He tried to get his mind back on task. "You really impressed the LT and chief out there yesterday with your shooting, Doc. We're short a sniper in our squad, and he's hoping you'll agree to train in with me on sniper ops. As a backup," he added. Her eyes widened enormously, her lips parted as she digested his words. "Want to add this to your training resume?" Gabe sincerely hoped she'd say yes.

"But I'm not a trained sniper, Gabe." Bay protested quietly, keeping her voice down because the warehouse was filled with military men and women. "I haven't gone through sniper school. Won't the guys think-"

"It doesn't matter what they think," he parried quietly, holding her unsure stare. "Chief decides. If he feels you are qualified, sniper school or not, Doc, he's not going to waste whatever skills you have out there on coming missions."

It made sense to her, but it was still a shock. "Okay," she said, shrugging. "I'll try, but no promises."

"You'll be carrying the Win Mag on some missions but not all of them. It just depends on the type of op, but you'll have to carry it outside on your rucksack like I do. It's more weight."

Gazing up at the four Win Mags standing on the rack, she nodded. "It's not a problem. I carry sixty to eighty pounds of medical gear on my back already. I'm a mobile operating unit." She turned and looked up at him. His face was unreadable, those green eyes dark and thoughtful looking. "I can do it."

Gabe called over a Navy personnel man and produced another requisition slip.

Bay was excited about the Win Mag. It brought back happy memories with her father. She wondered obliquely if he was looking over her shoulder as she was given the rifle. Moving her fingers across the fibergla.s.s stock, she heard Gabe asked for a SIG Sauer pistol. She raised her head and saw one produced by the Navy guy behind the counter. Frowning, she laid the rifle on the counter.

Gabe picked up the pistol, checked it out and was satisfied. He turned, handing it to her b.u.t.t first. "You'll wear one of these, too."

Stunned, Bay stared down at the specially made German pistol. "But..." She gulped. "Oh, I can't, Gabe." She held up her hands and took a step back. "Only SEALs are allowed to wear that pistol. It's specially made for them. Even I know that."

Gabe seemed surprised at her reaction. "That's true, but you're with our team now. You need to always wear it wherever you go. It's never not a part of your daily gear you wear, Doc."

Panic ate at Bay as she stared at the pistol. She hesitated.

"What's the problem?" Gabe demanded.

Licking her lower lip, Bay said, "I want to fit in, Gabe. Not stand out. Half those guys don't want me around. I-I didn't go through SEAL training. By all rights, I haven't earned the right to wear a SIG. It just seems like a slap in their faces, to me. That I'm pretending to be something I'm not."

Gabe laid the SIG on the counter, understanding her concerns. There was genuine anxiety in her blue eyes. He put his hand on her shoulder for a moment. "Look, Doc, what you don't understand yet is where we patrol, the missions we undertake. We're in harm's way all the time. You can't have enough weapons and ammo on you, believe me." He wanted to leave his hand on her shoulder but forced himself to release her. "You're worried Hammer and his guys are going to ride you about wearing it, aren't you?"

Nodding, Bay chewed on her lower lip. "It will be one more thing they'll hold against me. They'll accuse me of-"

"Bay," he said, purposely using her name to get her to focus, "read my lips. The chief wants you fully equipped. If you don't look like a SEAL out where we patrol, that's not good, because the Taliban we have to deal with sometimes will only respect us because we are SEALs. Got it?"

His logic was sound. Bay felt a shiver where he'd unexpectedly touched her shoulder. "Okay, I guess I can take it...."

Gabe picked up the black nylon drop holster and said, "Lift your arms away from your waist."

Taken aback, Bay realized he was going to place the holster around her waist. For the next few minutes, Gabe made sure the drop holster fit correctly. Pulling the two Velcro straps just tight enough around her thigh, he wanted the pistol to ride just above her knee.

"There. How does that feel?" Gabe handed her the SIG. The SEAL pistol had no safety on it.

Bay placed the pistol in the low-riding holster. "Okay," she said tentatively. "I feel like a gunfighter."

Gabe grinned. "That's what we are. Allow your hand to drop to your side. I want to see if your palm naturally comes to rest over the b.u.t.t of the pistol."

Bay found his care and attention stabilizing. Intuitively, she knew Hammer and his men would say something. Probably many times over, for her to be wearing the SIG, the signature SEAL pistol. Gabe seemed unhappy with the holster position. He knelt at her side and raised the holster about an inch so that the b.u.t.t was resting where her palm would naturally come to rest against her thigh. Finally, he stood back and critically studied his handiwork. Then he looked up at her.

"Okay, that feels about right to me," he murmured, gesturing toward the pistol. "Does it ride comfortably on your thigh?" She had nice legs, he'd discovered, while affixing the holster. Cammies hid a body pretty well, but working the straps, he could feel how taut her thigh was. Bay moved her hand a couple of times, her palm fitting nicely over the b.u.t.t of the pistol.

"Good." He picked up a Kevlar vest, fitted it to her, got the level 4 ceramic armor plates for it and placed it over with the rest of her acc.u.mulated gear. She had to have a Kevlar helmet with a rail system, NVGs, night-vision goggles and a grenade launcher system for her M-4 rifle. Finally, they moved down the counter to where the knives were displayed.

Bay gave him a distressed look. "I have to carry one of these big knives?" She pointed toward them, disbelief in her voice.

"Yes."

"Listen, I've got plenty of scalpels in my medical pack. I don't really think I need one more knife on me, Gabe. Do you?"

Gabe laughed as he picked up a seven-inch SEAL SOF knife and held it toward her, b.u.t.t first. "Your scalpels aren't long enough, Doc. We usually wear this knife on our right outer calf if you're right-handed. Some guys like it riding low on their left thigh. Or the left outer calf. Where do you want to wear yours?"

Bay stared at the knife. The blade had tiny razor-sharp teeth beneath the lower half of it. Never mind the blade itself. Blowing out a breath of air, she said, "Okay...I guess my right calf?"

"You can start there and later, if you find out it isn't where you want it, you can move it." Gabe knelt down, attached the Velcro nylon black sheath around her lower leg, just below her knee. He tried to ignore touching her, but it didn't work. She was a large-boned woman with good muscling, and he could feel the firmness of her calf muscles beneath his fingertips. Standing up, he stood back, hands on his hips.

"How does that feel?"

Grimacing, Bay muttered, "It's okay."

"You'll get used to it. Comes in handy sometimes." He looked at the watch on his wrist. "Hungry?"

"I am."

"Okay, let's stow this gear back at Ops, put it in a locker and we'll grab some chow before we take a hop back to Bravo."

Gabe seemed to be out of his funk or whatever it was from earlier in the day. Her stomach grumbled because she hadn't eaten much at breakfast, still emotionally stressed out over some of the SEAL team not accepting her. Bay didn't want to tell Gabe, but the Special Forces guys had made her feel welcome from the beginning. They embraced her with eagerness. Here, it was like fighting every day to get a toehold of respect with everyone in the squad. SEALs were different, no question.

More and more, she oriented toward Gabe's quiet demeanor. He was thoughtful, listened closely and didn't knee-jerk on her. There was a lot to like about him. Bay saw some of the same characteristics to Navy corpsman Jack Scoville, whom she had been engaged to. The past was too painful to feel right now, and Bay tucked all those sad, traumatic memories away.

In the chow hall, Bay was amazed at how large, clean and bright it was. Hundreds of men and women were eating at the long white spotless tables. The noise level was high. One thing she instantly noticed was when they entered the chow hall, a lot of heads turned to closely check them out. Bay convinced herself it was because of the tall, rugged SEAL at her side, the M-4 hanging off a strap across his chest. SEALs were based at Bagram, but there were very few of them, and they were always a curiosity to the military people at large. As a black ops group, they were rarely seen in public.

Gabe handed her an aluminum tray as they got into line. It made him smile seeing a number of military guys gawking at Bay, who stood in front of him. He had to admit, with her height, at first glance, she looked like a SEAL. And then they would look at her a little more closely and discover she was a woman. Then their mouths dropped. If Bay saw their reaction to her, she didn't seem affected by the mult.i.tude of increasing male stares. He felt protective of her as they made it through the chow line and Gabe found a table unoccupied at the back, facing the doors.

"Sit beside me," he told her.

"Why?"

"Because SEALs always watch entrance and exit points. We never have our back to a door. We don't sit in front of windows, either."

Nodding, Bay sat down at his elbow, their backs to the light blue wall. "On-the-job training," she said in a teasing tone. "You probably feel like you're babysitting me." The food on the tray smelled wonderful. Hot food was always a luxury to those who'd lived mostly on MREs.

"I don't," he told her. "You're quick and intelligent. I like working with people like that." Gabe tried to ignore her closeness. He swore he could smell the strawberry fragrance of her shampoo. There were always soft tendrils on either side of her face even though she wore her shoulder-length hair gathered up in a ponytail. Men continued to stare openly at her. Gabe was sure sitting with him would stir up some gossip across the big base.

"I can hardly wait to get back to Camp Bravo," Bay told him between bites of her Reuben sandwich piled thickly with sauerkraut. "I've got a package coming from home. I hope it arrives today."

He smiled a little. "Never found anyone who didn't like mail call."

Picking at the French fries, Bay said, "My mama makes the best cookies-chocolate chip with walnuts from the trees around our cabin. She adds some secret ingredient she said she'd pa.s.s on to me when she died." Bay chuckled. "Does your wife send you boxes and keep you in cookies, too?"

Wincing inwardly, Gabe said flatly, "I'm divorced." He saw her expression become sad-for him. Bay was easily touched by another person's misery, he was discovering. But then again, she was a medic. Who better to be a compa.s.sionate soul?

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "How about your mom? Does she send you packages?"

"Yes, she does."

"What's her name?"

"Grace. She's an R.N. Works at the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, V.A. Hospital. She's a psychiatric nurse." He saw Bay react and she sighed.

"That's what I want to be when I leave the Navy. It's always been my dream to become an R.N."

"That's a dream you can reach, then," Gabe said, enjoying the big, thick hamburger and French fries.

"Well," Bay hedged, "when my pa got black lung, we lost his check from work. He had to quit his job and it was tough to make ends meet after that. I decided to go into the Navy because it would give me a paycheck and I could send most of my money home to them." She shrugged, her voice hollow. "Pa felt bad about me having to go find an outside job, but it couldn't be helped. My mama got paid for her services as a doctor with canned goods, vegetables, chickens and such. In the hills, money is scarce, so we trade."

Nodding, Gabe said, "I saw that with my hill friends I grew up with." He glanced at her. "And when you graduate from college, are you going back home?"

"I will. There's a nearby hospital in the lowlands at Dunmore, and I'll work there, but I intend to be home on weekends. That way, I can support Mama, who takes care of my sister, Eva-Jo. She's two years younger than me." Bay picked up her coffee mug and sipped from it.

"What's your sister do?" Gabe asked, finishing off the hamburger and wiping his hands on a paper napkin.

"Oh," Bay said softly, pain in her tone, "not much. My sister is mentally challenged. She has the mind and emotions of a ten-year-old." Shrugging, her voice low, Bay added, "Eva-Jo is special, Gabe. I love her dearly. And Mama is able to take care of her at home. She helps Mama in the garden, hanging the herbs out to dry and things like that. She has trouble reading and writing. It's sad...."

Hearing the concealed pain in Bay's husky voice, Gabe started to reach out and hold her hand. He wanted to take away some of her pain. His reaction shocked him enough to keep his hands right where they were. There was something kind, soft and sensitive about Bay that deeply touched him. And even more disconcerting, he had no way to armor himself against her. "I'm sorry to hear that." And he was. Her eyes widened slightly. "I don't have any brothers or sisters. I was an only child."

"I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't surrounded by my family, my aunts, uncles and cousins, my grandparents," Bay said, and smiled fondly. "Family means everything to me. When you're together, you're strong and you can weather life's storms more easily. You have support."

"The SEALs have a similar philosophy. If you consider one twig, it's easy to break it between your hands. But if you wrap a bunch of twigs together, they can't be broken. That's why the teams are so tight-they're like that bundle of sticks. The guys are close. We trust one another with our back out there and call each other brothers, and we are."

"At least you have parents," she pointed out.

Gabe shook his head. "My father's dead. All I have left is my mother. Both sets of my grandparents lived in California and Oregon, so I rarely got to see them before they pa.s.sed away."

"A scattered, broken nuclear family," Bay whispered, meeting his hooded look. "Maybe the SEALs have given you back the family you lost?"

"Maybe they have," Gabe agreed. He wanted to share with Bay that he'd longed for a family of his own for a long time. He wanted children, knowing he'd raise them very differently from the way his father, Frank, had raised him. Gabe thought he'd found that dream coming true when he married Lily. As Bay said, he was part of a scattered, broken family in more ways than she would ever realize. Maybe that's why he hadn't accurately gauged Lily. He'd been driven to want family. Want that warm, loving support. Without having it as a child, how could he know which woman would be right for him to fulfill that dream with? For his vision of his future? Sometimes Gabe would feel panic in his chest, of having lost out on a very important part of life by not marrying. When he'd decided to try and capture that lost element, he'd met Lily. Marrying her five days later had been the worst decision he'd ever made. Gabe knew, without a doubt, he lacked something within himself to find the right woman who wanted to share his dream of love and having a family. A real family. Not dysfunctional like the one he'd grown up in.

To his consternation, Gabe found himself comparing Lily to Bay. There was a blinding difference. What if he'd met Bay first? G.o.d, he was so drawn to her that it scared the h.e.l.l out of him. She was maternal and nurturing, unlike Lily, who was always in some kind of emotional drama. Bay was quiet and watched a lot and kept counsel to herself unless someone asked her for feedback. Lily was always telling him how she felt and usually it came out as a whining diatribe that about made him nuts.

Moving uncomfortably, Gabe was attracted to Bay's quiet strength. It exuded from her like sunlight. What man wouldn't want someone like her around him? And yet, he knew there wasn't anything he could say or do about it. He wasn't going to break Bay's trust in him by coming on to her. Gabe had to keep everything professional. Or else.

CHAPTER SIX.

BAY SAT NEXT to Gabe in the small, stuffy room the SEALs used to plan missions. Chief Doug Hampton had a whiteboard set up front and was drawing a valley where they were going to pull an op tomorrow morning. He also used a PowerPoint presentation for the details. The rest of the SEALs were sitting on the other two benches. Not one of them had said anything when she'd arrived with Gabe earlier after getting off a Chinook flight from Bagram. Bay had to admit, she looked like a SEAL with all the gear she had to wear. And maybe, as Gabe had said to her, she was just being too sensitive. Even Hammer didn't say anything or give her a dark look when she'd entered the room earlier.

Doug pointed to the red oval line on the whiteboard. "This is going to be a recon mission. Alpha Platoon will go and I'll be joining you. Our a.s.sets on the ground in this valley have said that there are three villages. They're all from the Shinwari Tribe, which the U.S. has a peaceful alliance with. a.s.sets at the Pakistan border are reporting that this valley has been targeted as new rat lines or newly created routes to get their weapons and fertilizer into the country. We have no idea when this will take place. We need to try and understand how the villagers are going to react to this new outside threat from their ancient enemy, the Hill Tribe. They're farmers and all they want to do is be left alone to go about their daily business. Unfortunately, there's a war going on around them and we don't know how they'll react to the insertion of Taliban carrying these supplies through their valley. We're going to fly in at 0600. It's an eight-hour day op, so pack your kit accordingly with first and second line gear."

Hampton looked up and pointed to Bay. "Doc, I'm wanting to use your linguistic and medical abilities out there tomorrow. Are you up for that?"

"Yes, Chief, I am."

"Good. The rest of the team is going to look around. Watch for IEDs, always. Just see how the farmers act or react to our presence. We'll also go out in teams of four to search for new trails across the area around the first village. This would tell us the shift has been made and the supplies are coming through that valley. There's a difference between a goat path and one that's being used to haul supplies. If you find a path, verify it with the kids herding the goats. Find out if they use it for the animals or not. If they don't, then put GPS coordinates on it and send it back here to the LT. When SEALs, Rangers or Special Forces have gone through the valley before these villages have offered no resistance. Maybe it's different now. We have to find out. Questions?"

Bay raised her hand.

"Doc?"

"Chief, if I'm going in as a medic, you want me to set up a clinic?"

"I do. Gabe? If you don't mind, I want you shadowing her. We don't have a familiarity with these Afghans in this shifting of routes with the Taliban. We're trying to establish some nation building with them, some goodwill so they'll trust us."

"I'll have her back," Gabe promised.

"Babysitter," Hammer muttered.

"It's better than babysitting you guys as a sniper on this op," Gabe challenged him. On many occasions, Gabe, because he was a sniper, would be ordered to high ground to have a look-down, shoot-down capability as his squad went through a village, searching for Taliban. His job was to spot a Taliban shooter and take him out before he could kill one of the SEALs. He saw the hurt in Bay's eyes over Hammer's comment. She was too sensitive to the hara.s.sment that SEALs gave one another. He'd far rather be with Bay than sitting up on a ridge if he didn't have to.

Snorting, Hammer shook his head and said nothing further.

"Chief?" Bay asked. "I'm treating women and children only? My experience over in Iraq is the men won't come to be helped because I'm a woman. Their Islamic laws decree the men can't be seen except by a male doctor."

Shrugging, Hampton murmured, "Well, we'll test that one out, won't we? We'll find the head elder of the village and depending on how bad those folks need medical help, you may find everyone lining up, no matter what their gender. You okay with that if it occurs?"

"Sure, no problem. I just need to know what to pack in my ruck, because male medical issues differ from women and children issues, is all."

Hampton nodded. "Plan for both genders, Doc. Better to be prepared than not. The Pashtuns sometimes bend rules when it suits them. If a guy has gone septic, he wants a shot of antibiotics to live. Infection is the number-one killer in this country because there are no medical services available. They die from infection, unable to obtain antibiotics, so you may well see men standing in your line as a result."

"Got it," Bay said, writing down a list of drugs to take on her small notepad. "What about food for the people?"

"This is an initial op to check them out," Hampton said. "We're going in to make first contact. Let's see what they need. Sometimes its medicine. Sometimes food. Just depends. If you can get the wives to talk, diplomatically ask them about Taliban activity through their area. See if it's happening. Maybe we'll get lucky and some woman will tell you the routes the Taliban is taking. That would be actionable intel."

Bay smiled a little. "I'm very good at getting the women to talk, Chief. Don't worry, I know how to mix business with medicine. If I get anything, you'll be the first to know. Since Gabe will be nearby, I can tell him if it's something urgent and he can pa.s.s the intel on to you."

"I like it," Hampton said, grinning. "You'll be a key player out there tomorrow, Doc."

"I'll do my best to be of help, Chief." Bay was relieved that Hammer said nothing further. With Gabe at her side, Bay felt confident that she could wrest intel from the women. They always liked talking with her in their native Pashto, were delighted she was a woman in this man's ongoing war. And they knew she could help their sick and ailing children. A trust was built quickly between women, no question.

After the planning was over, the a.s.signments handed out by the chief, everyone left. Bay had finished up her notes, Gabe sitting nearby, when the chief ambled over to them.

"Doc?"

She looked up. "Yes, Chief?"

Hampton rested his hands on his hips. "This village is pretty safe from what our ground a.s.sets have been telling us. None of the other black ops groups moving through the area has had trouble with them. I really want you to try and ingrain yourself into these villages as we check out each one of them. Build trust with them. I want to find those Taliban rat lines through their valley ASAP." Rat lines were military slang for Taliban safe houses, villagers who were sympathetic to them or a series of new trails being created into an area by the enemy. Frowning, he added, "Now, we have no idea if this has happened yet or not. But when we go in, you know the rest of the story. You might ask the women if they've been feeding more strangers lately or not."