Warren blinked. “How?”
“The details are sketchy, but preliminary reports suggest some of the villagers got greedy, started a revolt of some kind. They wanted more benefits, more food.”
Warren bit down on the curse sitting on the edge of his tongue.
“When the uprising erupted, soldiers went in and quieted them.”
Warren’s mood darkened. “Quieted them how?”
Nathan arched an eyebrow.
They killed villagers. The curse slipped out.
“We were able to put a lid on things—“
“That’s not a lid. That’s a ticking time bomb that will blow up in our faces!” Weighted by the news, Warren paced. “We need to prep a statement, preempt the negative publicity that will no doubt come out of this.”
Green World had been his ticket to the top. Although he’d left most of the details to Nathan, then a stellar attorney with aspirations of seeking a seat on the Hill, Warren had put countless hours into the effort.
“If this hits the news…can they blame us?”
“I’m sure they’ll try.”
“But things were done legally, so we don’t have to worry about that.” The only element in this whole thing that gave him peace right now. Nathan reassured him years ago that they’d come out squeaky clean.
“Sir, there’s more.”
He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his forehead. “What?”
“There’s a village about two hours north. One of the women working under Green World was the sister to a woman in this other village. They are making all sorts of accusations, saying the women are being used in slave trades, that the people are selling bodies for goods.”
“That’s outrageous!” Warren tugged at his tie. “But the authorities are on our side, right? We’re returning strength and vitality to the country.” When Nathan didn’t respond, a chill traced down Warren’s spine. “They killed them too?”
Nathan nodded. “Some of the villagers fought back. It was…ugly. An American missionary living there—without the consent of the Ugandan government—is the cause. He told them to fight, gave them weapons. He fired the first shot on the soldiers when they arrived to enforce a curfew.”
Warren dropped onto a stone bench and cradled his head in his hands. “It can fall apart in a heartbeat.” He looked at his friend. “Can they trace this back to us? You said everything traceable would clear us.”
“Well yes, on paper.” Nathan scrunched his shoulders. “But this missionary, he’s former spec ops. He knows his stuff, knows how to survive.”
“By all that’s holy…” Warren shook his head. “It’s going to come and bite me in the backside, isn’t it?”
“It could. If he is allowed to talk.”
“Then let’s make sure he can’t talk.”
Acholi, Uganda
Wraith. Black, bloodied, and shrieking, they swarmed around him, taunting. Flitting around, their wispy tendrils traced icy trails down his spine.
No! Not again. They’d come after him before.
Scott Callaghan took off running. Through cornfields. His legs slogged through the narrow rows, stalks smacking his face as the ghouls gave chase. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
He looked back.
Children screamed after him, reaching for him. Crying out to him.
No…no…He plunged through the shoulder-high stalks, gasping. Mouth dry, eyes filled with sand, he pushed on. Looking for escape.
Something scraped along his hip—a hand, no doubt. Trying to stop him.
“Scott!”
With a glance back, he slowed. No way. Not possible. The man looked like him, yet didn’t. ACUs camouflaged him in the fields, but not from Scott’s trained eye. “Brother?”
“Go, run!” his brother shouted.
Jogging, Scott couldn’t stop to look. Disbelief choked his mind. How could his brother have found him? Scott double-checked that he wasn’t seeing things. His breath backed into his throat as his brother went down, an ax sticking out of his back.
Horrified, Scott burst into a run. He pressed himself onward. And burst into the bean field. He stumbled, fingers sweeping the dirt and large leaves. Onward. Had to keep going.
“Please, Akiiki!”
Another glance over his shoulder revealed dozens of prepubescent boys. Some missing lips. Some ears. All missing hope.
“No!” Scott lunged upward, sweat drenching his body as he shook off the heavy weight of sleep. He looked around the dark thatched hut. A subtle shift of movement to the side. He snatched up his weapon and blade from either side and aimed them in that direction.
At the tip of the machete, a streak of moonlight glinted off the blade and reflected in the whites of Ojore’s eyes.
“Akiiki, hurry,” came the urgent whisper. “They’re coming.” The fog of sleep vanished. Scott swung his legs over the low-slung metal bed, his mind keen on the young man crouched by the door. They’d been foolish to think they wouldn’t be identified. It’d been his earnest desire to keep things low-key, stay off the radar so he could continue helping others. Wouldn’t God give him a break?
A sound spiraled through the night, stilling both of them. Rumble. Like thunder. Only…it wasn’t thunder. Not in the middle of the hot dry season of February.
He lunged for the door and ripped it open. Whistling spiraled through the air.
Scott spun around and dove on top of Ojore at the familiar sound. “Down!” Boom!
Screams raped the peaceful night.
CHAPTER 13
USCGC Fallon Sector San Juan
You know—”
“Please. Don’t talk.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I was the commanding officer on this vessel.”
Range Metcalfe swallowed hard and met the gaze of Lieutenant Arianna Connors. They’d gone to school together, and when he’d bailed on staying anywhere around Canyon and requested an assignment on Sector Galveston, she’d won command for Sector San Juan after Browne’s promotion.
“Sorry.” Range gripped the rail as he stared out over the churning waters. It wasn’t too long ago he stood aboard a similar cutter. With Canyon. “Just not…in the best frame of mind.” He shot her a glance and a halfhearted smile. “I’m tired of hearing platitudes and lectures on how and why I should be doing this. How I should just forget how he betrayed me.”
She pursed her lips and nodded, then leaned against the rail. “I was here, ya know, when your brother was aboard.”
Range shot her a look, tension knotting the muscles at the base of his neck.
Arianna was undeterred. “I could tell you two were at odds, but there was something…deep between the two of you.”
“Deep hatred.”
“That, too.” She laughed a nice laugh that seemed in sync with the waters the cutter sluiced through. “Look, rumors get around—“
He straightened. “This is why I said not to talk.”
“Well, I guess it’s a bad habit, being commanding officer, that I don’t take orders from those under me in rank.”
Low blow. He’d taken a demotion to get Galveston. It’d been the farthest he had been willing to relocate at the time. Someone else landed Alaska, and California had no openings.
“Listen.” She touched his arm, her brown hair snapping against her face. “Don’t let it eat you, Range. I remember the quiet kid back in the academy. Back then, I saw a young, handsome, promising Coastie.”
His heart pounded with the waves.
“Now I see a man willing to throw away everything, just so he can cling to bitterness.”
Bitterness? Yeah, maybe that was what coiled his stomach in knots.
Disregard.
She didn’t know what Canyon had done. How he’d ripped the heart right out of Range. “That’s pretty easy to say for someone who has sailed through life.”
Arianna shifted and leaned back against the rail, the sun twinkling in her eyes. “I guess it might be. But the only sa
iling I’ve done has been in Hawaii.” With one eye pinched closed, she looked up at him. “Not to belittle your pain, but…she’s not the only fish in the ocean, Range.”
With that, Arianna pushed off the rail and left.
What did that mean?
Did it even matter? He was out on a fool’s errand and would most likely end up dead. He’d even told Greene this was asinine because he wasn’t spec ops like Canyon. He was a Coastie, trained in water maneuvers and rescue. Not land rescues.
And yet, here he was, about to sacrifice it all for a brother who nuked him.
Somewhere over the Middle East
There was only so much a man could be expected to tolerate and not lose his good mind. And we are way past that. Back pressed against the interior of the small plane, Griffin sat with his feet all but pressed to his hind parts, the toes of his boots touching Aladdin’s ribs. Sardine in a can came to mind, but since he didn’t eat the nasty things…
Loud dialogue from the front made him look up at the cockpit. Kacie—if that was her real name—shouted across to the man she’d called Kaled, who was slumped to the side, his head against the window as he talked to her in a weak but tight voice. The pilot’s minutes were numbered.
Great. We’ll die up here, plummet to our deaths, and it will be all over.
Elbows propped on his knee, he threaded his fingers and poked his thumbs against his forehead, against the headache pounding worse than a bass beat. He wanted Kacie to trust him, to allow him to work out the plan. Her methods were intense and her mouth scathing. But she got the job done.
Though he’d rigged a new IV for the assassin, it didn’t seem to do no good. Aladdin had been unconscious for the last hour. The plane banked down and tugged him, as if pulling him into its hull. Vibrations wormed through his legs and back, numbing him. Was this a good idea? Escaping prison, snatching Aladdin back? Now headed to find another Nightshade asset?
Truth be told, he didn’t know.
They’d saved Aladdin’s life. He couldn’t argue that. Wouldn’t. For that reason alone, he’d been glad to be free. But really—did Lara Croft’s sister even need him?
No. In fact, nobody had needed him. In a long time. Not even Dante—which was a good thing. It was. Griffin had put together Nightshade by watching the news, monitoring military channels to pick the best of the best. The men who had the oomph to own what they did.
Now those men, his brothers, were scattered across this messed-up world. Who did this? Who went after Nightshade? Someone who had a powerful need to die, because he and the others, once back together, would ensure their attackers kissed the grave—fast.
Hands loose, he let them dangle over his legs and focused on the powerhouse sitting in the copilot’s seat. She had it going on—good mind, quick moves—but she had issues. Trust issues. And so did he—but his were because she wouldn’t trust him. Would she ever? They had four more guys to snag back.
Max…Where are you, man? He’d been the one to find the shortest path from A to B in any given scenario. Sure could use that genius now.
Shouts from the front drew his gaze. Kacie arched toward Kaled, tugging on his arm. Her gaze shot back to Griffin. “Do something!”
He pushed himself to his feet, hunched to avoid thumping his head against the ceiling as he did when he first entered, then shuffled toward the front. “CPR isn’t going to save him.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even tried.” Her frantic response stilled him.
She knows him. That was the only logical reason she would be acting crazy. “Because he is riddled with bullet holes. His breathing earlier—you could hear the fluid in his lungs. Up here, in the air, there’s nothing I can do.”
“We’re only twenty minutes out. Just revive him. We can keep him alive.”
“We can’t, Kacie.” Griffin set a hand on her arm. “I don’t have equipment to bag him or give him an IV unless I unplug Aladdin.”
“So your friend lives and mine dies?”
“Aladdin can breathe on his own. He’s stable.”
“Then do CPR. You can do that, right? I mean, you have some usefulness besides taking up space, right?”
Griffin glared. “To do CPR, I have to lay him flat—there’s no room.”
“Do it!”
“No room!”
She nudged the controls.
The plane pitched to the right.
A tight hold on the seats kept him from sliding into the thin wall. Really thin when you considered that was all between you and twenty-some thousand feet of air.
“Woman!”
Both hands on the controls, Kacie worked them. She turned it to the left.
Once again the craft banked, this time in the opposite direction.
“You trying to get us killed.”
That green-eyed glare raked him again. “Are we afraid of heights?”
“Heights?” He could not believe his ears. “Heights?” He stabbed a finger toward the windshield. “That’s not heights.”
“Save Kaled. Give him CPR.”
Griffin bit his tongue, looked away to stop from shouting what he’d said repeatedly already. He bent his knees—
The craft dipped.
“I can’t do nothing if you keep flying like a crazy woman.” He eased Kaled down, tilted the guy’s head back—knowing full well it was too late. There was nothing he could do. But this man meant something to her. So…he’d show her he wasn’t a heartless jerk. Griffin blew into the man’s mouth. The chest rose. Fell. Nothing. He repeated it, then pumped on the guy’s bloody chest. Nothing. The plane again canted to the right.
“I thought you knew how to fly.”
“Relax, it’s a stripped-down Piper. We have engines, so we’re fine. I know where we’re going—“
“And where is that? I mean, you can decimate that information, right?” Forearm resting on the back of her seat, he leaned closer. “Or don’t you trust me yet?”
Her gaze flicked to his. “Do you mean disseminate?”
Heat chugged through Griffin’s veins, but he tried not to let it show. Instead, he stared her down. Waited for the answer to his question.
“One leg at a time, remember?”
“I’m pretty sure our elephant is a quadriplegic by now. Location.”
After letting out a frustrated growl, Kacie jerked back to the front and dropped against the seat with a grunt. “Greece.”
“Greece,” Griffin muttered. Why on earth would they go there? He eased onto one of the two seats still anchored to the floor, wiping his hands on his tactical pants. Glad she didn’t ask about her friend, hoping she accepted that it wasn’t his lack of trying—that the man had been dead before Griffin even tried to save him.
Bending forward nearly had his shoulders touching the front seats. “Listen, Baby Girl. We’re on the same team. We have the same goal—get back the men from my team.” He shook his hands for emphasis. “Now, I don’t care what sort of business you’re trying to protect or if you’re trying to protect yourself, but you need to understand—these are my boys.” Was it his imagination, or were they descending? “I will do whatever it takes to get them back, and part of that includes protecting you when and if I have to. So let’s put this ornery nature behind us, all right? Let’s play pretend: You like me; I like you.”
She stared straight ahead, the blue dust of dawn caressing her jaw.
“Like one big happy family, you”—he touched her shoulder—“and me. Got it?”
“Families aren’t happy.”
Griffin pushed himself backward onto one of two seats directly behind the cockpit, frustration rippling through his muscles. He smoothed a hand over his head and resisted the urge to dump her out of the plane. They’d dunked the Kid for less frustration.
He lowered his head to his hands. Lord, You have got to help me. This woman is getting on my last nerve. I want my boys back. I want them alive.
When nothing but the roar of the engines met his prayer, Griffin lumbered ba
ck to Aladdin. In the darkness, he could tell that the assassin still hadn’t gained consciousness. As he eased himself along the hull to sit, a puttering sound flicked into the drone of the engines…which slowly died.
Silence voided the engine noise.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a fuel or line leak. Engines are down, but we still have electrical.”
“How are we—?”
“Secure him and then get strapped in,” she called over her shoulder.
Griffin went to work. He propped gear around Aladdin, used a bay tether to hold him in place but not hurt him more, then he dropped into the chair.
“Hold on!”
Unknown Location
Burning radiated through his chest and back as if someone had set it afire to grill steaks. And his arms, why wouldn’t they move? Marshall groaned and opened his eyes—much easier this time. White blasted through his field of vision, and though instinct nearly slammed his lids shut, he resisted. He had to get oriented.
The room had the look and smell of a hospital.
A hospital? Why did that feel wrong in every way and sense of the word?
He stretched his neck up to look around, but pain prickled his chest. He slumped back against the mattress, pulling back his chin to peer down at his chest. A white bandage covered his right pectoral.
Snap. Did he get shot again? When did that happen?
They’d been to Tunisia. In and out. The mission had problems—Legend was definitely an asset, even if the big thug did drop him in lakes and pools—but they’d come back.
Firethorn (Discarded Heroes) Page 13
