Chapter 28

SETH

^FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER, AGED TWENTY^

~Helmand River Valley, Afghanistan ~

It had been hot and dry since Seth had returned from his assignment away from the base.

All he wanted was a cool shower and to dissolve under the air conditioning before they had to debrief.

His head bounced off the side beam of the Hummer as the Lance Corporal tried to avoid another pothole in the desert road.

Seth missed the colder weather of Kansas at this time of year.

He had experienced a lot over the last fourteen months he had been in Afghanistan.

Although he had been home once during his deployment, Seth missed the snow and wearing puffy jackets and three pairs of socks and drinking hot chocolate…

…without the marshmallows melting because the room temperature was more than a hundred degrees.

Here, even the water in a glass evaporated around the ice before you could drink it, he thought with a grimace as he wiped the sweat from beneath his helmet.

He smiled as he thought about the letter he had received from the Colonel the day before, permitting him to go home for the holidays.

In less than twenty-four hours he would be heading home—home to snow, home cooking, and Ranya.

She was the sweetest little girl that ever graced the world, with the biggest smile and laughing brown eyes.

She had her mother’s dark curly hair and olive skin, but strangely, she had Sarah’s quiet disposition. Seth figured it was because Sarah had taken over her care after she was born.

She didn’t have an ounce of Tereza’s manipulation or bad temper, both of which had gotten worse in the last eighteen months.

Seth stared blindly at the desert terrain that flashed past the window as he thought about the changes he had noticed in Terry.

Her skin was darker, and her eyes had lost their spark as if something inside of her had died while she was pregnant with Ranya.

Her hair had also lost its luster, falling long and flat as she went days without caring for it.

She had also lost weight, and Seth knew it was because she was falling deeper and deeper into her addiction to drugs and alcohol.

He had signed papers that allowed Sarah to have full guardianship of Ranya while he was away. Tereza didn’t even argue.

Sarah hadn’t said anything about Ranya’s care, but he had noticed on their Skype chats that Ranya was with her most of the time. And that Ranya called Sarah ~Mama.~

This told him that Tereza wasn’t around enough for her daughter to recognize her. This saddened him because Ranya recognized him in the video calls.

Fortunately, he had still been stateside when she was born, and he was able to spend the first six weeks with her before he was shipped out.

And she was eager to fill him in on her activities of the week when he was able to call, though most of her words were still lost in her baby babble.

But he looked forward to those conversations.

He was excited to go home for the holidays, not only because he’d missed her first Christmas, but because Tereza had agreed to the divorce and signing full custody of Ranya over to him.

“She’s one lucky little girl,” Private First Class Tia Morales said.

She was always squeezed up between Seth and another large PFC of their unit, Gabriel von Ashner, her five-two frame disappearing when they were around.

The three of them formed the sniper team of their unit and had learned to use this to their advantage because Tia was badass with a rifle from both a treetop and at close range.

Seth shook his head. “Nope, I’m the lucky one.”

No one in his unit knew that Ranya wasn’t his own. No one knew he was married.

“Mason, hang low.” Seth straightened as he spotted movement on a dune not too far from their position.

It was too early in the day for the shepherds to be heading back to their villages, and there had been no reports of merchant trains moving through the desert in their direction.

“What’s up, Marshall?” The sound of rifles being readied sounded loudly in the Hummer as Mason rounded the next turn.

“Not sure, but I think I spotted movement to the north.”

“Affirmative,” PFC Lexus Nottingham, who was in the front passenger seat, confirmed Seth’s statement. “Heading toward camp.”

“All units are in base except the third squadron, so no one’s supposed to be out this way except us,” Lance Corporal Finnigan Lopez confirmed.

He had a brief consultation with their base communications team.

“Trouble is waiting, mavericks. Let’s do what we do best,” Seth commanded.

Mason stopped the Hummer and Seth, Tia, and Gabriel slipped out one door as the other three members climbed out the other door.

The six of them climbed the dune with easy steps, staying close to the ground so that they weren’t noticed by the other group.

They moved into a position to see the other people without being spotted.

“They’re dropping mines in the road, Corporal,” Gabriel mumbled into his mike.

“That confirms their friendliness,” Seth murmured back.

“There are about fifteen of them, plus the two at the road,” Kenzie Roundtree said as she dropped onto the sand beside Seth.

“They are all heavily armed with M-16 rifles, but I saw a stack of crates, so I suspect they have more firepower. I also saw an RPG launcher standing against the crates.”

“Great. It sounds like they are wanting to take an offensive stand for our main route.” Seth radioed the new information to the base and then listened to the response. He looked at his team.

They had all graduated together and had been in several tight spots over the last few months and had proven themselves level-headed and capable in a battle. Seth trusted them with his life.

And the fact that they were given the task of keeping the boundaries safe made him proud of his unit. They followed the rules but weren’t afraid to bend them when the need arose.

And to be their team’s leader was the greatest honor for Seth.

“Morales, can you disarm the mine from here?” She arched her brow at Seth and lifted her head till she could assess the distance.

“I’d need a bit of a lift. I can’t see it without elevation.”

“How much elevation?” Gabriel asked.

She rocked her head from side to side as she did the math. “Five feet?”

He nodded and then tapped Seth on the shoulder. “She can use our shoulders as leverage.”

“Um, mavericks…we’re coming to the mine. Time is short here.”

The three of them looked at each other as Mason’s voice came over the radio. Seth checked that the rest of the team was in position, Finn already taking cover behind the stack of crates.

The advantage of having a teenage cat burglar on the team was that they could have someone on the inside before their enemy realized it.

Seth watched as Finn quietly lifted a lid and peered inside. He gesticulated in their direction and Gabriel whistled.

Kenzie had grown up in a hearing-impaired home, and she had taught them all to sign.

Another weapon in their arsenal. And what Finn was signing was worrisome. The enemy group didn’t just have firepower.

They’d brought enough to blow up a small country.

“Listen up, mavericks. We need to take them out without touching those crates. The one who does cleans the bathrooms for a week. Hear me?” Seth demanded.

“Yes, sir,” the team affirmed.

With a nod, Seth and Gabriel stood up shoulder-to-shoulder, and Tia scrambled up their backpacks till she was perched on the top, each of them holding her knees to keep her steady.

She was so tiny that they barely felt her weight on their packs. She lifted her rifle to her shoulder, made a minute adjustment on the telescope, and pulled the trigger.

Seth felt the muscle in her thigh shift as it absorbed the recoil of the heavy rifle.

They saw the sand puff up where she had hit her target before they heard the explosion.

Seconds later, the responding gunfire from the insurgents fired at the Hummer as it plowed through the flying grains of sand.

From her perch, Tia fired four more times, each round resulting in an insurgent falling and not getting back up.

Then Seth and Gabriel looked up and watched as Tia fell back from her six-foot-three perch, her eyes staring up at the wide blue sky, a perfectly round hole between them.