by Ty Patterson
RUN!
Warriors Series, Book 12
Ty Patterson
Contents
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Copyright © 2017 Ty Patterson
Books by Ty Patterson
Acknowledgments
Dedications
Untitled
I. Catch!
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
II. RUN!
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Epilogue
More Books
Bonus Chapter from The Last Gunfighter Of Space
Author’s Message
About the Author
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* * *
Copyright © 2017 Ty Patterson
RUN! is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All rights reserved
Published by Three Aces Publishing
Visit the author site: http://www.typatterson.com
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If the author gave you an advance reader or a beta reader copy, please do not share it with any other person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Publisher Notes
The publisher and author do not have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.
Original Cover Design: Nathan Wampler
Digital Formatting: Tugboat Design
Books by Ty Patterson
Warriors Series
The Warrior, Warriors series, Book 1
The Reluctant Warrior, Warriors series, Book 2
The Warrior Code, Warriors series, Book 3
The Warrior’s Debt, Warriors series, Book 4
Warriors series Boxset, Books 1-4
Flay, Warriors series, Book 5
Behind You, Warriors series, Book 6
Hunting You, Warriors series, Book 7
Zero, Warriors series, Book 8
Warriors series Boxset II, Books 5-8
Warriors series Boxset III, Books 1-8
Death Club, Warriors series, Book 9,
Trigger Break, Warriors series, Book 10
Scorched Earth, Warriors series, Book 11
RUN! Warriors series, Book 12
Warriors Series Shorts
Zulu Hour, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 1
The Shadow, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 2
The Man From Congo, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 3
The Texan, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 4
The Heavies, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 5
The Cab Driver, Warriors Series Shorts, Book 6
Gemini Series
Dividing Zero, Gemini Series, Book 1
Defending Cain, Gemini Series, Book 2
I Am Missing, Gemini Series, Book 3
Cade Stryker Series
The Last Gunfighter of Space, Book 1
The Thief Who Stole A Planet, Book 2
Zeb Carter Series
Zeb Carter, Book 1
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Acknowledgments
No book is a single person’s product. I am privileged that RUN! has benefited from the input of several great people.
Molly Birch, David T. Blake, Tracy Boulet, Patricia Burke, Mark Campbell, Tricia Cullerton, Claire Forgacs, Dave Davis, Sylvia Foster, Cary Lory Becker, Charlie Carrick, Pat Ellis, Dori Barrett, Simon Alphonso, Dave Davis, V. Elizabeth Perry, Ann Finn, Pete Bennett, Eric Blackburn, Margaret Harvey, David Hay, Jim Lambert, Suzanne Jackson Mickelson, Tricia Terry Pellman, Jimmy Smith, Theresa, and Brad Werths, who are my beta readers and who helped shape my book, my launch team for supporting me, Doreen Martens for her editing, and Donna Rich for her proofreading.
Dedications
To Michelle Rose Dunn, Debbie Bruns Gallant, Tom Gallant, and Cheri Gerhardt, for supporting me.
To all the men and women in uniform who make it possible for us to enjoy our freedom.
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.
—George Washington
I
Catch!
Chapter One
He came from Beirut. He came from war. His name was Waleed Omar Bilal, but not many remembered that name. Namir was what everyone called him—those who feared him, and there were many of them, and those who respected him as well.
Namir. Leopard.
They had started calling him that because of his ability to strike without warning and disappear into nothingness.
No one knew when he would come, or from where. All knew that when he left, there would be death and destruction in his wake.
The name had originated in a small village in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
He and his small band of men had ambushed and captured an American convoy of thirty. He had killed most of the men and, after torturing the survivors, had left them to die in the heat.
Namir. That’s when his men had started calling him by that name.
Namir had known war all his life. He was born during a Lebanese army bombing raid in the valley.
He had seen his parents murdered by Maronite Christian guerillas.
That horrific incident stayed with him. He grew up being reared by neighbors and militants.
* * *
The earliest memory he had was of his parents dying.
The strongest emotion he had was hate.
Hate for Christians.
Namir’s first kill happened when he was eight years old.
It wasn’t planned. His gun went off when he was playing with it and killed an old villager.
He fled the place and joined a wandering band of armed militants. War became not just his solace, but his profession.
The militants Namir had joined were a splinter group of Hezbollah, the group that had waged a political war, and sometimes terrorism, against Israel and America, and had persecuted people of other faiths.
Having grown up in a toxic environment, Namir quickly found he was better at military strategy than any other militant in his group. And that he liked killing and torture.
He also found he was uninterested in the ideological beliefs of the Hezbollah.
He killed the leader of his group when he was twenty-five. Took over the cell, which was fifty strong. Turned it into a Mafia-style gang and ruled over a small village in the Bekaa Valley.
Product and money. Only those two mattered. Religious killing, fanaticism, creating a caliphate—all that was of zero interest to him.
He still had a burning hatred for Christians. He killed them where he could.
However, he didn’t allow his emotions to get in the way of his business.
* * *
The valley was broad and flat, a hundred miles northeast of Beirut, high up against the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It had orchards, wineries, and factories for handmade carpets.
The village used to make wine at one time. Now it was better known for its hashish fields.
Namir’s gang controlled hundreds of acres of such fields, the villagers effectively serving the bandits. Hashish sales, however, were being rapidly overtaken by the manufacture of Captagon, an addictive drug that helped fighters stay awake for days and fight like zombies.
Namir had converted four houses in the village into laboratories, the hub of his multimillion-dollar income.
It was when he turned thirty-five that it all came crashing down on him.
Chapter Two
He was returning from Beirut, where he and his men had killed twenty Christian men and raped the women with them. None had done anything to Namir or his gang.
The militants were on their way out of the city after being involved in an action against the Lebanese army. It had started raining, and their open-topped Jeeps didn’t offer much protection.
They took cover in a church, where a group was praying. The occupants ordered them to leave.
Namir, high on Captagon, was in no mood to obey. His hatred for Christians surfaced.
He slapped the nearest man, at which several others from the church congregation rushed at him.
In no time, AKs slipped into the gang members’ hands, and a few minutes later, many innocents were dead.
‘We can have some fun,’ one gunman said with a grin, looking in the direction of the women cowering in a corner of the church.
‘Yes,’ Namir agreed.
Unknown to him, one man had gotten away from the massacre: Kenton Ashland, an American reporter.
Ashland had surreptitiously fled as the gunmen arrived. Hearing shots, he crept back to the doors of the church cautiously and hid beneath a vehicle parked in front of the wide-open doors. What he saw sickened him, and he started taking pictures and recording it on his cell.
He uploaded the images and video to the Internet, after which events moved quickly.
There were American forces in Beirut based close to the church. Some soldiers spotted the pictures, noted the time stamp and recognized the church.
They alerted their commander.
When Namir set out two hours later, a trap was ready, waiting.
* * *
The militants’ capture was widely covered by international media, and Namir was branded a war criminal.
He was tried, amidst global publicity, in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Netherlands. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
He was transported back to Lebanon and began his jail time in Beirut.
However, he didn’t serve his full term.
A month after his fortieth birthday, his gang members organized a full-scale attack on the prison, supported by others.
Namir escaped, along with several other prisoners.
He fled the country on a private plane after being provided with a fake passport and papers.
He went to Switzerland and got his face altered. Not by much, but enough to fool facial recognition programs.
He then flew to America using yet another passport.
Namir had a long memory. Coupled with that, he had an unforgiving nature.
It was time to pay Kenton Ashland a visit.
And bring war to anyone who stood in Namir’s way.
Chapter Three
Zeb Carter feinted and slammed a fist into the rushing man’s gut. The assailant wheezed but kept on coming.
Zeb had no room to maneuver. Behind him was the wall of the bar; in front of him were his attackers, three of them.
He went inside his attacker’s punching range, took a blow to his shoulder, stiffened three fingers and jabbed them in the man’s throat.
Sour breath washed over him as the goon choked, gasped, and gave up the fight.
The man’s two friends then took up the attack.
They had held back, assuming their friend would sufficiently damage Zeb, but now, they came forward, their faces intent, their fists bunching.
Zeb shoved Sour Breath in their way, spun on his left heel, his right leg swinging up straight and hard as a concrete beam, and kicked the second aggressor on his shoulder.
The man staggered, a high keening sound emerging from his throat, as he clutched his shoulder and dropped to the ground.
That left the third man.
He was lean, wiry, narrow-faced. His eyes were watchful. There was none of his friends’ rage on his face. He was cool, calculating.
‘You can walk away,’ Zeb told him, ‘Before you get hurt.’
Wiry didn’t reply. His eyes flicked over Zeb’s shoulder, as if signaling someone behind.
Zeb didn’t fall for that trick. He was watching the attacker’s hands, which were hanging by his side.
Not a puncher, then. A shooter? A knife-man?
A soft swish answered his question as Wiry drew a wicked-looking blade from a thigh holster, and he stabbed forward.
Zeb evaded the flashing blade, mentally appreciating the move.
He’s got some experience or training. That’s a clean stab, not the wild waving most attackers display.
Wiry faked a move, and then slashed suddenly, almost catching Zeb by s
urprise.
The knife whistled through the air and sliced air an inch away from his throat.
Zeb let it pass, guessing there would be a second attack.
He guessed right.
The blade reversed, and instead of sweeping back, cut towards his face.
