SHADOWS Read online

  “Damn straight, we do,” Eyes said coolly with a wicked glint in his eyes and a smile on his lips. Some might find it disconcerting the things they joked about, but those people didn’t get into situations like these men did. If they didn’t laugh, they couldn’t do it. And the world and their families needed them doing what they did so they could all be free and safe at home.

  In a grand gesture, Sleep threw his arms out, and gave air quotes at the word might as he continued. “As I was getting my ass whooped, I might have forgotten about the rest of the kids who’d been playing with us on the field that day. I was so used to my tight knit group being the only ones around. But those kids who knew me, who lived in the surrounding blocks by my house, never could’ve imagined what they were going to be getting themselves into that day. By the time I’d gotten to my feet, it was a revolution. The four high schoolers and the baby bully were getting pummeled by nearly every kid out there. It was beautiful, I was just starting after the—”

  “Contact! Hard right!” Sleep’s story was interrupted by one of the pilots as the Blackhawk made an instantaneous movement to the left and down, the G-force pulling each of them into their seats as their safety harnesses clenched at their chests.

  All laughter ended for the team as they instantly shot into fight mode. They held on tight as the chopper’s engine gave a hard growl, doing all it could to responded to the pilot’s ace commands.

  The SEAL team had gone from jovial friends to looking like marble statues in the blink of an eye as they sat straight, seat straps tight enough to impact deep breathing, and in perfect unison, their long guns etched into their torsos.

  Onboard countermeasures were deployed, causing a sequence of explosions close to the chopper. The team shared a look. This wasn’t small arms fire coming at them, or normal ammunition for that matter. Something big and bad enough to end everything was screaming toward them. Even knowing that, there wasn’t time or energy for fear. This was all a part of the job they’d signed up for. They’d either make it . . . or, hopefully, it would end fast.

  Eyes’s voice came through loud and clear over the coms. “Breathe men, we might be getting out of a job a bit sooner than expected.” He grinned, making the others groan. That was Eyes, making a joke even in the face of death.

  The SEAL team stoically gazed at one another in case it was the last time they’d get to do just that. They each nodded, no fear seeping in, just a determination to fight until the end.

  “Brace for impact!” a voice called.

  That was their only warning before the engine revved, pushing itself hard for several surreal seconds. They heard an explosion far too close for comfort, and then a deadly silence fell over them for what seemed like forever, but in reality must’ve only been a second or two.

  The chopper gave a shudder as another explosion made impact, sending a ball of heat rolling through the cabin. They lost control as their chopper began spinning, leaving them with zero idea if they were up, down or sideways. Equilibrium was gone.

  Garbled screams came through the coms as they made it to the tree line, the chopper cutting into the giant masses of wood like a car plowing through toothpicks. It didn’t take long for them to impact the ground hard enough to snap necks, before bouncing back up, hitting more trees, then flipping side over side for long enough to make them completely disoriented.

  The chopper finally came to a halt with the windshield facing the sky. Smoke, debris, and a cloud of dust was suffocating all inside the cabin of the chopper, making it nearly impossible to breathe or see.

  “Report!” Eyes commanded into the darkness.

  Each of the team members did a quick body scan. They needed to know who could move, who couldn’t. Seconds counted when the enemy was bearing down on them.

  “Morph, good, releasing straps.”

  “Sleep, good, releasing straps.”

  “Stogie, left elbow injury, impacting hand movement. Need assist on straps. Otherwise, good,” Stogie said with a deep cough.

  “I’ve got you, Stogie,” called Sleep.

  “Clapper, Rain, report,” Eyes called.

  No response.

  Eyes released himself and slid down toward his unresponsive teammates. He moved as swiftly as he could through the small chopper. “Clapper, Rain, report,” he said again.

  While Sleep assisted Stogie, Morph released the side door of the halo, releasing the airborne crap into the outside air, bringing them much needed oxygen. Then he moved forward, checking on the flight crew. There was no movement. He checked pulses. There were none, and blood was dripping onto his hand, covering his palm instantly. He absently wiped it on his pants. There was no time now to grieve the loss of good men. That would come later.

  “Morph exiting and securing exterior. All three crew members are KIA,” he said, then slid down the body of the destroyed halo.

  “Morph exiting, crew down, copy,” a voice replied.

  Morph immediately dropped to the ground, scanning the area. No one was close — at least not yet. He knew they’d be coming soon. They wouldn’t shoot down a US military chopper without plans to capture. Before they arrived, his team needed to be long gone.

  Sleep made it to the door with Stogie. “Morph, I need an assist,” Sleep called. Morph moved over and assisted Sleep with getting Stogie safely to the ground. Sleep slipped back inside to help Eyes with the other members.

  Stogie struggled with basic tasks only having one useable hand, but finally got his night vision on, then awkwardly racked a round in his M4 and flipped the scope cover into the open position. He set the long gun back across his chest, then performed the same task of getting battle ready with his sidearm.

  “Let’s do a sweep,” Morph said. Stogie nodded. They did a sweep around the chopper, hearing noises in the distance.

  “We’re pretty far up shit creek,” Stogie said. His left arm was a mess, but there was too much adrenaline for him to feel pain.

  “That’s for sure, and damned if we don’t have a paddle to navigate in the middle of this hell hole,” Morph replied.

  It didn’t take long before they spotted the enemy. They were close. Both of them dropped out of sight before messaging their team. “You guys need to get moving. We have contact, twelve to fifteen of them, approximately eight hundred yards out, making their way up from the valley,” Morph said.

  “Clapper and Rain didn’t make it. We’ll have to come back for them,” Eyes said over the coms. Pain ripped through all of them at those words.

  Sleep and Eyes dropped down from the chopper, immediately getting their gear in place. Before they took more than two steps, the first shots rang through the air, coming from the forest. Sleep racked a round in his long gun, then became still. He focused on a green glow moving swiftly forward in the trees.

  Eyes coordinated fast, giving his team the location to meet. They didn’t hesitate. There were only four of them now, and they were determined to not lose another life.

  “Okay, we’re moving up this hill, then we’ll look at injuries and reassess. We’re going to head southeast toward JBad. It’s approximately one hundred miles away as the crow flies, and we’ll need to cover as much ground as possible while we have the shield of darkness.”

  “Copy,” the other three men replied in unison.

  Within minutes they’d made their way up the hill to a secure place they could take cover and still see the enemy. Eyes took the lead on triage for his team. Thankfully, Stogie was the only one who needed bandaging. The compound fracture just above his elbow needed more medical supplies than they had on hand, but as they often did, they made do.

  “We have to tourniquet and compress this and get it tight to your body. You might have an artery cut, hard to tell, but you’re bleeding at a good clip. Do you want your arm straight down, or chicken winged?” Then, he smiled. “No matter which you choose it’s gonna hurt like hell, but don’t worry, I’m not gonna feel a thing,” Eyes said.


  “That makes me feel soooo much better,” Stogie said with a pained laugh and roll of his eyes. “Let’s go with chicken wing. I need to be able to brace my long gun.”

  “Speed this up. Four insurgents broke off from the group and are heading our way,” Sleep hissed. “I don’t want to fire and draw all of them this way . . . though shooting a few might make me feel better about this whole clusterfuck.” They all wanted revenge for their fallen soldiers, but they were disciplined enough to do the job without compromising their mission.

  “Two minutes,” Eyes said. He moved quickly, and Stogie, breaking into a sweat as his arm was bandaged, didn’t utter a sound as Eyes worked. He finished in record time, thanks to Stogie’s pain threshold and training.

  “Let’s go,” Sleep said, and Stogie stood, moving slow and a bit uneven, but at least he was moving.

  In a flash, the entire forest lit up brighter than a nightclub with a dozen strobe lights going off at once. Gunfire rang out from multiple directions. Eyes was on it in less than a heartbeat.

  “Back over the hill, now — Go! Make contact with those four insurgents and do it quiet and fast,” Eyes barked over the blasts ripping up the ground and trees near them.

  Morph and Sleep made quick work of the four men who’d been on their way toward their team. Stogie had his sidearm out, firing shots, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He turned, and that’s when Eyes watched blood explode from the left side of his chest as a bullet ripped straight through him. Shock registered on Stogie’s features as he looked down for a brief moment, looked back at Eyes with a look of disappointment and then dropped to his knees and fell face forward to the ground, his body jerking once before going still.

  Eyes rushed to him, checked his pulse to be absolutely sure, then closed Stogie’s eyes. He wouldn’t allow his brain to open the door to even think about grieving. He grabbed Stogie’s ammo, incapacitated the fallen soldier’s long gun, then followed his other team members over the crest of the hill, down the way they’d just come from.

  Morph took the lead while Sleep and Eyes flanked each side of him, approximately six feet separating them, moving as swiftly as they could in unfamiliar territory. They took out several insurgents as they made their way through the forest, not once breaking their stride.

  Eyes kept an eye on their back, making sure the enemy wasn’t coming up from behind. The good and the bad of the situation was that the enemy was spread out, not united, and unable to coordinate within their own ranks, making it all but impossible to call out the location of the SEALs. However, it gave Eyes and his team no sure route to take since the enemy could turn on a moment’s notice, blocking a new path.

  As they took a new direction, they noted the enemies’ voices were growing fainter. Morph turned the team down an old animal game trail and heard what sounded like rushing water. Thirty yards down the path, their trail opened to a rock outcrop with a waterfall to the right, dropping into what seemed an endless black abyss. They weren’t in a good position. Their options were quickly dwindling.

  “Any ideas, boys?” Morph asked, not admitting how pissed he was that he’d led them to this location, even though none of them knew where they were. They’d landed at least a couple of hundred miles from their original drop-off point. “We can double back and peel hard right where this damned goat trail started,” Morph added through a tight jaw.

  Before they could form a new plan, shots rang out again. Morph dropped, a shot ripping through his right leg, just above his knee. Without hesitation, he turned his body toward the forest and gave instantaneous return fire in rapid three round succession. Eyes and Sleep each took a knee and fired a barrage of 5.56 rounds, aiming at random green objects that were placed at sporadic yardages. This enemy had little strategy, but endless numbers, which seemed to keep growing.

  “How in the hell are this many of them converging?” Morph snapped as he fired several more rounds.

  “I don’t know. Maybe from the pits of hell,” Sleep thundered, his own rifle only ceasing to find a new enemy to target and stamp out.

  Eyes looked at the situation and knew if they didn’t change something real quick none of them were making it out of this. Half of his team was gone, plus the crew that had been transporting them. They might die that night, but they wouldn’t do it without one hell of a fight, and certainly not without taking down a whole lot of these savages. He made a quick decision.

  “Sleep, pull Morph down the edge of this damn mountain, and cease fire. I’m going to take these guys on a magic carpet ride, and if the fates are with me I’ll create a flank,” Eyes said. He grinned and gave his brothers a wink.

  “Eyes, you realize you’re not funny, right? Not in the best of times, but definitely not in the worst.” Morph huffed at him, though his own lips twitched, even with the amount of pain he had to be feeling.

  “I just have a tough crowd,” Eyes replied. He then nodded to Sleep and Morph. Nothing else needed to be said. Sleep would follow his command.

  He turned and ran directly up the trail — straight toward the fire coming at them. He barely missed a shot straight at his head before he dropped behind a downed tree then fired a couple of shots.

  Sleep watched Eyes leave, hoping it wasn’t the last time he’d see the man he considered his brother-in-arms and, more importantly, his best friend. He was glad they’d managed to give each other a smile. Neither fear nor defeat was the last thing they’d see on each other’s faces.

  He wasn’t able to turn away until seeing the green outline of Eyes popping back up from the fallen tree, dropping two insurgents, then sprinting again to another tree. He stopped for only seconds to fire rounds before moving again. Soon he was swallowed up by the dense woods.

  “Let’s go,” Sleep said, sliding Morph over the edge. “It looks like there’s enough of a grade we should be able to support ourselves. I’ll get your leg wrapped and we’ll get these sons of bitches put down.”

  “I don’t think this is getting wrapped,” Morph said. “I’m cold, and getting lightheaded. I’m losing too much blood. I can feel it pooled in my boot.” His voice was fading.

  “Get your ass over this ledge and we’ll bandage you up. It’s just a spot of blood,” Sleep’s voice hammered down.

  Morph gave it all he could, leaning heavily on Sleep as they moved to the ledge. They were just about over when a heavy, thick, metal pinging sound bounced toward them.

  They turned in unison, adrenaline coursing through their bodies, as they decided they needed to change directions fast. They both knew what that sound meant and knew how little time they had.

  “Get out of here alive and tell my family my last breath was filled with love for them,” Morph said.

  “No!” Sleep screamed, but it was too late. With the last strength Morph had, he wrapped his thick hands over Sleep’s shoulders and twisted their bodies just as the grenade exploded.

  The explosion instantly killed Morph, miniature pieces of shrapnel piercing his entire body. Morph’s shock-waved momentum sent Sleep flying over the edge of the cliff, screaming Morph’s name as pain ripped through him.

  Sleep couldn’t control his movements as he rolled down the jagged mountain, his limbs and torso repeatedly slamming against objects. His head cracked against a tree, then his ribs felt as if something had pierced straight into them. He was hit and twisted in so many ways, he wasn’t sure how he was still conscious.

  After what seemed like an endless amount of time, he finally stopped, lying on the ground. He wasn’t sure if he passed out or not, wasn’t sure how much time passed, wasn’t even sure if it was day or night anymore as he tried shaking cobwebs from his head and gain his breath.

  As consciousness came to him, he had no doubt that he had at least one rib completely broken, making it nearly impossible to breathe. He also was very aware that Morph was dead, and he had no idea where his remaining team member was. Sleep couldn’t breathe fully, couldn’t see, and could bar
ely move. It was either down to him alone, or him and Eyes.

  As much as Sleep wanted to close his eyes and rest he knew if he did, they mostly likely wouldn’t open again. He willed his body to do what he commanded of it and sat up, instantly coughing blood. He understood things weren’t looking good. But he wasn’t a quitter and he sure as hell wasn’t going to die sitting around doing nothing about it.

  Fumbling in his pack with shaking fingers, he found his med kit, opened it, and took out what he needed. The pain was excruciating, but he pushed it down. He ripped open his jacket, felt his rib cage, then took the needle from the kit and pushed it in with enough force to puncture his lung.

  Instant relief washed through him as oxygen flowed inside his damaged body. As he took slow breaths and secured the needle so it wouldn’t fall out, he formulated a plan. He wouldn’t lie there and die. He wouldn’t dishonor his friends, his team, or himself by giving up.

  Sleep quickly spread out everything he had on him, and then gathered the most critical items, knowing it wasn’t possible to haul all of his gear with how beat up his body was. He got to his feet and had to lean against a tree as his head spun and blood dripped freely from his mouth. Pain was everywhere, but he pushed it down. Slowly, he began moving to the edge of the river. It was a well-known truth that all waterways eventually led to civilization.

  He took one step, then another, and then another. He didn’t think, didn’t focus on the pain. He simply moved one step at a time. He had no idea how much time passed, no idea how far he was traveling. He just focused on one foot in front of the other. Daylight began to break over the horizon and he still trudged forward . . .