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Fourteen years ago: South Sudan…

“Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

Screams and gunfire sounded over Missy’s tactical radio.

Second Lieutenant Millicent Andriopolos didn’t waste a second. She yelled to the squad she was currently leading even though they’d all heard the distress call.

Feet scrambled.

“Winch. What’s happening,” she barked into her comm as she and her team rushed from the building they’d just cleared and secured.

The call had come from her second in command, who, with his squad of five, had been tasked to help relocate a UN Peacekeeping delegation. The UN faction was packing to move their office closer to the new seat of power in Juba. That was where the SPLA—the Sudan People’s Liberation Army—was basing their capitol, now that they’d won control of the region in a highly contested election.

Missy’s Army platoon had been recently deployed as a Cultural Support Team, or CST, to assist not only the new government, but the local opposition groups trying to navigate where they stood after the takeover. Things, however, weren’t going exactly smoothly. The Nile and Cobra factions in the area were resisting the newly appointed SPLA led government, and she hoped that wasn’t translating to big trouble for her squad.

“Winch!” Missy yelled into her comm unit as she ran, trying to raise her Sergeant to no avail.

Goddammit. What was happening? Her gut clenched, and even though her mind shouldn’t go there, her immediate concern was for one man in particular.

Cobble .

She shook off the distraction she couldn’t afford.

“Squad B,” she clipped over her mic. “Heading in to assist Squad C. Requesting additional backup.”

“Copy, LT,” Turner’s steady voice from B team came back. “We heard. ETA, six minutes.”

She and her squad would be on site in three.

Hopefully that would be soon enough.

****

Approaching the building while sticking to the early morning shadows, a shudder traveled up Missy’s spine as she perused the situation ahead. All was quiet. Too quiet. Which had her spooked. There should have been bustling personnel. Files and computers being carried out. Vehicles being loaded.

The silence was eerie.

She raised a hand for her men to stop behind her as she studied the outside of the building. She’d been here before, and nothing detectable stood out as being different, but that didn’t mean anything. After the mayday call she’d received—and the silence that had ensued—they needed to approach, carefully.

“Grogan. Fletch,” she whispered to two of her team flanking her. “Head around back. There’s a door that leads inside from the alley. Let me know when you’re in position, then wait for my word to breach.”

Grogan gave a nod of his head before he and Fletch disappeared into the shadows.

Less than a minute later, she got a click over the comm that signaled the pair were in place.

“Make ready,” she told the three men who remained on her six.

“Copy that, LT,” they spoke in unison.

She opened her mic. “Okay. On my go. Three, two, one…”

The small group ran for the main front door, kicking it in, which wasn’t hard to do as it already stood ajar.

Ajar because…

…what met her eyes inside was carnage. Total and utter carnage.

“Fuck,” Grogan rasped, standing opposite to Missy, having entered across the room from where she’d come in. “Are they all…?”

Missy didn’t know. She wanted to scream at the senseless slaughter, but instead gave a succinct nod. It sure looked like everyone in the office was dead.

Cobble …

Wanting nothing more than to weep at the injustice of it all, Missy knew she had to hide her feelings. She was in charge, and there was work to do. She swallowed back bile and assessed.

The bodies of five UN Peacekeepers, riddled with bullets, lay strewn across the floor. Next to and amongst them were Missy’s Squad C, all unmoving and covered with massive amounts of blood.

Winch was laying on his back with his eyes wide open. He still had his radio gripped in his hand. Missy rushed to his side, pulled off her tactical gloves, and leaning down, laid her fingers along the side of his neck. It was a completely useless gesture. He was already gone, and she knew it.

Missy sucked in a breath, nearly gagging at the stench of gun-powder, blood, and other bodily effluents that flooded her nostrils.

One of her team was vomiting behind her, and she didn’t blame them. It was pure anger and adrenaline that kept her from losing her stomach’s contents, as well. Although if she found Cobble lifeless amongst the bodies, her stoicism would be sorely tested.

“Check for signs of life,” Missy managed, reaching up to close Winch’s eyes. She leaned down to whisper in his ear. “You were a good man,” she choked out, fighting back tears for a life lost too soon. “I’ll make sure your wife knows that you died a hero.” Winch, she knew, not only had a wife, but three kids at home. Kids who would never see him again.

Her resolve hardened. This heinous crime would not go unanswered.

She inched over toward the next man.

A stranger. He too, was gone.

A large boot caught her eye, and following its length, her gaze traversed up a muscled, familiar, camo-clad leg, leading to…

Cobble.

Missy nearly choked out a groan. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. No. Please . He couldn’t be dead. Losing so many good men was hard enough, but there was something so very special about this man who had, in the past, made her…take notice.

When working with him, she’d become almost girly at times; something no one had ever accused her of before. Cobble was just so…compelling. A stunning man who embraced life; grabbing onto everything the world had to offer with both hands.

And she wasn’t blind. Missy couldn’t help but be attracted to not only his constant, upbeat attitude, but his chiseled face with its scruffy five o-clock shadow, the blond hair she’d love to test with her fingers for softness, and his gorgeous physique; all tight hips and massive shoulders. The man was gorgeous, sunshine personified, and…

Dead ?

Her body went cold.

Would she ever see Cobble’s smile again? Would he ever again brighten her day with an arcane piece of knowledge?

Right now, his face was barely recognizable beneath the blood streaming from—

Streaming!

Holy shit!

Missy scrambled forward.

A dead man’s heart didn’t pump blood.

Hands shaking, Missy reached for his pulse and found a weak one. Almost undetectable, but there.

Cobble was alive.

She yelled into her radio. “Command. We need immediate medical assistance, an emergency evac, and an extraction team.” Missy did a quick count. “Eighteen men down: eleven soldiers and UN personnel, as well as seven insurgents.” She hated to add, “Most presumed dead.” She gave the building’s location and received an affirmative just as squad B entered the building, coming to a stop at the devastation that met their eyes.

Missy instantly addressed Turner, squad B’s leader and their platoon’s medic. “Cobble’s still alive.” She was amazed that her voice worked.

Turner strode forward and dropped to his knees beside his teammate, immediately beginning triage.

With one worried look at the formerly vibrant man who was lying so still, Missy drew in a deep breath, regrouped, at least on the outside, and began her rounds to make further assessments to see if anyone else was still breathing. Her squad did the same, and after a lot of despondent head-shakes, a consensus was finally reached.

Cobble was the only one who had survived.

It was a huge blow to have lost so many good men.

What the fuck had gone on here?

Why this office, and why now, when a new regime had just claimed power?

The job of all the people murdered here today had been to assure that the rebel factions were protected moving forward; the displaced given a voice in the new government. It made no sense that those people the UN forces were representing would bite the proverbial hand that fed them.

On the flip side, if it had been a government sanctioned hit, why would the new regime order it? Those gaining power were relying on the CST and the UN Peacekeepers to help smooth their precipitous transition.

Missy stood back and attempted to look at things with a keen eye; distancing herself for a few moments from the human wreckage. Although keeping her gaze off Cobble where Turner worked on him, was almost impossible.

Focus, Andy. Focus .

There had to be some kind of clue amongst all the open drawers and scattered paperwork that would help unravel this Charlie Foxtrot. It almost seemed as if someone had been purposely looking for something here. Had there been documents stored in this location that were considered classified? Missy didn’t have the clearance to know the answer. But screw that, because right here in front of her was one third of her platoon. Dead. Wiped out.

Missy made up her mind then and there. She was damned sure going to make it her business to find answers as to what had happened; classified or not.

“How’s he doing?” Missy finally gave in and strode back to Turner, squatting beside him as he tended to a comatose Cobble.

“Pulse thready and weak. Breathing sounds non-existent on the left side,” the medic stated grimly. “It looks like he sustained a bullet wound to the right thorax that penetrated his lung.”

“And the blood on his head?” she asked, trying not to reach out and touch the affected area; brush over what she knew would be a soft-as-silk buzz cut.

“Nothing dire,” Turner told her. “Just a graze. But it might be what saved his life. He would have gone down after being hit there, and whoever the shooters were, they probably thought because of all the blood, that he was dead.”

Missy nodded, her heart in her throat.

“I’ve got an IV started,” Turner continued, “but he’ll need immediate surgery.”

Missy stood up and addressed Grogan, trying to get the LT part of her head back to where it should be, instead of completely focused on Cobble. “Any ID on the insurgents our men took down.”

Amongst the dead were several of the bad guys. Winch and his team had managed to kill seven rebels, which considering the odds of how many must have stormed the office to take out her highly trained unit, was a damned fine take-down.

“No ID on any of them, LT,” Grogan said. “There’s no telling who they work for, or if they were just trouble-making outliers.”

Missy scowled. “We’ll let the powers that be see if they can determine anything significant from the bodies.”

She was pretty sure they’d find nothing conclusive, but to her discerning eye, this still seemed…planned. She wasn’t sure why. It was just a gut feeling. But already—at her young age—she’d learned not to ignore her instincts, even though some would doubt her credentials.

Had she spent most of her life in academia? Yes . Had she done it all as a child prodigy who’d graduated college at the age of nineteen? Another yes. But she’d also—once she’d joined the Army—gone through an intensive officer training course; having her eyes firmly on a commissioned officer rank. Not only had she aced every course she’d taken, both physical and mental, she’d also achieved her first step by becoming a second lieutenant.

Subsequently, because of what her higher-ups had deemed a potent blend of skills and intuition, she’d been given charge of a platoon. This platoon. Her platoon.

Which was now minus five good men, and Cobble laying here, hurt. Missy couldn’t let her mind wander to any scenario where he wouldn’t recover. She wouldn’t. A world without Cobble would be…

She hissed in an angry breath.

This attack had become personal.

Missy cemented her resolve. While she was waiting for reinforcements and medical evac, she’d take pictures of everything she could get her hands on. Then she would accompany Cobble to the hospital.

As soon as he woke up from surgery… if he woke up from surgery, she’d find out what the hell had happened here.