Authors Note: Ok, the bombings in this chapter and the events onward never happened, they are a figment of my imagination. Fiction. False. ETC, just FYI. Just to let y'all know. I needed a major event to move my plot along and came up with it.

10.

Gordon.

Meanwhile…

"Has anyone here seen Sanderson or Hoot," I asked for what felt like the third time in less then an hour.

How could two guys go missing?

They just vanished.

No one knew where they were.

They weren't in their rooms.

They weren't in the bathroom.

They weren't in the stockade.

How could I loose two Delta Operators?

"Not since they were conspiring in the kitchen," Randy told me, attempting yet again to work the phone. Annoyed he put it on the receiver and then asked, "Whom has he been chasing around? Maybe he got lucky?"

God I had no idea.

I sagged across the countertop and let out a breath. The Sergeant Major was out along with the Aussies. It wasn't like I was in charge or anything. It just wasn't great to loose two men who were known to cause trouble apart, together, well, no good would come of it.

Randy picked up the phone again and tried the number to one of the gates, the one closest to us.

He dialed the number, waited, and swore; "Damn busy signal again."

He smacked the phone down on the receiver. "Exactly how far away are they?"

I didn't have to ask him to elaborate on they. I knew who they were. They being my wife and his sons.

"No Randy," I simply told him.

He let out a sigh and looked upwards.

So I added, "You have to separate yourself when you're working. They're a distraction when we work."

He knew and I knew that he knew. He was just a new dad. He became an Operator and a dad in the same week. One was enough of an adjustment, two was a handful. It was a hard lesson for me to learn. And he was learning it.

"Maybe they're hiding," he suggested.

They very well could have been hiding.

They better have been hiding.

When I caught one of them I was tearing into them. Did they know how to leave a note. It wasn't hard. I could hold a seminar on the pen and paper for them if they were unaware in connecting the dots.

I rested my chin on the counter, "Who would Hoot have confided in about a female?"

"Sanderson."

"Other then Sanderson?" Randy paused, then shrugged and picked up the phone and tried the gate number again.

Maybe I needed to go through his stuff.

Hoot would know better. He wouldn't keep anything incriminating with him. From out in the common area a voice shouted,

"G! Come look at this!"

As I stood and walked past Randy he shook his head. The line was still busy.

"Try a different gate," I suggested. Randy grabbed the five-page list of base numbers.

"G!"

All right, all right. I jogged out and toward the couches where all the guys were, every last one of us, glued to the couch.

On the TV I could see a brick building and a lot of smoke. I read the information bar on the bottom of the page, translated it from German to English.

An American Embassy was bombed.

"Randy!" I yelled, not taking my eyes off the TV.

"It's the second one today," Leon added cross-legged from the floor.

All I could do was watch as people were rushed out and Emergency Workers rushed in.

Then I noticed the writing on the ambulances – German. "Where was the other bombing?"

"Switzerland. Both were there…isn't that where the Mrs.'s is?" I stormed towards the kitchen.

She was not staying there. She was going to get in Germany, she could stay on this base. Or she could go home. I wanted her out of that country. No sooner had I made it past Randy and into the kitchen.

"G! There was another one…a third bombing, this one in Austria." I all but ripped the phone off the wall and punched in numbers that I had long ago memorized.

It rang and rang and rang and finally, "Hello?"

My heart swelled.

Thank God for nosey children. "Troy, put Aunt Angela on the phone, its Uncle G."

There was a pause, and then the young boy told me, "I won't."

Not I can't, I won't. Excuse me? "Troy, put your aunt on the phone right now."

Again he reiterated, "No. I won't."

"Why?"

He paused and sighed over the phone, "Cause she's busy crying an she doesn't know I have the phone. If she knew I had the phone she wouldn't cry an then she'd be sad all day again an I don't like when Aunt Angela is sad."

That didn't make sense.

The kid wasn't making sense.

Why was she sad?

She was fine over the phone last night. I was going to get to the bottom of this, "Fine…put Holly on the phone."

"No."

Now I was getting annoyed with Troy. Why couldn't Trey have picked up the phone?

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, "Why?"

"Cause they argue cause Aunt Angela's sad. Holly says she'll tell on Aunt Angela if she doesn't do something to fix her. If I give Holly the phone then she'll know that Trey and I know and she'll tell you and Aunt Angela will be sadder."

"Why is Aunt Angela sad?"

"She lost somethin."

"What'd she loose?"

"I dunno. Aunt Angela usually starts crying when they get that far in their argument."

What could she have lost? Her wedding ring? Her toe rings? She didn't own anything that she couldn't live without.

"Dunno. She had it with her in the hospital a left without it…hold on, TREY! Uncle G is on the phone!"

There was shuffling.

Running.

Someone dropped the phone and it sounded like someone stepped on the tail of a cat.

Then Trey came over the phone, "Hi Uncle G!"

Good, the well behaved one. "Put Aunt Angela on the phone, this is an emergency."

"Sorry…I can't do that." I was hitting a brick wall.

I lowered the phone and yelled for their father.