay smiled. “I’m the one who is doing the A-B-Cs...airway, breathing, circulation on a guy who’s been shot. I don’t have time to fool around with social niceties.”
Nodding, Gabe reached for the second piece of toast. “I used to be LPO of our team until about six months ago. You probably got assigned to me because the chief trusts me. This is my fourth deployment over here with him and I’m a known quantity.”
“So you were the mother hen for the enlisted guys in your platoon before this?”
Gabe chuckled. “Yeah, I was a real mother hen, for sure.”
“But why aren’t you LPO now?”
He stopped smiling. “A situation came up,” he said gruffly.
“Hmm,” Bay murmured, feeling him retreat. She saw something in his narrowing eyes, a look that warned, back off. Moving her fingers around the warm mug, she said, “Life sometimes kicks us in the head like a mule and it takes time for us to get back up on our feet.”
Her insight stunned Gabe. For a moment, he just stared at her, and then he resumed eating. “I’m okay not being LPO. And Phil, who we call Thor, is doing a good job in my stead.”
“So Chief Hampton figured if he put me with the biggest, baddest mother hen in the platoon, I’d be in good hands.” She grinned.
“You need to ask the chief why he assigned you to me. I’m not in his head.”
Bay finished off her coffee and set the mug aside. “I know I’m in good hands with you, Gabe. You were the only one there in that room who was protecting me against Hammer and his friends.”
“LPOs always are protective of their guys. It comes with the territory. You’re one of us now, and that protection is accorded you, as well.”
Nodding, Bay picked up the last of a few potatoes from her tray and nibbled on them. She figured she’d stepped on a land mine with Gabe. He appeared unhappy for a moment, but then he hid his reaction with a hard, unreadable expression. A game face. Something she saw in all black ops people. “Nothing wrong with being a mother hen. I’m one. And Hammer and his friends are going to find that out big-time as soon as I get my feet under me with this team.”
Gabe would bet on that. Baylee-Ann Thorn was not a weakling in any sense. She came across soft and innocent, but now Gabe was beginning to understand that sweetness could be shown or taken away, depending upon the situation. “It’s the doc’s job to keep the guys well.” And then he remembered the photo of her father. “That was a Winchester rifle your father carrying on his shoulder in that photo you showed me?”
“Yes, a .300 Win Mag rifle.”
“It looked like it.”
“Why?”
“Because in a couple of hours, you’ll be using my Win Mag against Hammer in the shooting competition.”
Shrugging, Bay smiled a little. “So?”
“So you know how to use one.”
“My pa used the civilian variety of Win Mag to bag deer and other animals. The type you guys use for sniping is a military grade and not something I’m familiar with.”
“Just the cartridge is different. Stocks are made out of fiberglass because it’s lighter than wood.” He studied her hard for a moment. “When did your father start training you to use the Win Mag?”
“When I was thirteen.”
The innocent look she gave him made him grin. “So you’ve been using a Win Mag for five years before you joined the Navy? And in that time, you were using it to bring down big game at fourteen hundred yards?”
“Yes.”
Gabe sat up. “Has anyone ever accused you of being the mistress of understatement?”
She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin, wadded it up and dropped onto her tray. “A few times.” Bay saw that dark, accessing look of his, felt it surround her. It was an intense focus a hunter would have.
“That Win Mag has a body-jarring recoil to it when it’s fired,” he warned her. It would take a shoulder off a person if he didn’t realize the kick of the rifle and physically compensate for that violent recoil. He wondered how she was able to handle such a weapon at such a young age.
“Oh, Pa warned me,” Bay chuckled. Pushing her fingers through her curly brown hair, she said, “The first time I fired it, it knocked me on my behind. My pa never laughed so hard, and neither did I. He’d warned me beforehand about its recoil, but until you actually fire it, you don’t have a clue.”
Her laughter was like thick, dark honey across his wounded heart. Gabe had no defense against it. Her eyes danced with mirth. It lifted him, for no accountable reason. “Well,” he growled, pushing the tray aside, “Hammer’s in a lot of trouble, then.”
“Ohh,” Bay murmured, “I don’t think so.”
Gabe studied her. “Then you really don’t need a spotter. You’ve never worked with one and you’re hitting your target at fourteen hundred yards.” That blew him away.
“My pa never called himself a spotter. He taught me about windage, wind direction, humidity and so on. I could sure use your help, Gabe. This is dry air. There’s no humidity. I’m not used to firing in this kind of environment. If you could help me dial it in, I’d be grateful.”
How could he refuse her? “Hammer is going to get his sails trimmed.”
“All I want to do is give a good accounting of myself. Maybe then he’ll get serious about me being responsible regarding my job with your platoon.”
Gabe smiled wryly, picked up his tray and rose to his full six feet. Her heart opened as she regarded him standing there, waiting for her. There was an intense, quiet power around him, like that of a coiled copperhead ready to strike. She didn’t see this same kind of tension in the other SEALs, although they all possessed it, more or less.
Gabe was a leader; there was no doubt. And she knew the men respected him. Why wasn’t he LPO? Well, for whatever reason, Bay found herself thanking the Lord for having Chief Hampton assign her to this SEAL. He was trustworthy. And her life would be in his hands, quite literally.
Easing off the bench, Bay picked up her tray and followed Gabe to where they placed their empty trays. She noticed the women stuck together at the various benches. A number of the SEALs from Alpha were all sitting together and eating, Hammer among them. When he spotted her across the large packed room, he gave her a glare. She ignored it.
CHAPTER THREE
BAY FELT ADRENALINE leak into her bloodstream as she settled prone, on her belly. The Afghan sun beat down hard on them at the small shooting range the SEALs had created years earlier at this FOB. The wind was inconstant, blowing intermittently across the area. The range was far away from Operations. Helos were constantly coming and going, the reverberations and thumping noise pounding and chopping through the dry air.
Gabe helped her set up the .300 Win Mag because it was the sniper rifle, not the regular hunting rifle Bay was used to. The bipods were set at the front of the barrel and he made sure the fiberglass stock was settled firmly against her cheek. The entire SEAL platoon, including the officers and chief, was present. Bay didn’t seemed rattled at all. She went about the business of picking up any rocks that could jam into her torso and legs when she went prone. She studied the flags waving off to one side of the square wooden targets in the distance, sizing up the wind factor and direction. The rest of the team stood behind Hammer. There was a wooden table nearby where ammo was collected.
Bay settled her cap on backward so the bill scraped the nape of her neck. She wore her sunglasses, the sun burning down on her. She felt Gabe’s quiet presence as he knelt nearby with the spotter scope on a stand between his knees. There were three dials on the Win Mag, the same as she was used to using back home. Ten feet to her left, Hammer was settling down in the dirt on his belly, bringing his Win Mag into his arms. His spotter was Oz, another SEAL shooter who was his best friend.
“Okay,” Gabe told her quietly, leaning toward her so that only she could hear him, “just relax.”
His deep voice washed across her. The tension in her shoulders dissolved. Bay hadn’t expected the officers of the team to show up. That added more pressure to her. Well, they wanted to know if she was going to be a liability or another gun in the fight on patrols. Bay couldn’t blame them for wanting to know.
Listening to Gabe’s direction and information, she dialed in the elevation and compensated for the windage. She’d lived in mountains, albeit not high ones, but the formula was the same. Mountains made their own weather, and wind was the single biggest challenge to a sniper or a hunter. The wrong assessment of wind speed could knock a bullet off course.
Bay studied the large square wooden targets that were set at twelve hundred yards. There were three red circles to create the bull’s-eye. It was understood their shots had to hit the center. If they fell outside the center, then that shooter was the loser. She had three shots and so did Hammer.
Lifting her chin, Bay angled a look up at Gabe. “Hey, is Hammer a sniper like you?”
“Yes, he is. The medic we just lost was another of our snipers. The chief’s in a bind because there’s no one available to come into our team who is sniper qualified. He doesn’t like us without two snipers on every patrol.”
“Can’t blame him there,” Bay agreed. That was bad news because, as she’d found out by going on patrol with Special Forces teams, those snipers were a must. There were so many situations when a sniper would make the difference between a team taking on casualties and not. Snipers were called “force multipliers” for a reason.
Gabe watched her expression. He couldn’t see her eyes behind those wraparound sunglasses and wished he could. Her mouth was soft and she was relaxed. “Okay, we’re taking the first shot. Ready?”
Nodding, Bay settled down into her position. This was a natural position her father had taught her. It was the rifle in her right hand, resting against her right shoulder. Her left arm was tucked in front of her chest, the bipod giving her rifle stability. The stock had to fit firmly and comfortably against her right cheek. She wasn’t using a scope, rather the iron sights on the rifle itself. Hammer had insisted on iron sights only. It made hitting the target tougher. Very few ever used iron sights, the scopes superior and delivering on target all the time.
* * *
GABE GENTLY PATTED her cap, an old sniper signal that meant “shoot.”
The multiple variables of the shot ran through Bay’s mind as her eyes narrowed, her finger brushing the two-pound trigger, her right hand steady on the Win Mag stock. Her father had taught her there was a still point between inhalation and exhalation. It was when her breath left her body and before her lungs automatically began to expand to draw in a breath of fresh air into the body—this was the perfect time to fire the rifle.
The Win Mag bucked hard against her shoulder, the brute force of the recoil rippling spasmodically through her entire body. Gabe was watching through the spotter scope, following the telltale vapor trail of the bullet.
“Bull’s-eye!” Gabe yelled, thrusting his fist into the air.
Relief sped through her. Bay eased out of the position, amazed. “Really?” she asked Gabe. He was grinning as he turned to her.
“You hit it perfect, Doc. Good going. You’re dialed in.” Gabe lifted his head to see Hammer snarling a curse as he settled into position. He then turned back to Bay. “What? You didn’t think you’d nail it?” He laughed heartily.
Hammer nailed the first shot, too. There was a lot of clapping and cheering from the platoon as he’d made a successful shot. No one had clapped for her. Maybe, Bay figured, the guys were stunned she’d made the first shot at all. Gabe was the only one who believed in her. Knew she could do it. She felt warmth flow through her. There was an unexpected kindness to him that wasn’t easily discerned on the surface, but she was privy to it. That and the care and protection she could literally feel he’d encircled her with. It was unspoken, but there. In spades.
“Okay,” Gabe said softly, studying the flags. He watched the heat waves dancing across the flat area in front of them. They were showing a wind direction change. Leaning down, he told her to dial in to a different windage setting.
Bay settled in, focused. Her mouth compressed and she willed her body to relax. She desperately wanted to make this next shot, but the breeze was erratically shifting. It lifted several stands of her curly hair as she took a breath and let it naturally leave her body. Finger pressed against the trigger...breath out...still...fire... The Win Mag bucked savagely against her shoulder, the bark of the shot booming like unleashed thunder throughout the area.
“Bull’s-eye!” Gabe hooted, pumping his fist above his head.
There was some unexpected, serious applause going on behind Bay. She twisted around and saw all three officers and their chief strongly clapping, a show of support for her. They grinned at each other like raccoons finding a bunch of crayfish in a stream. As if congratulating themselves on having the good luck to have her in their platoon. Turning back around, Bay saw the look on Hammer’s face. He sneered at her and then settled in to take his shot.
Gabe patted her on the cap. “Damn fine shot. You’re doing great, Doc.”
“Couldn’t do it without you, Gabe. You’re feeding me good intel.” And Bay knew that a good spotter could make all the difference as to whether the shot was accurate or not.
“Bull’s-eye!” Oz shouted triumphantly as Hammer made the center circle.
More clapping, hooting and hollering erupted from the SEALs standing behind Hammer.
Bay wiped sweat from her upper lip. She could feel it running down her rib cage and between her shoulder blades. It was hotter than hell out in this afternoon sun on top of this eight-thousand-foot mountain.
Gabe’s hand settled briefly on her shoulder, giving her a silent order to get relaxed back into the prone position. Bay felt less trepidation as his long fingers curved around her shoulder, as if to tell her it was all right, that she was doing fine. He appreciated her efforts.
Gabe gave her spotter info, the flags now stronger and then falling off. It was the worst kind of wind to shoot in accurately, and Bay compressed her lips, worried. She placed the stock against her cheek, feeling the perspiration between her skin and the fiberglass stock. Inhaling, she allowed her breath to escape until she was in that millisecond still point. She squeezed the trigger. The Win Mag recoiled hard, jerking her shoulder, the tremors rippling down the right side of her body all the way to her booted foot.
“Bull’s-eye!” Gabe shouted, slapping her on the back, grinning.
A few more SEALs were clapping now. The officers looked elated. Chief Hampton, from what Gabe could see, appeared damn relieved. Again, Hammer cursed loudly and seemed furious. Gabe gave his teammate a wicked grin.
Bay got to her knees, clearing the chamber and safing the Win Mag in her arms. She sat down with the butt of the rifle resting on her hip and watched Hammer shoot.
“Bull’s-eye!” Oz shouted.
The SEAL came out of prone position, glaring over at her, triumph written on his hard, lined face.
“It’s a draw,” Chief Hampton called.
“Like hell it is!” Hammer protested. He jabbed a finger toward Bay. “Let’s do one shot offhand, standing.” His lips curled away from his teeth. “That will separate the men from the pantywaist girls here.”
Bay was startled at the dare. Standing position at a twelve hundred yards? Nothing to support her rifle but herself? Gulping, she swung a troubled gaze over to Gabe, who was kneeling at her side. He scowled hard at Hammer. And then he shifted his gaze and locked onto hers.
“Want to try it?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve never shot offhand at home,” she admitted, worried. “I always used a tree limb or tree trunk to steady my rifle barrel if I had to stand.”
Bay tried to ferret out what she saw in his narrowing green eyes as he considered her statement. Then Gabe rose fluidly to his feet, the spotting scope in his right hand.
“Hey, Hammer,” he called.
“What?” the SEAL snarled, dusting off the front of his cammies, holding his rifle above the dust rolling off him.
“Tell you what,” Gabe said in a reasonable tone. “Whoever gets closest to the red center is the winner.”
