Nobody's Lost (Rescue Me Saga #5)(31)

“Street warfare. Never knew who the enemy was until it was too late.”

“What was your job?” Best not to zero in on the scene he flashed back to, but she wanted to understand more about him—and Adam, too. They had served there together. Usually Patrick didn’t mind talking about his job detail.

Ryder was no exception. “I trained in Kosovo to be an artillery fire direction operator, but we didn’t see combat on that tour. Basically, I was in charge of calling for air strikes or supporting arms fire missions. By the time we got to Kandahar—Afghanistan—I had advanced to the FIST team, but…”

“FIST?”

“Sorry. The Fire Support Team. In Kandahar, my job was forward observer, calling for fire support and air strikes.” He paused. Did he realize he’d revealed something about Kandahar? “I held a similar job by the time we got to Fallujah, just a higher rank.”

“Sounds like an important position, and one you were well-trained for.”

“We worked as a team. Everyone was important to the mission.”

“What was the most stressful part?”

He looked away and answered in barely a whisper. “Making sure I knew where all our friendlies were…”

Oh, God, no. Not that.

“Luckily, I never got any of the coalition troops injured or killed.”

She relaxed some. He’d just been answering her question. Thank God he didn’t have that on his conscience. The guilt would have been unbearable for anyone.

He squeezed her even tighter. Megan didn’t know what to say to comfort him but hugged him hoping he would continue to talk. How much more was bottled up inside him? So much like Patrick. She didn’t know the half of what he’d experienced either.

When his grip loosened, she took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry you had to go through those things, Ryder. I can’t imagine making split-second decisions involving so many lives in the chaos of combat. So much can change in a flash. You aren’t the first and won’t be the last to make the wrong call.”

“It wasn’t my first screw-up.”

“Tell me what happened,” she whispered, although it pained her to hear more anguish from him.

“I don’t want to talk about the first time, but when we came under attack in Fallujah, I hesitated in calling for our preplanned fire mission. I was more worried about getting Grant out of there.”

Megan remembered talking with Grant at Adam’s wedding. One tough woman who apparently wanted to be more like one of the guys if the role she fulfilled in the wedding party was any indication.

While everyone was busy making preparations the day before the wedding, Megan and Grant had found time to talk a little about what it had been like for Adam’s unit in Fallujah. The woman even asked if Patrick had any combat-related stress issues and made Megan comfortable enough to share a little about how hard it was for him when he first came home. Grant gave her some tips on how to deal with his PTSD in the future.

“It’s normal to take care of your buddies in your unit when under fire, but I didn’t think women Marines served in combat situations.”

“We were in an observation post during a cease-fire, and hostilities had all but ended. Or so we thought. She’d been assigned temporarily to my unit because of her expertise with high-tech communications. We had a Marine sniper on the roof with us—Damián Orlando. Grant was trying to correlate real-time satellite tactical data on a primary insurgent target’s location so he could take him out. Then all hell broke loose.

“My sergeant was killed by a grenade. Nothing I could have done about that, but I put our corpsman in danger by not doing my job. A mortar came in while he was prepping Orlando to be medevacked out. Doc could have died, too, because of me.”

Surely someone else could have called for the airstrike when Damián was wounded. Adam had been there, too, although higher up the chain of command. Did her brother blame himself, too? Probably. He took responsibility for everyone around him in civilian life, too. The man was a protector and a guardian by nature. She wished she could give Adam a hug of comfort to reassure him. She’d do that when she got to Denver this month.

She realized she hadn’t heard anything about Karla in a while. She’d call later. Right now, all that mattered was the man in he arms.

“But Marc didn’t die. I saw him at Adam’s wedding. He looks very fit, in fact.”

Ryder pulled away. “I’m glad to hear he’s doing well. I never could face him again after Fallujah.”

She raised her hand and stroked his cheek, feeling the stubble of his whiskers. “Ryder, you’re human. You were put in a position that would leave most of us curled in the fetal position. Please stop blaming yourself for things that didn’t go as planned. It was a goddamned war zone.”

He stared into her eyes but remained silent.

“You have a lot in common with my brothers, you know. They blame themselves for everything that went wrong, too. Thank God most of you came home, but I hate that you brought the war home with you. All of you deserve to have some peace now, too. You served your country honorably.” She wished she knew what to say to make it right for him. How could she help him release that pain? “What would the Jemez tribal leaders tell you to do?”

“Reconnect with the Great Spirit.”