btitle>Jack MarsJack Mars is author of the bestselling LUKE STONE thriller series, which include the suspense thrillers ANY MEANS NECESSARY (book #1), OATH OF OFFICE (book #2), SITUATION ROOM (book #3), OPPOSE ANY FOE (book #4), and PRESIDENT ELECT (book #5).
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Copyright © 2016 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Orhan Cam, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
CHAPTER ONE
October 16
5:25 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time
Marble Canyon
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
“They’re coming through on all sides!”
Luke was trying to live until daybreak, but the sun refused to rise. It was cold, and his shirt was off. He had ripped it off in the heat of combat. There was no ammo left.
Turbaned, bearded Taliban fighters poured over the walls of the outpost. Men screamed all around him.
Luke tossed his empty rifle away and pulled his handgun. He fired down the trench on his own position – it was overrun with enemies. A line of them were running this way. More came sliding, falling, jumping over the wall.
Where were his guys? Was anyone still alive?
He killed the closest man with a shot to the face. The head exploded like a cherry tomato. He grabbed the man by his tunic and held him up as a shield. The headless man was light, and Luke was raging with adrenaline – it was if the corpse were an empty suit of clothes.
He killed four men with four shots. He kept firing.
Then he was out of bullets. Again.
A Taliban charged with an AK-47, bayonet attached. Luke pushed the corpse at him, then threw his gun like a tomahawk. It bounced off the man’s head, distracting him for a second. Luke used that time. He stepped into the attack, sliding along the edge of the bayonet. He plunged two fingers deep into the man’s eyes, and pulled.
The man screamed. His hands went to his face. Now Luke had the AK. He bayoneted his enemy in the chest, two, three, four times. He pushed it in deep.
The man breathed his last right into Luke’s face.
Luke’s hands roamed the man’s body. The fresh corpse had a grenade in its breast pocket. Luke took it, pulled it, and tossed it over the rampart into the oncoming hordes.
He hit the deck.
BOOOM.
The explosion was right there, spraying dirt and rock and blood and bone. The sandbagged wall half collapsed on top of him.
Luke clawed his way to his feet, deaf now, his ears ringing. He checked the AK. Empty. But he still had the bayonet.
“Come on, you bastards!” he screamed. “Come on!”
More men came over the wall, and he stabbed them in a frenzy. He ripped and tore at them with his bare hands. He shot them with their own guns.
At some point, the sun rose, but there was no warmth to it. The fighting had stopped somehow – he couldn’t remember when, or how, it had ended. The ground was rugged, and hard. There were dead bodies everywhere. Skinny, bearded men lay all over the ground, with eyes wide and staring.
Nearby, he spotted one crawling back down the hill, trailing a line of blood like the trail of slime that follows a snail. He should really go out there and kill that guy, but he didn’t want to risk being in the open.
Luke’s chest was painted red. He was soaked in the blood of dead men. His body trembled from hunger, and from exhaustion. He stared out at the surrounding mountains, just coming into view.
How many more were out there? How long before they came?
Martinez was sprawled on his back nearby, low in the trench. He was crying. He couldn’t move his legs. He’d had enough. He wanted to die. “Stone,” he said. “Hey, Stone. Hey! Kill me, man. Just kill me. Hey, Stone! Listen to me, man!”
Luke was numb. He had no thoughts about Martinez’s legs, or about Martinez’s future. He was just tired of listening to Martinez’s complaints.
“I’d gladly kill you, Martinez, just for whining like that. But I’m out of ammo. So man up… okay?”
Nearby, Murphy was sitting on an outcropping of rock, staring into space. He wasn’t even trying to take cover.
“Murph! Get down here. You want a sniper to put a bullet in your head?”
Murphy turned and looked at Luke. His eyes were just… gone. He shook his head. An exhalation of air escaped from him. It sounded almost like laughter. He stayed right where he was.
If more Taliban came, they were toast. Neither one of these guys had much fight left in them, and the only weapon Stone still had was the bent bayonet in his hand. For a moment, he thought idly about picking through some of these dead guys for weapons. He didn’t know if he had the strength left to stand. He might have to crawl instead.
As he watched, a line of black insects appeared in the sky far away. He knew what they were in an instant. Helicopters. United States military helicopters, probably Black Hawks. The cavalry was coming. Luke didn’t feel good about that, or bad. He felt nothing. Emptiness was an occupational hazard. He felt nothing at all…
Luke was awakened by his ringing phone. He lay there and blinked.
He tried to orient himself. He was in a tent, he realized, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
It was just before first light, and he was in the tent he shared with his son, Gunner. He stared into the black night, listening to the sound of his son’s deep breathing nearby.
His phone kept ringing.
It vibrated against his leg, and made the annoying buzzing sound that phones set to vibrate make. He didn’t want to wake Gunner, but this was probably a call he needed
