by Sean Parnell
To his left he saw Panther’s Zodiac, ruined and wallowing in the surf. The bodies of Panther’s men and those they’d killed were impossible to discern from each other. Then he saw Panther, with the hulk of the flamethrower strapped to his back, the heavy iron torch in his hammy fists, and Panther ran by him and saw him and grunted, “The helicopters, Steele . . . the helicopters.”
Steele pushed himself to his feet and turned to see Panther making his end zone dash. The colonel was pounding toward the flank of the second Harbin just as Steele saw six men in chem-bio suits piling into the cargo door of the first. He raised the 1911 and gunned one down at the lip, but the others scrambled aboard.
Panther opened up with the roaring flamethrower just meters away from the second helicopter, and the jellied napalm immolated the fuselage in a torrent of orange fire. Then a screaming crew chief appeared in the cargo door with a weapon, shot Panther point-blank with a burst of bullets, and his flamethrower tank exploded.
Steele stood there in shock, stunned by the vision. Pain seared his lungs with every breath and his gun-smoke-ravaged eyes were blurred and streaming. He watched the first helicopter as it lifted off from the beach, flew straightaway, then banked to the right, as if swinging around to the other side of the island. He heard a shout and spun to his right.
He saw a man running from the beach toward the island’s forested hump. He was carrying a long bamboo pole and a pistol. It was the man who’d been giving the briefing, Zaifeng, and he disappeared into the dark mouth of something that looked like a cave. There was another man chasing Zaifeng in a flat-out sprint, one of Steele’s men, but he had no helmet on, as if he’d torn it off in the heat. He had spiky gray hair.
No, Dad . . . No!
Steele jerked forward to chase him, then he skidded to a stop, twisting in circles, his eyes madly searching the wrecked guns and corpses. He spotted an RPG-7 tube, holstered his 1911, snatched it up, and yanked one rocket from a dead man’s quiver.
He ran with everything he had left. Po’s bullet had ricocheted somewhere inside his body and he tasted frothy blood in his mouth. His soaked boots slammed over sand and rock and scree, the maw of the cave grew larger in his vision, then he heard a gunshot, and another, and he cursed and ran faster.
There was a hazy circle of light at the end of that rock-strewn tunnel. He heard the helo’s rotors surging. In special forces he’d trained with every enemy weapon they had at the JFK Warfare Center and School, and he slammed the RPG rocket into the tube, seated its nipple in the barrel slot, and yanked the arming ring and cap from the green phallic tip of the warhead.
He burst from the end of the cave onto a slope of soft brown beach. Zaifeng was nowhere, but his father was sprawled on his face to his left, with a slither of black blood crawling down toward the sea. And right there, at a hundred meters out over the water, the last Harbin Z-20 was thundering toward him. In a moment, it was going to blur right past him.
He shouldered the RPG, cocked the hammer down with his thumb, and tried to remember the anomalies of the weapon. The rocket would deploy spring-loaded guide fins, but the wind would turn it on its axis, so in flight it would turn into the wind, not away from it. Right?
A breeze was slapping his blood-spattered face from the right. He followed the Harbin dead center with the iron sights, but he didn’t lead it.
He fired. The explosion banged his head like a hammer, the backblast singed his eyebrows, and the warhead went rocketing straight for the Harbin. Then it slowly skewed like a curveball, right along with it, and detonated in the cockpit. The helo’s shattered smoking nose jerked skyward, then it rolled over and crashed in a huge plume of water.
Steele dropped the RPG in the sand.
Zaifeng stabbed him deep in the back with the blade of his bo.
Steele fell to his knees. His left arm was useless. He reached behind with his right, yanked the bo from his rib cage, and Zaifeng kicked it out of his hand and then kicked him in his solar plexus. Steele grunted, got to his feet, turned to Zaifeng, and said, “I’m not fucking interested.”
But the man was like a cat. He had raging fire in his eyes. He spun his entire body in the air and kicked Steele’s pistol out of his fist before he could fully draw it, then continued his spin and kicked him in the face. Steele felt his jaw crack, and he knew he had nothing left of any of the hundreds of hand-to-hand skills he knew, so he charged Zaifeng like a bull and took every knife hand to his forearms and the kicks to his knees, until he got his right hand on that muscled throat, just above Zaifeng’s embroidered Swords of Qing emblem, and choked him one-handed, digging his fingers into every sinew and bone, until Zaifeng’s face turned purple and his eyes rolled back and Steele dropped him on his back in the sand.
Steele collapsed on his hands and knees. He crawled to the bo. It was lying there smeared in his own slick blood. He used the staff to help himself up, staggered over to Zaifeng, and raised it.
Zaifeng looked up at him, and in perfect Shanghai English, rasped, “You should have welcomed this war with China . . . I was your only hope.”
Steele rammed the blade down into Zaifeng’s heart and said, “Thanks for the advice, asshole.”
He picked up his 1911 and staggered over to his father. He sat down next to him and leaned back against a slab of stone. Then he reached out, turned Hank over, and dragged him onto his lap. His father’s eyes were shut, but he was still breathing. His gray hair fluttered in the breeze.
Steele looked out at the sea. It was shimmering blue and silver now, gentle and calm. The helicopter was gone, but the shape of some sort of small warship was out there. It wasn’t an American ship. It was closing.
He laid his head back against the rock, and closed his eyes. . . .
In the TOC at Pingtung, Ralphy was desperately trying to raise him. There was nothing but static.
Dalton Goodhill had Ted Lansky on comms. He was shouting at Lansky that he had to spin up a QRF from the fleet and order a rescue. Lansky told him there were Chinese warships in the area. He told him to stand down.
Goodhill staggered from the TOC and out into the burning morning sun.
He fell to his knees and threw up.
Epilogue
Neville Island, Pennsylvania
Susan Steele stepped out of Eric’s house. The morning was young, cold and clear, and for a while after locking the door, she just stood there on the landing and breathed. The tops of the tall black pines were waving their feathers in the wind from the river, hungry starlings were flitting and chirping, and high above in the pale azure sky, she thought she saw an eagle wheeling.
Susan didn’t really believe in omens, neither good nor bad, but she’d take her comforts where she could.
She was wearing her fashionable boots and jeans, her hands in the pockets of her thick plaid car coat and her sunglasses perched in her hair. She was dressed for work, but lately she’d been dragging herself to the office. Showing all those houses to happy families wasn’t something she cared much about these days.
For the first two weeks when she hadn’t heard anything from Eric, she had reminded herself that it wasn’t unusual and had often happened before. After all, when he’d deployed on multiple tours to Afghanistan, or God knew where, at times a whole month would go by before he could email or text or call. But then another week had passed, and another, and she knew that something was different. Eric and Hank had been together, they knew how much she would worry, and she kept hearing their precious voices over and over in that last, tinny, faraway call.
No. She told herself that it would be all right. And then that man had appeared at her office.
She’d never met him before. Eric had never talked about him, and as far as she remembered, he wasn’t someone from Hank’s past either. Yet he’d introduced himself warmly, saying he knew them both well. He looked and talked like someone from one of those old Cary Grant films, with his Burberry coat and bow tie, and a fedora with a feather. He had a very nice walking stick that it
didn’t seem like he was using as a cane.
Thorn was his name, and it seemed to match his demeanor. His facial features were soft and pinkish but his blue eyes were sharp as razors. He removed his hat, sat down in front of Susan’s desk, and told her she’d need to be patient. Eric and Hank were away on a very important government project, something he couldn’t really describe, and Susan told him she understood, because for years she’d been a guardian of secrets. He handed her a business card. It was thick and white with gold embossed letters, with only his name and a phone number. But she was already feeling weak in her ankles and sick to her stomach, when he then reached across her desk and squeezed her hand.
“I shan’t lie to you, Susan,” he said. “There is the possibility that they shall not return.”
He told her he’d be in touch on a regular basis, but that if she needed anything at all, she should call. When he left she didn’t escort him out to his car. She couldn’t stand.
After that, she hadn’t eaten at all for three whole days. This morning had been her first eggs and a cup of coffee. It felt almost like a betrayal, but she reminded herself she was a military spouse and mother.
We must keep ourselves going, and suffer in patience and silence.
She took a deep breath, jangled her keys, and was about to walk past Eric’s fugly red hybrid and get in her Jeep, when a car rolled out of the woods and up the gravel. It was a cream-colored Kia with Uber and Lyft stickers on the windshield. It stopped next to her Jeep, and she frowned.
The rear door opened and Meg Harden got out. Susan touched her chest and almost gasped. Meg looked as beautiful as Susan remembered, maybe more so, with her mink-black hair and her crystal blue eyes gleaming. And she was hugging a very small blue bundle, and inside Susan could see a tiny baby. The Uber backed up, made a K turn, and drove away, leaving Meg and the baby there alone.
“He’s not here, is he?” Meg said. Her blue eyes were rimmed in liquid.
“No, hon,” Susan said as she walked down to Meg. She gently tipped the baby’s blanket away from his little bald head. He had striking green eyes.
“I brought him a son,” Meg said.
Susan smiled and tipped her chin at the homely Toyota. “That’s fair. He left you a car.”
“My parents . . .” Meg’s voice was liquid, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “They’re hardly speaking to me, Susan. They’re not big fans of unwed mothers.”
Susan nodded and kissed the baby on his head. Then she touched Meg’s cheek, slipped one arm around her shoulders, and walked her back toward the house.
“That’s all right,” she said. “We’ll do fine. I know how to raise good men.”
Acknowledgments
Left for Dead would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of several people. David Highfill, my editor, is flat-out incredible. I’ve worked with him for more than nine years now and he’s become more than an editor. He’s a friend. Dan Conaway is my agent. He took a chance on me and I’m thankful for it. Dan, thank you for your time and attention.
Next up is my good friend Steve Hartov. Thank you for advice, counsel, and mentorship. Left for Dead is the best Eric Steele thriller yet and that is because of you.
Melanie is my much, much better half. Thank you for reading all of my books and giving me feedback before anyone else. Thank you for always being there for me.
Ethan, Emma, and Evan. My three children. I love you all! Being your Dad and watching you grow has been the privilege of a lifetime. You are the reason for all of this!
About the Author
SEAN PARNELL is the author of the bestselling memoir Outlaw Platoon and the novels Man of War, All Out War, and One True Patriot. He is a retired U.S. Army infantry captain who served in some of the heaviest combat of the Afghan War. He recounts those battles in vivid detail during his leadership presentations for the nation’s most successful teams and corporations. He is also the cofounder of the American Warrior Initiative, a charity that honors and empowers our veterans. Parnell lives with his three children near Pittsburgh.
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Also by Sean Parnell
Nonfiction
Outlaw Platoon
Fiction
Man of War
All Out War
One True Patriot
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
left for dead. Copyright © 2021 by Sean Parnell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Parnell, Sean, 1981- author.
Title: Left for dead : a novel / Sean Parnell.
Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021] | Series: Eric Steele series ; vol 4 | Summary: "Special Operative Eric Steele battles a renegade group of bioterrorists armed with a devastating virus in the fourth pulse-pounding military thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Outlaw Platoon"— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021032634 (print) | LCCN 2021032635 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062986610 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062986627 | ISBN 9780062986634 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3616.A762 L44 2021 (print) | LCC PS3616.A762 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032634
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032635
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-298663-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-298661-0
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