Authors: Elaine Levine
Shattered Valor
SHATTERED VALOR
A
Red Team Novel
by
© 2012 by Elaine Levine. All rights reserved
A Note from the Author:
We begin
Shattered Valor
at the point where
The Edge of Courage
left off. To maximize your enjoyment of this serialized story, I highly recommend you read
The Edge of Courage
before starting this book!
—
Elaine
CHAPTER ONE
Ty Bladen’s fingers and palms were sticky with rattlesnake blood. He thought the snake flesh he’d eaten would provide much needed moisture and protein. Instead, it stuck to his tongue and throat, intensifying his thirst.
He shifted forward on the narrow ledge, looking into the yawning fissure below. Rocks tumbled down, clattering as they hit the craggy walls on their way to the bottom. White bones were scattered across the pit’s floor, large enough to see but too far away to identify as either animal or human. About halfway down, a crumpled, beige coat hung from a protruding rock. It was riddled with bullet holes.
Ty remembered the minutia of everything that had happened in the moments before the tranq hit him. He’d met with his foreman, Dennis Jackson, who was preparing to take his wife out of town. Ty wanted the couple far away, safe from the conflict that was about to descend upon them. Amir Hadad, the terrorist Ty and his team hunted, had been there, in Ty’s house, holding a gun to his foreman’s wife. And then Dennis’ anguished words as the tranq took effect and darkness surrounded him,
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Ty looked at the rock wall across from him. So many rattlers were making their slow ascent up the steeply sloping rise that it quivered with their movement. Likely, the same thing was happening on the wall below him. If he didn’t climb out now, he’d have to spend another night playing viper roulette with the ones that made it to the ledge where he’d spent the last night—assuming the precarious outcropping of granite continued to hold his weight.
He looked up at the fissure’s opening, some thirty feet above him. Twice before, he’d tried, but he’d slipped back down to this ledge. The sharp rocks had carved long gashes in his chest and arms, but he’d be goddamned if he’d die in this snake pit. He reached, once again, for a hold on the jagged rock face and started up. Handhold, foothold, up.
The sun was in its late evening descent, casting shadows that made it hard to see the best places to grip. Handhold, foothold, up. As soon as he was out of this godforsaken snake pit, he intended to hunt down the terrorist who’d put him there and give the motherfucker a little taste of his own medicine, Wyoming style.
He reached for another handhold, pausing just slightly to let his senses test for the sound of a rattle or any unexpected movement before pulling himself up a few more inches. If he ever saw another rattler, it would be one time too many. He moved up another few inches, and then had to pause. His left thigh, still recovering from the bullet wound he taken in Afghanistan a couple of months earlier, cramped like a fisted hand. He couldn’t stop his upward climb to massage it. He dragged himself up another few inches, letting his left leg trail limply. Handhold, foothold, up. Sweat trickled down his forehead into his eyes. Handhold, foothold, up. He couldn’t wipe it away. Handhold, foothold, up. It was at this point that he kept losing his footing. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and forced the pain to the back of his mind as he reached up again.
He wondered what had happened to the Jacksons. He didn’t doubt that Amir had coerced them into doing his dirty work. He hadn’t seen their bodies in the cavern below him, but he knew Amir wouldn’t let them survive their participation in his nefarious activities.
Handhold, foothold, up. The air began to move around Ty in a chilling swirl. Crickets sounded loud and close. He was near the top, almost out. Handhold, foothold, up. Another few feet and he’d be clear of the pit. God knows what might be waiting for him on the outside. Hopefully, the snakes that had gotten out weren’t lingering there.
His next handhold was over the lip of the crevice. He pulled himself out of the hole then lay still, listening. There was only the cold breeze in the short pines nearby. No animals stirred. No snakes made furtive movements in the sparse grass. He sat up and rubbed his burning thigh.
He had to be somewhere in the Medicine Bow Mountains. The tranq that had incapacitated him wouldn’t have lasted long enough for his captors to get him very far away—unless they’d kept him under longer than he knew. The ridge he was on was close to seven thousand feet high. The air was thin and cold. He needed water and then shelter, neither of which could wait until morning.
Pink and orange still colored the western sky beyond the distant peaks, but night had already settled in the wide, dark valley below him. He could see a scattering of buildings whose ranch lights twinkled in the far distance. He hoped one of them had a working phone so that he could call his team for a pickup.
It took him almost three hours to reach the ranch whose lights he’d seen from the ridge. At times it seemed the closer he got, the farther it was from him. A trick of the cold, clear air, no doubt. It had to be well after midnight now. His goddamned leg was having spasms.
Christ
, it hurt.
The ranch spread consisted of a house, a barn, and a couple of older outbuildings. He made his way along the wall of the barn to a water spigot. He turned it on. Icy water spilled onto the dry ground. He cupped his hands and took a long drink, then another. He washed his face and splashed his chest to rinse the dirt from his cuts. As he took another long drink, wind sheared across the space between the house and barn, sending him into a violent round of shivering.
He needed to get warm. Fast.
Lights were on inside the house. He could hear the welcome sound of women’s voices. He limped over to the door and knocked. The talking ceased immediately. He leaned his head against a windowpane in the door. Had he imagined he heard people inside? Fucking conjured it up like his PTSD-stricken friend, Rocco, would have?
He knocked again. No one came to the door. He tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. The lights shut off the instant he stepped inside. The dark shrouded his vision, blinding him to the short hellion who charged at him, swinging a club as a woman behind her screamed.
Ty stumbled to his knees. Pain radiated out from his injured thigh and his shoulders where he was getting a clubbing. He tackled the female hitting him, slamming her onto her back. She lost her grip on her club. He heard it clatter as it rolled away on the linoleum floor.
The lights flashed back on.
He became aware of several things at once. He knew the girl he held pinned to the floor. Her club had been the brass base of a lamp. A woman, who looked rather zombie-ish in her torn clothes, messed-up hair, and green and white face, was over by the light switch. And a very large, very tense looking dog stood nose to nose with him, its lips drawn back in a grisly smile of teeth and fangs.
“Oh, fuck,” Ty hissed, barely moving his mouth and never taking his eyes off the big, tan dog. The monster’s head had to be the size of a basketball. It had black-rimmed eyes, a dark snout, and very large fangs. Ty tried to push the girl across the floor, wanting to move her away from the danger.
“Slowly, very slowly, get behind me,” he calmly ordered.
“Ty Bladen! Get off me.”
Ty didn’t break eye contact with the dog. “Don’t argue with me, Eden.”
She heaved a loud sigh, capturing the beast’s attention. To Ty’s utter horror, she reached up and scratched the monster’s chin. “This is Tank. He won’t hurt you unless I give him the order.”
Ty ventured a quick look at the woman pinned beneath him. She barely resembled the ballsy female he’d met at the local western bar two days earlier. Her face was lean and shadows darkened her beautiful topaz eyes.
She was eyeing him critically as well. “What happened to you, Bladen? Did they get you, too?”
“Who?”
“Jefferson Holbrook and his thugs.”
“No. It was a friend of his, though. Been trying to get out of a snake pit for the last day or so. What happened here?”
“Holbrook kidnapped my friends, Sherri and Trudy, after the fight at Winchester’s. He just brought them back a little while ago—they’re terribly hurt. Can you help me get them to a doctor?”
Ty nodded. Eden climbed out from beneath him, then hurried into the other room where the zombie woman stood. Tank stayed behind and continued to give him the evil eye. Ty sat up and leaned against the fridge, taking a breath before forcing his leg to hold his weight again. He used the handle of the fridge to pull himself up, then limped after Eden as she helped her friend back to the sofa where another woman reclined in a semi-conscious state.
The women’s faces were bruised and disfigured with cuts and swelling bumps, their necks ringed with red and blue blotches. Ah, Christ. He could barely recognize them now. They looked nothing like the Jersey Shore transplants who were so vibrant but so out of place at Winchester’s a couple of nights ago—the same girls his friends, Val and Greer, had caused a barroom brawl over. They still wore the clothes they’d worn then. Well, the remnants of them anyway.
“What’s going on, Eden?” Ty asked.
She looked at him. “My friends and I got separated after the fight at the bar. They didn’t come back until just before you got here. Please—I’ve got to get them to a doctor.”
He nodded. “Go get some blankets.” She got up to do as he requested, but he caught her arm before she could leave the room. “Were you hurt?”
“No.” She put a hand to her throat. Ty didn’t see bruises there, but wondered if they just hadn’t appeared yet. “Scared to death, but they didn’t do anything to me, other than threaten me.” Eden hurried off to one of the bedrooms and came back with two blankets. She helped one of the girls into a blanket while Ty wrapped the other one up.
“How did they threaten you?”
Eden looked at her friends, then at him. “They said there’s a ledger at your house, hidden somewhere. They want it or they will do to me what they did to my friends. What were they talking about, Bladen?”
Ty shook his head. “I don’t know. They didn’t say anything else? A clue as to what was in it?”
She shook her head. “Where do you live?”
“Outside of Wolf Creek Bend. By my calculations, we’re on or near the WKB compound right now. Do you have a better idea where we are?” he asked Eden.
“We’re
on
the WKB compound. This house belongs to Jefferson Holbrook.”
Just fucking peachy. Could this night get any worse? They were holed up in a house owned by the leader of the western branch of the notorious prison gang, the White Kingdom Brotherhood. They needed to clear out, and fast. “Do you have wheels?” he asked Eden.
She nodded. “I have my SUV and they have their rental car.”
He gave Eden a critical assessment. “Are you up to driving?” She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, but at least she hadn’t been roughed up like her friends.
“Yes. I just want to get out of here.”
Ty nodded toward the girl who was drifting at the edge of consciousness. “She’s Sherri, right?”
Eden nodded. “And Trudy,” she said, indicating the girl whose hand she was holding. “Should we call for an ambulance?”
“No. It’ll take too long. It would be more than two hours for an ambulance to make the round trip from Wolf Creek Bend. If we bring them down ourselves, we can be there in about an hour.” And, more importantly, off Holbrook’s property sooner.