Page 17 of Eight Years (The Trident Trilogy 1)

Chapter Ten

Baghdad, Iraq

2003

Mack was two months into a three-month deployment in Iraq. The last month was always the toughest on him. He had to manage his excitement about being close to seeing Millie again with being focused every last minute he was here. Lack of focus could get him or his teammates killed, but every day he got closer to seeing Millie, he felt like he lost just a little bit of his clarity.

Millie always made him a drawing for every day he was going to be gone on deployment, with countdown numbers on the top of each one. Mack pulled that day’s drawing out first thing every morning. They became like a lifeline to him. Beatrice helped Millie count out how many drawings she would need, and then helped her pack them into an envelope for Mack to take with him when he left. Beatrice always had a soft spot for Mack growing up, and it had transferred over to Millie. At least she was able to protect Millie from absorbing too much of Camille’s crazy while he was gone.

“Let me see today’s drawing,” said Chase, Mack’s team leader, as he walked over.

Smiling, Mack held up the drawing of the butterfly. At least half of her artwork had something to do with butterflies.

“She’s quite the little Picasso already,” Chase said. “You still trying to train her up?

“Yeah, she’s a crazy good swimmer already. Decent shot for as little as her hands are still,” Mack said proudly. “The only thing I’m worried about is her self-defense skills. She’s not taking to it.”

“She’s only eight years old, dumbass. She doesn’t need to be a Krav Maga master just yet,” Chase said, rolling his eyes.

Mack knew that Chase was messing with him, but he really was getting worried about Millie’s lack of interest in his self-defense training. She’d taken so readily to swimming and shooting, but he just couldn’t get her to focus on hand-to-hand defense.

“If you’re trying to make her the first female SEAL, I think Demi Moore has already beaten her to that,” Harry chimed in from the corner of the room.

Mack laughed. There was little to no chance of that. First, he’d never allow her to be in the military, and second—and more importantly—she had the focus of a drunk bird. As she’d gotten older, their conversations had started to physically wear Mack out. Following her train of thought was like watching a pin ball bounce unrestrained through the machine.

Last time he was home, he’d been working with her on perfecting an army crawl. He bought a pair of fake night-vision goggles so they could try an assault in the dark. He told her to crawl through the corn stalks in Camille’s garden to see if she could sneak up on him undetected. After waiting ten minutes for her to crawl only fifty feet, he decided to flank her. He snuck around from the back and started crawling through the garden to surprise her. He was twenty feet away when he heard her singing. He got closer to find her on her back, goggles on top of her head, looking up at the stars through the stalks. He grabbed her foot before she even knew he was anywhere near her. She definitely didn’t have a future as a special forces operator.

“You know it’s been eight years, man,” Chase said quietly to Mack. “There’s nobody coming for her. You need to pull back the defenses a little.”

“Yeah, I know, but even just in everyday life, you know, if I’m not here, I want her to be able to protect herself,” Mack said.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, but if it does, I’ve got her. Mariel and I will make her one of our own. You know that,” Chase said.

“And if you’re gone, too, what happens then?”

“Then Harry’s got her or Clem, and on down the line. You know how this works. She’s family. Someone is always going to have her back,” Chase said.

“I don’t want Clem anywhere near my daughter. Ever. No matter the circumstances,” Mack said.

“Roger that,” Chase said, laughing as he headed to the showers.

Chase was Mack’s best friend. They’d known each other since Mack joined Chase’s team. He knew Chase would die defending him but more importantly, he’d die defending Millie. Chase was the only one who knew the entire story, and he’d never told anyone, not even his wife.

Mack remembered the day he’d received the phone call telling him he had a daughter. The man on the other end of the phone spoke with a heavy Slavic accent that made it almost impossible for Mack to understand what he was saying. Mack finally recognized he was talking about Nejra, the woman he’d worked with when his team was assigned to Sarajevo. The man said Nejra had gotten pregnant with Mack’s baby. He had slept with her several times, but he’d always used protection, so his first thought was that her family was trying to shake him down for money.

The man continued, telling him that Nejra’s brother had murdered her in an honor killing. Nejra was Muslim, and Mack knew she had a brother. He guessed it could be a possibility, but he didn’t think it seemed likely. The man told him the brother was going to kill the baby if Mack didn’t come over to Bosnia to get her. Now, Mack just thought it was a set up to kill him for sleeping with Nejra.

The man quickly hung up without leaving his name or number. Luckily, he had called Mack at the base. Mack had their intelligence team trace the call. He only had to do a little research on the man who called to figure out his connection to Nejra was legitimate. And he found out, sadly, that Nejra had died, although the official cause of death was listed as natural causes.

Chase advised him vehemently against going over to Bosnia, but he knew Mack was determined, even if he had to go AWOL. There was something in Mack’s gut that made him feel like the man on the phone was telling the truth. Chase gave him two weeks’ leave, telling everyone that Mack had to handle a family matter.

Mack located the baby within a day of being in Sarajevo. Nejra’s brother still had her. By what Mack had been able to put together, the baby had to be at least two months old. If the story was true, he wondered why the brother hadn’t killed the baby yet. Mack observed them for almost a week. The brother took the baby out with him when he left the building to go to the market, visit friends, whatever, but he always left her in the apartment when he went for prayers at the mosque.

Mack spent days trying to determine how to decide if the baby was his without tipping anyone off. He’d almost decided just to confront the brother when, one day, he was observing them and caught a glimpse of the baby’s bright red hair through his binoculars. A bolt of electricity surged through his body. He knew right then that the baby was his.

Mack waited for the next time the brother left for the mosque, and just walked in and took the baby. He realized he was committing an international crime that could land him in jail for life or get him killed, but he didn’t care. His gut was telling him this was his baby, and he wanted to get her out of there.

He flew all the way back to New York without anyone questioning him. He told everyone his wife had died in childbirth, and he was taking the baby home. The flight attendants flocked around the baby the entire flight, helping him feed and change her. Mack had no idea what to do with a baby, so they saved him. He looked helpless, and he was for maybe the first time since he was the baby’s age.

Mack had a paternity test done first thing when they got to New York. She was a hundred percent his. He hadn’t really considered what he would do if she wasn’t. He felt certain since the day he saw her hair, and the feeling had cemented within him the moment he picked her up off the floor of that apartment.

After he got her a birth certificate in New York, he’d gone to Virginia Beach and spent a few days with Millie alone before he talked himself into going down to the Outer Banks to try to convince Camille to take care of her. He and Chase agreed it was probably the safest place for Millie in case anyone was following him.

Mack had lived on pins and needles for almost two years after he’d brought her back, but slowly over the years, his fear had almost gone away. He still jumped every time he heard a Slavic accent of any kind, but thankfully, in Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks, that didn’t happen very often.

---