Disclaimers, notes, etc., in part 1

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25 March 2003

It's 0316.  I've been dozing on and off as the half-conscious nightmares come fast and furious.  I think I'm a little more awake now than I have been and it just now dawns on me what Mac said about the Speedo.  She doesn't want anyone else eyeing the merchandise that closely.  Well, well, well, Colonel Mackenzie, I think you actually let something slip tonight.

Ever since that cursed night in Sydney, my Sarah has kept herself closed off so tightly that I can't really tell how she feels about me.  Okay, I know that we're best friends – that never really changed at the deepest levels even during the madness I've taken to calling the Princess Bugme Era – and I know that as my best friend she worries about me a lot.  But what I don't know for sure is whether at this point she still cares for me as much as I care for her.  I can't even be sure that the reason she's still with me on our Baby Deal is anything more than her desire to be a mother.  But rare comments like the one about my merchandise tonight give me hope that when I can finally let myself out of prison and give myself to her unconditionally, she will do the same in return.

What annoys me is that Sturgis every once in a while gets this Cheshire cat grin when he gets me started talking about my partner, as though he knows something I don't about her.  Or maybe like he knows something about me that I don't, or that he thinks I don't.  Or maybe he knows that I know and is laughing at my inability to put it in words.  I'm too damned tired to figure this out right now, but I'm also too damned scared to allow mys…

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I am in big trouble.  I just woke up in my living room, but I was supposed to be at staff call five minutes ago.  Worse, I have a splitting headache, the kind I don't admit to getting after a night commiserating with a six-pack, even though the remnants of my second beer managed to survive the night unscathed on my coffee table.  I give Admiral Chegwidden five more minutes before he orders either Petty Officer Tiner or Lieutenant Sims to call to ask me politely if I'm planning to make an appearance today.

The phone is down on the floor where I left it after Mac hung up last night.  I reach for it and hit 3 on the speed dial, hoping to head off the admiral's surrogate's call.  Petty Officer Coates answers in a voice that is just way too perky for a morning like this.

"Jen, it's Commander Rabb.  Please let the Admiral know with my apologies that I will be in ASAP, and that Lt. Col. Mackenzie arrived safely in Doha."  I think I manage to say that in a way that tells her I'm far more awake than I feel.

"Due respect, sir," she starts, and I know I haven't fooled her, "but you don't sound like you're okay to come into the office today."  I often wonder if Jen and Mac are related somehow, because the younger woman reads me almost as well as Mac does.

"I'm fine, Petty Officer," I profess.  "Or I will be as soon as I have a cup of coffee."

I hear her laugh at that before she asks the kind of impertinent question she can get away with because she's talking to me.  "Tiner's or the Colonel's, sir?"

I laugh, too.  "The Colonel's, not that it's coffee."  Jen's only been at JAG since Christmas but she's heard Mac and me argue about the difference between Navy coffee and Marine whatever it is that she makes with the same ingredients.  I've weakened my position in that particular dispute by actually drinking the stuff she makes on more than one occasion – even if it does take a half-cup of sugar and a quarter cup of cream to make it palatable.  I drink the real stuff black; Sturgis takes it all regular – two sugars, two creams, and Mac won't even drink what she calls the dirty water that is real coffee because she takes her stuff intravenously black.

"That's good, sir, because she ordered me to make sure that I made the coffee her way while she's gone.  I'll have a cup waiting for you at…"

"0845, Jen.  Thanks."  I'll have to bust my six to do it, but I won't be any later than that.

"You're welcome, sir.  Will that be all?"

"Yes.  See you in thirty five minutes."

She takes a beat to look at her watch – she's not that closely related to Mac – and replies with a smile in her tone, "Thirty nine, sir.  No need to run any red lights."

The worst part is that I won't have time to check my e-mail before I leave.  Damn.

=====

I had hoped to check that e-mail at lunch, but the Admiral asked me to join him and one does not say, "No," to a two-star admiral.  I think I'm about to get my ass served to me over linguine at his favorite Italian lunch spot.

"Harm," Admiral Chegwidden begins as the waiter delivers our salads, and I am taken aback at the gentleness of his tone, "how bad were your nightmares last night?"

"Sir?"  That certainly wasn't what I expected the first words out of his mouth to be.

He smiles at me in that fatherly way he has.  "Son, I've been around a long time, and I've seen a lot of partnerships and friendships in my time, but whatever this thing is between you and Mac defies understanding.  I had a bad dream about her last night – I can only guess that the reason you were late is that you slept less than I did."  He starts in on his freshly peppered salad.

I relax a little; when our CO is like this, it's very easy to let a bit of the discipline go and just talk to AJ man-to-man.  "No, sir, I didn't," I admit.  "It didn't help that I fell asleep with ZNN on, and that Stuart what's-his-name kept intruding with color commentary on what was happening to Mac in my head."

"Dunstan," the Admiral supplies.  "You know, Harm, that I wish I hadn't had to acquiesce to the order for her services, right?  I don't like having my best staff officers in a war zone.  Any of them, but especially the ones I consider my best friends and family."

That would be my reminder that Mac is – has to be – a Marine first in his calculations, however much he might prefer to think of her as a woman in need of protection.  He's also telling me that I need to leave that "woman in need of protection" thing out of the office the same way he does.  "I know, Admiral," I admit.  "But you at least had the illusion of a choice.  I didn't.  She just left."

"Not by her choice."

I deserve that.  He of all people has to know that the day I left to fly again was the beginning of the downturn in my relationship with Mac, and I'm sure it's not because either of us has ever told him.  AJ Chegwidden reads people better than any other person I've ever served with, and if I had to choose between an analysis of someone by Jordan (may she rest in peace)  or AJ, it would be a 50-50 pick 'em.  "I know that, too, sir.  She's doing her duty with her usual Marine Corps Semper Fi and I can hear her saying 'Marines don't duck, they cover,' whenever I close my eyes and let my mind drift just a little.  But I'd be a lot more sanguine if I were with her."

Chegwidden drops his fork into his empty salad bowl, props his elbows on the table around it, and lays his head into his hands.  "Commander Rabb, do you have any idea how many years of my life I left in the months of March, April, and May last year?  I had three of my best officers and friends in a war zone and sent a fourth on a mission straight out of Tom Clancy.  One of those four came back missing a piece of his leg – though thankfully, it seems, not his soul.  I don't have enough years left to have two officers in a war zone this year."  He looks up at me with a steel gleam in his eyes.  "I almost convinced them to let me go with her, though."

I nearly choke on the last bite of my own salad at that.  He's managed to surprise me, and before I can say anything he smiles and continues.

"I said 'almost', Harm.  Everyone else in the chain of command agreed, but it seems our new SecNav isn't very happy about my untimely exit from your Tomcat last month."  He doesn't mention the pending results of Commander Linsey's recent witch-hunt, which I'm guessing is the real reason for the denial.

"On that score, sir, the new SecNav and I agree wholeheartedly," I say, avoiding my own supposition and hoping he takes it as the worries of a friend and not as insubordination.  "Thank you for trying, at least."

Our entrees arrive; we spend a few quiet minutes eating (and at least for my part, enjoying my eggplant Parmesan immensely) before he turns to serious business.  "Harm, as your friend and as someone who cares very much for Mac myself, I can both sympathize and empathize with your predicament.  But as your commanding officer, I can really only give you about three inches of rope for the entire two weeks or so we expect her to be away.  We won't count this morning."

That's a very generous offer.  "Thank you, sir.  I'll do my best not to use any of that rope."

He smiles again, and I'm struck by how well he balances the tough-as-nails SEAL trained commanding officer with the marshmallow-hearted (not that I'll be saying that to him anytime soon, and besides that's Harriet's assessment) friend and father figure.  "I'll do my best to give you a half-inch warning before you need it."

I feel better now, and I think I might make it through until tonight when I can check my e-mail.  Or if I'm lucky, Sarah will call again.

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I have two brief e-mail messages from Mac when I get home.

Harm, she wrote in a note she titled "Save the Speedo for me", choppers grounded early due to incoming sandstorms.  May be taking on additional work in the meantime, waiting to hear about possible injury to a forward observer doing BDAs.  More when I can – satellite quality not good enough for voice transmission, surprised this is working.  We're surviving, counting the days until we're okay.  Mac.  The timestamp on this note is 0935, which I have to guess from the contents is Doha time.  For a moment, I think that I worried all day for no good reason.

Then I open the second one, which is timestamped 1347.  Harm, going forward into observer post to relieve injured post commander.  Replacement due Thursday then will continue with original assignment.  Storms due to be over by then and better to be busy than be in the way.  Watch ZNN; SD coming to OP with me.  May do "day in the life" piece.  Joy – wouldn't but for you close to me all day.  Surviving, will be okay.  Mac.

I'm not stupid.  One of the many tasks Mac learned to do in Bosnia was Bomb Damage Assessment, and the only place we're really bombing in a way that she could assess in Iraq is Baghdad, which means my Sarah is going to be behind enemy lines, most likely – or at the very least so far forward in our lines as to be the same difference.  And as much as I will enjoy whatever I get to see of Mac on TV, Stuart Dunstan isn't exactly anyone I want her to be spending time with.  I don't trust him all that much, even though he seems to have learned his lesson last year and did as well as or better than everyone else covering Bud's injuries.  Okay, let me admit to myself that it's the man, not the reporter, that I don't trust.

The "Speedo" reference makes me smile.  I get the line "you close to me all day" right away; she found my t-shirts and is wearing one.  It takes me three full reviews, however,  before I get the "We" reference in the first note; I'm quite sure that if I had an audience I'd be told I'm grinning like an idiot.  Our children may be a ways off in the future, but it looks as though that future is more likely than not, at least in some form or another.

I flip on the TV to ZNN and settle on my couch; a half hour later it occurs to me that getting a TV for the bedroom might not be a bad idea because I doubt my poor, abused back can take two weeks of sleeping on the couch.  Or I could move the TV into the bedroom, but then I'd be in bed whenever I'm home, which is potentially just as bad.  At least without Mac to keep me company.

During the 2200 hour, Dunstan's first piece about Mac comes on.  His new producer and his editors in New York really busted their sixes to put the introduction together; there's a picture from her senior college yearbook, a series of file photos taken by a combat photographer in Bosnia, her law school graduation picture, and several seconds of the trial that made her famous.  Dunstan himself introduces the fact that she and I prosecuted him at his court martial with humility I wouldn't have credited to him, and there's a fabulous freeze-frame picture of the two of us conferring at the table during the trial.  We look like we're getting ready to kiss, which brings a smile to my face.

The next two minutes explain with little more detail than Mac's notes why she and her media shadows are going forward and allow Mac to explain why a JAG officer got the nod to take over the observer post.  She's very eloquent; I wonder how many takes she went through and I also have to wonder how she manages to look so squared away in the blowing sand and heat that The Weather Channel announced had been the conditions in Qatar earlier today.  Dunstan's closing lines indicate that he'll be reporting on Mac's day from the observer post live during the morning show and the piece ends with a shot of Mac slinging her sea bag into an APC for the ride to the helo pad.  Apparently, not all the choppers are grounded.

My phone rings the moment the commercial starts.  It's my mother, and Harmon Rabb, Jr., you're the next contestant on Trish's Twenty Questions Extravaganza.

"So, Mac is in Iraq and you're still in DC.  Did you two have a fight?"

To this day, I don't know what possessed me to tell her even the little bit I did about the events surrounding Mac's abrupt departure for the Guadalcanal last spring.  My mother has held it over my head ever since.  "No, Mom, we didn't this time."  I'm going to make her use as many of those twenty questions as I can on getting the basic information so she won't have many left to dig deeper.

"Did she volunteer anyway?"

"No."

"So she went because she was ordered to go.  Semper Fi and all that.  Did you even think about disobeying a direct order so you could go with her?"

"Yes," I admit after a moment, and I know that this is yet one more thing my mother will hold over me in her "tell her how you feel so I can have my grandchildren" arsenal.

"And Mac, bless her olive drab heart, threatened you with bodily harm if you did?"

"Not in so many words, but the idea was there."  I have no doubt that if I showed up in Qatar – or Iraq – without properly cut orders proving my allowable presence there that Mac would scissor kick my head and I'd wake up on a transport headed stateside before I could be missed here.

"How do you feel?"

You know that part at the beginning of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Spock is whizzing through intricate math, science, and general knowledge questions when all of a sudden the computer spits out the question, "How do you feel?"  Spock comes to a screeching halt and the computer has to ask the question again.

So does my mother after I give her fifteen seconds of silence.  "How do you feel?"

I feel the tears coming again, but Sarah isn't here to wrap her arms around me, so I choke them back as silently as I can and try to find the words to answer my mother.  "Terrified," I finally say, and it's as though that one word breaks a dam inside me.  "Mom, I don't know this for absolute certain, but I'd bet a pretty hefty chunk of my trust fund that the observer post she's going to is on the outskirts of Baghdad.  I don't even know where she's supposed to go to do whatever it is she's actually there to do, and now I have to worry about stray bombs and cruise missiles and the Republican Guard."

"It doesn't help that she's going to relieve an injured officer, does it?"

"No.  It just means that she's going someplace where her getting hurt is all the more likely.  Mom…"

Oh, this woman knows me all too well.  "Harmon Rabb, Jr., you listen to me.  Don't you go borrowing trouble.  Mac is doing the job she signed up to do and she's going to do it to the best of her abilities.  If she gets hurt, she's strong and healthy and she knows she has a lot to live for – but she's also a smart woman and 'the best damned Marine in the Corps'," I hate it when my mother uses my own words against me, "so she's going to do her very best to not get hurt.  And God forbid, but if the worst happens, you will have nothing to blame but your own stubborn pride and irrational fear for her not knowing exactly how much she means to you."

Ouch.  My own mother wields the rapier of cowardice and guilt better – or at least more forthrightly – than Sturgis does.  What sucks is that she's right and I've known it for a long time; that night on the Admiral's porch I should have just said it all rather than danced around it.  But no, I screwed the pooch on that one and it's gotten me precisely nowhere. 

Well, that's not entirely true; Renee and Bugme are gone and neither Mac nor I have made the mistake of a lifetime by getting married to others.  That's actually quite a bit farther than nowhere, come to think of it.  "I'm working on that," I tell my mother defensively.

"Can you use the 'L' word in your own head yet?"

My mother is just as much of a witch as Mac when it comes to seeing into my head – except that Mac either can't or won't see what I can't yet unbind to say, whereas my mother can.  I bet it's because my dad was like this, too, but I'm not going to ask her about that, at least not now.  As innocently as I can, I parry her verbal thrust.  "What 'L' word?"  Never mind that I actually did use it on that cursed porch; it's vanished from my vocabulary as surely as Mac has vanished from JAG HQ:  it's there somewhere, but damned if I have access to it now.

The noise she makes in La Jolla probably startles several of the neighborhood dogs and it hurts my ears here in DC.  "I think it's time to do for you what your Grandma Sarah did for your father," she says.  "I love you, Harm, and I'll be praying for Sarah's safety.  And for your sanity.  Good night."  She hangs up.

I know that I stare at the receiver for a long time as I ponder.  Just what did Grandma Sarah do for Dad?  And thus what is it that my mother is going to do for me?