a life-or-death situation at any second of any hour. There’d been the extreme sleep deprivation for months at Ranger School. The steady, prolonged pressure of four years at West Point. Those had each been their own sort of hell, but he’d made it through each one because he’d had a sense of purpose during them.
He also hadn’t been a father during any of them.
He wasn’t feeling particular purposeful this week. Nobody in the battalion seemed to be. As the staff arrived one by one, Aiden glanced at the array of expressions: resignation, anger, glumness. Plain old bad moods—and this was the senior leadership. The barracks full of eighteen-and nineteen-year-old privates must be a real barrel of laughs. Dragging an unmotivated unit through an unnecessary exercise? Yes, that counted as a kind of hell, when it took his children away from him.
He’d survive it, of course. He could survive anything, and he’d learned that not overseas or in a Georgia swamp or in the granite-walled environs of a military academy. He’d learned that in a hospital, by his wife’s bedside. He could survive anything, even if he didn’t want to, even if it was grossly unfair of the universe to expect him to take another breath.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the brown flatness, and missed the unsullied joy of his daughters. They gave him breath. They gave him purpose. They gave him happiness. They were gone until Christmas Eve. He rubbed the two pennies between his fingers.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” The battalion commander entered the boardroom with energy, clapping his hands together and rubbing them in anticipation. It was entirely too much cheer for the start of a three-hour meeting.
Aiden turned away from the window and took his seat.
“The preparations for this exercise have been executed in an outstanding manner,” the battalion commander said, then he turned to Aiden. “Major Nord, well done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was an unexpected way to open a meeting, but Aiden supposed he couldn’t ask for better than that. The commander went around the table, congratulating each staff officer and each of the four company commanders, including Tom Cross, Aiden’s new neighbor. Captain Cross and his wife, Captain Helen Pallas, had bought the acreage adjacent to Aiden’s. Their new house was not quite complete. They’d moved in about a month ago, anyway.
“Which brings me to the highlight of this meeting.”
Aiden exchanged a look with the executive officer, who raised his brow and shrugged. Neither of them had been informed there was going to be a highlight of this meeting.
“The powers-that-be have completed their review of the plans and preparatory work we’ve submitted. They are certain that we have prepared for every contingency.”
A few of the officers and senior NCOs gave appropriately restrained, indoor hoo-ahs in response.
“In fact, they are so certain we’ll ace this exercise, they have decided not to hold the actual exercise.”
Silence.
The lieutenant colonel seemed to enjoy it. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, try to control yourselves. I know you were looking forward to ninety-six hours of no sleep and delicious MREs, but you’re going to have to find a way to cope with a training holiday instead.”
A training holiday? Time off without having it counted against his annual leave? Time off when he’d been expecting to work around the clock for days? Time off?
The stunned silence held. It was like they’d all just witnessed a Christmas miracle.
Aiden didn’t trust it. “The entire exercise, sir? The brigade as well as the battalion?” If the brigade was still a go, then he would still work. The brigade S-3 would want input from the battalion S-3.
“The whole enchilada. I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that, in addition to reviewing our plans, someone higher up also reviewed the amount of fuel the exercise would require and the amount of fuel budget they had left for the year. They don’t have a burning need to deploy hundreds of vehicles across Central Texas’s highways this week, after all.”
All around the table, faces were starting to smile.
The commander was openly laughing. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of their spouses reviewed the calendar with them, too. This level of exercise being conducted this close to Christmas while all the kids are out of school was guaranteed to piss off some very important spouses—or entire organizations of spouses.”
No kidding.
Aiden’s surprise was wearing off. Anger was taking its place. Couldn’t they have foreseen the blow to morale among the military families? Couldn’t they have counted their damn money and their damn fuel and canceled the whole damn enchilada sooner? Before he’d promised his sister that she could have his girls for the week?
The three-hour meeting was over in five minutes.
The battalion commander stayed, wishing each person a happy holiday as the team cleared out with alacrity, everyone dialing their cell phones as they left to give their families the good news. Aiden was in no hurry. He had no one to dial.
Only one person came in the door instead of out, and that was Captain Helen Pallas, who’d no doubt sprinted over from the brigade headquarters building to see her husband.
They were both in uniform, so they could not share any newlywed hugging and kissing—thank God, because Aiden couldn’t leave before he gathered up the papers it turned out he didn’t need—but their high five, a hard slap of victory, made up for it. Just the sound of that clap made his hand sting.
“Pack your bags,” Helen said. “We’re going to Europe, baby.”
“We’re what?” Tom asked.
Aiden stacked papers and listened as his new neighbor explained that she’d set up a house swap with an old friend in Belgium.
“How long before I knew the exercise was canceled did you know?” The laughter and approval in Tom’s voice as he spoke to his wife gave Aiden another pang of...wistfulness. He remembered what that had been like, to have a coconspirator. A friend. A lover. Long ago—it felt like a million years ago.
Helen made a show of checking her watch. “About fifteen minutes.”
“You set all this up in fifteen minutes?”
She pretended to dust off her fingernails on her camouflage lapel. “That’s right. One European honeymoon, arranged in fifteen minutes. We’re already on the list for a Space-A flight to NATO headquarters tonight. If we don’t get a seat, then we’re going standby on a commercial flight to Amsterdam out of Austin, and we’ll rent a car and drive to Brussels. Colonel Reed already signed my leave form. Any questions?”
Tom looked past her to the battalion commander. “Can I get a leave form signed in the next half hour, sir? I hope the answer is yes, or else I’m apparently going to miss my own honeymoon.”
Helen turned to Aiden. “Major Nord, I hate to impose on you. My friend India will take care of our dog once she gets to our house, but there’s going to be about ten hours where we’re passing each other over the Atlantic.
