X-Ops Exposed

by Paige Tyler

  Chase regarded him thoughtfully. “Does this research Mahsood is doing have anything to do with the way Bell was killed?”

  Damn, this guy was dangerously good when it came to his gut.

  “Yes,” Tate said, not elaborating further.

  Chase didn’t push for more on the subject. “Okay. What about the woman in the photo?”

  “The picture came from the security camera of a convenience store a few hours from here. She stumbled in there a little while after escaping from one of Mahsood’s research facilities.”

  “Escaping? She was held there against her will?”

  Tate inclined his head.

  Chase sighed. “And Brannon? How is she involved in this?”

  “You sure you want to know?” Tate asked. “And before you answer, stop and seriously think about this. Brannon is a powerful woman. You get on the wrong side of this, and kissing your career goodbye will be the least of your concerns.”

  “I’m sure,” Chase answered without hesitation. “If I only wanted to walk down the safe paths, I never would have joined the marines, become a cop, or gotten involved in this case. I said I’d trust you. Now, it’s time for you to start trusting me.”

  Tate took a deep breath, knowing he was taking one hell of a big leap of faith. But his gut was telling him it was the right thing to do. “Rebecca Brannon has been funding Mahsood’s research. The woman in the picture from the security camera is her daughter. Mahsood was experimenting on her, almost certainly with Brannon’s full knowledge and support.”

  If Chase tried to hide his surprise, he wasn’t able to pull it off. “You have any proof of this? Proof solid enough to go after a woman this powerful?”

  Tate shook his head. “No. And to be truthful, I doubt I’m going to be finding any up here. Which is fine, because that’s not why I was sent here.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To figure out what killed Bell and make sure it doesn’t kill anyone else,” Tate said. “Let’s get over to see this research assistant and see if she can help with that.”

  Chase started the car and put it in gear but then hesitated. “You mean who killed Bell, right?”

  It took Tate a moment to realize exactly what he’d said, and by then, it was too late to worry about it. He turned to gaze out the passenger window. “Yeah, sure. That’s what I meant.”

  * * *

  “What is this place?” Zarina asked as she set down her pack and knelt beside him on the ground.

  Tanner didn’t answer her question. They were a dozen feet from a deep, slow-moving stretch of the Entiat River, less than an hour’s hike from the camp. Tanner could hear the crunch of tires on gravel as a heavy vehicle moved along the forest access road a couple hundred yards away. He remembered that rough, narrow road well, even if he’d only been semiconscious the last time he’d traveled over it.

  He closed his eyes, vividly remembering the smell of the humid summer air the night Stutmeir’s men had brought him here. He could almost feel the hard bed of the pickup truck digging into his spine as the vehicle bounced and jounced along the unpaved route that was little more than a firebreak through this section of the forest. It had been a night he’d never forget. The weight and scent of the four dead bodies that had been piled on top of him in the back of the vehicle guaranteed that.

  As much as he’d never wanted to come back here, there was a part of him that always knew he would. In the privacy of his own mind, he could admit that the place terrified him. But at the same time, it called to him. He had a history with this stretch of riverbank.

  Opening his eyes, he reached out and scooped away some of the pine needles that had collected in the shallow depression in front of him, making it easier to see the outline. There were even a few telltale sections of dirt as evidence that the soil had been broken up and pushed to the side.

  “This is the place Stutmeir’s men brought the bodies after the hybrid experiments,” he said softly. “This spot right here was my grave. As things go, it wasn’t bad, I guess. It had a nice view of the river.”

  Zarina stared at him, understanding and horror crossing her face in equal measures. “Oh God. You were…?”

  “Buried?” Tanner finished, because he knew she wouldn’t be able to. Her beautiful, amazing mind simply couldn’t envision something that terrible. “Yeah, I was buried here, along with Spencer, Bryce, and all the other homeless people and hikers Stutmeir’s doctors experimented on.”

  Zarina’s head whipped around as she took in the dozen or so other shallow depressions scattered around the clearing. “Are the bodies still here?” she asked hesitantly, her voice low as if she was worried about disturbing them.

  “No. At least I don’t think so. The DCO cleaned the place up after taking down Stutmeir so no one would stumble over the remains and draw attention to the area.”

  Even though the bodies weren’t there, the thought of them was enough to make him remember Stutmeir’s men dragging him out of the back of the pickup truck along with the others and tossing him into the holes they’d dug. Then they’d started dumping dirt on him. They’d buried him alive, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do to stop them.

  He remembered everything so clearly because the drug Zarina had injected him with to trick the doctors into thinking he was dead had made his heart rate drop and trapped his fully functioning mind inside a nearly comatose body. He’d been completely aware the whole time the men had buried him, and the sensation of the dirt hitting his face and covering his helpless body had taken him back to the very worst day of his life and almost crushed his soul.

  Kneeling there now, reliving the memories, was enough to send his pulse racing and make his fangs extend. He didn’t realize how close he was to completely losing it until Zarina reached out and rested her hand on his forearm.

  Tears filled her eyes, spilling over and running down her face. “I’m right here, Tanner. You’re not alone.”

  His pulse slowed at the sound of her voice, his fangs retracting. For about the millionth time, he wondered what it was about Zarina that gave her the ability to pull him back from the edge with nothing more than a touch or even a whispered word or two. He’d never fully understood how she did it, but it had been like that from the very first moment she’d spoken to him mere hours after Stutmeir’s doctors had given him the first dose of hybrid serum.

  He wanted to reach up and wipe her tears away, but his hands were too dirty. Literally and figuratively. Sometimes he didn’t think he’d ever be clean enough to touch her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never knew what they were planning. I thought they were going to dump you in the woods. If I’d known they were going to bury you, I would have never given you that drug. I should have tried to stop them from taking you.”

  “If you hadn’t given me the drug, they would have kept giving me dose after dose of that serum until my body ripped itself apart,” he said hoarsely. “And if you tried to stop them from taking me, you probably would have found yourself in one of these graves without the possibility of ever crawling out. So don’t be sorry. You saved me. That’s all that matters.”

  Zarina shook her head, her mouth opening but no words coming out.

  Before he could stop himself, he reached out and grabbed the hand she had resting on his forearm, giving it a firm squeeze. “When those men grabbed me that day in the forest, I was sure I was dead. When they gave me those two doses of hybrid serum, turning me into a monster, I prayed I would die. And when things were at their darkest, you came and risked everything for me. I can’t put into words how much that means to me, because you did more than save my life that day. You gave me a reason to keep going.”

  She wiped the wetness from her cheeks with her free hand, blinking at him in confusion. “Keep going? What are you saying? That you’d given up on living? Why?”

  He
shook his head, opening his mouth to tell her that wasn’t it. But the truth was, at that point in his life nearly eighteen months ago, he had been close to giving up. He’d pulled so far away from the rest of the world, there wasn’t much left other than ending it all.

  Zarina’s hand tightened around his. “Tanner, talk to me. Please.”

  He regarded her silently for a moment. Maybe it was time he got everything out in the open. Maybe then she’d understand why he couldn’t take her antiserum and why she was wasting her life staying out here trying to help him.

  “This isn’t the first time I ended up flat on my back in a shallow depression, getting dirt dumped in my face,” he said quietly. “The other time it happened, I was pretty sure I was going to die, too.”

  He ran his free hand over the grave he’d clawed his way out of after Zarina’s drug had worn off. As the loose, earthy soil shifted between his fingers, he vividly remembered the sensation of the rich dirt getting sucked up his nose and into his lungs as he’d fought to get out of the hole. It had seemed to take forever, and he’d almost given up. But it was the memory of the beautiful Russian doctor with the voice of an angel that had kept him clawing for the surface. At the time, he remembered thinking that he had to make it out so he could find a way to help her.

  Zarina didn’t say anything, didn’t prompt him. Instead, she knelt there in the dirt beside him, holding his hand and waiting for him to get the courage to say the things that needed to be said.

  “Ryan and I were in northern Afghanistan on our last deployment with the 2nd Ranger Battalion,” he said, the pain of thinking back to the last battle he’d fought with his friend making it hard to get the words out. “It was in a little place called the Kunduz Province that I doubt ninety-nine percent of the world could find on a map, even with the help of Google. The mission was supposed to be easy. All we had to do was babysit a bunch of Afghanis as they picked up a local warlord. But everything fell apart, and we ended up in a meat grinder. All three members of my fire team died right in front of me. Ryan’s guys bought it, too. In the span of ten minutes, our entire squad was wiped out.”

  Thinking about Chad, Vas, and Danny dying was enough to push him to the edge of his control again. His fingers tingled and his gums ached. He breathed through it, focusing on Zarina’s warm scent and her gentle touch until the urge to run—or tear something apart—passed.

  “I was almost taken out by a Taliban fighter with a rocket-propelled grenade and ended up getting flipped through the air,” he continued. “I came down in an artillery crater and immediately got pelted with falling dirt and rocks. It felt like I was being buried alive.”

  Zarina looked down at the depression in the ground in front of them, her face going pale as she recognized the similarities to what had happened here.

  Tanner swallowed hard as he remembered what it had been like lying in that hole over in Afghanistan, every part of his body hurting while he wondered if he was going to die. Wondering if anyone would ever find him in that damn crater. They were exactly the same feelings and emotions he’d experienced here.

  “Going through something like that once was bad enough, but having the same thing happen to me again here?” He shook his head. “I…I didn’t handle it well.”

  Zarina took his other hand in hers, and he used the strength she gave him to keep talking, to get the rest of the story out.

  “I thought I’d get over everything that happened over there, all my guys dying, you know?” He shrugged. “I’d seen other men in the battalion die in combat before, and it hadn’t shaken me up too bad. I mean, I’d be upset about it for a couple of weeks but then get right back into the job. That’s what soldiers are supposed to do. It’s what I’d done for years. But for some reason, that time was different. I couldn’t shake the memories. The images of my guys dying were there every time I closed my eyes. I stopped sleeping at night and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Everything became a haze, and I barely remember coming home from Afghanistan after the deployment. The only clear memory of that time I have is what happened to my guys, and I had the crystal-clear knowledge that I couldn’t be a Ranger anymore. When it came time to reenlist, I couldn’t do it. So I walked away.”

  “Did you talk to Ryan at all during this time?” Zarina asked. “He’d gone through the same thing. Was he having problems dealing with it, too?”

  “Yeah, but most people probably didn’t notice it. I knew him well enough to recognize he was hurting, too, just in a different way.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Before what happened in Kunduz, Ryan and I were like brothers. But after that, we both changed. It was like there was this big pink elephant in the room, but both of us acted like we didn’t see it. I pulled away from everyone, Ryan included.” Tanner sighed. “As for Ryan, he bought a big motorcycle and started street racing and staying out in the clubs around Seattle until the early morning hours, stumbling in hungover just in time for morning physical fitness training. It wasn’t long after that we stopped talking to each other altogether. It was like we woke up one morning and realized we didn’t know each other anymore. I didn’t even tell him when I made the decision to walk away from the Rangers.”

  “Didn’t anyone in your unit notice what was happening?” Zarina asked, frustration clear in her voice.

  He shrugged. “Sure they noticed. The army really tries, but as a general rule, soldiers tend to stay out of one another’s heads. If you show up to work on time and do your job, the thoughts rolling around in your bean are your own business. But I had to talk to a few docs in order to get out-processed, and they figured out I’d had my brain bucket rattled a few times. That’s where the VA disability came from. I didn’t want to take it, but it’s pretty standard in the military now. Get blown up a time or two, get a few bucks from the Veterans Administration. I’m not even sure if there’s a way within the VA bureaucracy to give it back.”

  Zarina scowled. “That’s crazy! Why the hell wouldn’t you want to take the money? Traumatic head injury is serious, and it’s a common side effect of concussive blasts.”

  Tanner couldn’t refute that. Zarina was a doctor, so she was probably right. But for him, getting money simply because you’d been knocked unconscious a few times didn’t feel right. Not when there were soldiers out there coming home with body parts missing. His problems were nothing compared with that.

  “Regardless,” he said. “After I filled out a few forms and watched a couple of videos about dealing with stress, I was done with the army, and they were done with me.”

  That answer didn’t seem to make Zarina very happy if the look on her face was any indication, but she let it go. “Okay, so you got out of the army and went back to see your family?”

  “Yeah. I thought spending time with them would fix everything.” He winced at how incredibly stupid and naive that sounded. “My family had always been close, so I assumed being with them was what I needed to get me out of the fog I was in after getting out of the army.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  He shook his head. “It was like I didn’t know how to fit into their world anymore. They wanted to hear stories about what I’d seen and done, but I wanted to forget it all. They tried to help, but they couldn’t understand the mood swings, the anxiety, the strange sleep patterns, the hypervigilance, the hours I spent staring up at the ceiling. Hell, I didn’t understand it, either, but it was tougher on them. I was someone wearing the face of the man they knew as their son, their brother, their friend, but I wasn’t the person they’d known all their lives. It scared the hell out of them.”

  Zarina was quiet for a moment. “Did you try to get professional help?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t stupid. I knew there was something wrong with me. I tried to get an appointment to talk to someone at the VA in Seattle, but the waiting list was insane. There are way too many vets needing help and way too few pe
ople helping them.” He shrugged. “I made the appointment even though part of me knew I’d never show up. I felt like I was a car flying down the interstate at a hundred miles an hour with one lug holding each tire on. I knew it was only a matter of time until a wheel fell off and I crashed and burned. I was right.”

  “What happened?” Zarina asked in a hesitant voice, as if she really didn’t want to know.

  Tanner took a deep breath, shame and embarrassment nearly overwhelming him. “Dad came downstairs one morning and found me sitting at the kitchen table where I’d been the night before when he and Mom went to bed. I was staring out the window at the sun coming up. He said good morning, then started to make coffee like he always did. When I just kept sitting there without saying anything, he figured out pretty damn quick something wasn’t right with me.”

  Tanner raked his hand through his long hair, wishing he didn’t have to tell Zarina about what happened next, but he needed to.

  “He wanted to know what the hell was wrong. I know Dad meant well, but I couldn’t explain the things I was feeling. I don’t know what happened. One second, we were shouting at each other, and the next, my hands were around his throat, and I had him pinned against the wall.”

  Tanner didn’t look at Zarina, afraid to see the horror in her eyes. But when he risked a glance in her direction, he saw that she didn’t seem horrified at all. Maybe because she’d seen him lose it so many times that nothing he did shocked her anymore.

  “That wasn’t even the worst of it,” he continued. “When Cam jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, I thought it was gunfire. I went into total combat mode and tossed my dad across the kitchen right as my mom and brother hurried in. I’ll never forget the look on her face. It was like she’d seen a monster. That’s when I realized what the hell I’d done.” Tears blurred his vision, and he forced them back. “That’s when I left. I knew if I didn’t, I’d end up hurting someone at some point, so I bailed.”