Jake (In the Company of Snipers Book 16) Read online

  It was still early. Jake hadn’t made his early morning rounds of Sector 18 yet. Jamaal was over at the Flying Angel Tavern turning in a week’s worth of recycle. Rowdy Stokes owned the place. Ex-military and understanding of other vets down on their luck, he paid a half dollar a pound for recyclable aluminum trash. It wasn’t much, but it put some GWs in their pockets and bought a decent sandwich and a Coke once in a while. Maybe a cold beer. Conversation.

  Jake had planned to meet Jamaal over at Lamont’s Pool Hall. He’d wanted to chat the owner, Lamont Adams, up for a job, but he didn’t get the chance. The old fart wasn’t there. The door was still locked and Jake chalked it up to his wife. She had an awful wasting kind of cancer, so Jake always cut the grouchy guy a little slack. God knew he had his hands full. There wasn’t anything worse than standing by and watching the woman you loved die a slow death. Yeah. He cut Adams a lot of slack. Looked out for him, too, because that was what Sector 18 was all about.

  Jake arched his back and stretched. Litter patrol wasn’t much of a life, and picking up other people’s garbage might look like a waste of time, but it kept him and Jamaal close to the folks they cared about, the folks who might not know someone was sneaking around their business with a crowbar. Or breaking into their car. Or bullying their kid on the way home from school and forcing them to run drugs across the bridge to high-end folks in fancy cars who wouldn’t be caught dead in poor, rundown Anacostia.

  Dusting his scraped palms down his dirty jeans, he called it one helluva hard lesson learned. Poindexter’s message was clear. He was on his way to fame and fortune. The have-nots were in his way. But if Poindexter thought he could send his henchmen into Sector 18 and expect Jake to turn tail and run, he had another thing coming. Jake Weylin didn’t desert his post, not ever, and this piece of Washington D.C. wasn’t just Ward 8 anymore. No sir. It was his and Jamaal’s prime real estate. It was Sector 18, and they were the self-proclaimed guardians of it, not Poindexter.

  Acid pooled in the pit of Jake’s gut. If Rocky Rabbit and Ferret Face were on the prowl, where the hell was Jamaal? And what’d Ferret Face mean by ‘your buddy better back off’?

  It took Jake less than ten minutes to hightail it over to the Flying Angel, but Rowdy hadn’t seen Jamaal yet. Only one place remained to check for his buddy. Well, make that two. He could very well be floating in the Anacostia River or he could be down at the free clinic. Jake opted for the clinic. He jogged, scared of what he might find. Jamaal was the only family he had. He couldn’t afford to lose him, too.

  Approaching the clinic, he caught sight of Miss Wright pulling out of the rear alley, and who should be in the passenger seat next to her with his head lolled back like he was taking a nap? Jamaal. The slacker! But damn, it looked like he’d been in a fight.

  Jake kept his distance, not like that was hard to do. Lacy was, after all, on wheels. Once he’d seen her look both ways before she pulled into traffic, he knew where she was going. He’d followed her plenty before, mostly just to make sure she’d gotten home in one piece.

  Ever since that first day in the alley behind the clinic, Lacy was on his safe list, one of the many innocent and kind people he kept track of. It was damned unusual, though, for a pretty white gal like her to live in shabby, low income Anacostia. She was no cast off like he was, not even down on her luck, either. She had a good job. So why was she here? He hadn’t figured that one out yet, but, oh well. There were lots of things he couldn’t figure out these days, like why she’d put on such a tough act that first day.

  It was a good thing he liked to walk, so he followed her. How else would he get to his buddy Zack’s place over in Maryland? Or the hospital in D.C. the few times Jamaal had been incarcerated under the guise of needing medical care? Besides, physical exercise worked wonders. It cleared a man’s head, a damned good thing in Jake’s book. Working up a good sweat also worked the kinks out of a man’s back and exorcised the mental demons out of his head a helluva lot better than the shit Jamaal chose to put in his mouth. No way was that crap going into Jake. It all ended up in a guy’s head, and he had enough crap in there to last a lifetime as it was. Maybe two lifetimes. He didn’t need more.

  Their continual trips to the clinic were all Jamaal’s fault. Like the first one. If Jamaal hadn’t been playing drink-and-cry, ‘let-me-tell-ya-another-sad-story’ that day, he wouldn’t have fallen on his butt and broken the bottle of cheap liquor that cut him. Of course, he didn’t need many stitches, not like that ornery Dr. Anderson would’ve wasted more time or catgut on him than he had to.

  Aggravation skittered across Jake’s shoulders just thinking of the prick. Anderson couldn’t sew a straight line. Didn’t look like he’d even tried to make his stitches even, not like the kind Dr. Marlee did. Of the two, she was the real doctor. He’d left Jamaal with an oozing wound that healed into an ugly scar on the left cheek of his ass, not like anyone else would see it, but still. Jamaal might get lucky. Some woman might want to see his big backside. It could happen.

  Jake spread his fingers on his right hand wide, flexed them a few times, and let the aggravation roll away. He wasn’t about to hit a doctor over a few lousy stitches. Besides, it was Jamaal’s fault he’d gotten cut. It was also Jamaal’s fault that Jake came face-to-face with Lacy. Now there was another story.

  She’d literally taken his breath when she’d looked up from her car like a trapped animal, and Jake had all but suffocated on the spot. No shit. His heart kind of stopped pumping. His lungs quit processing oxygen, and he, a big tough Marine with one too many forward deployments under his belt, wanted to tuck tail and run away. From a woman. How crazy was that?

  When Anderson had asked Jake that day what happened to Jamaal in his sarcastic way, Jake had stuttered like a dimwit, not able to take his eyes off Lacy. She’d looked down at the instrument tray like she didn’t want him to know she’d seen his moment of total stupidity, her dark lashes fanned over a sprinkle of freckles on blushing pink cheeks.

  Lacy had that redhead complexion thing going for her, the creamiest skin beneath a clipped up tangle of burnished red hair, all of it intent on escaping said clip. The knowledge that he’d put that glow on her face had excited Jake at some primal level. That’s what made the blush all the more noticeable. It declared he was still a man; that this particular woman noticed him and couldn’t control her body’s response to him.

  He hadn’t missed that just the tip of her tongue peeked out briefly between moist lips already glistening with a hint of pink gloss, either. Like a fifteen-year old boy with raging hormones, his eyes had drifted to the front of her scrubs, hoping for a hint of hardened nipples beneath the fabric. Instead, pockets covered the swell of her breasts, nice plump pockets that created a rigid hard-on in his pants. He’d been glad he was sitting that day. He’d dropped his hands in front of his lap to camouflage his reaction.

  But Lacy had secrets, too. He could tell. She might not trust him enough to share, but that was okay. He wasn’t much for sharing, either.

  For some crazy reason, that single meeting sparked emotions he hadn’t admitted to in years. Out of the blue, his feelings for her ran as deep as hot-blooded Rodolfo’s did for the fair Mimi in Puccini’s tragic opera, La Bohème. It didn’t help when Jake’s dysfunctional brain immediately set his vocal cords to humming, ‘O soave fanciulla,’ the duet between the love-struck couple that translated meant, ‘Oh lovely girl.’

  Didn’t it figure? His gray matter could instantly pull up the musical score from any opera in the world, but he couldn’t form a coherent answer to Dr. Anderson with Lacy watching. Yeah. Puccini’s Rodolfo turned into a blithering idiot the moment he’d met Mimi, too.

  The opera played in the back of Jake’s mind while his feet followed her car, not like he worried he’d lose her. He knew where she was going. But with every step, Jake’s mood plunged headlong to regret. There would be no tenderness between him and the lovely Lacy, especially not enough to make a happy ending. He had a job to do. She was
an unsuspecting client, but his responsibility nonetheless and nothing more. Besides Rodolfo’s and Mimi’s story hadn’t ended happy. Why would Jake and Lacy’s?

  He’d put the frivolity of unnecessary things like romance aside the day his men died at that other Sector 18, the front gate of Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan. He honestly couldn’t remember how the nickname came to be for that gate. It might’ve started as a joke. For all he knew, it was some make-believe battlefield in a video game that one of his USMC brothers or sisters had played.

  He might not be able to remember that, but he knew he was damned proud of his men and women that day. On an assist to the Army, his USMC squad had fallen in like the topnotch troops they were. Not once did they complain, and there was plenty to piss and moan about in Afghanistan. They should have, but helping their Army brethren was part of the deal. It was what jarheads did. They manned up, marched on, kept on keeping on, and all that bullshit.

  Two of his best corporals brought up the rear that day, Aiden Scott and Emile Blum. Trained and ready, they’d recognized the danger at Egger’s main gate before anyone else knew what was coming at them. Jake had jerked around when he’d heard Emile bark at the driver of that ratty mini-truck to, ‘Halt!’

  The tough little blonde didn’t ask twice. There wasn’t time. With calm integrity, she’d lifted her M16A4, took careful aim, and sealed the deal, taking her shot and killing the driver. Aiden backed her up with a steady hack-hack-hack of his rifle. The two stepped forward instead of running away like they probably should have, and Jake was even prouder of them for that. Prouder and sadder.

  They took the war to the jihad-screaming driver all right. They did their job and stopped him cold at the gate rather than let him in to spread his son-of-a-bitchin’ holy war inside Eggers. Only the truck was full of explosives, and the Army got a hell of an assist from the Corps that day. Jake’s squad took the brunt of the hit, lost two damned good Marines, and there wasn’t a thing he could’ve done about it but scream for the rest of his guys to get down while a shitload of fire and brimstone took out everything in its path. The explosion knocked everyone not in the immediate kill zone off their feet. Everyone but Aiden and Emile.

  When Jake got to where they’d been standing, the guard shack was obliterated. What was left of the truck steamed in the middle of a blackened crater like a smoking carcass. Aiden and Emile’s charred bodies, or what was left of them, had still smoldered where they’d landed. In pieces. Bit and pieces…

  Jake cocked his head and looked up, hoping to see stars instead of the dismal wintry sky overhead. For some reason he couldn’t understand, stars helped him forget. They were so far away, they couldn’t get hurt by assholes with guns and bombs and—death.

  The day Aiden and Emile went to their eternal rest as true heroes still haunted Jake. Their remains were shipped home via Dover AFB in Delaware. Their mothers cried; one in Winnemucca, Nevada; the other in Detroit, Michigan. Like the true heroes they were, both Aiden and Emile were interred at Arlington National Cemetery amongst the other men and women who had given all.

  But sometimes, Jake could swear he was still there at Egger’s front gate. To this day, he detested the smell of summer barbeques on the wind. Chargrilled hamburgers. Bonfires. Just the hint of burning autumn leaves could time warp him overseas and back to hell. Back to that day.

  Fireworks were the worst. The Fourth of July might be a day of celebration for most, but it was a day of hiding out in Zack’s basement and watching noisy movies in his home theater to block the noise. Yeah. Independence came at too high a cost, and coming home sucked.

  Jake growled off the mantel of despair settling over his shoulders. He had work to do. This wedge-shaped neighborhood between Eighteenth Street, Good Hope Road, and the Anacostia River had become his alternate universe, a second chance where he could make everything right again. He’d even named it the same corny name as what all the guys called the gate at Egger’s: Sector 18. It felt the same.

  Jake kept walking, his mind edging closer to that numb zone between then and now. Jamaal was there that day, too. He knew the fallen. The dirty streets of Kabul didn’t seem so far away some days. Jake knew he couldn’t bring Aiden or Emile back, but if he could keep Jamaal alive, maybe Aiden and Emile would forgive him for ordering them to bring up the rear. He could still hear Emile’s cocky, “Yes, Sarge.”

  He just wished he couldn’t.

  Chapter Three

  “Come on, tough guy,” Lacy muttered beneath the weight of one damned big man. Mostly slack muscle at the moment, Jamaal woke up just enough to help her transition him from the gurney at the backdoor of the clinic into the passenger seat of her very economical, but not very big, four-door sedan. But getting him to shuffle those extra-wide feet of his up the two flights of stairs to her third floor apartment proved the more daunting challenge.

  With each step, she and Jamaal had become more intimately acquainted. It didn’t help that he was only dressed in a couple of skimpy hospital gowns, one turned backwards to keep the winter chill off the big guy’s butt. She’d topped that scant outfit with a thin robe from the clinic’s small stash of luxury items, but it was too small for a man with the girth of Jamaal. He belonged on Saturday morning television in the wrestling ring, not tucked into hospital duds.

  His big hairy arm angled around her neck, his open palm slapping against her breasts like a loose sweatshirt sleeve in the wind. More than once, she’d used his butt cheek as a rudder. Mostly unconscious, he still seemed to grasp that one good five-fingered clench on his rear meant move your ass, Marine.

  Finally at her door, she was sweaty from the load she’d half-carried, half-dragged, and afraid of being caught. Her neighbors didn’t need to know her business, but Mrs. Brown just two doors down, did have a nose on her. Ha. Mrs. Brown should’ve been named Mrs. Buttinsky. That nose of hers could pick up the slightest hint of anything happening in the third floor hall. The woman had radar ears, too, and she’d have no trouble minding Lacy’s business either.

  Lacy could almost hear the inquisition now. “What you doin’ child? Why you taking a man into your place? You sleeping around? Is he sick? What’s he got? He drunk? Lordy me, you don’t want to be hauling no drunk man home to be taking care of him. Next thing you know...”

  Lacy allowed a tight grin as her imagination provided a very realistic scenario of all Mrs. Brown would say if she just happened to step into the hall right now. But that would be the day Lacy had a man in her apartment, a cold day in hell. Jamaal didn’t count. He might be a man, but he was more of a soldier in need, and not that kind of need, either. The only reason he was here was because she couldn’t stomach the thought of him being restrained over at Country General. Heck, they’d dope him up, send him to the state mental health facility, or worse, maybe shock him.

  Nope. Not going to happen. Not to Jamaal.

  Fumbling to pull her keys out of the rear pocket of her too tight jeans where she shouldn’t have put them in the first place, Lacy heard the squeak of the front door to the apartment complex. Like always, it banged when it slammed shut.

  Damn it. Someone’s coming. Get your butt inside and out of sight.

  Jamaal blew out a big nasty breath into her face. Propped up against her like he was, only made pulling her keys out of her rear pocket more difficult, but then he started leaning. If she didn’t hurry, he was going down, and she was going down with him. Mrs. Brown would have plenty to talk about then.

  At last! The keys were clear of her fat ass and in her fingers. Trembling more from panic at the neighborhood gossip than over-exertion, she rammed the key into the door lock and inside the apartment she and Jamaal went. Kicking the door closed behind her, Lacy blew out a puff of satisfaction for a job well done. Nobody, but nobody, knew she had Jamaal in her place, and she intended to keep it that way.

  “Over here,” she said as she directed the semi-conscious Bradley tank at her side over to her sofa. It creaked when she tried unsuccessfully to ease
him down, but no matter. He’d landed with a thump in the corner of it, but at least he was mostly sitting up. His head tilted limply to the side. Good enough. He was down and she could straighten him up. Maybe.

  Lacy stepped back, stretched the muscle strain out of her back, and sucked in a deep breath. This might just be the craziest thing she’d ever done, but damn. Jamaal was a helluva big guy to move all by herself. Every muscle in her back declared that loudly and clearly, but regret never entered her mind. He needed a unique brand of help that only another Marine would understand. Maybe she couldn’t provide all the technical side of medical care, but what she had to give was his for the taking. What he needed most was a warm place to hide out, lick his wounds, and do it without being judged, poked, and prodded. Or restrained.

  “You want a drink?” she offered in one out of breath sigh, just in case he was more awake than he looked. No such luck. Jamaal was out for the count, and she was lucky he’d made it this far. “Never mind,” she told him. “If you don’t, I sure do.”

  Turning one quick about-face landed her smack dab in her kitchen and at her old-fashioned refrigerator. Ewww. Whoever thought yellow was any kind of a color for kitchen appliances had to have been on drugs, and the idiot who’d tried to re-paint it that same color? Dumb and dumber.

  Her apartment was small, and small meant simple and mostly furnished with second-hand furniture, but good enough for now. The open kitchen faced the back of the couch, which itself faced the only window in the place, where Lacy could contemplate the brick wall of the neighboring building. She considered herself lucky for that much of a view. She could’ve been facing another set of peeping tom windows and some perv with a zoom lens and a camcorder. No, thank you very much. Some apartment complexes were built with just that much lack of foresight and privacy. Hers was one of the good ones. She faced a wall.