herself as well as everyone else.
She could feel Harvard watching as she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. He moved closer, still looking to catch her if she fell. It was remarkable, really. Every other woman she knew would’ve been dying for a good-looking man like Senior Chief Daryl Becker to play hero for them.
But she wasn’t every other woman.
She’d come this far on her own two feet and she wasn’t about to let some silly bump on the head undermine her tough-as-nails reputation.
It was hard enough working at FInCOM, where the boys only grudgingly let the girls play, too. But for eight weeks, she was being allowed access to the absolutely-no-women-allowed world of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
For the next eight weeks, the members of SEAL Team Ten’s invincible Alpha Squad were going to be watching her, waiting for her to screw up so they could say to each other, See, this is precisely why we don’t let women in.
The SEALs were the U.S. Navy’s special operations units. They were highly trained warriors with well-earned reputations for being the closest things to superheroes this side of a comic book.
The acronym came from sea, air and land, and SEALs were equally comfortable—and adept—at operating in all of those environments.
They were smart, they were brave and they were more than a little crazy—they had to be to make it through the grueling sessions known as BUD/S training, which included the legendary Hell Week. From what P.J. had heard, a man who was still in the SEAL program after completing Hell Week had every right to be cocky and arrogant.
And the men of Alpha Squad at times could be both.
As P.J. forced herself to walk slowly but steadily away, she could feel all of Alpha Squad’s eyes on her back.
Especially Senior Chief Harvard Becker’s.
CHAPTER TWO
HARVARD DIDN’T KNOW what the hell he was doing here.
It was nearly 0100. He should have gone back to his apartment outside the base. He should be sitting on his couch in his boxers, chillin’ and having a cold beer and skimming through the past five days’ videotapes of The Young and the Restless instead of making a soap opera out of his own life.
Instead, he was here in this allegedly upscale hotel bar with the rest of the unmarried guys from Alpha Squad, making a sorry-assed attempt to bond with FInCOM’s wunderkinder.
Steel guitars were wailing from the jukebox—some dreadful song about Papa going after Mama and doing her in because of her cheatin’ heart. And the SEALs—Wes and Bobby were the only ones Harvard could see from his quick scan of the late-night crowd—were sitting on one side of the room, and the three male FInCOM agents were on the other. Not much bonding going down here tonight.
Harvard didn’t blame Wes and Bob one bit. FInCOM’s fab four didn’t have much in common with the Alpha Squad.
It was amazing, really. There were something like seventy-three-hundred agents in the Federal Intelligence Commission. He’d have thought the Chosen Four would have come equipped with superhero capes and a giant S emblazoned on the fronts of their shirts at the very least.
Timothy Farber was FInCOM’s alleged golden boy. He was a fresh-faced, college-boy type, several years shy of thirty, with a humorless earnestness that was annoying as hell. He was a solid subscriber to the FInCOM my-way-or-the-highway way of thinking. This no doubt worked when directing traffic to allow clear passage for the President’s convoy, but it wouldn’t do him quite as well when dealing with unpredictable, suicidal, religious zealots.
No, in Harvard’s experience, a leader of a counterterrorist team needed constantly to adjust his plan of attack, altering and revising as unknown variables become known. A team leader needed to know how to listen to others’ opinions and to know that sometimes the other guy’s idea might be the best idea.
Joe Cat had consulted with Alan “Frisco” Francisco—one of the best BUD/S training instructors in Coronado—and had purposely put blustery Tim Farber in command of the very first training scenario in an attempt to knock him off his high horse. A former member of the Alpha Squad who was off the active duty list because of a permanent injury to his knee, Frisco had duties that kept him in California, but he was in constant contact with both Alpha Squad’s captain and Harvard.
Still, judging from the way Farber was holding court at the bar, surrounded by his two fellow agents, it was obvious to Harvard that Frisco’s ploy hadn’t worked. Farber was totally unperturbed by his failure.
Maybe tomorrow, when Alpha Squad reviewed the exercise, the fact would finally sink in that Farber had personally created this snafu, this grand-scale Charlie Foxtrot.
But somehow Harvard doubted it.
As Harvard watched, Farber drew something on a napkin, and the two other FInCOM agents nodded seriously.
Greg Greene and Charles Schneider were around Harvard’s age, thirty-five, thirty-six, maybe even older. They’d spent most of the preliminary classroom sessions looking bored, their body language broadcasting “been there, done that.” But in the field, during the evening’s exercise, they’d shown little imagination. They were standard issue FInCOM agents—finks, as the SEALs were fond of calling them. They didn’t make waves, they followed the rule book to the last letter, they waited for someone else to take the lead and they looked good in dark suits and sunglasses.
They’d looked good smeared with yellow paint from the terrorists’ weapons, too. They’d followed Tim Farber’s command without question, and in the mock ambush that had resulted, they’d been rather messily mock killed.
Still, they hadn’t seemed to learn that following Farber unquestioningly might’ve been a mistake, because here they were, following Farber still. No doubt because someone higher up in FInCOM had told them to follow him.
Only one of the four superfinks out there tonight had openly questioned Farber’s command decisions.
P. J. Richards.
Harvard glanced around the bar again, but he didn’t see her anywhere. She was probably in her room, having a soak in the tub, icing the bruise on the back of her head.
Damn, he could still see her, flung backward like some rag doll when that paint ball hit her. He hadn’t gone to church in a long time, but he’d silently checked in with God as he’d called for the training session to halt, asking for divine intervention, praying that P.J. hadn’t hit that tree with enough force to break her pretty neck.
Men died during training. The risk was part of being a SEAL. But P. J. Richards was neither man nor SEAL, and the thought of her out there with them, facing the dangers they so casually faced, made Harvard’s skin crawl.
“Hey, Senior Chief. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Lucky O’Donlon was carrying a pitcher of beer from the bar.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, either, O’Donlon. I was sure you’d be heading out to see that girlfriend of yours at warp speed.”
Harvard followed Lucky to the table where Bobby and Wes were sitting. He nodded a greeting to them—the inseparable twins of Alpha Squad. Unidentical twins. Bobby Taylor came close to Harvard’s six foot five,
