by Misty Evans
Fatal Honor
Shadow Force International, Book 2
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Misty Evans
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To Mark, my favorite wizard
Acknowledgements
An author can’t do without feedback. It’s been an honor to bring this new series to readers and have them embrace the troubled heroes and heroines of Shadow Force International so whole-heartedly. Thank you to my fans many times over from the bottom of my heart for your love and support!
An author also needs her tribe. Adrienne, JB, Nana, Amy R, Amy A, and Steph, you made me brainstorm harder and were always around when I needed an ear to cry on or someone to bounce an idea off of. Miles and Charlotte are two very unique, out of the box characters that challenged me at every turn. Plus, my life has been complicated so far this year. I have my sanity because of all of you!
Lastly, oodles of gratitude to my new/old beta reader Tiana for offering to read for me once more. It’s been awhile since The Perfect Hostage, but I’m so glad you’re back in the crazy world of my stories, T!
From me & my Gypsy ancestors to you and yours:
Kushti bok
Shadow Force International
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A group of former SEALs, abandoned by the United States and labeled as rogue operatives, who now work as a black ops team performing private intelligence, security, and paramilitary missions for those who have nowhere else to turn.
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Cine seamana vant culege furtuna.
Who sows wind will harvest storm.
How shall I hold on to my soul,
so that it does not touch yours?
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Fatal Honor, Shadow Force International Book 2
Copyright © 2016 Misty Evans
ISBN: 978-0-9966470-4-5
Cover Art by Sweet & Spicy Designs
Formatting by Author E.M.S.
Editing by Linda Beaulieu, Marcie Gately, Patricia Essex
By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. 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 hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.
Please Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Table of Contents
FREE Short Story
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Shadow Force International
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About FATAL COURAGE
Thank You for Reading
Books by Misty Evans
About the Author
Chapter One
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THE ONE THING Navy SEAL Miles Duncan would never do was betray his SEAL team brothers.
On a cold January night in a castle on the right bank of the Danube River in eastern Serbia, he did just that.
“You are one ugly terrorist, mate,” MI6 operative Andrew Hardy joked as he and Miles crawled across the cold parapet, working their way toward the corner tower of the castle where the object of their mission was located.
The British Intelligence officer looked like Henry Cavill and sounded a little like Alan Rickman, drawing out some of his words here and there like Snape in the Harry Potter movies. Miles wondered if he practiced in the mirror back home in London. He probably tried different hairstyles there too, aiming for the latest Bieber look.
Even with the face paint Miles had layered on Hardy, along with the dark camo suit, the operative looked like a movie star. A movie star taking on a role in an action film that would make him look like a badass while in real life he got manicures and ate caviar while men like Miles and his SEAL teammates gutted it out with MREs. “I didn’t realize being beautiful was a requirement for being an AK-47-toting terrorist. In that case, you should take the lead on this mission, pretty boy.”
That garnered a chuckle from the terrorist team listening in on their comms. Miles’ teammates and several of Hardy’s were the good guys this round, while Miles and Hardy and a handful of SIS pretended to be the tangos. The good guys had stores of weapons, ammunition, and food. The bad had none of that. Miles and Hardy were in charge of setting off a bomb to distract the guards so their teammates could confiscate the resources they needed.
Hardy, good natured as well as slightly egotistical, laughed along with their tango buddies. “I’m good, chief. Lead the way.”
The night was cold, the bite of the fast-approaching winter in the air. A partial moon hung over the castle’s east turret, a half-lidded eye watching them as they attempted to breach the tower where they would set off the bomb.
The bomb wasn’t real, but the training lesson was serious. It was quite possibly their last tactical engagement together and Miles had every intention of making it a success.
The joint team training operation with the CIA and SIS had come about on short notice. MI6 agents had been in the area working with CIA agents to track down a British operative who’d gone undercover with the Romanian crime lord and was now believed to have gone rogue. The operative was identified only by a code name, Butter. Apparently the Queen didn’t take kindly to her agents going off the reservation and wasn’t about to share the details.
So the British guys were waiting on orders to come from Vauxhall Cross on the double agent’s whereabouts and bring in the crime lord, a guy named Bourean, with her. Both SIS and the CIA wanted Bourean. Problem was, no one could pinpoint exactly where the MI6 gal was hiding out. Every lead from Vauxhall, every expedition into the nearby towns and countryside, had turned up zilch.
Miles and his team had also been on standby along the border, waiting on orders to carry out a complicated extraction of an Islamist Syrian terrorist who’d once been with Al Qaeda and was now traveling Europe to set up splinter groups. He’d formed his latest group with former Guantanamo Bay detainees and the U.S.—along with a doze
n other countries—wanted him bad. Latest intel suggested he was working with Bourean to get his hands on weapons and had holed up in the mountains to ride out the winter months.
Not ones to sit on their hands and do nothing, they’d been training relentlessly day in and day out. The big wigs at the SIS and CIA had decided a joint training op would benefit all parties involved. The SEAL team had gone on a couple of scouting missions with the spies to see if they could scare up Agent Butter. With no luck, the MI6 guys had wanted to play terrorist for a while. Win-win.
Hardy wanted his double agent. Miles wanted his terrorist. Looked like neither of them was going to complete their mission, however, because now, a nasty storm system was moving into the area within the next twelve hours. Planting their fake bomb might be their one and only success this round.
Which sucked, but Miles had learned that sometimes you had to take whatever success you could eke out and be happy with it.
Before he and Hardy could breach the tower, however, even their plan to plant the bomb eluded him in the end when Senior Chief Hunnan called a halt to the exercise.
The senior chief was big, burly, and gruff, barely giving his men time to file into a circle around him inside the flanking tower where he’d set up their HQ before he started barking out a change in their mission. “A plane has gone down in the Southern Carpathian Mountain range. It was carrying a high-value asset. A nuclear physicist named Alexander.” He marked a spot on a map and then tapped a large tablet to blow up the same map with a more detailed topography. “DIA believes he was kidnapped by several Syrian sympathizers through a deal with Romanian crime lord Nicolae Bourean. He was being transported to Turkey where the kidnappers planned to meet up with a Syrian intelligence operative and turn him over. Syria wants to develop nuclear weapons. The plane was shot down and an intercept from the crash suggests our scientist is still alive.”
The exfiltration mission they had been waiting for was finally here. Only now, it was a search and rescue of a completely different target.
Hardy danced on the balls of his feet as he eyed the map. “Bloody hell, that’s the area our girl was last spotted.”
The Carpathians, a rugged arc of mountains that stretched nearly a thousand miles from one end to the other, were nothing to fool with, especially with a blizzard approaching. The second longest mountain range in Europe, they’d been divided into three sections: Eastern, Western, and Southern. They were separated from the Alps by the mighty Danube. Getting in and out of the rugged area was challenging for their kind of missions.
Hardy’s boss put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, mate. We’re pulling out. With no new leads and the storm coming in, we have to go. Butter got the best of us.”
A few minutes later, as Miles’ team suited up for the helicopter ride to take them deep into the Romanian mountain range, Hardy pulled Miles aside.
“Agent Butter,” he said, handing Miles a snapshot of the woman. The profile view showed pale blond hair, a perky nose and lovely skin. Her hair, no doubt the reason for her codename, was pulled back behind her ear and a lightening bolt earring nestled in the lobe. “Keep your eyes out for her. She’s dangerous. If you do come across her, do not engage. Notify us.”
Miles took one last look at the photo and nodded. She hardly looked like the woman all the MI6 agents talked about as though she were a ghost, but perhaps that’s why they had such a lousy photo of her. She was a ghost in the wind.
“You think I’ll find her in the plane debris?” he joked.
Hardy didn’t smile. “If Bourean is in on this, she is too. SIS wants Bourean, but I want her more. No MI6 operative sells out my country and lives to talk about it, you feel me?”
“Yeah, pretty boy.” Miles clapped him on the back. He didn’t run off to remote areas of the world and put his life on the line for grins and giggles. He lived and breathed being a SEAL. Would do anything to protect his country. “If I see Agent Butter, you’ll be the first to know.”
Southern Carpathians
Five hours later
MILES FLOATED IN a hazy cloud of pain and bliss. How the two sensations could exist at the same moment, he wasn’t sure. He blinked his eyes open but the scene before him didn’t compute. Open beams on a ceiling, dried flowers and plants tied with strings hanging down. Shadows dancing over rough-hewn log walls, the comforting smell of a fire.
A woman hummed as she rocked in a rocking chair near a fireplace, a book open in her lap. She was beautiful, with long, dark blond hair flowing over one shoulder, thick eyelashes hiding her eyes as she stared down at the book. Graceful fingers twirled the end of one section of her hair as she hummed. Her left leg was drawn up under her, toes of the right foot pushing off the floor, keeping up the chair’s cadence.
Where am I? What is this place?
His memory was thick as pudding. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to swim through it, grasping at the fleeting images.
It was no use. The last thing he remembered was Andy’s face, the seriousness in his eyes.
Scientist. Plane.
Butter.
The helicopter explosion. It all came back to him in flashes, nothing concrete, just out of his brain’s reach.
The rocking chair creaked and he opened his eyes once more. The woman was no longer reading; she was watching him.
Dark eyes locked on his, her expression steady and serene.
His tongue was thick, his mouth dry. Pain shot through his lower leg, his ribcage, when he tried to move. “Hello?” he said, but it came out a croak.
She stood from the chair, putting her book down on the side table. The hem of her long white gown fell to floor and she hugged a sweater around her body as she walked softly over to peer down at him.
“You’re finally awake. I was worried you might have a concussion, but there wasn’t anything I could do but wait and see. We’re kind of stuck here in the middle of nowhere, I’m afraid.” She motioned to a window across the room. “How do you feel?”
He could barely see through the frosted pane but it appeared a blizzard raged outside. “Like I fell out of a helicopter.”
“I didn’t see it, but that sounds possible.”
“Where am I?” This time his voice was stronger.
“A cabin in the mountains. You’re lucky to be alive.”
How was he alive? A flash of memory jarred his mind—the helo shifting too suddenly; panicked voices; losing his balance as he hung in the open door.
“I found you in the snow. I thought you were dead.”
“And the others?”
She looked to the fire, shook her head. “There was an explosion. The helicopter crashed.”
The pain radiating throughout his body took on a sharper edge. He closed his eyes and sensed her moving away. “How?” he whispered to himself. Explosion. Crash. It didn’t make sense. “How did that happen?”
As he replayed the memories he could dredge out of his brain over and over, the bed moved with her weight as she sat on the edge and handed him a cup of water. “Drink this. You need fluids.”
He was gutted.
Let me die.
He turned his head away, stared at the opposite wall where a desk and bookshelf sat.
“I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she said, quietly. “The pain, the survivor’s guilt. The need to understand why it happened, who was responsible. Blaming yourself doesn’t help. Getting answers sometimes doesn’t either. Nothing can bring them back.”
For long moments, Miles wished her away. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t touch him. Just sat with him as if sharing his grief.
His ragged breathing slowed. His parched throat yearned for the water she held. A thousand daggers stabbed at his heart but eventually, the desire to know what had happened made him look at her once more. “I’ll take that drink, now.”
She gave him a sad smile. With her help, he propped himself up on his elbow, enjoying the soft touch of her hands, her patience with him. He grasped the c
up, his fingers lacing with hers. His skin tingled where their fingers met, his hand trembling with weakness. She held onto the cup, guiding it to his mouth.
Their eyes met over the edge of the cup. The water was cool and tinged with a flavor he couldn’t place. The raw burn in his throat vanished. “What’s in it?” he asked.
“A tonic my mother used to use on me when I was feeling ill. All natural, nothing harmful, I promise.”
She smiled again and his mind went blank. She was strikingly beautiful, her voice soft and soothing. Her touch…
While the realization that his SEAL brothers were gone was a nightmare, he, himself, had apparently fallen into a dream. He was alive and stuck in a cabin in a snowstorm with the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
Maybe I died, too, and went to heaven.
While that seemed unlikely, he hoped that was the case. Living without his team wasn’t an option. If they were dead, he wanted to be dead with them.
Taking the cup from his hand, she glanced down at it. Shadows from the fire danced across her tanned skin, but he swore he saw her cheeks blush. “My name is Sarah,” she said.
