Hard Line - Pamela Clare Page 0,73
about the IED blast that killed my friends—Lars, Felix, Mads.”
“Yes. You were thrown clear. Mads and Felix were killed. Lars died while you held his hand. I remember.”
“Three died. Three of us survived. We were airlifted back to our base, along with the bodies. I was out of my mind with rage. I wanted blood. I wanted to make al Harzi pay for what he’d done. Jakob, one of the other survivors, felt the same. So, we waited until night, and we commandeered a vehicle and snuck off base, armed to the teeth.”
“You went AWOL?”
“AWOL? What’s that?”
“Absent without leave.”
“Yeah, and stole a vehicle.”
“Okay. Wow.”
“We drove through the night back to those poppy fields. It was a crazy thing to do. AQ operatives and Taliban fighters were everywhere. But we made it to al Harzi’s hideout, passing the crater in the dirt road that was left by the IED. The blood of our friends was still there in the dirt. We parked about a half-mile away and walked the remaining distance, weapons ready.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“I was too out of my mind with grief and anger to be afraid.” Thor told her how they’d taken out six armed men to get into the compound and then made their way through a courtyard into the main structure, killing every fighting-age male. “Some were teenagers—just kids. Others were the real deal—AQ combatants. We killed every last one of them in front of screaming women and crying children.”
“Oh, Thor.”
Thor couldn’t meet her gaze. “It wasn’t war. Warfighting is supposed to be controlled, targeted. It was a rage-fueled massacre. I had become a Berserker, a monster. All I wanted to do was kill and kill and kill.”
“Did you kill the women, too?”
“No women or small children.”
“Thank God.” Samantha whispered the words, but Thor heard them.
“We found al Harzi hiding in the back. He let all of his men die for him and then hid behind women. We killed him, dragged his body back to our vehicle, stripped him naked, and dumped him in the crater left by that IED. We wanted all of the AQ forces in the area to know who had killed him—and why. Then we drove back to base, parked the vehicle, and snuck back into our beds. I didn’t sleep at all that night.”
“You could have been killed.”
Thor nodded. “In the morning, word got around that US forces had found al Harzi’s body in the exact spot where our men had died. Our commanding officer called us into his office, asked if there was anything we’d like to tell him. We shook our heads. He let us go. And that was the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t the end.” She reached up, touched Thor’s face. “You carry this with you still. I can see it in your eyes.”
“I thought I had let it go while I was in Greenland, but I had a nightmare about it a couple of nights ago. You were there. You watched me kill a man. You looked at me with horror on your face, and you screamed.”
“I’m not screaming, Thor. You haven’t scared me away. I can’t judge you for what you did that night. Besides, you’ve already judged yourself.”
He looked into her eyes, saw only compassion. “I turned into a monster, Samantha. Do you understand? That beast still lives inside me. Tonight, when I thought you were dead, I felt that same rage, that same bloodlust. I wanted to kill Hardin. I wanted to rip him to pieces.”
Samantha sat up, took his hand. “That doesn’t make you a monster, Thor. That makes you human.”
Her gaze shifted to his shoulder, and her eyes went wide. “You’re hurt.”
“Yeah. Hardin shot me with my own damned pistol.”
“He shot you?”
Thor realized she had no idea what had happened, so he told her what the bastard had done. How he’d used her to get Thor into his office. How Thor had seen her lying motionless on the ice on Hardin’s webcam and had given Hardin everything he wanted without a fight. How Thor had found her, untied the ropes, and carried her here.
She glanced around their Mylar tent. “Where are we?”
“The café out in Summer Camp. We were both hypothermic and have early frostbite. You were drugged, too, and in a lot worse shape than I was.”
She was staring at him. “You carried me all the way out here with no cold-weather gear and a freaking bullet in your shoulder?”
He slid his fingers into her hair, his fingertips still tingling from