One Rough Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

would have made things a hell of a lot easier if Kurt had simply ordered me to go. Now I would have to make a choice about whether to leave the team on the night they deployed, or abandon my family after I had promised I would be home for my daughter’s birthday. Nothing was more important to me than Heather and Angie, but as the team leader the mission took priority. It was an impossible choice.
    My deployment was nothing new for my family. I had married Heather after I was accepted into the Special Mission Unit on Fort Bragg, so she was used to frequent absences. Even so, leaving is like twisting a knife each time I do it, especially now that Angie is old enough to know I’m gone. Our last night together before the culmination exercise hadn’t been a very good one.
    I had been out grilling steaks when I heard a thump inside the house, like something had crashed. I went inside to find Heather staring at the thermostat on the wall, clearly upset. I asked her what had fallen.
    “That was me kicking the damn wall. The air conditioner’s broken again. That’s just great. Right before you leave. Perfect. Something else I’ll have to deal with.”
    This wasn’t a good way to start our last night together for at least six months. I tried to mollify her. “I’ll have Paul handle it. I’ll call him right now.”
    Paul was our next-door neighbor. He was a good guy, but I really didn’t care for him. He was always upbeat, always helpful, to the point where it was sickening. I’m probably jealous because he spends more time with my family than I do. He’s the one that Heather turns to for any immediate help, and that hurts. But that’s not his fault, it’s mine.
    Heather waved her hand. “Paul couldn’t fix a leaky faucet. Don’t bother. I’ll get Tim to help. He’s a lot better with his hands, and he’s home now.”
    She started to say something else but held her tongue.
    I could tell she wanted to get something out but wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it tonight. I needed to avoid a fight at all costs. While I, personally, didn’t really fear what the future held, I couldn’t predict what would happen on a deployment, and couldn’t allow Heather’s last memory of me to be a fight. We both knew the job was dangerous. We never talked about it out loud, but the potential consequences were there all the time. Tonight it was worse, because I was leaving. It was like a heavy presence that surrounded everything in the room. I took a gamble, hoping whatever she wanted to tell me would be a simple thing that I could smooth over before I left.
    “What? What were you going to say?”
    “I’ve said it before.” She sighed, brushed a strand of hair out of her face, then let it out. “Why do you have to go? Why is it always you? You’ve been gone since 9/11. Isn’t it someone else’s turn?”
    Shit . That gamble hadn’t paid off . “We’ve been over this. I can’t just up and leave. I’m the team leader. It takes time to train a replacement. This is my last tour. I promise.”
    Task Force tours were a little different than anything I had done before. They were six months long, followed by three months of downtime, followed by a three-month ramp-up prior to deploying again. During the last month of the ramp-up, we deployed permanently to D.C. and dropped all contact with our past, so for the family it was more like a seven-month rotation. The final month was lockdown. It was when we were completely cleaned from our past and prepped to become whatever was called upon by the mission. Tonight was the last night before the lockdown in D.C., the last night before my final seven-month absence. I was stepping down after this tour, something I had promised Heather I would do.
    She gave me a bitter look. “Yeah, just like your last rotation at the Unit. And then you go and volunteer for this new thing. What’ll it be next, Pike? At least when you were with the Unit I had other wives to talk to, people I could call who