Scars of Trust (The Brave Delta Force Division #5)

Chapter 1

Russ

That’s how these things always start.

Not with a warning. Not with mercy. Just a phone vibrating in the dark—and the cold, certainty that someone, somewhere, is already running out of time.

I roll out of bed before the second vibration hits, grab the phone from the nightstand, and answer on the move.

“Duncan.”

“Briefing room three. Ten minutes.”

The line goes dead.

No explanation. No good morning.

Just the kind of clipped order that tells me this one’s bad.

By the time I hit the hallway, I’m already dressed—black cargo pants, gray T-shirt, boots half-laced as I move.

The compound is quiet at this hour, but not asleep. Men like us never really sleep. We drift. We reset. We wait for the next fire.

Inside briefing room three, Miles Newton is already there, leaning back in a chair like he owns the place, coffee in one hand, expression grim enough to kill the usual smart-ass comment before it ever leaves his mouth.

Lucas Spencer stands near the wall, arms folded, eyes on the screen.

Clay Vincent is flipping a knife in one hand, catching it by the handle every time with that eerie calm of his.

I take the empty seat at the table.

“This sounds fun,” I mutter.

Miles slides a file across to me. “Depends on your definition of fun.”

I open it.

Photos.

Smoke.

Collapsed buildings.

Children covered in dust.

Medical tents shredded by shelling.

Then the satellite image comes up on the screen at the front of the room, along with a red circle over a battered section of western Iran.

Our handler steps forward. “Conflict escalation in the region has turned ugly fast. Local militia groups are using the chaos to settle scores, and the regime is cracking down hard. Foreign aid workers are being targeted. Americans especially.”

That last part lands hard.

The room goes still.

“Three American doctors are still inside a pediatric relief zone near Kermanshah,” he continues.

“They stayed after the evacuation order to treat injured civilians. Intelligence suggests regime forces have begun hunting foreign nationals house to house. We believe they’ll be dead inside forty-eight hours if we don’t move. ”

I look back down at the file.

Three names.

Dr. Hannah Bowers.

Dr. Stephen Cole.

Dr. Olivia Taylor.

There’s a photo clipped to the last page.

Dark blonde hair pulled into a loose knot.

No makeup. Tired blue eyes. A smudge of dirt streaked across one cheek.

She’s kneeling beside a little girl with a bandaged leg, one hand on the child’s shoulder, her face set in the kind of quiet determination that says she’d stand in front of a firing squad before she let anyone touch those kids.

Something about the image hits harder than it should.

“She’s the problem,” Murray Conrad says.

I glance up. “Meaning?”

“Meaning the other two are likely to come if we can reach them. Dr. Taylor won’t. Our sources say she’s been refusing extraction for days. She’s running what’s left of a makeshift clinic for displaced children.”

Miles exhales slowly. “So we’re rescuing someone who doesn’t want to be rescued.”

Clay catches the knife and slips it away. “Those are always my favorite.”

Murray taps the screen again, and new images appear—checkpoints, road closures, armed patrols, black vehicles without plates.

“Your insertion window is narrow. You’ll enter through northern Iraq, cross the border, and move on foot the last stretch. Minimal signature. No support once you’re inside. Get the doctors out and get back across the line.”

Lucas studies the map. “What’s the complication?”

Murray gives him a look that says all of it.

Then he says, “We’ve intercepted communications indicating the regime has orders to execute American nationals publicly if captured. They want a message. They want fear.”

Miles sets his coffee down.

No one speaks for a second.

Because we all know what that means.

This isn’t just a rescue.

It’s a race against a clock that’s already bleeding out.

I flip back to Olivia Taylor’s photo.

She’s not smiling.

She’s not posing.

She’s looking at that little girl like the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

“Any local security?” I ask.

“Scattered volunteers, mostly. A priest. Two teenage boys helping with supplies. No trained defense. They’ve already been hit once. I would go with you, but I have to be in Ukraine tomorrow.”

My jaw tightens.

“What kind of doctor is she?” I ask.

Murray checks his notes. “Pediatric trauma. She volunteered with an aid group eight months ago and refused reassignment twice. Has a record for insubordination in the best possible sense. She goes where the worst injuries are.”

Clay snorts. “Sounds like she’s going to love you, Russ.”

“I’m not there to be loved.”

Miles grins without humor. “That’s good, because from the sound of it, she’s going to want to stab you.”

The meeting shifts into movement after that. Routes. Comms. Gear. Timing. The things that keep men alive when plans go bad—and over there, they will go bad. It’s just a matter of when.

An hour later, we’re wheels up before dawn.

The plane is dark except for red overhead lights and the faint glow from a tablet in Lucas’s hands. Clay is asleep like a man who can shut off danger with the flip of a switch. Miles is cleaning a sidearm with careful efficiency.

I sit with my forearms braced on my knees and Olivia Taylor’s file open in my hands.

I shouldn’t still be looking at her photo.

Shouldn’t be wondering what kind of woman stays in a war zone when everyone else is trying to run.

Shouldn’t be replaying the way she looked at that child.

But I am.

Because there’s courage, and then there’s recklessness.

There’s selflessness, and then there’s the kind of stubborn that gets people killed.

I’ve spent enough years in hell to know the difference.

Miles glances over. “You keep staring at that picture, she’s going to start charging rent.”

I shut the file. “Mind your own business.”

He chuckles. “That bad, huh?”

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s what worries me.”

I lean back in the seat and close my eyes for exactly two seconds before the image comes back anyway.

Dust on her cheek.

Defiance in her eyes.

The kind of face a man remembers even when he has no business remembering anything at all.

“She stays, we drag her out,” Lucas says quietly, still looking at the map.

I open my eyes.

He isn’t asking.

He’s reminding me what the mission is.

And he’s right.

We aren’t there to debate.

We aren’t there to admire her conviction.

We aren’t there to save the world.

We’re there to extract three Americans and get out before Iran burns down around us.

Simple.

Except the missions that look simple on paper are usually the ones that leave blood on your hands.

Hours later, boots hit dirt under a moonless sky.

The air is dry. Cold. Sharp enough to cut the inside of your lungs. We move fast and low, gear tight, weapons checked, shadows among shadows as we cross hostile ground with nothing but night overhead and war breathing in the distance.

Somewhere beyond the ridge, artillery rolls like thunder.

By dawn, smoke stains the horizon.

By noon, we’ve lost two drone windows and changed routes twice.

By evening, we’re in position above the village.

What’s left of it.

The clinic is a half-collapsed schoolhouse ringed with rubble, patched tarps, and the desperate kind of hope people build when they’ve run out of options.

Kids move like ghosts between the walls.

Women carry buckets. Men with hollow faces scan the roads with ancient rifles and no illusion that they could stop what’s coming.

I raise the binoculars.

And there she is.

Dr. Olivia Taylor.

She’s in blue scrubs under a dirt-caked jacket, sleeves shoved to the elbows, hair falling out of its knot as she kneels beside a boy on a blanket in the yard. She presses her hand to his shoulder, speaking low and steady while blood stains the fabric wrapped around his chest.

Even from this distance, I can see it.

The exhaustion.

The fury.

The absolute refusal to give up.

Then a truck backfires somewhere down the road.

Half the camp flinches.

Olivia doesn’t.

She just lifts her head, scanning the street with those sharp eyes.

Like she’s already daring death to come find her.

Miles lies beside me in the dust. “That her?”

“Yeah.”

Clay settles on my other side. “She looks friendly.”

“She looks like trouble,” I say.

Lucas checks his watch. “Movement on the east road. Two vehicles.”

I bring the binoculars back up.

Black SUVs.

No markings.

Too clean for aid workers. Too deliberate for civilians.

Regime.

My pulse goes cold and steady.

“We’re out of time,” I say.

And down below, Dr. Olivia Taylor rises to her feet like she’s ready to go to war with her bare hands.