Right after I get through grounding your brother for the rest of his natural life, Megan thought. Leaving Chris asleep in his own bed would have been so much easier than getting him up, getting him dressed, and getting him upset. If Joey had been home when he was supposed to be, she could have done just that. Her frustration and anger at her older son grew.
“Okay,” Chris said sleepily. He lay against her more contentedly, and his breath whispered soft and warm against the hollow of her throat. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, baby,” she told him.
One of the three women on duty in the emergency baby-sitting facilities met her at the door. Since Megan had used the services before and was on file, all she had to do was show her military ID to check Chris in. Megan politely refused the young woman’s offer to take her son and carried him inside the room herself.
The room was filled with cradles and small beds. The constant state of readiness around the world was taking a terrible toll on military families. Emergency baby-sitting had become a necessary thing in these troubled times.
As Megan looked around, she was surprised to see that most of the beds were filled. She glanced at the woman who had checked her in. “Busy night, huh?”
“Yeah. Military support personnel got called in a few minutes ago,” the young woman said. “There’s been some kind of attack.”
A cold rush in Megan’s chest took her breath for a moment. “Where?”
“Turkey,” the woman said.
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I heard the news from one of the men who dropped off his daughter a few minutes ago.” She looked at Megan. “Do you have someone over there?”
“My husband.” Megan held Chris tightly. It hurt to think about putting him down and walking away from him. With Goose in danger, and Joey gone, she couldn’t think of being absent from her younger son.
But Gerry’s in danger, too, she told herself. Reluctantly, she placed Chris in one of the empty beds and pulled the sheet over him.
He looked up at her with those wide, blue eyes. “Night, Mommy.”
“Good night, baby.” Megan was surprised at the lump in her throat. “I love you. Say your prayers, honey.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Chris said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
“He will, darling. He will.” Megan ruffled her son’s hair and kissed him.
“I’m just going to sleep for a little while, Mommy, so you can come and get me soon.”
“I will, Chris. I’ll be right there for you. Promise.”
Yawning, his little nose wrinkling, Chris rolled over on his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in the space of a drawn breath.
Megan kissed her son once more, thankful for such a precious gift, and left the nursery. Her thoughts spun, filled with Gerry and Boyd Fletcher, wondering where Joey might be, and hoping that Goose was all right, because if she knew her husband, he would be in the middle of things.
4
The Mediterranean Sea
USS Wasp
Local Time 0657 Hours
Alone with the dead man in the small, refrigerated room next to the medical department that was sometimes used as a morgue, U.S. Navy Chaplain Delroy Harte gazed at the stationery before him and prayed that the proper words would come to him. God, help me. How do you write to a woman and tell her that her husband is dead? How do you write to his children and tell them that their father no longer lives?
Those were things agencies within the Department of Defense had been set up to handle. Even knowing that those agencies had already contacted the dead man’s family didn’t help him. Dwight’s family would expect a letter from his chaplain and good friend; a sad announcement would carry a more personal touch than the standard military communications. But the emotional cost of writing that letter was higher than Delroy had believed possible. He’d never, in his years in the military, been put in the position of writing one like it before. Letters for the dead, yes; he’d written those. But never a letter for someone who’d been his best friend.
The chaplain closed his eyes, aware of the familiar noises of Wasp coursing all around him, and tried to remember how his father had handled deaths within his small Baptist congregation in Marbury, Alabama. But Delroy Harte found no solace there. Josiah Harte had known every member of his congregation, all those souls who sat in the pews every Sunday to hear the hard-fisted, hellfire-and-brimstone sermons his father had delivered. His father had also known all of the townspeople who never darkened the door of the church till they were carried inside in a box.
Delroy had known the man who now lay in the black body bag on the stainless steel table a few feet away. Known him well and admired him greatly. He shifted and gazed at the body bag, hoping that an answer would somehow appear there. But it didn’t.
His father had been ten times the pastor Delroy had turned out to be. Josiah Harte had watched over his congregation and his family with love and wisdom, leading them with a stern hand and a gentle touch, guiding so many of them to fulfilling lives enriched with a sense of purpose.
Tense and fatigued, a condition that was hard to get into and almost impossible to escape, Delroy stood and stretched his legs. He stood six feet six inches tall. In high school, he’d been a power forward, one of the greatest basketball players the school had ever seen. People had believed he’d never make it through college without being drafted by the NBA. But that had been before he lost his father.
