Page 14 of Tormented Heir

We’re approaching the deserted village that the ragtag battalion we are trailing passed through long hours back.

The fuckers keep carrying out incursions and raids, as if the poor people living on this war-torn border haven’t had enough. This battalion we are tracking is from enemy territory, but they find it easy to cross the border and mount attacks as the friendlies have such a depleted fighting force.

We will try to help with that as much as we can as we embed deeper. Training friendlies and equipping them is one of the ways of modern warfare.

“Sweep as we go,” Mickles orders.

I nod and fall back, weapon raised as two of the engineers working with us start their sweep for IEDs and landmines. It’s doubtful this place is mined, but we don’t leave it to chance.

The drones hover, the operators getting ready, messing about with their screens.

The uneasy feeling is crawling up my spine now. I can’t shake it. Physically, I try to. I roll my shoulders and crack my neck, side to side.

“You feel it too, huh?” Mickles says the words low. For my ears only.

We’re not alone. We have a small unit of engineers with us. They’ll be hanging behind and working in the village to try to make it habitable again. They’ll have the backup of an army unit once we’ve secured the place. We’ll move on, still dodging those fuckers we’ve been following for weeks now.

Sooner or later the order will come. Attack. My blood fizzes with the thought.

It isn’t that I relish hurting people, or the risk to myself, but the waiting is worse than the action. This wait, in particular, is beyond fucking awful.

“Yes.” I nod at Mickles.

“Stay frosty, Babel.” He uses my nickname. They call me that because as well as the Arabic and French I learned as part of my training, I speak fluent English, Italian, Russian, and a smattering of Chinese. Languages are simply something I find easy to pick up. I believe because I was bilingual from a young age, it has become an ingrained skill for me.

Our isolation and vulnerability gnaws at me. We’re a small group, right on the border between a friendly country and an enemy nation. The vicious little battalion we are following have been using this porous border to create increasingly audacious attacks.

Like special forces operators, we are trained to work as small, specialized units. We work closely with host armies, training them.

It makes us a flexible weapon.

The engineers keep up their sweep, and we hoist our weapons as we follow them. I’m on alert, that feeling not dissipating.

“They left, right?” Mickles mutters. “We saw those fuckers leave.”

“They left.” Nuts nods as he joins us, fanning out so that between the three of us we cover the entire dusty track winding its way between the deserted buildings.

He’s called Nuts because he’s always eating pistachio nuts, spitting out the shells on the floor and making a fucking mess.

Still, he’s a good guy to have at your back. Messy or not.

Movement catches my eye, like the flutter of a wing near the flat roof of the building to my right. Heart speeding, I raise my weapon, but it’s a dark rag of cloth caught on a metal pole. It flaps in the tiny wafts of arid breeze. I swallow, my heart rate slowing down, and glance at the opposite buildings. Nothing.

The village doesn’t feel deserted. Something lives here. Could I be so on edge that I’m picking up the presence of a stray dog and letting it get to me? Maybe it’s the ghosts of the past. I almost laugh at myself, but the feeling is too strong to find humor.

I’m a big believer in intuition, and mine is screaming at me right now.

“How long ago was this place abandoned?” I ask Mickles.

“Two months.”

“Something’s off,” I say, and at that moment he appears.

A small kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Skinny. Undernourished. He walks right out of the house in front of us to our left and stands there, staring.

My eyes sweep down his body.

Oh, hell no.

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