Savage Reborn (Team Savage Book 1) Read online

  The injured man looked blankly at him for a moment but after a few seconds, he focused his attention and nodded. He gripped the rifle firmly. Lee was a fine soldier despite being a chatty Cathy at heart. Sometimes, all you needed was to be reminded what your priorities were.

  Lee steeled himself, avoided looking at his mangled leg, and aimed the rifle at the door. “Will do, Sarge,” he said, his voice shaking gently.

  Johnson nodded as he tugged his sidearm from the holster at his hip. He hurried to where the hatch opened to the roof. While he wasn’t sure that the small wooden stepladder would take his weight, there really was no other option.

  He had almost reached the top when the hatch opened and one of the insurgents peered through the aperture to see if the room had been cleared by the grenade.

  Definitely not professional soldiers, Johnson mused as he drew the combat knife coldly from his hip, gripped it in a backhand, and stabbed it into the man’s throat. A sudden burst of bright red blood coated the face of his helmet. He twisted the blade and used the movement to hook the man and drag him down through the hatch. His pistol aimed at the opening, he waited until a couple more faces came into view. He pulled the trigger and the almost negligible kick of the pistol punched back into his hand as both faces disappeared in a spray of red. They fell back and shouts erupted on the roof as he hauled himself through the hole.

  Three men awaited him. He’d had extensive training for situations like this, and for the first time since the firefight had started, Johnson felt calm and collected. Ice filled his veins, and he knew exactly what he needed to do.

  He fired before he’d even fully found his feet. The first man stumbled back as his throat suddenly opened. The hollow-point round tore through his jugular on the way out. Johnson shifted slightly and dropped to his knees when he saw weapons raised toward him. He gripped the pistol in both hands and close to his chest and didn’t need to aim when his enemies were this close.

  A second man fell, the life in his eyes immediately extinguished when a bullet punched into his forehead. The third tried to turn away. Seeing his comrades eliminated this quickly obviously affected him, and when one lacked training, instincts came to the fore. He wanted to survive but Johnson was ready. A bullet pierced the man’s back and severed his spine at his third rib. He dropped and was dead before he hit the ground.

  For a moment, Johnson wondered if a swarm of mosquitoes had gotten inside his helmet. A high-pitched whine pushed through his calm and he had to resist the urge to swat at the air around his head. He knew, instinctively, that there were no bugs, but his nerves protested in the aftermath of his killing spree. Three shots, three yards, and under three seconds. Exactly like the rulebook called for.

  He looked up and swallowed his bloodlust, and his gaze settled on another man on the roof. He was smaller and leaner and appeared to be a civilian—maybe forced into the situation by the insurgents. The man was on his knees with his hands raised and mumbled something incoherent, clearly begging for his life.

  For a second, he was tempted to spare the man. Too many people had died today. Besides, the backlash for killing a civilian in this situation would be beyond massive. Still…

  “Sorry, I can’t risk it, asshole,” Johnson said and raised his weapon. The man clearly didn’t speak English, but the intention was clear. He tried to move away but his frantic efforts were too slow. A double-tap through the forehead felled him in his tracks.

  A hint of guilt rippled through Johnson as he moved toward the edge of the building, ejected the mag from his pistol, and replaced it with a new one. He would need to set his emotions aside, he knew, or push through them if he wanted to live to regret his actions there today with what was left of his squad.

  “Red Three, is the west of the village still open?” he asked and squinted in the direction that seemed to be the best way out. “Red Three?”

  He checked the vital signs of the other half of his team. No response. Either they had all gone offline, all at the same time with technical difficulties, or…

  His heart sank and he muttered, “Shit.” He stooped to retrieve an assault rifle a dead man had dropped, then peeked over the edge of the building. A fairly large group of men made their way toward the door but, like he had, none thought to check the roof. They would pay for that.

  His lips drew back in a rictus snarl as his first shots cut through the massed insurgents. As packed together as they were, the rounds ripped through one and sometimes two men at a time to dispense all kinds of collateral damage.

  It wasn’t until he had fired the third burst that the men realized that they were being fired at from above and quickly tried to find cover. There wasn’t much to be had, though, since the area between the house Johnson was on and the one across the street was almost completely open.

  A rout ensued and most of the men didn’t even bother to retaliate as he maintained the steady barrage and only stopped when he ran out of ammunition. He drew away from the edge of the building, moved back toward the hatch, and dropped without using the stepladder. A jolt of pain knifed through him when he landed. He scowled at the pieces of shrapnel that jutted from his armor.

  “I can’t get the rest of the team on comms,” Lee gasped as he pushed awkwardly against the wall for support. In all honesty, Johnson was surprised that he hadn’t bled out by now. He vaguely recalled something about severed arteries going into spasm on occasion, so if one had been shredded, maybe that was what had kept him alive. Only time would tell whether he would make the inevitably rough trip out.

  “Me neither. They haven’t responded at all,” he replied and took a moment to collect the dog tags from their fallen comrades. “We’ll swing by to see if they’re still around. I need you with me on this, all right? I’ll carry you out, but you need to stick it out with me. Pass out on my back, and I’ll give you time to recover only to kick your ass once we’re back on base, got it?”

  “Roger that, Sarge.” Lee forced a grin that soon became a grimace.

  He grinned in response. The man’s leg hung by a thread, but he was still game, and Johnson felt a thrill of pride in his team. He was relieved that a man in his crew still believed in him despite the hardship they’d faced tonight. Still, he was well aware of how adrenaline played in these kinds of situations. He kept his thoughts in check and pulled the wounded man onto his back and allowed him to support himself with his arms as best he could.

  Johnson let his shoulders do most of the work and held Lee’s damaged leg in place with one hand, while the other gripped his sidearm. His heart still hammered furiously against his ribcage, but he moved toward the door despite the sense of doom that had settled over him. The whole village had fallen into an eerie silence again, which made him grind his teeth. He didn’t like this kind of quiet. It always meant trouble.

  Shouts were exchanged in the distance along with a couple of rogue gunshots, but other than that, the only sound was the wind whipping through the open areas of the village. There were still hostiles around, and he was well aware of the fact that he hadn’t been able to take care of all of them. Which begged the question—where the hell were they?

  They cleared the building with none of their enemies in sight. He tried not to think of the warm, thick liquid that ran down his body beneath his armor. Obviously, whatever wounds he had sustained continued to bleed. The only thing that blocked the pain was the adrenaline that coursed through his system.

  Johnson shook his head and grinned. There was nothing like going for a jog with a man draped over your back to keep the blood and adrenaline flowing. He knew that all the activity simply made it worse. It was a given that he would certainly continue to lose blood, and with the movement and exertion, he would tear his wounds and make them worse. But, if he stayed in place, the chances were he and Lee would both be gunned down. They needed to get back to the evac zone as quickly as possible. All other medical emergencies could wait.

  He pushed himself to move as fast as he could with Lee on
his back. Johnson hissed and his muscles burned by the time he finally cleared the village. There was no more gunfire and no reports over the comms. The other squad members’ vitals were still quiet and the chance that anybody else was alive was remote. He suspected that either their HUDs or his own had sustained damage and he couldn’t pick up even the flat-line indicator that would confirm his suspicions.

  They reached the desert and moved toward some outlying buildings on the west side. If the enemy dumbasses had any brains, this would be where they waited for Johnson and his squad. There was no sign of them, but there were bodies—in last-stand numbers too, he noted as he scrutinized the area. He raised his pistol when he heard footsteps.

  “Don’t you dare,” Lee growled, but Johnson needed to unload his burden. He dropped his teammate abruptly and Lee cursed and grunted in pain as he landed in a heap. Johnson gripped his pistol with both hands as the three insurgents who searched through the corpses on the ground realized that they had newcomers on their hands.

  The armor on the bodies looked familiar—too familiar. Even with the sun having set an hour before, it was hard to miss what his own men had worn into combat. And those men were looting the bodies.

  Fuck these guys! He pulled the trigger, faster than they were. As tired as he was and with as much blood as he’d lost, he expected that reaction time would be a toss-up for the victory. At this point, all he could do was take advantage of the fact that the men had been too occupied with looting the weapons and possessions from his dead squad mates to have hands on their weapons.

  The insurgents didn’t even fire a single shot before bullet holes appeared in their chests and heads as they fell, choking on their own blood. Johnson fired until the nine-round magazine in his pistol was expended. He retrieved the last mag he had for it, slapped it in, and continued to shoot.

  Even when he was out of bullets, he wasted a couple of seconds pulling the trigger of his empty weapon.

  “Sarge! We need to get out of here,” Lee said. His voice had taken on that distant quality again.

  “Sure,” he responded harshly. “I need to take care of something first.”

  “Sarge, they’re fucking dead! Get it together.”

  Johnson turned and gritted his teeth. “Just… I need to take care of something.”

  He could feel the effects of the blood loss take over now. The weakness in his body went beyond fatigued muscles. Those same muscles didn’t receive enough oxygen to keep up with the exertions they were forced into and had begun to shut down one by one. But still, he needed to do something first. He staggered toward his fallen comrades.

  “Sarge?” Lee asked and propped himself up on his arm to watch as the sergeant quickly collected the dog tags from the men who had been killed. Those little pieces of aluminum that nobody would think to steal had more value to their families than all the money in the world. Of course, the Army would come up with some story about where they were stationed and how they died. Medals would be handed out and funerals would be held as coffins without bodies were delivered back to the States. That was merely how things were done.

  Johnson moved toward Lee and tucked all the dog tags into his pouch before he helped the man to stand on his good leg.

  “How are you feeling, Red Seven?” he asked as he heaved the man onto his back again.

  “Like a fucking twenty-dollar bill, sir,” he replied. The man had applied some bandaging to his leg, but there was only so much that could do. He needed surgery. “It looks like one of the motherfuckers tagged you, though.”

  Johnson glanced down as he moved again. A couple of holes had appeared in his armor and now leaked red. Well, he guessed it was red. With the only light source available to him being a half moon and stars, everything simply looked black.

  “We’ll make it,” he said, moved one foot in front of the other, and actually tried to run. He managed a few steps before he decided that if he fell over, neither of them would get up again. Still, he maintained a good pace—slower than he would have liked, but from the clock on his HUD, they had more than enough time to get back to the evac zone.

  It felt like hours. The desert chilled as night deepened and the cold seeped into his bones, although blood loss was possibly to blame for some of it. He grasped Lee with both hands and kept moving, determined to get at least one member of his team out alive even if it killed him.

  Hours and more endless hours passed, although it felt like days. He couldn’t see the sunrise, but he did feel the heavy rotors of the helo that was sent to pick them up and the chopper’s blades that churned the air above his body. Voices babbled and he tightened his grasp on Lee’s arm. They wanted to take him. He shook his head in panic, knowing he needed to get the asshole to a hospital. Back to the evac point.

  “Sergeant,” someone said. “We need to get him some medical attention.”

  Lee was limp. He’d passed out a while back, but Johnson wasn’t quite sure when, though. He struggled to stay on his feet and a pair of arms caught him by the shoulders.

  Someone dragged him toward the helicopter. “Get him out of his armor.”

  “Are you kidding?” a second voice replied. “That stuff is the only thing keeping everything in him from spilling out. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  The cold faded and so did his shattered senses. It was an unmanageable chore to keep his eyes open. Straps came over him and held him in place as the helicopter took off.

  “Save Red Seven,” he whispered and shivered with fear at how weak his voice sounded. He wasn’t sure if anyone heard him, so he said it again. Well, he thought he did. He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. His eyes closed and he felt his grip on things loosen. He slept.

  Chapter Two

  He could smell…something. Like bleach, but with a soapy, cinnamon-type hint. The odd combination of smells left him confused—like someone had baked pumpkin pies but put bleach in them. Who would do that?

  Serial killers, that’s who. Jules loved to watch late-night documentaries on America’s most prolific serial killers. She was a moderator on one of those internet forums that talked about them and had told him once that she’d found evidence that H. H. Holmes was actually Jack the Ripper. It made sense that Britain’s most famous serial killer was an American, he remembered thinking.

  He really needed to call her when he got back stateside. Abigail would want to see him too. He could take her to get tacos and…ice cream? No, she was seven. She didn’t like ice cream anymore. She’d told him that the last time.

  Johnson opened his eyes and looked cautiously around him. The lights were dimmed, which made it harder to wake up, but sleep wasn’t an option anymore. He needed to find the man who ran this base and persuade him to push his visit home to a couple of months early.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, shook his head, and tried to focus. An IV was plugged into his arm—saline solution and probably morphine too. He looked at his body in a sudden panic. Had he lost his leg? No, that was Lee. Weird. Why…oh, right, surgeries. So many—too many. They should simply release him and send him home.

  Well, that explained the smell of bleach, anyway, but it didn’t explain the cinnamon. Was it something they used to make the place smell less like death and cleaning products?

  The door to his room opened and a young woman stepped inside. She wore pristine white, her black hair cut short to just above her shoulders. A pair of glasses rested low on her nose.

  “Good morning, sergeant,” she said, and a small, professional smile touched her lips as she moved to the foot of his hospital bed and tapped the tablet there. “I thought I heard some movement in here. It’s good to see that you’re with us again. We thought we’d lost you back there.”

  He blinked a few times as he tried to pull his memories into something remotely cohesive. He didn’t remember being wheeled in there. Then again, much of his recent memory was too fuzzy to remember clearly.

  “Let’s start with something simple,” she said and drew his attention
back to her. “Do you remember your name?”

  He nodded and licked his lips. “Sergeant Jeremiah Johnson, 75th Special Forces Group.”

  “Excellent. Cognitive functions appear to work normally,” she said with a smile. He studied her white coat. Weren’t doctors supposed to wear their names on their lapels? He craned his neck to see the file that she looked at on the tablet.

  Patient 90911. No name. That was less than encouraging. It was one of those hospitals. He knew about them, of course—black sites that were created to treat patients who didn’t need much in the way of names or identities until they were released.

  “How long have I been in this facility?” he asked as he returned his focus to the doctor.

  “You’ve been in my care for the past three days after you were released from surgery,” she replied. The smile never left her face. She seemed nervous, he thought, as if she thought she was in the presence of a dangerous animal that could attack her at any moment.

  His suspicions about the hospital were confirmed by the way she smoothly sidestepped the question. He leaned back in his bed.

  She pulled the blanket down and inspected the bandages that covered his torso. “Tell me if you feel any discomfort, all right?”

  Johnson tilted his head to study his wound-riddled torso. There were more holes than he’d expected, including some higher up on his chest. For a moment, he simply stared in amazement when he realized that he had survived despite being turned into a chunk of swiss cheese.

  The doctor worked methodically to inspect the bandages and make sure that the stitches all held. She also ran a handful of reflex tests on his knee, a tapping test over his sternum, and a couple more that he was unfamiliar with.

  “Do you have any discomfort?” she asked, her expression and tone all efficiency.

  “Not really,” he replied. “How many surgeries did I have to undergo?”