Chapter2
Sunlight poured in through the tall, narrow windows that lined one side of a massive dining room, overlooking a beautifully sculpted garden just outside. The warm light spilled over the high gloss of the long, dark, wooden table where two people sat, both of them eating a meal, though neither one of them were looking at the other or speaking.
Lucas was sitting with a book in his hands, reading it as he finished his lunch, and two seats away from him, a young woman with long, blonde hair and wide, blue eyes was skimming over the pages of a stock market newspaper.
Her slender pale fingers were tipped with a delicate shade of rose pink that matched her soft, full lips. Her hair cascaded over one shoulder, leaving the other bare, uncovered as it was by her pretty, floral sundress.
“Brocknell peaked today,” she said without looking up.
“Yes. I sold mine this morning. Made enough to buy a small country,” Lucas answered with a smile as he turned the page of his book.
She lifted her gaze from the newspaper in her hands and gave him an admiring smile. “How do you always know?” she asked with quiet fascination.
“I just know. Like sailing… it’s just something I’m really, really good at.” Lucas winked at her and sipped his coffee. “You probably want to buy some of Whittaker’s before the end of the day today, too, if you can.”
She eyed him interestedly. “I’ll do that. Thank you for looking out for your baby sister.” She gave him a wink.
“That’s what good big brothers do,” he answered as he turned back to his book.
Just then, the door to the room opened, and a man somewhere in his early thirties with dark eyes and dark hair entered, his stride long and purposeful until he saw the blonde woman sitting near Lucas. He stopped almost in mid-step.
“Camilla…” he breathed out thickly, staring at her. “Good morning.”
“It’s nearly noon,” she returned, giving him little more than a glance before standing up and gathering her newspaper. “I have some business to see to,” she said offhandedly as she went to Lucas, kissing his cheek, and then walked from the room.
“She hates me.” The man sighed heavily as he walked over to Lucas and sat down.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Lucas replied, closing his book and setting it beside him. “She just doesn’t like you. And who could blame her?” Lucas asked in a teasing tone, eyeing the man’s head. “What did you do to your hair, Caleb?”
Caleb Boggs was Lucas’ best friend. No one in Lucas’ family liked him, but that didn’t stop Lucas from spending time with him.
Looking upward, as if doing so might give him a look at his hair, Caleb frowned. “What? What’s wrong with it?”
“You have about a pound of gel in it, and it’s going in nearly every direction,” Lucas answered stoically. “You look like you’re going for hero hair and failing miserably.”
“Change the hair. Got it.” Caleb sighed and glanced over at the abandoned spot where Camilla had been sitting.
“What brings you over?” Lucas asked lightly, reaching for his coffee.
“I came to see you. Where are Ryder and Pierce?” he asked, looking around the empty room as if either of Lucas’ brothers might suddenly appear at the very mention of their names.
“Ryder hasn’t been home in three days. He’s probably at some extended playboy party, passed out drunk with a dozen naked women. Pierce is working, as he always is. What did you come to see me about?” Lucas asked more directly the second time.
“What, I can’t just drop by to see my best friend?” Caleb asked innocently, spreading his hands out upturned before him, as if seeing Lucas for his fine company was the only reason he could possibly be there.
Lucas leveled his gaze at him.
“Okay. I need to go to Boston, and I want you to go with me,” Caleb finally admitted, dropping his shoulders slightly as he looked hopefully at Lucas.
“What for?” Lucas asked warily, eyeing him.
“A weekend road trip. Bros on the road. Fun. Adventure. The high seas. Good Italian food on Hanover Street. Beers at Cheers. Boston Public Gardens. Whatever you like. I’d even go to a museum there with you.” Caleb lowered his brows as his expression grew intent.
Lucas crossed his arms over his chest.
Caleb lifted a hand and pointed his finger toward the ceiling. “Okay… okay, I have a little business to see to there. The rest of the time, we can just… hang out.”
“What kind of business?” Lucas asked him darkly.
“Nothing illegal! No, no… it’s all above board. I promise. Don’t you fret. Come with me. Please,” Caleb implored.
“Alright. I’ll go, but I’m driving.” Lucas looked at him pointedly.
“No worries…” Caleb trailed off and looked away. “That’s totally fine. Of course.” He stood up and cleared his throat. “Thanks, buddy. I’m looking forward to it.”
Lucas gave him a wave, and Caleb waved back and walked out of the room. A couple of minutes later, Camilla walked back in and sat down at the table with her newspaper again. Her mouth was turned down in a dark frown.
“Why do you still hang out with him?” she grumbled, reaching for her tea. “He’s nothing but trouble and bad news.”
Lucas sighed and looked over at her. He felt a swelling in his chest as a wave of frustration washed through him. “Caleb saved my life,” he began defensively. “There’s no way that I can repay that. Do you have a friend who would willingly be so brave? Who would step in front of a bullet for you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, knowing that there wouldn’t be one. He rose from his chair and took his book with him, heading out of the side door in the kitchen to go to one of the gardens in their massive estate.
The garden he chose was one that he often went to. There was a big pond there and a comfortable bench set beneath a weeping willow tree. He sank down onto the bench and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
The idyllic scene before him—the still water reflecting the bright, blue sky and drifting clouds; the tall, slender grasses grouped along one side of the pond; the weeping willow tendrils that swayed lightly around him—began to fade, and a much darker scene unfolded before his eyes.
Night in the desert wasn’t like night anywhere else. When the last light of day faded and every star that God had ever put in the heavens began to shine in a glittering mass above, everything on terra firma descended into pure darkness. There was no light around as far as any eye could see, no distance could be detected near or far, and no depth. There was nothing but the stink of smoke and decay that war putrefies the air with, and an engulfing blackness, blinding sight.
The blackness didn’t drown out the sounds, though. No, those were amplified in the dark. The mysterious noises created by things unseen. The noises played tricks on a man’s mind when he was blinded with pitch black, and they took on the form of those things that hide in the recesses of the human mind, kept behind walls of safety and sanity.
The blistering heat of the day that made breathing unbearably miserable faded in mere minutes with the onset of night. With nothing to hold the warmth of the sun, the hills and flatlands of the desert seemed to draw in the coldness of space, suffocating life that might feebly attempt to last until the break of dawn.
There were other nightmares in that hell, but they were not wicked tricks of the mind; they were living, pulsing nightmares, just waiting to become the reality of anyone they could find. They existed on both sides of the battles that were being waged in the wastelands of Afghanistan. If men from either side happened to be captured, there were the graces of the Geneva Conventions which should be adhered to, and were, on rare occasions, but in the grip of hatred and anger, of religion and power hungry leaders, those conventions were ignored or forgotten, or disregarded as weakness, and that knowledge weighed heavy on the minds of the two men who had barely escaped their helicopter being shot down behind enemy lines. The mission had been successful. They had bombed a base and destroyed every life around it so that nothing remained. It was the order they had been given. They hated it, but they turned their back on morality and did what they were told to do. There was nothing left behind them at their target, but there was something coming straight to them as they left it to return to their own base. A missile had been launched and had hit the helicopter, bringing it down in raging flames until it hit the ground and, long moments later, exploded. It burned high and bright, blinding the eyes of the only two men who’d escaped it, with its brilliant blazing light in the dead blackness of the desert night.
Staring for an eternal second, Lucas and Caleb gaped in disbelief at the instant loss of their comrades, their hearts breaking before them as they turned and ran from the scene. Lucas pulled Caleb down to the dirt with him, and they crawled along the harsh, dry ground, turning and winding their way through low lying scrub brush.
They went down into shallow ravines and circumnavigated small hills, not wanting to be up high where anyone could find them. They tried to keep their breath shallow and thin, their hearts pounded so loudly in their ears, pulsing, gushing hot blood through them, daring to be heard by anything around them.
They crawled for what felt like hours, and the night only got darker around them, the terrain more dangerous, and the cold fear of capture more prevalent. Caleb felt it seeping into him – the dread that at any moment, they might be seen or heard and captured by the enemy. He stopped and stayed still for a long moment, and Lucas, five feet ahead of him, heard him stop, so he paused in his crawling and turned to look over his shoulder. He could not see his best friend; he could only see the merest outline of a bumpy form on the ground.
He waited, wondering if Caleb had heard something. There was no unnatural sound outside of the desert life around them. He took a deep breath and slowly, carefully, inched his way backward until he was closer to Caleb. He wondered if some poisonous desert creature had gotten him, he was so still, but when Lucas reached him, he could finally hear the other man breathing, softly and almost silently.
“What is it? Are you alright?” Lucas barely whispered.
Caleb didn’t answer right away. He hesitated, and then replied as he looked around. “I’m okay. I want to get up and run for it. We’re never going to get to the enemy line crawling like this. At least, not by daylight, and if we’re still crawling through this hell hole when the sun comes up, we’ll be seen and captured. We have the cover of darkness right now. I could hardly see where you were in front of me, and that wasn’t even ten feet. We could do this. We get up, and we make a run for it. Moving targets are harder to hit anyway, in case anyone is out there.”
“We know someone is out there; that’s why there’s a decimated helicopter back there, and everyone on the mission except us is dead! Because someone else is out there, somewhere between the helicopter that we left and the enemy line that we have to get to and cross. We know we’re not alone out here. We can’t risk being seen! We’ve got to crawl,” Lucas insisted.
“No, the sun will be up, and then there’s no chance we’ll make it! If we aren’t found and killed by their side, we’ll be killed by the elements out here while we’re hiding and waiting for dark again. Listen, we were fifty miles in for the target. We made it back probably thirty miles before we were taken down. My best guess is that we have twenty miles to go. Now, I know we’re in good shape, but we aren’t going to be able to crawl for twenty miles through this… craptastic desert and make it to the enemy line by dawn. It won’t happen. Our best bet is to get up and make a run for it. We run straight through until we die or until we get there, but we run or we’re never going to make it. This pitch black night is our best chance to get out alive!” Caleb might have only been barely audible to Lucas, but he was making his point quite clear.
Lucas sighed and hung his head, closing his eyes. He thought it through carefully and then lifted his head and faced his friend. “Alright. You win. We’ll go. Just stay as low as you can, and if you see or hear anything, you drop and keep moving.”
Caleb didn’t answer. He rose from the ground and stayed in a low crouch, rushing through and around the bushes and plants, moving as quickly as he could, and Lucas was right behind him. They went for a long while, not speaking, keeping their breath and their movements as quiet as they could, keeping their eyes and ears on full alert, and they made it almost ten miles before the crack of a gun sounded, and the shot rang out through the night, echoing throughout the desert and then vanishing into the darkness.
Lucas winced in sudden pain as the bullet ripped past his calf. He collapsed on the ground and curled his fingers into the dirt, clenching his teeth as tightly as he could to stop himself from screaming out in pain. Caleb stopped in front of him and dropped down low, moving back to where he was.
“You’re hit?” he asked, seeming to already know.
“My leg,” Lucas answered him in a hushed breath. He felt the sweat all over his body running downward in rivulets, some of it finding its way into the wound, burning his flesh with his own saltwater. He drew in a long deep breath to steady himself.
“We have to go. Whoever shot you is still out there, and they’re looking for us. Come on, I’ll help you.” Caleb hoisted him up so that their arms were wrapped around each other’s shoulders side to side, and they hurried as fast as Lucas’ leg would let them go. Every step felt as if he was being stabbed in the calf; every step brought more blood, hot and wet, trickling down into his boot, seeping into his pants and his sock, filling the sole of his shoe. Still, they limped onward. More shots rang out behind them, but they hit the ground where the two of them had been, not where they had run to. Whoever had shot them hadn’t realized that they’d gotten up and run. The enemy was looking for them where they believed them to be fallen.
They thought they’d made good ground and gotten away until, out of the air just behind them, another shot sounded; they both dropped to the ground and stayed still. They watched and waited, their breath ragged and burning at their chests, their bodies drenched in sweat that began to chill them in the night air as they stayed still.
A lone soldier moved through the dirt near them, looking everywhere, searching and thinking he had hit one of them. A muscle spasm cramped Lucas’ leg as he kept it still, and he sucked in a lung-full of air, shutting his eyes against the pain and holding it at bay as much as he could. The soldier heard him and turned swiftly on the spot he was standing in, not four feet away from them. He held up his gun, and Lucas could see straight down the barrel of it. Another shot rang out, and the soldier fell to the earth in a heap.
Lucas looked over at Caleb and saw him sitting nearby with his gun pointed directly at where the soldier had been standing only moments before. He turned his head and looked at Lucas. “I don’t think there are any more. I think he was a rogue. Let’s get out of here. We’re not that far from the line now.”
Caleb helped Lucas to his feet, and together they hurried again, arm in arm, limping their way through the black night and the cold desert until at long last, just before the gray light of dawn, they passed the enemy line. It wasn’t much further after that before they were picked up by another of their fellow soldiers who happened to be passing by in a Jeep.
Lucas was taken to the infirmary and kept there until he was healed. Caleb visited him every day, and after Lucas thanked him with all of his heart for saving his life the night that it happened, they never talked about it again.