Fortune's
Soldier:
Shadow
Ops Alpha
by
Sarah Luddington
Genre:
M/M Military Romance
Fortune
is a fickle bastard for a soldier, Luke Sinclair knows that more than
most.
As
a Special Forces Operative he finished his career with an elite
British black ops department in Military Intelligence. As tough as it
had been, Luke loved his job and his partner, Sam Locke. Sam had once
been a US Navy SEAL.
Being
a mercenary gives Luke freedom of movement even if he cannot escape
his memories.
When
their world fell apart, Luke thought he would never see Sam again,
until they are recalled to London and sent to Syria. They must
transport the one person able to finish tearing them apart. A
terrorist who destroyed their lives. Luke and Sam fight to save the
world from imminent destruction and fight just as hard for each
other.
From
the deserts of Syria the men chase a nuclear bomb and weaponised
virus through Armenia and into Russia, finding so much more than
revenge on the way.
This
is a military gay romance with a high death count, torture (not
BDSM), and a lot of action.
**Only
99 cents!!**
Chapter One
THE RUBBER EYEPIECE STUCK TO my skin in the heat coming off the asphalted roof. Sweat greased my face and dripped under my chin making me itch. It might be pre-dawn but damn I couldn’t stand much more of this torture. The five storey apartment block squatted in the New York district of Queens and from this high corner of a tenement building, with the aid of my mounted scope, I could see the much finer apartments of Center Boulevard in Hunters Point. I shifted just enough to ease the cramp in my back for a moment before settling. Just one of the many disadvantages of age and a life lived on the edge of violence, the constant aches. To be honest I’d never planned to live this long but that’s what happened when you were well trained, damned good at your job and some dark version of lucky that preserved your life. I relaxed again, breathing through my nose and continued to watch the apartment 678 metres away. It wouldn’t be much of a challenge to kill the bastard I hunted, not at this distance and in this sultry weather. My bladder made life more tricky. I eyed the bottles I’d been pissing in for the last thirteen hours waiting for my target to return to his luxury penthouse. The importance of remaining hydrated on a job had been drilled into me, it helped maintain concentration if your body didn’t have to suffer from lack of water. The downside? The stuff you didn’t sweat out had to leave your body regardless and getting up to take a piss just didn’t happen when you are a sniper. The man I hunted had touched down on American soil at 16:35, but the target could take anywhere between two hours or several days to reach his penthouse from JFK. It all depended on what he wanted to do in the vast city of New York. So, I waited with patience even a cat would envy, for the fucker to turn up. Unfortunately, I waited in a New York sweatbox, covered in fumes and dust. Even at 05:36 the sounds of the city rumbled around my high perch, bouncing off the nearby buildings. Making a hit from this distance wasn’t about the target so much as making certain I wasn’t spotted by the overlooking buildings and the hels running around the sky. I wore clothes that were thin enough to cope with the heat and dark enough to blend with the tarmac I lay on, which stank by the way, and had a few broken cardboard boxes draped over me and the muzzle of my Barrett MRAD and its suppressor. The .308 Sinclair rounds were my preferred option for this American rifle over this distance. They’d go through the glass without deviation and hit the target like a hot needle being pushed into warm butter. A light flicked on in the glass and steel stairwell. Elation rushed through me but the world in my scope didn’t shift and neither did the long muzzle. The arrogant prick lived inside a glass bubble and I had a way to shatter it. The target didn’t trust elevators, so he and his bodyguards walked up the stairs. I could see him on the phone, no one concentrating on the target’s surroundings; they certainly would not be able to see me. I eased my finger to the trigger, my breathing didn’t change, neither did my heartbeat. The target came to the top of the stairs and paused. I squeezed the trigger. A dull spat whispered out of my rifle. Between one calm breath and the next the glass shattered and I watched red blossom over the marble interior of the stairwell. A single shot and I’d done my job. The man dropped to the ground. The bodyguards, three of them, drew their weapons but I just remained still and continued to watch through the scope. There was shouting, wild gesticulation, calls made on phones and I could hear sirens screaming. I wanted to move away before the authorities turned up, not because I feared being found, it would just complicate matters. The three men all turned their backs to me, giving me the opportunity to slide away from my vantage point and begin cleaning up my nest. The clean-up took long enough to see the police and ambulance arrive but I’d already packed my gear, changed into clean clothes I’d brought with me and descended to the street through the stairwell. Once outside I looked like a large man carrying a gym bag and a small day sack. The black baseball cap I wore shielded my eyes from the sunlight glinting off the shop windows and the elation of the job being completed well, without additional casualties, began to wear off. The muscle cramps in my back and legs from remaining still for over thirteen hours started to force me to slow down. Once upon a time I’d have been able to do a three day stint and then run a bloody marathon across a desert carrying a fifty kilo pack. These days I looked the same on the outside – at least that’s what my vanity told the mirror – but bits of me inside just didn’t work as well any more. Water and protein bars might feed a twenty-five-year-old body but not a forty-eight-year-old one. Thinking about scran made my stomach grumble but I needed to shower before I considered forcing someone to serve me food in one of the thousand eateries in the area. After walking eight blocks I found the hotel I’d registered in and returned to my room without needing to use the front desk. All they would remember was a man walking out one day and returning another, these places were anonymous. In my room I dropped my bag and pack, stripped out of my clothing and headed for the shower. The cool water caressed my taut flesh and the multitudinous scars of past campaigns that littered my body. It felt ridiculous to enjoy a simple shower this much but as I rubbed my shorn hair clean my eyes slid closed and I allowed myself a smile. Someone once told me that if I made the effort a bit more often my smile could melt the hearts of terrorists and politicians alike. As a soldier I had little time for either and tended to clump both groups into my ‘kill list’ frame of reference. I switched on the TV and the news reported the shooting. They were already assuming the Russian was killed by either his own government or a rival, which amounted to the same thing. I sat on the bed, opened the gym bag and removed the rifle. I stripped her down while watching a film about zombies and cleaned each part with a meditative air of peace settling into my mind. Cleaning a rifle, even after a single shot, had always been a place of peace for a working mind. Even in the early days I’d taken pride in my weapons and this small act kept me focused but not able to think outside the moment and I never liked the comedown after removing a target. This smoothed the transition, put the box back in the right place and allowed me to bury my dead. My next task would be food but my phone buzzed and took priority. I hit the speaker button. “I hope you’re not phoning to check on me?” “As if I would dare,” said a woman’s cultured voice on the other end. “You are the only person brave enough, Aria, and for that I will always love you.” I heard a disgruntled harrumph the other end. “There’s nothing more in the world that makes my skin crawl than you telling me you love me,” she groused. I managed a half smile. Aria found me work and I paid her a finder’s fee. She didn’t work with me exclusively but we had an understanding. I took the work others, meaning governments mostly, couldn’t do without causing them to lose sleep but needed doing anyway – hence the dead Russian. “Truce, Aria, why are you calling because you already know I’ve done the job?” “I should bloody hope so, they’ve paid you enough to get it done clean. But I’ve another job for you,” she said getting to the point. That decision was easy. “No.” “Luke, you’ll want this one.” I shoved the oiled rag down the barrel of the suppressor. “No. I don’t do back-to-back jobs any more. I don’t need to and I’ve just spent three days and nights, I might add, on a rooftop in a New York summer making sure I had the right location. I’m going home tomorrow,” I said. I had spent a great deal of time stalking New York’s streets to find the right apartment building to take that shot. It needed to be high enough, full of residents who weren’t interested in strangers or empty of people altogether, and overlooked by few domestic buildings. Office workers seeing me wouldn’t have mattered so much but people tended to pay attention to changes in their home’s immediate surroundings. “You really will want this one,” she repeated, making her voice lighter and mischievous. I lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling of the hotel room. A nice blank white space. “No, I won’t. I have a dog in the Cotswolds that needs me.” “Rogue is fine, the nanny cam in the dog sitter’s house is reporting back to me on an hourly basis.” Aria’s sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed. I frowned at how much Aria had infiltrated my personal life, such as it was these days. “Rogue will be missing me and why have you hacked my camera?” “Why do you feel the need to spy on your dog sitter? Helen seems to be a very nice English woman.” “She’s a formidable woman,” I said. Helen stood at five foot and a whisker, age almost indeterminate, with steel colouring and a soul to match. She kept my Malinois in check like few other people could manage, including me most of the time. “And I don’t spy on her, I spy on the dog.” Aria barked a laugh. “You just keep telling yourself that.” The ceiling in this hotel looked inviting. I could lie on the bed and stare at it for hours, which is what would happen until I took that flight back to my country cottage and the dog, where I could stare at my ceiling instead and not sleep. I sighed and wondered when it would stop. When the drive to work, to be in the zone and hunting might leave me in peace to enjoy the life I kept trying to re-build. “What’s the job?” I asked. Aria made a pleased hum that made me want to turn it down on principle. “You want to go back to the UK? Your wish is my command.” “I doubt that somehow but okay. What’s going on?” I asked. I rarely worked on UK soil, my skills weren’t needed too often. That and hunting my back garden felt too pedestrian. “I have little information at the moment but they are paying a great deal. The person who contacted me said his name was Damien Stapleton.” “Doesn’t ring a bell.” I could hear fingers moving like greased lightning over a keyboard. “No, he clearly doesn’t exist. I’ve done a full background check and I can’t find him anywhere. It’s good news really because it means he doesn’t have a reason to create a full identity. He’s just using a name for a little protection. It’s why I agreed to contact you because this mission is specific to you.” I frowned. That wasn’t normal, not many outside the industry knew who I’d become since leaving the Regiment. “They asked for me?” “They want, and I quote, ‘Sergeant Luke Sinclair, for a pick up.’” My frown deepened. “A pick up?” I heard the clatter of more computer keys as she spoke to me. “Yep. They need you in London and then you have to go and retrieve someone.” “From?” “That’s why they want to meet you in London I guess. You have the standard clause at that point to reject the job but we keep the deposit.” And Aria of course wanted her cut of that deposit, which would be a sizeable sum. London in the early summer wasn’t as bad as New York and I could be home in three hours, less if the motorway wasn’t packed. “Alright, I’ll bite. Get me a flight to Heathrow.” “Yes, Sergeant.” “Fuck off,” I muttered, hanging up the phone. That title sent chills up my spine, who would be asking for me as Sergeant Luke Sinclair? I hadn’t been in the army for almost five years and I might have a problem leaving certain parts of the life behind – mainly the killing bad guys part – but I didn’t miss the chain of command. My mind wandered off down a rabbit hole and I fought to drag it back, but failed again. My room felt lonely and cold, much like my life for the last five years. I pushed off the bed, contemplated shaving but decided I liked the grizzled look for New York, and went in search of the nearest gay club. I needed to drink and I needed to fuck. Aria sent through the flight details to London, I had twelve hours to burn and in New York even during the day, I could find some trouble to enjoy.
Sarah Luddington is the
author of historical gay romance and contemporary gay romance. She is
a gay rights activist, holds three martial arts black belts, a degree
in Medieval History and far too many dogs. She lives on a mountain in
Spain and in her spare time writes and reads LGBT fiction.
Come and visit her
website at www.romanticadventures.net or Facebook for more
information. She always welcomes contact with her readers.
Many thanks.
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