Trusting a Warrior

by Melanie Hansen

  Also available from Melanie Hansen

  and Carina Press

  Point of Contact

  Loving a Warrior

  Keeping a Warrior

  Also available from Melanie Hansen

  Everything Changes

  Signs of Life

  Unquiet

  Love and the Exorcism

  Pieces of Me

  See My Words

  Content Note

  Trusting a Warrior deals with topics some readers may find difficult, including the suicide of a secondary character, as well as descriptions of grief therapy and a suicide survivors’ support group.

  Trusting a Warrior

  Melanie Hansen

  To my sweet L—so loved, and so deeply missed.

  Author Note

  In the past five years, my life has been impacted twice by suicide. The first time, it was a close family member who’d struggled with a serious mental illness. As tragic as her death was and always will be, it wasn’t completely unforeseen. The second time, though, the death by suicide of my best friend’s husband—a man who was my friend, as well—came out of the blue, a seemingly impulsive act that left my friend shattered into a million pieces. Being there for her in the aftermath, and supporting her, challenged me emotionally in ways I’ll never forget.

  In Trusting a Warrior, I’ve chosen to focus on veteran suicide, which is rapidly becoming an epidemic. Men and women who’ve survived multiple combat tours are coming home only to take their own lives in record numbers. Post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries and the stigma that prevents veterans from seeking help are all contributing factors. Thankfully, it’s starting to be recognized that the mental injuries of war can be just as debilitating—and just as fatal—as the physical ones.

  If you’re the suicide survivor of a military member, I urge you to reach out to TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors), taps.org/suicideloss. There you will find a wealth of resources geared toward survivors of military suicide, including peer-to-peer support. Those in need of immediate post-suicide support should call 800-959-8277.

  If you are a veteran dealing with thoughts of suicide, the Veterans Crisis Hotline is there twenty-four hours a day. Their number is 800-273-8255, and press 1.

  For others who are struggling with the suicide of a loved one, samaritanshope.org/our-services/grief-support-services is an amazing resource. They offer free, nonjudgmental peer support and fellowship to those bereaved by suicide.

  You are not alone.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Operation K-9 Brothers by Sandra Owens

  About the Author

  Prologue

  George Monteverdi leapt into the void, his sixty-five-pound Belgian Malinois dangling from his body harness.

  A three-second slide down the rope, and then the helicopter dipped its nose and clattered away, its cargo delivered safely. For the space of several heartbeats, the strike team stayed frozen, weapons to their shoulders, scanning for threats.

  At last the team leader twirled his finger in a “let’s go” motion. Geo unclipped his dog, quickly stepped out of the harness, and stowed it in his ruck. Then he bent down and cracked the chem-lites hanging from the dog’s vest, activating them. That way he’d be visible to the SEALs at all times through their night-vision goggles.

  “How ’bout it, Bosch?” he murmured, giving the dog a quick scratch behind the ears. “Ready to go to work?”

  A low whine was his reply, the dog’s intelligent eyes gleaming up at him, tongue lolling. “I was born ready,” he seemed to say, and with one last pat, Geo stood.

  “K9’s off-leash,” he informed his teammates over the troop net. “Heading south.”

  Grunted acknowledgments echoed in his earpiece, and he exhaled long and slow, adrenaline humming through him, the weight of responsibility settling heavily on his shoulders.

  “Walk point with me,” he said to the new guy, a tall white dude named Kelly whose whole body vibrated with the nervous, first-op jitters Geo could remember all too well.

  Kelly gave a short, jerky nod.

  “I’ll be watching for Bosch’s tells,” Geo went on, gesturing toward the dog. “You watch for everything else, okay? We got this.”

  Geo’s calmness was contagious, and Kelly visibly settled down as his training kicked in. “Roger that.”

  With a reassuring nod, Geo gave the dog his search command, then set out after him, Kelly slightly behind and to the right, the rest of the team fanning out in their wake.

  Geo briefly scanned their surroundings to get his bearings before gluing his attention to Bosch, who trotted on ahead, his powerful nose alternating between sniffing the ground and the air. Ignoring the birds he startled into flight, Bosch’s sole focus was on detecting the scent of explosives—or humans.

  About a mile out, the team paused in the shelter of a palm grove to do one last coordination.

  “According to the tactical operations center, nothing’s changed since the op brief,” the team leader, a Black guy named Jaxon, said. “HVT’s stationary, like he has been for the last eight hours.”

  They all looked at each other. High-value targets never stayed in one place for long. Eight hours? Unheard of.

  “Smells like a trap,” Geo said, his tone blunt.

  Mutters of agreement went around the circle of guys, and Jaxon waited patiently for everyone to get the requisite bitching and moaning out of their systems before saying, “Oh, I have no doubt this is a trap, gentlemen.” He paused. “We just have to outsmart it.”

  Wolfish grins replaced the sour expressions, because if there was anything SEALs loved more than a challenge, it was a challenge with seemingly impossible odds.

  Geo glanced at Kelly. He had a feeling this was going to be a baptism by fire.

  Hope you’re ready, kid.

  Jaxon gave the signal to move out again, and as they walked, Geo pictured the compound. Walls, eight to ten feet high, with a metal gate for entry. Farmland all around, scattered trees. The drone feeds had shown no animals, no women and children. In fact, there was no movement at all. If this was a high-ranking insurgent commander, where were his bodyguards on the roof, or snipers in the trees?

  The whole thing stunk to high heaven.

  Yet, despite the dangers, everyone from the top down had decided the juice was worth the squeeze. Geo couldn’t help but shudder. He’d seen video of the commander’s handiwork—the kidnapping of local police, the torture, the murder, the stolen uniforms used to infiltrate coalition ranks. One attack had missed a U.S. general by mere minutes, although several other people had been killed.

  Yeah, they couldn’t pass up this chance to take the guy down, no way. Maybe he hadn’t moved all day because he’d gotten complacent, careless. Maybe he
was sick, or injured, and unable to be moved. Maybe he was dead.

  No matter what, the intel said he was here, so the SEALs were going on. After all, they had stealth on their side, they had training. Geo’s lips curved. They had a hair missile.

  A hundred yards out from the target, he called Bosch to him as the team took a knee to observe the compound through their binos.

  “Ten to one that shit’s wired to blow,” Jaxon muttered, his binoculars pointed at the gate, which appeared to be ajar. “Might as well have a goddamn welcome mat out front, too.”

  “‘Come on in, boys. Get blown up!’” someone cracked, and mirthless chuckles went around the group.

  Jaxon lowered his binos. “Send in the K9.”

  Geo uttered a few terse commands, Bosch’s lithe form a dark blur as he streaked toward the compound. To the SEALs, he was easily trackable by the chem-lites hanging from his vest, but to the naked eye, he’d be all but invisible.

  Unable to keep from tensing, Geo waited for shots to ring out, the bloodcurdling yelp of an animal in pain...

  All was silent.

  Bosch sniffed along the bottom of the rock-and-mud wall as he’d been trained, looking for buried explosives, then moved on to inspect the gate. Nothing.

  “Okay. Let’s move in.”

  At Jaxon’s order, the team fanned out and headed for the compound. At the base of the wall, their sniper unhooked the collapsible ladder from his ruck, set it up and scaled it to the top. He scanned the interior courtyard.

  “No movement,” he reported.

  “Over the ladder or through the gate, boss?”

  At Kelly’s question, Jaxon glanced at the dog, who’d returned to Geo’s side and stood in an alert stance, ears up, body forward. “Gate,” he said. “K9 cleared it.”

  A rush of warmth and pride settled in Geo’s chest at the vote of confidence. On a SEAL team, trust was never just given—it had to be earned, and at this moment seven men were putting their lives in his hands, in his training of his dog.

  And their work wasn’t done yet.

  Geo moved to the gate and inched it open far enough for everyone to squeeze through one by one. Once inside, the men spread out across the courtyard as their sniper covered them from his prone position atop the wall.

  With Bosch at his heels, Geo headed toward the main structure, a small one-story house. That door, too, was ajar. When Bosch didn’t alert on the threshold, Geo moved in behind him, using the barrel of his M-4 to push the door open wider. The smell that assaulted his nose made bile rush into his throat, and he gagged.

  “Got something,” he croaked into the troop net. “Something dead.”

  Instantly their platoon medic, Cade, and Jaxon were by his side. Geo let his rifle hang from his shoulder as he slid the powerful flashlight from its sheath on his belt and switched it on, illuminating the single room.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  The interior of the small structure was splattered in blood, huge rusty pools of it soaked into the earthen floor. A machete lay on a table underneath some frayed ropes that dangled from the ceiling.

  At his feet, the dog let out a distressed whine, something Geo had never heard him do. He reached down to give him a reassuring pat. “I feel it, too, bud.”

  The evil permeating the room seemed to brush along Geo’s skin, echoes of screams lingering in his ears.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Jaxon said grimly. Cade’s face was bone white, eyes stark as he backed from the doorway.

  “Boss?” Kelly called out. “Something wrong?”

  Jaxon put his hand up to stop him from striding over. “Spare yourself. We’ve seen what they wanted us to see.”

  Which was what? A warning? A diversion? Why was the cell phone planted to lure them here in the first place?

  Geo could see the wheels turning in Jaxon’s head as his sharp gaze darted around the compound. This dude was a leader Geo would follow into the fiery depths of hell itself—calm, decisive, his emotions locked down and firmly in check. In contrast, Cade was shaking, his upper lip gleaming with sweat in the moonlight.

  A frisson of alarm moved through Geo. This was not the time to be losing it. They had to get their asses out of this mess first.

  As if hearing his thoughts, Cade made a visible effort to pull himself together, and when he spoke, his voice was calm. “What’s the plan?”

  Jaxon turned to Geo. “Is there any other way out of here?”

  Instantly he knew what he was thinking. “Yeah. There’s another gate by the animal pen.”

  The small pen and nearby shed had just been searched—no bad guys or explosives—so if the cell phone wasn’t planted to lure them here and blow them up, then the ambush must be waiting for them outside.

  As they grouped up to move toward the secondary gate, Bosch suddenly tilted his head back, sniffed the air, and bristled. Although he hadn’t made a sound, Geo paused. He knew all his tells, and this one was saying, “I smell something.”

  Had the wind shifted? It had been coming from the north, and the dog hadn’t hit on anything before now. Geo held up his wind gauge. Sure enough, it was now coming from the east.

  He gestured to get Jaxon’s attention. “I think we’re looking at contact from the east,” he said quietly. “They’ve crept up on us while we’ve been busy in here.”

  “What’s over that way?”

  Pulling up his mental maps, Geo replied, “Palm groves. A shit-ton of irrigation ditches. If they’re coming from that direction, the sniper couldn’t have seen them from here.”

  The men shuffled their feet in anticipation, and one of them growled, “If they’re lookin’ for a fight, I say let’s give ’em a goddamn fight.”

  They had a choice. Jaxon could call in air support, get an A-10 to swoop down from the sky and strafe the area with its powerful cannons. The bad guys would never know what hit them, and the last thing they’d hear would be the roar of a plane. They’d look up, and boom, lights out.

  Geo glanced around the circle of grim faces. No. The men in the grove were ones who didn’t hesitate to burn young pilots alive in cages, or behead journalists on camera, or hang people up by their wrists and butcher them like pieces of meat. They deserved to see their death coming straight at them.

  “Let’s go.”

  In an overabundance of caution considering the rest of the compound was clear, Geo sent Bosch to inspect the secondary gate before anyone touched it, the hair on his arms prickling when the dog took a few whiffs, then sat.

  “Nobody come any closer,” he said urgently. “He’s on odor.”

  The SEALs froze.

  Pulling out his flashlight again, Geo crouched and aimed the powerful beam at the base of the gate. Sure enough, a few thin wires gleamed.

  “Fuckin’ toe-popper,” he pronounced. “Not enough to kill, but it would’ve taken off a leg or two.”

  Heartfelt curses all around as the realization hit.

  If someone had triggered the gate, in those first few minutes of confusion and chaos, the insurgents would’ve had the advantage. They would have swarmed in from the palm grove to pin the SEALs down in the compound like sitting ducks, turning them from aggressors into victims forced to fight for their lives. Booby-trapping the back gate instead of the front showed that the insurgents had a better understanding of SEAL tactics than they’d given them credit for.

  But the bad guys had made a fatal miscalculation. They hadn’t expected the dog.

  Jaxon didn’t have to give any orders. No one made any covert hand signals. They slipped out through the main gate and moved swiftly, silently, toward the palm grove. Next to Geo, Bosch trotted, head held high. His whole demeanor was different now—muscles coiled, body straining, as if he knew his next command wouldn’t be to search, but to attack...

  “Reveiren!”

  At
Geo’s hiss, the dog streaked off, low to the ground. He veered straight toward a thicket of heavy brush, and with no hesitation, plunged through it. A beat of silence before unearthly screams pierced the air.

  Not bothering with stealth anymore, the team ran into the thicket, ignoring the thorns that tore at their uniforms. Busting through to the other side, they were greeted by the sight of Bosch crushing a man’s right arm in his powerful jaws. Blood sprayed everywhere as the dog shook him violently, the dude’s AK-47 falling uselessly to the ground.

  Arrayed on either side of him, his fellow insurgents knelt frozen in shock and horror. One of them caught sight of the SEALs looming out of the darkness, and with a shout, he raised his weapon.

  Too little, too late. A ferocious burst of gunfire later, six enemy fighters lay dead.

  Growls and screams suddenly came from yet another thicket, and Geo darted over to see Bosch clamped onto the forearm of a man who didn’t look to even be out of his teens. He eased his finger from the trigger when he saw no sign of a weapon, and called the dog off.

  The boy was sobbing, his arm a mess of blood.

  Bellowing “Medic!” Geo jerked the barrel of his gun to motion the kid out of the brush, only then seeing a narrow black tube with some familiar-looking shells lying next to it.

  An RPG launcher.

  Disillusionment burned in Geo’s gut. This was no innocent kid, but the guy tasked with shooting down any American helos rushing to help the SEALs.

  Shaking his head, Geo pulled some flex-cuffs from his cargo pocket and bound the boy’s wrists together in front of him, then pulled him to his feet and shoved him over to Cade, who already had his med bag out.

  “He’s got a chunk taken out of his arm,” he said briefly, leaving Cade to it while he headed back to collect the weaponry—no way would they leave it behind for someone else to use. In the same vein, the other guys were busy gathering up the dead men’s AK-47s, and they piled everything up on a tattered old blanket one of them had been using as a bedroll.

  When Cade saw the RPG launcher, he froze in the act of irrigating the kid’s wound. “Whose was that?” he asked tightly. “His?”