“He’s not my dad!” Jed exploded. “He’s not anyone’s fucking father, least of all mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. He’s not my dad. It’s biologically impossible.”
Max didn’t know what to say, and by the time he’d found his tongue again, Jed was long gone, with the distant rumble of his truck driving away the only sign he’d been there at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Phoenix, AZ
January 2, 2007
JEDHADwatched a Serbian church burn once. An old wooden building, painted white and weathered by the harsh Balkan weather. Every boy in the village died in that church, burned alive as punishment for the religion they’d been born into. Jed’s patrol had been too late to save them, the heat too intense, but they’d heard the screaming, and then the silence.
The silence had been louder.
The Serbian winter was bitterly cold, and despite the heat of the flames, every facet of Jed’s being became numb, turned to stone by apathy. He felt nothing except an illogical hatred for the sacred building that became a mass grave. Years later, standing in the small-town Phoenix chapel, he didn’t feel much different, except on the inside he felt as charred and decayed as the bullet-riddled church he’d watched burn.
Jed felt himself drift as he stood beside Olivia, Paul’s widow. He fought it. She needed him to be strong for her, but his mind wasn’t capable of taking him to a better place. Instead it took him back in time, back to a city he’d fought so hard to spare the same fate….
Mosul.
The first time they came to the city, no one had known they were there. They’d crept through the streets unnoticed and hadn’t seen a soul. That was how they liked it—get in, do the job, and get out.
Not this time.
This time they were patrolling the night markets with Kurdish rookies, trying to teach them to be fighters, mediators, and diplomats all rolled into one. A tough enough task on its own, but in the packed town square all eyes were on them, watching and waiting for them to put a foot wrong.
Jed scanned the square. His team was split, and the two separate groups were surrounded. An elderly woman screamed in his face. He didn’t pick up every word—her dialect was as ancient as she was—but he got the sentiment. His team and their band of recruits were unwelcome.
The local young men who stood in small groups caught Jed’s attention, their eyes dark with suspicion. The coalition had forged good links with them at the beginning of the war, but a misplaced cluster bomb had decimated far more than the local school, and the relationship had unraveled.
Jed searched out Paul. He was on the other side of the square, covering the eastern sector. With his back turned, it was impossible to tell if he felt as wary as Jed did.
A young woman approached Jed. She wasn’t wearing a headscarf, but that was normal in Mosul. The city was diverse. Muslims, Christians, Yazidi, they all had their place. What was unusual was the woman’s friendly smile. It lit up her warm Arabian skin and inky dark eyes, and flew in the face of every other local in close proximity. Though Jed wasn’t drawn to women, she was beautiful.
“Masaa el-Kheir.”
Jed returned the sentiment and smiled back, mesmerized. She didn’t seem real.
His distraction was brief, a split second, but it was enough.
Paul’s shout cut through the claustrophobic noise of the market, and the woman dropped to the ground, a bullet embedded in her skull.
“J! Get back, she’s fucking packing!”
Jed stared at the dead woman crumpled at his feet. The explosives strapped to her body were now glaringly obvious, and as his team spread out in well-drilled symmetry, his heart told him they’d never clear the square fast enough to get out alive.
Someone had to defuse the bomb. Now.
Jed dropped to the ground and ripped the thick layers of clothing from the dead woman’s body. It was a classic sign of a suicide bomber, and the device he uncovered was huge. How had he missed it? He stared at the rudimentary bomb with his breath stuck in his throat. The bomb was massive. If it detonated, no one in the square was making it home. They’d all be blitzed in a crater the size of a football field.
Bomb disposal wasn’t Jed’s skill. He knew only the basics—learned at training camp and long forgotten. He scanned the packed marketplace, searching for Raffi, his weapons specialist, but Raffi was too far away, stuck on the other side of the square. He caught Jed’s eye and shook his head. No time. He was on his own.
Jed stared at the bomb, looking for the timer to sever the physical connection between the detonator and the charge. His hands shook, refusing to work the way he needed them to. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t slow his mind down enough to process his actions. It was over, it was all over. The bomb was going to detonate, and they were all going to die.
Paul dropped down beside him, his boots smearing the dark blood pooled on the ground. “Focus, J. Look at the bomb. No one else can do this. It’s gotta be you.”