Saint (A Dark Mafia Romance)(130)

We’re listening to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” that day in the second Humvee when the ambush hits. You’d wonder with all the shit that happened immediately following that how I’d have possibly remembered that little detail, but it’s one of those bizarre things that’ll stick with me long after I manage to forget the rest of it. Evans, our driver, is cracking some sort of crude joke about someone’s sister while Simon Le Bon belts out a chorus through the speakers when the first Humvee in front of us just erupts into liquid fire. It fucking blooms into flame, and then it’s just gone. The chaos of the moment hits like a shot of something strong right to the head, and there’s screaming and shouting as Evans tears us off the road as metal rakes the side of the truck.

The actual sequence of events are blurry, but I can remember the sound of peppering bullets plunking like hail on the other side of the building I’m crouched behind. There are people everywhere - and I don’t mean soldiers or guerrillas either, I mean fuckin PEOPLE. There are civilians and fucking children running right through the firefight and all I can think is how Goddamn UNFAIR of a world it is because of that. How in any rational, sane universe, no kid should have to cover his fucking head and run between two ideologies hurling metal at each other that he doesn’t give a fuck about.

Guys who’s names I knew but have now forgotten are getting shot - they’re dying around me, and through it all, the guys from Duran Duran just keep on playing from the open door of the shot-up Hummer behind me.

“Mark target!” Our ranking Sergeant is screaming at me, his face tight as he pops around the corner to squeeze off a few shots. “Drone strike inbound, Irish! I need a target, NOW.”

I glance over the wall, wincing at the spray of rock that scatters across my face as I eyeball the enemy position. There’s a three story building at the end of the road with Taliban on the roof with mortars and two gun placements.

“Sir!” I yell, ducking back behind the wall. “Tall building, end of the street. Tallest one in town!”

He’s radioing it in, but there’s something lingering from my quick look at the building that’s nagging at me, and I chance one more peep over the wall.

Oh, fuck.

It’s hits me like a slug to the gut. The tallest building in town, with the empty flag pole, and the Taliban on the roof….

…And the playground right outside the front door.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Call it off!” I’m running, heedless of the metal flying past my head and exploding across the ground by my feet as I sprint towards the Sargent across the road on the radio. “It’s a school! It’s a fucking school!” I’m waving my arms at him, screaming. He must suddenly hear me, because he squints and looks up as he puts his radio down. Just in time for the bullet to catch him right through the ear and drop him like bag of cement on the ground.

Drones are noiseless, but missiles turning the school at the end of the street along with half the other buildings in town into pillars of fire are not.

And neither are my screams.

When it’s over, I hear true and absolute silence. Everyone in our squad besides the three of us is dead, the pieces of shit using the school as a shield are dead, and I’m pretty sure anyone left in the town is dead as well.

It’s in that very moment where I make my decision, and it’s in that same moment where I convince Bryce and Hudson to come with me. It’s then that we desert and just walk away from all of it. We’re already dead, as far as intel is concerned, and from there it’s over the border to China, and then to the Mediterranean, and then Africa and the mercenary work. And later, to William Archer.

And from that moment on, our whole lives change.



“Wait, where are we?”

I grin to myself in my seat across the cabin from Quinn, watching her lips curl into one of those sexy, intriguing and curious smiles of hers. Apparently, keeping secrets from this girl can be fun after all.

“Why do you ask?” I say as casually as possible, trying to hide my grin as she turns back to me with that questioning smile on her face.

“Uh, because I’m not looking at a map, but I’m one-hundred percent positive that’s not Seattle down there.”

I frown and shake my head as nonchalantly as possible. “It isn’t?”

“Unless Seattle has suddenly found itself a white sandy beach with palm trees?” She arches her brow at me, her eyes sparkling, and I find myself wondering if I have time to tear her clothes off before we land.

“Huh, did I say Seattle?”

She laughs. “Um, yeah, you did.”