Page 1 of Twister

1

Joint Expeditionary BaseLittle Creek-Fort Story, Virginia Beach, Virginia

It was times like this when he questioned whether he was as sound as the doctors had said he was. He was working the obstacle course, or as they called it, the O-course. He’d only been back to work for a couple of weeks. After their mission in Haiti and the earthquake had shaken half of the embassy free and it had fallen on him, dislocated his shoulder, and caused a small bleed inside his torso that had almost led to his death, he’d dealt with shortness of breath, dizziness, fatigue, anxiety, and sweating for no goddamn reason. He’d lost almost thirty percent of his blood volume, and his body had been working ever since to get back to his healthy normal.

He’d been sliding into hemorrhagic shock. With that kind of blood loss, his organs had been laboring on their way to shutting down, his heart working overtime, increasing his blood pressure. His limbs had been clammy and cold because all the blood had been siphoned from his extremities to feed the heart and keep his organs viable. Recovery from that type of situation took time. But with the administration of intravenousfluids, plasma packed with red blood cells, and a transfusion of platelets, he was feeling ready to get back to operating.

His recovery had seemed slower than was necessary until he tried to do a little more and had almost passed out. It was a good thing that Dagger had been there when he’d thought he could walk farther than was prescribed.

That had been so fucking frustrating. He was a medic, a combat medic, no less, yet he couldn’t seem to give himself a break. What did they say about medical professionals? They made the worst patients.

He’d been saved by men closer to him than he’d ever thought possible. Lieutenant Michael “Tex” Penn had gone to bat for him, making sure he got the treatment he needed. His other brothers, Master Chief Angelo “Bondo” Zane, Matthew “Easy” Hitchcock, Kade “Dagger” Hollis, Christian “Brawler” Beckett and their military working dog, Beast, and Jae “Flash” Shaw, had braved an earthquake-devastated country to get him to a chopper to take him to the nearest military hospital, which happened to be on the tip of Cuba—Guantanamo Bay to be exact. His remaining brother, Bale “Shark” Maddox, had been captured by criminal Haitians at the behest of their rogue minister. In the end, Shark had been shot multiple times, but he’d survived. The minister had not.

Most of the course had been routine—bunny hop, tires, cargo net climb, the crawl through loose sand covered with a wood-pegged barbed wire box. Then there were the balance logs, monkey bars, the Burma Bridge, and the wall that was an eight-foot climb. Once those were completed, it was the weaver, a swing over the water obstacles, then more tires, and finally the tube where he was currently getting ready to hit.

The run from the tires was an easy jog, nothing that taxed him even after the challenges he’d just been through, but all of a sudden, he felt a strong surge of fear. His heart accelerated, andhe started sucking air and trembling. The closer he got to the tube, the worse it got, but he powered through until he got about halfway through the obstacle. Those feelings overwhelmed him as pain exploded in his shoulder, and he felt pressed to the ground, the ceiling of the narrow tube feeling as if it was crushing him. He squeezed his eyes closed, working at getting his breathing under control.

“Twist?” came Dagger’s voice behind him.

Snapping out of the strange mental state, he made himself move, crawling slowly at first, then with a harder purpose, needing to get out of here as quickly as possible. He cleared the exit and dropped into the wet mud at the end. He couldn’t catch his breath for a moment. He was well aware that Tex and Bondo were watching him.

Wading out of the mud to solid ground and slicking off the excess, he worked at getting back his equilibrium.

“Hit the showers,” Bondo called out, marking something down on a tablet. Twister didn’t want to be paranoid about his performance. He looked down at his dive watch and took a hard breath. Fuck, he was off by at least thirty seconds. How long had he been stuck in the tube?

He rose and started for the showers, telling himself it was an anomaly.

Dagger watchedhis buddy sprint away from the mud pit as he climbed out. Before he could even slick off the cloying mud, Tex was by his side with Bondo.

“Twister is off his usual time of six eighteen.”

“What did he do?” Dagger asked.

“Six forty-eight.”

Dagger frowned. “That’s at least thirty seconds. He smokes me easily on this course. He knows it like the back of his hand.” He watched as Twister disappeared around one of the buildings. “The doc cleared him, right?”

“What’s going on?” Easy asked as he came up to them, the rest of the team following.

“Yeah, said he was better than one hundred percent…physically.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Bondo met Dagger’s hard gaze. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything?”

“Shark’s faster, and he was shot.”

“Well, he’s also in love,” Bondo said, and Tex’s eyes flashed, and he nodded.

“Watch him,” Tex said, then he and Bondo moved off.

“Dagger?”

He turned to Easy, Flash, and Brawler. Shark had outdistanced them from the beginning and was already in the shower. “Twist was off his time by thirty seconds.”

The guys shifted, looking at each other. Dagger knew why. It was significant that their brother was lagging behind his normal time. It wasn’t like Twister to be slow at anything, especially after coming off a long leave.

“He’s just getting his sea legs back,” Flash said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Slow start, maybe.”

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