TRAITOR: A Military Romance Novel (Military Men Book 3)
Page 11
There was a school, a medical clinic, the main city hospital, the marketplace, and a handful of other smaller instances. They could have been heavy coincidences, but it was everyone’s opinions that they were so well planned they couldn’t have been.
The largest of the incidents was at the hospital. There were many casualties and the whole building had exploded before it could be evacuated. We were lucky there weren’t more deaths, really.
I focused in on the hospital, again reading through the incident reports. Nearly everyone on base were called to attend the scene and aid the rescue effort. Those left behind were busy with other vital tasks.
Major Atoll had given me a list of every soldier that was on site that day. He needed it for rollcall to make sure there were no missing soldiers that might need assistance. It listed one hundred and seventy-three people.
Each attending person was required to submit a report on their movements during the incident. The reports were used to fully reconstruct what happened and where things happened.
I started reading through the individual reports. I had already done it twice but I could still have missed something. I was grasping at straws but it seemed that was all I could do now. Major Atoll had put a countdown on my investigation, and the clock never stopped ticking.
It took hours to get through the stack of paperwork. The horror of what they had endured that day reconstructed a scene of terror and evil beyond reproach. It sickened me to read of amputations, people being torn apart in front of others, and terribly ill patients that couldn’t get to safety on their own.
I tried to remain impartial, reading the reports with a critical eye instead of a human one. It was the only way to get through them all.
Shaun’s report was included in the stack, he detailed his movements up to the fifth floor and how he assisted patients in getting to the stairs so they could be helped down. He continually went back and forth, saving everyone he came upon.
There was nothing outstanding about his report. If anything, it only proved how brave he had acted that day. He, and every other soldier, should have been hailed as heroes.
With the last report being done, I counted them up to make sure none were missing. If there was a soldier that hadn’t submitted one, they might be a good place to start looking for another suspect.
There were one hundred and seventy-four reports.
I checked them again.
I checked the list of soldiers again.
There was definitely one more report than there should have been. I started going through the list, taking the corresponding soldier’s report from the stack.
I was left with just one: Private Luke Salinger.
His report was brief, with just a few vague sentences about searching the levels to help patients. It was detailed enough to not raise any suspicions, but really lacked substance when analyzed.
Hope was starting to spark in my gut.
I went through the same process with all of the other incidents. Private Luke Salinger was absent from every rollcall list and yet he still submitted a report claiming to be there.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence.
I started going through the interviews again, searching for references to Private Salinger. I had found a loose thread and now I needed to unravel it.
My eyelids grew heavy as the late night turned into early morning. I put my head down on the desk for just a moment so I could take a break…
***
I woke up a few hours later, embarrassed to find paperwork stuck to my face. I rubbed at my cheeks, hoping there wasn’t any ink imprinted there.
A break was needed. My stomach was rumbling for food and I desperately needed to shower. All my reports were neatly stacked and put away before I crept out of the meeting room.
A shower and then some breakfast. Neither made the nausea in my stomach any better. When I was finished, I couldn’t bear going back to the reports straight away. Instead, I searched through the base until I found Corporal William Gate. He was the direct superior of Luke Salinger. If anyone knew him, it would be Gate.
“Corporal, would you have a minute?” I asked, knowing full well he couldn’t refuse a meeting with me. Not without a lot of trouble being hurled his way.
He nodded agreement and we stepped into a quiet corridor. It would have been nice to be somewhere more discreet but we were on a time schedule – both of us.
“I understand Private Luke Salinger is in your troop,” I started. Gate nodded. “What is your opinion of him?”
Corporal Gate was the typical army type, brown hair shaven short, muscles that bulked through his uniform, and an expression of perpetual lethalness. “He’s a good soldier.”
“Have you ever noticed anything a bit odd about him? Maybe something he said without thinking?”
“I can’t say I have.”
He wasn’t making it easy for me. Extracting teeth would have been easier. “Do you know if he was at the scene of the hospital incident?”
He thought for a few moments and I waited eagerly to see if my theory had any credibility at all.
“He wasn’t there,” Corporal Gate finally said. “He said he wasn’t feeling well that day so he was excused for rest time.”
“Are you certain?”
“I don’t say things I’m not certain about, ma’am.” He glared at me as if I had just insulted him. “If that’s everything, I need to get going. I’m late to report.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.”
Mr. Chatty, he wasn’t.
Helpful, maybe.
As I watched Corporal Gate walk down the corridor, another man caught my eye. Shaun was just passing by. He held my gaze for only a moment before scowling and continuing on. I ached to go to him and explain everything. I wanted to tell him that I believed what he said, that I believed in him.
But I couldn’t. He wouldn’t listen to me and his surveillance team would report the incident back to Major Atoll. The best thing I could do now was find the real traitor and then beg forgiveness from Shaun later on. Surely he would have to understand why I had lied to him.
I pushed the image of his disappointment stricken face out of my mind. I needed to focus and I couldn’t do that if I kept replaying the same thing over and over again.
There had to be someone who would know more about Private Salinger than his superior. I needed someone willing to talk.
One of the people I had interviewed was more open than the others. She had been chatty and one of the few who didn’t finger Shaun for the role of traitor. Even better, she was in the same troop as Private Salinger.
I needed to speak with Private Sasha Kincaid.
Chapter 15:
Private Simon
҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉
I was fucking angry.
My blood was up to boiling point and I felt like I needed to hit everything around me. I needed to cause destruction, vent my anger, do something until all the rage was worked out of me.
Normally sex would be able to help me out there but that wasn’t going to happen. I could barely even look at Jenny.
Even when I’d seen her in the corridor, I could barely control myself. I wanted to know why she had betrayed me like that. How she could have done what we did, all the while knowing my head was still in the noose as the traitor.
She should have told me.
It was the right thing to do.
Sure, her position said she couldn’t, but I wasn’t just anyone. We had shared the most intimate of moments together and then I find out she was prosecuting me? I didn’t deserve that.
Perhaps I was a nice distraction, one last fuck before we both get sent home. Except when we arrived in the U.S. it would be me going behind bars and she would be free. She would be the one making sure I was court-martialed.
I don’t think I could ever forgive her for that. I admired honesty and respect more than anything else and she had betrayed me on both accounts. It was unacceptable and I hated her for it.
To be betrayed like that only switched my heart off. I wouldn’t put myself out there again, I wouldn’t risk being hurt another time. This was it, Jenny was it, and now there was nothing.
I stormed through the corridors like a bull in a china shop. My surveillance squad could witness whatever they liked. They could run back to Jenny and Atoll and have a field day trying to analyze my movements. Let them think whatever the fuck they wanted to think.
My destination was the mess hall. I was hungry and I needed to do something, something that would make me feel better.
The room was packed with soldiers getting breakfast. The din of nervous energy was everywhere. Voices conversed with one another, some laughing, others speaking in hushed tones. They were all rowdy and ready to get out in the field for the day.
I filled my tray and took the only free table in the middle of the room. A small notepad was in my pocket, along with a pencil. I took them both out and got to work. I ate with one hand and scrawled with the other.
It was my resignation letter.
I was applying to be discharged from the military. I’d had enough. Even before the whole shit storm with the traitor had reared its ugly head, I was ready to go. The longer I served, the more jaded I became.
When I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was serve my country. My lousy, two-bit father told me to ‘do something with my life’ before he forced me out of the house at sixteen. I’d stayed with various friends for two years and enlisted on my eighteenth birthday.
I once wore my uniform with pride, ready to right all the wrongs with the world. What I had discovered recently was that my rose-colored glasses were starting to fade. I’d seen too much death and destruction for it to serve a purpose anymore. There were no winners in war and I was tired of perpetuating the suffering of so many people.
I wanted to go home and serve my country in different ways. I wanted to help people without the need for bloodshed. Leave that to those who still wore their uniforms like a soldier should.
With all my anger and rage, I couldn’t properly articulate any of this in my request for discharge. I’d never been good at writing and my words all got muddled up. My request ended up sounding like a rant but I couldn’t put it any other way.
Jenny would probably have been able to make it beautiful. She was the intelligent type, knowing what to say and when to say it. In everything other than matters relating to me, anyway.
Conversations flowed around me in the noisy mess hall. My breakfast was all gone so I had no further reason to stay there.
I signed my resignation letter.
And stopped.
One voice stood out among all the others. I filtered the others out until I could focus on just the one.
My captor.
The real traitor.
I’d memorized his voice so I could find him. It was the only thing getting me through since I’d spent all those hours on the floor of the supply closet. It was where I had fueled my rage to keep me from going crazy.
I stood up and looked around, the voice swimming around me like a fly I couldn’t catch. I needed to find its owner, I couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done.
People stopped to look at me as I staggered around the mess hall. I needed to match the voice with a mouth that was moving at the same time. I hadn’t seen his face in the supply closet, all I had was the voice to identify the fucker.
“You alright, Simon?” one of the soldiers in my troop asked. He was looking at me strangely. I probably looked deranged.
Maybe I was.
For a moment, I doubted whether I had heard the voice at all. I wasn’t in the sanest of mental places, maybe my brain was playing tricks on me. Perhaps I was hearing what I wanted to hear instead of reality.
I stood quietly and listened from the middle of the room. A dozen men were all looking at me strangely now. They were all waiting for me to lose my shit, the traitor to get his just desserts. None of them were on my side. They would all be glad to see the back of me, the more public the execution, the better.
The voice drifted to me again.
It was real.
And I saw its owner.
Private Luke Salinger.
I crossed the room in two strides and something snapped within me. The moment I reached the bastard, I lunged for his shirt. I dragged him from his seat so we were both standing.
“What the fuck are you doing?” If there was ever a doubt that I had the right man, it flew out the window. It was him, I was a thousand percent sure now.
My arm recoiled and my hand balled into a fist. I aimed directly at his jaw and hit him with every piece of anger I had.
His head was forced to the side with the blow. If I had my way, I was going to keep punching him until his head was just a bloody stump. He deserved every piece of it for what he’d done to me.
He deserved to die for what he’d done to hundreds of innocent people.
“I’m going to kill you,” I growled at him.
Salinger shot out at me, no longer holding anything back. I blocked his fist with my arm, but wasn’t fast enough to stop the blow to my stomach. I doubled over as a wave of nausea rushed over me.
I stood up again, barely noticing the crowd forming around us. Men were voicing their opinions, some wanting us to stop and others wanted us to really get stuck into each other.
None of them mattered, all I could focus on was Salinger. He had caused my life to be a living nightmare these past months and he deserved everything he was getting. I had no mercy for him, not when he hadn’t shown any to those poor people caught in the crosshairs.
We went to throw a punch at the same time, Salinger was a split second faster than me. My jaw burst into white hot pain as the blow seared through me. It only made me angrier.
“Shaun, stop!” The female voice made me falter for just a moment. I scanned the crowd in the space of a split second and saw the horrified look on Jenny’s face.
I didn’t want her to see me like this. This was the animal side of me, the side that could make me go into a room full of people and open fire on the enemy. I didn’t see humans then and I wasn’t seeing a human now. Jenny couldn’t see me like that.
I wasn’t that person to her.
I didn’t want to be that person any longer.
My arm stopped and I returned it back to my side. I pushed Salinger away and stood frozen solid in the middle of the mess hall. It was suddenly so quiet all I could hear was the beating of my own heart and the ragged breaths of those around me.
Salinger’s bloodied lips twisted up into a grin. It was nothing short of evil. I could instantly imagine him conspiring with the Taliban to take us down. He would enjoy being a double agent, he would relish in the idea of getting away with it.
I pointed a shaky finger at him. Everyone in the mess hall would be witness to his downfall. “This man—”
My words were cut off as an ear-shattering loud noise rocketed through the building. Every single person there crouched down and covered their heads with their arms. We knew what an explosion sounded like and we’d just heard a big one.
Chips of plaster started crumbling from the ceiling as all the furniture shook from the impact. The lights flickered before switching off completely. The backup generator should have kicked in after a few seconds but it didn’t.
Something was wrong.
We were under attack.
In the flashes of light from the emergency exit signs, I could just make out one figure moving toward me. Salinger kneeled down so his mouth was next to my ear. “I’m going to kill you all,” he whispered.
I reached out to grab him but he was too fast. He skipped out of my grasp and ran for the door. I jumped to my feet, ignoring everything else as the room that started to crumbl
e around me.
There was no clear pathway to walk. If there weren’t people in my way, it was debris from the explosion. I could only imagine what else was going on throughout the base. There had to be pure chaos beyond the walls.
By the time I’d made it to the door, Salinger was nowhere to be seen. Soldiers in the mess hall started to gather themselves together and start to leave. We were trained to attack anyone that attacked us, they were running into the fight.