You’re a fucking pussy, McBride. If the guys could see this, they wouldn’t even recognize you.
Natalie set the bottle of whiskey aside and cradled Zach’s head against her chest and held him, a hard lump in her throat. He was such a strong man, such a man’s man. He probably hadn’t shed a tear since he was a little boy. But he was crying now, real tears, his body shaking with the effort to suppress them. And it broke her heart.
“I tried! God, I tried! I tried to save them!” The words burst out of him, his voice ragged, tinged with despair.
She remembered what Agent Chiago had said about Zach and how he’d earned his Medal of Honor. He’d come close to being killed while trying to save his team. That must be what this was about.
“Aw, Jesus!” He drew back from her, shot to his feet, and took a couple of steps, wiping his face with his hands, clearly enraged with himself. And for a moment he stood there, ramrod straight, sucking in lungful after lungful of air.
Natalie held back, gave him his space, afraid she’d pushed him too far.
“I led a five-man team into the Hindu Kush mountains in Nuristan province in Afghanistan.” His voice was flat, lifeless. “We’d gotten a tip from an informant about caves where Taliban combatants had hidden a cache of weapons and explosives. Our objective was to find the caves and to destroy the cache. But the informant turned out to be a Qaeda agent. Instead of finding caves, we were ambushed.”
He grabbed a chair, sank into it, avoiding her gaze.
“We fought our way free. Chris, Mike, Jimmy, Brian, and I had been together since BUD/S. We were a team. It’s like we read each other’s minds. No matter what the odds or what the situation, we . . .” A faint smile played on his lips, then faded. “We retreated, tried to make our way to the extraction point, but we got boxed into a canyon by enemy fire—five of us against more than a hundred of them. We took cover as best we could. I . . . Ah, hell, I can’t believe I’m talking about this.”
Natalie sat across from him, waiting, giving him the time he needed.
He drew a breath, went on. “I tried to call for extraction, but I couldn’t get a clear signal. I knew that someone had to climb to the rim of the canyon to make the call, but that meant being exposed to enemy fire. They all had wives and kids. I didn’t.”
“So you took it upon yourself.” How like the Zach she knew to risk his own life to save others.
“I was their commanding officer. It was my job to bring them back alive. It was myjob. And there was no one at home waiting for me to return.”
That sounded so terribly lonely. “What about your parents?”
He shook his head. “My mother had died a few months earlier of a rare heart infection, and my old man . . . We barely spoke to one another. The SEALs, my team—that was my family.”
Natalie knew what it was like to lose one’s entire family. She waited, fairly sure she knew where this story was going.
“I climbed to the rim of the canyon. Made it almost to the top before I got hit. Caught an AK round in the back. I managed to hold on, hauled myself over the top, made the call. I could hear the men’s weapons firing. I knew the guys were still alive. Six Black Hawks were in the air and on their way. If they could just hold on another twenty minutes . . .” He held out his hand, reaching for the bottle.
Natalie picked it up, passed it to him.
He drank, seeming to swallow his own emotions along with the alcohol, his face becoming an expressionless mask, his gaze focused on nothing. “I was thirsty from blood loss and needed water. I reached for my pack and saw a group of Taliban fighters making their way down the slope across from me, headed for my team. They didn’t see me. I grabbed my rifle, emptied the magazine, and reloaded. But I couldn’t move fast enough. I didn’t get all of them. They tossed a couple IEDs into the hollow where the men were hiding. I listened to my team die, heard their cries, Brian screaming . . .”
Tears trickled down Natalie’s cheeks, her heart aching for him. Yes, she’d lost her parents and the man she loved, but she hadn’t been there to watch and hear them die. She couldn’t even bear to imagine that.
“I blacked out. When I came to, I was in the hands of a medevac unit. The rescue I’d called for turned out to be my own. The navy patched me up and shipped me stateside to recover.”
Then Zach’s mask began to crumble. “I arrived the same week as their bodies. I went to their funerals at Arlington. I watched while their wives cried and their kids sat there looking confused and . . . and asking about Daddy.”
His voice broke, and for the first time since he’d started telling Natalie his story, his gaze met hers. “Iwas the one who was supposed to die that day. They were supposed to come home.”
“It’s not your fault, Zach. You did more than most men—”
Ignoring her, he stood, walked over the railing, and looked out over the sleeping city. Natalie followed, unsure what to do or say. And for a time they stood there in silence, his jaw clenched, his body shaking again, a look of raw anguish on his face.
He took another drink. “After Brian’s funeral, his wife, Debbie, came up to me, carrying their youngest. I’d known her since she and Brian met. I was the best man at their wedding. She . . .”
He paused, drew a deep breath. “She called me a coward, told me . . . that I’d left her husband and the others to die, that I’d climbed out of that canyon to save my own ass. ‘You should have died,’ she said, ‘not my husband.’ I tried to explain but . . .”
His voice trailed off.
Natalie watched him, saw the torment on his face, and found herself wanting to smack poor widowed Debbie. Did he actually believe her? Yes, he did. He’d gotten so tangled in his grief that he truly believed he’d failed his friends.
Oh, Zach!