Текст книги "Collateral Damage"

Автор книги: Kaylea Cross

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Collateral Damage

Kaylea Cross

Copyright © 2015

by Kaylea Cross

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Cover Art by

Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-928044-09-3

Dedication

This one is for my readers. You guys are incredible and I appreciate you all so much. Thank you for your support of this series, and for falling in love with my Bagram characters as much as I have. I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to these guys!

Also to Kim, to whom I’m eternally grateful to for checking my military details. Your courtship with D helped inspire part of Honor and Liam’s story, so I hope I did it justice.

With love,

Kaylea

Author’s Note

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and so too must my Bagram series. This final installment is a real emotional rollercoaster ride, so better buckle up before you start reading. Some things are not easily forgiven. It’s not easy to get over past hurts and still be willing to open your heart to the very person who broke it before, but that’s exactly what Honor and Liam have to do. I hope you enjoy this last book of the series, where you’ll catch up with the entire Bagram crew.

*Important Note*: This story picks up at the end of Danger Close, justprior to the epilogue. The last part of the book takes place after Lt. Erin Kelly returns stateside once her tour at Bagram is done.

Lastly, as always I’ve tried my best to get all the military details right, but any mistakes I may have made are my fault and no one else’s.

Happy reading!

Kaylea Cross

Glossary of Terms

SOAR: 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Also known as the Night Stalkers. Special U.S. Army regiment that provides helicopter support for special operations forces.

FE: flight engineer. Part of a military aviation crew, and responsible for monitors and operates the aircraft systems.

OPSEC: operations security.

60: refers to Black Hawk helicopters.

WOCS: Warrant Officer Candidate School.

ST6: SEAL Team Six, or DEVGRU. The most badass of the SEAL Teams and the guys who took out Bin Laden.

LZ: landing zone, area where a helicopter sets down

DAP: Direct Action Penetrator, a heavily armed Black Hawk helicopter used to escort more vulnerable aircraft on a mission

Triple-A (AAA): anti-aircraft artillery gun, usually mounted on a vehicle

AFSOC: Air Force Special Operations Command

CCT: Combat Control Team. Members of AFSOC tasked with calling in and directing fire from aircraft during battle, such as air strikes, close air support and fire support.

JBLM: Joint base Lewis-McChord, located outside of Tacoma, Washington

PJs: Pararescue Jumpers. Members of AFSOC. Advanced combat medics tasked with the recovery and medical treatment of personnel in both combat and non-combat/humanitarian missions.

CSAR: combat search and rescue

TLZ: tactical landing zone. Areas on the battlefield designated for insertion of troops and/or supplies

FLIR: Forward Looking Infrared camera, usually mounted on aircraft, uses thermal imaging to create a “picture” on a video monitor to allow pilots to fly at night.

47: nomenclature designating a Chinook helicopter

NVGs: night vision goggles

64: nomenclature designating an Apache attack helicopter

JoP: justice of the peace

CCTV: closed circuit television, usually used for security purposes

DHS: Department of Homeland Security

OPTEMPO: Operational Tempo, or the frequency at which operations are happening

AHA: ammunition holding area, where ammo is kept on base

RPG: rocket propelled grenade

Chapter One

Honor felt like she’d barely fallen asleep before a series of high-pitched beeps made her eyes fly open in the near darkness. She rolled to her side on the bunk and reached for the pager on the floor beside her boots as a groan and the creak of bedsprings sounded from the next cot over.

“’s that you or me?” Erin mumbled sleepily from beside her.

“Me,” Honor murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

“”kay.” More creaking springs as Erin turned back over and pulled the covers over her head.

Of all the roommates Honor had had over the past two deployments here at Bagram, she was closest to Erin. And now her friend’s tour was almost up. In ten short days she’d be going home and Honor would be lonely as hell.

Running a hand over her face, Honor sat up and peered at her pager, recognizing the code calling her in to manage something. The dial on her watch read oh-three-twenty-one hours. She’d only hit her rack at just before midnight.

Withholding a groan, she threw back the covers, ran her fingers through her hair and slipped the elastic band on her right wrist up to gather it into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck. She got to her feet, her aching muscles protesting the movement and lack of sleep, and grabbed a bottle of water for the walk over to the hangar.

Slipping on her utilities and tucking her sidearm into its holster on her right thigh, she eased the door of the B-hut open and glanced over her shoulder. Erin was securely burrowed beneath the covers and well on her way back to sleep, maybe to dream about her man. Wade Sandberg had saved Erin last spring when she’d been caught in a terrorist attack while on leave back stateside. The dirty bomb had detonated at CIA headquarters in Virginia, killing scores of innocent people and contaminating the area with radiation. If not for Wade, Erin would likely have died that day.

The bunk next to Erin’s was empty. Ace would be flying a night mission, hunting down tangos with the rest of her Spectre 130 gunship crew, using their FLIR and other cool gadgets and advanced avionics. Once they engaged a target, the incredible firepower on that machine made short work of enemy forces on the ground.

Man, Honor freaking loved that aircraft. Sometimes she wished she’d become a pilot, rather than an aviation maintenance technician. But she’d always had a knack for all things mechanical and most times she loved her job.

Just not as much lately, though her reasons were mostly non-work related.

Outside in the pre-dawn darkness, the air was surprisingly brisk for May and scented with the usual smells that inhabited Bagram: a mixture of earthy dust, the faint scent of aviation fuel, and the occasional whiff of sewage from the porta-potties that would only intensify as the day wore on and the temperature climbed into the nineties once more.

As she headed for the hangar, her pager went off again. She snatched it from her belt. 47 damaged by small arms fire. Crew wounded. ETA 15 minutes.

Honor stopped walking, her heart doing a sickening roll in her chest. Then she chided herself and kept going.

It’s not him. Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.

Except, considering the nature of his job and the constant danger involved in every mission he flew, she knew it very well could.

With renewed urgency she hurried across base to the hangars and found three of her soldiers standing around drinking coffee, waiting for the damaged bird to arrive.

“Hi, ma’am,” Smithers, her master sergeant, said.

“Hey,” she said, accepting a coffee from him with a smile of thanks. Corporal Feinstein was beside him, and Private Ipman on the other. “Where’s Andrews?”

Smithers rolled his eyes. “Taking his sweet time getting his ass in gear, as usual.”

She made a mental note to talk to him about that. Again. “Any more word on what happened with the bird? What unit they’re with?” Anything to prepare them for what they could expect upon arrival.

He shook his head. “Command told us a few of the crew were wounded, that medics and fire are on the way, and that’s it. Not sure who they’re with, or if the damage is small arms fire or an RPG.”

“Well the good news is, they’re still able to fly her,” Honor said, taking a sip of blessedly hot coffee. She felt more awake already. “You guys ready to go to work?”

“We were born ready,” Ipman piped up from where he was readying equipment near the far wall.

Together the four of them walked out onto the tarmac and stood near the flight line, waiting for the wounded Chinook to arrive. Emergency vehicles began showing up on scene, base paramedics and firemen standing by to greet the incoming bird and her crew. The entire time Honor’s heart beat an erratic rhythm, unable to shake that deep-seated fear that it was Liam’s bird. It wasn’t a rational fear, since logically she knew SOAR had its own maintenance section and the chances of her crew being called in for one of their aircraft was almost zero.

That didn’t diminish the lingering unease, made even worse because of the extra helping of guilt on top of it. Being that they were no longer on speaking terms, she hadn’t even had the guts to contact him after the incident last March to see how he was doing.

He hadn’t contacted her either, of course, but she hadn’t expected him to after the way they’d left things. Nope. He’d made his feelings about her actions crystal clear on that terrible night over a year and a half ago. The crux of it was, he didn’t understand what it was like to be forced to make the impossible choice between the person you love and your family. He saw her as weak for her decision, thought she didn’t love him.

Even nineteen months later that still stung. If he thought those things, then he didn’t really know her at all.

Ipman had been over talking to some guys from another crew and returned with news. “It’s a forty-seven Foxtrot.”

An older, utility Chinook. Couldn’t be Liam then, she told herself. SOAR pretty much only flew Echo and Golf models now. She let out a breath of relief.

Glancing back, she noticed Andrews had shown up at last and was standing with Feinstein, looking half-asleep with his sandy-brown hair sticking up and his eyes bleary. Finally the unmistakable sound of approaching rotor blades carried over the noise of other aircraft readying for takeoff, shaking her out of her thoughts.

In the distance, backlit against the eastern horizon getting lighter by the minute, two UH-60 Black Hawks appeared like giant black insects in the sky. Behind them, the huge, hulking silhouette of a 47 came into view. A small plume of smoke trailed behind it.

The 60s landed farther north down the tarmac, leaving the area closest to the emergency crews for the 47F. The pilots settled her down on the tarmac and in the lights from the fire trucks and ambulances Honor got her first look at the damage it had sustained. Her soldiers stood next to her, all of them taking in the multiple large-caliber holes in the right side of the fuselage, streaking from the rear of the cockpit and continuing all the way up to the engine housing. The pilots began engine shutdown and the twin rotors began to slow.

Fire crews moved in immediately. The medical personnel waited at the end of the loading ramp as the FE lowered it. A minute later five figures appeared in the opening, one man suspended between two others, his arms draped across his crewmembers’ shoulders as they helped him out. From where Honor stood she could see the blood streaking his right side, from hip to knee. Another of the crewmembers walked out cradling his left arm, already wrapped in a bloody bandage.

Heart thudding in her ears over the sound of the engines in their cool-down cycle, Honor watched as the wounded pilot removed his helmet and felt an additional surge of relief when the light caught on his hair. Blond, not dark.

Definitely not Liam, even though she’d known it wouldn’t be. And both injured men were walking out, so that was a good sign.

She expelled the breath she’d been holding, waited while the fire crews rushed in to check the situation inside and others drained the fuel to avoid a possible fire if any of the lines had been damaged. When they reappeared a few minutes later and gave the all clear, she and her soldiers climbed inside to look around.

Smithers let out a low whistle as he swept the beam of his flashlight around the interior. Light from outside streamed through the many holes in the fuselage and there must have been a fire at some point because the crew had sprayed retardant all over the place. The smell of jet fuel hung thick in the air, from the crews draining the tank, but perhaps from damaged fuel lines as well.

“They were damn lucky to keep the bird in the air,” Smithers said.

Honor didn’t answer, already busy doing her own inspection of the cockpit. The beam of her flashlight landed on the co-pilot’s seat. She stared at the blood staining it, her mind flashing back to Liam and what he must have had seen and felt when his own bird had been hit last March. He’d stayed at the controls despite his wounds, managed to keep the Chinook in the air and save the lives of everyone on board—his crew, a platoon of SEAL Team Six operators, Honor’s former roommate Maya and her now husband Jackson, and the Secretary of Defense.

She hadn’t found out about Liam until his shot-up bird had arrived from Kandahar the day after rescuing Maya, Jackson and the SecDef from Rahim’s clutches. She’d been in the hangar with another crew working on a hydraulics problem when someone had told her he’d been wounded. The next sixteen hours had gone by in a blur until she’d seen Erin the next day and her friend had reassured her that he was okay, that she’d seen him at the hospital in Kandahar. That was it. No details, no mention of anything else.

SOAR didn’t mess around with OPSEC, and no amount of digging since had clued her in to what had happened.

Switching her focus to the situation at hand, Honor made note of the damage in the cockpit and mentally compiled a list of what needed to be done. They could replace the seat easily enough, but the rest of the repairs to the body would take days, if not weeks.

“God I hate cleaning up blood,” Andrews muttered from behind her. The muttering was nothing new. He made it clear that he hated deployment, hated Bagram even more, and seemed to hate his job most of the time. In this case though, she agreed with him.

“Part of the job, and that’s why they pay us the big bucks,” she said, but she agreed with him. Cleaning up the blood of someone you knew and cared about would be far worse though.

“Wonder who shot them up,” Smithers mused behind her. “Taliban, or that Rahim guy’s followers maybe?”

The mere mention of the name Rahim filled her with anger and loathing. The American-born terrorist mastermind was responsible for what had happened to Maya, for wounding Liam, and for Erin nearly dying in that dirty bomb attack. “Could be either. Or both.” Thankfully he’d died at the hands of Erin’s boyfriend, Wade—who’d been his second-in-command in a deep undercover operation for the CIA—just minutes before the bomb had exploded.

But his followers were still in the area and hungry for revenge. Bagram remained on high alert.

“Hey, Ms. Girard?”

Honor turned around at the sound of Ipman’s voice. As a warrant officer her soldiers either called her Ms. Girard or ma’am. “Yeah?”

“The crew chief’s here.”

Honor stepped out of the cockpit as the man began telling them what happened.

“We were doing a resupply and had just gone into an in-ground hover in a small valley in the tribal region when we started taking fire. At first just a couple shooters, but pretty soon there were a few dozen. Me and the other gunner sprayed their position but he got hit and the co-pilot shortly after. Pilot commander got us up and out of there but we were limping and we knew it. The 60s got there pretty quick and their gunners helped clear off the drop zone, but more tangos were coming out onto the surrounding hills like ants and we had to fly at a reduced altitude all the way back here.”

“Was there a fire on board?” Honor asked, envisioning all of that in her mind. Must have been real tense in here for a while.

“We smelled smoke so we sprayed the interior down and kept our eyes on the fuel lines.”

She nodded. “We’ll make sure we check all that.” From her initial inspection she was almost certain at least one of them had been damaged.

The man lifted a hand and patted the side of the interior, an almost fond expression on his face. “She’s a tough old lady, to get us back here in one piece.”

“She sure is. Go ahead and get your report done up. I know you must be anxious to check on your crew at the hospital after the debriefing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She set a hand on his shoulder, smiled. “We’ll take it from here. She’s in good hands.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Tell your FE to drop by the hangar when he gets a chance, to address any other concerns he has.” Flight engineers were crucial members of a crew and would have a good handle on all the damage to the aircraft.

“Will do.”

When he left she spoke to her soldiers. “Let’s move this girl into the hangar and get started.”

Once the Chinook was safely in the repair hangar, Honor divvied up assignments and the crew got to work. Since it was a big job she put aside her manager’s hat for a few hours and helped out, cleaning the interior then removing the damaged hoses and electrical components.

It took them hours to list the exact extent of the damage and figure out what needed repair versus replacement. Someone brought sandwiches and coffee but it was mid-afternoon before she was able to get all her paperwork filed and check on her other soldiers’ jobs. By then the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with her big time.

She swung by HQ to hand in more paperwork, intending to head from there over to the showers before returning to her B-hut for a bit, but stopped when she saw a man in a flight suit with his left arm bundled up in a sling. The co-pilot from the damaged Chinook.

Giving him a polite smile when he glanced her way, she opened her mouth to ask how he was doing and see if his flight engineer was around, when she saw another man step out of the next door down the hall.

The smile froze in place, every drop of blood draining from her face as she stared at him. Her mouth snapped shut.

Major Liam Magrath.

He stopped just outside the door when he spotted her, his hand still on the knob, paused in the act of shutting the door as he stared back at her with those piercing green eyes.

Everything else funneled away. The other people in the building, their voices, all sound except the painful pounding of her heart in her ears. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

He lowered his hand from the knob and stood stiffly beside the door, giving her a nod of acknowledgement that did nothing to ease the silent tension infusing the air. His thick, dark brown hair was cut regulation short. She knew how soft it was despite the short length because she’d run her fingers through it more times than she could count.

“Hey,” he said, his deep voice stirring bittersweet memories. It had been so long since she’d heard it.

Honor swallowed hard. “Hey.” The sudden flood of emotion was almost too much. It took everything she had to keep the pain locked inside and not let it show. Liam looked away and shifted his weight as though he was about to turn and leave. A burst of panic exploded inside her. “You hear about the Chinook that came in this morning?” she heard herself blurt out.

He stopped, his gaze coming back to hers, flat and unreadable. “Yeah. Wounded crew are gonna be okay.”

It was the first time she’d seen him in over a year. She was so starved for the sight of him she couldn’t stop her gaze from running over the length of his body. Looking at him now, it was impossible to tell he’d been hurt at all.

He looked as strong as ever, six-feet-one-inch of raw male power housed in a tightly controlled exterior. His jaw was impossibly square, as stubborn and unforgiving as the rest of him. His flight suit covered everything except where he’d rolled his sleeves up to the elbows, exposing tanned, roped forearms. Hard, powerful arms she used to wake up wrapped in whenever they got to spend the night together stateside, feeling safe and secure…

And loved. God, no one had ever loved her the way Liam had.

All this time later she still had no idea how she was supposed to live without that—without him. The nightmarish no-win situation she’d been in would’ve had far-reaching consequences no matter what she’d decided, but there wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t regret her decision.

She’d lost so much already, over the past five months alone; coming to terms with the realization that she’d lost Liam irrevocably despite her efforts at reaching out to him had pretty much shattered her.

Her stomach was a hard knot beneath her ribcage, all her muscles stiff as she struggled to think of what else to say, some part of her unable to let him go just yet. “Are you… How are you?”

Something she couldn’t decipher flickered in his eyes for a second, then his gaze chilled, his expression turning impassive. “Fine. You?” His gaze dropped to the insignia in the middle of her chest that broadcast her recent promotion to warrant officer. “Congrats.”

“Thanks.” She’d applied and been selected for WOCS and had done her training at Fort Rucker, Alabama almost three months ago now, then done a short stint back at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State before returning to finish her tour here. “But I meant how are you physically these days. I never did find out what—”

“I’m fine.” The last word rang with such finality she felt it resonate in the empty space inside her chest. He glanced at his watch, obviously impatient to leave. “I gotta go.”

Honor floundered for something else to say, something that would keep him here long enough to make him look at her, really look at her instead of acting like she was a near stranger and drop that awful, distant mask he wore. But nothing she said or did would ever make that happen.

He was a field grade officer eight ranks above her. Even with her new rank and their different chains of command making a romantic relationship between them technically within regulations if it was handled properly, that was a non-issue now. As far as he was concerned, they were done and had been for over a year and a half. He’d been hers and she’d blown it. Apologies meant nothing to him, no matter how sincere and heartfelt, and God knew she’d given several of them. He wasn’t the type to forgive and forget. Not with the way she’d hurt him.

You lost him a long time ago, and you know it. You have to let him go. Honor swallowed, struggled to keep her voice even as she said the only thing she could to save her dignity. “Okay. Take care.”

“You too.” He walked away without a backward glance, left her standing there devastated all over again. Her heart ached even more when she saw the slight hitch in his strong, confident gait. Liam moved like he owned the ground he walked on, something she’d always found sexy. Whatever other wounds he’d sustained on that mission last spring, his left leg had definitely been injured.

Honor hated that she didn’t know what happened or that she hadn’t been able to be there for him, but he’d made it abundantly clear even back then that he wanted nothing to do with her. And if this sickening sensation in her stomach at the sight of him was any indication, maybe it was a blessing that they never ran into each other.

The far door shut as Liam stepped out into the brilliant sunshine. Realizing she was still standing there staring after him like a lovesick idiot, Honor pivoted and headed back the way she’d come. Forget the shower, all she wanted was her bunk so she could pull the covers over her head and nurse her battered heart in private. They’d only bumped into each other a handful of times since they’d broken up, and every damn time she laid eyes on him her heart broke all over again.

As she walked away from the building, she couldn’t help thinking about the stark contrast between now and the first time they’d seen each other in-country, when he’d kissed her that first time. A little under two years ago now, mere months before her entire world had come crumbling down around her.