PRIVATE: A Military Romance Novel (Military Men Book 2) (10 page)

I flicked the radio button. “Ready. Three. Two. One. Go! Go! Go!”

We all moved as one unit, attacking the doors and bashing them until we could gain access. The bosses preferred the stealth missions but this place couldn’t wait. Not when there were captives inside that had their lives at stake.

I’d sent Kincaid to the back of the building and teamed her with the strongest soldier I had. As the gunfire started lighting up the dark interior of the building, all I could think about was her safety. I wanted both to catch a glimpse of her to know she was okay and to not see her so she would be out of firing range.

A man with a gun much bigger than mine stepped into the middle of my path. His face was frozen in a sneer, ready to kill me the moment he saw me. His gun might have been bigger, but mine was faster. I hit him in the chest before bright red blood started to stain his filthy tunic. He went down to the floor in a bloody heap. I kicked his gun away from his reach.

I skirted around the body before entering the building further. There were mattresses in most of the rooms, splayed out on the floor with loose sheets rumpling them. Nobody was asleep, no one could slumber with the thunderous roar of the guns exploding in the air.

Watson shot me a worried look as he ducked into another room. More gunshots followed him, illuminating the place like the Fourth of July fireworks.

Maybe it was Watson’s influence but I was starting to get a horrible feeling in my gut too. Something wasn’t right about the place. There weren’t enough men to properly defend the place. They were making it too easy for us and the Taliban normally did the exact opposite.

I cleared another three rooms, each one of them empty. The stench in the place was nearly unbearable. The smell of the guns wasn’t powerful enough to cover the scent of human waste and general filth. Breathing through my mouth wasn’t nearly enough to help.

The sound of bullets firing was replaced by multiple cries of ‘clear’. The level we were on was under our control now but that didn’t mean we were out of the woods.

Something definitely didn’t feel right.

Watson sidled up to me, sweat pouring down his reddened face. “This is too easy.”

“I know what you mean. We need to go up and check out what else they’re hiding. The fuckers are up to something.”

“I’ve got your back, brother.”

I spotted Kincaid at the back of the group. Her eyes were open wide as she checked her gun and waited for further orders. Seeing her alive was more of relief than I expected. I didn’t realize how worried about her I was before that moment.

My hands made the signal that we were going up and they needed to follow. I moved with Watson at my side, I trusted him with my life and he had proved worthy of that trust several times over.

All the hair was standing on end at the back of my neck. It was more than my gut playing havoc with me, it was years of experience too. The way the building was so vulnerable to attack wasn’t right. The Taliban were more paranoid and smarter than that.

We rounded the top of the stairs and started spreading out to cover as many areas at once as we could. The floor was largely empty with only a few captives curled up in balls in the corner. Simon got them out and took them outside while the rest of the area was cleared.

The building had five levels in total. We continued the slow crawl through each of them before we reached the top. The sinking feeling only grew worse the further we moved upwards.

The roof was completely empty. It held a few cigarettes and other pieces of trash but no people. Traces of signs of the Taliban living in the building were everywhere, just not the people. Was there a terrorist convention that we didn’t know about?

“What’s wrong?” The question startled me from my thoughts as I turned around to face Kincaid. She had a smear of dirt on her elbow but seemed otherwise unharmed.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Do a sweep of the area with the others and then we’ll secure the place. Maybe we’ll all get an early mark today.”

I smiled but she didn’t return it. More than anything I wanted to share my concerns with her and talk them out but that wasn’t appropriate. She was a private, her rank was little more than a body making up the numbers. She had no right to more information than the others.

She turned away and left me standing alone on the roof while I grappled for an answer to what was going on. There had to be something I was missing. I needed to get into the head of the enemy and work out what they would have been up to in this situation.

Then it hit me, a hard blow to the gut that knocked all the air out of my lungs. “Everyone get out of the building! Now!”

My soldiers knew when they needed to follow orders quickly and without hesitation. They all started moving toward the staircase but it wasn’t fast enough for my liking. “Hurry! We need to evacuate. The building is going to blow!”

Everyone surged forward until we were sprinting down the stairs. We had to go two abreast and it seemed like we were taking an interminably long time to get down to the ground level.

I looked around, trying to spot Kincaid in the flow of bodies. She couldn’t get left behind, not if the Taliban had done what I suspected they did.

At the second level, it started.

The first explosion rocked the foundations so hard I had to brace against the wall in order to stay on my feet. Some of my men weren’t that lucky, falling over each other and down a few of the stairs.

We moved faster, our boots hardly touching the ground with the speed. The second explosion wasn’t as much of a surprise but it was still enough to have a significant impact.

I couldn’t see Kincaid anywhere, not even a glimpse of her. The panic was hard to hide. “Where’s Kincaid? Has anyone seen Kincaid?” I shouted over the din of the stomping footsteps. Nobody answered me, except for a few that shook their heads.

She could have been up or down, there was no way to tell where the hell she was. She needed to get out of the building before the whole thing came down. We all did.

Pieces of ceiling were starting to rain down, at first just dust and then in large chunks. We had to dodge them just to keep moving. Watson brought up the rear of the procession.

“Have you seen Kincaid? Was anyone else up there?”

“I don’t think so,” Watson replied. “But there was so much shit falling down I couldn’t see much. This whole place is about to implode.”

“We have to find her.”

“She’s a good solider, she’s probably already out.” If Watson thought my concern was odd, he didn’t mention it. After all, the safety of all my troop was my responsibility, but Kincaid was different. It was a primal concern, one that reached far further than the confines of a superior’s role.

My brain said to keep moving but my heart wouldn’t let me. I turned around and ran upwards, pushing past Watson in my efforts to hurry.

“Hey! It’s too dangerous,” he yelled out to my retreating back.

“I’ll be back,” I shouted in response. “Do a count outside, make sure everyone is accounted for.”

I couldn’t see him but I imagined Watson begrudgingly going down the remaining flights of stairs, shaking his head at my stupidity.

He wasn’t kidding about the condition of the building. Half the building had shifted, creating a chasm down the middle that I couldn’t jump over. Internal walls were crumbling as they were reduced to dust, the explosions still making my ears ring.

The Taliban must have had bombs on every floor, demolishing the building in a synchronized manner to ensure complete destruction.

I was having trouble walking with the constant stress of the building make it shift underneath me. Dust was getting into my eyes, nose, and lungs. I put my hand over my mouth but there was only so much dust I could keep out.

I couldn’t see a thing and my search was quickly getting ludicrous. If Kincaid had been left behind, she could be anywhere and under any pile of debris. Chances were she wasn’t alive.

Yet another explosion and large chunks of the building fell away so daylight could show its face on the inside. I didn’t have much time before being buried myself.

It crushed my soul but I had to get out of there. The only thing I could hope for now was that Kincaid had gotten out with the rest of them. Maybe, by some miracle, she managed to slip past me.

There was more of the ceiling on the floor than above, making every step I took treacherous. I needed to run but one slip and my footing would be lost for good. I moved down each of the stairs as fast as I could possibly go.

A massive wall to my left suddenly crumbled, crashing to the floor and sending out a new wave of dust in my path. There were no lights and the internal staircase was as far from the windows as they could get. If it wasn’t for the light coming in from the cracked and broken walls, I never would have been able to continue.

Screams were coming from the building but I couldn’t place where from. We’d cleared floors so there shouldn’t have been anyone left except us and they definitely weren’t coming from my men.

There had to be a basement.

The captives.

I finally reached the ground floor and burst through the hanging door. Soldiers were standing around, some already helping those that were injured in their escape.

“There are screams coming from the basement, we have to go back in,” I panted out, every word making my lungs burn. I braced on my knees while a coughing fit overcame me, expelling the dust I had coated my throat with.

I still couldn’t see Kincaid through my watery vision. The sun was motherfucking hot, making my uniform cling to the sweat on my back. I would have paid good money to be anywhere but where I was at that moment.

Simon stood forward first. “The building is coming down. It’s too dangerous to go back in. We need to return to base for further orders.”

“No. We need to go back into the building and get the goddamn captives out of the fucking basement.”

Simon shrunk back but I didn’t have time for dramatics. We needed to get moving before the whole structure trapped those people permanently.

“Get ready,” I called out to everyone assembled. “Anyone who can still walk needs to follow me. Those people are not dying today, not on my watch.”

“We should go in from the back,” Watson said. Finally, someone helpful. “It’s less damaged there.”

There were still no signs of Kincaid, even as my team started to fall into lines heading toward the building again. We were all covered in dust, both in shades of white and brown.

“Has anyone seen Kincaid?” I called out as I marched. The men around me shook their heads, some yelling out a ‘no’ from further down the front of the line.

The noise of the building dying and shifting filled the air, alerting everyone in the area to the destruction we had triggered. If they didn’t appreciate our presence before, they certainly wouldn’t now.

There was nothing stable about the building as we went inside again. Support beams crisscrossed our path, making us crouch down to get through. The screams were louder now and appeared to be getting louder the further we walked. We had to be going in the right direction.

The staircase downwards was hidden behind a wall that had crumbled apart in spectacular fashion. We pulled at all the wood and debris to get through but there was more there than we anticipated.

My arms ached with the repetitive strain of removing bricks and concrete. Every scream that echoed upwards spurred me on further.

It wasn’t until we were almost through that I saw her.

Kincaid.

Lying underneath a pile of rubble.

My heart stopped as time seemed to move in slow motion. She wasn’t moving at all, lying as still as a dead body. I’d seen death plenty of times before but they were never people I knew, never people I really cared about.

“Kincaid,” I called out. All the aches were forgotten while I struggled to get to her. There wasn’t one part of me that wasn’t obsessed with reaching her. I needed to feel for a pulse because she sure wasn’t in a position to reply to my pleas.

“The beam holding her down is also keeping up the roof,” one of my men, Cooper, said as he pointed to the offending piece of wood. He was right, which meant getting her out of there was going to be nearly impossible.

“We need to prop up the roof,” I said. Instantly, my men started to get to work. There were plenty of pieces of debris around but not much as tall and strong as what we needed.

I swept everything off the top of a desk and then pushed it toward the center of the room. It was like an inferno inside, making my hands slick with sweat. I wiped them on my pants and heaved harder until the desk was where I needed it to be.

Others caught onto my plan as we hurried to create a makeshift support beam. The building wasn’t going to last much longer and I would have preferred it if everyone wasn’t still inside when it gave up the ghost.

Pieces of wood stretched from the desk to the roof, they were unstable at best but as good as we could get. We could finally get to Kincaid and remove the beam pinning her in place.

We crouched down along the piece of wood. “On my count, we do this slowly. Three. Two. One.” The beam was heaved from her and placed on the floor, no longer blocking our way.

“Watson, lead a team down into the basement. Simon, Hamilton, stay here and help me. Move, soldiers, now!”

They all jumped to command while I leaned over Kincaid. My hand was shaking as I touched her neck to look for a pulse.

I could feel it. Her heart was beating fainter than it should but it was still working. “Help me get her out of here.”

Simon took her legs while I hooked my hands under her shoulders. Hamilton hovered between us, clearing our path out of the building.

We took her to the front of the property and then crossed the road before I was satisfied we were a safe distance away when the building decided to give up and collapse in full.

Kincaid was gently placed on the ground while I inspected her for injuries. She had a red welt on her head that had been oozing blood at some stage but was now dried. I couldn’t see any other injuries but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.