Lee (In the Company of Snipers Book 12)

by Irish Winters

  “That’s why you’re here, too, isn’t it? Alex hasn’t given up on you. You’re a good man.”

  A rumble vibrated under her fingers. “He’s a stubborn son-of-a-bitch. This was supposed to be my last mission with The TEAM. I didn’t want it at first. I argued. I was done, like Seth, tired of carrying a weapon twenty-four-seven. Tired of fighting. Then I saw you running...”

  “And here you are.” She ducked her head under his chin and sighed, her ear against Lee’s heart, his hand in her hair, combing tangles through his fingers. The scent of him and the tenderness of his touch eased the melancholy of Seth’s predicament. “Eric sounds like a doctor, not a soldier.”

  “Marine Corps medic,” Lee explained. “That’s why Alex assigned them to work together. Seth might drive Eric crazy, but he’s the only one making progress with the kid, and they both know it.”

  “Kid? You all look like you’re the same age. Alex doesn’t look much older.”

  “A year in combat can make a man old awfully fast. He’s got ten years on me.”

  “He’s a good man,” she said softly. “All of you are.”

  Lee pressed a kiss into the top of her head. “I like to think so. Come on. Breakfast is ready. Let’s eat.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Not exactly. That’s when Harley flew over the handlebars and landed face-first in pig slop,” Alex said as he finished his last forkful of pancakes. “I’ve never seen a man slip and slide through so much crap to get away from a mad mama javelina.”

  Lee laughed until he had tears in his eyes, holding his stomach at the outlandish tale of Mark Houston and Harley Mortimer on their one and only wild pig hunt in northern California.

  “What’d he do next?” Seth wiped his eyes, still busting a gut at the tall tale.

  “He turned around and popped that pig right between the eyes,” Alex said. “Best smoked brisket I’ve ever tasted.”

  Seth all but rolled on the floor, and Lee had to give it to Alex. He had a knack for leadership. One minute he was all hard-assed and belligerent, but the next, in the kitchen cooking breakfast like it was no big deal to wait on his men and women.

  Lee had been to his boss’s home near the Shenandoah Valley back in Virginia, plenty of times. Alex and his wife, Kelsey, held regular dinners, picnics, and get-togethers, transforming The TEAM into a tight-knit family like a good military leader would have done. He’d heard stories about how Alex used to be a regular hermit, mad at the world and everyone in it. Lee had never witnessed that side of the man. Yes, Alex could get damned mad, but he usually had a good reason when he popped a gasket.

  But he was sneaky. Lee knew what his boss was doing even in the middle of breakfast that was really more like a late lunch. He was diagnosing the readiness and fitness of his team. He was studying each individual team member. And he was planning for combat that might never come. The man never rested. He should’ve been a damned general. No doubt about it.

  That he’d effectively diffused his team’s over-the-top energy with something as simple as delaying opening the reliquary until after breakfast proved it. Alex was in control.

  The afternoon was a relaxing change from the hectic hotel bombing and bank robbery of the morning. Damn it had been a busy day. Tess sat with him on the small couch, her legs curled beneath her and a glass of iced tea in her hand. The reliquary was safely hidden beneath a floor panel in a fireproof, explosion-resistant safe where Tess had placed it herself. Eric and Seth weren’t expected to resume the hunt for Turik until the next morning. For this one afternoon, they were just a group of guys and one pretty gal enjoying a meal and having a good time together. It seemed surreal after the last action-packed days.

  “I’ve got movement onscreen,” Hunter said from his bank of monitors. He’d joined the team for a plate of breakfast, but opted to eat at his post.

  Alex set his plate on the kitchen counter. “They’re too damned close.”

  Hunter zoomed in on the image. “You’re looking at around fifty soldiers in the vicinity of the crypt. They started closing in an hour ago. They’re moving faster now.”

  Lee and Tess joined the standing room only crowd behind him. “No,” she hissed quietly. “This can’t be happening.”

  But it was happening and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Shadowy figures crept toward the entrance of the crypt. Foot by foot, they moved slowly but surely until, one by one, they began to disappear. Tess groaned as the dastardly deed unfolded. The Taliban had found the crypt. They were doing the unthinkable. Mummy after mummy was dragged to the entrance and tossed down the steep embankment. Lee clutched her shoulder until she pulled away from him and let loose a shrill, “No!”

  A particularly brave soldier dragged one along the trail and set it on fire. Smoldering black smoke curled over the scene.

  “Ahh!’ she cried, voicing everyone’s frustration. She pulled her hair and paced. There was nothing to be done but watch yet another diabolical deed by an ignorant breed of men. Finally, she turned on her heel and walked out the door. Lee let her go.

  “Can’t we get a chopper to take us up there?” Seth asked. “We need to stop this. You know anybody?”

  “It’ll take time. We’re too far away,” Alex answered. “We’re too late.”

  The vandalism didn’t take long. Within the hour, the activity at the crypt slowed. One by one, the brave bullies began their downward trek. Only the smoking remains were left behind. There were no words for the despicable crime against Afghan culture Lee had just witnessed. Even Alex seemed deflated by this senseless act.

  “I say we go anyway,” Seth insisted. “We’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit here.”

  “We might be able to save a couple mummies,” Eric said. “Boss?”

  “We need to move this rig.” Alex’s answer seemed irrelevant, but it made sense. There was nothing left to be done at the crypt but to pick up the pieces, and even that would be difficult considering the extreme terrain.

  Lee went looking for Tess. Closing the door quietly behind him, he peered toward the back of the rig and then toward the cab. She was nowhere in sight. A frisson of unease flickered up the back of his neck. He stepped off the stairs. “Tess? Where are you?”

  Nothing. Unease turned to panic. She couldn’t be gone, could she? He rounded the rig, looking everywhere. Nothing but dust and disappointment. “Damn. Where are you, honey?” he called.

  “Up here.” Her voice drifted from above. There she was, her legs dangling over the edge of the trailer. He latched onto the ladder at the back of the rig and joined her. Wordlessly, she leaned into him, her fingers on his chest. He covered her tiny hand with his, thankful for the feminine pulse under his thumb. Coconut and lime drifted into his nose, instantly replacing his distress with soothing calm.

  They sat facing west, and despite what he’d just witnessed, Lee was as content as he could ever remember being. He’d grown up in a large family in Astoria, Oregon. Two sisters. Three brothers. The best mother and father a kid could ask for. With the Pacific Ocean two steps out his front door and the mighty Columbia River out the back, he’d had the perfect childhood and growing up years. Captained his baseball team. Took state. Dated a few girls. Went to college.

  Then along came the war, and he’d joined the Marines. Deployed to Afghanistan. Ran smack into Nizari. Lee honestly didn’t fit in anywhere after that ordeal. No place felt safe, not even inside that perfect home or with that perfect family he’d grown up with. His mom and dad hadn’t understood how he could leave them again, but he’d had to. He didn’t belong in Astoria any more. He’d been offered a job on the East Coast, and he didn’t turn it down.

  He pressed a kiss into Tess’s dark tangles. The TEAM was the only place where Lee did fit until… the day came he didn’t. He couldn’t explain what happened, but even among a group of ex-military, most of them Marines who’d been through similar trauma, something was still missing. Not until he saw Tess running that first time did he fe
el whole again. Go figure.

  The hot sun had settled low in the sky. Shadows of boulders and rocks darkened the arid landscape, but he had Tess. The warmth of her body against his sparked more than just a physical calm. He couldn’t explain that either, he just accepted it. Somehow, she was familiar to his body and mind, maybe his soul. She was exactly what he needed.

  The only outward sign that there was something going on in her mind was the way her right index finger kept rubbing over the top of her thumbnail. He’d expected her to be more emotional after watching her dreams ransacked and destroyed. She wasn’t. Lee waited.

  At last, she pointed to the snow-capped mountains in the distance. “I think about Roxana sometimes, and I wonder if you’re right. Did Alexander really love her like the legend tells us, or was he just another cold-hearted man who had a world to conquer? Was she just another conquest? A trophy wife to exploit while he ruled the world?”

  Lee let her talk.

  “She lived in the mountains, Lee, not the civilized cities of Persia, Greece, or Sparta. Her ways were so different from his. When he returned to Macedonia, she left everything behind. Her family. Her sisters. The mountains she loved. The winter snows of the Hindu Kush. Her people. Everything, Lee. Roxana gave up all she was for... him.”

  The desolation in Tess’s voice crept into Lee’s heart. This was a side he hadn’t seen of the woman he loved.

  “She had to be so lonely,” Tess whispered, her eyes cast up toward the rugged peaks of stone off to the northeast.

  Lee raised her hand to his cheek, still content to let her speak. The senseless destruction of the mummies meant more to her than just the loss of priceless artifacts. Her own brand of loneliness eked out of her.

  “This is the land that killed Alexander’s dream of conquering the world,” she said quietly. “No one knows exactly how he died. Some say he was poisoned. Some say his own men killed him. Others believe his ghost still walks the mountain tops.”

  Lee followed the direction of her finger. The high mountain snows reflected pink and gold in the waning sun.

  “I think he died of a broken heart. Not even Roxana’s love was enough for him. He had the greatest treasure a man could find, but he wanted the world, and in wanting the world, he wanted less than what he already had. He wanted chaff when he already possessed the rarest gold in his hand. He had the love of a good woman, Lee. He had a son on the way. He had everything, but it wasn’t enough.”

  Lee kissed her knuckles one by one. He had a feeling Tess wasn’t talking about Alexander so much anymore, that someone in her past had left her behind just as heartbroken and sad as Roxana. That she just might be as lonely as Lee was.

  “The Taliban think they can destroy everything they disagree with. They leave orphans like Mina and Jamaal behind wherever they go.”

  “You really care about those little ones, don’t you?” he asked, finally understanding the depth of her love for this country. It was always the children who suffered the most. They deserved a brighter future than the one staring down the road at them.

  “It’s time someone stood up to all the liars in the world.” Her voice turned firm.

  “You’re just one person, Tess. You’re not an army.”

  She nodded. “But I am one person. I might not be able to prove those fingers matched the mummified remains of Roxana anymore, but I can prove the DNA in that reliquary matches the living members of that tribe. I can prove there’s still hope for Afghanistan.”

  He felt the import of her words followed immediately by the futility. One person could also be captured and worse. He opted for sanity. “There’s always hope,” he muttered, his fingers massaging the tense muscles at the base of her skull. “How did you know the mummy and the fingers were really Roxana’s? You’ve got to have more proof than an old legend.”

  “I do,” she whispered. “Actually, your boss does.”

  “Alex?”

  “Come. I’ll show you.” She climbed down from the roof of the trailer, and together they rejoined the conversation inside. Tess headed straight to Hunter, still seated at the monitors. “May I have my cell phone back?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’ve already removed the batteries of all those phones to disable GPS tracking. It’s pretty much worthless. Besides, it was old tech.” He opened his drawer and handed her a new cell phone. “I set you up with the latest Smartphone, unlimited coverage, and—”

  “It’s okay. It wasn’t really a cell phone. May I please have it back? I really need it.”

  “It’s not?” He looked as surprised as Lee felt. Reaching into the top drawer at his desk, Hunter retrieved her old phone. “Sure. Here it is.”

  “Thank you,” she said when she had it in her hands again. “I wasn’t worried when you took it from me, Hunter. You’re a good man. I knew you’d keep it safe.”

  Damned if tough old Hunter Christian didn’t blush like a little kid.

  Now everyone was watching. Tess pressed the side of her phone, which released a spring-loaded compartment not unlike those inside a battery-operated watch. She stared up at Lee as three tissue-covered discs fell into her palm. She handed one to Lee, one to Alex, and the last to Hunter. Those violet-blues were full of mischief. “Unwrap your Christmas presents, boys.”

  Lee tipped the object in his hand out of the tissue to reveal a gold coin.

  “Whoa,” Hunter muttered at an identical coin in his hand. “I thought your phone felt a little heavy after I lifted the batteries.”

  Lee flipped the coin over in his fingers, definitely the right weight for a solid gold piece. The coin was barely the size of a copper penny. One side showed the relief of an elephant with an ornate letter ‘A’ printed beneath it. The opposite side showed a man’s profile, his bearing proud and strong. No letters marked that side. An ornate coiled rope circled the edges.

  “Wow,” Seth said. “It that real gold?”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Alex whispered reverently. He turned on Tess. “Is this real?”

  She beamed like a little girl and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Stewart. These are the rarest coins in the world. Only one has ever been located before. It was Alexander the Great’s. He had his own coinage struck with his image.”

  “He was a narcissistic bastard,” Alex breathed. “Where did you get them?”

  “There’s more,” she answered without answering the question, a typical Tess tactic. “It’s time to open the reliquary.”

  Lee handed his gold coin to Seth and went to the floor panel beside the ammo cabinet. He lifted the thin carpet aside, entered the security code into the floor vault, and removed Tess’s tote. Handing it to her, he let Tess do the honor of unveiling her priceless treasure. Very gently, she pulled a long object from the bag and unwrapped the burlap covering it.

  “Damn,” Eric muttered when the object came into view.

  “It’s cool, isn’t it?” Seth exclaimed proudly.

  Lee couldn’t believe his eyes. The reliquary was made entirely of gold, burnished with age. A cylinder of around eighteen inches in length, its width measured a man’s forearm. Elegantly carved with the very obvious design of a Grecian warrior astride a horse at the front, it boasted two symbols on the side, one at each end. Lee recognized one as the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of eternity. The other looked like a flower of some kind. Maybe a rose.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off Tess standing there with the century-old artifact in her hands. There wasn’t one iota of pride on her face. No greed. No Arrogance. Only reverence, as if she held something more sacred than riches. His heart swelled as he finally saw the real Tess Culver and he couldn’t have been prouder. She was no cat burglar. She was the light to his darkness and the light to Afghanistan’s darkness, too. Anyone who looked at her could see the love in those violet-blue eyes. The tenderness.

  She pointed to the ankh. “As I’m sure you guys already know, this is the symbol for eternity. And this”—she indicated the etched flower—“is the symbol for Roxana, also kno
wn as the Rose of The Hindu Kush.” She moved her fingers over the embossed warrior astride his horse, caressing the image. “This represents Alexander the Great. His son, Alexander IV, had this reliquary made to honor Roxana, to unite her to his father for time and all eternity. Mr. Stewart, would you care to do the honor of revealing Queen Roxana’s fingers?”

  Alex was speechless, and Lee didn’t blame him. Whatever spirit resided inside that reliquary, it filled the inside of the trailer like a living presence. Tess looked to Lee, their eyes meeting with a shiver. He didn’t need to see the fingers to know they truly belonged to Roxana. An unseen presence from another dimension had just deigned to pay them a visit. He could almost feel the spirit of the forgotten queen in the air around them. No wonder the legend had survived for more than two centuries. No wonder the simple people up high in the rugged Hindu Kush revered Alexander and his beloved Roxana.

  “Go on. Open it,” Tess whispered to Alex. “You bear his name. You should be the one to reveal his beloved. You must see what I’ve seen so that you too will believe.”

  Alex accepted the reliquary into his arms, cradling it like a baby. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.”

  “It’s hollow and the walls of it are quite thin,” Tess explained. “See the ridge along the side? Slide your fingernail along the edge. It will open.”

  He did as she directed. An entire quarter-side of the cylinder flipped outward. “Ahh,” he murmured as he took a seat. “I can’t believe I’m holding this.”

  “Now you know,” Tess said quietly, her hand on his shoulder.

  “Son-of-a-bitch. I can’t believe I’m holding this,” he repeated, his eyes riveted to the treasure in his palm. “It’s his, umm, her f-finger.”

  The softest glow lit Tess’s violet-blues as she murmured, “Yes, it’s Roxana’s and Alexander’s fingers.”

  It wasn’t often Alex stuttered. Lee went to his side, peering into the open compartment. Nestled within a scrap of coarse, dark fabric were two skeletal fingers. That would’ve been awesome enough, but more mindboggling was the item glittering from one of those fingers. A gold signet ring, one that kings for centuries had used to declare their power and authority. Their seal. Its stamp depicted a man with a spear atop a rearing stallion.