Page 39 of Trusting a Warrior

“I had no idea you were part of a SEAL dynasty,” Geo exclaimed. “Master Chief MacMillan is your uncle?”

“Yeah.” Matt took a pretzel from the basket in front of them and broke it into tiny pieces. “So I had big fuckin’ shoes to fill.”

“No shit.” Geo couldn’t even imagine. Rick MacMillan was a legend in the teams, a SEAL sniper who’d been part of the special operations joint task force sent to Mogadishu, Somalia.

With that sort of background, the pressure on Matt to succeed must have been intense, almost suffocating, yet here he was. Raising his glass in a silent toast, Geo said, “Now you’ll get to carve out your own path, have your own stories to tell. It’s a different world than when he was in.”

“For sure.”

They fell silent, both staring up at the walls and ceiling of the bar, which over the years had turned into a memorial for the West Coast SEALs lost to the wars in the Middle East.

For some reason, an unsettled, unmoored feeling started swirling in Geo’s gut. He drained his beer quickly, then ordered another. Instead of blunting the edges of his agitation, the alcohol only increased it.

Matt eyed him. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Geo muttered. His gaze skittered over to one particular section of the wall that was dedicated to the loss of Cobra Three-Five. Throat tight, Geo scanned the twenty-four bearded faces, gone six years now.

And the community was still dealing with the fallout.

“Did you know some of them?” Matt’s hushed voice broke into his reverie.

Geo took a long, slow gulp of his beer. “Yeah, I did.” He pointed to a photo near the top of the pyramid. “Talked to him, in fact, right before they got on that helo.”

Matt squinted to read the name. “Greg Petronis.”

“Helluva dude. We called him ‘Mooch’ because he was always out of Copenhagen, but shit, he’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked.” Geo shook his head. “He carried a copy of this little book by Marcus Aurelius. Quoted from it constantly and drove us all fuckin’ nuts.”

“‘Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back,’” Matt said softly. “Meditations.”

“Yep, that’s the one.” Shoving his empty bottle away, Geo grated, “I know those guys weren’t smiling at death when that punk shot them down. They all had their middle fingers up high and were screaming ‘Fuck you!’”

Matt nodded somberly, still gazing at the wall. “MPC Callie? There was a dog team on that Chinook?”

“Yeah.” Geo swallowed hard. “You know how they were found? Dog in the guy’s arms, like he’d just had enough time to wrap himself around her as they were going down.”

As always, picturing that handler’s tragic desperation stole Geo’s breath. It was something he himself wrestled with when he was alone in the dark with his thoughts, the fact that Bosch hadn’t asked to be there. He hadn’t volunteered to go to war, hadn’t signed a contract offering his life to the Navy. He had no choice in the matter, didn’t have the ability to reason that the odor he was being praised for finding was capable of blowing him to smithereens, or that the man he was so enthusiastically tracking might shoot him.

As the human, it was up to Geo to protect him, and that’s what the handler in that doomed helicopter, in those last terrifying moments of his life, had been frantically trying to do.

Protect his dog.

He opened his eyes to meet Matt’s.

“Were you there, Geo? I heard there was a SEAL unit sent out as the quick-reaction force and first responders.”

“I wasn’t, but a buddy of mine was. Cade’s the one who found the—found the dog.”

“Damn.” Matt winced. “You wonder how those guys handled that, seeing what they must’ve seen, so many dead friends.”

“Some of them didn’t handle it,” Geo snapped. “Some of them—”

One of them spiraled downward into his own personal hell and took a bunch of us with him.

He glanced up at the chronological line of pictures, which ended with some dude who’d been killed about two years ago. Nothing since then.

The low-grade anger bubbling inside him suddenly burst into flame. “Hey!” he called to the bartender, a tattooed young white woman with short spiky hair and a nose ring. “There’s a picture missing.” He stabbed his finger toward the memorial wall. “A guy who died last year.”

“Really?” The bartender pursed her lips in confusion. “I’ll ask the manager. Usually he has the pictures up within a few days of hearing about someone’s passing.”