Prologue
Kabul, Afghanistan
“Spread out a little, guys.” Lieutenant Jayson Harmon cursed as he led his four Special Forces teammates toward the downtrodden goat farm on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. “I know you like each other, but jeez, one frigging grenade will get you all.”
The guys—Derek Mickens, Kyle Griffen, Kellen Tredeau, and Connor Marks—grinned but followed his orders. The four enlisted Special Forces operators had logged more time sitting on toilets than he had running missions. They knew what the hell they were doing, but he appreciated them humoring him anyway.
It wasn’t much of a mission. They were going out with some of the local Afghan National Police to gather up a cache of illegal weapons, but he was just thrilled Captain Donovan had finally allowed him to run an operation on his own. Jayson knew his commander and best friend was just watching out for the FNG—effing new guy—but it was time to stop coddling him. He’d completed the same Special Forces training as everyone else on the team. This was his third deployment, and it was time to let him do his job.
The captain grudgingly agreed with him, mostly because this was such a low-risk operation. But, hey, it was a mission, and Jayson would take it where he could get it.
The three ANP officers ahead of them quickened their pace through a series of low corrals and paddocks, pushing aside a random goat as they headed toward the main barn structure that supposedly held the collection of automatic weapons they were there to recover. The local police chief had described the area as more of an equipment dump than a weapons cache, and said he didn’t expect anyone to be guarding it and doubted they’d have to worry about booby traps. It was a nice piece of intel, but Jayson wouldn’t believe those details until he confirmed them for himself.
He was about to yell at the Afghans to slow down a little when a horribly familiar whooshing sound jerked his attention to the left.
“RPG!” Mickens shouted.
Jayson had about half a second to throw himself forward as the rocket-propelled grenade raced straight at him and slammed into a thin wooden fence behind them. The rocket warhead exploded, the blast wave picking him up and throwing him through the air like he was a toy.
He didn’t feel the searing pain in his back until he slammed into a wooden water trough and finally hit the ground; then, the agony did its very best to make up for lost time, ripping through him like a thousand red-hot knives. His vision wavered like someone was dragging a heavy black curtain across him right there in the goat-crap-filled corral. He fought the darkness trying to drag him under. Gunfire echoed in his ears, making him nearly deaf. He could barely hear his men swearing up a storm around him. He couldn’t pass out, not yet. He’d led his guys—his friends—into an ambush, and now he had to get them out.
He reached behind him, trying to figure out how badly he’d been hurt, praying his tactical vest and equipment pouches had limited the damage, but froze when his hand encountered something warm, torn-up, and numb where the base of his spine had been.
Shit.
He shook off those thoughts. It didn’t matter how bad it was. He just had to last long enough to make sure his guys made it out of this alive.
Jayson lifted his head out of the muck in the corral, shocked at how hard even that simple movement was. It was like his upper body weighed a ton. It didn’t help that his damn legs wouldn’t do a thing he told them to do. That was when he realized he was fucked up beyond all repair.
He gritted his teeth and shoved with his arms until he raised his head enough to see what the hell was happening. The scene that met his eyes almost made him want to say the hell with it.
A constant stream of bullets was tearing up the ground around them. Two of the Afghan police lay dead fifteen feet ahead of him. The third guy was nowhere to be seen. He’d either escaped or been blown to pieces. Being on the national police force in this country didn’t earn these guys any love.
Jayson twisted his head to the left just in time to see another RPG slam into the ground and explode right where Connor had been taking cover behind a low stone wall. He went flying backward, his face and upper body peppered with the frag from the grenade. But like the tough-ass soldier he was, he was back on his feet in a flash and popping off shots at the roof of the barn where the attack was coming from.
But Connor’s angle was all wrong. His rounds merely hit the edge of the mud wall along the roof, not doing much more than making a mess. He was never going to get a clear shot on the insurgent and his RPG launcher from down here, not with his M4.
“Connor, stop shooting!” Jayson shouted over the sounds of battle. “Take Kyle and work yourself around to the right. The 40mm grenade launcher is the only thing we have that can take out that asshole on the roof.”
Every one of his guys turned and looked at him in shock, though he wasn’t sure whether it was because he’d shouted so loud or because they’d thought he was dead.
Derek—the team’s medic—immediately headed in his direction, but Jayson clumsily waved him off. “Cover Kyle and Connor. If they don’t get that guy on the roof, we’re all dead.”
Derek hesitated, clearly torn between his medic responsibilities and the orders he’d just been given. But ultimately he did what he had to do and turned back to start laying down suppressive fire on the roofline.
Kellen was on the squad radio, probably giving a situation report to Landon. Oh shit, the captain was gonna be so pissed at him. The first time Jayson had a chance to prove himself capable of leading the team and instead he’d walked them right into a damn ambush. Landon was never gonna let him run a mission again in his life.
He pushed that self-pitying crap aside. Nobody cared right then how he’d gotten them in this mess; they just expected him to get everyone out.
Just then he heard the familiar hollow thump of the grenade launcher going off. A few seconds later, he saw the explosion on the flat roof of the barn. Three more high-explosive grenades quickly followed, each landing squarely on top of the building.
No more shooting came from the roof, but that didn’t mean they were out of the woods yet. There were still at least ten insurgents running around the goat farm peppering them with automatic weapon fire from their AKs. Jayson ordered Connor and Kyle back into a better defensive position, then started directing their fire on one specific target after another. He pulled his Beretta 9mm and started shooting at the nearest insurgents as the rest of the team did the same. Even though every one of his guys was bleeding from multiple wounds by then, they did some serious damage.
It was as he was trying to reload his pistol—a damn near impossible task with his screwed-up back—that Jayson realized something was wrong with his eyes. His vision was starting to go dark around the edges, like he was staring down a long, pitch-black tunnel. He blinked his eyes trying to fix the problem, but it only got worse.
He looked down to get a fresh clip out of one of the pouches on his tactical vest and saw that he was lying in a pool of his own blood.
“Oh, fuck.”
