What They Deserve
Chapter 10
Friday, March 12, 2004
1845 Local Time
Lucky Dream Palace – Chinese Restaurant
Falls Church, VA
Lt. Colonel Sarah Mackenzie Rabb sat laughing and joking with her JAG colleagues. They were sitting around a large round table on the occasion of PO Jennifer Coates' promotion to Petty Officer First Class. Soon it came time to open the fortune cookies as the waiter brought over a bowl full of them. They all argued about who should open and read his/her fortune first.
"Jennifer should go first, she's the guest of honor," Harriet argued.
"We should go by rank and that means the admiral should go first," Matt countered.
"We should go by who has the highest award on their chest. That's you Mr. Simms. After you read your fortune, you can choose the next victim, and so on for the rest of you," AJ said.
"I always thought that would get me in trouble someday," Matt grumbled good naturedly.
Everyone chuckled along with him.
He reached into the bowl and snatched one off the top. He crumbled it and pulled out the slip of paper and read it aloud, "Your unspoken desire is the road not taken, take it." He thought for a second and then said, "Well all my desires are spoken so I'm happy about the road I took."
Everyone at the table went, "AAAHHH."
Matt looked around the table at everyone and his eyes settled on the next victim, "I choose my lovely cousin Harriet Beaumont Simms Roberts."
"Geez, I'm glad I didn't put all those names on my business card," Harriet cracked as she reached for her fortune cookie. She laughed heartily as she read, "Your unspoken desire is the road not taken, take it."
At that everyone chuckled at the coincidence.
Harriet then looked toward her best friend and said, "We'll go back to who has the highest honor in their ribbons, so Colonel Rabb, as a Meritorious Service honoree, you have the next honors?"
"Thank you Harriet," Mac answered as she reached for her cookie and extracted the fortune.
Her eyes widened as she read it aloud, "Your unspoken desire is the road not taken, take it."
"NO WAY!" Matt exclaimed. He was sitting next to Mac and she held it up for him to see. "I'll be darned. I think the fortune writers have been reading too much Robert Frost."
"Yeah, I think you're right," Mac agreed with a smile.
As everyone crumbled their cookie and read the same fortune, Mac thought back on the road she had taken. She found herself being happy about it. That was despite the last year and a half.
While her marriage to Harm was solid, it was not without its troubles. Those troubles were not brought about from any arguments or disagreements that they had. As a married couple they had many. Those troubles came from outside influences. The troubling influences did not come from their shared desire to fulfill their duties to the Marine Corps and the Navy, but from the SECNAV and the CIA.
They knew that as a military couple they would have to be apart on separate duty stations. Like the Simms had to endure, Mac and Harm also endured those separations. Harm had the easier road as he had already served a sea duty when he went back to flying. While he was there he performed as the squadron's legal officer. About a year after their marriage AJ summoned Mac into his office. He needed to discuss things with her.
Flashback
Friday, May 24, 2002
JAG Headquarters
Falls Church, VA
"Colonel as the result of the attacks on September 11 of last year you know we are reallocating our resources. Have you given thought to how far you would like to continue in the Marine Corps?" AJ asked her as she sat down.
"Well sir I have and I have discussed those thoughts with Harm. We are in agreement that I can accept whatever assignment that I need without any qualms," Mac replied.
"That's good because I have been speaking to your monitor and I've come up with a few things," AJ said as he handed a list across his desk to her.
As Mac read the list AJ commented, "The first choice I believe is the better one. You need that to demonstrate that you can handle the legal matters of a fleet on the move."
Mac said, "I would have to agree sir. When do I report for this duty?" Mac asked without reservation.
"Is next week too inconvenient?" AJ asked, half knowing the answer.
"No sir it is not. That will give me time with Harm to get him adjusted to what he has to do while I'm gone," Mac said with a smile.
End of Flashback
That was how she was assigned as the Force Judge Advocate of the 4th Marine Expeditionary Battalion on the USS Guadalcanal. It was going to go into the action in the Persian Gulf.
Mac was on that duty for six months. It was where she earned her Meritorious Service Medal. One week into the cruise as the fleet was passing close by Indonesia, she had gone to Aceh Provence in Indonesia on a case where a Marine Corporal was arrested for raping a local girl. The local girl positively identified the corporal as the assailant. Mac had been successful in paying his bail for his release in her custody, after assuring the local police captain that the corporal would be tried for his crime in a military court. Unfortunately the locals not liking that a rapist appeared to be getting away with his crime, attacked the embassy where Mac had taken him to await transfer to the Guadalcanal. In the melee of the attack, one other Marine guard was killed and his Gunnery Sergeant was blinded. Taking command, Mac had successfully evacuated the embassy staff to helicopters that took them to the Guadalcanal.
When she returned to JAG after her duty to the fleet was completed, AJ had awarded her the medal in front of the whole JAG Corps gathered in the parking lot at Headquarters. She had enjoyed receiving her congratulatory kiss from Harm.
"That's to make up for the last six months," Harm said as they broke the kiss.
Things settled down after that. Harm and Mac enjoyed the life that they were making for themselves. They went through a dark patch when Bud had been injured in Afghanistan. He had his leg blown off when he stepped on a mine trying to get a child out of that same minefield. Mac and Matt had barely escaped injury after they had to swerve into in another minefield while trying not to run over a goat in their path. They were in pursuit of a terrorist with a dirty bomb.
Harm had been along on that mission as an advisor on the Seahawk. He had flown a Tomcat and let a cruise missile, with the same dirty bomb Mac and Matt were after, lock on to him and fly away from the fleet until it flamed out over the middle of the Arabian sea.
She & Harm, Jackie & Matt as well as the other JAG staff and friends had rallied around Bud and Harriet as Bud recovered and returned to full active duty.
Then the next winter into spring Mac had to deal with an audit called by the SECNAV. The auditor was Commander Theodore Lindsey. Lindsey had been a poor choice as he had been passed over for promotion by the Captain Promotion Board, chaired by Admiral Chegwidden. He had an ax to grind as well as other things that he wanted to blame on those at JAG whom he thought had done him wrong. His charges were all successfully rebutted by the JAG Staff and he was asked by the SECNAV to never enter the Pentagon again.
After they dealt with that, they had to deal with the murder of Lt. Loren Singer. That winter she had died from drowning. She had been speaking with someone on the walkway bridge that overlooked the Potomac River's Great Falls. She had slipped and fell on the ice covering the walkway and hit her head on the railing and was knocked unconscious. She had then been tossed into the river by the man who she was talking to at the time of her fall. That man had thought her dead from the fall. He had been afraid that the baby Loren was carrying would be found to be his. Her body wasn't found until the next spring where the rising water had left her perched up a tree.
At first Harm had been implicated in Loren's death. He was seen counseling her at Benzingers on how to deal with her pregnancy shortly before her death. He had been a bit angry with her attitude because he thought that her baby had been Sergei's. Sergei had arrived in the states the previous Christmas and Harm had seen him and Loren together just before she shipped out to the Seahawk as Bud's replacement. Also his white uniform cover had been found along the same bank of the Potomac River where Loren's decomposed body had been found.
Against the SECNAV's orders, Mac had stepped in and vigorously defended her husband. Mac smiled as she remembered throwing Harm's OCD afflicted female attorney, Commander Faith Coleman, out of the interview room, saying, "Commander I will defend my husband. So either you sit second chair or get lost."
Coleman's ego got in her way and she left the case.
Forensic testing on the hat showed that the amount of silt found in the hat, had not been consistent with the amount that should have been in the hat if Harm had lost the hat in the winter.
With the help of the NCIS investigators looking in the Navy's LSO Visitors' Log and Harm remembering when his hat had been switched by a visitor to his office, Mac was able to exonerate Harm and bring homicide charges against Commander Lindsey, the man who switched Harm's hat and who Loren was speaking to on the icy walkway..
No sooner after taking a breath on that debacle, Clayton Webb had used whatever influence he had to get Mac to accompany him on a very dangerous CIA mission to Paraguay. His one mistake was not asking Harm to go along. Mac was forced to agree to go when the SECNAV had ordered her to go because of her fluency in the Farsi language.
Despite the fact that Mac was married to a man she loved deeply, Webb was still sniffing around hoping to get them apart. This mission was it for him. They were going to pretend that they were married and Mac was pregnant. Unfortunately for Webb when they arrived at the hotel in Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay, Mac rebuffed all his advances that Webb tried under the guise of acting like a married couple.
They had been captured by Sadik, the terrorist they were hunting, after they had tried to free Gunnery Sergeant Victor Galindez from Sadik's compound after the Gunny's real identity had been compromised.
While in captivity, Webb had fallen on his sword for Mac as he suffered torture long enough to keep Sadik's men off Mac and for Harm to come to their rescue.
Harm had only been there after he had received word that Mac and Webb had missed their regularly scheduled check-ins. He defied the CIA, his own commanding officer, and the SECNAV's orders of not to get involved by saying "Screw you all. You can take my commission and shove it. I'm getting my wife and bringing her home."
He was successful in rescuing Mac and Webb, finding his wife strapped to the same table where Webb was tortured, about to be receive the same treatment.
After the shooting stopped and they were relatively safe from attack, Harm and Gunny loaded a totally beaten-up Webb into the front seat of an SUV they commandered. Before they left Sadik's compound Mac bent over and kissed Webb on the cheek saying, "Clay thank you for keeping them from me. I will be forever grateful. But this is the end. Stay away from me, Harm and my family. If I ever see you come near me again, I'll be the one to put a bullet in your head."
At that Gunny took Webb back to the states while Mac and Harm tried to run Sadik to ground, but he had gotten away from them.
When Mac and Harm returned to DC, they both agreed that because of the way the SECNAV treated him, Harm was not going back to the Navy. So borrowing against the trust fund his step father Frank Burnett had established for him when he was boy, Harm bought out the airport service, Grace Aviation, where he stored his Stearman in Blacksburg, VA from the man who owned it, Tom Johnson.
Mr. Johnson had let it founder because after his wife died in a car accident, he had fallen into the bottle. He left his 14 year old daughter Mattie to run the business in his absence. When Harm agreed to buy the service, he and Mac adopted Mattie as their legal ward. Mac and Harm both agreed that they had room in their hearts for the girl who desperately needed their help.
Their troubles had all ended a short two months before when Sadik had shown up in DC, threatening Mac. First he had followed Harm and Mac to the airport in Blacksburg and while they were in Mattie's house eating dinner, he rigged the battery in Harm's Corvette, that he also stored in Blacksburg, to blow up in Harm's face when he went to maintain it. The explosion had rendered Harm temporarily deaf.
So working undercover with the help of NCIS, not the CIA, whom she did not trust, Mac was able to thwart Sadik's scheme of converting her to Islam and blowing up a night club full of 'infidels'. When Sadik learned that he had been duped he attacked Mac. During the struggle Mac was able to get Sadik's gun and shoot him in the shoulder and then in the head.
She taunted him between the first shot to his shoulder and the second shot to his head with, "That's for my husband. And this is for me."
After that Mac and Harm went through a lot of counseling to get over the Post Traumatic Stress brought on by the whole Sadik affair.
Now Mac and Harm were both doing well. Harm was working with NCIS as the head of a team of investigators. He had gotten the job when the NCIS Special Agent, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who investigated him for Singer's murder, recruited him on behalf of the NCIS Director Tom Morrow. Harm had always loved the investigation side of his job at JAG. So seeing that he had missed that part of his job working at the LSO and that there was a new SECNAV, Harm accepted the position.
They hired a manager for Grace Aviation, one Jack Keeter. Jack had gotten tired of flying and crashing things for the CIA.
They sold their condo in Arlington and bought a house in Fairfax, VA., an easy commute for Mac into Falls Church. They had to give up the condo because it was too small for them and Mattie. You see AJ had to wait a year to tell Mac of her duty cruise because she and Harm had been successful in conceiving not one, not two, but three babies that first night of their honeymoon.
Fraternal triplets, two girls Amanda and Maryam Rabb and one boy, Nathaniel Rabb were born to Mac almost exactly nine months after their wedding. The triplets showed up a week before the nine months of the exact date of their conception on February 18, 2002.
At the restaurant as they all got up to leave Jennifer went up to Matt and said, "Permission to hug the commander sir."
"Granted Petty Officer First Class," Matt said as he received her into his arms to share a friendly hug.
When they broke apart Jen said, "I want to thank you sir. If you hadn't shown the faith you had in me when I was charged two Christmases ago, I wouldn't be here. I'd probably be in prison, or working as a master thief."
"Well I wouldn't say master thief, I'd say advising the law on how to catch master thieves. You're a good person by nature Jen. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise," Matt told her.
"Thank you sir," Jen said sincerely as she turned to leave.
Turning to Mac, Matt asked, "I wonder where our spouses are. They're supposed to be here so that we can convoy down to Blacksburg tonight and go flying tomorrow."
"When I looked out the window just before, I saw Harm's Lexus pulling into the parking lot," Mac replied.
As soon as she finished speaking she saw the front door to the restaurant open. She saw her very tall husband hold it open to let through someone that was too small to be seen over the maître-de's station. As they cleared the podium, three dark haired children spotted her and ran full tilt through the maze of empty tables and chairs to get to her.
Mac bent and received her three children in a joyous hug.
"Mommy, mommy, are we going flying tomorrow?" her son Nathaniel shouted for them.
"Yes we're going flying tomorrow," Mac answered as she continued to administer kisses and tickles.
"What about the picnic," Amanda asked in a whine.
"Yeah the picnic with ice cream," Maryam added in the same tone.
"Yes we're going to fly and we're going to have a picnic with ice cream tomorrow. So everyone calm down," Mac said cheerily.
As Harm got to her, she stood up to receive his sweet and lingering kiss.
"Hey flyboy, have any trouble getting the weekend off?" Mac asked as they came up for air.
"None at all. Gibbs' team will take the duty this weekend. My team will pull it next week," Harm replied.
"Where's Mattie?" Mac asked.
"She's with Kate Simms at the mall. We're picking her up on the way," Harm answered.
"That's good. So what do say we get this show on the road," Mac said as he hooked her hand into Harm's bent arm.
"I'm with you colonel, all the way," Harm said as they corralled their children to go back out.
As they drove away from the restaurant Mac thought about the fortune that she and the others had read. She knew that all her desires were spoken for on that ferry trip in Sydney. The road she had taken with Harm had got them What They Deserve.
The End