Steele (The Elite Forces Book 4) Read online

  STEELE

  Copyright © 2017 Hilary Storm

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Model: Preston Tate

  Cover Photography: Eric David Battershell

  Paperback Cover: Designs by Dana

  Editing: Julia Goda

  Printed in the United States of America

  STEELE

  By Hilary Storm & Kathy Coopmans

  PROLOGUE

  STEELE

  “Get your asses back to the chopper. We have to lift now!” I scream at Ace and Vice through my headpiece, my voice echoing off the metal confines of the chopper. The worst part of flying the bird all the time is having to listen to everything all around you and still remain in position and on the ready to take off at any given moment.

  I just heard an explosion through my earpiece, and I’m instantly yanked back in time. My mind and body on full alert, immediately feeling like I’m back at war. This happens every single time I hear loud noises, but this time there’s a reason for the adrenaline rushing through me. Shit has gone haywire out there, and I can’t tell who’s still moving or if we have anyone down. “Ace, let me hear you. I need a fucking roll call on you two asap, motherfuckers.” My fucking fingers are twitching to open this door. “Come on, brother, let me hear you speak to me.”

  A whisper comes through from Ace, and it’s moments like these when I feel as if my heart practically stops beating. I dread this shit like the fucking plague in this country. “I’m trapped; they’re coming now.” What the fuck does he mean, he’s trapped? Vice starts throwing out orders for me to stay where I am, and I do the one thing I’ve been ordered never to do; I unhook my seatbelt and leave the chopper to find my men. It may be a deadly mistake, but there’s no way in hell I’m leaving anyone behind. This is my team, and they’re like brothers to me. It almost gutted me when I was forced to fly off with Kaleb still on the ground in Mexico, and there’s no fucking way I’m doing that shit again.

  “Go. Get out of here while you can, both of you.” I should kick Ace’s ass for telling us to leave him behind, and maybe one day I’ll have that chance, but for now, I’m going to get his ass.

  I start running, making sure to stay low when I hear Ace once more. “Fuck. My legs.” The agonizing pain in just those three words is enough to gut me. When one of us is down, we’re all affected by it.

  “Where the hell are you, man?” I roar. My boots dig into the hot sand as sweat pours down my face while I make some ground. We’re positioned just outside of Baghdad in an area that’s been isolated for years. It’s some safety zone where refugees who are sick, wounded, or hell forbid, dying come. Whether the war has ended or not, people are whacked the fuck out to be here.

  This trip should have been an easy in and out. All we had to do was what we’ve been doing every month for the past three years; drop off medical supplies to a group of missionary medical personal. The usual routine takes less than a couple of hours when we’re not fucking attacked in the process. They check to make sure the order is complete, which it always is. Then we haul our asses out of here. I’ve spent enough time in the desert, so the quicker I get out of this fucking place, the better it is for me.

  I busted my ass to become a pilot when I joined the Marines right out of high school. I’ve been through years of rigorous training, all the way into Officer’s School, and even worked to become specialized in many areas because I dedicated my life to protecting our country. All the years begin to run together now that I’ve done it all. I’ve seen it all, and now at the age of twenty-nine, I’m ready to kill anything that gets in our way of us getting our asses the fuck out of here.

  “Damn it, this hurts. Fuck!” Ace screams, and it tears through me like a shard of glass ripping apart my insides. My eyes go wide, and my pulse quickens as I scan the area trying to find him. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is deafening, so I’m struggling to pick up on all the signals I should be. I stand still, purposely tuning into every sound and movement around me. I know better than to go in like a lunatic, especially when there’s no one at my back covering me. This place is a minefield full of IEDs, and the last thing I need to happen is for my ass to get caught up in one. These fuckers have perfected making improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and we simply aren’t equipped for their level of crazy doing a simple drop-off as we are.

  “Where are you?” I speak into my headset, hoping he can give me something. I should have a visual on him from here if they stayed on the path, but all I see is a bunch of shitty blown-up buildings and even worse terrain running along the river that flows through here. It’s a deserted city cluttered with burned-out remains of armored cars and other shit blown up by these devices.

  I’m standing in the middle of this fucking place, and I left my glasses back at the chopper. This is the last time I’m not wearing my fully equipped uniform, even if I’m on a fucking run to take some old lady to church on a Sunday morning. Trouble seems to find us lately, and I’m getting irritated that something that should’ve been a fucking cakewalk has turned into one of my men being injured.

  For fuck’s sake, we’ve fought many wars and been on countless missions coming out unscathed and ready for the next, and on this simple drop, I’m listening to Ace’s pain and I can’t fucking find him. I pull my earpiece and let it hang as I try and listen for them without any enhanced technology. The sound of the river drowns out most of the noise, but finally, I hear Vice yell my name in the distance.

  Everything hits me all at once as I run toward Vice’s now panicked voice guiding me to where I need to go. The torture, the dead bodies of all the innocent lives lost all begin to flash in my head as I run. Memories of my fallen brothers hit me just like the ones that haunt me in the night, causing me to run even faster as I watch the ground for anything that would stop me.

  I hear his scream through the earpiece that’s still hanging down. A routine mission is now one that will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life as I’ll add his scream to my list of things that’ll automatically replay in my head every night, torturing me to stay awake. It’s the price I pay to do what I was born to do.

  “What the fuck?” I stop dead in my tracks. The need to choke the hell out of someone has me clenching the grip on my gun. The urge to drive my free hand through the fucker who set this trap is intense, and with one glance around, I don’t see anyone alive that I can blame.

  “Is he alright?” I bend down to examine Ace. His leg is buried under a pile of concrete slabs. His blood stains the sand around him, but with a quick glance, I can’t see anywhere else he’s injured.

  “Yeah. His pulse is steady.”

  “I told you fuckers to go; they’re coming. We have to get the fuck out of here; you know the rules.”

  “Fuck off. We aren’t leaving without your stubborn ass.” I shut him up and then begin to scan the area around us before I ask Vice if he has a plan yet. “Can we get his leg out? I mean, shit, look at him.” I can see everything around me with the exception of what’s behind a concrete wall that’s blocking my view on the right.

  “We have to wedge something under the concrete and see if we can ge
t his ass out of there. Look for something.” I walk the small area and bend over to pick up a pipe when I hear the gravel shift behind me. Planting my knees on the ground, my Heckler & Koch Mk23 handgun in my palm ready to blow someone’s head off, I listen.

  “I’ll help you.” My back stiffens, my arm engages, and I spin my body around. Gun pointed. Ready to shoot that sweet-talking caress of a voice.

  “And you are?” I ask, gun pointed in her direction. She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t show one tiny speck of fear in her glaring brown eyes.

  “Grace Birch. Now, get out of my way. This man is hurt.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  GRACE

  “How are you feeling this morning?” I ask my father as I lean over his lumpy bed to touch his forehead, hoping to feel a cooler temperature. Sadly, he’s still burning up, and it doesn’t matter what I do, he’s just not responding to the care I’m giving him.

  Both of us are up to date on our vaccines; we do our best to take care of ourselves, and I always make sure to keep our supplies sterile. I have no clue what’s got him down and has him so weak that he can hardly stand. I have my suspicions, but every time I bring it up to him, he shuts me down. For two days now, his body temperature hasn’t budged from 104 degrees, his skin is red, and just like last night, it’s still hot to the touch, and yet he’s not sweating. His body is fighting an infection, and the antibiotics aren’t here yet. We depend on the medicine that’s dropped, and it can’t come soon enough this time. My father used what we had in stock on the last group of refugees that traveled through.

  “I’ll survive. Don’t count me out just yet.” He’s coherent, which is the only reason I haven’t forced him to make the trip elsewhere in search of a doctor, but that’s a huge problem for me. I don’t know who around here I could take him to. He’s the only doctor I trust in this god-awful foreign land. He says he’s not contagious and if we can get rid of the infection, he’ll be fine. I know what he’s saying is true; I’m just scared he’s hiding how bad he hurts, and I’m tired of hearing him deny it. I know him well enough to know that if it were me, he’d have me on an airplane back to the States.

  He’s never been one to show any weakness; in fact, he’s the strongest man I know. But damn it, this time he’s going to listen to me. I don’t care what I have to do. I need to get him out of here, and he’s not making any more excuses.

  I’m doing everything he tells me to do to make him better, and he says it’ll just take time now. That’s something I would believe if we were under normal circumstances. But out here in the scorching desert, no one has a clue what will happen from day to day. We may be faced with a rush of illness that we can’t possibly treat with the limited supplies we have on hand.

  Every time I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always told them I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a doctor. It wasn’t until I turned fourteen and we moved to Baghdad that the reality of what he does for people really hit me. My father is the most selfless human being I know, even to the point that I’ve had to devote my life to his mission, because doing anything else would go against the one man I owe my life to. In fact, both my mother and I did. He took her in when the sperm donor who created me beat my mother to an unrecognizable pile of flesh.

  I wasn’t supposed to survive that horrendous trauma, and neither was she, but Dr. Birch somehow saved my mother, and as the story goes, eight months later, I came out kicking and screaming, trying to make my point very clear. As a child growing up, I had no idea what point I was supposed to be making. Still don’t as an adult, but I’m trying to figure that out.

  I’m an only child. My dad was never able to have his own children, and when he fell for my mother, I became his by default.

  His blood may not run through my veins, but this man is my father, and even after meeting all my friends’ fathers growing up, I can tell I got very lucky in this department. Some parents are pure evil and selfish right down to their core. That became very clear when we moved here. I shudder at the thought of things I’ve witnessed in this country. I’ve seen things that would tear a normal person’s heart out, but it’s obvious that I’m not normal. I’m used to the cold, hard reality that this country has brought into my life, and I hate it so bad that I look forward to the day my father and I can go back to the States and begin to live a normal life. My only problem is, I’m afraid my father plans to die saving lives out here. I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.

  So, that thought alone makes disappointing him even more difficult. I can’t even fathom the thought of not doing what he expects of me. He wants me to carry on his legacy here, and I simply don’t know if I can, or if I even want to.

  I’m twenty-two years old, and it’s time for me to go to med school. I’ve been able to take the classes I need so far from here, but now it’s time for me to move back to the States to finish. I finally have the opportunity to move back to our home in Missouri. I miss our home there, but I know it’ll never be the same now that my mother is gone. I’d leave today if given a chance; the only problem I have is, the one man I owe everything to is very sick and needs me here to help him, even though he insists that I go without him.

  “You’re as beautiful as your mom was.” He speaks through an exaggerated breath, and I look down as he mentions her; memories are written all over his aged face. My mother died a year ago when she and several others were blown up by a roadside bomb. That day was the worst day of my life. It was the day that I came to hate this place, and I watched my father break at the same time. That day and the following weeks after her death were when I knew my time here had to be over. Knowing she was killed in such an inhumane way set me off. I became bitter toward the very land my family has sacrificed our lives for. I hate it here.

  The raw truth is, this is what my father feels he was born to do. He chooses to help others in need, no matter the cost to his own life.

  I’m done sacrificing what I love for this cold mission, and even though I’m all he has left in this world, it’s time for a change. It’s past time to get him to a hospital before he dies from this infection. I’m not going to sit back and wait for time to pass when he’s suffering like this from something that could eventually take him away from me. And even though he’s going to try and make me go follow my dreams on my own, I refuse to do what he says this time, no matter how tempting it is to finally get out of this hell.

  “I miss her. We both do. However, I really think she would chew you out if you didn’t go back to the States. In fact, you would be there already, and you know it. I don’t have everything here to take care of you, Dad. An infection like this isn’t something to take lightly. Especially when there are no antibiotics left. You're getting worse, and you know it.” I pull up a chair and dip the washcloth into the water. “I can’t even provide you with cool water. This is ridiculous. I’m going to sponge you down, then I’m going to go wait for the chopper with the supplies, see about them helping us.” I press the cloth to his forehead. His eyes watch me with as much determination as mine.

  “You do know I love you more than anything, Grace. In spite of that, if I leave here, these people will be lost.”

  “And what happens if you die?” I snap. I’m not one to bring up the worst, but the anger inside me takes over. “I’ll be lost if something happens to you. Think about that.” I know that wasn’t a fair thing to say, but right now I simply don’t care. He’s going, whether he likes it or not. My father gave up his surgical practice, his staff, his entire life back home to come here and help these victims of a war they did not want. A war that tore their country apart. A war that ended up killing my mother along with so many other innocent people in the process.

  “Alright, Grace. I’ll go. I need you to do me a favor, first.” I distinctly hear the brittle exertion in his voice as he forces himself to sit a little higher against his pillow.

  “I’ll do anything you need me to do,” I say, trying to help him lift the upper hal
f of his frail body up. My emotional walls are thinning, and my eyes are on the verge of tears. He’s too weak. I know if we don’t leave soon, he’s going to die. I try to calm my heart down and listen to what he has to say. I should be elated he’s willing to go, but something in the center of my chest tells me he’s waited too long.

  “Dad, you need to drink this water.” I unscrew the cap and lift it to his mouth, where he takes extremely slow needed sips. He coughs as he tries to struggle it down. I can’t seem to release the lump full of fear in my throat. All at once it’s spreading its tiny vines throughout my body, choking me until I can hardly breathe.

  “You have always been a smart girl. And now you’ve grown into a woman I’m very proud of. I need you to go to your mother’s grave and tell her good-bye.” His request sends a wave of mixed emotions through me. I want to go, but I don’t want to wait any longer than we have to. That trip would take me a few hours, and I know he doesn’t have much time if I don’t get him the care he needs.

  “Oh, Dad. I’m not going to tell her good-bye. Someday, we can come back. When you’re better and I’m done with school. The country will have built itself up by then. Things will be different,” I say with hope, knowing very well we may never come back.

  “Grace, I know you, sometimes better than you know yourself. I see it in your eyes. You're ready to leave here for good, and it’s okay. I don’t think you know quite yet what you want to do with your life. I only know this isn’t where you want to be. So, go. Tell her good-bye and make the arrangements to get us home.” It’s all I can muster up to not tell him this is his way of asking me to say good-bye to her from him, too. I sense it as much as I smell the plague in this godforsaken country.

  “Okay. I’ll tell Aaliyah to come check on you. I won’t be long.” I kiss his forehead and rearrange the pillows until he nods. His smile is tight as he’s holding back his pain. “I love you, Dad,” I say, close the door, and the tears I was holding back begin to fall as I silently cry.