by Julie Rowe
Stone.
Fear sank an ice pick into his gut. He whipped around to look at the vehicle behind his and saw her running with the men from her vehicle, returning to the base.
Relief burned away the cold, allowing him to breathe again.
Good, the survivors needed to evacuate in case of a follow-up attack.
Shouts from the other side of the flames grabbed his attention, but no one appeared. He turned to check Franz and discovered Ali running toward him, her rifle in her hands. “Max?” she yelled.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought you were escorting the others to safety.”
“They’re in good hands.” She glanced at Franz and the blood on Max’s uniform. “You’re the one who needs backup.”
He couldn’t argue the point. That didn’t mean he liked it.
“Are you okay?” He put his hands on her shoulders, sliding them down and over her body to check for injuries.
“I’m good,” she said, wiggling away from him to inspect him instead. “Are you? Is this your blood?”
“No, it’s Franz’s blood. Head wounds often bleed profusely.”
“Help is on its way. Did you see what happened?”
“No.”
She stared at the remains of the lead vehicle with narrowed eyes. “If we were anywhere else, I’d say that was the result of an IED.”
“It could have been,” Max said. “The Boston bombing was a homemade device.” He looked around. “Any injuries in your vehicle?”
“Nothing besides a few bumps and bruises.”
Another explosion had both of them ducking and stepping back from the flames and smoke.
A bullet struck the mess of debris where he’d been standing a moment ago. A second later, Stone took him by the arm and yanked him behind the wreck of his vehicle.
Stone snapped her rifle into position and fired back, but the bullets kept coming. “Get to cover,” she yelled at him.
Not without her. “You too!”
“Max,” she barked. “What did I say about arguing? Get the fuck out of here, before I kick your ass.”
She was right. He could be an idiot later.
Max ducked and found himself using the smoking wreckage to hide from more bullets coming in short bursts all around him. He managed to get back to Franz and move the unconscious man into a sheltered doorway, but he still couldn’t determine where the shooter was. There was probably more than one.
Goddamn it, he didn’t have time to be assassinated. He had too much to do.
Movement from beyond the remains of the lead vehicle caught his attention, and a man—no, a boy, barely a teenager—walked slowly and calmly through the rubble and ruined vehicles. A bulky package was strapped to his chest and his gaze searched for someone or something.
The boy saw Alicia, but he didn’t do anything threatening. In fact, he backed away from her, hugged the wall of the building behind him and kept moving.
That retreat from her, from blowing himself up, was probably the only thing that stopped Alicia from shooting him.
Who the hell would use a child as a suicide bomber?
Extremists, fanatics, madmen. It didn’t matter what anyone called them, they were dead men if Max got his hands on them.
He’d taken a vow to preserve life, but the kind of animals who could plan and execute this terrible act of horror, with a child as a weapon, could not be allowed to continue breathing.
That wasn’t going to improve his immediate situation. The boy was still walking forward and appeared to be looking for something. A target? In a moment, Max and Franz were going to be visible.
He sucked in a deep breath and prepared to leave the relative safety of the doorway. Perhaps he could talk the boy into surrendering. Franz and Alicia would have no doubt argued with him about that plan, but the German was still out cold and Alicia too far away.
He stood and walked toward the teen.
The young man saw him and took a second to stare at Max. An expression of recognition and fear flashed across the boy’s face, and Max knew he was in trouble.
Someone had sent a child to kill him.
If he walked away, would the kid follow? How close did the bomber want to get before detonating the explosives? If there were no eyes on the boy, could he be convinced to abandon his mission?
Max sidestepped away from the doorway, then walked backward. “You don’t have to do this,” he called to the boy. “We can help you, keep you safe.”
The boy followed, picking up his pace to close the distance between them. “They said they will kill my sister and brother if I don’t,” the boy said, his voice bleak and hopeless.
Max was about to turn and run when the young man jerked once, and pitched forward to land on his hands.
Someone had shot the would-be bomber, wounded him.
Shots pinged off the stone wall of the building behind Max and peppered the area around the child bomber. At least one of them hit the boy and he crumpled. Max ducked and ran back to the relative safety of the doorway where he’d left Franz.
Return fire halted the rain of bullets. Max waited for more, but none materialized.
Had Stone taken out the shooter? Or was he being lured out into the open?
He glanced back at Franz. A sizable blood pool had formed around the man’s head. His head wound might be worse than Max had first thought.
Since no one had fired any shots at him for nearly half a minute, he took a chance and rushed back to their vehicle and pulled a first aid kit from the rear seat. It looked completely intact. He ran back to Franz, put on a pair of gloves and began searching for the source of the bleeding. It didn’t take long to find a deep five—or six-inch long cut along the back of the German’s head.
He pulled out a roll of gauze and a large non-stick pad, and proceeded to carefully stanch the bleeding.
The sound of several pairs of booted feet running toward his hiding place had him glancing up.
A contingent of soldiers in US Army uniforms surfaced out of the smoke.
“I need a medical team here now.” Max didn’t wait for a reply, but concentrated on getting the bleeding under control.
American soldiers filtered through the area, some to look for more bodies, others to investigate, while some stood watch. He ignored them until he had Franz ready to transport. By that time a group of combat medics had arrived and they were able to take the German soldier away to a nearby hospital.
Max searched the wreckage for more injured, but everyone still alive had been identified by the medics, and was in various stages of being removed from the area.
“What the hell are you still doing here?” Stone demanded.
He turned and stared at her and the rifle she carried, a sick feeling churning his gut. “Did you shoot the suicide bomber?”
“I wounded him. The sniper who was trying to nail your ass from the roof over there finished the kid off.” She stepped up to him and poked his chest with a finger. “You’re lucky I shot that asshole before he shot you. I also saw you step away from cover and allow that bomber to ID you.” She paused, then asked with heavily laden sarcasm, “Do you have a death wish, Colonel?”
If he did, he wasn’t alone. “You’re the one who stayed out in the open to play shooter.”
Chapter Two
Alicia wanted to strangle him. She settled for yelling. “I wasn’t the target.”
“Our vehicles were full of targets, including you.” He looked at her like he wanted to strip her naked and inspect her for bruises. “We can’t know if the bomber was supposed to eliminate any one person or just as many as possible.”
“Why didn’t you leave when I told you to?”
“Franz was bleeding out.”
“Saving o
thers at the cost of your own safety is stupid.”
He looked at her like she was crazy. “That’s my job.”
“Throwing your life away isn’t part of your job.” She poked him in the chest again. “I think you were the target. Everything else was collateral damage.”
“We have no proof of that.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”
“Why does that matter?”
The man wasn’t stubborn, he was willfully blind to threats to his safety. “Akbar isn’t just looking for any target. He’s fixed his sights on you.”
Max pressed his lips together. “Don’t get ahead of the facts. We don’t know that he’s behind this.”
“Don’t dismiss me, damn it. I know about the body with the message written to you on it.” A gruesome find, discovered at the scene of a bombing, a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan a week ago. It warned that the wrath of God was coming, and had been addressed to Colonel Maximillian, US Army. That kind of death threat could derail even the most pragmatic man.
His gaze softened and he put a hand on her arm to guide her away from the carnage. “While I appreciate your concern, I won’t avoid doing my duty because it’s dangerous, or because someone attempts to kill me. I’ll be careful and I won’t do anything without making sure I’m performing that task as safely as possible.” He stopped and smiled ruefully at her. “I’m a soldier. Danger comes with the job.”
This from a man with few to no combat skills. “Max,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Planning for an attack only gets you as far as the first contact with the enemy. After that, no plan can keep up with the changing conditions. I’ve seen your shooting scores and I’ve faced you on the mats. You couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag. You’re important. General Stone says that you’ve got one of the toughest and most important jobs in the army right now. He can’t afford to lose you.”
He sighed. “Blunt, but true.” He shrugged, but didn’t say anything else for several seconds.
His face was blank as he stared into space, and she could almost hear the cacophony of thoughts racing around in his head. Would he ignore her concerns, or take them seriously?
Finally he asked, “What do you suggest?”
“You need more training and a permanent bodyguard.” What he really needed was head-to-toe body armor.
He snorted and stepped away from her. “I don’t have time for more training or a tag-along. I need several clones just to get my current workload done and still sleep once every few days.”
She followed. “I guarantee the person assigned to you would slide into your team without any trouble.”
He gave her a sour look. “You? I thought you swore never to leave your current position? Something about the rest of the army being too pansy ass for you.”
“What can I say?” she said with a toothy grin. “I like a challenge.”
“Lovely.” His tightly pressed lips told her he wasn’t happy with the situation at all. Would he argue against it?
“You need me, Max,” she said, dropping the smile to show she was serious. “Don’t fight me on this.”
“According to you, I can’t fight at all.”
Alicia ran one hand over her face. “We can change that.” If only she could do something about her own problems.
Max watched her with a frown on his face. “What am I missing? According to everyone, you love your job with the Special Forces. Why are you even considering this?”
He deserved the truth.
“I’ve gotten myself into some trouble in the past few months.” She was going to have to explain it. Fuck.
“What kind of trouble?” Max asked slowly.
“Butting heads with a couple of officers.” She sighed. “Complaints have been made.”
“Official complaints?”
“Yes.”
“And your father is...”
“General Stone does not practice favoritism.”
“Bullshit.”
Alicia turned to stare at Max. He seldom swore. “He’s done as much as he can, but when I screw up, I really screw up. And now, today—”
“Today, you saved my life and Franz’s life.” Max’s voice was filled with righteous indignation.
“And I did it by disobeying an order from the British Army’s chief medical officer. It’s one more nail in my coffin.”
Max stared at her for a moment then muttered something under his breath. She only caught a couple of words, stubborn and idiots, but it was more than anyone else had said. He seemed to think about it for several moments, then looked at her and said, “I’ll make the request for your training skills. Try to stay out of trouble.”
“Yes, sir. Though trouble seems to have no problem finding me.”
* * *
A month later, Max hunkered down in the dirt, tucked his rifle into the hollow of his shoulder and waited for his target to show himself. The conditions were good, visibility excellent and no wind. Max had only to wait.
The enemy popped up. Max released a breath, then squeezed out three quick shots.
“You missed,” a woman said from behind him. “All three shots.”
Max’s gut tightened at the sound of her voice. He looked over his shoulder at his personal peanut gallery. Sergeant Alicia Stone.
“I expected you three weeks ago,” he said loud enough to be heard despite the hearing protection they were both wearing. “What took you so long?”
Her mouth tightened. “I was unexpectedly delayed, sir.”
That was word for word what General Stone said when Max had asked him why his daughter was going to be weeks late in joining Max’s team.
Word for word meant the answer had been carefully chosen. Chosen responses were used in three situations in the army: As a non-answer to a question that shouldn’t have been asked in the first place. As a calculated response regarding a political or public relations messy event. Or as avoidance of a harmful incident. Which one was this?
Stone excelled in her role as a trainer for the Special Forces combatives program, but she had one major failing. She never hesitated to call anyone she was training on their mistakes, regardless of rank.
She was about to stomp all over him thanks to his.
He was a lousy shot.
He secured his weapon, then removed his ear protection.
“I knew you were a terrible shot, but this is beyond my lowest expectations.” She looked at him like he was some kind of insect. “How did you qualify to carry your sidearm with aim like that?”
“A great deal of practice.” He glanced at the rifle he held. “This is not my preferred weapon.”
“You actually have one you like?”
She was pushing it.
He stood and looked at her, altogether enjoying how far back she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact with him. This woman was a force of nature with a personality to match. To allow her to see weakness was foolhardy at best.
“My tongue,” he said, staring at her mouth. “Weren’t you the one who said I could flay a private alive with it?”
The corners of her lips twitched. “I don’t know many extremists who’ll take the time to sit down and have a conversation with one of us.”
She’d said us. The flash of humor soothed something tense inside him. “Well, I’ve got one of them sending me letters. That’s a start.” He’d received six, filled with rhetoric and raving about a holy war. That wasn’t counting the threats addressed to him, written on dead bodies left where they were sure to be found.
“No, someone is attempting to create fear by including flour inside the envelope to make you think they’re sending anthrax,” she said with concern.
He shrugged that away. “We know how to handle anthra
x. It’s the dead bodies that have me worried.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that you need to be prepared to defend yourself, which is impossible with aim like that.” She gestured at the target he’d missed a whole lot more than three times. “I knew you had terrible aim, but this is so bad, I have serious doubts about your ability to defend yourself in any situation.” For the first time since she arrived, she didn’t sound like she was accusing him of anything.
She did have a point. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“It’ll have to keep. We’re expected by the general in his office in ten minutes.” She came to attention and stared at his Adam’s apple as any good soldier would do when addressing a senior officer.
“Very good, thank you, Sergeant.”
She saluted and he saluted back.
Max exited the range with Stone behind him, then they went their separate ways.
He returned to his very drab and banal-looking building that contained his office and lab. The inside was anything but drab and banal. He had a fully equipped level-four containment lab, allowing him to work with some of the most deadly bacteria and viruses in the world.
He stowed his weapon in the locker in his office, cleaned up, and stopped to talk with his assistant, Private Eugene Walsh, who was just hanging up the phone. “I’ll be busy for the next couple of hours with General Stone.”
“Sir,” Eugene said. “That was General Stone on the phone. He’s on his way over here for your meeting.”
“Ah. Excellent, thank you.”
Max sat down at his desk and retrieved the latest email from Dr. Sophia Perry, a physician on his biological response team. She and her partner, Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Connor Button, were currently training medical teams from Afghanistan to respond to disease outbreaks. That was their official mission. Unofficially, they were attempting to track the movements of a very dangerous extremist—a chemist who’d lost his family in an American air strike on known terrorists in Syria.
No one had known Akbar’s family was in the same hotel.
Since then, Akbar had attempted to deploy biological weapons twice. Once with weaponized anthrax and a second time with a modified rabies virus. His known body count now approached two thousand dead. In his last attempt, he’d tried to kidnap Dr. Perry and force her to modify his rabies virus, but she’d blown up her lab to prevent that from happening. Unfortunately Akbar had escaped with relatively minor injuries.