The Soldier's Mission. Lenora Worth

      Luke shoved Laura down behind the car, his hand covering her head. “Friends of yours?”

      “I don’t know,” she said on a gasp of air, the shock of her words telling him she was being honest. “What’s going on?”

      “You tell me.” He lifted his head an inch. And was rewarded with another round of rifle fire. “Somebody doesn’t like you being here, sweetheart.”

      She tried to peek around the car’s bumper, but he held her down. Glaring up at him, she whispered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you sure they aren’t shooting at you?”

      “That is a possibility,” he said on a growl. “I’ve made a lot of enemies lately.”

      “Anybody in particular?”

      Luke thought about the laundry list of sins he’d committed in the name of grief. “We don’t have that long. I have to get you out of here.”

      She seemed to like that idea. “So…how do you plan to do that?”

      LENORA WORTH

      has written more than forty books, most of those for Steeple Hill. She has freelanced for a local magazine, where she wrote monthly opinion columns, feature articles and social commentaries. She also wrote for the local paper for five years. Married to her high school sweetheart for thirty-five years, Lenora lives in Louisiana and has two grown children and a cat. She loves to read, take long walks, sit in her garden and go shoe shopping.

      The Soldier’s Mission

      Lenora Worth

      “But by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.”

      —Proverbs 15:13

      To my son Kaleb—a true heart hunter.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      LETTER TO READER

      QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

      ONE

      He’d had the dream again.

      The stifling desert air burned hot, dirty and dry. The acrid smell of charred metal and scorched wires mixed with the metallic, sickly sweet smell of blood all around him. The sound of rapid-fire machine guns mingled with the screams of pain as, one by one, the men in his unit fell. He saw the horror of a landmine exploding against the jagged rocks of the craggy mountainside where they’d been penned down for forty-eight hours. One misstep and three of his men gone in a flash of searing fire and ear-shattering explosions. The others were taken out as the insurgents fought to the finish.

      Then, the eerie sound of a deathly silence as the shooting stopped…and even after all of Luke’s efforts to save his wounded men, the moans and cries for help eased away…until there was nothing left but scorched dust lifting out over the rocks.

      He was the only man left standing. But he wasn’t alone on that mountain. And he knew he’d be dead before dusk.

      He’d jolted awake, gasping for air, a cold sweat covering his body, his hands shaking, grasping for his machine gun.

      Luke “Paco” Martinez sat up and pushed at his damp hair then searched for the glowing green of the digital clock. 6:00 a.m. Old habits died hard. And a good night’s sleep was always just beyond his reach.

      Barefoot, his cotton pajama bottoms dragging on the cool linoleum of the tiny trailer’s floor, Luke went straight to the coffeepot and hit the brew button. And while he waited for the coffee, he stared at the lone bottle of tequila sitting on the window seal.

      Stared and remembered the dream, the nightmare, that wouldn’t let him find any rest.

      Looking away from the tempting bottle of amber liquid, he instead focused on the distant mountains. The desert and mountains here in Arizona were a contrast against the rocky, unforgiving mountains of Afghanistan. Even though this high desert country was harsh and brutal at times, he could find comfort in the tall prickly saguaros and occasional thickets of Joshua trees and pinon pines growing all around his home. Here, he could run toward the mesas and the mountains and find solace, his questioning prayers echoing inside his head while his feet pounded on the dirt, his mind going numb with each step, each beat of his racing heart. Why was I spared, Lord?

      In the dream, Luke screamed his own rage as he moved headlong into the fray, his M4 carbine popping what seemed like a never-ending round on the insurgents hidden in the hills.

      In the dream, he always woke up before they killed him.

      And because he did wake up and because he was alive to relive that horrible day over and over, he stared at the liquor bottle while he drank his coffee and told himself he could get through this.

      Focus on the mountains, Paco.

      That’s what his grandfather had told him the day he’d come here to wrestle his soul back from the brink. Focus on the mountains.

      He was better now, six months after coming home to Arizona. He was getting better each and every day, in spite of the nightmares. He’d even gone on a few short-term missions for CHAIM, the secret organization he’d been a member of since before he’d joined the army.

      He was better now. No more drunken binges, no more fights in restaurants and bars. Not as much pain. The army might not believe that, but his fellow CHAIM agents did, thankfully.

      He’d be okay, Luke told himself. He just needed a little more time. And a lot more prayers.

      So he drained his coffee and put on his running clothes and headed out into the early morning chill of the ever-changing desert, away from the little trailer that was his home now, away from the nightmares and the memories.

      And away from that tempting bottle of golden relief.

      She couldn’t get his voice out of her head.

      Laura Walton thought about the man she’d come to the desert to find. The man everyone was worried about. The man who, a few weeks ago, had called the CHAIM hotline in the middle of the night.

      “My father died in Vietnam,” the grainy, low voice said over the phone line. “My brother was wounded in Desert Storm. He’s in a wheelchair now. And I just got back from Afghanistan. Lost my whole unit. Lost everyone. I think I need to talk to somebody.”

      Laura had been on call that night, volunteering to man the hotline that CHAIM held open for all of its operatives, the world over.

      But only one call had come to the Phoenix hotline on that still fall night. One call from a man who was suffering a tremendous amount of survivor’s guilt.