Cliff's Edge Read Free Page B

long legs and crossing them at the ankles.
    It wasn’t the first time someone commented on his friendship with Cliff Snyder, wondering—or assuming—they were a couple. Their friendship went back twenty years, to BUDs training. The class started with one hundred twenty-four candidates and finished with nineteen. Without a doubt the two of them had spurred each other to success, often side-by-side in the sub-sixty degree water off the coast of San Diego, reminding each other that failure to reach or maintain standards in training meant getting wet—failure on a mission meant death.
    For the first few years after qualifying as SEALs, the two of them served on different SEAL teams out of Coronado, but eventually they’d been assigned to the same team and landed on the same platoon many times since.
    God…BUDs was forever ago. I’m getting to be an old man in this business.
    They’d formed a competitive bond that extended far beyond the already tight connections that SEAL teams develop. The only area their lives didn’t intersect was in the bedroom. They each had their own interests there.
    “Heard from Snides lately? Man, I thought they’d never get him out of the field. How’s he doing at the schoolhouse?” Marco asked, pulling Ryan from his memories.
    Ryan laughed and shook his head. “Haven’t talked him for a couple weeks, but he wasn’t looking forward to this tour of duty. He says it’s where old SEALs go to retire.”
    “He ain’t wrong about that,” Marco agreed. His mouth quirked up on one side. “So…they cutting you orders there next, old man?”
    “Fuck you,” Ryan said, laughing. He paused to unwrap a piece of Big Red and folded it into thirds before popping it in his mouth. “All respect to those who teach at BUDs, but, man…I don’t think I’m cut out for that training shit. Besides, I don’t think they could handle both me and Snides.”
    Marco punched him on the shoulder before standing as his name was called for his turn with the medical crew. His smile faded. “I hear what you’re saying—but don’t sell yourself short, Rhino. Despite all the drills, and that invincible feeling you get when you’re finished with the training pipeline, you and Cliff got me through the probation period and made sure I stayed alive.”
    Marco disappeared behind the blue curtain where the medics would conduct their preliminary assessment, and Ryan resumed his head-back-eyes-closed position. Goddamn Marco had called him an old man—and he had the right of it. At least to the kids going through BUDs right now. Only thirty-seven, but twenty years seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. Now he was in the enviable position of having his reenlistment coincide with negotiating for his next set of orders. Not that there was a lot of wiggle room among their ranks. With less than twenty-five hundred SEALs, the billets were manned with intricate precision. Pay grade, skills, and experience all had to align to meet the mission of the special warfare community. Twenty years also meant he could go home…but other than his Coronado condo, what exactly was home?
    Maybe he could skip the mandatory R and R and head straight back to base to talk to the captain and the detailer about his reenlistment options. The powers that be would probably still insist he take some downtime after the mission, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He and Snides had the final season of Sons of Anarchy on the DVR. The sonofabitch better not have cheated and watched it without him.
    *
    Ryan eyed the bowl of matchsticks Captain Ross kept on his desk and wondered what the old man would think if he took two to prop up his eyelids. Sure he could function on no sleep for days on end when he was in the field, but for the last—he glanced at the loudly-ticking government-issued Skilcraft clock on the wall—fifty-seven hours, he’d been deloused, debriefed, and determined fit to travel. Returning to San Diego via Yokota, Japan, and