Damn, but Alexa’s boldness made him smile! Jen wasn’t like that at all. She was very shy instead. And Alexa’s honesty was raw and startling to him. He’d never met a woman who came clean and asked the serious questions that every relationship eventually brought up. One kiss had opened up many doorways between them, he realized, not sorry that it had happened.
And damn it, he was so drawn to Alexa that in some ways, Gage felt helpless to combat it. His mind yammered at him that she was far out of his reach, that she wouldn’t really be interested in the likes of him. Yet she clearly was, and that confounded the hell out of Gage. He was nothing special. He held terrible, heartbreaking secrets, and he wasn’t the hero that Alexa thought he was. He couldn’t even save his own sister.
And he knew how Alexa saw him as a hero.
No way. Not ever. It was his father who’d been a real hero. He’d loved Gage and Jen’s mother, loved them. He’d done everything he could on his meager pay to see that they were cared for, fed, and had a roof over their heads.
Sometimes, Gage could feel his father yearning for more for his family. He had often talked of Jen and Gage going to college and wondered how he could ensure they’d get there. His father had wanted the best for both of them. Until that day when his whole world was shredded by the most hideous deed imaginable, the day the sun stopped shining for them all.
Gage had stopped dreaming the day his family was murdered, and he could hardly dare to imagine that someone like Alexa Culver would be seriously drawn to him.
Gage told himself it was sex and lust. That was it. He’d never had a woman tell him so bluntly that she was interested in him. Yet, he knew Alexa was not the type that hopped from one man’s bed to another. He knew that for the man she loved, she would go through hell and back. His unerring sniper sense, that invisible radar he used, told him that. She was a woman who played for keeps. And if she got into a relationship, she would work hard to make it last.
God, he was in such a confusing web of events with her. He stopped at his barracks, took out the key, and opened the door. Entering the hall, he quietly shut and locked the door, assaulted by the snoring of his Marine friends as he padded silently down to the door on the left. He decided to shower early tomorrow morning before meeting Alexa. His mind was churning over so many things, his emotions in utter disarray. Now all Gage wanted was to lie down and hope like hell he’d fall asleep immediately to escape it all.
He did fall asleep, but his dreams, which were usually dark and torturous, turned to a rich canvas of his sister. He saw Jen’s smiles as they enjoyed the many adventures they’d had as children. His father had deployed out of Camp Pendleton, the huge Marine Corps base in Southern California. They’d explored together the yellow, baked, cactus-strewn hills.
Jen was born when he was two. Later, as they grew up, he remembered helping his mother with Jen when she was young. His mother had a part-time job and balanced it with taking care of all of them.
Fortunately, Jen was what his mother called a “good baby,” and Gage adored holding her, rocking her. She was his sister, and she and her sunlit hair always made him smile. His father had asked him to help his mother while he was gone on deployment, and Gage took that request with seriousness.
In the dream he saw his father when he’d just returned from Iraq, just in time to see Jen take her first steps. Gage had sat on the floor watching his mother ease Jen out toward her father, who had his hands outstretched to catch her in case she fell. The moment was forever etched on Gage’s heart. After Jen had taken those faltering, unsure steps toward her father at his coaxing, there was a huge celebration. Even more heartwarming, Gage recalled his dad pulling him over, his arm around his shoulders, telling him about the time he’d made his own first steps. Gage heard the awe, joy, and pride in his dad’s voice as he recounted that monumental event that his parents never forgot.
The dream continued, and Gage remembered that his dad, when home, was a fierce and protective parent. But he was also loving, and came into his room two or three times a week to read to Gage before he went to sleep. Gage would pick the book out, and his dad would come in, sit near his bed, and read a chapter or two until Gage fell asleep. A few nights later, they would pick up where they’d left off. This experience alone fostered in Gage a great love of books.
At thirteen, Gage had been taken aside by his father, who had been seriously wounded and had left the Marine Corps, planning to move his family to the Chicago urban area. His mother’s eye condition was worsening, and she was distraught. Gage saw the strain on his father’s face as well. He could feel his father’s intense love for his mother—there was no question that he loved her with a fierceness that Gage had never seen between two people. Gage’s dad had sat him down in the garage, where they could be alone, and had drawn up a second chair opposite him. He could remember the somber, serious tone in his dad’s voice as he told him that he was going to have to grow up in a hurry. Although most kids his age still had a lot of years without responsibility left, his life was now going to be different.
Gage could feel his father’s heavy heart and his concern, saw it in his dark blue eyes. His father had rested his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped between his legs. In a low voice, he told Gage that he was needed, because he could no longer do certain things due to his serious back injuries from the war. He was now in constant pain, unable to make certain movements, and Gage knew that his dad had spent nearly a year in the hospital and then in rehab, learning to walk again.
A piece of shrapnel from an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade, had struck the Humvee he was riding in down an Iraqi street. The shrapnel had lodged in his lower spine, paralyzing him for a while, but his father’s fighting spirit had triumphed and he was able to walk again, as well as do most of the things he had always been able to do.
Now his father told Gage that he was tall for his age, stronger than most thirteen-year-olds, and that he was going to need Gage’s help. Gage was more than ready to assist in whatever way he could. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t see the pain in his father’s face. And he knew his mother worried about the amount of pain drugs he had to take just to keep going. Even at thirteen, Gage was dealing with parent-level issues every day. His mother’s eyes were so bad that she could no longer walk to her grade school to pick up Jen every morning and afternoon. Now that was his job.
Gage awoke suddenly, sitting up in bed, wiping the sweat off his brow. It was dark and he could hear the wind blowing outside the barracks. Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, a guttural sound escaped him. The dream was still with him—the memories of that move from California to Chicago. He remembered his father’s pain from that shrapnel and how he had sat in the backseat of their car, only thirteen, but feeling strong and capable. He felt good about himself because he’d helped his father, and they’d gotten all the furniture and boxes loaded into the trailer. He was looking forward to walking Jen to and from her grade school every day once they arrived at the small row house his parents had bought.
With a soft curse, Gage pulled his hands away from his face and threw the covers off his legs, sitting up, his feet touching the cold floor. He gripped the mattress on either side of him, eyes tightly shut. Everyone had so been looking forward to that move. His dad loved Chicago, had told him so many funny stories about the city, about where they would live. He knew his dad was over the moon that they had been able to buy a small house in his old neighborhood.
Sadness swam through Gage, and he shook his head as his heartache deepened, feeling like he was about to drown in a riptide of sorrow.
Who would ever imagine that the place where his dad grew up happy would end their lives? Who would guess that after they moved there, Jen and his dad would be murdered by a street gang, leaving him and his mother in shock?
And yet, Gage had stepped into his father’s shoes and done the best he could to help his mother survive the unbearable. He had held her, but no one had held him.
; CHAPTER 7
Gage was on edge as the CH-47 helicopter landed outside the Shinwari village. It was 0800, the sky a pale blue, the temperature below freezing, snow covering the area around the walled village. There was a contingent of ten Marines who acted as protection for the dental and optical team that had flown in with them. Much to his disappointment, Matt Culver couldn’t make it, and he’d been counting on being there for his sister.
Unfortunately, he had been called out on an op in the middle of the night, and this morning at 0700, when he’d met Alexa at her B-hut, he couldn’t tell her where he’d gone. Delta Force was black ops, and everything they did was top secret.
Gage was glad the Marine squad went down the ramp first, establishing a perimeter, their M14s up and ready. This was a safe, pro-American village, but Gage knew that even the safest village was a crapshoot these days. There could always be villagers who hid their pro-Taliban stance and then came out of nowhere, attacking Americans with the intent to kill them.
Gripping Alexa’s arm, he sensed her excitement. She was in the air war, not the ground war, and didn’t grasp how dangerous these outings could be. Of course, she knew that Matt’s fiancée had found out the hard way. Dr. Dara McKenzie had been in a van going to a safe Shinwari village when it was ambushed and attacked by Taliban. The driver had been instantly killed, and Dara escaped with Matt, while Callie, her younger sister, was taken by another Delta Force operator, Beau Gardner, in a different direction. Both couples were trying to split their pursuers, hide, and get the hell away from the firefight.
Gage wished Alexa wasn’t so bubbly and excited this morning. Instead, she should have been focusing, looking around, watching the villagers’ body language, and keeping alert. But that was his job. Today, he was her shadow, whether she wanted him to be or not. As they stepped off the ramp into the half-foot-deep snow, Gage was glad he’d decided to wear his sniper gear. Although he didn’t carry a sniper rifle on him, he did have an M4 in a chest harness, the barrel pointed down. There was also a .45 in his holster and a Ka-Bar knife in a sheath strapped to his lower left calf. And of course he’d brought his sixty-five-pound rucksack, fully packed with things he needed on a sniper op. No one, with the exception of the medical teams and Alexa, came to this village unarmed.
The buffeting of the blades hit them full force. The CH-47 had two blades, one front and one rear. Snow was flying up as the two loadmasters quickly released the pallet of goods, allowing it to slide down into the muddy earth. Gage pulled Alexa aside, keeping her near him to protect her as much as he could. He lifted his chin, his gaze slowly panning along the line of hills that ended where the walled village began. He saw why the village had been built there in the first place. There was a nice stream giving the area water from high up in the Hindu Kush, more than fourteen thousand feet tall ten kilometers to the east of them. The mountains looked like guardians, but Gage knew better.
These mountains held thousands of limestone caves where the Taliban hid and made plans, and stuck the innocent who had been kidnapped and were going to be taken over the Pakistan border to be sold as slaves. They used the caves to hide and then assault an unarmed village. Then the bastards would melt back into the mountains, hiding once again from the eyes of the drones.
He moved Alexa from the roar of the CH-47 and the blasts of wind tearing at them, almost knocking her down. Keeping his hand firmly around her upper arm, he saw the chief and his wife waiting at the village’s opened gates. Gage had never been to this village, so he didn’t know the lay of the land. As a sniper, he sure as hell didn’t like the look of that heavily treed wadi, or ravine, moving vertically from the wall of the village straight up into the hills above them. It was a good place for Taliban to sit and hide and strike from. Damn!
Yes, it was winter, and yes, the Taliban had supposedly slunk back to their villages or across the border to wait until spring to make their next offensive into this war-torn country.
The back of his neck prickled—a warning that not all was what it seemed. Gage never disregarded the hair rising on his nape. Not ever. His fingers tightened around Alexa’s arm and he drew her a little closer to him. She looked up, suddenly worried.
“What?” she mouthed.
It was impossible to talk with the helo’s blades turning at nearly takeoff speed. The bird was a target, and the pilots wanted to offload all the supplies as fast as they could and get the hell out of there.
Gage’s mouth tightened. Looking down, he thought how out of place Alexa looked here. She was like a bright, beautiful flower. Her red hair plaited in a single braid peaked out from beneath the hood of her black nylon down parka. A soft forest green turtleneck, jeans, and hiking boots completed her ensemble.
Shaking his head, he nudged her toward the village, wanting to get as far away from that helo as possible. The medical teams were hurrying toward the gate, and the people waiting for them were peering out of it. Gage put himself behind her, his hand on her shoulder, guiding her as quickly as she could get through the snow. Alexa intuitively knew that something wasn’t right—he could see it by the sudden tension in her body. And that was good, Gage thought, because survival was instinctive.
Did she feel the danger? He sure as hell did. His gaze whipped from one place to another, trying to ferret out where it was lurking.
The villagers waved and smiled as the medical teams, seven female medical assistants and two male doctors in total, met with the chief. Gage pulled Alexa away from them, keeping his eyes on the ground, looking for snow or mud that had been disturbed, signs that IEDs had been planted. He searched thoroughly before he let her move a foot in any direction.
Alexa seemed oblivious to the threat, and his protectiveness amped up as he brought her near the heavy wooden gate, then waited. Placing her between the mud-and-stone wall that rose six feet high and was two feet thick, Gage turned, bringing up the barrel of his M4, a sign he was on guard.
Where the hell was the danger coming from? His nostrils flared, and he tried to pick up a scent that might tell him. With the churning of the wind from the blades’ turning, it was almost impossible to smell anything.
Those hills. He knew someone was hiding in those hills. There were groves of evergreens in the wadi. A whole army could hide in there and not be seen. Gage wished he had a combat assault dog and handler with them, because the dog sure as hell would have alerted his handler of any sign of danger. Combat dogs were trained to quietly signal if they detected enemy fighters or ambushes. Also, generally two Apache gunships flew with an unarmed helicopter such as this one. But none had been available, and the colonel on duty at the ops desk approved the flight to go without them since it was a short trip and a pro-American village they were to visit. Gage had almost argued against it but kept his mouth shut. He should have opened it, damn it.
As a sniper, Gage knew patience was the key to finding the Taliban. It was possible that attacks would occur, even during the winter.
He wished like hell a drone could have at least been sent with them. He’d demanded that from the Air Force colonel. The officer had been pissed but agreed there should be some level of protection for the medical mission. One was on the way, he knew, and it was due to arrive in about five minutes. It was too damned bad that the spooks hadn’t sent one ahead to check for body heat, because that would quickly have pinpointed any hidden Taliban.
Frustration thrummed through Gage as he watched the two medical groups, mostly composed of young women in their twenties. They were smiling, laughing, and chatting, as if they were on a lark.
This was not a lark. Gage knew from prior experience that these health teams, as they were referred to, were used to working in a nice, safe office on Bagram, not out in the wilds of this chaotic country. His teeth clenched as the two groups gathered around the chief and his wife. They should have gone inside the village walls. It would have been a safer place to meet. But no one was asking him to handle security for this medical team. The civilian doctors waved off the Marin
e sergeant’s suggestions to move inside the walls. The Marines could suggest, but it was the doctors who were in charge and made final decisions.
Meanwhile, the ramp was quickly lifted and closed. The CH-47 powered up, the engines roaring, shaking the air, the vibrations rippled through Gage’s tense body. He felt Alexa’s hand on his arm as she peeked out from behind him. She was concerned, but he couldn’t tell her anything because the noise was deafening as the helo rose straight up in the air, clawing for altitude.
His gaze cut sharply to the Marine detachment. He had complete faith in them. They were well-trained marksmen, and great guards for this group, which was clearly oblivious to the dangers that surrounded them. But they weren’t snipers and could easily miss small details that stood out and screamed at him.
Alexa gripped Gage’s arm, waiting for the helicopter to be far enough away so that they could talk and hear one another. His face was stony and his eyes were narrowed, his gaze never still. What was wrong? She was uneasy, and yet she felt safe because he was standing in front of her.
If she’d ever doubted his type A status, she could now put that to rest after seeing him with the Air Force colonel, forcing him to get a drone for their flight out here. She licked her lips nervously, trying to see what he was seeing.
“What’s wrong, Gage? Something isn’t right?”
He barely turned his head, keeping his gaze briefly on the wadi, his finger just above the trigger of his M4. “Got company. I feel a threat but I can’t see it yet, but I will . . .”
“W-what does that mean?” She quickly looked at the medical teams talking through an interpreter with the smiling chief.
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “Just stay where you are. If I tell you to drop, you do it. If I tell you to run, you run with me as hard and fast as you can for that village entrance. All right?”
Broken Dreams (Delos Series Book 4) Page 9
