An hour later, James, Cole, Derek and I were back in the training room, each of us working with a kid on our own. James was working with Angel, Derek with Alex, Cole with Cody, and I was working with Melanie. “You need to deepen your stance just a hair-” I paused, showing her what I meant “- and hold your fists up just a bit higher so no one can throw you off balance or punch you in the face.” James, Cole, Derek, and I were all interrupted by ringing cellphones. I cursed under my breath.
When we got off the line, we told the kids to take a break while I ran to get Damon. We had a situation developing off the coast of Cape Horn again. This time more than just one ship had been hijacked, and one of them belonged to the Nigerian Navy! “I think we should probably take back the Navy vessel first.” It was Derek talking. “I agree. The Navy vessel would have the most ammo on board.” Derek and I were talking as we were being brought in to the area on a high tech Navy Cutter. A Cutter could travel up to almost sixty knots, which was pretty astounding considering the fact that it was a hundred and thirty two feet long.
An hour and a half later, we were on scene. “I want a team of snipers on top of the bridge, one on the crows nest, and another on the fantail. Understood?” When I heard the affermative, I called all crew to battle stations and sprinted along the deck to a rigid rubber inflatible. Cole, Derek, Malcolm, and Smitty all piled in with me. We were going on board to try to take full controll of the bridge and eventually the rest of the ship.
When we reached the ship deck, we began taking heavy fire. “Malcolm, Cole, provide cover, Derek and Smitty follow me please.” I breached the bridge door and found the expected cadre of pirates inside. Some of them surrundered immedeatly, the rest were killed within seconds of our arrival. All in all, that part of the mission went pretty smoothly.
We arrived at the next ship in the nick of time. The pirates were milliseconds from killing off the crew when the five of us arrived to bust up their little party. “Cole, Smitty, left flank. Derek, Malcolm, right flank. I’m going to cause a distraction.” With that, we were off. I sprinted out in front of the line of pirates, screaming “What you got, Motherfuckers?! What you got?!” I probably looked like the craziest person on planet earth, and at that particular moment, I kinda felt like it, too.
An hour later, I was back on board the Cutter, having both assigned and lead teams to clear the vessels of pirates. When I finished my report, I snagged an MRE and waited for our next assingment.
About two and a half months later, we were all home again. I had repeatedly sent e-mails pushing Melanie and Cody to advance in their studies, and it seemed as if they had taken my advice to heart. When I arrived at home, it was to discover that not only had Melanie and Cody become fluent in basic French, Spanish, and Russian, but they were now working on becoming at least partially fluent in mandarin chinese. “You guys are really shaping up, fast.” I told Cody one day in the training room. I, a Navy SEAL, was thoroughly impressed with their progress. They had taken leaps and bounds when it came to knowledge, but their fighting skills could still use a bit of work.
Damon and I spent the next few days just getting used to being together again, managing pack affairs, and dealing with what we had both been through. Damon’s and James’es units had both been assigned to a trouble spot in North Korea, which Damon was kind enough to fill me in on. The leader of North Korea, Kim-jong un, had allowed news crews to see them launching missile prototypes towards the South Pacific. Damon and James had been sent on a covert op to neutralize the potential threat because it appeared that, for once, the North Koreans may have got it right. Based off of what had been seen of their plans, it was quite likley that they were building more of these missiles, enough that it was looking entirley possible that their goal was world domination. I immedeatley knew that I had a moral obligation to warn their most likley targets. If I didn’t, how would I be able to live with myself? I knew that if I got caught, I would face a long stretch of jail time or even possibly execution, but it is better that only one person who knows and is prepared to deal with it dies, rather than hundreds of thousands of innocent people, who had no inkling what was going on. Their most likley targets other than the United States were Russia, China, South Korea, Poland, Germany, the UK, France, Mexico, and Canada. I couldn’t call Blake if I didn’t have the contact information, because the less he knew about what I was planning, the better. Neither Damon nor James knew what I was planning, only Smitty did, because he insisted on coming with me. Somehow, the little weasle had found out what I was up to.
I hopped into the car, telling the others that I just needed to get some air and insisting that my newly appointed bodyguards stay behind. “Absolutley not, Carmen, I will not tolerate you going out alone anymore.” Damon growled at me. “I’m not going alone, Smitty is going to be with me. And besides, you do not controll me. I will go out whenever I want, wherever I want, and with whoever I want, because I am a Navy SEAL, and I can take care of myself, thank you quite much!” I snarled back at him. Our argument went on like this for another forty-five minutes until I finally just stormed out on him and, having lost my patience, issued an Alpha command that no wolf was to go after me as I ran out the door. I anticipated that I probably had about five minutes before Damon realized that I was alone. My wolf and I put all of our stregnth into keeping a strong mental barrier between myself and Damon, and Smitty drove us to Oceana so I could make the call in relative privacy.
I made it to my room, and slipped out my cell, scrolling through the menu and hitting redial when I found Dmitry’s number. “Hello?” “Dmitry, this is Carmen Cortez, We need to talk, now.” “Carmen? What is this about?” “You’ll see. I can’t say it over an unsecured phone line. We have to meet in person, asap.” “Meet me in the village of Novosibrisk on monday.” “All SF personel need to be informed as well Dmitry. I need to say it to all of you at once, so my government does not become suspicious of me. I’m going to be asking SF leaders from Mexico, Canada, the UK, the netherlands, Germany, South Korea, Poland, as well as France and Spain.” “And you are doing this all without your country’s knowledge?” “It wouldn’t be the first time.” I admitted. “You are willing to face imprisionment to save the lives of people you’ve never met before?” “Dmitry, I walked into this knowing that I could be killed for even talking to you. I believe that it is better that only one person, who knows what she is getting herself into, dies than that hundreds or even thousands or millions of innocent people die because one government ordered that something be kept a secret, do you not agree?” “I do.” His voice was hard and level. we both knew we could be seen as traitors for agreeing to meet, but also that it needed to be done.
Dmitry gave me the contact information of the other heads of SF in the countries I had listed. All of them agreed. We had to meet up. We also all agreed that Novosibrisk would be the perfect place to meet, and Monday almost wasn’t soon enough. After another hour or so of planning via confrence call with Dmitry and the others, the meeting location was moved to catherine palace in St. Petersburg.
An hour after I finished the planning, I finally drove home. It was nearly midnight, and I knew both Damon and James would be frantic. Hell, I couldn’t really blame them. “Smitty, none of the others can ever find out about this, okay? If the higher ups hear about what we just did, we’d both be lynched on the spot for treason, figuratively speaking.” “Carmen, I fully realize what could happen if this reaches ‘The powers that be’, but the others need to know.” “Smitty, anyone who is even suspected of having known about this could be killed on the spot, screw habeas corpus rights, if you know what I mean.” “You really think the government would take that risk?” “I don’t think they’d actually have a choice, Smit.” My tone was as grim as I felt.
When we pulled up to the pack mansion, it was a beehive of activity. I noticed Damon starting for my car out of the corner of my eye, and some protective instinct had me hiding Smitty as I made my way to Damon, before he could catch a whiff of the car. “Carmen. I thought I told you not to leave the fucking property!” He growled, crushing me to his chest. I pushed him away, still not having forgiven him for earlier. “I needed my space Damon. I still do, in fact. I only stopped back to get some clothes.” I knew it would hurt him to hear that. Hell, it hurt me just saying it. I quickly pushed past him, hiding my face. “Carmen! I’m really sorry! Please, don’t leave me! I’ll do anything!” It was downright painful, hearing the desperation in his voice. I forced my next words to sound as cold and uncaring as possible. “Sorry is just a word, Damon, and in this case it came way too late. I have to go. I leave in an hour for my next mission, anyway.” “Carmen! Please! Please just stay with me!” “I can’t, Damon. I can’t bear to be around you anymore, so please, leave me alone Damon.” Those last words felt to me as if I had just driven a knife through both of our hearts. It was all I could do to keep a blank face as I watched tears of agony rolling down his face.
