"So?"
"So I was telling some of the guys about what happened with me and Christine. I mean, they knew I was up for captain's mast, and they'd heard scuttlebutt about what had happened. So I told them." He made a wry face. "And they started calling me something."
"What?"
"Jaybird."
"As in 'naked as a,'" Murdock said, laughing. "Hey, it fits!"
"Yeah, well, it don't any longer, sir. You see, by getting shipped to the East Coast, nobody there'll know about me. I can tell 'em anything. 'Jaybird' will be safely buried back in Coronado."
"Don't be too sure about that, David. The Navy's a tight, close community, and the SEALs are tighter and closer yet. Hell, there probably aren't many more than a thousand SEALs in the world today. You're always running across some guy you knew at another duty station."
"Aw, you know how East and West Coast SEALs are always running each other down. I figure I'll be safe enough in NAVSPECWARGRU-Two. Don't you think?"
"It's possible, I guess." Murdock had been thinking a lot lately about that rumored chasm between east and west. How readily were the men in his new platoon going to accept him? "Where are they putting you anyway?"
"I don't know yet, sit, but I hear there's an opening in one of the action Teams. I've still got about two months to go on probation, so I've really got to keep my nose clean after all the fuss back at Coronado."
"I should damn well think you'd better, Jaybird," Murdock said, grinning.
"Aw, Lieutenant, don't call me that. Hey! What's your new station?"
"They've got a platoon waiting for me. Don't know any more than that."
"Huh. Maybe we'll be seem' each other again at Little Creek!"
"Could be. Anything's possible. Especially for SEALS."
2130 hours (Zulu -5)
Samelli's Bar
Norfolk, Virginia
They'd come to Samelli's to do some serious drinking, a part of the ongoing wake for the Lieutenant. MacKenzie ordered his usual Bombay gin, a taste he'd acquired during his tour with SEAL Team Six back in the eighties, then turned to face the gloomy cavern of the bar.
Things were just getting warmed up. Radioman First Class Ronald "Bearcat" Holt was on the floor of the bar, braced in push-up position on his fingertips. Lucy, one of the waitresses at Samelli's, was stretched full-length face-up on his back, bracing herself by gripping his belt. She looked tiny, and a little apprehensive.
"Okay!" Fernandez shouted, waving a fistful of money. "Gimme a hundred! Ready... go!"
"Hold it!" Roselli called, waving his hands. "Hold it!" Reaching down his leg, he slipped the black, double-edged leaf-blade of a Sykes-Fairbairn commando knife from a boot sheath.
"Hey, hey!" one of the bartenders warned. "No weapons in here! You guys know the rules!"
"It's all right!" Roselli replied, grinning. "Everything is perfectly under control. We must observe all the propri... all the propri... Everything's got to be kosher here! But this here op is turnin' into a damned sneak-and-peek!" Lucy's short skirt had hiked up on her thighs, exposing white panties.
Delicately, without touching her legs, Roselli used the point of his knife to tug the skirt back into a less revealing position. "Looks like real delicate surgery, Razor," Boomer said.
"Well, yeah," Roselli replied. "But we wouldn't want no Tail-hook charges brought against us, fellas, now would we?"
Some of the SEALs cheered, while others booed him. "You're a real gentleman, Razor," Lucy said sweetly. Several SEALs groaned at that, and Boomer hit him with a fistful of popcorn.
"Hey, I can't help it if I'm just too impossibly cool to be believed," Roselli said. "Right, the bets are covered, the lady's covered, are we set, gentlemen? Okay, go!"
Holt began performing push-ups at the rate of one per second. Some of the other SEALs began counting cadence. "One! And two! And three! And four!"
"C'mon, Holt, no cheating! All the way down!"
"I'm going' all the way down!"
"I don't think she's heavy enough!"
"Yeah, why don't you try it with a telephone pole?"
"Or Big Mac!"
"Screw you, Razor!" Holt called out.
"An' twelve! An' thirteen! An' fourteen!"
Another quiet Friday night at Samelli's, MacKenzie thought, wrapping his big hands around his glass of Bombay gin. Samelli's, a little bar and restaurant on Little Creek Road in east Norfolk, had long been a popular watering hole for naval personnel, but since the creation of Team Seven it had become virtually a private domain, SEAL territory, and all others enter at your own risk.
"He's getting' tired. Look at his face!"
"Aw, he's just getting' warmed up!"
"...twenty! An' twenty-one! An' twenty-two!"
Actually, MacKenzie reflected, it was rather quiet tonight, and that worried him. There were only seven SEALs in the whole place, counting him, all wearing civvies and none of them even bothering with the handful of Marines and Navy personnel already there when they arrived. Outwardly the boys were as rambunctious as usual, and as determined to get drunk, but there was a hard edge to their laughter, a bitterness to their jokes and banter that typified what MacKenzie had been noticing all week.
The platoon's morale was way the hell down. Lately, good-natured hazing or kidding was more likely to be taken as an insult, and there'd been a number of fights during the past few days. In a booth over in one corner, Doc Ellsworth was ignoring the push-up contest. He'd picked up two pretty SEALettes, a blonde and a redhead, and was demonstrating his famous double-beer-drinking trick, holding two open bottles of Budweiser upended in his mouth at once, no hands, and chugging the contents down in a steady series of gulps. The girls, a couple of military groupies MacKenzie had seen hanging out at Samelli's with his boys before, watched wide-eyed. The rest of the SEALs were clustered around Holt and Lucy.
"Forty-three! Forty-four! Forty-five!"
Doc spit out the two empty bottles, then leaned across his table. "Aw, shit, guys!" he called. "Wouldn't it be better if Lucy was underneath him while he was doing that?"
"Yeah Doc's right! Hey Holt, you dumb ass! You got it backward! The girl's s'posed to be under you!"
"Fifty-two! Fifty-three! Fifty-four!"
"Wait! Wait!" Garcia shouted. "I'll fix it!" The SEAL positioned himself, then dove head-first toward the two people on the floor, landing on top of Lucy, who squealed and wiggled beneath him. Holt oofed and staggered a bit under the impact, then continued pumping away. "Sixty! Sixty-one! Sixty-two!"
"Hey, it's a Lucy sandwich!" Nicholson called. "Samelli's house specialty! Looks real good!"
Roselli laughed as Garcia kissed Lucy on the cheek. "Looks like fun, anyway. Can anybody play?"
"What the fuck's going' on back there?" Holt demanded from the bottom of the pile, though he never missed a beat. "Garcia! Get your ass off of there! That ain't in the bet!"
"Yeah, get the fuck out of there, Garcia!" Miguel Fernandez shouted, his dark face flushing darker as he advanced on the unlikely, heaving trio. "I got money riding on Ron and you're screwin' up the bet!"
"That ain't all that's riding on Ron," Roselli said, snickering.
Fernandez grabbed Garcia by his waistband and hauled him off Lucy bodily. She gave a loud scream and almost fell off Holt.
"Put me down, you pussy!" Garcia bellowed.
"Who's a pussy, you piss-balled, penny-pricked little son of a bitch?" In an instant, the atmosphere had transformed from camaraderie to vicious, flaring anger. Fernandez launched a swift right hook that connected with the side of Garcia's head and sent him tumbling across a table.
"Knock it off, you two!" MacKenzie bellowed, moving toward the two antagonists. On the floor, Holt kept doing his push-ups with Lucy still clinging to his back.
Garcia scrambled up off the floor and came back, fists clenched, but when he threw a punch it was only a feint. His foot came up instead, slamming into Fernandez's side.