Fighting For Valor

by Patricia D. Eddy

  Trevor’s voice takes on an almost monotonous tone now, and he’s not looking at any of us. His gaze is focused somewhere over my head, out the window. “Within twenty minutes, the prisoner won’t know up from down. He’ll see things. Hear things. And he’ll be susceptible to programming.”

  “Programming?” I sit up a little straighter. “Did they get him addicted to drugs?” It’s too much like Wren. Too many memories, and I want to carry her away, back to Seattle where nothing can ever touch her again.

  Trevor frowns. “No. They wouldn’t risk that. Not if they wanted something from him. But the drugs would leave him off balance. Anyone here ever done LSD? Mushrooms?”

  No one speaks, and Trevor offers a wry smile. “It’ll fuck you up big time. He’s in the dark. It’s hotter than hell. He’s probably restrained. Definitely alone. In an environment he doesn’t understand. And he can’t think straight. Then, someone comes. Tells him it’s going to be okay. That he’s going to be safe.”

  “He wouldn’t believe that,” I growl. “Ripper’s too smart for—”

  “He would. Maybe not the first time. But the fifth? The tenth? Breaking a man isn’t something you do in a day. Or a week. It takes months. Back and forth. Total agony, then drugged, relative safety. Eventually, he’ll believe any fucking thing they want him to. Because whoever’s in charge of him…well…they’ll be the one to make it all okay. Get him somewhere cool. Give him food. More drugs. Treat his wounds. And then…they’ll deal the final blow.”

  Fuck. What the hell else?

  After a pause, Trevor scrubs his hands over his face. “They’ll take away the one thing he’s been holding onto the whole time. Hope.”

  “How?” Dax demands, but from his tone, I think he’s figured it out. So have I.

  “They’ll tell him everyone he knows is dead. And that he killed them.”

  The hanger’s deserted this time of night. Or morning. It’s almost 2:00 a.m., and none of us have slept. That’s what the flight’s for. We’re all in our separate corners, going through our rituals. Inara’s upside down in a head stand, West is cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed, Trevor’s on the phone to some of his CIA contacts, Dax sits with his arms around Evianna and her head on his shoulder.

  Wren’s checking and double-checking every piece of tech. Laptops, coms, tablets, and cameras. She’s not going with us—I put my foot down—though we fought about it for an hour. Now, she’s not speaking to me. Can’t say I blame her.

  Digging my hand into my pocket, I finger the small, black box I’ve carried around for two weeks.

  “Wren? Sweetheart, I…need—”

  She’s in front of me before I can finish the sentence. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” My heart takes up a frantic beat in my chest, and I step back. “I don’t—”

  “You just said ‘I need.’ Pretty sure you’ve used those words exactly twice before.” She cocks her head, concern darkening her emerald eyes as she wraps her delicate fingers around my biceps—well, partly around them—and drops her voice. “I may be mad at you, but I still love you, Ry.”

  I haul her against me and try not to crush her. She’s so tiny. So perfect. “Come outside with me for a minute?”

  With a nod, she eases down to her feet and lets me put my arm around her shoulders.

  The moon is almost full, and the airfield has a view of the water. It’s…beautiful. Hell, without the plane idling two hundred feet away, this could be almost romantic.

  “I wanted to do this at home,” I say, my voice stronger than it has any right to be with how nervous I am. “Maybe take you to the Space Needle restaurant—it looks out over Puget Sound and spins slowly. You get a whole three-sixty-view as you eat.”

  She smiles at me, and my whole world feels lighter. “You surprise me every day, Ryker McCabe. That sounds like an actual…date.”

  “We skipped that whole part of the relationship.” I stare down at my boots. “You deserve a guy who’ll date you. Bring you flowers. Take you all the places you’ve ever wanted to go.”

  When I meet her gaze, anger simmers in her eyes. “Don’t fucking tell me what I deserve. I love you. I deserve you. You’re the one who makes me happier than I’ve ever been. Who understands me. Who—”

  The profanity—so unusual for her—has my heart shooting into my throat. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this.” Pulling out the box, I drop to one knee with a stifled grunt. “I love you, Wren. I didn’t think I could love anyone. Or that anyone could ever love me. And we’re about to go back to the place where…” I shake my head and open the box.

  The platinum ring has four emerald-cut diamonds arranged in a haphazard line. “The guy who made this called it ‘beautifully broken.’ Back in Russia, after…all that shit, you said ‘maybe I didn’t realize how beautiful broken could be.’”

  Wren’s eyes glisten, and she runs her fingers over the beads of her bracelet. Five times in a row before she blinks hard and focuses on me again. “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything, sweetheart. Every single moment we’ve had together. And I want a lot more. All of them. For the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?”

  She nods, then holds out her hand. As I slip the ring onto her finger, a single tear rolls down her cheek. “I didn’t know if you wanted to…”

  Pushing to my feet, I gather her against me and silence her with my lips on hers. My little bird. My partner. One day, my wife. I wish I had the words to tell her what she means to me, but this…this is a start.

  “Come back to me, Ryker,” she whispers when I finally let her go. “Bring Ripper home, but make sure you come home too.”

  “I will, sweetheart. I promise.”

  Dax

  Against me, Evianna shifts, and fuck. She feels so good in my arms. “Are you sure about this?” she asks. “Going back there?”

  “Yes.” Taking off my glasses so she can see my eyes—not that it does anything for my sight—I wait until she brushes a kiss to my lips. “I left him behind, darlin’. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know. I spent so many years mad at Ry for leaving me behind. Not in Hell. He didn’t have a choice when he escaped without me. But when we got back. I can’t do that to Ripper for one single day more.”

  “You’re not going to Faruk’s compound, though, right?” Worry tinges her voice, and I wish I could tell her what she wants to hear. Give her some guarantee I’ll come back alive. And whole.

  Skating my thumb over her engagement ring, I evade the question. I won’t lie to her. “I’ll stay with Trev the whole time.”

  “That means you’re going.” She frames my face with her hands. Her palms are warm and soft, and she traces the scars around my eyes gently with her thumbs. “You’re scary-good at navigating the world without being able to see it, babe, but this is—” Evianna’s voice cracks and she touches her forehead to mine, “—men with guns who’ll kill you in a heartbeat. Or worse.”

  “I know, darlin’. I know.” I don’t have any answers for her. Or myself. I just know I have to do this. If I stay here…or even at the Kabul safehouse, it’ll be the end of me. “I’ll come back alive. We’ve got a wedding to plan. There’s nothing in this world that would stop me from marrying you. I promise.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ryker

  West peers through the night-vision scope at the compound at the top of the hill. “One target on each of the north and east towers. Two on the south and west.”

  With a nod, Inara hoists her rifle case onto her shoulder. “Roger that. It’ll take me twenty minutes to get into position. Another ten to sight in. Radio silence from me until I’m done.”

  “Base? You have Indigo on GPS?” On mission, we never use our real names. Only designators. Too great a risk if anyone were to intercept our signals. This job is so fucking illegal, we’d all be locked away for the rest of our lives.

  “Yep. Got her.” Wren sounds so far away—and she is. Back in Boston. This is th
e most complicated job we’ve ever done, and so West’s wife, Cam, and Inara’s guy, Royce, are patched in to Wren’s other ear in case the GPS trackers go down. They’re all computer geniuses, and more than once, I’ve thought about asking them to join Hidden Agenda.

  West pulls out his tablet as soon as Inara takes off. “All right. Listen up. This isn’t a normal op.” He focuses on Graham. “If you can subdue a hostile silently, do it. Even if that means killing them. You okay with that, probie?”

  “Got it.” The kid’s barely twenty-seven, new to the team, and though he’s seen combat, he’s green as fuck, and I hate filling his ledger like this. But we need all the help we can get.

  “Anyone comes across Faruk, you take him out. No hesitation,” I add. “He’s not going to hurt anyone again after tonight.”

  West calls up the satellite photo of the compound. “We have no idea where the target is, and the house is a fucking maze on the main level and underground, but Base will be watching our GPS signals. You get boxed in, you signal for help.”

  “Last call,” I say quietly. “Check your weapons and ammo. Zip ties. Flares. We’re going in hot and silent. Thermals show twenty-three signals, but we don’t know how well the scanner penetrates into the basement. So we could be looking at double that number.” Turning to Dax, who’s standing next to me with his hands clenched into fists and a special pair of glasses with a built-in camera covering his sightless eyes, I clasp his shoulder. “Are you sure, brother?”

  “If you ask me that again, you’re going to be on your ass,” he growls.

  I have to stifle my grumbled curse. “This party can’t get any bigger. We should invite the guy we passed an hour ago with that herd of goats too.”

  “Shut it, Alpha Team Leader.” My little bird chuckles over the air, and the sound calms me like nothing else. “This is what family does.”

  Family.

  I never thought I’d have one again. Before Hell, my team was my family. Dax, Ripper, Hab, Naz, Gose… But after we escaped, I thought I’d lost them all—along with any hope of redemption.

  “All right,” I say over the lump in my throat. “Indigo should be checking in soon. Let’s go get our brother back.”

  “Hooah,” Dax says.

  West and Graham add, “Hooyah,” in tandem.

  Over comms, I hear Ford’s “Oorah,” and we’re good to go.

  We’re coming, Ripper. I’m sorry we’re six years late.

  As the sky darkens at moonset, West, Graham, and I creep closer to the compound. Trevor and Dax crouch behind an old truck parked a thousand yards away. The former CIA spook paid a local to leave the vehicle this morning with the air let out of one of the tires.

  “You’re up, Indigo,” I whisper.

  “Roger that.”

  Inara’s comms click off, and West frees the grappling hook from his belt. At my side, Graham flexes his fingers. The kid’s been working on his rappelling skills non-stop since his first mission where he almost got himself killed. As I mentally tick off the location of each member of my team, one word bounces around in my head.

  Family.

  Wren was the first one who told me Hidden Agenda, my K&R firm, was a family. And families support one another. I rest my hand on Graham’s shoulder and give it a squeeze.

  From above, I hear a soft exhalation of air followed by a quiet thud. One down. West throws the hook over the wall, and it catches on the razor wire. Good enough. He’s up and over in less than a thirty seconds. Graham’s next, and though he takes slightly longer, he’s almost as quick as I am.

  The three of us crouch on the top of the north guard tower, the dead guard staring up at nothing. Inara’s the best damn sharpshooter I’ve ever known, and she put a bullet right between his eyes.

  West pieces together his own rifle. In under five minutes, all six guards in the towers are dead.

  “Bravo Team…approach is clear,” I say. “Base, we’re going in.”

  “Be careful,” Wren says, and the tremble in her voice shoots right to my heart. “There are two guards at the back door to the house.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Got sights on one of them,” Inara says. “Alpha Team, on your mark.”

  West and Graham drop down to the ground, and West pulls a serrated blade from a sheath at his waist before the two of them head east, towards the back door. He’ll protect the kid as best he can. I descend silently and head in the other direction, determined to check out two buildings at the edge of the compound. The smaller showed a faint heat signature moving back and forth, and though I have no proof it’s Ripper, my instincts are pulling me in that direction.

  As I approach the corner of the house, footsteps scuff along the dirt, and I wrap my fingers around the handle of my blade. Except it’s not mine. It’s Ripper’s. The only piece of him I had left. I’ve carried it with me on every mission since I left the army.

  Tonight, I’ll use it. Silent and deadly.

  At least Dax is the only one wearing a camera. Wren doesn’t need to see what I’m about to do. The knife slides quickly into the man’s abdomen as I cover his mouth with my other hand. Blood splashes the wall, and he gurgles quietly as I twist the blade and destroy his internal organs. He’s dead within seconds, and I ease his body down to the ground.

  The first building is just a storage shed—and empty. Slinking quietly towards the second, I listen. A handful of chickens peck at the ground, and a dog barks from the inside of what looks like a barn. Fuck. Have I been tracking a damn dog this entire time?

  I have to check. As I put my ear to the door, I hear quiet panting. Adjusting my grip on the knife again, I use my foot to nudge the wood and then spin so I can press my back against the wall. A skinny, scruffy dog comes padding out.

  Dammit. I could have been hunting down Faruk instead of chasing Fido.

  “Base? Status on heat signatures at my location?”

  “One. Faint. Headed away from you. All the others are inside.”

  “It was a goddamned dog. He’s not out here.” I stalk towards the front of the house, anger tightening my jaw.

  “Wait,” Wren says. “Stop. There’s…something… Where are you, Team Leader?”

  “Twenty-five meters west-northwest of the front door.”

  “Hold position.”

  “I’m exposed, Base.” Pulling out my Beretta, I scan all around me. There’s nothing here. Nothing but dead bodies and blood. The gate’s still closed, and to the outside world, Faruk’s compound is peaceful.

  “Oh God. Really?” Wren’s not talking to me, but whatever she just learned has her voice trembling. “Right in front of you. Maybe half a meter. Is there a…wooden cover? Like you’d find on a manhole?”

  I adjust the sensitivity of my NVGs and peer at the ground. The night vision turns everything green, but it sharpens everything around me, and the circular outline of a cover maybe ten feet across comes into focus. “Roger that.”

  “It’s…a well,” she says. “Faruk threatened to put the doc down there. Keep her there if she didn’t cooperate. And…there’s something really faint on the thermals under there. Like…actually underground.”

  I drop to one knee and feel around, finding a small metal ring that pops up from the cover. My gut twists. What’s down there? A body? An enemy? Or my brother?

  The cover slides off easily, and I peer into the deep, dark space. “Package located,” I manage, though I don’t know how I get the words out. He’s twenty feet down, curled on his side, unmoving. “Bravo Team…prepare for infil. My position. Hold until I have proof of life.”

  In my ear, Wren’s voice comforts me. “There should be a rope ladder against the wall of the building behind you.”

  “Roger.”

  As I hook the last rung of the rope on a small iron peg sticking up from the ground, multiple quiet pops sound from inside the house.

  “Alpha Team Leader,” West says, “Enemy target secured. Office. Southwest corner of the main floor.”

>   “Keep him breathing. He’s mine.”

  The ladder unfurls and hits the prone body in the thigh. I blow out a breath as he flinches. Still alive. I’m down in under a minute, and even with everything I’ve seen, what I find makes me stagger back until I hit the wall. Dead scorpions litter the ground—most of them crushed, but a few of them ripped apart, their abdomens gone…like…he had to eat them. A live one skitters over his thigh, and as soon as it reaches the dirt, I slam my boot down on top of it. “Not today, fucker.”

  There’s a single plastic water bottle next to him—empty—as well as a bucket, and the stench is so thick I could chew it. Pushing the goggles up on my head, I activate the small light at my shoulder. That sends another scorpion fleeing back through a crack in the wall.

  “Ripper?” Kneeling next to him, I check for a pulse. The man in front of me bears little resemblance to my friend. His beard is thick but neatly trimmed, and his hair brushes his collar. He’s too thin, and so dehydrated, his skin looks a lot like wrinkled paper. Blood dries on his cracked lips. “Base, put the doc on.”

  “I-I’m here,” Joey says quietly.

  “His heart’s racing. One-sixty at least. There’s an empty water bottle with him, but I don’t know how long he’s been down here. He ate some of the scorpions, I think. And he’s burning up.”

  “Oh my God.” After a few seconds, she stammers, “Y-you have to…to get fluids into him. And sugar. Lower his core temperature. His kidneys are probably shutting down. Beyond that…get him to a hospital.”

  I can’t do that. Dax and I already decided…Jackson Richards no longer exists. We buried him. Everything that happens now…happens off book. “Roger that.”

  Pulling a small canteen from one of the pockets of my tactical vest, I slide my arm under Ripper’s torso and ease him up. “Rip? You have to drink, brother. We’re getting out of here.”