Chapter 1
Wild Turkey rippled like amber waves inside Gabriel Durrand’s whiskey glass. Ambient noises dimmed as the palpable scents of civilization drifted seamlessly into earthier odors. The desert crept into his consciousness on a carpet of darkness, swallowing him by slow degrees.
Sweat dripped into his eyes and trickled down his back, hot and slick, slipping into the waistband of his cammies. But he remained as he was, unmoving, barely breathing because this was it. He could feel it in the cramped muscles of his shoulders, on the itchy nape of his neck. They’d been living in this damned sandbox for five weeks now. Followed a hundred leads. Planned a dozen missions, but this would be the last.
They’d finally run the bastard to ground. Abdul Wakil Ghafoor. Rapist, murderer. Soon-to-be corpse.
It was oh-dark thirty. Sometime between too early and just about fucking time. The desert was as quiet as death. His comrades were nearby, but almost invisible. A squad of men with exceptional training and unsurpassed skills. He knew each of them as well as he knew himself.
Jairo…the little Latino, strong as a bull, quick as a fox. Snipes…sharpshooter and new daddy, so proud it’d make you laugh if it weren’t for that dumb-ass niggle of jealousy every time he pulled out the photos.
Intel…the genius.
Shep…
Close behind him, Shepherd’s stomach rumbled. The rangy Okie shifted his rifle, trying to ease the jacked-up tension that had been building in them all for a month. “If this fucker makes me miss breakfast, I’m gonna kill ‘im twice,” he murmured.
Shepherd…the ass…and Gabe’s wingman since boot camp.
“Quit your fucking swearing,” Gabe mouthed, and Shepherd grinned, teeth so white they nearly glowed. But they were well hidden, hunkered down behind a wall the color of puke. Forty feet away at one o’clock was a squat farmhouse constructed of the same material. Light spilled at a sharp angle from the building’s only window. Sporadic laughter could be heard coming from behind the closed door. Ghafoor had a hell of a sense of humor. As did his guards. There was nothing funnier to them than spilling American blood. But the hilarity would end tonight.
Intel had traced them here.
Reynolds had given the orders; no planes, no Humvees, no noise. Just a half-dozen seasoned Rangers armed with guts and patriotism.
This would be a coup to negate the growing list of Middle Eastern snafus because this was an OFP. Their own fucking program. No one knew they were there. Not their mothers. Not their lovers, and sure as hell not the shit-bricks in Washington.
Off to their left, Reynolds raised his arm. Camouflaged warriors eased out of nowhere, tightening the perimeter like a noose around Ghafoor’s scrawny neck.
A new Land Cruiser stood nearby, shining in the moonlight. Reynolds motioned toward it, one quick jerk of his head. Snipes crept forward, M-4 at the ready as he reached through the open window, retrieved the keys, then nodded once and knelt, taking cover behind a chromed wheel.
The rest of the detail found new positions, just as invisible, but closer now, every rifle trained, every muscle tensed.
Reynolds pointed to Intel, crouched as he was behind an ancient, wind-gnarled olive tree.
Just about ready, just about there.
Intel hunkered back, entirely unseen, his voice loud and clear in the dark silence, an echoing Pashto warning to lay down their guns, to give themselves up.
Then the Land Cruiser exploded. It leapt toward the sky on a rocket of flame. Fire engulfed Snipes like a glove. He shrieked, high-pitched with agony. The sound was chopped short as the vehicle landed.
Scraps of metal rained from the sky. A flaming shard struck Gabe, ripping the rifle from his hands. He threw himself onto the sand, clawing for his frags, but his fingers were slippery. Unwieldy.
Gunfire burst over them, torpedoing from behind. Reynolds grunted and spun, hitting the ground like a loosed boulder.
Gabe scrambled around in a circle, spinning on his belly. White-hot gunfire ripped at them from a dozen inky locations, and through his skewed night vision goggles, he could see the blackened faces of the men who had outwitted them.
To his right, Intel stepped out of cover and opened fire. Two Sunni rebels stumbled backward, bodies jerking to the staccato beat of his weapon. For a moment, the lone tree seemed to crackle with silver energy, then it split, ripping down the middle. Splinters burst into the air like fireworks. Intel leapt away, miraculously unscathed, rifle raised in astonishment.
“Get down! Get the fuck down!” someone screamed, but before the words ended, Intel toppled backward, twitching erratically in the exploding light.
And in that same eerie glow, Shepherd leapt forward. Gabe watched him race across the desert in slow motion, a hunkered, camouflaged sprinter on a heavy treadmill of sand. Powder-puffs billowed up from his boots as he labored toward Intel’s twitching body. Firelight echoed off his rifle as a dozen Taliban aimed to kill.
Gabe found himself on his feet. He didn’t know when he’d located his rifle. Didn’t interpret his own actions. Didn’t hear his own incoherent roar as he raced toward the duo by the fractured tree, M-4 chattering as he ran.
Someone shrieked a truncated curse. Shepherd dragged Intel to his feet. A splinter the size of a pistol muzzle was protruding from the wounded man’s throat, but he was still convulsing, limbs jerking out of rhythm, like Pinocchio gone mad.
“Let’s go!” Gabe shouted and crouched down, spattering gunfire into the anonymous blackness.
“Help me!” Shepherd rasped.
But Intel had gone limp. “Too late!”
“The hell it is!” Shepherd barked. “Grab his—”
Gabe leapt to his feet and swung. The butt of his weapon struck Shepherd’s temple like a thunderclap. He stumbled back, shock stamped across his face as Intel’s body slumped to the ground. And then Shepherd fell, too, stunned and motionless. For one horrified moment, Gabe delayed, barely hearing the harsh beat of the guns behind him. Then he threw himself atop Shep’s prostrate form and opened fire.
It was a nightmare of chaos, of pain, of terror and blood and anger and guilt.
But finally the noise ceased, though the pain continued, throbbing like a bitching ulcer.
“You okay?”
Reynolds was bent at the waist, holding his stomach. In the periphery, someone was weeping, guttural gasping sobs that slowed gradually, becoming softer, intermittent.
Gabe nodded, though he couldn’t remember the question. Blood was dripping onto his leg with mind-numbing regularity.
“Are you sure?” someone asked, and with those words reality seeped like acid into his aching brain.
He raised his eyes, letting the surroundings take hold of his faulty consciousness; the Blue Oyster, a semi-seedy club on the outskirts of MacLean, Virginia. A club where he’d been told to meet an agent named Eddy. An agent who could help save Shepherd’s ass. But Eddy hadn’t shown.
Instead, a woman stood beside his table. She was blond and slim. Cute would be the term his sister would use, and that with some derision. The Durrand women didn’t do cute.
“Sure,” he said and drew himself fully into the present, locking the past behind him in maximum security.
The woman frowned, seemed to consider leaving then decided against it. “You spilled your drink.”
It took him a moment to glance down, longer to realize she was right. Blood was not dripping onto his thigh as he had assumed. It was whiskey. A neat means of losing consciousness by the quickest possible route.
“I’m fine,” he said and righted his glass, but she didn’t move away, forcing him to say more, to attempt civility. “Don’t I look fine?”
She scowled. Ginger-colored freckles were scattered across her pert little nose like wind-blown confetti, and her face was shaped like a heart, making her look as if she’d just whistled off the streets of Mayberry U. S. A.
His hands were trembling. He shoved them under the table for safekeeping. “Devastatingly handsome?” he asked. It was a line Linus Shepherd might have delivered. If Linus Shepherd were still around. If he hadn’t been such a damn fuckup.
Suddenly Gabe’s eyes stung and his throat felt tight, but Rangers didn’t cry. Sometimes they got shit-faced and brawled in the street like rabid dogs. Sometimes they shot the tires out of their own damn vehicles, but they did not cry, and he’d left his Beretta at the hotel. So he would do none of the above.
“Yet boyishly charming?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said, then, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. I just thought you might… I’m sorry,” she said again and retreated to a table behind him and to his right.
He let her go, refilled his glass from the handy bottle nearby and wondered why the hell he was such a damned wienie. She was built like an all-American Barbie, for God’s sake, and he wasn’t dead. Not yet.
At least that’s what Shepherd had said before shipping off to Bogotá with Miller the Moron. Before half of Miller’s men had come back in body bags. Before Shepherd had gone MIA.
Goddammit! Gabe gritted his teeth against the hard rush of memories. Against the pain and guilt and hopelessness.
But he wasn’t dead. Not yet, he remembered, and closing his eyes for an abbreviated eternity, grabbed the Wild Turkey by the throat and rose to his feet.