Suzanne Brockmann - The Admiral's Bride

When he said it like that, as if it were an absolute truth, even Matt could believe him.

The hospital was the pits, filled with pain and stink and death, but Matt knew he was only going to be there a little while longer.

He’d been given his orders, his medical discharge. He was going home to Lisa.

He was going to walk with a limp, probably for the rest of his life, but the doctors had managed to save his leg. Not bad for a guy who’d been left for dead.

“You’re looking much better today.” The nurse that stopped by his bed and checked his leg was a pretty brunette with two deep dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. “I’m Constance. You can call me Connie for short.”

He hadn’t seen her before, but he’d only been here about forty-eight hours. He’d spent most of that time in surgery and recovery.

“Oh, you’re one of Jake’s Boys,” Connie said as she checked his chart, her Georgia peaches-and-cream accent suddenly hushed with respect.

“No,” he said, “I’m not a SEAL. I’m a sergeant with—”

“I know you’re not a SEAL, silly.” She dimpled up again. “Jake’s SEALs don’t turn up in our hospital beds. We sometimes have to give them extra penicillin, but perhaps I shouldn’t mention that in mixed company.” She winked.

Matt was confused. “But you said—”

“Jake’s Boys,” she repeated. “That’s what we call you—the wounded men that Lieutenant Jake Robinson brings in. Someone started keeping count here at the hospital about eight months ago.”

At his blank look, she tried to explain. “Jake has developed the habit of resurrecting U.S. soldiers from the dead, Sergeant. Last month, his team liberated an entire prisoner-of-war camp. Don’t ask me how, but Jake and his team came out of that jungle with seventy-five POWs, each one looking worse than the last. I swear, I cried for a week when I saw those poor souls.” She shook her head. “I think there were ten of you this time, weren’t there? Jake’s up to…let’s see…I think it’s four hundred and twenty-seven now.” She dimpled again. “Although if you ask me, he should get extra points for the priest.”

“Four hundred and…”

“Twenty-seven.” Connie nodded, taking his blood pressure, her touch businesslike, impersonal. “All of whom owe their lives to him. Of course, we only started counting eight months ago. He’s been in-country much longer.”

“A lieutenant, huh?” Matt mused. “My captain couldn’t get even get one single chopper to fly in to pull us out.”

Connie bristled. “Your captain is a word I will not use because I am a lady. Shame on him for leaving you boys that way. He better not come to this hospital for his annual checkup. There are a dozen doctors and nurses who are dying to get a chance to tell him to turn his head and cough.”

Matt laughed, but then winced. “Captain Tyler tried,” he said. “I was there. I know he tried. That’s what I don’t understand. How could this lieutenant make things happen when a captain couldn’t?”

“Well, you know Jake’s nickname.” Connie looked up from her gentle but methodical checking of his shrapnel wounds. “Or maybe you don’t. His teammates call him Admiral. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he made it to that rank someday. He’s got something about him. Oh, yes, there’s something very special in those blue eyes.”

Blue eyes. “I think I met him,” Matt said.

“Sergeant, you wouldn’t just think it if you’d met him. You’d know it. He has a face like a movie star and a smile that makes you want to follow him just about anywhere.” She sighed, then smiled again. “Oh, my. I am getting myself worked up over that young man, aren’t I?”

Matt had to know. “So how did a lieutenant manage to get all those soldiers dropped into the area? There must’ve been hundreds of them, and—”

Connie laughed but then stopped, her eyes widening as she looked at him. “My goodness,” she said. “You don’t know, do you? When I heard about it, I didn’t quite believe it, but if they managed to fool you, too…”

Matt just waited for her to explain.

“It was a ruse,” she said. “Jake and his SEALs rigged a chain of explosives to fool the VC into thinking we’d launched a counteroffensive. It was just a distraction so he could get Captain Ruben’s chopper in to pull you out. There weren’t hundreds of soldiers in that jungle, Sergeant. What you saw and heard was solely the handiwork of seven U.S. Navy SEALs, led by one Lieutenant Jake Robinson.”

Matt was floored. Seven SEALs had made him believe there was a huge army out there in the darkness.

Connie’s dimples deepened. “Gracious, that man might be more than an admiral someday. He just might go all the way and become our president.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “I’d give him my vote, that’s for sure.”

She made a note on Matt’s chart, about to move on to the next bed.

“Connie?”

She turned back patiently. “Sergeant, I can’t give you anything for the pain for another few hours.”

“No, that’s not…I was just wondering. Does he ever come around here? Lieutenant Robinson, I mean. I’d like to thank him.”

“First off,” she said. “As one of Jake’s Boys, you and he are on a first-name basis. And secondly, no. You won’t see him around here. He’s already back out there, Sergeant. He’s sleeping in the jungle tonight—that is, if he’s sleeping at all.”

Washington, D.C., today

The Pentagon.

Dr. Zoe Lange gazed out the window of the limo as the driver pulled up to the Pentagon.

Damn.

She was way underdressed.

Her boss, Patrick Sullivan, had told her only that she was a candidate for an important and potentially long-term assignment. Zoe had figured that appropriate dress for such a meeting meant comfortable—blue jeans, running shoes, a T-shirt with a little blue flower print, and hardly any makeup. She was who she was, after all. If she were going to join a long-term mission, everyone might as well know exactly what to expect right from the start.

She didn’t dress up unless she had to.

Unless she were going someplace like, oh, say, the Pentagon.

If she’d known she was coming to the Pentagon, she would have put on her skintight black cat suit, her three-inch heels, dark red lipstick and worn her long blond hair in some kind of fancy French braid, rather than this high-school cheerleader ponytail she was wearing. Because men in the military tended to think female agents who looked like Emma Peel or one of James Bond’s babes could hold their own when the going got tough. But little blue flowers, nuh-uh. Little blue flowers meant they’d have to hand her hankies to mop her frightened tears. Never mind the fact that little blue flowers didn’t compromise her ability to run hard and fast, the way three-inch heels did.

Well, okay. She was here now. The little blue flowers were going to have to do.

She put on her sunglasses and picked up her oversize handbag that doubled as a briefcase and let herself be escorted by the guards into the building, through all the security checkpoints and into a waiting elevator.

Down. They headed down, further even than the B that marked the basement floor. Even though no more letters or numbers flashed on the display over the door, they kept sinking. What could possibly be this far down besides hell?

Zoe smiled tightly at the idea of being summoned for a meeting with the devil himself. In her line of business, it was entirely possible. She just hadn’t expected to meet him here in D.C.

Finally the elevator stopped and the doors opened with a subdued chime.

The hallway was a clean off-white and very bright, not the dimly lit, smoky magentas and red-oranges of hell. The guards waiting for her outside didn’t carry pitchforks. Instead they wore naval uniforms. Navy, huh? Hmm, wasn’t that interesting?