by Ronie Kendig
Another soldier brandished a needle. When the guy moved toward Midas, an arm snaked around his throat and held him in a choke hold.
“Put it down,” Aladdin ordered as he peered over the man’s shoulder.
Surprise lit through Max at the stealth of that man. But Aladdin was right. “You’re not drugging my man.”
Triton scowled. “Exactly ten minutes to rendezvous with our only ride out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without her,” Midas reiterated, the growl stronger now.
“She’s part of my team.” Max added his assent to Midas’s claim. “If she’s here, we find her.”
With a nod, Midas thanked him. They were a team, they—
Pain flickered through Midas’s eyes and he hauled in a breath. Slowly, his shoulder rolled around the corner. He pitched forward, limp.
Max lunged and caught him, confused as he supported the man’s dead weight. “Midas!” Only then did he see the dart in Canyon’s neck. He snapped his gaze to the leader of the faction.
Triton shrugged. “Sorry. We’ve got orders, too.”
Spine pressed against the wall near the door, Dani waited in the darkness as the guards shouted outside her cell. Come and find out where I went. Poised to the side of the door, she held the broken cot leg she’d used to shatter the lightbulb. Light leapt into the cell through the small Plexiglas window. The ground sparkled. She prayed the guards didn’t notice the glass from the shattered bulb, which should give her a few more options.
Shink!
The outside lock disengaged.
Creak!
The door groaned open.
Steadying herself, she waited … waited … finally a guard stepped in. She brought the leg down across the base of his neck. A sickening crack echoed through the cement block.
The guard crumpled as she spun away, assuming a defensive posture for the other two who rushed into the room, M16s at the ready, weapon-mounted lights fracturing the darkness.
She dove forward.
Muzzle flash ignited the room, sparking.
With a gasp, she stilled.
Navas sauntered in, toed the unconscious man with his boot, then looked at Dani. “If you try that again, I’ll have them kill you.”
Nice try. “If you touch me Bruzon will kill you.”
A sneer slithered into his face. “Are you that anxious to return to his bed?”
Fury rose up within Dani. Baiting her was one thing. Taunting another. She raised the cot leg and shoved every ounce of strength behind it.
Quick as lightning, he lunged. The flat part of his hand sliced the air and smacked her throat. Dani fell back. Unable to breathe, she flipped onto her side, holding her throat. Groping for air.
Navas knelt beside her. “If you ever try that again, I will kill you.”
Trachea constricted, she gasped. Sucked hard for air that didn’t exist. Her temples throbbed under the deprivation.
He set a netbook in front of her and pressed PLAY.
Unbelievably, she watched as red lights bathed the images of the facility as a dozen men snaked through.
“Your hero—do you see him?”
Throat aching, she rubbed it and ignored the burn ignited in her heart. Yes, she recognized Canyon’s face.
“He left you.”
As precious oxygen bled into her throat and lungs, Dani turned wide eyes to him. “No.”
“Yes, look at the images. A spec-ops team extracted him last night.”
Dani shook her head, tears stinging her eyes.
“Why did they leave you, Danielle?” He grunted. “Why did he leave you?”
For a second she forgot to breathe.
“Let’s go. Bring her.”
The pain of not breathing paled to the pain of a breaking heart.
Lambert Residence, Maryland 8 May
“What aren’t you telling me, Bob?”
The connection simmered with muttering and clattering. “Never could hide anything from you.”
“Then let’s not ruin our friendship now.” Olin stood from his recliner and started toward his office, mentally noting Charlotte set down her newspaper. No doubt her wife alarms blazed.
“She’s not here.”
His slippered feet shuffled to a stop on the hardwood floor. Something akin to an arctic blast rushed through his veins, freezing his muscles, his heart. “What do you mean she’s not there?” He had to mentally push himself across the threshold and close the door quietly and slowly so he didn’t worry Charlotte.
As he moved to his desk he grew concerned when his friend did not answer. “Bob?”
“That’s some team you’ve got there.”
Bob’s comment wasn’t the compliment it appeared to be. “What happened?” Palm on the desk, Olin eased into the chair, heart and mind racing.
“The dark-haired guy running that op?”
Had to be Max. “They call him Frogman.”
“That’s the one. He turned my hangar into a fight club about an hour ago.”
Definitely Max. Strange and rancid, dread swirled through his gut. Max, angry? What happened? “He has a temper—”
“And a solid right hook.”
But there was one thing about Max that worried Olin—he held his warrior brothers in the highest regard. For Max to attack someone sent to extract him meant one thing: He felt a code had been violated.
“You’ll understand that I can’t much elaborate, but … Who am I kidding? The man whose facility we penetrated? His reach stretches around the globe, as you know. So it should be no surprise to hear he’d gotten to one of my men.”
“One—”
“Now, don’t worry. He’s in a cell, and your man gave him a few new lumps to consider.” Bob huffed and groaned. “Can’t say a lot, things are … well, I’ve got brass breathing down my neck.” The phone muffled and Bob shouted something. “Listen, Olin, things are a mess. I gotta go.”
“Bob.” He worked to control his voice, his temper. “Where is Danielle?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say—my guy left her there. Said she belonged to the general.”
Fire roared down Olin’s spine. He pushed to his feet, vision bleeding red. “Get my team back down there.”
“No can do. We’ve been put on a no-fly hold for the next twenty-four hours because of this fiasco.”
“Danielle doesn’t have twenty-four hours.”
“Sorry, Olin. It’s out of my hands.”
Naval Base, Cuba 14 May
Boulders sat on his eyes. At least, that’s how it felt. Canyon groaned and pulled himself to the side, attempting to sit up. Pain spiked through his head and shoulder. He dropped back. A strange rustling made him still. Squinting, he glanced around the room …
I can open my eyes. Why weren’t they swollen shut?
“Easy there,” Max’s soothing but entirely too loud voice snapped through the void. “You’re hooked up to a few boxes.”
Beeping and hissing of machines broke into Canyon’s awareness. He shifted, pried open his eyes—even though he opened them, the brightness in the room pressed against the back of his corneas.
He lifted his arm and looked at the head of the needle whose length disappeared beneath his skin. Then traced the tube up to a bag. Squinting didn’t help him focus, but he guessed the bag served as hydration. The beeping came from the blood-pressure monitor attached to his finger.
The room could’ve been a cage for all he knew. Gray bled against gray in a dull menagerie of materials—gray concrete, gray metal, gray mattress, gray lamp—lights! He winced and jerked, making his head swim. He had to align everything, get his mind back in the game. The last thing he knew—
“Roark.” He grunted as he pulled himself up off the mattress. “Where is—?”
“Your head looks like someone used it for soccer.”
Canyon snorted at Max’s comment as he wobbled on the edge of the bed. Palm against his head, he tried to think past the thundering in his skull. �
�Torture and waterboarding do that.” He winced at the fire in his temple. “Where … where am I? How’s Roark?”
They were safe now. It’d been too close, getting captured then extracted by the spec-ops team. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to her again. There were a lot of things to make right. The first thing was setting things right with her. Marry her, if she’d have him. Not out of guilt—yes, he’d been wrong to make love to her out of wedlock. He felt like a heel. Like scum. If his past had been any indication, he’d pay for the mistake somehow. The thought rankled him. She deserved so much better than someone like him, but he didn’t want her to have anyone else. He wanted the rest of their lives to spend together.
You don’t deserve her or a happy ending.
A door squeaked open. “Ah, good.” A man in a white lab coat strode in. “I thought you should be rousing.”
Head down, Canyon peered up through his brows, feeling very hungover. “What’d you give me?” He also noted Max had not answered his questions. And that worried him. He locked gazes with the team leader.
“That’s saline.” The doctor removed an electrode taped to Canyon’s shoulder and one from his chest, then removed the finger cuff. The shrill beeping stopped.
“Saline?” Canyon rubbed the spot where the tape had pulled against his flesh. “And I feel like roadkill?” It didn’t add up.
The door opened again. In streamed Legend, Cowboy, the Kid, and Aladdin. They joined Max against the wall. “Hey, guys …” Nobody smiled. Nobody talked. What was with the lineup? “Where’s Squirt?”
“Recovering.”
A thought struck him: His question about Roark hadn’t been answered. Which meant … Roark … If that electrode was still stuck over his heart, the team would hear his ramping heart rate. The only thing keeping him on the gurney were the spinning circles called the floor. “Anyone going to tell me what’s going on? Where’s Roark? How is she?”
In the silence that pervaded the moment, Canyon knew something wasn’t right. Though he studied his teammates, he couldn’t pin down what was wrong. “What’s going on?”
“Hydrocodone detox.” Max stepped from the grouping, arms folded over his chest.
“Hydrocodone?” Hot and cold swirled in Canyon’s gut, mixed with dread and guilt, as his brain dumped all coherent thought. How did they know?
Straddling a metal stool, the doc clasped his hands. “You’re a medic—remember, it’s a semisynthetic opioid derived from either of two naturally occurring opiates, codeine and thebaine.”
Canyon glared. “I know what it is. Why are you—?” He pushed his attention to the team leader. “Detox. What do you mean?”
A black storm cloud rushed over Max’s face as he squared his shoulders and lowered his chin. Fight mode. “Why don’t you explain to me”—he bobbed his head to the other men—“to the team, why you had high levels of hydrocodone in your system?”
They couldn’t know. “This is insane. They drugged me. I’m a medic.”
“Which gives you access to the drug, am I correct?”
Canyon swallowed—hard. Max had it figured out. How, he didn’t know because he’d kept it concealed from everyone, even his family. Worked around it. Benefitted from it. Okay, so he forgot a few things. Didn’t get bothered by other things. Who cared?
His mind swam—he’d taken a few just before that rifle butt. But he didn’t care about that. He could handle the drugs. He’d taken them long enough. What he couldn’t deal with was the pain in his back. Or the pain knowing they were ignoring what happened during the extraction. “Roark. Where is she?”
“No!” Max shouted, his voice echoing through the room. “This is about you. And us. How long have you been on them?”
“This is a waste of time.”
“Own up to it, Midas.” Legend stood tall and straight, his barrel chest seeming much bigger than usual.
Canyon came off the gurney. Ignored the wobbling in his knees. “Where’s Roark—is she okay? It’s not a hard question.”
“Neither is mine.” Max let out a slow, heavy breath. “How long have you been on them?”
Rubbing his face only reminded Canyon of his broken nose. He gently shook his head and studied the cracks in the cement. It was no use. Going up against Max was as useful as trying to milk a tank. “Since I landed in the hospital with a broken back after … a mission gone wrong.” He gulped; he’d never told anyone. The explosion in that village had broken more than his back though.
“And?”
The men in this room … they deserved to know. But he couldn’t. That order from the panel forbade his revealing the secret.
“And what!?” Never hope Max would back down.
“They help me forget.”
“Forget what?” Max shouted.
“Everything! The pain, the past, the mistakes—”
Max lunged, grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him up. “Your responsibility? Your duties to this team? How to do your mission right?” Amid Max’s shouts, metal clattered against the floor.
The IV tower toppled. The needle tugged against his arm. Pinned to the wall, he felt like a limp doll.
“Tell me!” Max growled and thudded his arms against Canyon’s chest for emphasis. “How’d they capture you?”
“It just happened.”
“No.” Pits of fury boiled in place of Max’s eyes. “You’re always the one who smells a trap, always feels when the wind changes. And I’m supposed to believe you didn’t hear them come up on you? Where was your head? Was it the drugs?”
Canyon diverted his gaze, guilt chugging through his veins. Why … why hadn’t he thought of that? Was it the drugs? Or was it the high of passion that lingered after that night?
Vaguely he remembered Roark mentioning the pills he’d taken. How many had he taken?
“You put her life on the line! You jeopardized the mission.” Forearm pressed against Canyon’s chest again, Max tightened his lips. “You failed, Metcalfe. You failed.”
Thud! The back of Canyon’s head banged the cement as quick as Max released him.
Canyon braced himself, gripping his knees as he bent over. But that made his face feel like it would fall off. Guilt. Screwup. Yeah, no surprise there. “I just—” He hadn’t felt this bad in … years. Oh man, he needed a pill. The thought crackled through his conscience. “I feel hammered.”
Wheels clanked against the floor as the doctor shifted. “You’re experiencing the aftereffects of a detox using the accelerated neuro-regulation, or ANR. You should be thankful, really. This provides the rate of highest success for opiate dependency.” Understanding lurked in the blue eyes of the physician. “You aren’t the first soldier addicted to painkillers. We have done in a matter of days what would’ve taken months—and a much lower success rate—in a traditional rehab detox program.”
“Detox?” If he was detoxed, why did he feel like he’d been used for a punching bag?
“It may have actually worked in your favor that you were drugged during your torture. Your body was more relaxed due to the analgesic effect of the hydrocodone.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea; it wasn’t a good thing. You’ve been strapped to that table, unconscious, while the doc here worked the drugs from your system,” Legend explained. “It’s been six long days.”
Canyon froze. “Six days?”
“Yes.” No backing down when it came to Max.
The doc rolled the stool toward the wall, then stood. “The first two you weren’t in a physical condition to endure the treatment, especially not with the drug they hit you with to drag you back here. Then four days for the detox therapy.”
Another scowl from Max. “But if I had it my way, you’d have gone through it the hard way, sweat it out for weeks. You deserve that.”
“It was our concern for the girl that made us choose this route.”
Like the mud that slid down the mountain and tossed him into a pit of chaos, Canyon saw the world collapse once again. Th
e doc’s face went pale. Cowboy came off the wall. Aladdin mumbled something. The Kid shifted nervously.
Max shot a dagger at the doc, who made a quick exit.
“What …?” Canyon took a step toward them. “What did he mean?” His head pounded with the rapid increase of his blood pressure. Anger gripped his chest. “I’ll ask one more time before this gets ugly,” he said low and slow, eyeing every man in the room. “Where is Roark?”
“Clear out.” Max motioned to the others. “Midas—”
“Is. She. Here?”
Undaunted, unfazed, Max stood there as the Kid, Squirt, and Aladdin filed out. The door shut. “No.”
“Where … she … you left her behind?” Everything in Canyon drained out like a massive hole in the hull of a tanker. Then refueled midair crumble. They left her. Unbelievable. He’d been drugged, dragged out unwillingly. They walked out.
Pivoting, he saw the concern etched into Cowboy’s face, the anticipation leeching through Max’s body language. Legend standing tall but the remorse was there, too.
They were braced for a fight. And by God, he’d give them one.
Canyon grabbed the pole on the floor and swung around. Max ducked. The metal clanged against the wall. Vibrations tremored up his arm. He spun and threw the pole. The line snapped tight and yanked the IV from his arm.
Blood squirted from where the needle came free. The spike of pain enlivened him.
“You left her! I promised her, promised.”
“We had no choice.”
Canyon launched himself at Max.
CHAPTER 23
Crack!
Max stumbled back. Recovered. Instinct drove a hard right at Midas. Stand down. Man, he did not want to do this, fight his own guy. “Hey.” He shoved a hand out to hold off Canyon’s next punch. “Hey!”
Fury glowed through Canyon’s eyes as he hauled back for another punch. From behind, Legend grabbed his fist, twisted his arm down, under and around. He shoved Canyon against the wall, pressing his face against the concrete. “Stand down or so help me …”
Ghosts had nothing on the tormented expression in Canyon’s pale face as he grunted against Legend’s firm grasp. There’s more here than he’s telling us. Then again, wasn’t that always the case with the former Green Beret? Yet if that were true, they had to give the guy some space.
