Troubleshooters: Headed For Trouble Part 23

Maggie nodded, getting the message that the accident could just as easily have happened here in Boston. "I love you, Mommy."

"I love you, too, monkey-girl."

"Hey! Hey! Arlene!"

They both looked up, and there he was, running toward them.

Jack.

And Maggie gave Arlene a push and it was all she needed to start running, too, toward Jack, and then, G.o.d, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.

His mouth was so warm, and he'd been drinking coffee, probably nonstop since he'd caught the plane from Nevada, but he'd made it.

And she didn't ever want to stop kissing him, but she had to go. And the tears that she always worked so valiantly to hide from Maggie escaped. "I'm so sorry," she told him.

"I know," he said as he turned her so that Maggie couldn't see her, even as she dug through her pockets for a Kleenex. "I'm in love with you, remember? I'm in love with you, and if I had to answer the question What would Arlene do, I would say that of course you'd go back."

She laughed as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, as she looked at him, trying to memorize him-his smile, his warmth, the width of his shoulders, the unruly lock of hair that fell into his eyes-for the cold and lonely days and nights she knew were coming.

He was looking at her just as intently, but then he pulled her close and kissed her face, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, her chin. "Vegas schmegas," he said as he pulled Arlene over to where Maggie was standing near Jules and the woman from the airline. "Mags, can I borrow your lucky ring?"

Maggie clutched the diamond ring that Arlene had just given her, but Jack was pointing toward the kelly green plastic leprechaun that she'd gotten at Laser-Mania.

"I need to borrow it for a few months," Jack added. "I hope that's okay."

Maggie nodded as she handed it to him.

But then Jack's full attention was back on Arlene. And as she gazed up into the warmth of his whiskey-colored eyes, he whispered, "With this ring, I thee wed," as he slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand.

She laughed both from her surprise and from the power of the emotion that filled her.

"We don't need to be in Vegas to start our lives together," Jack told her. "We don't even need to be together. You're mine now, and Leenie, I'm all yours, and when you come back, we'll go and sign whatever papers need to be signed and filed. But that won't change the fact that it starts right now. You and me. Forever."

As Jack kissed Arlene again she heard the attendant from the airline say to Jules, "I'm sorry, sir, the flight is full, otherwise I'd be more than willing to bend the rules."

"How about you let me go on and see if there's someone willing to take the next flight to JFK," Jules suggested, and Arlene knew he was trying to arrange a seat for Jack to go with her, at least as far as New York.

But Jack heard him, too, and he stopped kissing Arlene to say, "No, that's okay. Thank you, Jules, but it's best if I stay here."

With Maggie. He didn't say those words, but he didn't have to. Arlene knew that whatever happened-what was it that Mike Milton had said? That line from that movie? Come what may ...

Come what may, G.o.d help her, Jack would be there for Maggie, forever, too.

That vow he'd made may not have been legal, but it was real.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am," the woman from the airline said, and she really was sorry. She actually had tears in her eyes. This was probably the most up-close-and-personal she'd ever been to the reality of a war that was being fought on the other side of the world.

Arlene picked up her carry-on bag, but then she dropped it so that she could hug Jules, and then Jack, and then Maggie one more time.

And then Jules was holding out her bag for her. She slipped its strap over her shoulder as she gave her boarding pa.s.s to the woman and started down the ramp. But she turned as she walked, to look back, one last time.

Jack had his arm around Maggie, and Jules was standing solidly on her other side. "We'll keep the home fires burning," Jack called.

She nodded. "See you soon," she said, and got on the plane.

Epilogue.

Sgt. Arlene Schroeder Lloyd received an honorable discharge from the Army in February 2009. She, Jack, Maggie, and three-year-old Ian live in Needham, Ma.s.sachusetts, in a small house where they are joined several times a year by Jack's sons Luke and Joey.

Jack recently sold his first novel, and has found some significant acclaim as a political blogger for a popular online news site. Arlene works part-time at a little bookstore five minutes from their home.

They are happy, but life is not without turmoil. Especially ever since Mike Milton joined the Marines.

He currently serves in Afghanistan.

And Maggie e-mails him every day, without fail.

A SEAL and Three Babies

March 2009 This story takes place several weeks after Hot Pursuit, and a month or so before Breaking the Rules.

Chapter One.

The tiny country of Tarafashir A narrow portable stairway had been pushed up against the commercial airliner, and the metal pinged and shuddered under Sam Starrett's boots as he squeezed his way down to the airport runway. He had his son Ash in one arm, Ash's diaper bag over his shoulder, and not just one but two car seats in the other hand.

They were bulky and awkward, and it was all about getting a good grip-and having large enough hands.

Robin and Jules Ca.s.sidy were right behind him, wrestling with the third car seat along with a variety of the group's carry-on bags. Then Sam's wife Alyssa muscled down the two strollers they'd need for this months-long adventure, followed by Max and Gina Bhagat, who carried their freakishly polite three-year-old daughter, and their eight-month-old high-decibel soliloquist son, who was still bewailing the entire traveling team's frustration, discomfort, and bitter disappointment.

This little multifamily outing had quickly turned into a misadventure when their first flight was delayed-nearly six hours at the gate, and well over two on the tarmac, at J-Fing-K. As a result, they'd arrived in London at WTF o'clock, having missed their connecting flight, an event that had dominoed and created a need to take this latest several-hours-delayed flight which in turn had had a mild midair emergency with the electrical system, requiring that they land here, in the tiny country of Tarafashir, still a four-hour c.r.a.pfest from their final destination.

Sam was well aware that there were definitely worse places to make an unplanned landing-Libya, Pakistan, Kazbekistan, to name a few. At least T-fashir was U.S.-friendly and safe, although mostly p.i.s.s-poor. The government was a monarchy, and their leader a king who had, at one point, not just been a monk, but, according to legend, a stoner monk.

The country's major exports in past decades had been marijuana and opium. And although there was a vaguely successful program in place in which farmers who replaced their crops with soybeans received sufficient food and medical care for their villages, it was clear to Sam, just from looking at the badly patched and pitted runway, that the also-promised modernization of the Tarafashir infrastructure had again been delayed.

Possibly because the entire country still had a raging case of the munchies.

"They're holding our flight to Kabul. Gate one. It's on the other side of the terminal," Max Bhagat announced as he ended his phone call and slipped his cell into the pocket of his jeans before helping Gina juggle their two kids. Mikey, the eight-month-old, was usually as goofily, droolfully cheerful as Sam's son, Ash.

Usually.

Today Mike had fussed and worried his way through the seemingly endless flight, needing all four parental hands to cope. His sister, Emma-age three-going-on-forty-had been safely tucked in between her Uncle Robin and Uncle Jules. Emma had played for a while with one-year-old Ash-who'd gone into p.i.s.sed mode, no doubt at Mikey's stellar example, and who had decided he wouldn't even think about napping unless he sat on Uncle Robin's lap-until he'd finally fallen unconscious. Ash, that is, not Robin. At which point Em had no doubt spent the remaining hours of the flight discussing the socioeconomic ramifications of The Cat in the Hat with her patient pseudo-uncles.

The little girl was freakishly smart, impossibly polite and well-behaved, and way too somber for her own good. Plus, she was a tiny sponge-always, always watching and listening to the grown-ups around her.

"s.h.i.t." Jules now swore at Max's news about the flight to Kabul, not quite under his breath. He then made a face at Emma, whose brown eyes had become even bigger at his slip.

Sam found that to be one of the biggest discomforts of parenting-the inability to say s.h.i.t in times like these, when a pungent and heartfelt s.h.i.t was clearly needed.

In the past well-over-twenty-four-hours of nonstop, cranky-child-inducing, slow-mo travel, this was the one flight they could've stood to miss.

But as Emma giggled at the silly face Jules made, Sam made a note and filed it under useful information. The fact that Emma was capable of smiling, let alone giggling, was good to know.

Of course, Uncle Jules was special.

And not just because he was an FBI agent, or because he was fabulous and gay-married to a movie star.

Jules was ... Jules. One of a kind.

"It's all right, babe," Robin murmured, giving his husband a smile and a nudge with his shoulder. "We always know this might happen, anytime we travel. And it's good. You need to get there."

"Yeah, I know," Jules muttered back on a sigh. "I just wanted ... at least to be able to say goodbye properly."

"We got time," Sam pointed out. "They're holding the flight."

Max's announcement was good news in the big-picture sense-and not entirely unexpected considering that Max, a high-level FBI agent, had the President's private number among his list of contacts on his phone.

Sam turned to look at Alyssa, who took Ash from his arms.

"Mommy wants to say a bad word, too," she told their son, who gave her a drooly smile as he burbled some of his near-perpetual joy back at her, unaware of his own impending misfortune.

Alyssa looked back at Sam then, and he could see her unhappiness. This was the hardest part-she hated this kind of separation. She preferred working with him, but she knew d.a.m.n well that they couldn't both go out into dangerous, terrorist-filled countries. Not together. Not anymore. Because of Ash.

He and his wife risked their lives for a living-that wasn't going to change-but they could no longer risk them both at the same time.

And that sucked.

But it also didn't suck-again, because of Ash.

"We'll be fine," Sam told the woman who was not just the love of his life, but the best team leader he'd ever had. She was commanding, decisive, cool under pressure, compa.s.sionate, intelligent, and hot as h.e.l.l when she barked out orders. Yeah, he was going to miss working with her on this op, too. But he'd survive. "We're gonna be okay."

"I know that." Lys managed a smile as she locked Ash into the frontpack she wore, so she could carry those strollers while Sam humped it with the car seats and their carry-ons.

Together, with Max and Gina leading the way, with Jules and Robin on their heels, Sam and his family went into the airport's crowded terminal-a.s.suming this rusting and ancient World War IIaera Quonset hut could be called a terminal.

It was cooler inside, but only slightly. The building wasn't air conditioned, and the big fans overhead spun slowly, lazily. Sam could see the fading red paint of a sign for gate one on the other side of the structure.

"I just really wanted to help get you settled," Lys told him as they threaded their way through the crowd of locals, most of whom wore the unmistakable white robes that identified them as monks, their shaved heads gleaming in the cheap fluorescent lighting. "And I really don't like leaving you here. Tarafashir was not part of the plan. We shouldn't be the ones to leave first."

"We're gonna be okay," Sam said again. "Our flight's in just a few hours. Those of us who are small will change our diapers, those who are bigger will get something to eat that's hopefully neither dog or goat, and we'll all stretch our legs. We'll be fine, and then we'll be in a resort hotel on a private island in the Aegean sea."

Alyssa, Jules, and Max, however, would be not in a seaside resort hotel. They'd be in landlocked Afghanistan, sleeping in barracks or maybe even in drafty tents. They'd barely have time, after touching down in Kabul, to grab a meal before they went wheels up again, this time to the first of a half dozen FOBs-remote military forward operating bases in the mountains. The chosen FOBs were all regular stops on the standard USO tour, and the President was determined to visit at least one of them during his upcoming trip.

As members of the special advance advisory team in charge of providing information to ensure the President's security during his impending visit, they would have to evaluate them all.

Over at gate one, Max had set down the various pieces of luggage he'd been carrying, and was group-hugging his wife and children. It wasn't until he kissed Gina that Sam realized exactly what Jules had said.

I just wanted at least to be able to say goodbye properly.

Jules's wanting to say goodbye properly had nothing to do with time, and everything to do with the fact that while Tarafashir was ruled by a U.S. approved monarch-slash-dictator, and while visiting Americans were treated with respect, the royal family and governing body was socially conservative, and h.o.m.os.e.xuality was illegal.

And that meant that even though Jules and Robin were lawfully wed in the state of Ma.s.sachusetts, saying goodbye with a PDA more extreme than a handshake was likely to get them thrown into jail.

And that-a goodbye said with a handshake-was not okay with Sam.

Not while there was a chance-a slim one, but definitely a chance-that Jules wouldn't return from this mission.

So Sam unloaded the car seats next to Max and Gina, who were still lost in their own private world, and he quickly kissed Alyssa on the mouth. "Don't get on that plane until I get back."

She laughed at that. "I won't, because I'm not taking Ash to Afghanistan."

"Good." He grabbed Jules with one hand, and Robin with the other, and pulled them over toward the obvious international sign for the men's head. The bathroom was a single-seater with a door that didn't lock. Pushing it open, Sam saw that it was, at least, empty.

"Tech check," he said to Jules, who nodded his understanding as he ushered Robin inside, closing the door tightly behind them.

Sam then stood in front of that door, arms folded across his chest, his message clear to everyone despite the potential language barrier: Find another bathroom. This one's taken.

Chapter Two.

"Tech check?" Robin repeated, confused as Jules closed the men's room door behind them.

No doubt Jules had understood Cowboy Sam's cryptic message, because he was scanning the ceiling and the walls, and even looking along the concrete floor and behind the toilet that hadn't been cleaned. Ever.