Breaking Point

“My pa, Floyd William Thorn, died when he was forty-nine,” she told him, sadness in her tone. She placed a picture of her father before him. “He was a coal miner and got black lung. With the herbs she collected, Mama kept him alive many years longer than he should have lived.” Her voice grew low with emotion. “I miss him so much....”

Gabe picked up the photo, studying the man with a long, unkempt brown-and-silver beard. He wore an old green baseball cap and was proudly standing with a rifle over his shoulder. Bay had his long straight nose and high cheekbones. “I’m sorry you lost him. That’s too young to die.”

Bay took the photo from him and carefully placed it back in the ziplock bag. “He was a good man, Gabe. He taught me how to hunt and we had so much fun together. Pa was always laughing and joking around with us. And he was very kind. There were a number of elderly folks on our mountain who needed help. Pa would go over and chop wood for them, take it to their cabins so they’d have fire to cook with and keep them warm at night during the winter. Each spring, Pa would till their gardens with our mule, Betsy, to help them get in their garden so they’d have food to eat and can in the fall.”

Gabe digested her softly spoken words, saw the grief lingering in her eyes. “He sounds like a helluva good man. Responsible.”

Bay pressed her lips together, feeling the loss of her father. “Hill people stick together. Sometimes we’d go out and hunt deer for these elders. We’d kill one or two, gut and skin them. Then we’d carry them back and spread the meat between these families. Pa believed you took care of your family as well as the people around you.”

“And now you’re taking care of people around you, too. Looks like you have the genes on both sides of your family.” Gabe saw the sadness in Bay’s eyes and found himself wanting to do something to cheer her up. Again, he stopped that desire. This was a dangerous edge to walk with her.

“I love helping people,” Bay said, lifting her head and managing to tuck her sadness away.

“I’m blown away you’re an 18 Delta corpsman. We’ve had SEALs go for that training and wash out. Some made it, but most didn’t. From what I’ve heard, it’s eighteen months of unrelenting hell.”

“It was,” Bay said. “But I loved it. I’d been a corpsman in Iraq and already been under fire, doing my job. By the time I got to 18 Delta, when they’d put you into a situation where you had to work under bullets and explosions going off, it didn’t rattle me one bit. It did a lot of other guys, though. They were really great combat corpsmen, but they couldn’t think through the chaos to stop bleeding or perform lifesaving field operations.”

“What made you so cool, calm and collected under fire?” Gabe asked, going back and starting to spread strawberry jam over six pieces of toast he had piled up at one end of his aluminum tray.

“I don’t know. My mom was always cool as a cucumber when things got tense.”

“You said you were hunting with your dad at an early age? I wonder if the sound of gunfire was something you grew up with.” He chewed on the toast. “I was raised near the woods in Pennsylvania. I was hunting with my father when I was your age. He was a big-time hunter and I got used to being around gunfire.”

“Maybe,” Bay murmured. She watched him enjoy the toast and jam. Gabe was tucking away a lot of food, but she knew these men who were out on long patrols would easily burn through twelve thousand calories. “I find I focus so much on the guy who’s wounded that I don’t hear anything else around me. I’ve been in firefights where the guys on my team would tell me bullets were singing all around me as I was delivering medical aid to a downed soldier, and I wasn’t even aware of it.”

“That’s a handy reaction to have,” Gabe agreed. Inwardly, he began to feel some relief. Bay had the experience and calm that would be needed should they get into a firefight. And it was a given, in their business, they would.

“Why do you think the chief assigned you to me?” Bay wondered, tilting her head and holding his gaze.

Disconcerted, Gabe grinned. “You have a helluva way of getting to the heart of the matter, don’t you?”

“In my business, it’s always the bottom line.” Bay smiled. “I’m the one who is doing the A-B-Cs...airway, breathing, circulation on a guy who’s been shot. I don’t have time to fool around with social niceties.”

Nodding, Gabe reached for the second piece of toast. “I used to be LPO of our team until about six months ago. You probably got assigned to me because the chief trusts me. This is my fourth deployment over here with him and I’m a known quantity.”

“So you were the mother hen for the enlisted guys in your platoon before this?”

Gabe chuckled. “Yeah, I was a real mother hen, for sure.”

“But why aren’t you LPO now?”

He stopped smiling. “A situation came up,” he said gruffly.

“Hmm,” Bay murmured, feeling him retreat. She saw something in his narrowing eyes, a look that warned, back off. Moving her fingers around the warm mug, she said, “Life sometimes kicks us in the head like a mule and it takes time for us to get back up on our feet.”

Her insight stunned Gabe. For a moment, he just stared at her, and then he resumed eating. “I’m okay not being LPO. And Phil, who we call Thor, is doing a good job in my stead.”

“So Chief Hampton figured if he put me with the biggest, baddest mother hen in the platoon, I’d be in good hands.” She grinned.

“You need to ask the chief why he assigned you to me. I’m not in his head.”

Bay finished off her coffee and set the mug aside. “I know I’m in good hands with you, Gabe. You were the only one there in that room who was protecting me against Hammer and his friends.”

“LPOs always are protective of their guys. It comes with the territory. You’re one of us now, and that protection is accorded you, as well.”

Nodding, Bay picked up the last of a few potatoes from her tray and nibbled on them. She figured she’d stepped on a land mine with Gabe. He appeared unhappy for a moment, but then he hid his reaction with a hard, unreadable expression. A game face. Something she saw in all black ops people. “Nothing wrong with being a mother hen. I’m one. And Hammer and his friends are going to find that out big-time as soon as I get my feet under me with this team.”

Gabe would bet on that. Baylee-Ann Thorn was not a weakling in any sense. She came across soft and innocent, but now Gabe was beginning to understand that sweetness could be shown or taken away, depending upon the situation. “It’s the doc’s job to keep the guys well.” And then he remembered the photo of her father. “That was a Winchester rifle your father carrying on his shoulder in that photo you showed me?”

“Yes, a .300 Win Mag rifle.”

“It looked like it.”

“Why?”

“Because in a couple of hours, you’ll be using my Win Mag against Hammer in the shooting competition.”

Shrugging, Bay smiled a little. “So?”

“So you know how to use one.”

“My pa used the civilian variety of Win Mag to bag deer and other animals. The type you guys use for sniping is a military grade and not something I’m familiar with.”

“Just the cartridge is different. Stocks are made out of fiberglass because it’s lighter than wood.” He studied her hard for a moment. “When did your father start training you to use the Win Mag?”

“When I was thirteen.”

The innocent look she gave him made him grin. “So you’ve been using a Win Mag for five years before you joined the Navy? And in that time, you were using it to bring down big game at fourteen hundred yards?”

“Yes.”

Gabe sat up. “Has anyone ever accused you of being the mistress of understatement?”

She wiped her mouth with the paper napkin, wadded it up and dropped onto her tray. “A few times.” Bay saw that dark, accessing look of his, felt it surround her. It was an intense focus a hunter would have.

“That Win Mag has a body-jarring recoil to it when it’s fired,” he warned her. It would take a shoulder off a person if he didn’t realize the kick of the rifle and physically compensate for that violent recoil. He wondered how she was able to handle such a weapon at such a young age.

“Oh, Pa warned me,” Bay chuckled. Pushing her fingers through her curly brown hair, she said, “The first time I fired it, it knocked me on my behind. My pa never laughed so hard, and neither did I. He’d warned me beforehand about its recoil, but until you actually fire it, you don’t have a clue.”

Her laughter was like thick, dark honey across his wounded heart. Gabe had no defense against it. Her eyes danced with mirth. It lifted him, for no accountable reason. “Well,” he growled, pushing the tray aside, “Hammer’s in a lot of trouble, then.”

“Ohh,” Bay murmured, “I don’t think so.”

Gabe studied her. “Then you really don’t need a spotter. You’ve never worked with one and you’re hitting your target at fourteen hundred yards.” That blew him away.

“My pa never called himself a spotter. He taught me about windage, wind direction, humidity and so on. I could sure use your help, Gabe. This is dry air. There’s no humidity. I’m not used to firing in this kind of environment. If you could help me dial it in, I’d be grateful.”

How could he refuse her? “Hammer is going to get his sails trimmed.”