Prologue
Sangin, Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan, August 2006
“We have to keep moving, or they’re going to cut off our escape route!”
Even though the city around them was coming apart at the seams from the explosions and automatic weapons fire, somehow Corporal Zane Kendrick still heard Lance Corporal Oliver Shipley’s warning. But while he’d heard it, there was nothing he could do. He was too busy watching one of his best friends in the world dying in his arms.
Lance Corporal Harry Redfield was already unconscious, which was almost certainly a saving grace. The horrific shrapnel wounds covering the front of his body—courtesy of a 107mm rocket warhead—would have had him screaming in agonizing pain. Even in the middle of the war zone Sangin had become, those cries would have only brought more Taliban fighters down on them. And as Oliver had implied, that would mean the end of them all.
They’d considered carrying Harry, but as British special forces soldiers, they’d seen enough men die on the battlefield to know he wasn’t going to make it. Calling in a medevac wasn’t an option, either. With wounds this bad, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Hoping there was a God up in Heaven to hear him, Zane prayed Harry would die quickly, without ever regaining consciousness and seeing how badly he was torn apart. It was a horrible thing to wish, but in this situation, it was the best they could hope for.
“Dammit, Zane!” Lance Corporal Billy Gordon snapped. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but we’re going to have to leave Harry behind, or we’ll be as dead as he is.”
Zane knew Billy was right, but he couldn’t leave Harry to die here in this dirty alley alone. Zane’s fiancée, Sienna, would have said it was because he cared as much about his men as he did his family. She said that was part of what made him a good leader…and a good man. Zane wasn’t so sure about that. Sienna might have been a little biased when it came to her future husband. He loved her like crazy, but to say she only saw the best in him was an understatement.
This had started out as a simple rescue mission but had quickly gone bad. Earlier in the day, a group of British paratroopers from the third battalion had been ambushed by a large force of Taliban fighters while clearing a compound full of weapons and improvised explosive devices. There had been multiple injuries, and the paratroopers had been forced to retreat. It wasn’t until later they’d realized one of their corporals was missing. Zane and the three other members of their Special Air Service patrol had volunteered to go back for him.
Fortunately, they’d found the injured soldier fairly quickly, even though he’d been hiding. Then that rocket had streaked in out of nowhere and Harry had gotten hit.
“He’s dead, Zane.” Oliver put a hand on his shoulder. “We need to go.”
Zane gazed down at Harry in the darkness, tears burning his eyes. He and Harry had gone through basic recruit and common military training together, then met up again in SAS assessment. They’d gone through the rigorous special ops training and ended up in D Squadron together. They’d been on every training exercise and deployment together for the past six years. Now, Harry was dead. Just like that.
He wished they could bring Harry with them, but he knew they couldn’t. It would take a weapon out of one of their hands and increase the likelihood that none of them would make it home. But there was no way in hell he’d leave Harry lying in the street, not with the way the Taliban treated captured enemy soldiers—dead or alive. So he and his friends hid Harry’s body under some metal sheeting in the alley. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep him safe until they could come back in the daylight and recover the body.
“We all need to remember this location,” Zane said. “That way, someone will be able to come back and take Harry home to his family.”
Oliver and Billy solemnly nodded. There was a lot of dangerous ground for them to cover between here and base camp. The chance of all of them making it back wasn’t good.
It tore him up to even think about, and his thoughts immediately turned to Sienna. They were supposed to get married when he got back from this deployment. He’d gone out of his way to reassure her he wasn’t in a lot of danger over here—not because he wanted to lie to her, but simply because she wasn’t the kind of woman who could deal with the reality of what he did for a living.
If he didn’t make it back, he didn’t want to imagine what it would do to her.
“Let’s go,” he said, pushing thoughts of Sienna aside and hefting his L119A1 carbine, ignoring Harry’s blood covering the front of his uniform. “Watch yourselves. This city is full of people looking to kill a coalition soldier, and we’re the only ones here to shoot.”
Zane led them west, toward the river, sticking to the shadows to avoid the groups of armed men roaming the streets. Oliver kept the District Centre apprised of their location as they moved, whispering into his radio to keep from giving their location away.
While Zane tried to stay focused on the present and the need to get the rest of his team back home safely, he couldn’t stop thinking about how crushed Harry’s parents were going to be when they found out he was dead. Zane had spent a lot of time with them over the years, and he would rather be the one to tell him, but that wasn’t the way it worked. Some officer in the regiment who’d probably never met Harry would be the one to do the notification. Zane couldn’t imagine how horrible it would be to learn your son was dead from a total stranger.
He and his team were still two kilometers from base camp when they ran into a group of armed men on a narrow street. The first round caught Zane in the left hip, spinning him halfway around. He grunted as pain gripped him, but he ignored it, putting everything he had into getting his weapon up and aimed at the men. Then he pulled the trigger, carefully putting down one target after another. Billy and Oliver did the same, even as Oliver shouted into the radio that they needed backup.
Zane felt two additional spikes of pain as more bullets slammed into him, but he couldn’t for the life of him say where he’d been hit. It scared him that they didn’t hurt like they should. He dropped his spent magazine and loaded a new one, squeezing the trigger again and again. A few minutes later, the last man fell, and the echo of gunshots slowly faded.
Knowing they needed to get the hell out of there before more bad guys showed up, Zane turned to tell Billy and Oliver as much. At least he tried to. Unfortunately, his whole left side refused to cooperate. He glanced down to see that he’d been hit once in the thigh and once in the stomach, right below his tactical vest. He knew the one in his stomach was bad, but since it didn’t hurt that much, he wouldn’t worry overmuch about it. It wasn’t as if things could get worse.
But when he finally managed to turn around, he realized things could, indeed, get worse. Billy and Oliver were on the ground, and they weren’t moving.
Shit.
What energy he had left drained away. He took a few careful steps, then dropped to his knees between his friends. Behind him, he heard the light thud of feet running across broken ground. It looked like Taliban reinforcements were on the way.
Zane rolled Billy over on his back but knew before seeing his lifeless eyes that it was too late. A round had caught Billy in the neck. He’d probably bled out before even hitting the ground. Another piece of Zane’s soul tore away as he thought about Billy’s pretty girlfriend and the baby they had on the way. She’d wanted Billy to get out of the regiment and get a job at her dad’s clothing store. But Billy had insisted retail wasn’t for people like him and had reenlisted for another tour.
Zane should have talked him out of it. Billy’s unborn child would still have a father if he had.
He forced himself to stop thinking and turned to Oliver, dreading what he’d see. Relief flooded though Zane when his friend groaned. Then he saw the shattered ballistic plates of Oliver’s tactical vest and the blood pouring everywhere. The first shot had broken the protective ceramic plate. The second had punched through his chest. It was amazing he was still alive.
