As I pass another storefront, I notice another cross that ISIS painted on the doors of the ‘infidels.’ I wonder how many are still here and how many have been tortured, or turned into sex slaves. Or worse.
I signal to Darby to follow me. My other men disappear as much as possible into the dark spots. I hold up a fist and freeze. Footsteps. Voices. I signal Darby back against the wall and we wait.
The footsteps get louder. Men laughing. A woman crying. I finally see them appear from another alley fifty yards ahead.
All three men are walking with old Kalashnikov’s, and there’s the woman who’s blindfolded and gagged, being pushed and shoved in front of them.
Her hands are tied behind her back and she falls to her knees, apparently tripping over something. The three men scream and kick her, yelling at her to move forward. She crawls, but not fast enough. The one in the middle raises his gun and fires a burst into the air.
“Stand down,” I whisper into my mic. “Wait for my signal.”
I watch the woman curl into a ball, begging in Arabic for her life. The man on the left reaches down and grabs her by the hair, lifting her up and dragging her forward. The asshole in the middle puts a pistol to her head and pulls the trigger.
Click.
They laugh and push her again, one kicking her in the ass. This time she stays on her feet. I clench and unclench my weapon, willing my brain back into neutral.
The atrocities one group of humans do to another is unfathomable. But I know better than to take out these three men. They are the effect, not the cause. I want the leaders. I want to chop off the dragon’s head so the fire is forever extinguished.
“Clear.”
Slowly, cautiously Darby and I move forward. Following the men and woman to the safe house.
“Mister.”
I jerk around, but there’s no one there. But I heard a voice. I know it.
A little hand sticks out from around the corner and I aim, but don’t fire. I wait. Less than ten seconds later, a thatch of dark hair, then a forehead and an eye peek around the crumble of the building.
He steps out. No more than nine, ten at the most. “Mister—”
I raise my finger to my lips. He’s still in my sights. I don’t know if this is a setup—they use kids as decoys and shields regularly over here.
He’s wearing rags and I can clearly see he has no weapons, bombs or wires strapped to his body. I wait to see what he wants and what he’ll do. His brown eyes are enormous.
“Bombs in ground,” he says in Arabic and then repeats it again in very broken English. For emphasis, he lowers to his haunches and makes a circle in the dirt. I look around.
Shit.
“How many?” I whisper in his native tongue.
“Many.” Then he rises up and says, “I’ll show you.”
Still cautious. Still waiting, I signal Darby and the team to stop, then follow the boy as he leads me around IEDs littering the alley we were about to take. I ask him to mark each one with a circle in the dirt. He does exactly as I ask.
We duck into a doorway and I clamp a hand on his shoulder. “Why are you out this time of night?”
He looks so scared. “My sisters. They throw away good food here. I feed them.”
“Where are your parents?”
His eyes grow sad. “Dead.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sami.”
I lower down to eye level with him and notice the scar over his right eye. “Sami, you’ve got to get out of here. Things are about to get bad. You need to get small and hide.”
“But my sisters...”
“You can’t help yours sisters if you’re dead. You have less than one minute to get out of here. Do you understand?”
His face turns mulish and I have to respect that. For one so young, he’s loyal.
“Where are your sisters?”
He points east. “One kilometer.”
“Then they’re safe. This area is not. Understand?”
He nods and begins to turn.
“Sami.” He stops, turns back and I take the watch off my wrist. “Don’t take less than nine hundred pounds for this. Do you understand me?”
His eyes are huge and I rumple his hair. “Thank you.”
“Go. Be careful. Remember to get small and stay put.”
He turns and takes a few steps before coming back and wrapping his skinny arms around my legs. One squeeze and he is gone.
It’s eerily quiet as I slowly turn the handle on the door. It’s locked. I click my radio three times—the signal for the others to move in. I find a window slightly cracked open and push it up, but immediately stop. A bomb couldn’t have been much louder than that squeak in the dead quiet.
A light goes on in an upstairs window across the street. I quickly return to the front door.
Two tongue clicks. Stop advancing. It’s gonna be me and Darby. I motion for Darby to get behind me and watch our flank. I push on the door with my hip. Nothing. I grab my knife and slide it between the old looking lock and the doorframe, remembering when I’d used a credit card to get into my dad’s liquor cabinet.
Nothing.
“Charlie, Charlie.” I whisper into my radio. Time for plan C.
In thirty seconds, I hear the familiar tongue click. Darren is in position with his squad, ready to clear the way out of here if needed. My squad is going in. We have seven hostages to bring out.
I briefly wonder how the Seals and other special ops groups are doing. We’d had to split into four groups to defeat our targets. It wasn’t optimal, but necessary.
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ground shakes as the world explodes and I wonder if our guys had found a new alley of IEDs.
No. Flames burn at my twelve o’clock, three, six and nine. Quickly gauging the distance, my blood turns cold as I realize those bombs could have very well taken out our Rangers.
BOOM!
BOOM!
“Get out. Get out. Get out.”
I’m screaming at my men, realizing we’ve been set up. The new bombs are going off in the approximate area of where the terrorists were thought to be located. Where the Seals were.
BOOM!
The force of the explosion throws me into a building, but I’m on my feet, screaming at my men to retreat. No doubt, we’ve been fucking set-up.
BOOM!
I watch two men in front of me thrown into the air as one steps on an IED.
“Left!”
I recognize the alley the boy had marked and we pick our way down and out. I’m searching for targets. There’s no one to aim for. No one to shoot.
But as we exit the alley, bullets fly and I hit the ground and roll, coming up behind a low wall. I send out a spray, giving cover to Darby, who dives behind me and comes up with guns blazing. From the corner of my eye, I see Darren and two of his men take position behind the other wall.
My arm stings as a bullet ricochets off my chest plate. Darby is bleeding below his eye, but he seems fine enough. The brick walls have become a random series of debris flying towards us. Missiles small and sharp enough to take off skin.
Weaving our way forward, giving each other cover, we make our way down the next alley. Then I see him. Fuck. The boy. I see the boy. He’s being used as a shield.
And my mind goes black.
Lifting my weapon, I aim and fire with zero hesitation, taking the bastard by surprise. The boy drops to the ground as his holder staggers backward, a well-placed bullet in his eye.
I look at the dirt and realize there are more circles. The kid had been marking them for us when he was caught.
I point them out and then scoop up the kid as we run past him, tossing him over my shoulder. “Hang on tight.” Beside me, Darby staggers and falls forward. I get a hand on his arm, straightening him. He keeps running, dripping blood from his hand.
Spotting a doorway, I dive through, pulling Darby in with me. The boy rolls, grabs his hip and curls into a
ball. He’d been shot, but the bullet cauterized the wound on the way in.
A second later, Darren and two men are inside and the zing of bullets suddenly increase.
Hearing the grind of machinery, I look out and see several trucks with reinforcements heading up the street. It stops and turns, giving me a clear view of the fifty-caliber barrel moving toward the door, aiming straight at us.
“Down!”
I cover the boy as the tracers light up the room and bullets cut through the walls like butter. There is nothing to do but hope they miss. It’s obvious they’re just shooting at random, but random bullets kill just as dead.
Darren looks at me. “Birds coming in. We need to get out of here.”
I look around. Where the fuck do we go?
I flip my night vision goggles down, but everything is still dark. I flip them back up since they seem to be dead.
A yapping dog breaks the silence just as a light shines through the door. “Duff?” I hear someone yelling from behind the door.
“Fuck, Wyman. Why aren’t you on the radio?”
“We’ve been trying to get you for the last five minutes.”
He points his flashlight at me and I reach up, for the first time feeling the burn mark on my neck. My radio wire is split in two and there’s a hole in its battery. Saved by a fucking D-cell.
“Why did it get so quiet?” I ask him.
“Don’t know. They scattered. Something spooked them.”
I shake my head. It’s another set-up. I can feel it.
“We’ve got to get out of here. How many of us are left and what is the rendezvous point?”
“Not many left. The alleys were traps. Led us in like fucking rats.”
I touch the boy’s head. “Thanks to this guy, we got out safe. Now we need to get to that point. Ammo check.”
Damn. Not enough.
“Conserve fire power. Shoot to kill. Let’s get out of here so we can come back and annihilate these fuckers and retrieve our men.”
Wyman stills, listening. “Do you hear that?”
“Fuck.” I know the sound of a T-62 Russian tank after my time in Iraq. I hand Darren my gun and throw the kid on my back again, pulling grenades off my vest. There were no orders telling me I couldn’t save innocent lives. I’ll be damned if this kid doesn’t have a chance to live. He saved mine.
Dead weight.
I feel like I’m back in boot camp, running the obstacle course, only this time with a sock in my mouth and fifty pounds strapped to my ankles. Wyman is at my back. Darren at my right. Three more join us, then two more. We spread out, weaving our way to our new coordinates.
The T-62 rounds the corner and I see two enemy on the top. One with an RPG. The other half out of the turret on the machine gun.
“Wyman.”
“On it.” He drops to his knee and the RPG tumbles off the turret along with its owner.
He catches up to me, but the tank is picking up speed. “How much farther?” I wheeze as I run as fast as I can. I’ve taken too many bullets in my vest.
“I don’t know. Can’t be far.”
Another hail of bullets curl up the dirt at our feet. “Get that fucker in the turret.”
Wyman pulls the trigger.
Nothing.
I throw him a magazine, but he’s already taking his sniper rifle off his shoulder.
I turn back to run before the shot goes off. Up ahead, Darren has turned, giving Seelen cover. Jackson shows up out of nowhere.
“Take the kid,” I yell at Darren. I’m taking out the tank with Wyman.”
“No, you have him,” he shouts and shows me his hand. C4. “That’ll work better. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I look Darren in the eye and take off as fast as I can. The cannon’s fire lights the area for a split second.
The blast knocks me off my feet and I almost land on the kid. My head hurts, and waves of dizziness wash over me. The fucking shell missed by about twenty yards and why it didn’t explode, I have no idea.
Another round misses us, but it’s closer and I didn’t even hear its approach. The ringing in my ears is like one thousand mosquitoes. I surely blew my eardrums. The kid is bleeding out of his mouth and ears now.
The C4 must have torn the track off the tank and I see Darren running back toward me. That stops the forward motion, but not the cannon. Luckily, the tank operators planned their fire while they were moving forward and it was a line drive over our heads.
“Go. Go. Go.”
I see Darren’s lips move, but can’t hear a thing. I pick up the kid, pull Jackson from the ground and start moving.
The bird. It’s hovering ahead of us. A big Blackhawk blowing up the dirt, giving us additional cover. We might make it after all.
BOOM!
I’m blinded as white takes over my vision and I’m thrown forward, losing my balance and go down, the boy landing a couple feet away.
Darren rolls beside me and I crawl to him, blinking against the white, trying to get my vision back.
“Get up, soldier,” I scream at him.
Nothing. He doesn’t even blink.
Getting to my feet, I haul Darren up, but fall when I take the first step. I stay down and begin to drag him, pulling us both to the chopper. Then someone has him. He’s tossed over a shoulder, then I’m hurled into the air and am over a shoulder too.
The boy.
Oh no. The boy.
He’s lying there, still as death. Then he blinks and focuses on me.
I reach for him and miss.
“Go back! Go back! Get the boy!”
I’m screaming, but the noise all around us is horrendous. “Get the boy!”
In a whirl of movement, I’m in the chopper. We’re lifting off and I’m reaching again. Reaching. Then I don’t see him anymore. The boy is gone.
“Tourniquet!”
I try to sit up, but I can’t. Someone is putting too much pressure on my leg.
“Darren?”
There he is. I see him now. Someone’s pounding on his chest.
“I need that fucking tourniquet!”
A needle is jabbed into my upper thigh and another in my stomach. Soon, the glorious feeling of morphine begins to flow.
A nap.
That’s all I need and I’ll be ready to come back for round two.
Just a little nap now.
I’ll only close my eyes for just a minute.
Badass (Book 2) — Destinies Collide
Chapter 1 – Duffy
I’ve heard that when you’re on the brink of death, your life flashes in front of your eyes.
That’s not true. At least not for me.
I expected a movie reel of my top twenty greatest—or worst—moments. Or some shit like that. But I didn’t see anything. Feel anything. Just voices. Voices coming at me from every direction.
Some voices boomed loud as thunder—‘tourniquet’—while some were so soft I strained to hear—‘he’s gone.’ But they all did one thing … told me things I didn’t want to know. Or maybe I did want to know. I’m still not sure about that.
Things I do know…
I was airlifted to a hospital in Syria and immediately transported to Germany. The Blackhawk I was on sustained a hit, but the pilot was able to keep us in the air. Aside from the smoke, I don’t remember much of that flight.
Things I wish I didn’t know…
Darren’s dead.
Jackson’s dead.
Hulk’s dead.
Wyman’s dead.
The list goes on and on.
My entire team wiped out in a matter of minutes. Except me.
Why me?
Why am I still alive?
Then there’s the boy. Sami. A boy who played a critical role in my survival. A boy who helped my team get as far as we did. I can only guess that he’s dead too. I left him. I left him lying on the ground so close to the Blackhawk. I left him. I left him! Another person I couldn’t save.
Is living my
punishment?
Of course, from what I’m hearing, my living isn’t completely certain yet...
From the bits and pieces I’ve learned as people talk over and around me, I was shot at least fifteen times. Most were stopped by my body armor, but some landed in flesh. Four wounds in my arms and three in my shredded leg. Broken ribs and a collapsed lung from the shots to my armor. But that doesn’t seem to be the main concern.
“Sergeant Duffy? Can you hear me?”
I try to open my eyes but they won’t cooperate. It feels like the fuckers are glued shut. I lift a hand, trying to acknowledge the person speaking to me. I can’t move it. It must be glued down too.
“Sergeant Duffy. If you can hear me, you’re in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. You’re about to undergo surgery to remove bullet wounds to your extremities and stop internal bleeding. Your family has been notified…”
They’re talking around me again. Saying things like … “He’s lucky they were able to seal the bleeding on the Blackhawk.” Or “One quarter of an inch to the left and he’d be gone.” Or “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Or “What are his chances of keeping the leg?”
Other voices too.
“Sergeant Duffy. This is Colonel Vorhees from Army intelligence. Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” I’m barely able to tell him I can.
I can also open my eyes now, just a slit. The Colonel is a tremendous blur, but I blink and he comes into better focus.
“Sergeant Duffy, one of the Landstuhl surgeons will be speaking to you in a moment, but it’s important I ask you a few questions first. Are you able to speak?”
I try to say something, but it’s so dry it feels like my tongue is also glued to the roof of my mouth.
A nurse appears above me and sticks something wet and spongy between my lips. She smiles down at me as she swabs it around, nearly making me gag.
When she’s gone, I realize my mouth feels better. I lick my lips and try, “What…?” Shit! That word feels like a knife in my throat. In my lungs. In my brain. I try it again, “What happened?”
“You’ve been in Landstuhl for two days now. You’ve undergone two surgeries and possibly one more before we can get you back in the states.”
I lick my lips and close my eyes again. “We were set up.”
Badass - The Complete Series: A Billionaire Military Romance Page 14
