Honor Reclaimed (HORNET #2)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

FLORIDA EVERGLADES

Seth Harlan’s boot squished into soft earth where seconds ago there had been solid ground, and his foot slid out from under him.

Aw, shit.

He saw the fall coming but had zero chance of stopping himself in the slimy swamp scum. Barely had time to react beyond lifting his rifle so that it didn’t end up jammed with mud. He landed sideways with an ungraceful splash in a pool of stagnant water. The stench was incredible, the taste even worse, but he stayed put. Listened. Told his heart to calm the fuck down before it beat out of his chest and gave away his position.

Water sloshed around him. Insects buzzed, birds cawed. In the distance, a woodpecker tapped out a staccato rhythm on a tree. Closer by, a frog let out a bellowing croak. He strained his ears, struggling to pick out footsteps, voices—any sign that his position had been compromised. But the natural noises drowned out the unnatural, so he was as sure as he could be that his fall hadn’t drawn any unwanted attention.

The other member of insertion team Alpha, Jean-Luc Cavalier, crouched behind foliage on dry turf, obviously waiting for him to get his act together. They were still a good two klicks from the target. They’d have to haul ass if he was going to get into position before the opposition force arrived with their “hostage.”

He could not fuck up another training mission.

“Alpha Two, coming to you,” he said into his radio because the last thing he needed was to startle Jean-Luc and end this mission with friendly fire before it even began.

“Roger, Alpha One,” Jean-Luc’s voice answered.

He hauled himself upright and slogged through the mud, careful not to make any more sound than necessary. It cost precious minutes they didn’t have, but eventually he made it to Jean-Luc, who fell in behind him, and he picked up the pace to make up for the time lost. This was his show, another test thrown at him by Gabe Bristow, HORNET’s commander, and he wasn’t going to screw it up by missing their deadline to get into position.

Using satellite images of the area, he and Jean-Luc had gone over the plan forwards and backwards, inside and out before leaving the security of their forward operating base. About a half mile out from the target, he motioned for Jean-Luc to go left and he moved to the right. He knew exactly where he had to set up his hide, knew exactly where Jean-Luc would be positioned, and how their raid would go down if the intel Gabe had given them was correct.

Seth crept through the dense underbrush, his senses heightened to a razor’s edge. Each step was carefully placed to minimize noise, every breath controlled to blend with the ambient sounds of the swamp. The weight of his gear and the oppressive humidity made the trek arduous, but he pushed forward with single-minded focus.

As he neared the designated location for his hide, he paused, scanning the area with a practiced eye. A small rise offered a clear line of sight to the target zone while providing adequate concealment. He settled into position, the damp earth conforming to his body as he lay prone, rifle at the ready.

“Alpha One in position,” he whispered into the radio. “Alpha Two, report.”

“Alpha Two in position,” came Jean-Luc’s reply, his voice low and steady over the comm. “Visual on the target zone. No activity yet.”

Seth adjusted his scope, the crosshairs settling on the dilapidated shack that was their objective. It looked like something out of Deliverance . He’d be so unsurprised to hear banjo music starting any second. If he were with his old team, Bowie, his spotter, would have even hummed a few bars from the famously creepy dueling banjo scene and they would have shared a silent laugh over it.

But Bowie was dead.

So was the rest of his old team.

Now here he was, slogging through a swamp without a spotter, doing what was normally a two-person job by himself. All for a new team that didn’t accept or trust him.

Yet , he reminded himself. They’d come around.

Through the scope, Seth surveyed the landscape, noting every detail— the decrepit shack that was the supposed rendezvous point, the winding trail that led to it, the thick foliage that could hide any number of threats.

The shack was quiet. No movement. Intel said two HTs—hostage takers—were supposedly arriving with their principle at 1400. Their mission was to neutralize the HTs and get the hostage out. It had to be quick, quiet, and they had to be en route to their exfil before dark.

Seth shimmied closer and found a good firing position behind a thick, half rotted log. Stretching out flat on his belly, he used some of the local fauna to cover himself and his rifle.

Then he settled in for a wait.

The buzzing of bugs got louder, almost deafening, and he suspected a swarm had gathered over his head, but he didn’t look away from his scope to confirm his suspicion. A half hour into the watch something with many legs crawled across his back, and the mud coating him from head to foot started to really fucking sting.

Still, he didn’t move a muscle.

He waited. Watched. Listened. Just as he’d been trained to do in sniper school.

Remaining alert and vigilant during long stretches of inaction was always the hardest part of a sniper’s mission. He’d never had much problem with it before, but… well, yeah, that was before. Now, it took everything he had in him not to fidget or give in to the creeping sense of paranoia that made him want to glance around. He knew there was nobody behind him. Every sense he had told him so. But his heart raced and his gut told him he had to check, had to make sure. He hated having his back open to attack. That was how he’d lost his original team.

The sound of a motor caught his attention, drawing it away from the constant, nagging paranoia. Relief coursed through him. Finally something else to focus on. He scanned the trees through his scope.

Nothing. No boat, although the sound continued to get closer. And then, there it was. An airboat skimming over the murky water, clearing a copse of trees and easing up to the shore near the shack.

Two HTs, just as their intel had said. One operating the boat, one scanning the surroundings holding an AK-47, both wearing camo and face paint.

“Alpha One to Alpha Two,” Seth whispered, finally breaking the radio silence. “I have eyes on two HTs arriving by boat. No sign of the hostage.”

“Roger that,” Jean-Luc’s voice said in his ear.

“Are you still in position, Alpha Two?”

“Affirmative.”

“Hold your position.” And just like that, as the words left his lips, they transported him out of the swamp. He heard himself screaming those words, the command echoing around between his ears. “ Hold your positions!”

The heat surrounding him no longer moved through his lungs like soup—instead, it was a dry heat, like breathing sand, parching his throat with each inhale. The buzzing in his ears wasn’t from bugs, but from bullets as they rained down on his stranded Humvee from overhead. His remaining men—Bowie, Link, Rey, Cordero—scrambled to find cover and return fire. Lance Corporal Joe McMahon was already dead, slumped over the steering wheel.

“Seth!” Omar Cordero’s panicked voice filled his head. “We’re under attack. Holy shit! There’s hundreds of them.”

“I got no comms, Sir,” Link shouted.

“Your orders?” Rey asked. Young and terrified, he was all but shaking in his boots.

Seth hadn’t expected the ambush, hadn’t prepared his men for the possibility of it. And with their vehicle disabled by an RPG, they were sitting ducks as another wave of insurgents swarmed down the mountain.

Dammit, they couldn’t hold their positions. “Fall back! Get to higher ground!”

“Go,” Bowie said. “I’ll draw their fire. Go, go, go!”

“Hold! Hold!”

The buzzing in his ears wasn’t from bugs, but from bullets as he told his men—Bowie, Link, McMahon, Rey, Cordero—to keep firing at the Taliban fighters swarming down the mountain. Corporal Garrett Rey taking a bullet through his face, blood spraying like Old Faithful as he toppled off the mountain. Another wave of insurgents, two more for each one they picked off, pushing them further down the mountainside toward a precipice…

“Fall back! Fall back! Fall back!”

“Alpha One? Alpha One, do you copy?”

Jean-Luc’s voice in his ear brought Seth slamming back to the here and now with dizzying force. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs and a sticky, cold sweat coated his skin, raising goose bumps despite the muggy swamp air.

Fuck.

By sheer force of will, he quieted his breathing, squashed the lingering fear and horror. His paranoia had amped up to Terror Alert level Red, but he was not going to give in to his mind’s games and look behind him. At this point, any unnecessary movement could give him away.

He. Could. Do. This.

“One to Two,” he said and his voice sounded like he’d scoured his throat with glass shards. He didn’t bother clearing away the hoarseness. “I didn’t copy. Say again. Over.”

“I have visual confirmation of our hostage. Do you want to engage?”

Seth refocused on his scope. The two HTs pulled a hooded figure up out of the boat and all but threw him over the edge. He stumbled when he landed and faceplanted in the swamp mud until his captors yanked him upright again. The guy jerked against the ropes binding his hands, tried to break free and run. His shoulders heaved under a wet and muddy business shirt like he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Alpha One, do you want to engage?”

Another breath. In and out. Goddammit. He had to focus. He was not the captive here, but if this was a real situation, he was the only thing standing between the hostage and the kind of memories that kept a man up playing online poker all night. He scanned the distance, calculated, and wished like hell he had a spotter to double-check his calculations. He had a shot.

“One to Two, move in.”

All right. Moment of truth.

Seth’s heart pounded so hard he heard nothing but the thudding rush of blood in his ears. Cold sweat ran like a river down his spine, but he forced his hands to steady as he checked the scope, adjusted the dials one last time, and sank into his prone position until his bones held him up rather than his muscles. His rifle rested in a natural groove on the log in front of him. Ready. Waiting for his command to do its job.

He took aim, breathed deep. In and out. In and out. He had the HT’s fatal T directly in the crosshairs. All he had to do was breathe and let the rifle take over. Breathe and tighten…his… finger.

Something round dug into the base of his skull.

Arctic water spilled through his veins, sending wracking shivers through his body. He knew the feeling of a gun barrel against his head all too well, had lived with it day in and day out for fifteen months, wondering every time if it would be the last time his captors tormented him with the possibility of death.

“Bang,” a gruff voice said with the faintest hint of New York City coloring the words. The muzzle lifted away from his head and Ian Reinhardt stood over him, usual scowl firmly in place. “You’re dead, Harlan. So’s your team. Again. You gotta hold the record for most teams killed by one operator.”

The door to the shack burst open and Gabe Bristow limped out into the clearing without his cane. “Reinhardt, enough.”

Ian grunted and shouldered his paintball gun. “Boss man’s coming to your rescue yet again, noob. When will you grow some fucking balls and stand up for yourself?”

Seth climbed to his feet. “Back off, Reinhardt.”

“Or what? You’ll put a bullet in me? You miss half the damn time.” Ian scoffed. “Where’s the Hero Sniper the media went on and on about? ‘Cause I sure as fuck haven’t seen him.”

A sour taste filled Seth’s mouth as it always did when someone mentioned the extensive news coverage of his rescue. Half the news outlets had lauded him as some kind of hero and the other half had rifled through his past, looking for any speck of dirt they could find. Some of the more heartless tabloids—one in particular—had even insinuated he had gone AWOL, killed his men, and the whole rescue was all a giant government conspiracy to cover up his crimes.

Fucking reporters. He had no love for them.

“Reinhardt!” Gabe said again, his voice all Navy SEAL commander. “Hit the deck and give me a hundred. Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Ian flashed a grin full of malice and almost cheerfully dropped into the push-up position right there in the mud.

Ian counted out the reps and Seth scanned the remnants of their training mission as the rest of the team converged on the clearing.

Harvard, who had been playing the part of the hostage, stood beside Marcus DeAngelo and Jesse Warrick, the two HTs. Jean-Luc emerged from the underbrush without any paint on him to indicate he’d been hit, but that wouldn’t have lasted. Seth was supposed to have been Jean-Luc’s lookout and also provide cover fire. Without him, Jean-Luc was as good as dead.

“All right, gentlemen,” Gabe said, addressing the group as Quinn, the team’s XO, came out of the shack where he and Gabe had been watching from monitors. “What went wrong?”

“The Hero Sniper wasn’t aware of his surroundings,” Ian said between push-ups. He paused in the up position and added, “I’d been tracking him for two klicks, ever since he bit it in the mud. Stood right behind him for a good ten minutes. He never noticed. Ask me, a sniper should have two good eyes.”

Seth met Gabe’s steely gaze, his gut churning with a mix of shame and defiance. The commander’s expression was unreadable, but the disappointment was palpable in the heavy silence that followed Ian’s scathing report.

Seth’s jaw clenched. He wanted to defend himself, to explain that the flashbacks had caught him off guard, that he was still adjusting to operating with only one eye and without the help of a spotter.

But excuses wouldn’t fly with Gabe Bristow. So he snapped Marine straight and prepared for the dressing down he rightfully deserved. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah, Harlan. You did.”

“I lost focus and didn’t listen to my instincts. Won’t happen again, sir.”

Gabe made a noncommittal sound and addressed the entire team, “Pack up, gentlemen. We’re done here for today.”

There were a lot of good-natured jabs, some cursing, and some laughter as everyone headed toward the boat. Seth shouldered his rifle and followed in the group’s wake. Nobody spoke to him, which was a-okay as far as he was concerned. He got the feeling deep in his gut—and fuck him if he’d ignore it again—that Gabe’s dismissive attitude meant he’d screwed up one too many times for the former SEAL’s liking.

He was done.