Page 92 of The Forever Christmas Tree

I’m getting really tired of everyone calling me a fool. “Are you suggesting that I move to California?”

“I’m not suggesting anything.”

“Like hell you aren’t!”

“Don’t swear,” she said. Then she reached across the table and took one of his hands in both of hers. “Ethan, do something.”

Thus it was that two weeks later Ethan and Cassie were on a plane to San Diego. He had to wait that long for his daughter to be strong enough for the strain of travel.

Cassie, whose excitement was a palpable thing, thought that they should inform Wendy that they were coming. Ethan wasn’t taking a chance that she would nix the visit.

After renting a car at the airport, they drove to Coronado where Ethan got them a room at the famous Hotel del Coronado, which Cassie loved because it resembled a big white castle, albeit with a red roof. Soon after, he found the cottage where Wendy lived with two roommates. He left Cassie in the car while he went to the door, just to make sure he’d gotten the right place.

Diane, the WEALS known as Grizz, answered his knock. Leaning against the frame, arms folded over her chest, she just grinned. “Well, well, well! You lost, buddy?”

That is some welcome! Not a good sign for how Wendy is feeling toward me. “Hello, Diane,” he said, opting for politeness, instead of responding in kind. “Is Wendy here?”

“No, she’s over at the command center. It’s her turn this week to teach the newbie class.”

He breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t off on some dangerous mission that he would worry over. “Can we go over there?” he asked, indicating with a motion of his head toward the car that Cassie was with him.

Diane waved at Cassie, then told him, “I can give you a pass.” Belatedly, she asked, “Do you want to come in for a drink?”

“No, I’ll wait out here.”

She went inside and returned with a card which she handed to him. Then, she gave him specific instructions on which entrance to the base to use and where the command center was located.

“Thanks, Diane,” he said.

She studied him for a long moment and asked, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a fool?”

“A few people. Why?”

“What took you so long?”

If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad . . .

Wendy was on the O-Course of the grinder, the asphalt-covered PT area that sat like a prison yard in the middle of the command center buildings. Working out a group of WEALS trainees, she watched and occasionally yelled out orders to the scrungy women, hot and sweaty and dirty, just like her. After a three-mile run on the beach, wearing shorts, T-shirts, and heavy boondockers, they were rolling around in the sand for sugar cookies.

She set her stopwatch for twelve minutes and called out, “Ready, set, go!” The women immediately began a regimented series of exercises that involved the cargo net, the balance poles, the “hoo-yah logs,” rope swinging, the “dirty name log jumps,” the weaver, the tower climb, the monkey bar ladder, and the Slide for Life.

She’d performed and supervised this rotation so many times, she could do it with her eyes closed. For these few minutes, she had a chance to think. And any time she had a chance to think, her thoughts kept going back to that blasted Forever Christmas Tree. The blue spruce flourishing—heck, even the fact that it had survived—held significance. She wasn’t sure what, but she intended to find out.

Because her Christmas liberty had been cut in half, she had another week coming. And a few more days on top of that because of the two live ops she’d engaged in since the Afghan mission. Maybe she would go home to Bell Cove for Easter and get some answers.

Like, why had Ethan failed to respond to any of her text messages? The ones she’d sent soon after her departure from Bell Cove, and then shut down when she hit a figurative wall.

Surely, Ethan understood, without the details, that the curtailment of her liberty, and that of her teammates, had been made for an important reason. No sooner had they arrived back at Coronado than they’d been given a briefing. Three Marines captured and being tortured in a remote mountainous region of Afghanistan.

Being the professionals they were, a small team of two WEALS and four SEALs (her, Diane, JAM, K-4, Geek, and F.U.) were ready and HALOed within days onto a flat portion of the mountain. Wearing full-ruck, meaning about seventy-five pounds of equipment, including assault weapons in a sling over one shoulder, handguns in a thigh holster, and Ka-Bar knives in their boots, they had made their way leapfrog style out of the open area. Two operatives worked together, one running in a crouch position while covered by a partner from behind till the partner came forward and passed by to be protected by the first person in the same manner, over and over, till they reached cover.

They’d found the soldiers, one of them near death from injuries and repeated beatings, in a cave guarded by only two Taliban men, who were quickly eradicated. The whole operation took only two hours before they were back on the plane to Kabul. Easy peasy, which was not always the case. Like that 2005 incident in which sixteen SEALs and spec op troops had been killed when they’d tried to rescue four downed SEALs in those same mountains. Or the infamous Operation Gothic Serpent, which was the subject of the movie Black Hawk Down.

During SEALs and WEALS training, the instructors always drummed in the message that, in the most successful ops, the goal was accomplished with no shots being fired. That had not been the case for Wendy’s team that day two months ago. There had been three deaths. The two Taliban and the one Marine who died as he was being airlifted. Still, it was considered a successful mission.

Wendy was eight minutes into this PT rotation when Delphine, one of her roommates, came up to her and said, “Commander wants to see you. I’ll take over.”

She raised a brow. “What’s up?”