Dove (Hawke’s Wood #2)

Prologue

BEAR

To be fair, I’ve never been great at following orders.

Which makes it kind of… ironic that I rose so high in the military.

Of course, now that’s all coming to an end. Just like everything in my life does.

“Our investigation has found that you disobeyed a direct order, not once but three times, and put your men’s lives at risk.

We find, further, that you put the entire operation at risk, as well as the weapons and top-secret information you were carrying at the time.

Lives were lost, equipment was destroyed, and regional assets were endangered by your actions. ”

The man behind the desk in front of me pauses and looks up, his eyes so dark a black he could be Satan himself.

Hell, for all the damage he’s doing to my life, he might as well be.

“In short, your actions cost us a lot of money, as well as men. As such, we’re assigning you an OTH discharge, effective immediately.”

He pauses again, and this time I know it’s intentional. He wants me to react to what he just said. Wants me to give him some sort of response. A cringe. A gesture. A moan.

But he’s out of fucking luck on that one.

After all, they’ve spent fifteen fucking years training me not to have an emotional response to anything they say or do. Christ, they’ve taught me to bury my emotions so deeply I barely have access to them anymore. So he’s a fucking fool if he thinks I’ll react now.

Even when he’s stripping me of everything I’ve worked for since I turned twenty.

“All of this could have been avoided if you’d just followed orders the way you were trained to do.”

This time, I can’t keep my mouth shut. I won’t.

“Following orders would have meant leaving my men behind and cursing them to a fate worse than death,” I snap. “And I wasn’t going to do that.”

He stares at me, his eyes narrowed in the overly bright lighting of the office, his hair cut in the high, tight manner that even the higher-ups in the Marines insist on wearing. And I know what he’s waiting for this time, too.

He wants me to call him sir, the way people like him have come to expect. The honorific they’ve imposed on me for years, now, and the one they think they deserve.

But he’s got another thing coming there, too.

Because I’m finished bowing down to people like him.

Instead of answering, I turn sharply on my heel and head toward the door out of this godforsaken place.

This tiny office where decisions are handed down, lives changed, and careers ended.

This box full of fake mahogany and beige carpets, taupe walls covered in military honors and those generic paintings you see in hotels.

This room where men like me, who have slaved for our country, are told that we’re no longer useful because we chose saving our soldiers rather than following the orders of some guy sitting in an office just like this.

“Lieutenant.”

The word is a dagger thrown right at my back, a snapped command so sharp that it actually brings me to a halt.

Partially because if I’m being discharged, that word doesn’t belong to me anymore.

I bite my tongue against the clap back trying to burst out of my mouth and turn my chin over my shoulder, giving the man only my profile. He doesn’t pay to have my full face anymore, and as far as I’m concerned, he no longer even deserves my attention.

But I’m morbidly curious about what he has to say.

“Yes?”

“You know the rules. There’s a gag order on anything you may have seen or done during your time with us. We won’t protect you if you go out and start trouble. And we won’t stand as reference for you.”

I snort at that. “Why the fuck would I use you as a reference?” I ask sharply. “I don’t even want to fucking remember I’ve been here.”

A tense, shocked silence follows that, and then: “Get out of my office, Hawke.”

Ah, there we are. No rank. No respect. Just the last name my father gave me, and nothing more.

And for the first time in years, he’s given me an order I actually want to follow.

I leave the office, stepping over the line between that box and the hallway outside it–still beige and depressing, but at least offering an exit to the outside world–and slam the door behind me, knowing as I do that I’m putting a barrier between me and my past.

Me and my career.

Me and the only real meaning I’ve ever felt in my life.

They get me on an immediate flight out of there, direct from Baghdad to JFK, and I’m grateful for that much, at least. I walk through the airport with my eyes straight ahead, ignoring the arched lights above and the gorgeous architecture of this building in favor of letting my mind jump through what I need to do to get on this plane as quickly as possible.

This is a large enough airport to take and send out international flights, so I have quite a walk ahead of me, but it’s also the middle of the night, and the place is largely deserted.

Businesspeople are looking at phones, families are hustling toward their gates, and a few single travelers are greeting each other or saying goodbye, with all the tears that includes.

The few restaurants are quiet, their lights extinguished, and though some of the booths still have people working, they aren’t doing much business.

Pity. I could have used the distraction. Instead, I’m left with nothing but my thoughts, and those are...

Grim.

Christ, this has been a long week.

Strike that; it’s been a long fucking month.

A long year.

A long fifteen years, full of blows to both my ego and my body, men screaming in my face that I wasn’t worth anything, and growth in a system that should have hated me. Achieving promotions before I should have had them courtesy of my absolute obsession with being the best.

Being put in charge of men before I was ready.

Running missions before I should have, and with an absolute lack of belief in following orders.

The problem is, I’ve always had the heart of a rebel, and yet here I was in a system that believed in absolute obedience. A chain of command that left no room for personal decisions. A commitment to mindless following of orders without regard to ethics or personal morals.

Fuck, it’s no wonder I’m being kicked out.

I’m surprised it took this long, if I’m being honest.

After all, I have a long history of disappointing the people who depend on me to do what I’m supposed to.

I huff out a laugh at that, my mind flying through a million and one memories of being a kid and going against my father–or my mother, or my older brother, or my teachers–and I let the laugh stretch into a full grin.

It’s not a charming grin, though, and I’m sure I look absolutely insane, walking through Baghdad International by myself and smiling at nothing in particular.

I don’t wipe the smile off my face, because I don’t give a fuck.

After what this week did to me, I fucking deserve this crazy grin and the bubble of isolation around me.

I close my eyes for a moment and remember where it all started: a set of orders for a new mission, to be run in the desert of Iraq right up against the border of Iran.

The target: an obscure Iranian base that sat just over the border.

A few easy steps from a country that was friendly into one that wanted us dead.

An hour, at most, in the black of night.

Less than a mile between safety and danger, with all the mechanized vehicles I needed.

A group of ten men, each of them experienced enough to know exactly what they were doing and how to do it. Young enough to be strong and agile; old enough to have the hours and training we required.

The mission was simple. Get to the base we’d been assigned, plant a bomb under a specific building, grab any guards we could find, and get the hell out of there.

When I asked why this required boots on the ground rather than a targeted strike via missile, I was told that we needed POWs to find out more about the base, and that a missile was likely to be intercepted, thereby showing that we knew where the base was and wanted more information about it.

On the surface, it made sense.

Once we were across the border and into Iranian territory, though, things went wrong so quickly that I started doubting everything they’d ever told me.

We were driving through pitch-black night when we hit the first mine.

Sudden flame exploding out of the ground, the surge of sound that meant the explosion was large enough to destroy entire vehicles.

Bright orange heat rearing up against the night sky.

Armored vehicles flying through the air and hitting additional mines when they came down. Gunshots. Men shouting.

Planes that weren’t our own tearing through the atmosphere above, here far too quickly to be anything but a trap.

I hadn’t had time to do anything but react. There was a voice in my ear telling me sharply to get the hell out of there. Get the men in the still viable vehicles, turn around, and run for the border. Get back to Iraq. Save the men I still had.

But I had three vehicles down, two of them burning, and I could hear men screaming inside them.

Hear the shouts and pleas for help, the men calling me by name.

And those were soldiers I’d known for years–friends and colleagues who had seen me through the roughest days and learned everything next to my side.

They were men under my command.

My responsibility.

And I hadn’t been willing to leave them behind.

I’d grabbed the two men out of my own vehicle and run for the burning trucks, shouting instructions as we went.

Within seconds men from the other trucks had joined us, all of us fighting to break the glass of the burning vehicles and grab the men inside them.

We worked as a unit, each of us taking a different window and maintaining constant communication.

And we pulled man after man from the burning trucks.

Each one out, I sent back to one of the whole trucks with a soldier, screaming for them to hurry and get to cover with the wounded.

Because above us, the planes were dropping down and getting as close to the desert as they could. Buzzing us as they flew over, and I had no doubt we stood out like fucking nightlights in the flames around us.

I didn’t know what they were waiting for. They could have been shooting at us right from the start, and instead they were flying around up there like they were watching a fucking TV show.

Like they were enjoying our fight. Taking joy in our struggle to get our men out.

I’d put all thought of them to the side and sent my men to the truck with the largest flames, and we’d broken one window, then another, trying to get to our men.

I’d gone into the truck itself, seeking the man I heard screaming, and had found him against the back wall, cornered by flame with his legs stuck under a stack of ammunition.

It had taken me too long to get him out, and by the time we emerged, we were both singed and coughing.

But he was alive.

I sent him back to the whole trucks with one of my soldiers and turned toward the final truck–the only one we hadn’t cleared out–ready to finish this up, when I heard something. The whine of wind on a steel body, the roar of something that wasn’t an engine but something else.

It took me three steps too long to realize what I was hearing.

And then the truck in front of us exploded into a ball of white-hot flame, pieces flying skyward as it came apart.

“Missiles!” I screamed, diving to the side.

My men came with me, each of us seeking shelter in the dunes of the desert, but that was no good, either. Within moments bullets were falling from the sky, hitting the sand around us like tiny explosions, and we were driven out of the safety of the dunes.

“Back to the trucks!” I shouted.

We ran, ducking behind the remainder of the vehicles we’d left and sprinting in between, each of us no doubt praying for the pilots above to lose focus for a single moment. When we finally reached the truck I was aiming for, I paused to look around me, trying to see whether we’d all made it.

Half of us hadn’t.

For all I knew, men were back there in the sand, hit in the leg or arm and bleeding out.

And if I’d had time, I could have saved them.

But the voice in my ear, the one coming from headquarters, was screaming to get my men out of there–as a direct order–and that I’d already disobeyed multiple demands to stand the fuck down. Screaming that I had men to save and equipment to get home.

Men to save.

That thought finally drove me into the trucks and forced me to give the command to retreat, and moments later we were tearing down the road back toward the border, all of us hunched over as if that would keep the pilots from firing on us.

They didn’t.

We were allowed to escape unscathed.

But I would never forget the men I left behind. And I would never stop wondering whether they were actually dead, or if they laid in the desert for hours afterwards, waiting for me to come back for them.

I knew I’d damn well never forgive myself for leaving them there.

So yes, I’d disobeyed orders that night, intent on saving my men. And I would have disobeyed more, if it wouldn’t have put my remaining men in direct danger.

I shake my head and come back to myself, the space behind my eyes still echoing with flames against a midnight sky and the screams of men trapped inside burning vehicles.

Around me, the airport is empty and dim, the people sleepy and sort of fuzzy around the edges during their middle-of-the-night trek through the building.

I breathe out slowly and start walking again.

My gate. I need to get to my gate and get on the plane home. Back to the US. Back to New York.

And from there, back to Hawke’s Wood, and the kids I deserted four years ago.

The kids I don’t even know if I can call my own.

Not anymore.