Ghost (Iron Battalion MC #3)

Prologue

GHOST

“LIEUTENANT, GOD DAMN IT! I SAID MAYDAY! WHERE IN THE HELLS BELLS ARE YOU!?”

I snapped my head up, awake and alert. Fuck, had I fallen asleep?

BOOMMMMM!

The ground beneath me shook. Screams erupted into the air. I scrambled to the computer desk in front of me, my fingers flying across the keyboard.

CRASHHHHHH!

“Noooooo!”

I whipped my head toward the door when something crashed against it.

No. No, no, no. It couldn’t be.

I couldn’t have been that reckless.

“Lieutenant! Ghost! We need a sitrep! Please!”

I scrambled to get to the microphone sitting on the desk next to the keyboard. “Roger, roger. What in the hell is going on out there!?”

“You were supposed to be watching! Were you watching!? You didn’t see it!?”

My eyes danced in between all of the security camera screens. I abandoned the mic, my hands shivering as my fingertips flew a million miles a second.

There was no way I had fallen asleep.

Not with the kind of caffeine I had pumped into my system.

My hands shivered. My heart rate skyrocketed. For the first time in my military career, I panicked. My eyes widened as I watched another convoy make its way through the front gates of our marine compound.

Right through the demolished front fucking gates.

Oh my God.

We had been breached.

I reached for the mic and yelled into it. “How in the fuck did this happen!? Tell me what you saw before they started pouring in!”

Static noise greeted my ears as one of my screens went blank.

“Captain! I need an update!” I barked.

Another crash.

Another boom.

Another round of screens.

Before another screen went staticky.

I pulled my gun from my hip and leapt up from the chair. But almost immediately, the ground trembled, and I got knocked to the floor. My head cracked against the edge of the desk. Stars swam in my eyes.

Another boom shook the ground I laid upon.

“Captain,” I grunted as I tried to stand.

The world around me tilted. I felt something dribbling down my face. A series of knocking thuds came against the bomb-blast door that cut me off from the rest of base.

From the rest of my Marines.

From the rest of my men.

“I’m coming,” I grunted as I rolled over onto all fours.

“Lieutenant! Open up! They’re coming! Please! Let me in!”

“Coming,” I grunted as the world tilted in my vision.

“LIEUTENAAAAAANT! MOMMY! PLEASE! SOMEONE HELP MEEEEE! MOM! MOMMY! NOOOOO!”

I heard the sound of gurgling. Squelching. Someone was crying somewhere. So many voices cried out for their mother. Boys, dying where they stood. Boys who had no fucking business fighting the war of rich men.

Somehow, I pulled myself up to my feet.

Somehow, I found my way to the wall.

And somehow, I managed to stumble against it, using it to prop me up as something dribbled down my neck.

Was that the blood from my face?

No matter, I didn’t have time.

“I’m here,” I panted as my trembling hands fiddled with the lock on the door. “I’m here. Come in. It’s safe in—”

I ripped the door open, and the smell of smoke and chaos greeted me. People were running around. Bullets flew in all directions. Chattering men called out in a language I hadn’t bothered to learn, and now I wished I paid attention in all of those required language courses.

Base had been infiltrated.

Heads were dragged behind stolen Humvees.

Bodies littered the ground.

My eyes widened as I looked down, and I found a sergeant. My sergeant. Sergeant Davie Bucklesbee.

With his insides spilled out onto the ground.

“No,” I whispered as I dropped to my knees.

I found myself scooping up his insides and trying to put them back.

“Come on, Sarge. Stay with me,” I whispered.

My hands shivered as I brushed the sand off his large intestines.

He could still survive if I put it back.

Right?

“Bring him home safe, okay?”

His wife’s words bombarded my mind as I shoveled his insides back into his body. It wasn’t until another crash rocketed me off to the side, kicking up dust that completely enveloped his body, that I realized I made a grave mistake.

A mistake that had cost the man his life.

Why the fuck had I fallen asleep!?

I coughed as I waved my hand in front of my face.

Fucking hell, I needed a mask or something.

The grit of the sand caught in between my teeth.

It was twinged with the taste of metal. It clogged the back of my throat, threatening to drown my lungs.

I heard someone calling out to retreat. I heard footsteps and gunfire being shot into the air.

Random bullets rained down around me, and somehow, despite the bile creeping up the back of my throat, I managed to crawl my way back to Davie.

“I’m not leaving you behind,” I grunted.

I scooped my arms underneath him and dragged him back into the bomb shelter. I closed the door and looked back at my cameras. All of them were staticky. I had no more eyes around base.

How the fuck had I fallen asleep!?

I never fell asleep at my post.

“I’m so sorry,” I said breathlessly as I reached for the weapons on Davie’s hips.

I forced myself to pay attention through the tilting of the world.

As long as I had a focal point, everything else stayed in relatively the same position that my brain required.

I stumbled back toward the door. Blood followed me in a trail in my wake.

I pulled the guns off my hips, checking their magazines to make sure they were full.

I cocked them and whipped the door open.

“Raaaaaa-AAAAAAAH!”

Bullets. It was all I knew. Bullets and blood.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know who I was pursuing.

But if they didn’t have a United States Marine Corps uniform on, they were toast. I didn’t allow anyone to announce themselves.

I took no mercy as I popped bullets into the chests of the people who ran down our gate and exploded their way into our ranks.

Every single last one of them would die for what they had done.

“Lieu—ten—nant—”

I whipped around at the sound of the voice. I recognized that voice. “Lonnie! Where are you!?”

“L—ieu—”

I felt fingertips at my ankle and I looked down.

I heard someone charging me, and I lifted my gun, pulling the trigger without even looking.

The sound of a body dropping to the ground had nothing on the sound that happened inside of my body when I dropped to my knees and scooped up the private’s hand.

Just a private.

Just a kid.

“Hutchins,” I said breathlessly. “I’m right here. Hey. Focus on me.”

He coughed up blood, looking up at me with those fearful brown eyes of his. “The… the bomb. At… at the… the… the gate.”

“I know,” I said as I whipped my head around, trying to find a good place to tug him for safety. “I know. They took down the gate. I know that’s how they got in.”

“No,” he said before he coughed.

His lips twinged with blood as I stood and hefted him over my shoulder. “Keep that blood inside, soldier. You hear me?”

“Ghost,” he squeaked out.

“I’ve gotcha. Just hang on.”

“Div…er…sion,” he choked out. “It was… just… a… there… on your… cameras… if…”

“Hush now,” I commanded as I rushed back to the bomb shelter that served as the surveillance room I was in. “I’ve got you and everything is just fine.”

“So—rry.”

“No apologies, soldier. Let’s go.”

I had no idea that he was apologizing for bleeding all over the back of my uniform. I had no way of knowing that turning him upside down over my shoulder like that would have only made things worse.

“All right,” I said as I settled him down away from Davie’s body, “now, Private, if you can look at me—”

When my eyes finally caught his, I froze. Another bomb. Another shake. Another tremor. Another round of screams. But it had nothing on the way that nineteen-year-old private looked up at me with death in his eyes.

With sorrow on his face.

Apologizing for something that was my fault.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered as my fingers urged his eyes closed.

Stepping outside was like unleashing the hounds.

I blacked out. I heard screaming, and I charged for it, discharging my weapons and plucking others off the dead bodies that littered the ground around me.

Bodies that I was responsible for. I needed to be out there.

I needed to see what my laziness had done.

It was the only punishment that fit my crime.

“Lieutenant!”

“Ghost!”

“Someone, help me!”

“I can’t feel my legs!”

“Mommy! Mommy, help meeee!”

“HEEEEEEEELP!”

Wait a second, that wasn’t—

“SOMEBODY HELP ME! THEY’RE COMING FOR MEEEEEE!”

I whipped my head up from the sink where I splashed my face with some cold ass water. One of the few times I ever chanced a glance at my face without my mask. I hated the taste of sand. The taste of dirt. I also hated showing my face.

Someone like me didn’t deserve to show their face.

“Just a flashback,” I whispered breathlessly to my reflection in the mirror. “Just a—"

“PLEASE! THEY’RE COMING! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL MEEEEE!”

That wasn’t a flashback, however.

And before I knew it, my legs carried me as quickly as they could run as I put my mask back on my face.