Final
Play
Shadow
Ops: Charlie
by
Sarah Luddington
Genre:
M/M Gay Military Romance
Workplace
bullying can cripple the best of people, but for a soldier, it can be
the difference between life and death.
Nick Wilde, an
embattled SAS soldier, finds Gabriel Cabrera, a former US Ranger,
hanging by his wrists in a terrorist camp in Myanmar.
Their
first battle is surviving the jungle when they are abandoned by
Nick’s homophobic commanding officer and his team.
Their
second battle is to survive Jupiter Section. The blackest of black
ops US organisations. The small UK covert group Unit Twelve use the
skill and bond of both men to fight and try to bring down Jupiter
Section and save both the US and UK governments.
The final
battle is how the men survive the aftermath of this conflict and
learn to live with the terrible consequences.
An MM military
romance with tough men who are broken and reformed by their
experiences. Only love can draw them into the future they both crave
– a future of peace.
**Only
.99 cents!**
“Do not engage unless necessary, Echo 7.”
“Understood, Echo 1. Out.”
I moved the barrel of my G36k back to my previous direction of travel and approached the corner, the sound growing louder. I hit the pressel in my chest opening a channel to my commanding officer. “Echo 1, I can hear someone singing the Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Say again, Echo 7.”
“I think there’s an American down here,” I whispered.
Then I heard, “Contact!” from several team members on the net and suppressed gunfire behind me, the phut phut, strange in its quiet deadness.
Ultimate
Sanction
Shadow
Ops: Bravo
Mac, a
42 year old veteran of the SAS, is in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo learning to live without his closest friend Jacob Hayes after
being forced into ‘retirement’.
However, a spat with an
African warlord brings the SAS, British Military Intelligence and
Jacob back into his life.
Mac soon discovers his enemies are
more dangerous than he ever considered possible. While Mac, Jacob and
Unit 12, the elite arm of British Military Intelligence, strive to
prevent North Korea gaining a WMD of terrifying proportions. They
also fall deeper into a global conspiracy set to disrupt the delicate
balance of power in the world.
During their battles, Jacob
forces Mac to confront the one truth he finds too hard to face alone.
Mac’s sexuality is long denied, hidden in the dark by his brutal
father before he ever had the chance to understand it. Is Special
Forces operative Jacob strong enough to fight for the heart of the
man he’s always loved?
This is a military gay romance with,
off-screen torture (not BDSM) a high death count and a lot of action.
It can be read as a stand-alone.
**Only
.99 cents!**
I WOKE LONG BEFORE DAWN, the sheets a tangled sweaty mess, the humidity of
night pressing against my naked flesh because I’d forgotten to switch on the air
conditioning again. Though the sweat might well have come from the dreams I
didn’t push to remember. Memories were bad enough; I didn’t need to add to
them with dreams.
“Run,” I muttered to the empty walls. I untangled myself and rose, the
darkness of Kinshasa never a complete pitch-black, unlike the nights I’d spent
in the jungle over the last couple of years.
Living alone meant I moved easily around the room without tripping over
discarded clothes. I wouldn’t class myself as a neat freak but if an item had a
home, not putting back in that home wasted time and energy. A habit I would
never break after my 23 years in the British Army. The running gear had a
home and I found it easily. I dressed in shorts and a vest, pulled on some socks
and hunted down my trainers. While I dressed, I figured out which of my runs
to tackle before the heat of dawn made running impossible for me.
“Seven kilometres should do it,” I said, walking through my darkened
kitchen. Light from my neighbour’s back porch shone onto a wall of picture
frames and one seemed to wink at me. A magpie attraction drew me to look,
even though I knew it would be a jackdaw’s beak plucking at my heartstrings
again.
The picture showed me standing next to my corporal, his arm slung over my
shoulder. He looks at the camera, in full DPMs, the Disruptive Pattern Material
suitable for work in the deserts of Syria. I am looking at him.
Unable to stop the inevitable pain, I reached up to run a finger over the
digital rendition of my friend while trying to ignore the expression the camera
caught on my face. “Miss you.”
~ 8 ~
I can’t help looking at the younger version of me. The unmitigated longing
in my face makes it hard for me to breathe. Flashes of memory. Flashes of
seeing Jacob’s long, corded limbs naked in the showers we’d shared, or rooms
and tents over the years together, crowd inside my mind and make my heart
beat faster.
The growl coming from my throat is low and dangerous. I force the images
back in their box, where they never manage to stay for long, turn away from
the wall of pictures and grab the house keys. My only house guest, a huge
mongrel dog who came with the property when I bought it, lifts his head as I
leave but declines my offer of a run. Hound doesn’t run anywhere if he can
avoid it. In fact, the dog doesn’t really do anything other than put his head in
my lap if I sit outside in the evening.
Forgoing the warm up, I opt for a gentle run to start, trying hard to keep my
mind blank. By concentrating on each footfall, I gradually chase the ache in my
heart away, put the memories back in their rigid containers, and stop thinking
about the past or the future. By living in the present there is a safe numbness to
my life which brings with it a sense of peace, perhaps even happiness, if you
think happiness is no longer wanting something you can’t have in your life.
The kilometres stacked up as I pounded along well-lit streets in the mega
city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I wove through the
urban landscape, the roads quiet, the pavements empty, the air not exactly clean
but better than it would be during the heat of the day. Summers here weren’t
desert hot, but the humidity could make them feel like hell.
I never thought I’d miss the deserts of the Middle East and Asia.
The burn in my muscles weighed heavy for a moment and I forced myself to
slow down, having picked up the pace 5km ago. Walking up a hill made sweat
slide down my back and another memory took the opportunity to leap out of
the dark.
Unable to keep it pushed away, I stopped and closed my eyes for a moment
indulging in the ridiculous fantasy.
Even after 3 years I could still recall every freckle on Jacob’s face and
shoulders. His soft brown eyes, pale but bright, like amber rather than
something dark such as mahogany. The brown hair, always cut short, and
naturally tanned skin. His hands and forearms I knew just as well, covered in
fine hair, thick fingers and rough knuckles. Callouses from the hours spent on
~ 9 ~
the firing range and working out in the gym. Five years we’d worked together
in the Special Air Service. He’d come up from the Pathfinders, 12 years my
junior and the moment he passed selection I had known I’d be unable to keep
him away from my heart.
Within weeks our commanding officers realised we were a seamless team of
two and every deployment found us working side by side. On a training
exercise in Saudi Arabia I’d taken a tumble down a dune. The sand, hot and
fine, suffocated me as I rolled down from the crest of the hill. I dropped 30
metres, the heat of the sand burning into my face and hands as I tried to stop
the roll. We carried full Bergens, webbing, complete with magazines and water
rations, belts and body armour. My assault rifle, the trusted L119A2 carbine,
smacked me around the face making my tactical helmet slip so the next roll had
the gun’s butt hit my head. I had no control. I could hear Jacob scream my
name but with a mouth full of sand I didn’t stand a chance of answering, I
could hardly breathe. When I hit the bottom the extra 30kg of weight I carried,
the dizziness and the heat which left me sucking more sand into my body, made
it impossible to move.
Arabian sand is like golden water. If the gods could find a way to make it
look and move like water yet deny all those who needed their grace access to
life by creating this mockery, then that’s what we had in the desert. A mockery
of water. It covered me. A prickly, miserable sensation of clinging sandpaper.
“Mac, shit, Mac, you okay?” Jacob’s breathless question made me realise
he’d raced down the hill after me.
“Sergeant, get your fucking arse back up this hill,” barked our captain. The
sadist had decided we needed more team discipline so forced us on a 10km
forced march through the desert near the camp we were using as our OP.
“And, Corporal Hayes, you are docked a week’s pay for disobeying my direct
order to remain in formation.”
I watched Jacob’s eyes flash with the need to give his CO the finger. I
croaked, “Don’t,” and managed to lay a hand on his arm.
Jacob’s expression darkened. “You okay?” He took out his water bottle and
helped me sit up. The rest of the team were already doing double time away
from our position.
I took a drink and watched them go. “That man is going to be the death of
us,” I muttered once I’d spat the sand out.
~ 10 ~
“Fucking rupert.”
He was a prick, straight out of Sandhurst and must have licked some serious
arse to get posted to the SAS so fast. He’d made it through our basic training,
just, but the 22nd Regiment didn’t like it when people played politics, so
rumours were flying that his position in the team was probationary. We loved
to gossip so this man’s status as our CO meant we had little to no respect. A
forced march like this in the desert wouldn’t win him any medals from us.
“Well, we’re going to be late back, so there’s no point in hurrying now.
Might as well take it easy.” I poked Jacob in the chest. “But you shouldn’t
have come after me, you prick. You could have broken your neck.”
Jacob snorted. “Yeah, I’m going to leave you in the sun to bake. Come on,
old man. Let’s get you up and make our way back to the OP at a sensible
pace.”
“He’ll dock us another week’s pay.”
“That’s going to be a problem,” Jacob admitted.
I looked at him and recognised the blush covering his sunburned cheeks.
“What did you do this time?”
He shrugged. “Might have found myself at a camel race when you went off
to Turkey for that meeting with the Head Shed.”
I sighed the sigh of a thousand martyrs. “Jacob…”
“Don’t, alright, I know – I have a problem. Sorry.” He actually hung his
head.
I used his younger back and knees to push myself out of the sand. “Fella,
you’re a walking disaster area. We’ve had this conversation too many times to
count.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“You want me to take over your wages again?” I asked. We’d been working
on his gambling problem for a year now. I had the feeling it masked something
worse, something deeper but I couldn’t get him to talk it through. We’d gone
into his bank and made arrangements for an allowance and everything over
that he had to gain a signature from me. We’d cancelled the agreement a
month ago, clearly that had been a mistake.
He nodded, thoroughly ashamed of having to be rescued. “Sorry, Mac. I
never want to disappoint you.”
I gripped his shoulder, the strength in him always surprising me
~ 11 ~
considering he stood a good 10cm shorter than me. “You will never disappoint
me.” A wave of desire ripped through me, from nowhere, and I almost doubled
over with the pain of denial that whipped up to chase it away.
The frequency of these moments, a sickening combination of lust for him
and loathing for myself, left me raw.
I turned away from the sad puppy eyes. “Come on. Let’s go.” Rough words.
While we walked through the shifting sand, plodding because with every
step we sank into the solid water, I wrestled with the ache in my chest, the need
in my groin and the fear in my head. Jacob wanted women. He’d made that
clear to me over the 18 months we’d worked together. He took them home, he
fucked them, he behaved like every young squaddie since the beginning of
wars, but I didn’t.
I preferred not to think about sex. I didn’t get close to the women in the
clubs and bars, or the bases we worked out of all over the world. I liked
women. I liked working with them, I liked being friends with them, but I didn’t
need or want sex. I wasn’t very good at it and found the whole experience
uncomfortable. I understood others gained a great deal of joy from the
practice, but it wasn’t for me. I worked. The SAS were my family, my life, my
mission. I had nothing else. I wanted nothing else.
Jacob began to talk, he did that a lot, and I listened to the chatter about
something one of the guys on base had told him about SEAL Team 7 and
gradually the pain eased.
I’d become adept at lying to him, to me, and living in a world of denial so
deep I’d never see the daylight over the weight of water drowning me on a
daily basis.
“Mac?”
I logged back into the day, the heat almost felling me as we stopped.
“What?”
“You okay?”
I smiled at him and reached up to grip the back of his neck, the only gesture
I allowed myself despite Jacob constantly rubbing against me or slinging an
arm over my shoulders. “Yeah. I’m with you, so I’m bound to be alright.”
He grinned, his teeth very white in the deepening tan of his face. “I was
saying – the girls on base are going to throw a party. We’ve all been invited.”
The idea filled me with horror, but I’d get to spend the evening shooting the
~ 12 ~
shit with some of the married women and that didn’t sound so bad. The horror
part would be watching some young thing throw herself at Jacob. I had visions
of being his best man at the wedding, god father to his children and being their
single uncle who never met ‘the one’.
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“You don’t have to sound quite so enthusiastic,” he said.
“Come on, we need to keep moving. You never know, we might beat them
back.”
“Unless you plan on whipping my arse to make me move faster that’s never
going to happen,” he grumbled.
The thought of whipping his arse to make him do anything almost made me
pass out the blood shifted away from my brain so fast. “Just walk, pest.” I
prodded him with the carbine.
He grinned at me and we fell into step together again, just like always. Life
was good when I had Jacob at my shoulder.
Fortune's
Soldier
Shadow
Ops: Alpha
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!**
Goodreads
* Amazon
1
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.
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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