He dove into the back of the truck as Montega sped away from the ridge and two more—assumingly fully loaded—SUVs pulled into his spot.
Men poured out and took up firing positions. I had tried to kill the drivers as they infiltrated the draw, but their windshields were made of ballistic proof glass, rated higher than my 5.56mm.
“Did you hit the oh shit button?!” I asked Royal, adrenaline making me sound frantic.
“Yeah, QRF is en route!” Royal replied as he set up his SAW on the lip of the truck.
There was no way to exit the gully. Streams had long ago cut these grooves into the mountain and there was no way to climb such steep inclines. With only one decline—where the enemy waited—we were not able to leave the way we came in.
I could hear the snaps and cracks of lead hitting my damn truck. Glass shattered. Fluids were already soaking the sand under my feet. A pain-filled screech came from one of the women, pulling my attention away from the truck and striking my heart with fear.
Grace looked over her shoulder at me, her newly unbound hands holding Tatum’s face with what was left of her shirt. “It’s just glass!”
“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, trying not to have a heart attack.
I bent down to reload another drum into the SAW before Royal had to reload his. Looking over Grace’s shoulder, I inspected the cut, and nodded in approval as I slapped the feed tray down on top of the weapon and went back to suppressing. Hearing gunshots coming for my rear, over my head, I clenched my teeth.
If it was more cartel, I didn’t want to know. I would just accept death as it lit up my back. I couldn’t mentally deal with looking back and seeing them, knowing that they would kill Grace. Kill Tatum. Kill Royal.
“Fucking finally.” Royal pumped his fist in the air twice and shot it to the right of the draw with two fingers extended and joined. Translation: Look over here, now go that way.
I looked in the direction of Royal’s commands to see two pick-ups, our up-armored bread truck we borrowed, and half a dozen dirt bikes barreling our way.
The incoming fire was over our heads and coming from what was our third and final SAW. I mounted it’s bipod myself, bolting it to the roof of the truck. One of our members was in the bed, firing at a cyclic rate. Translation: Fast. He was mowing shit down.
One truck darted to our right, the other two our left as they tried to misdirect the fire from Royal, me, and the girls. The bread truck pulled up in front of my truck, blocking gunfire, as members dove from the back.
Rounds were still peppering everywhere around us. When were these guys going to stop? We obviously outnumbered them.
Kicked up sand stung my eyes as sweat fell from my brow. Now was the time, we had to move. There was no other option. The more the cartel shot at us, the more accurate they became.
An explosion to my front right took out our truck on that side quickly negated my last thought. Fuck! Now was definitely not the time. We weren’t going anywhere.
“MEDIC!”
The screams of three of our crew were evidence enough of that. I blinked as if in slow motion. My breath the only sound in my ears, impossibly long gasps of air that were never enough. Men, on fire. Brothers, dying. Past became present. Two deserts merged into one hell.
“Royal, wait!”
The sound of a handle, a first name instead of the last names of the past, cleared the fog away.
I spun in a circle. I was scrambling for another tactical maneuver that would get us out of this high noon scenario and into the back of that truck when a shape darted from behind me and off in the direction of the wounded men.
It was Royal.
Shit.
I lunged, picking up the rate of fire on my SAW as I covered his reckless ass. He pulled one brother behind the bread truck then ducked out for number two.
Tatum grabbed a handgun and fired blindly through the blown out window above her.
Royal went back out to retrieve the third man.
The smoke was thick. Too thick to see faces. His back was to me when his hands flew up into the air as he let go of the man he was trying to save. He fell backwards with his mouth gaping open.
“NO!” I shouted.
I shot at two men at my two o’clock equipped with RPGs, likely the source of the first blast. The men fell in satisfying heaps.
“Run, now! Get to the other truck. I’m getting Royal,” I yelled to the girls’ position through the window.
Satisfied, I left my SAW to grab Royal. I looked towards the girls over my shoulder to make sure they got out, and caught a familiar red light, trailed by ghost gray smoke.
We were fucked.
The girls weren’t in the truck.
I was fucked.
As the red streak moved closer, another flash of red appeared from my three o’clock. Warmth washed over me as my hair blew back, the pressure building up in my head felt like I had it caught under a slowly lowering hydraulic lift.
At the point where I felt my eyes were going to burst from my head, yellow, white, orange, and then black passed before my eyes.
Darkness all around, save for a few slow-flashing red and green lights. My eyes were heavy from exhaustion. The heat of the night pulled sweat from my body. I grabbed my towel and dabbed at it before crashing down to my bed. ‘Another day, another dollar’ I thought as I stared into the Iraqi night through the window above my bed.
A large boom followed by whistles jolted me from bed. That sound was as familiar as my heartbeat, and right now my heart was beating out of my chest. Incoming! I thought it before I heard someone far away yell the same thing.
More whistling.
More booms.
I shot from my room and down the narrow corridor formed by a line of cargo containers—or cans—to one side and concrete barriers to the other. The rocks cutting at my feet weren’t registering pain; in the human body, fear and adrenaline made sure of that. Men in front of me were bursting from their cans and taking off in the same direction I was headed.
The bunker.
The booms grew louder, heavier, and the whistles angrier, louder, ultimately . . . closer.
“Fucking run, Tread!” I shouted to myself to usher more speed from my bare feet. BOOM! The most recent round caused me to bend forward, as if to ‘Matrix’ my way through a blast of shrapnel and concussion.
Almost there!
I could see men ducking and diving into the bunker not ten meters in front of me. As I passed an opening in the concrete barriers to my left, a firework exploded, only instead of hundreds of feet in the air, it was on the ground.
It was less than six meters away from me.
I fell to the ground, feeling as if someone pushed me over, then a tugging at my Army t-shirt got me back to my feet.
Being pushed the rest of the way, I made it into the bunker, and the man pushing me joined the rest on the other side. Headlamps blocked their figures and faces. The white light grew as they all turn towards me, no sound to be heard.
No sounds other than the ringing in my ears. “What are they looking at?” I thought as I looked down, checking to see if my cock was out of my pants without me knowing. It was not, but out of the corner of my vision, I saw a red stain on my shirt. It grew, and grew, then another appeared near my navel. I looked back at the lights. They faded out as I fell over, only to appear a moment later.
The white grew, and grew.
The white slowly gained a blue hue. A blurry figure appeared from outside my vision. I felt a thump on my face, followed by another, and another. The blurriness decreased with each thump.
‘Doc’ Remy, who was our medic in the Army, materialized into the figure. He held a small object in between our faces.
“Morphine,” he shouted, although he sounded as if he were at the end of a long hallway.
A pinch in my thigh let me know he had stuck me. My head fell to my right side. The farthest right I could see was a pool of bright red blood. At the top of my vision, the side of the brea
d truck rocked back and forth. To my front was a figure holding a weapon butt stock first to the ground. It was Alt, using his M320 with the butt stock extended as a makeshift mortar. On impulse, the muscles at the corner of my mouth twitched and tweaked, eventually forming into a smile.
“I love morphine,” I thought, or maybe said, before I faded again.
I AWOKE BELIEVING THAT I knew what a heroin addict felt after a bender. My skin crawled, my lungs burned, my head swam. I had awoken in my living room, to the news on the TV stating the headline “Massacre on the Mesa.” The voices on the TV started out as gargled noise before slowly becoming more and more coherent.
“Massacre in Robledo Mountains today. Police found numerous bodies, shell casings, and discarded weaponry in an apparent bout between two drug cartel families. At least one body confirmed was that of a known coyote, Carlos Mendez, who is wanted by both the FBI and the state police for human trafficking, drug trafficking, and a laundry list of other lesser crimes that include premeditated murder and gang activity.”
Shit. Hopefully this wasn’t going to land in the MC’s lap. Had everything gone a little smoother, we could have called a cleaning company out there to wrap everything up with a nice red bow.
“Furthermore, the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Bureau are specifically interested in the incident due to the use of high explosives so close to the United States border. Numerous shell casings were found for 40 millimeter grenade shells, not unlike those used by the U.S. Military. Mortars were also used. The rounds that were fired were made by American companies on contract with the military to provide their mortar rounds. The company in question denied any dealings with Mexico, but declined to elaborate on how the mortar rounds got into the hands of the cartel. The CEO, along with the Commanding Generals for Force Command and Southern Command, promised an immediate investigation into the supply chains of ammunition in the southwestern United States military facilities. Are our borders safe? And is this only the start of what could be a deadly cartel war on United States land? Join me at eleven when we take a look back at this historic site. Back to you, Jim.”
It was highly unlikely we would come out on the other side of this unscathed.
I sat up on the couch, the pain in my rib cage immediately throwing me back down. I closed my eyes to catch my breath and opened the fresh shirt that had been put on me, revealing bandages wrapped tightly, too tightly, around my ribcage.
Dried blood marked a location on my left side that made me recall exactly what happened before the lights went out.
An RPG had detonated somewhere near where Royal and I were retreating to cover.
Morphine.
I had to be on morphine. That would explain the junkie wake up.
How had I gotten home, though?
Where was everyone?
Was Royal in the same shape?
Better?
Worse?
There were too many questions and not enough answers. My head began to twist and twirl inside my skull. Another bout of vertigo, no doubt.
I forced myself up into a sitting position and lit a cigarette. My elbows placed on my knees, I let my head hang low and stared at the floor, hoping the spinning would go away.
The initial burst of nicotine in my system made it worse. I must have been out awhile for cigarettes to affect me.
“You’re up, then?” I turned to the familiar voice to see my sister observing me. She was drinking from a coffee cup and lifted another off the table, signaling that it was for me.
“Yeah. Got questions, Tate.”
“I bet you do. Drink first. You need to take some pain meds before the morphine wears off. Oh, how I hate to see my bubba cry.”
“Your sarcasm does not amuse, miss.” I eyed her cheek. “How’s the cut?”
“Nothing a band-aid didn’t fix. Now take the pills or I’ll call Veesa on you.”
“Yeah, yeah. No need. She isn’t here ,is she?”
“No. Lucky for you.”
“You got that right. My ribs feel broken. I don’t need mom squeezing and hugging me right now.” The thought of Grace hugging me sounded much more appealing. Her small frame wrapped around me was just what this doctor ordered.
“And Grace?” I asked when she didn’t magically appear.
“Gracie! Someone’s up to see you!”
I cringed as her words drilled holes into my head. I hadn’t noticed the shower running until it abruptly shut off.
“Wait, how is Royal? He was shot, the explosion—” I said in alarm.
“Royal got a bullet to the vest, but he’s okay. He just had the breath knocked out of him. The RPG busted an eardrum, though. He’s laying low in the other room. Should be able to walk in time for the barbeque.”
“What barbeque?” This was not a time to party.
Tatum rolled her eyes like I was dense. “We have to keep up appearances. The local cops are already sniffing around us. We have to be visible and unharmed or we’re all going to jail.”
The bathroom door flung open and Grace appeared, wrapped in a towel, dripping wet. Holy hell. I was definitely not dead.
She raced towards me and flung her arms around me, almost knocking me over and back onto the couch. I wouldn’t have fought it if I didn’t have piping hot coffee in my hand, and could actually breathe with her weight on me.
“Hey, babe. I missed you,” Grace said, searching my face. She must have noticed me turning purple with the need to expand my lungs because she jumped up again, almost losing her towel. “I’m so sorry!”
“S’okay,” I croaked, but decided I was going to lie back down for a minute. “I missed you. You scared the shit out of me. Tell me what happened when you were with the cartel. Did they hurt you? Touch you at all?”
“Let me go get dressed. I’ll tell you everything, okay? Don’t try to move.”
We moved to the dining room table at my request, not wanting them hovering above me like I was dying.
Tatum and Grace took turns explaining the whole ordeal, as if they had been rehearsing who would say what as I slept. I studied them and wondered if they were holding anything back. Then I thought that just maybe this was something they had to keep between them, and I loved them for it.
They had come a long way from hating each other a few months ago. It was a relief to see and I was inclined to let them have their secrets, as long as they were okay mentally after this ordeal.
Both weren’t typically good at storytelling, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I could feel the tears welling up as I observed the frantic lyrics and hand gestures they were making. I sat back and listened with blissful ears at the chaos unfolding and realized that, for the first time in forever, I was at peace.
EVERYONE WAS SMILING.
It was a dang miracle.
No one was getting shot at, though everyone was undoubtedly packing.
I looked about the yard and felt my chest swell with pride. We had made it out of that crazy situation with the cartel alive. People were eating, laughing, playing corn hole and horse shoes.
“What are you smiling at, pretty girl?”
I looked over at Tread, took in his relaxed smirk then leaned in for a kiss. His lips swept over mine twice before I felt his slick tongue trying to break into my mouth. I let him in after the first knock and his taste filled my head.
I pulled away at the sound of shrill whistles from his brothers around us.
“You doing okay?” I asked quietly.
Tread nodded, his eyes heated, telling me without words he wished we were anywhere but a Ronin get together. “Yeah, baby. I’m good.”
I straightened in my chair to look around once again, because as much as the boys needed this day and this carefree time, it served another purpose as well.
A massacre on United States soil didn’t sit well with authorities, and we all had a feeling it was only a matter of time. So we needed to be visible and more importantly, uninjured.
I ran my hand down Tread’s side,
feeling the cotton that banded his broken ribs as I found Royal with my eyes. He was making a good show of holding up a pillar, but since I knew his equilibrium was still off, it was more likely that the pillar was holding him up.
On the opposite side of the parking lot was Harvey holding court with the injured that had been released from the hospital. Lola busied herself babying every one of them and they ate it up like puppies.
My phone vibrated in my purse, making a faint sound over a Pink Floyd song playing through the speakers.
Since only one person had a reason to text me, I leaned once more to Tread and kissed his cheek as I picked up my purse from under his chair. “I’ll be right back.” I held up my purse in the universal sign for ‘girl problems’ and Tread gave a chin lift that could have meant a million things before he went back to listening to a story Alt was telling.
I moved quickly into the saloon and passed a bustling Veesa as she prepared food in the kitchen. As soon as I closed the door in the bathroom, I moved to a stall and lowered the lid. Digging out my phone, I sat on the—semi—clean seat.
Kit: You’ve been quiet, Gracie Lou. Been avoiding me for the love shack?
I scoffed and shook my head. If she only knew what she had been missing. Then again, maybe that was the purpose of her leaving to begin with. We were like night and day. She didn’t want this life, and I had chosen it.
Me: What’s up with you? Everything okay in lover’s paradise?
Kit: Nice try. I do have cable, you know. Cartels tend to hit nationwide, even if I am only a state away.
Me: I saw that. What’s the world coming to??
Kit: Hmm. But everyone’s okay there? My dad and everybody?
I snickered and rolled my eyes. Fishing much? We knew we had to be careful about what we said over devices, so she must have been worried to come so close to the truth.
Me: Your dad is currently basking in his reign.
I purposefully left off anything about what she really wanted to know, even if she was worried about her father.
Tread: Biker Romance (Ronin MC Series Book 1) Page 30