Page 1 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

ONE

Zach

Classified Location

The routine extraction had started like any other mission, with adrenalin coursing through my veins and the buzz of excitement tempered with nerves. We were in the middle of hostile territory to rescue a 427 Special Operations Aviation Squadron crew of three, plus two civilians—five Canadian souls in all. Deep in the ruins of a bloody coup, our team was way behind enemy lines where the hostages and the original extraction team were being used as bargaining chips.

Five hostages, twelve insurgents, easy in and out.

Nothing we hadn’t done before.

Until friendly fire pinned us down.

“Sit rep,” Lieutenant Commander McKenzie ordered.

I waited for my space, “Bravo three,” I confirmed, and hunkered down next to Oz—Bravo four—SEAL teammate, friend, and the best person to be next to in this shit.

This was never meant to be a balls-to-the-wall fight. The job was supposed to be silent extraction, not fucked-up-bullets-flying-everywhere, but that had gone to shit as soon as one hostage had managed the unthinkable and gotten himself free.

He was free with a weapon, using it on the bad guys to block them from entering the remains of a building where he and the four others were imprisoned, but he impeded our rescue op. Something about how he held himself and advanced with confidence—or idiocy—told me he wasn’t just another grunt caught in the crossfire. There was a spark in him, a flicker of defiance that resonated with me viscerally. He was a lone figure with his back to the shattered door, his expression determined despite the odds stacked against him.

“Two civilians at the rear,” Oz confirmed and motioned to the left of us. Were the hostages getting out? So, our guy with the gun was laying cover for the others to escape? How far did they think they’d get? They were in the middle of nowhere, but red tape had delayed extraction, and I could only imagine the erosion of hope that anyone would come for them. No wonder they were hobbling away barefoot to god knows where. I weighed our options with a sense of urgency bordering on desperation—Oz and I were closest, but to get them all out safely and to exfil, we needed to get the prisoner with the weapon to get out of the damned way.

“Who the fuck is that?” I muttered, staring at a scrap of human in torn and bloody camo, shorter than me, with dark hair, skinny, his back to the broken bricks of the ruined building, nothing to shelter him, spraying bullets like he was the freaking terminator.

Oz slithered close to the edge of our vantage point. “Has to be 427 crew.”

By a process of elimination, this was Henderson, Andrews, or Milner, decimating the assholes who’d taken them captive but aiming right at us as collateral.

Bullets tore through the air, kicking up dirt and debris dangerously close to where Oz and I crouched. The sharp cracks of gunfire echoed in my ears, drowning out all other sounds except for the pounding of my heart. The crossfire had us pinned down between opposing forces.

“Bravo three, four, pinned,” Oz confirmed, so at least the rest of the team would know how vulnerable our position was.

“Someone get that 427 to back off,” I said, gritting my teeth as a bullet came so close it grazed my face and burned like a fucker. I cursed, pressing a hand to the wound, and my fingers came away red. “Fuck!”

I scanned the tree line to our left for any sign of movement, ignoring the injury, my finger poised on the trigger of my weapon. Every instinct screamed at me to keep moving, to find a way out of this trap, given we were the closest to the hostage with a weapon, but I knew any sudden movement would only draw more fire on us. I pushed at Oz and gestured to the trees, five fingers up, my message clear—if we could get there, then we’d have a way of getting behind the guy and wouldn’t be in the middle of this crossfire. Oz nodded; his expression was grim but determined as he braced himself for the dash across the open ground. I counted the seconds in my head, waiting for the perfect moment to make our move. Watched the spray of bullets from the hostage with the gun, seeing the pattern. Five.

“Stay low!” I shouted over the chaos, my voice barely audible above the cacophony. “Go!” I shouted, breaking into a sprint as bullets whizzed past us, kicking up dust and debris in our wake. Every muscle in my body screamed with exertion as we raced towards the relative safety of the trees. When we reached the tree line, relief shattered as Oz stumbled to his knees and gripped his side.

Hurt.

He’s hurt.

I dragged him to cover. “Bravo four down,” I announced, searching for the wound, finding a through-and-through and a lot of blood. I tore open the QuikClot and slapped it front and back, and only then did I pull Oz deeper into the trees as he cursed up a storm.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

His pulse was steady, and he blinked at me, pain carved into his face.

“That fucker shot me!” Oz snapped as he tried to push himself upright, succeeding on the third attempt. I didn’t correct him because I didn’t know whether the bullet had been friendly or enemy fire.

“Head to exfil,” I ordered, using my six-month seniority on him despite us both holding the same rank. “I’m stopping him.”

I slipped away before Oz could stop me, glancing back to see him torn between following me and understanding that, injured as he was, he’d hold me back.

The two hostages who’d made it out, one in a 427 uniform, both broken and covered in blood, stilled as I drew closer. I gestured for them to keep walking toward the trees, hoping I could emote enough that they would understand we were there to help. I received a nod from the civilian, but the injured 427 pilot could barely walk, and their progress was slow.

Approaching the damaged building from the rear and keeping low to the ground, I ended up four feet behind the wall where the hostage-turned-gunslinger was raining fire on the insurgents and my teammates. As I advanced with caution through the chaos, I stumbled across two more hostages, both shaky and hurt, trying to get out. I thumbed behind me, and they helped each other over rubble as I stole a look through an open window, focused on the man outside, immersed in the firefight, running out of ammunition, and holding a death wish.

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