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CHAPTER ONE
Nellis AFB, Nevada
“I’ve lost my edge, Colonel.”
The admission burned its way up Captain Chuck Tanaka’s throat, each word pure acid on open wounds inside him. But he was an ace at embracing pain, and he’d be damned before he would endanger anyone else by taking the Colonel up on his offer to put Chuck back in the action.
F-16s roared overhead, rattling the rafters in the gaping hangar. Colonel Rex Scanlon stood beside him as airmen prepped for deployment to the Middle East with immunizations, gas masks, duffel bags full of gear. Close to two hundred warm bodies going to war.
Including his crew. His old crew from the top secret test squadron.
Pilots Jimmy Gage and Vince Deluca lined up with loadmaster Mason Randolph standing in a long, long line for a gamma globulin immunization along with an assload full of other shots to prepare them for the diseases overseas. He remembered well how the huge needle left a lump that made for uncomfortable flying. Back when he’d been their navigator. Before his injuries grounded him for life.
These days he was the squadron mobility officer. He ensured all deploying personnel were up to date with training, shots, equipment.
In a nutshell? He rode a desk and pushed paper.
Musty gear and a low hum of chitchat filled the hangar. All familiar. Jimmy, Vince and Mason shuffled forward, flight suits down around their ankles in boxer shorts while the doc shouted, “Next.”
“Tanaka?” Scanlon leaned forward, staring him down from behind black rimmed glasses. “I need you on this mission. You’re the man. You have the skills.”
Not the skills he wanted, not the job he wanted. Better to exist.
Chuck took a folder from an overeager airman and signed off the bottom of a form. One more ready to deploy. Around them, uniformed men and women carried large green deployment bags stuffed full of equipment picked up at numerous stations. Security cops were posted throughout, watching and talking into radios. Off to his left, a dozen more who’d completed drawing equipment sat on the floor fitting the ballistic plates into their body armor. Another group checked over their weapons, disassembling and putting them back together.
His fingers twitched with muscle memory from performing the same tasks countless times. In the past. Speed mattered and he couldn’t trust his hands or his feet any longer.
Chuck slapped the folder closed. “I figure I’ve given my fair share to Uncle Sam. He won’t mind if I sit out the rest of my commitment to the Air Force at my desk, rubber stamping paperwork.”
Scanlon scrubbed his face, sighed hard, his eyes too full of the hell that went down when they’d both been in Turkey two years ago. “Without question, you’ve sacrificed more than your fair share for your country. But this op, this enemy, these people…” His jaw clenched and the pity shifted to something harder. “This is our chance to even the score for what they did to you and those other servicemen they kidnapped.”
Hunger. Mind games. Torture. Chuck’s grip tightened on his clipboard.
Thankfully, his thoughts were broken by another airman thrusting a folder at him. He opened it and took a few minutes to calm himself by reading the checklist before signing at the bottom. He embraced routine and monotony through the days and sweated through the nights.
Chuck passed the folder back to the airman and waited until he stepped away before meeting the Colonel’s gaze dead on. “A very wise nun always told me holding grudges is bad for the soul.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not laughing.”
Neither was Chuck these days. But he was getting by. Surviving one step at a time, literally, as he recovered from the ass kicking he’d taken overseas at the hands of a sadistic bitch bent on prying secrets from servicemen, then selling the info to the highest terrorist bidder.
She hadn’t gotten jack shit from him about the covert test missions he used to fly or the cutting edge equipment he developed in the dark ops squadron. But he’d paid a heavy price for keeping those secrets.
“Pardon my bluntness, Colonel, but have you taken a look at me lately?” His eleven broken bones had healed as well as they ever would, and he was lucky to be on his feet again. Reconstructive surgery had taken care of most of the scars. External ones, anyway.
His ex girlfriend claimed he was still an “emotional cripple.” Whatever the hell that meant. “Sir, I know exactly what I’m worth these days, or rather how little. You’re not fooling anyone here. Offering me a mission is the equivalent of a pity fuck. Sir.”
Scanlon’s thick eyebrow hitched upward through two shouts of “Next” before he pulled the clipboard from his hand and gave it to Chuck’s assistant, a surprised master sergeant.
The Colonel guided Chuck away from the bustle and behind some pallets loaded for the deployment. “Chuck, this mission could be the back breaker for what some of the intel spooks think is a major attack here in the States. Our equipment, equipment you helped test, is the only way to exploit the one hole we have been able to find in their organization–”
“Not interested,” he interrupted, desperate as hell to stop the Colonel from taunting him with what he could not have anymore.
Scanlon continued as if he’d never been interrupted, “You’ll go in undercover as a blackjack dealer on an Italian cruise ship next week. You won’t be going in alone. I’ll have your back, and David Berg will be running the surveillance equipment on board the Fortuna. Think about it. At worst you’ll get some sun and great food. And at best, you’ll bring down a terrorist cell.”
Hunger for the chance to fight back gnawed at his gut. “You don’t need me as the front man.” Maybe… “Why not let me operate the gadgets? Nobody runs the packet analyzer and translator algorithms as well as I do. It’s more art than science.”
Shit, he was already envisioning himself there. “Forget I said that. I’m exactly where I should be–.”
Pop! A gunshot blasted from the other side of the pallets. A chunk of wood splintered into the air.
Chuck jerked hard and fast, looking over his shoulder even as he knew it had to be some dumb ass who’d slipped a round in his weapon then seriously screwed up with an unintentional discharge. He looked across the hangar—
And stared straight into cold, emotionless eyes of a gunman who looked too damn much like one of their own firing wildly into the clusters of airmen.
So fast. Shouts and more pops. Bullets. From the gunman and the security cops, but no one could get a decent aim as the guy ran and bobbed. The gunman turned toward Chuck’s old crew. Fired. Jimmy spun back as a round caught him in the shoulder. The gun tracked Jimmy for another—
Chuck drew his sidearm before he could think and centered on the uniformed gunman’s chest. Pop. Pop. Pop. He squeezed off three shots, center of mass.
Everyone and everything in the hangar went unearthly still. The only sound was a haunting echo of Chuck’s shots.
The gunman crumpled to the ground a second before the acrid scent of gunfire bit the air.
Chuck’s fist clenched around the familiar weight of his 9mm. The hangar seemed to freeze frame, imprinting itself in his brain. Cops with weapons drawn. Others with their fists wrapped around the butt of a gun. The unarmed huddled, hugging their heads protectively.
Slowly, sounds of sirens outside pierced his consciousness and snapped the frame back into motion. Security cops swarmed the downed gunman. His old crewmate, Jimmy, sat up, clutching his shoulder with blood pouring between his fingers while the rest of the crew checked him over. No one else opened fire but the edgy need to stay on guard seared the air as three other injured held onto a bleeding leg or arm. No one dead though. Thank God.
Adrenaline singed his insides, his pulse pounding in his ears. The gun felt right in his hands. Taking out an enemy felt even better.
The Colonel secured his unfired weapon back in the holster and stared at Chuck’s smoking gun, now pointing upward. “Still think you’ve lost your edge, Tanaka? Because from where I’m standing, it appears you just stopped a massacre.”
Chuck lowered his weapon slowly, the inevitable flooding his veins with each slug of his heart. “That same old nun also told me gloating is as dangerous as grudges.”
“Fair enough, Captain. I take it then you’ll be joining Berg and me at the morning briefing?”
He nodded once without taking his eyes off the unconscious gunman.
“Good, good,” Scanlon righted his black framed glasses. “Meanwhile, you may want to brush up on your blackjack skills.”
Chuck thumbed the barrel of his weapon, an undeniable thirst filling him. The need to get back in the fight. The need to defend his comrades.
The need to avenge.
There were still a lot of blanks to be filled in, but then that’s what briefs were for. He didn’t need to hear anymore well-executed persuasive arguments. He already knew.
He was going all in.
**
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