Page 8 of Tango

“So you deployed with Raiders specifically?” Auralia asked.

“I went where they told me to go, when they told me to go. Mostly my assignments put me with SEALs and possibly Delta Force—if they in fact existed. Not enough with Marine Raiders, for sure. A few times with Green Berets. I played with my buttons, and they kept me safe.”

“Ethan’s soundin’ all humble,” Gator said. “Here’s the deal with the 24th: a single operator is usually the first one to drop into the situation all by his lonesome, and once Wiz gets on the ground, he helped the rest of us parachute down without gettin’ picked off by enemy fire.”

“Wiz, wow, I haven’t been called that for years,” Ethan chuckled.

“Old habits,” Creed said.

Auralia squinched her features into a yuck face as she looked up at Creed. “Wiz? Like take a leak?”

“Like in ‘Wizard of.’ My last name’s Osbourne,” Ethan explained. “We had another guy named Osbourne, and he got the rock-star moniker before me. So I’m the little green man behind the curtain, pulling the levers, apparently.”

“I’d say that were apt,” Gator said. “Except maybe for the little and green.”

Ethan stood just shy of Gator's six foot three. So no, not little nor green.

“Wiz is better than some,” Auralia said. “Gator and Creed have friends with atrocious names.”

Ethan grinned. “Got an example?”

“Fellow over there with the mastiff?”

Ethan turned to where Auralia was pointing.

“That’s Nutsbe Crushed.”

Ethan planted his hands on his hips and chuckled. “Okay, yeah, that’s bad.”

“Ethan, here, rattled off all them different groups he worked with. Here’s the thing that blows my mind: the team Wiz got assigned to was the team he played on.” Gator put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “If Ethan was with the SEALs, he acted like a SEAL and did things the SEAL way. Same with us Marines Raiders. Same with Delta—if’n they existed. That’s how the 24th works it, seamless.”

“Seamless got the job done,” Creed said.

Auralia caught Ethan’s gaze. “You know I’m a journalist, right? Curious minds want to know.” Auralia raised jazz hands before asking, “I get that you were the only one there from the 24th. But didn’t you have your teammates backing you up?”

“Think of me like a library book,” Ethan told Auralia. “Anyone could check me out. Then I was their responsibility. I just asked that they return me on time and in the same condition they found me.”

Auralia pulled Creed’s arms tighter around her. “Which branch was your favorite?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It really depended on the people. With Creed and Gator, I knew we’d be defying gravity the whole time. If crazy was going to happen, it would happen with those two side by side. Not saying that’s a bad thing. Usually the crazy was in our favor.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I hated going out with the SEALs. Mostly, I hated that they did their insertion and extraction out of the ocean, and that meant long, dark nights swimming and even darker water.”

“Not a fan of sharks?” Auralia asked.

“Or anything else that might want to take a nibble. It was terrifying. I developed quite the phobia out there in the dark and deep. I absolutely hate it when I can’t see the bottom. I’m a swimming pool kind of guy.”

“Ethan’s out of the military now,” Creed said.

“Striker and me tried to recruit Ethan to Iniquus,” Gator said. “We figured his skills would be good to have in-house. But we lost out to his nomad spirit.”

“I thought about it, but the pirating life was calling me.” He skated a hand out. “White beaches, clear waters, maybe waist-deep. It was the kindergarten of pirating, and it was short-lived. I wasn’t capturing boats. I was metal detecting things that swimmers lost in the waves. It made me a surprisingly sustainable living.”

Gator focused on Auralia. “Ethan missed me and Christen’s weddin’ because he’d moved from treasure huntin’ to huntin’ for mines in Ukraine.”

“Ukraine?” Auralia asked.

“The airports are closed, so it made things squirrely getting back. Speaking of squirrely.” Ethan raised his chin as a pack of Malinois and German shepherds trotted in through the gate at the end of the field.

“That’s my signal. Team Charlie and the dogs are doin’ a dance for the families.” Creed pulled off his jacket and put it around Auralia’s shoulders, dropped a kiss onto her lips, then took off at a jog.