Authors: Julie Ann Walker
Rev It Up
Copyright © 2012 by Julie Ann Walker
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover images: Motorcycle by Sam Nehme of Broward Motorsports/BMS Choppers, Photography by Michael Lichter Photography
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To my mother. I owe all of this to you. You supported me and encouraged me through all my endeavors, and instilled in me a love for the written word that has shaped and enriched my life. Oftentimes, there wasn’t enough money for those designer jeans I thought I couldn’t live without, but there was always enough extra for book clubs and book fairs. Thanks for keeping my priorities straight.
Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero’s heart.
—Proverb
High in the mountains of the Hindu Kush
October…
“This is seriously messed up, guys,” Preacher whispered as he kept the business end of his M4 aimed at the Taliban leader sitting cross-legged on the dry, shale-strewn ground. Al-Masri’s mouth was covered with duct tape, but even so, it was hard to miss the bitter twist of his bearded cheeks or the undisguised hatred glowing in his black eyes.
Messed
up
. Jacob Sommers, aka Jake “The Snake,” couldn’t help but agree with that incredibly concise, if somewhat tame, assessment. Personally, he would’ve qualified their current situation as
fucked
up
. Fucked up from the ground up, to be more precise, but that was the difference between him and Preacher. He cursed like the sailor he was, and Preacher was actually known to bust out with the occasional
golly
gee
.
Of course, what you called it didn’t really matter, because it all boiled down to their entire mission having been plagued by disaster from the get-go. Starting with their one and only satellite radio getting bashed to smithereens on the side of the mountain when its strap broke during their fast-rope insertion into enemy territory. Continuing after they’d snatched al-Masri from his bed in one of the tiny houses crammed in the valley below, only to be spotted by one of his men who’d chosen the unholy hour of oh-three-hundred to go take a piss. And ending with the Taliban leader’s army boiling from the village to fan out across the valley, effectively cutting off Jake and his team’s planned route of escape and causing them to miss their evac out of this godforsaken hellhole. As a result, they’d been forced to take cover in a tiny outcropping of trees clinging precariously to the side of one hellaciously sheer barren-ass mountain.
And
to add a shiny turd on top of this crap sundae, the sun was coming up, slipping over the mountains to their east and spilling its disastrous light all around them.
“So whatchu boys wanna do now?” Rock asked in his slow Cajun drawl. Jake glanced at him briefly before turning his attention to the CO’s scarred face.
“Kill ’im,” Boss said, spitting on the ground like a visual exclamation point. “If we don’t, we probably won’t make it outta here. And if we try to take him with us, this douchebag will give away our position the first chance he gets. Intel says his army consists of between 80 and 120 fighters, which means at best that’s twenty-to-one and, at worst, thirty-to-one. We’re good, gentlemen, the absolute best, but those aren’t odds I’m comfortable entertaining.”
The four of them, Navy SEALs from Bravo Platoon, had been tasked with snatching Hamza al-Masri—the local Taliban leader personally responsible for the barracks bomb resulting in the deaths of over two hundred good Marines—and bringing him back to face some old-fashioned American justice. But that outcome was looking less and less likely as the hours and list of what-the-hells mounted.
“Those aren’t our orders,” Jake murmured, pissed beyond measure at the entire assbag of a situation. “We were told to bring him in still breathing.”
“Yeah?” Boss scoffed, his face full of derision. “And just who gave those orders, do you suppose? Some pencil-pushing prick in DC who wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to how quickly things can go from sugar to shit out here on the battlefield, that’s who. But what we’re talking about here is serious, guys, something that could get us reprimanded at best, busted down in rank, or worse. I won’t make the call. We all have to agree.”
Jake knew Boss was right. He knew killing al-Masri was their best chance at surviving. And Lord knew,
he
certainly wanted the guy dead, had wanted his head on a spike ever since that bombing. But that was a big part of Jake’s growing problem, now wasn’t it?
“No one would need to know,” Preacher mused. “We could kill him, bury the body, get the heck out of Dodge, and say we never saw him.” But even as he said the words, it was obvious from the look of disgust that passed over his camo-painted face that the idea didn’t sit real well with him.
It didn’t sit real well with
any
of them.
Among patriotism and loyalty and honor, one of the characteristics most SEALs prided themselves on was honesty. Lies tended to stick in their craws.
“No. If we do this thing, we’re doing it out in the open,” Boss said, his jaw sawing back and forth. “We get back to base and say, ‘This is what we did because it was our only viable option.’ And anyone who knows anything will understand that’s God’s honest truth. I’m not falsifying reports. I refuse to do that.”
“Maybe we kill him, report it, and nothing comes of it,” Preacher proposed. “They’re going to give him life in Gitmo or string him up by his neck anyway, so what’s the point? I think the brass will have our backs on this one.”
Say
what?
Jake resisted the urge to glance overhead—just in case pigs were singing R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” while zooming past.
He liked Preacher, he honestly did—despite the fact that six weeks ago the guy had up and married the only woman Jake ever loved. Of course, given that whole pride and honesty thing, he had to admit Preacher’s marriage to Michelle was mostly
his
fault. He
had
been the one to push the two of them together…
And was it really any surprise they’d hit it off?
Um, that’d be a big, resounding negative. Considering Michelle Knight was the finest, sweetest woman on the planet and Steven “Preacher” Carter was the nicest, absolute
nicest
guy Jake had ever met, it should’ve been a foregone conclusion they would be a perfect match.
And, yes, he realized that most people would consider labeling a guy who was philosophically discussing slicing open a man’s jugular as
nice
was more than a bit bizarre, but besides being nice, Preacher was also one hell of a soldier.
He knew the score here.
Then again, if he really believed they could come out of this shit-storm of a situation totally unscathed, he should be voted mayor of La-La Land.
“Gimme a break, brohah,” Jake growled, reverting back to the surfer lingo he’d grown up with, as he tended to do in stressful situations. “You
know
better than to trust the brass to have our backs. The good ol’ U-S of A wants al-Masri as a prize, a warning to all the other fanatics on the planet that there’s no place you can hide where we won’t find you and bring you to justice. We’ll be skewered if we kill him. No,” he shook his head, “we have to take him back in one piece.”
Although, if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t the thought of being demoted or ripped a new one by the rapier tongue of the general that prompted his dissent. No, no. He didn’t care about rank or any of that other bullcrap. It was the fact that his heart beat with a terrible, hungry rhythm at the thought of slipping his knife from its sheath and ending al-Masri’s existence right there and then that scared the breath right out of his lungs. Because he wasn’t supposed to have any particular feeling one way or another about his missions. He was supposed to remain cool and levelheaded.
Detached.
But lately that was becoming nearly impossible. Ever since the bombing, ever since the horror of sorting through all those bodies had planted a seed in him that’d steadily grown into a poison-fanged monster, he’d been struggling against a mind-numbing fury that obliterated all thoughts save those of vengeance.