Justice (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 2) (3 page)

Mission Stupid

FOR THE FIRST TIME since we’d embarked for Beirut on the hunt for Majedah Chehab, we were working aboveboard. Well, maybe not officially. Damn sure T-Zone wasn’t recognized by the US government, but we had authorized transport as opposed to the
borrowed
C17s, choppers, and other vehicles pressed into mission minus legitimate paperwork. What a difference that made. Even Storm was whistling, Bane wore a grim smile on his face, and Walker kept shooting off at the mouth with his usual loaded comments.

“Welcome to DeathStar Airlines. Please enjoy the in-flight entertainment”—he bowed so low the end of his braid nearly touched the floor of the C-12 Huron jet—“care of yours truly. We hope you have a pleasant stay in the hottest vacation destination in the Middle East, after Beirut of course.” With a flourish, he brandished his tablet and opened the screen to show the exterior rubble of the American Embassy. “Sana’a!”

“You’re so fucking twisted, dude.” I stowed my gear in the overhead bin and took a seat.

“C’mon, Jus. I tell folks all the time I work in the hospitality business. I rock this shit.”

“
Full of
fucking shit, more like.” Storm stalked past to the cockpit, a grin twitching the corners of his lips.

Walker had always been one hell of a pain in the ass, but he took point no matter what and was the first in, the last out despite any threats thrown at him. Seeing him a little more lighthearted, I wondered just what there’d been haunting his past—that one personal hardship all of us had scattered from—that Jade had made him let go.

Because normal people did not just sign up for jobs like this. It took a special breed of warriors with hard hearts, thick heads, and bulletproof consciences.

I peered over as he spread out his lanky frame. “Great place for a honeymoon then, wouldn’t you say? You pop the question to Jade yet?”

“Jade. She’s mean as a viper.” Bane shrugged off his night-black jacket, revealing bulky arms and shoulders covered in tats.

We were turning the man into a regular chatterbox.

“Yeah, she is.” Walker sighed, a dopey-as-fuck look on his face. “And no honeymoon in Sana’a. Last place any smart-thinking
silent professional
would want to visit on more than one occasion. And I’m pretty sure she already got the postcard
and
the T-shirt. Maybe even a scar or two.”

“So basically anyplace in the Mideast is out of the question?”

“Ditto that shit.” Walker crossed his arms behind his neck and shut his eyes, still with the goofy smirk. “I’m thinking Hawaii. Yeah. Sun and surf and heat. How much trouble could we get up to in Hawaii?” He squinted one eye open.

“Volcanoes,” Bane mumbled.

“Poisonous snakes and spiders. Possibly sharks?” I mentioned.

“Probably a cartel or two too,” Storm called back, conducting his in-flight check.

“Killjoys. Fuck off. I’m in love.”

Bane leaned across the center aisle and rubbed his hands across his skull cut. “Oh, trust me. We know. It’s fucking weird.”

“You should try it, my man.” Walker licked his lips with nothing short of glee.

Yep. The badasses were back together—and not on the run for a change.

At least not yet.

We’d had two hours to get our shit together. The fake passports. False IDs. Real money in more than one currency. Firearms, ammo, MREs, spare clothes, and always an extra pair of boots and just one more knife. That left little time to say adios to loved ones.

Walker was the only one of us guys who’d had to have the official
who-to-contact-if-I-don’t-make-it-back
conversation.

It couldn’t feel good, leaving the woman he loved behind when so much was up in the air between him and Jade.

Still, I envied the shit out of him for finding his perfect match.

Walker sauntered to the cockpit to take the copilot’s seat even though he shut his fucking eyes on takeoff and touchdown because of the sudden change in heights. I still couldn’t believe he’d done the HAHO jump last op. From the way Storm told the story of Walker’s drop over Beirut, anyone would think he’d jumped off the ledge of a sheer, sky-high cliff with no parachute in sight instead of the state of the art T-11 strapped to his back.

Walker maintained Storm had pushed him out the side of the Sikorsky helicopter.

Glancing at Storm’s lean, mean silhouette, I tended to believe Walker.

Once we were airborne, I turned to study Bane. He wore his seriousness like a badge of honor. No more than twenty-nine, the man was strictly professional to a T, except when dealing with Storm. They’d obviously butted heads before being put on the same team. The tension between them was thick as thunderclouds.

Maybe it was about a woman, but I doubted it. Storm clearly hungered for Blaize, and Bane showed no interest in her at all outside of the imperative.

I had no idea if Bane had a sex drive, a sex life . . . any life at all outside of work. Not that I wanted to know the details, but he was as close-lipped as they came. His shield was stitched on the outside as much as the high tech body armor he wore. As much as the roiling black ink marking the breadth of his shoulders and the back of his neck.

Maybe better that way. We all strived to maintain our silence about important life shit. I’d been driven to this
lifestyle
. Didn’t need to know if Bane’s reasons were better or worse than mine.

He was good at the job. Damn good.

That was what mattered.

His mind worked ceaselessly, crossing all pathways and contingencies. And despite his scary scars, he was good with his patients, those who needed his help. Putting them at ease with a touch, quickly stitching wounds as painlessly as possible. Bringing people back from the dead.

Jade.

That final night in Beirut.

Fuck.

The shitstorm had been eyeball high with Jade taking most of the heat care of Majedah’s cunt of a husband—Qasim Hassan, the Shia reactionary.

Jade hadn’t turned gray. She’d turned dead-fucking-white. Her heart had stopped more times than I could remember, and we’d never told Walker how close she’d come to walking across death’s threshold once and forever.

The way he’d held onto her in the front seat of the Hummer.

Looked at her like his life was tied to hers.

Shouted for her to come back. To come back for him as he pounded her chest . . . I’d nearly lost my grip on the steering wheel, Majedah sandwiched between us, and Storm and Bane stationed on the back of the vehicle with rifles in hand.

A love like that I’d never witnessed, never had. Once . . . fleetingly, I’d wanted . . . I’d lost . . .

In that small room in the airtight warehouse, Bane had brought Jade back from the brink, snarling fiercely, touching her with only as much force as he needed to.

“If you don’t wake up, woman, I’ll have to listen to Walker raining abuse on me for the rest of my days.” He’d hit her with another round of epi. “I can’t keep you alive if you don’t fight. And I know damn well you’re a fighter, because you made my life a bitch today.

“What’s her tox screen?” Bane had glanced back, teeth bared, hunkered over Jade as if he could keep the Grim Reaper at bay.

I’d read the printout. It wasn’t pretty. She’d been maxed out on a cocktail of opioids. No wonder her heart refused to beat, her lungs to fill, her eyelids to open.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” Bane had vaulted onto the gurney, pressing both hands over her chest. “Paddles!”

He’d laid them on her bare chest, and I’d watched the current of electricity shock through her body down to her toes.

Asystole!

There’d been a massive
bang
outside. The cavernous room beyond our little slapdash field hospital filled with raised, unrecognizable voices.

Danger was close at hand.

Jade was still dead on the table.

The solid beep of the alarm shot like an arrow through my spine.

“You either pump her chest or guard that door because there is no fucking way on this earth I’m telling Walker Jade is dead.” Bane popped off the stretcher and filled another needle.

“She’ll stroke out if you shoot her up with too much more.” My hands, folded one on top of the other, massaged her stilled heart beneath the wall of muscle and bone.

He spit off the needle cap. “Think I don’t know that?”

Bane had pushed the epinephrine, looking for a blip on the monitor that flatlined.

“Walker is waiting for you. GODDAMN YOU! WAKE UP, JADE!”

My stomach clenched like a balled fist as I counted the seconds, watching the door,
watching
Jade’s monitor for any action.

A sudden huge gasp filled the room, filled her chest.

Bane bowed his head to hers for a moment, his eyes shut. “Thank you.
Thank you
.”

The commotion outside eclipsed her reawakening, and Bane pounded to the door, opened it for a quick scan then closed it with a hard hit from his shoulder.

“There’s a team here. Your team from the Ministry, Jade.”

Red-rimmed eyes met his, and her fingers fluttered to her chest where her heart had just started beating again.

The shouts outside escalated.

I helped her sit up, aiding the woman who had probably never been weak one single day of her life.

“Walker?” she’d gasped.

“He’s holding them off.” Bane stomped forward, his fierce scowl slowly dissolving as he checked her vitals.

“He doesn’t want to let you go.” I’d gripped her hands that searched . . . searched for something I couldn’t give.

“I . . . I need to go with them.” She sank down. “Better for him.”

“Fucking doubt that,” Bane had gritted out.

In the end, Walker had no choice but to let her go. After that night, raw pain had consumed him like a wound festering from the inside out. No one could talk to him. He never joked around anymore.

He hadn’t come back to life until Jade had returned.

The two of them had been through ten thousand kinds of hell, and that was exactly why I was never falling in love again.

I glanced at Bane, wondering if he’d ever been tortured because of love.

With his hard features and gruff demeanor I somehow doubted it.

It was best for all of us to stay unattached.

Yeah, Bane was a good one to have on the team.

Didn’t hurt he was an ace shot, too.

I moved into the seat next to him, and we hunched over the iPad
I’d jacked up until Apple wouldn’t even recognize it anymore. Watching the footage of the embassy siege several times, the two of us tried to calculate a plan that wouldn’t get us killed on the way in or the ambassador and his daughter slaughtered on the way out.

Simple infiltrate and retrieve, Blaize had said.

Riiiight.

Sana’a, Yemen, was a straight-up hellhole. Unrest had reached epic proportions, anti-American sentiments sky high, culminating in the attack on the United States embassy. If it wasn’t al-Qaeda instigating rebel strife, it was the Houthi Shia seeking a toehold. For years, bloody turmoil and terrorist cells had overrun the country’s government and the operations of international bodies.

The embassy had been stripped down to a skeleton crew. The official building and the residence both situated inside the same compound were blocked off from the surrounding area by high walls and a supposedly impenetrable gate—a gate that had been breached on more than one occasion. The place was basically a military bunker inside enemy territory.

Lawless should never have brought his daughter there.

How the pair of them had gotten trapped inside the residence without any support staff or security forces quickly became evident. For the first few minutes—proceeding and during the bombardment—we had full footage of the interior and exterior of the embassy buildings and compound.

When the first missile rocked the exterior, blasting into the barricade wall, the security team had rushed from the embassy and scattered to cover the grounds.

Breach of protocol if ever I saw one.

Someone should’ve stayed with Lawless. Two someones at least. Four or five would’ve been better. But . . . fucking
skeleton crew
. . . and maybe they’d gotten their orders mixed up.

The emergence of the American security team signaled the onslaught of a second wave. Black-clad figures clambered over the wall. A sophisticated military transport vehicle carrying a car bomb exploded at the main gate. Grenades shot into the compound detonated with clouds of gray smoke and bright flashes of fire. Bodies went flying from their sentinel outposts. The sharp report of gun blasts rat-a-tat-tatted. By the time it was over the entire American force had been swiftly taken out.

All except one man, who was either fearless or had a really big death wish. Somehow Ambassador Lawless made it across the consulate grounds to the residence where the footage picked up inside.