“I’m supposed to be out of here in two more days. Hell, in civilian hospitals they do this same operation, only tougher, as an outpatient procedure.”
The two doctors talked with DeWitt outside. “The commander is going to need physical therapy in another four weeks. He’s a SEAL, right? He won’t be back to lifting those logs or swimming twenty miles for at least three months. He’ll think he can. If he gets too active, he can tear the tendon apart again and we’ll have to start all over.”
“Understood, sir. We’ll baby him. Well, we’ll try. The commander has a mind of his own.”
“Might be, but right now his body belongs to us.”
“I’ll remind him of that, Doctor.”
DeWitt had been placed in temporary command of the Third Platoon. Which didn’t mean a lot. He did wrangle seven days of liberty for the men. Most of them scattered all over the country. He had laid out a three-day trip for himself. Milly had wanted to go north again, up into the wine country. They would leave tomorrow.
Master Chief Gordon MacKenzie had helped him over the rough spots the first few days. DeWitt had done the after-action report and filed copies with Admiral Bennington in Pearl and with his own CO here on base. Master Chief MacKenzie had hovered over DeWitt for three days until DeWitt told him to get back to his own office.
DeWitt had planned the usual fish fry for the first evening after all the troops were home from liberty and when at least Murdock and Ronson would be out of Balboa. His specialty was grill-fried salmon. But that was next week.
He closed up and drove home to his apartment, where Milly waited for him. She had taken the week off from her computer work.
“This week I’m forgetting about computer problems and networking and all that,” she had told him the first day he came home. “I’m devoting this week to you and saying a quick little prayer of thanks for your safe return. Sometimes I think I’m like one of those women in New England harbors who paced the skywalk on top of their houses where they could look out to sea. They walked every evening until sundown hoping they could spot the incoming sails of their husbands’ ships.”
“Glad you saw my sails coming in this time,” he’d said.
Now he watched her from the bed as she undressed. Damn, what a woman. She knew exactly what excited him. A slow striptease was one of them. It had been a long, tough day and he thought he might be too tired. But he wasn’t. Then she revived him an hour later, and again at three in the morning. He swore she had set an alarm clock.
“Not true,” Milly said. “I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there watching you. Then when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I woke you up. I hope you didn’t mind.”
He grinned and kissed her again.
The next morning they began their drive up the coast. They used her two-year-old Mercury Grand Marquis. It was a much better road car than his little Ford. He loved to drive it. They wound up the coast, then through Oakland to get around San Francisco and into the wine country. Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino. They never got past Napa.
The small bed-and-breakfast was right near a winery. “Brothers Wines, since l842.” He doubted the heritage date, but the wines were pleasant and they bought several bottles to take with them.
“At least this time I know where you were,” Milly said. “The Chinese invasion of Hawaii. They were idiots to think they could wade ashore on the foremost bastion of U.S. Naval power in the whole Pacific.”
“Did I say I was in Hawaii?”
She laughed. “You didn’t have to. You brought me that matching Hawaiian shirt and the flowered muumuu. I know I’m not a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon, but even I could figure that one out.”
She sobered. They lay in bed in another bed-and-breakfast, watching the countryside out the window. It was two hours before dusk and they hadn’t dressed since their last love-making.
“Hey, sailor. You’ve been a SEAL for three years now, right?”
“Three years, and almost a half.”
“Good. Just wanted to remind you that anytime you’ve had enough of getting shot at and stabbed and blown apart, I’ll be willing to take in your shattered body and help you move out of SEAL fieldwork.” He started to say something, and she shushed him.
“No, wait a minute. Everytime you go out there and put your life on the line for your country, I keep thinking and hoping that this will be the last time. So, nobody was killed on this mission. Great. One sailor in a couple of hundred thousand a year gets killed in the regular Navy. The SEAL death and injury rate is the highest in the Navy. I don’t have to ask anyone to know that. How many of your men have died in the platoon since you became the second in command?”
He frowned. “Not sure. Maybe eight or ten in the last three years. A hell of a lot too many.”
“One of those ten could have been you. Or might be you on the next two or three missions. We’re playing the odds here. Usually your men don’t get killed because they foul up or do something wrong. They are just in the wrong place at the wrong time when that bullet slams through….” She stopped. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She grabbed him and held him so tightly, she almost cut off his breath.
When her head came up where he could see it, he kissed her tears away, then kissed her eyes and rolled over on top of her.
“Oh, damn,” Milly said. “I did it again. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do it this time. When Maria Fernandez and Nancy Dobler and I had our weekly gab session at the restaurant, we promised ourselves that we wouldn’t talk about our men getting out of the SEALs. That’s a great support group we have. We’re good friends now.”
“I’m glad. How is Maria doing?”
“She’s better. She usually calls me once a week at night when you guys are gone. We talked almost two hours the last time. I think it helped.”
“She likes you.”
“I like her. Oh, did I tell you that Ardith Manchester called me two days before you came home? She said you were scheduled to return. Not sure how she knew. I phoned the other two girls. It’s great to have her on our side.”
“She’s on both sides. She probably knows more state secrets and hush-hush things than anyone in Washington.”
“She’ll be here as soon as Murdock gets out of Balboa.”
“I bet she will. They ever going to get married?”
She kissed him and grinned. “Are we ever going to get married?”
He watched her. She was serious. “I didn’t know that you were all that interested in…”
Her look stopped him. “Maybe not a year ago,” she said. “Now I am. I’m tired of being thought of as a fallen woman.”
“Who would even think that these days?”
“Lots of women. My mother’s friends in Boston are the case in point. They don’t think the sixties ever existed. They think that marriage is the only way to have sex.”
“We sure proved them wrong on that point.”
She didn’t laugh. Still serious.
“Hey, it takes three days to get married,” he said. “We only have one day left on our trip.”
“So go AWOL.” She sighed and shook her head. “Forget that last crack. I’m getting bitchy. That time of the millennium. Hey, right now it’s your call. I’m ready, willing, and able to tie the knot at any time or place you pick. How is that for a proposal?”
“Best one I’ve ever had.”
She hit him on the shoulder. “Nobody has ever asked you to marry her. You would have told me.”