Page 16 of Lawson & Jill

Three grueling days of training in the dusty, hot shrubs of the Southern California wilds in the Camp Pendleton base and Lawson was ready for a beer, a shower, and time with Jill, not necessarily in that order. He’d told her that he’d be off the radar for three days, but to expect him to touch base on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. But after assessing the new recruits, he and his team had realized it was definitely going to take the additional night to get through to the boneheads.

“Roger, how many times do I need to tell you to keep your belly to the ground?” Law shoved the kid’s ass onto the rough earth and grimaced with disgust when Roger let out an oof of pain.

Seriously? That hurt?

“When you signed on for this assignment, you assured me you wanted to learn SIGINT, but you sure as hell aren’t showing a willingness, let alone any damned aptitude.”

“But, sir,” the recruit started.

“Don’t call me sir. Do I look like a damned officer?” Lawson hissed.

He heard Clancy laughing behind him. “You don’t have the looks,” his teammate joked. “You need to grow back the mustache, then you’re officer material.”

Lawson flipped him the bird before turning his attention back to Roger. “Let’s try this again. I need you to, this time, accurately calibrate and read-out the spectrum analyzer and the directional antenna. We need to know who and what we’re up against, where and how far away they are. We need that information now!”

Law watched as the kid once again fumbled three times to get the cord for the antenna into the analyzer. It took everything he had not to rip it out of his hands. When he finally got that done, the kid attempted to calibrate the machine with one hand as he held out the antenna. Law heard Clancy snickering behind them. He was going to kill his friend.

“Roger, that’s the wrong sequence.” Lawson kept his voice even. He knew if he sounded mad the kid would really blow it. Besides having to train the kid, he wanted his team, the Blue Blades, to kick the other Marine Raider team and grind them into the dust. Law knew that they were at the same kind of disadvantage because they were training newbies—but they weren’t stuck with a Roger.

“How about this?” The kid’s blond hair was stuck to his forehead. He kept licking his lips and his eye twitched. Law looked over his shoulder at Clancy and his trainee. He could see that both of them were having trouble keeping straight faces. It so wasn’t fair.

Law looked down at the frequency range that Roger had put into the spectrum analyzer. “It’s close, but it looks like you inverted the six and the three. Try again.”

As soon as Roger fixed it, the signal came in.

Success. Finally.

Now it was time to see if they could get a read on where the other team was broadcasting from and hopefully nail them. Law had been on his team’s ass to keep radio silence. It would’ve made life a hell of a lot easier for them if they’d been able to contact the two tactical vehicles on their team, but Law forced them to stick to the plan and only report in if something went totally FUBAR. Which so far, it hadn’t.

Law was hoping that McClellan, the SIGINT on the Red Smoke team, hadn’t been as much of a hardass.

“I’ve got something,” Roger’s eyes lit up as he fiddled with the receiver. “Look at this. I think they’re about eight clicks northwest over that hill.”

“Less thinking and more knowing,” Lawson growled.

“Sorry. I know they’re over there. I triangulated three signals. One was from tactical vehicles, not ours. Another I could hear, and it was definitely Mikey from Red Smoke; he’s one of the guys that I went to boot camp with. The third signal is coming from two kilometers to the southwest of the others. It wasn’t clear, but they said something about our Lieutenant Hunt. Something about him buying beer.”

“That has to be the Lieutenant of Red Smoke,” Clancy muttered. “Stork and Hunt had a bet on which team would come out on top.”

“Should I radio the others?” Roger asked.

Lawson thought his head would explode. “What part of radio silence do you not understand? Just for that, you’re the one who’s going to have to run—and I mean flat out run—your ass over to Pearson’s MRZR and tell him to get his ass over here. Then hitch a ride with him and gather Bashir. I want you all back here in fifteen minutes. If it’s sixteen minutes, your ass is grass. You got it?”

“Now, sir?”

“Jesus God, I’m not a sir.” It took everything he had to keep his voice down. “You’re now down to fourteen minutes. Get a move on and keep your butt down before Red Smoke tags your ass.”

He watched as Roger scrambled away. He was going to kill the runt if they lost this war game.

* * *

Jill pressed send on the third text that she’d sent to Law. One every day since Sunday. Monday was cookie and milk emojis. Tuesday was beer and limes. Wednesday was a hammock, and today was a smiley face. She really hoped that she was right about today being a day to smile and she would really get a chance to see him.

She had googled Marine Raider since she’d met him. His job was crazy scary. She hadn’t heard of them before, because it seemed like Navy SEALs sucked all the oxygen out of the room. But Marine Raiders were uber special forces along the same lines. Reading up on them, Jill got the impression that they thought they were all that and a bag of chips. It must have something to do with being a Marine.

Jill pushed her phone into the back pocket of her cut-off jeans.

“But Law doesn’t seem all that egotistical,” she told her giant purple alliums as she pulled the weeds from around their base. She patted down the upturned soil, then moved onto another patch in the flowerbed where more stubborn weeds had popped up.