Prologue
August 2006
Kirkuk, northern Iraq
JED COOPER lay back on the bed of the truck. His pillow was a rolled-up chemical-protection suit wedged on a box of grenades. Not the most comfortable resting place, but it wasn’t the strangest place he’d ever laid his head.
The convoy rolled on, picking its way through the dusty roads of Kirkuk. The desert dirt tracks were primitive, potholed, and laced with IEDs, but Jed closed his eyes against the blazing Iraqi sun and tried to switch off. The threat of a roadside device didn’t worry him much. He’d been around long enough to figure if a bomb had his name on, there wasn’t much he could do to avoid it. The potholes bothered him more. The truck lurched from side to side, and a familiar, nagging sickness brewed in his belly. He gritted his teeth, and despite the sweltering heat, felt cold as the blood ran from his face.
Don’t puke. Not here.
A hand landed on Jed’s shoulder. He opened his eyes and met the keen gaze of Glenn, his team’s lead medic.
“All right?”
Jed’s only answer was a slight shake of his head. I’m so fucking tired.
“Rest easy, J. Not long now.”
Easy for you to say. Jed closed his eyes and let his mind wander as he resumed the pretense of taking a nap.
Glenn was the only soul who knew his secret—this secret, at least—aside from a discreet German doctor at the camp’s main hospital. A virus, borne on bad drinking water, had laid his whole team low, but for Jed it had morphed into something else: a brutal stomach flu that wouldn’t quit. In the end it became gastroparesis—a chronic disease of the stomach, caused by irreparable damage to the vagus nerve.
Lucky me.
The symptom list was long and unpleasant: nausea, fatigue, weight loss, and pain… fuck, pain like he’d never felt it before. The doctor said he’d spend the rest of his days anemic and tired, and now, six long weeks later, Jed was starting to believe him. His crew had three weeks left of their marathon tour of Iraq, and it felt like fate. His military career was over, and he didn’t much care.
The depth of his apathy surprised him. He’d given the Army more than a decade of his life, and with his days numbered, he’d expected to feel more. Instead he felt nothing… nothing but a flat sense of impending doom. War had sucked the life from him, but without it, what was he? His momma was long dead, and he hadn’t spoken to his surviving family in years. Now he had weeks left on the job and no idea what he was going to do next.
He let out a heavy sigh and opened his eyes, grateful the rumbling truck engine drowned him out. He scanned his crew. They were all in much the same position as him, slumped down with their eyes closed, trying to snatch some much needed sleep. Only his second-in-command was awake, fiddling with the crappy stereo in the cab of the vehicle behind Jed’s.
Paul glanced up in the same moment Jed looked his way. Jed twitched his lips in a half smile. Paul winked and raised the middle finger on his left hand. His wedding band glinted in the sun.
Jed’s smile faded. He dropped his head back to his makeshift pillow and let his eyes fall closed again. Paul was the second-in-command of the eight-man crew Jed led, and his best friend. They were close—perhaps closer than they should’ve been—but none of that would matter when Paul went home to his wife and son….
A dull thud broke the monotonous grumble of the truck. Jed’s eyes flew open. RPGs. Fuck. He shot upright, searching for the source as Saja, the combat dog on Paul’s vehicle, began a persistent warning bark. In the distance, a smattering of AK47 fire broke out. It sounded close… too close.
The vehicles in the convoy stopped. Their hulking tires sent dust up into the perfect blue sky. Jed leaped from the truck, shouting orders, and hunkered down behind the back wheel. He counted his men as they hit the ground running. One through seven. Seven men, all present and whole, at least for now. The chaos of gunfire rocked the earth, and around them, the air crackled and glittered, shimmering with the invisible energy of an IED just before it went off.
Somewhere behind them, a vehicle blew up.
Jed’s world shrank to the immediate battlefield. Debris fell from the sky, and his crew cranked into motion like a well-oiled machine. Ambushes were common. Every man knew his role.
Jed darted across the sand and lay down in a firing position. The attack seemed to be coming from the back of the convoy. He took a risk, raised his head, and made a split-second analysis. Eight vehicles in the convoy. They had superior firepower, but with the smoke of the mortar-hit truck clouding the air, he had no idea how many enemy fighters lay beyond the initial ambush. Two or twenty, did it matter? Some days, he wasn’t sure. Fuck it. He called his men forward. Inaction was suicide.
Jed led the way back through the smoking convoy, with Paul, Kip, and the dog at the rear. He dodged the burning truck as the men behind put down covering fire. Another explosion rocked the earth. Jed dropped to the ground. Body parts rained down from the sky. He rolled to avoid a charred limb and hardly felt the bullet as it sliced into his leg and tore through muscle and bone.
The world slowed and dulled, as if powered with a fading battery. Jed squeezed the trigger on his weapon, but nothing happened. Shrapnel blasted holes in the dusty earth around him, and he watched through hazy eyes as his blood oozed into the sand. Flames from a burning vehicle reached him. He smelled his desert gear smoldering, but even through the heat of the flames, he felt cold—cold like he’d never be warm again.
Time stopped as he lay facedown in the dirt. He heard the shouts of men fighting, and the screams of them dying, but they sounded far off, like a forgotten TV in a backstreet bar. A muted cloud of euphoria floated through him. It was good, like the best sex he’d ever had, and he enjoyed the strange sensation of his life seeping into the earth.
An aircraft roared in the sky. The sound was deafening, and a different emotion rushed over him. Anger. He was annoyed. He wanted to sleep. Stubborn, he closed his eyes to the noise and let the silence of death wash over him.
I like this place.
“Jed! Jed! Move, goddammit, move!”
The acrid smell of burning flesh took over Jed’s senses, and then pain. Red hot, burning pain.
Fuck!
Jed rolled, extinguishing the flames on his shoulder. He tried to get up, but nothing happened. He was frozen, caught in a haze of blood and agony.
Shit.
“Jed!”
Jed followed the sound of Paul’s voice, and there he was, running across the smoke-filled battleground, paying no heed to the carnage around him. Damn. Even in the sickness of war, he looked like a quarterback. A quarterback looking to get himself killed.
New pain flared in Jed’s heart. Stop, go back. Get your head down. But the words stuck in his throat. He watched Paul dodge the hail of bullets sweeping the convoy and thought of Paul’s young family waiting for him back in Phoenix. Don’t do it. Not for me.
The aircraft roared again. Another explosion shook the ground, and Paul disappeared. Jed waved the smoke from his eyes, but the wait for the air to clear felt endless. Vehicles burned around him. Another voice yelled his name, but he ignored it. He felt nothing. Saw nothing, except the crumpled form of his best friend, facedown on the ground.
Jed scrambled to his feet and ran, his broken body moving on instinct. He reached Paul’s side and hauled him up. He dragged him toward an embankment before his leg gave out, and they fell together into the ditch. The radio on Paul’s shoulder crackled. Jed reached for it and called for help, but even as his voice fell away, he knew whoever came would be too late.