Chapter 1 #2
Nikos adjusted his scope and cursed under his breath. “That’s not all. There’s someone else with him—another hostage.”
Lucas exhaled slowly. “Civvie?”
“Looks like it. White shirt, tan cargo pants, no gear. What the hell is a civilian doing here?” Cole cursed.
Lucas didn’t answer immediately. His jaw tensed. “Makes the mission twice as risky.”
Nikos didn’t argue. They weren’t equipped for a full-scale rescue op—not with a second unknown factor. This was a surgical extraction.
He looked up as Angel tapped twice on the comm. Nikos followed the signal and froze.
A new player had entered the ring.
A tall mercenary strode into the courtyard, dragging a girl behind him by the arm. She stumbled, falling hard onto her knees in the dirt beside the frame.
“Jesus,” Lucas hissed. “She’s just a kid.”
The merc yanked her upright by her hair, wrenching her head back to bare her throat. The girl didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. Just clenched her fists, her shoulders stiff.
Angel’s voice crackled through the comm. “I’ve got the shot.”
“No,” Nikos snapped. “You take that shot, they’ll put a bullet in the hostages before his body hits the ground.”
Lucas grimaced. “There could be more. We haven’t cleared the north side where their trucks are parked.”
The merc released the girl, growling something in her ear that made her eyes flash with fury. She stood—slowly, defiantly—and walked toward the frame, toward Markos and the other man.
“What’s she doing?” Nikos muttered. He reached for his secondary weapon. “Get into position. Angel, take the shot if he makes a move on Markos. Only then.”
“Copy that.”
Below them, the merc lifted a pistol and aimed it at the girl’s head when the girl placed her hand on Markos’s leg. The girl must have said or done something that angered him. Angel fired when the man turned his gun on Markos.
The man’s skull exploded backward.
Even as Nikos released a low, savage curse, a deafening blast tore through the far side of the compound. The floodlights blew in a burst of sparks. Darkness swallowed the courtyard.
“Go loud!” Nikos ordered. “Lucas, cover me!”
He was already moving, vaulting over the ridge, sand and gravel shifting beneath his boots as he charged downhill. A cacophony of shouts and bullets surrounded him as he veered toward the center of the camp, his heart pounding.
Markos, hold on, brother. We’ve got you.
He skidded to a halt in front of the A-frame—only to find it empty. The jagged remains of a coarse rope dipped in blood were all that was left. The frayed edges dangled from the wood where they had been cut.
“What the—”
Markos. The girl. The civilian. All three were gone.
Gunfire chewed into the surrounding dirt. He dove, rolled, and came up behind a half-collapsed stone wall. Dirt and pieces of rock shattered around him, peppering him with bits of debris.
“Angel! Where are they?!” he barked into the mic.
“Gone,” Angel replied, breathless. “They’re not here. Repeat—not here.”
“Cole?”
“Negative. I’m at the east exit. No movement.”
“Lucas?!”
“I got nothing but corpses, man.”
Then—sudden silence.
The shooting stopped. Just like that.
The only thing left were the broken bodies littering the ground.
As far as he could tell, they all belonged to the mercenary group who had taken his brother, the other man, and the girl based on their desert clothing and the patches on their shoulders.
The brief glimpse he caught of the other, unknown group had them dressed all in black.
“What the hell?” Nikos muttered, rising cautiously as the silence stretched.
He stepped warily forward, keeping his rifle at the ready as he joined the other three men who moved down towards the center of the compound. Angel knelt beside one of the mercs dressed in desert fatigues and checked for a pulse that wasn’t there.
“They’re not from here,” Cole said grimly. “Eastern European, maybe. A few from Africa. From the looks of it, they’re all hired guns.”
Cole’s brows drew together. “Why the hell would they be here? What were they protecting?”
“Do we have an ID on the other assets?” Nikos asked.
“No. If they had any wounded or casualties, they took them with them,” Lucas replied as he rubbed a hand through his short hair, his mouth set in a grim line. “Markos’s team was assigned to escort a group of international doctors. Maybe that civvie was one of them.”
“Doctors don’t bring their daughters into war zones,” Angel muttered.
“It looks like this one might have. She didn’t look like a local,” Cole said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nikos snapped, his voice cracking on the words. “Markos is missing. And I’m going to find him. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll tear this goddamned desert apart if I have to.”
Four Days Later
Forward Operating Base Echo-Zulu I
The sun was relentless, beating down on the compound like a curse. Nikos stood outside the operations tent, his fists clenched, the order still ringing in his ears.
Reassigned. Effective immediately.
Markos Aeto: missing. Presumed dead.
Bullshit.
He would know.
They were twins. Born into the world seconds apart, they had always had an unusually close bond. They finished each other’s sentences, knew when the other was hurt; hell, they even dated the same type of women! He would feel it if his brother were gone.
Cole, Angel, and Lucas surrounded him in a loose circle, saying nothing. What could they say?
Nikos turned away from them, staring out across the shimmering horizon. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“He’s not dead. I don’t give a fuck what the CO said,” he growled.
“We know, man. Hell, if you want to thumb your nose, we’ll follow. I’m up for a good court-martial, especially if we prove them wrong,” Lucas offered.
Nikos closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I can’t ask you guys to throw your lives and careers away,” he said.
Angel snorted. “Dude, have you forgotten we are all trust-fund babies? It isn’t like we’ll starve if they kick us out.”
“Yeah, but we did this so we wouldn’t end up in jail,” Cole scoffed.
Nikos breathed out a deep sigh. He didn’t know what he would do, but he wasn’t going to give up. He turned when a chorus of excited voices and the distinct sounds of military transport trucks pulling up just inside the gates filled his ears. Dust swirled in their wake.
His mind was churning with ideas when the side door of the truck in front opened and a soldier slid out. His heart sped up when a familiar figure stepped down.
Nikos’s breath caught, and his knees nearly buckled.
“Holy shit!” Angel breathed, his eyes widening.
Cole and Lucas both choked back a laugh. Nikos took a step forward. He swallowed, wondering if he was losing his mind.
Markos.
Lean. Tattered. Alive!
His brother’s face was gaunt, his eyes shadowed, but it was unmistakably him.
Markos scanned the crowd but hadn’t seen him yet. When their eyes met, something shattered and rebuilt inside Nikos.
Markos murmured something to the driver, then started walking.
Nikos moved forward, slowly at first, then faster.
When they met, it wasn’t with words.
Arms clashed, fists clenched fabric; two brothers hanging onto the miracle that had been handed to them.
“Damn but it’s good to see you,” Nikos whispered.
“You, too, bro. You too.” Markos gave a broken laugh, resting his forehead against Nikos’s.
Nikos released a strained chuckle as he pulled away to study his twin.
“We almost had you. We were there, moving in. What the fuck happened?” he demanded.
Markos drew in a shuddering breath. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I’m done, Nikos. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.”
Nikos gripped his brother’s forearms and studied his drawn face. Something had happened. There was a haunted look in his brother’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. Whatever Markos had gone through, whatever he had seen, had changed him.
“This is our last tour, bro. No more,” he promised.
Markos nodded and squeezed his arms before turning away to greet Angel, Cole, and Lucas, his voice subdued.
Nikos watched his brother. Markos was leaner, but what struck him was that when they saw him four days ago, he had been beaten, shot, and looked near death.
He’d felt Markos’s pain like it was wired into his own bones.
His gaze moved over his brother’s wrists. There wasn’t a mark on them.
“You good?” Angel asked, slinging an arm around Nikos’s shoulders.
“Yeah,” Nikos muttered, staring at his twin and suddenly feeling like he was looking at a stranger.
Cosmos stepped through the entrance to the Command Center. The CO of the base, Colonel Allen Cambridge, scowled at him. Cosmos shoved his hands into the front pockets of his fatigues and nodded to several enlisted men who looked at him with curiosity and awe.
“I should have known you were involved in this,” Cambridge bit out.
“We were merely the Uber driver. Your man had already escaped,” Cosmos replied.
“I should be court-martialing his brother and the others, instead of reassigning their asses,” Cambridge said.
Cosmos chuckled. “Technically, they didn’t disobey any orders. You sent them out on a scouting mission—”
“—and they somehow ended up in the middle of a gunfight with a group of mercs wanted across half the damn planet who were running arms,” Cambridge snapped.
“Looks like everything worked out.”
“Yeah, it’s just strange how there are no witnesses to tell how that happened… except for you, Raines. You’re driving along in enemy territory in the middle of a Goddamn desert and come upon a missing soldier,” Cambridge retorted.
Cosmos chuckled again and shrugged. “Strange how things work out sometimes, isn’t it? Have a great day, Colonel.”