“Look alive, Commander.” First Lieutenant Arturo Felix wheeled into the room and didn’t stop until he’d punched Mason on the arm so hard the discomfort distracted from his other aches. Arturo had been greeting him that way since the kid joined his team. Normally, Mason would punch him back, but not today. After delivering his blow, Arturo jumped an arm’s length from Mason’s hospital bed. For now, it was all he had to do to snuff any chance of retaliation.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” said Mason.
“You gotta be fast.” Arturo dragged a chair from the corner and sat, careful to remain an arm’s length away. “How you feelin’ today, old man?”
Mason pushed himself to a sitting position, his expression frozen on his face to mask the pain the movement caused. “Oh you know, trim. About ten pounds lighter.”
Arturo’s gaze bounced in the direction of Mason’s left shin, a long cylindrical lump beneath his sheets. To the right, the sheets fell flat after the knob of his knee.
Arturo motioned to the space.
“Quit whinin’. It’s below the knee. You’re like, golden, dude. You can get one of those badass blades or something. Run sixty miles an hour.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Mason chuckled. “You always were a leg-half-full kind of guy.”
“Yeah, well...” Arturo took a deep breath and looked at him with empathy.
Sympathy?
Mason looked away with a grunt.
“This is God’s way of telling you it’s time to retire,” Arturo added.
Mason stared out the window and nodded. He was an old man compared to the kids they kept sending to fill his teams. He remembered the forty-something man he’d served under as a baby SEAL in his twenties. The man had seemed a million years old. And now here he was. The old man.
“You gonna be an instructor?” asked Arturo.
“Nah. Not for me.”
“Gonna take that money and run?”
Mason laughed. “Right. Buy a yacht. Travel the world. Nothing makes you filthy rich like the service.”
“Well, hurry up and get your bionic leg.”
Arturo leaned in to smack his good leg.
Mistake.
Mason’s hand shot out like a snake strike to catch his friend’s wrist.
“Don’t make me embarrass you in front of all these nurses,” said Mason, smirking. He squeezed his friend’s wrist just enough to prove it had been a clean capture and then released.
Arturo chuckled, rubbing his wrist. “I was about to say I’ll buy you a shot at McP’s.”
Mason gasped. “A whole shot? Wow. If you told me sooner I would have ditched the leg years ago.”
Arturo offered some retort and Mason nodded, but his mind had wandered.
What am I going to do?
He didn’t want to be an instructor. He didn’t want to watch wave after wave of healthy young men run circles around his gimpy ass. He didn’t want to hear they’d been blown to bits. He’d been moving for so long—now life had taken the legs out from under him.
Well, the leg.
This time he couldn’t just volunteer for another tour. Throw himself into the mission. Forget about—
“Did you hear we lost Mick?” asked Arturo.
The name caught Mason’s attention. “What?”
“Mick McQueen. He’s dead, dude.”
Mason swallowed. “I thought he was retired?”
“He was, but, I dunno. Heard he got killed.”
“Killed? How?”
Arturo shrugged.
Mason wanted to reach out and shake the information out of his friend. “Accident? Health thing? Give me some details, man.”
“I don’t have any. Just heard he was dead and the situation was sketch.” Arturo squinted an eye and pointed at him. “Hey, didn’t you date Mick’s daughter or something?”
“Me?”
“No, the other lopsided asshole in the bed. I heard—”
“I didn’t think you could make up a rumor about me I haven’t already heard.”
“What can I say? You’re the legend.”
“Uh huh.”
Mason lifted the water on his bedside table and took a sip to hide his thoughts from Arturo.
Mick McQueen dead.
Does she know? Jelly? I have to find out how he died. If he was killed—
Arturo poked him in the arm and Mason’s attention snapped back to the present.
“I’m keeping your hand next time I catch it.”
His friend stood. “Right. Seems like you better start keeping spares. Hey, I have a present for you.”
“Yeah? Is it my leg?”
“Nah. Better than that piece of hamburger. Hold on.” Arturo turned his head and called into the hallway loud enough for patients three floors down to hear.
“Ensign Trevor!”
Arturo returned his chair to the corner as a man wearing the Navy’s tan type II camouflage uniform entered with a curly-haired mutt beside him on a short, black nylon leash.
The pup had grown, but Mason recognized its patchwork of white, gray and black. It had belonged to the kids of their last target and been left behind when they were evacuated. When his team breached the compound, the fire fight had put the Muppet in a panic. During a final sweep, Mason doubled back to grab the dog right as an overlooked combatant lurking in the home’s ductwork dropped a grenade into the hall. If he hadn’t turned back to save the dog, he would have lost more than his leg.
“That’s the puppy from—”
Arturo nodded. “Yep. Your lucky charm.”
Mason swung his left leg over the edge of the bed, dragging what remained of the right one with it.
“Let him go.”
Mason rested his foot on the ground and leaned his tush against the bed for balance. He slapped his thighs.
“Come on, boy.”
The ensign unclipped the dog’s leash from his harness and it bounded forward to put a paw on each of Mason’s knees, craning its neck to lick his face.
He rubbed the dog’s ears and bent to accept a wet kiss, puppy breath sharp in
