CHAPTER 1

MAY

TUCKER RALEIGH OPENED HIS EYES. HE NEVER SHOULD have jumped. A dry stick protruding from dank humus soil poked his cheek. Tucker rolled his head to the right, away from the stick, and waited several seconds for the daze to clear. On the other hand, maybe it was just the dark of night causing his vision to blur.

What was he doing amid the overgrown bushes and grasses? Above him, the edge of a balcony deflected light from inside the house, casting a shadow over where he lay. The wet spring smell of an afternoon shower rose from the moist ground. Wispy bits of fog created a six-inch-high quilt across the backyard.

"I'm telling ya I got him!" a voice shouted above him.

"He must have jumped."

"He didn't jump, Goddamn it! I shot him. He's in here somewhere."

The voices jumbled, but Tucker grabbed bits and pieces of the conversation. After about the third sentence he realized one of the accents wasn't American. The person was speaking English, but the accent wasn't British, Australian, or American. The sound of moving crates and boxes being shoved about obscured the voices for a moment. A long grinding scrape of a piece of furniture being dragged across the wood floor told him they were still searching inside the house.

Tucker moved his left hand cautiously to his head, feeling a wet stickiness—blood, seeping down from the top of his skull through his crew cut. He touched his cheek where the stick had been, but didn't feel any cut or blood there. His shoulder hurt. Must have been the jump. It isn't the jump that kills you, his jump instructor at Fort Benning had told him, it's the sudden landing. Tucker blinked his eyes several times, willing his way to full consciousness, past the pain and the spinning in his head. He wiped the blood away a couple of times when it threatened to cloud his vision.

This was his house—his new house. Well, nearly new.

Someone stuck his head over the balcony, scanning the darkness. The faint light from the living room cast the intruder's shadow across the overgrown backyard. But, why? It wasn't as if he knew anyone here. This was his first night in the house. Surely, they must have him confused with someone else. He shut his eyes for a moment, recalling the initial attempt to break in through the front door. The door had violently burst opened with the steel security chain abruptly stopping the door six inches later.

"I tell ya, he went over the balcony."

"Well, get down there and find him, lad. Don't let him get away. Son-of-a-bitch. . . . I've got to do everything, don't I?"

He detected venom in the voice. He had heard that accent before. Maybe Scottish?

"Keep ya voice down. Ya want the neighbors up and about?" the one with the accent asked, the r's rolling with a heavy brogue.

Tucker rolled onto his side. Never stay in one place long. Keep moving—evade, make the enemy find you—keep them guessing. He had to shift his position—get away from here. Visions of the second Korean War flashed across his thoughts—two weeks hiding in the hills, fighting his way back to his own lines.

"Here, I found a flashlight, Sean." The voice was directly overhead on the balcony.

The balcony wouldn't hide him long, and if they came this far to kill him, they weren't going to let the job go undone just because he had disappeared. Eventually they would have to come down to search the yard. Dots of light flashed across his vision as Tucker stood up. Pain racked his left shoulder. Blood clouded his left eye. He reached up and wiped it away with the back of his right hand, leaving soil and dead bits of vegetation sticking to the side of his face. Damn, at least the right half seems okay, he thought. Tucker fell back against one of the four stanchions reinforcing the balcony and shut his eyes briefly, taking deep, quiet breaths. He definitely had that number-six Excedrin headache.

A beam of light shot out from above, sweeping the ground. It weaved outward from the balcony, back and forth across the overgrown backyard, toward the edge of a wood that separated the house from the Monocacy River. Urbana, Maryland, was supposed to be a quiet rural area. If this was how Frederick County welcomed its newcomers, he hated to think what his welcome party would have been like in Baltimore or Washington.

"We're going down there and find him."

"Not me. That's bullshit! We promised to bring you here and help you. But, by God, he's trained for this night shit. We ain't no more than hunters, and if you weren't . . ."

"Em," the one called Sean interrupted. "Casey, me lad, you're going to get your arse down there. We all are. If he gets away, the bloody raghead ain't going to be too happy is he? And, you won't be getting your money."

Were they talking about him? And who in the hell is the raghead? Raghead—a derogatory term for Arabs. It wasn't a term he used. He had been in combat against the Jihadists, and regardless of how demonized they were, they were still motivated fighters. Even if he had had a desire to use the term, the U.S. military forbade it. The few times when he had heard a member of his team use any such derogatory terms such as this, Tucker had straightened the user out immediately.

"Yeah, so you say, Sean. But, money ain't gonna be much good if we ain't alive to spend it."

But they were right about one thing. This was his world. His head turned, taking in the playing field in front of him. He was trained for this—what was the word? Yeah—night shit. He had escaped and evaded hostile forces before—Afghanistan, Indonesia, Yemen. He'd just never expected to have to do it in the United States. Why should this be any different? Why? Real simple. Because conducting an attack-and-evade mission needed a mind-set—you needed preparation. He had never done a mission that hadn't been planned days in advance. But you can't have it easy all the time, Tucker, he told himself. He braced his right hand against the wall of the house and pushed himself upright. If he remained undetected until he reached the woods at the back, the pendulum would swing even more in his direction. The white T-shirt tugged his shoulder where blood matted it to the cement wall. A sharp pain whipped through him, sending a cascade of new stars racing around his night vision. He bit his lip and pulled away, simultaneously reaching up and touching his left shoulder. Damn, he had taken a bullet! He touched his head lightly, then looked at his hand. No wonder he had that headache. The grazing wound on his head was caused by either a bullet or when he'd fallen—jumped—over the banister. This made three times he'd been shot during his Navy career. He twisted and bit his lip, and a couple of contortions later managed to pull the shirt up and over his head. White showed too easily in the dark. The dark tan earned in Indonesia made it easier to blend with the shadows of the moonless night. With his right hand, he pressed the shirt against his stomach, holding it there as he wadded it up. Then he tossed the shirt behind a nearby bush.

Copyright © 2004 by David E. Meadows