Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed

by Molles, D. J.

  UNBOWED

  LEE HARDEN SERIES

  BOOK 5

  ─

  D. J. MOLLES

  Who are you, Lee Harden? Are you wrath? Are you vengeance? Are you just a man of violence, always seeking an outlet for your anger? Is that all that lays at the center of you? Is your core just a vicious animal, trained to go for the throat, looking for opportunities to be let off the leash?

  Or are you, perhaps, something a little bit more than that?

  one

  ─▬▬▬─

  KILLERS

  GREELEY OR BUST was painted in big, white letters on the side of the utility van that took up the rear of the convoy as it snaked its way north, away from the refinery.

  How many yards between Lee and the back of that van?

  200, maybe. Now 250. Now 300.

  In the course of the ten days since Lee had lost his left eye—and his depth perception with it—he’d developed an obsessive habit of forcing himself to estimate distances. What had come almost instinctively to him over years of ranging targets with both eyes now became an exercise in in focus.

  Eventually the van, and the convoy ahead of it, followed the slow turn of the long road away from the refinery, and disappeared into the scrubby trees in the distance, flickering in the late morning sun that blazed through the branches.

  And then Lee was alone with Corporal Ryan.

  He was mostly confident in his distance assessment. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it took him time to calculate that distance. Which meant that any shot that required a hold-over was not something he could make quickly.

  It was like being a champion sprinter, and then finding one day that you had trouble simply walking.

  Which, coincidentally, Lee also had trouble with.

  They had broken his body. Lee was determined to gain back some of his physicality, but it had become exceedingly clear that he would never get back to where he’d been.

  It left him with a gaping hole, an ache that seemed to reside just beneath his sternum, lodged between his heart and his guts. His confidence in his body had been cut out of him, leaving only a crippling and utterly foreign sense of vulnerability.

  Half the man I used to be.

  One working eye. One working arm. One working leg. The left half of his body belonged to some invasive stranger. Some old and battered creature that gave him nothing but pain, and robbed him of the fluidity with which he was accustomed to moving through this world.

  “Major…sir…” Corporal Ryan’s voice trembled.

  Lee took a breath and bore down on it. He turned—his right leg first, nice and easy. Then his left leg, stiff and aching at the hip-joint. He squinted his right eye against the sunlight streaming between the pipelines, and looked down at the man before him.

  Corporal Ryan. On his knees. Hands bound behind his back. Sweat from the humidity, and from the stress, beading across his pale forehead, and glistening in the stubble of his two-week beard.

  He looked like shit. And it almost roused a sense of pity in Lee.

  Almost. But not quite.

  Corporal Ryan was dead to Lee. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Who are you, Lee Harden?

  “Listen,” Ryan whimpered. “I’m sorry. I understand that what I did was wrong. I was only confused by…by the command structure, and how everything has changed. I understand now that what I did was insubordinate. I’ve thought a lot about it. I’m ready to follow your lead, sir. And Sergeant Ryder, too. I understand that he’s my superior now. I can follow orders.”

  Lee listened. Oh, he listened. He gave himself time to digest it, and, as his eye ranged across Ryan’s fearful face, he wondered if the words would get through the barrier that Lee had erected around his heart and his mind.

  He gave those words a chance.

  But they just crashed against Lee’s walls, ineffective.

  Lee shook his head. “I don’t trust you anymore, corporal. I tried. I gave you a second chance. But when you refused to follow Sergeant Ryder’s orders a week ago, that was it.”

  “No,” Ryan pleaded. “No, I learned my lesson. Why else would you have kept me locked up for a week, if you didn’t think I could learn my lesson?”

  Lee laid his hand on his holstered pistol. “Ryan, I was never going to let you live.”

  Reality crashed through Ryan’s face. Obliterated vain hopes. “But…but…”

  Lee laid his gnarled and uncooperative left hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “I just didn’t want the others to see this happen.”

  Ryan squeezed his eyes shut. Tears seeped out from the corners. “Please!”

  Lee felt his nose curl. Corporal Ryan was more than just insubordinate. He was a coward. Here he was, an able-bodied young man, half the age of the battered fuck standing over him, with twice the physical capabilities. If the situation had been reversed, Lee would have launched himself at his captor, used his teeth if he had to. Bit his throat out. Stomped his head to mush.

  He wouldn’t have simply knelt there, begging.

  “I can’t trust you,” Lee said again. “You have no place with us.”

  He drew his pistol. He needed no range estimate to hit his target.

  Ryan opened his eyes. He saw the muzzle of the pistol pointed at his head. His mouth gaped soundlessly. Paralyzed by it.

  Lee’s finger tightened on the trigger. Brought it back to that stiff wall, beyond which another ounce of pressure would break it. Firing pin into primer. Propellant igniting. Bullet racing, blooming through skull and brain matter.

  A distant ringing in Lee’s ears, threatening to crescendo into the all-encompassing inner shriek of tinnitus.

  Ryan’s eyes left the muzzle. Found Lee’s.

  Whatever he saw there terrified him more than the muzzle.

  What are you, Lee Harden?

  Lee almost flinched away from that expression. But instead he pressed the trigger until it broke.

  ***

  Lee opened the back door to the Humvee and found Deuce keeping his seat warm for him. Not that he needed it warm—the sleeves of his combat shirt were rolled as high as he could get them, and the so-called “sweat-wicking” fabric was plastered to his back, not wicking much sweat at all.

  Seated behind the driver, Abe lifted his head. His black hair was nearly as long as his black beard now, and about as bushy, shot through with an even sprinkling of wiry gray. He gave Lee a quirked eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Between them passed a tacit acknowledgement of what had just happened.

  There was no judgement in Abe’s eyes. Not about this, anyways. He and Lee’s hands had been dirty long enough that neither thought it was worth mentioning anymore. Simply par for the course.

  Are you a killer? Are you still Mr. Nobody?

  Deuce stuck his muzzle in Lee’s face and gave him a lick, and a wag of the tail. Lee didn’t immediately oust him from his perch. His commands to the dog were slower these days. He gave Deuce the deference the dog had earned.

  Deuce didn’t need his pity. But looking at the dog, with the crusty remains of his own ruined eye—just like Lee’s—he had a hard time just slapping him on the rump and telling him to get down.

  Instead, Lee put his fingers into the dog’s fur and gave him a scratch behind the ears. His right hand moved just fine, but the tendons of the left still ached and smarted in his wrist, and the fingers only moved a fraction as far as they used to.

  “Good boy,” Lee murmured, noticing the burgeoning tinnitus beginning to fade. Then pointed to the back, where a little niche had been left open in the fastback amid piles of gear. He clicked his tongue, and Deuce obediently relinquished the seat.

  Lee used his ri
ght leg to hoist himself up, and then maneuvered his left into position and sat down with a huff.

  “You ready?” Abe asked, as Lee shut his door.

  Lee settled into his seat, looking out the window, back towards the refinery. Was he ready? Were the people ready?

  “Did you sink the boats?” Lee asked.

  “Perforated the hulls. Ripped random shit out of the motors. They’re back in the surf somewhere. Even if someone finds ‘em, they’re not getting to the drilling rigs. Not in those anyways.”

  Lee nodded. Through the tangle of pipelines that ran about the refinery, he could just make out the glimmer of the sea beyond. “And you’re comfortable with what Pez did to the rigs?”

  “Hell, Lee, I don’t even understand half the shit he said. But he says they’re plugged up or something. No one’s getting any oil out of them without a shit-ton of work.”

  It was the best they could hope for. Lee had toyed with the idea of permanently disabling the drilling rigs with explosives. But sometime in the future, they might want to get those drilling rigs and refineries working again. Right now, they only needed to deny resources to the enemy.

  Because they were coming. Whoever had taken Butler from them wouldn’t stay in Georgia forever. They’d come after Lee. And when they reached Texas, Lee didn’t want them to have a supply of fuel to continue their chase.

  Lee had drained every drop he could squeeze out of this place before giving the orders to sabotage it. There were eleven tanker trucks in that massive convoy that had just lit out. Mostly gasoline and diesel, but some JP-8 to run the Blackhawk as well. And any other aircraft they might come across.

  “Lee.”

  He had to turn his head all the way to be able to see Abe with his right eye.

  “Everything’s taken care of,” Abe soothed. “It’s time to go.”

  Lee nodded. “Just checking boxes, Abe. It makes me feel better.”

  “Well, if you’re feeling warm and fuzzy enough, I’d like to catch up to the convoy.”

  Lee looked to the driver, one of Breckenridge’s soldiers. “Private Turner, you can go ahead and get us out of here.”

  Turner nodded, cranked the wheel around and started driving.

  Lee glanced at Abe again. “Pez is in love with you now.”

  Abe chuffed. “Been following me around like a puppy.”

  “Loyalty is good. You saved his family.”

  “Didn’t save everyone. Couldn’t.”

  “Can’t save people that are already dead.”

  “Nope. Suppose not.”

  “Hey.”

  Abe met Lee’s earnest gaze.

  “You did good work down there.”

  Abe nodded. “I know. I’m not mad about it. I gave those fucks what they had coming.”

  Lee let it go. He’d already debriefed Abe fully when he’d returned only a few short nights ago. He’d gone to rescue the families of the refinery workers being held captive by the cartel. He hadn’t been able to save everyone’s family. Several of the families were already dead, their husbands at the refinery just hadn’t known it yet. But, at the very least, Abe had delivered them vengeance. And for that, every single one of those refinery workers now looked at Abe like he was some wrathful god made flesh. They both loved him and feared him.

  They were loyal to Abe. And Abe was loyal to the cause. It amounted to the same thing.

  Lee found it hard to trust in many people these days, but Abe was an exception. If there was anyone in this world that Lee trusted fully and completely, it was Abe Darabie.

  Which didn’t mean they never argued. Arguing between them had become a given. Abe was one of the few people who didn’t pull punches with Lee, and for that, Lee actually trusted him more. As tiring as he could sometimes be.

  Case in point: Abe’s chagrinned expression as they passed through an intersection, staring out to the east, where the road led back towards Butler.

  “You’re a stubborn fuck, you know that?”

  Abe frowned at him. “Hey pot, I’m kettle. Nice to meet you.”

  Their arguments almost had a call-and-response feel to them now. It was both irritating and comforting to be back with Abe, and have his old friend second-guess every damned thing he did. But Lee reminded himself that he’d missed that when he’d been all alone in Butler.

  “This is the right strategy,” Lee said with a confidence that was not so much invested in the end result of that strategy, but rather that it was the best of a set of shitty options.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Abe replied.

  “You sighed.”

  “I sighed? What are you, my wife now? I can’t sigh?”

  “If we’d split our forces to ambush whoever comes in from Georgia, then our push towards Greeley would be that much less effective. We need everything we have moving north. And even then, we’re looking at hard odds.”

  “Sure, Lee. We’ve already gone over this.”

  “Well, I’m not the one mooning out the window, fantasizing about shitty strategies that aren’t going to happen.”

  “A shitty strategy is not placing a rear-guard and getting your ass pinched between an army in the field and a fixed and fortified objective.”

  “We won’t get pinched. We’ll get into Greeley.”

  “You hope.” Abe fixed him with a serious look. “And if Sam doesn’t come through for you? If he doesn’t get into Greeley? If he can’t convince people to turn on Briggs?”

  “He will.”

  “You sent a half-boot to do a special forces job.”

  “And I’ve got an army that’s seventy-five-percent civilian guerillas. Any other obvious shit you want to point out to me?”

  Abe sniffed. Scratched at his beard. Never let his eyes leave Lee. “Are you just being contrary because you like to screw with me, or do you really have that much faith in Sam?”

  Lee considered that. Did he really have that much faith in Sam? When had the kid that had hidden under a stump, crying for his dead father, become a man that Lee could trust? Did he really think that Sam could pull this off?

  Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t sure. But you can never be sure about anything. Not in life. And certainly not in war. The future was unknowable.

  And deep down, Lee knew that his faith in Sam had nothing to do with whether or not he thought Sam could actually accomplish his mission. Rationally, he did think that Sam could, or he wouldn’t have sent him. But really, the reason why he’d sent Sam, and not one of the more qualified people, was that he didn’t know those more qualified people like he knew Sam.

  Lee looked out the windshield. “How many times have I been betrayed, Abe? How many times have you been betrayed? How many plans have gone tits up because the person we trusted turned on us?”

  Abe gave no response to that. Because the list was too long to even consider.

  “I can count on one hand the number of people I know won’t stab me in the back. Everyone else is subject to suspicion. So if you want to know why I sent a half-boot to do a special forces job, it’s because I know—I know—that Sam won’t betray me.”

  Abe took a heavy breath, and when he pressed it out, he seemed to relinquish the argument. “Well. I hope he can get the job done.”

  Lee felt a winch in his chest tighten another notch. “Yeah. Me too.”

  TWO

  ─▬▬▬─

  SAMEER

  “I thought Colorado was supposed to be all mountains and cool, crisp air,” Jones griped, wiping sweat off his brow. “The fuck is this?”

  Sam shuffled forward a few more steps, the hot concrete starting to burn through the thin soles of his worn out sneakers. He glanced to the side of the roadway, where two men in black polos and body armor watched them from the bed of a pickup truck, their rifles slung, but ready and in hand. He couldn’t see their eyes behind their sunglasses, but Sam was pretty sure they were looking at him and his group.

  “This look like the mountains to you, Jonesy?” Sam mutt
ered. He glanced to his left and could just barely make out a hazy ripple in the distance that rose up above the flatness of the horizon like a jagged wall.

  The Rockies. But Greeley wasn’t in the Rockies, despite the image he’d had in his head this whole time, which he guessed was something more like Aspen. When you think of Colorado, you don’t think flat.

  But Greeley was flat.

  Not that they were in Greeley proper just yet. This was the southern edge of what was called the “Red Zone,” which was actually a little town called La Salle, according to the battered map they’d left in the old Honda Civic they’d ditched ten miles back.

  One of the operatives in black polos held up his hand. “Y’all stop right there.”

  Sam’s spine stiffened, his heart jerking into high gear. He squinted against the sun, expecting the Cornerstone operative to level his rifle at them. But the man simply stood there, looking bored.

  Sam let his breath out slow. Best not to appear too nervous. Best to just look like the desperate, worn-out refugees that they were supposed to be.

  Jones shifted beside Sam, giving the operative a sideways glance. His grip tightened on the strap of the rifle he had slung on his back.

  There were six of them in the group. Sam’s squad—Jones, Pickell, Frenchie, and Johnson—and Marie. She’d been a last minute add on. Five military-aged males might still cause some uncomfortable questions to be asked, but the presence of a middle-aged woman diffused that suspicion. Or so they hoped.

  They were all dressed in tattered and filthy civilian clothes. They’d intentionally worn the most threadbare items they could rustle up, the most worn out backpacks they could find, and fitted their feet into sneakers with split toes and soles that were paper thin—if not downright holey.

  They certainly looked like they’d been travelling on foot for weeks.

  They smelled like it, too. None of them had washed themselves since the day this plan had been decided on. All for the mission.

  The operative that had ordered them to stop looked up the road, where the actual checkpoint stood, maybe fifty yards ahead. There, another group of haggard civilians was being inspected and questioned by a mix of soldiers in US military uniforms, and Cornerstone operatives in their black polos.