Traitor
Copyright © 2018 by Nicole Blanchard
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Operator
Last to Leave, Book 2
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Nicole Blanchard
Dedication
For Michelle
Prologue
Ford
Past - Somewhere in the fuckin’ desert
Despite it being hot as the devil’s ballsack, my guts twist with an icy apprehension that can’t mean anything good.
There’s nothing as far as my night vision goggles can see but dust, scrubby little plants, and huge towering dunes. The village we’re surveying is dead quiet, which should be reassuring, but it isn’t. It makes years of instincts honed by training scream with unease.
A cold sweat coats my back, reminding me all too vividly of the time we were ambushed on my first deployment, which feels like a lifetime ago. I’d had the same frozen ball of dread in my stomach then, too. I had no sway as a grunt then. I couldn’t tell my command we should turn back because I was worried. I couldn’t have saved my friend, Scott, who lost a leg on that mission and nearly lost his life.
But I can today.
In the years since the explosion, I’ve been deployed multiple times. I rose through the ranks in the infantry until I joined the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) as an operator. The day Scott was injured didn’t only change his life, it changed mine, too. I’d been coasting along in the military, uncertain of what I wanted, where I was going. When I woke up in a German hospital with a severe concussion and a broken arm, with my friend hovering near death, I knew one thing: I wouldn’t let it happen to anyone else.
I was a headstrong shit back then, that's for damn sure.
If I’ve learned anything since then, it’s that no one, but no one, can control what happens under the cover of night. Not even the men with guns and enough tactical training to choke a camel. I do my level best, though, and I like to think it makes a difference.
On a night like this, it brings to mind all the reasons why running headfirst into trouble is never a good idea.
But of course, we do it anyway.
I give a prearranged signal to my second in command, Callum “Cal” Reese, who speaks into his mic, directing the rest of the team to their designated checkpoints. Snipers to the high ground, breachers to the front. The same well-oiled machine we’d become for the past seven months since being assigned to what Cal affectionately dubbed Camp “Hellhole.” Each team is different, depending on mission objectives, but five of the guys I’ve deployed with before. Reuniting with them almost felt like coming home. I’m not sure when an Afghani wasteland started to become my reprieve and home became the place I wanted to escape.
“Creepy,” Cal says, and I nod in agreement.
“I’d be enthused if it didn’t feel like a fucking horror flick.”
“Dun-na, dun-na, duna duna duna,” comes one of our snipers, Killian “Kill” Burke. His partner, James Murdoch, sniggers.
Movement from the village quiets us all and in seconds intense focus descends. Our mission for tonight’s excursion is to clear the village and capture it for our own, along with any enemy objectives or intel. A second team, led by my good buddy, Ryan Tate, will be doing the same, but from the south side of the village. I glance back to our intelligence officer and possibly the most intimidating of our team, Dean Tyler, who nods, confirming Tate’s signal. Behind him a group of support Marines and Afghani military stand ready. They’ll clear each building while we scope ahead for any high-value targets.
The squat little buildings are pressed together, some crumbling from decades of neglect and small-level warfare between battling regimes, others have already disintegrated to dust, husks of their former selves. There are times when I get the feeling I’m stuck in an ancient era at the ends of the earth, when you’ve seen nothing but mud huts and caves for weeks on end. Probably why going home at the end of each deployment is such a shock.
There’s nothing like being covered in blood and brain matter one day and being asked why you aren’t laughing along at your welcome home barbecue the next.
I push those thoughts, and my own niggling doubts, to the back of my mind as we slowly, carefully, move closer to the village. My team and Tate’s depend on me to be focused and ready for any eventuality. Including the worst.
Cal arranges himself supine next to my position beside an outcropping of rock on the perimeter of the village. He readies his high-powered sights and scans the area as I call in an update to the rest of the team and the support fifty yards back, positioned in a ravine. When I’m done, I look back to him and he shakes his head.
No outward sign of danger, but that doesn’t mean it’s not lurking in the shadows, waiting for us to make our move.
Most villagers have already abandoned this settlement and the ones who are left sure as hell don’t want us coming in and taking over, but we have a job to do and lives are always on the line, on both sides. If we don’t move in now, intel villagers have or targets they’re hiding may cost lives, both American and foreign. Tens, hundreds, thousands. It’s a guessing game, in the end, and we do what we can to protect that loss of life, even if it costs us our own.
“Move out,” I order and Cal, Kill, James, and Dean shift in sync without question.
Kill and James crouch down, shadows blending with
the pitch-dark sky on rooftops in the distance. Cal and I move on opposite ends of the village, followed by Dean in the back with our support.
Seconds after I clear the first line of buildings, shots ring out against the night, and I hear a short scream followed by the sound of meat and bone colliding with the hard-packed dirt underneath my feet.
“Two guards neutralized,” Kill says into the mic, and I don’t need the reminder to know he earns his nickname with each mission.
As I progress through the village with a small group of Marines, we clear the buildings one by one. After an hour of this, I start to feel like the mission is a wash. There are no high-value targets, no valuable intel to be gleaned. All in all, it’s a fairly easy mission compared to most. More importantly, aside from the two kills at the onset, no significant loss of life. Tate’s team, according to Cal, reports the same.
The constant rapport of flashbangs can be heard in the distance as Tate leads his own team in a mirror pattern. Throughout it all they keep me updated through the mic. Soon, we reached the opposite end of town.
Dean appears, face trickling with sweat and flushed red, followed by Kill and James. Marines and Afghani military crouch beyond, faces bleached of color and drawn from lack of sleep. I don’t blame them. I’m going on thirty hours without hitting my bunk, but the only thing you can do is keep pressing forward.
When Tate joins with his team, I turn and signal that we should round up and go back to base. The mission may have been a bust, but there will be another tomorrow and the next day and the next. My guys need to rest, and I need to report our findings back to command, even if they’re shit.
There’s a two-mile hike before any rest can be had and that’s two miles we’ll be navigating in the dark, completely vulnerable to attack, so I can’t quite let down my guard yet.
I slap Tate on the back and say, “Let’s get this shit show on the road.”
We’re halfway back to camp when it all goes to hell.
The first gunshot goes off as the lights for camp begin to shine on the horizon. Everyone hits the ground, dust flies up and fills my mouth and eyes. I rub a hand over my face and choke. I don’t have time to worry about the grit under my lids and coating my tongue.
“We’re surrounded,” I hear through my radio.
I hear Tate curse from somewhere to my right, and the apprehension I’ve been feeling all night curdles in my stomach.
Fuck, but, fuck I knew this had been a bad idea. Knew it just as I knew we’re in deep shit.
Tate radios back to base, and Kill and Murdoch murmur in the background as they scout for our best option of retreat.
“To the east,” Kill announces into the radio. “There’s a break in their line.”
“Go,” I command Cal. Tate and I stay back to give the Marines and the rest our team time to find cover.
Shots pop off, little flashes in the obsidian night. Tate and I shoot at the direction of fire to give our men a chance, any chance. Screams fill what had been an eerily quiet night. My body moves by memory, as my mind races with where we’d gone wrong. This mission was supposed to be an easy in-and-out, if there is such a thing. We’d gotten a tip-off that it’d be ours for the taking. No enemies in the area.
So much for that shit.
“You go up,” Tate orders. As my senior in command, I defer to his judgement, but it chaps my ass to leave him vulnerable.
Knowing hesitation or arguments will only cost us both precious time, I sprint up the dunes with Tate close on my heels. Kill and Murdoch have taken up places on the dunes, and I hear the silent, deadly hiss of our nation’s finest shots whizzing past my ears.
I reach the crest of the dune and toss myself over the edge. Tate is seconds behind me when the blast knocks him off his feet and throws him a dozen yards away.
When the dust settles, and I peer over the dune and through my NVGs, I see Tate, well, parts of him, littered over the dusty landscape.
What remains of him peers through the darkness. Bloody froth bubbles at the corners of his mouth as he mouths, “Help me.”
Chapter One
Peyton
Present
My fingers twitch on the steering wheel, but for the first time, it isn’t due to the dark grip of anxiety. It’s with the urge to paint, to create. I haven’t felt the blessing of inspiration in so long that shock has me tapping on the brakes. They squeal and a car behind me honks in protest at my sudden deceleration.
Get it together, Peyton.
I accelerate once more and commit the location to memory. I pull off the next exit from the Blue Ridge Parkway, and direct my car toward the town that shares the name of the view—Windy Point, North Carolina.
The stunning landscape keeps pressing me toward the town center. The urge to capture the mix of color, of movement and shadow. This. This was what I was looking for.
As I pull to a stoplight, I search the town on my phone, excitement bubbling happily in my stomach. The quaint little mountain village of Windy Point boasts a population of less than two thousand year-round. But it’s not the variety of tourist attractions, the museums, or the multitude of shopping boutiques I’m interested in. It’s the openness. The freedom that attracts me. I’m in awe of the sweeping thrust of mountain peaks and the deep blue-green of the oak and hickory forests. The jewel blue of a sparkling lake peeks out between thick brush as I round a corner, and I force myself to release the tension I’ve been holding in my muscles since I set out on my journey two weeks and three states ago.
When I realized the urge to paint had all but dried up inside of me.
When it felt like the last part of me holding out hope had died.
Realizing I could either wither away and accept the inevitable slow march to death, or fight for the life I’d lost, I packed what few possessions I could fit into my car and began my search for something—anything—that could make me feel again. Feel in a way I hadn’t in longer than I could remember.
I used to be a big believer in passion, in fate, destiny. Life.
I’m determined to find my way back to life, even if it kills me.
I followed the winding roads from Mississippi to North Carolina without a destination in mind. Searching for—I wasn’t sure what exactly—but I figured I’d know it when I saw it.
For anyone else the journey would have taken less than half a day, but I decided for someone who couldn’t even leave her own house six months ago, it was progress. Slow, but progress nonetheless.
I didn’t have a plan. The mere thought of it has me gnawing on my thumbnail. I didn’t have a structured to-do list to guide my every waking moment or a host of professionals telling me the right way—or the wrong way—to face my demons each day. Supposedly, the years of intense therapy would teach me how to handle my grief, my anxiety, but all it did was remind me at every session of everything that had happened.
Counseling gave me tools to deal with those things, but it was the shock of my twenty-eighth birthday that propelled me to make a drastic change. Something about facing the tail end of my twenties, and the eventual dawn of my thirties, forced me to pull myself out of the mire of my past and do something about it. The only other option was letting it drown me. And I owed it to myself—and to them—to make something of the life I had left.
My heart pounds and I stifle a giggle in relief, because it doesn’t make me want to run for the nearest sanctuary and bolt the doors behind me. Instead, I want to scream and dance. I want to explore and paint—God, I want to paint more than I ever have—even more than before.
The exhilaration may fade, but for now, Windy Point is my new beginning, a fresh canvas. As I told my therapist at our monthly check-in, I’m prepared for the worst, but expecting the best. Even if I only stay a night or a week or a month, the change of scenery is what I’m looking for more than anything. I’ll get the chance to go back and take in more of the view that inspired me so much, go hiking, or swim in the lake if the weather warms up—and I ever learn how.
I don’t need a job, but if my stay winds up being longer than a week, I can visit any one of the touristy places I’ll pass on my way through town for something to keep me busy. A restaurant, a museum, or one of the boutiques may need some extra help now that the last fingers of winter are beginning to loosen their strangling hold on the surroundings. Visitors will no doubt flock to the area, which will mean a healthy supply of employment opportunities, should the need arise.
Dusk sweeps over the nearby peaks and bathes the town at its base in an inky pool of blue-green shadow. There won’t be any exploring tonight, but I don’t mind. If nothing else, the years spent cooped up with my nightmares taught me to wring every drop of pleasure out of each moment, no matter the circumstances.
A fluorescent sign advertising a 50s-style diner named Lola’s catches my eye and my stomach lets out a grumble. Realizing I haven’t had anything to eat since Tennessee turned into North Carolina, I flip my signal on and merge over to the right lane to pull into the parking lot. It gives me a little flutter in my chest to realize I have an appetite again. To be excited to eat food, to enjoy it, and not only for fuel.
Once, not too long ago, the scents of charred meat and grease that greet my nose as I open the diner door would have sent me running in the other direction. Instead, my stomach grumbles again as I walk up to the hostess stand.
Traitor (Last to Leave Book 1) Page 1