Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)
Trish McCallan
Prologue
* * *
Sweet Jesus, Joseph, and Mary . . .
BENEATH SPLINTERED SHARDS of moonlight piercing the thick canopy of blue-black ponderosa pine, Lieutenant Seth Rawlings watched Marcus Simcosky—better known as Cosky—roll a limp body onto its back. Rawls had seen plenty of dead bodies during his fourteen years as a corpsman—or medic—for SEAL Team 7 . . . but none like this.
Gunfire lit the clearing, pinging between tree trunks. He tore his eyes from the body on the ground in favor of scanning the trees surrounding him. He and his team had neutralized most of the *s who’d blown up their safe house, but a couple had escaped and were holed up in the forest creating havoc. Who the hell were these *s?
More importantly, who was funding them? Their anonymous enemy had deep pockets and military connections—a deadly combination.
Another burst of gunfire erupted. Rawls flinched, hunkering down, watching Cosky squat to loop the body’s limp arm around his neck, so he could drag it over his shoulder. In a half crouch, his teammate raced for the closest tree. For a second, instinct kicked in and Rawls tensed, ready to dive for cover. But the impulse quickly fled. From the evidence dangling over Cosky’s arms, taking cover wouldn’t make a lick of difference.
He followed Cosky behind the thick protection of bark and watched his teammate roll the body off his shoulder and onto the ground, where it lay stretched out on its back across a thin pad of pine needles.
Disbelief swelled, vibrated against Rawls’s chest.
Hold up. It’s just a dream.
His gaze skated to the right, taking in the body’s blood-soaked shirt and jeans. He recognized the cotton polo, the pants too, with their thinning patches of denim across the knees. He’d dressed in both less than forty-eight hours earlier, before the race to Seattle to investigate the incinerated lab and the detour to this supposedly safe haven in the Sierra Nevadas.
Rocking back on his heels, he stared down at the bloody cloth clinging to his chest. His shirt bore identical stains to the one covering the corpse on the ground. The corpse . . . yeah . . . he’d seen enough death to recognize its stamp.
Just like he recognized the high cheekbones, blue eyes, and gleaming cap of wheat-gold hair belonging to the man on the ground. Damnation, it was the same face he stared at every morning in the mirror.
If that don’t beat all . . . that’s you, hoss . . . you . . . dead on the ground.
He must be dreaming, although try as he might, he couldn’t remember closing his eyes.
He swayed, his body lighter than air, and looked down. What the devil . . . ? Several inches of air buffered his boots from the pine needles matting the forest floor.
Another slew of gunfire hammered the clearing. The familiar sound centered him, and his feet dropped back to the pitchy earth.
Time to wake up. Wake up!
“Clear!” a deep baritone yelled a hundred yards away.
Next to him, Cosky ripped his night vision device off and dropped to his knees. Leaning forward, he pressed his fingers against the side of the flaccid neck.
“Son of a bitch.” The words emerged on a low hiss and Cosky pulled back hard.
“Is he alive?” Zane Winters, his lieutenant commander, skidded to a stop next to Cosky and dropped to his knees. He didn’t wait for a response, just dragged the strap from his rifle over his head, yanked off his NVD, and stripped off his shirt.
Rawls shook his head. “A little late, bro.”
His voice emerged hollow—disembodied—and neither Cosky nor Zane reacted in the slightest.
’Course this is just a dream . . .
He pinched his forearm, or tried to, except he didn’t feel a thing, and his fingers disappeared into his arm all the way up to his knuckles. Holy hell . . . He could clearly see the murky image of rocks and pine needles through his transparent flesh. But he couldn’t feel anything—not the earth beneath his boots nor the wounds beneath his clothes.
As Cosky dragged his shirt off his head, folding it into a compression pad, déjà vu hit Rawls hard. A memory flashed through his mind. A blood-soaked body stretched across green grass. Tense faces and folded shirts.
Only Cosky had been camped out on the ground, and he’d been the one working frantically overhead trying to keep his buddy alive.
He and Cos had traded places. With one big-ass difference. Cosky hadn’t died.
“Welcome to hell,” a sour, yet oddly familiar voice said from behind him.
Rawls spun, and his body went light and floaty again. This shit just got weirder and weirder.
Wake up, hoss. Wake the hell up.
A couple of beats of his nonexistent heart later, and his boots settled back down. With a tight breath, he focused on the man behind him, relieved to find an actual person standing there. Until he realized the figure was translucent too. The hazy image of a tree trunk penetrated the guy’s thin chest.
A second later recognition hit . . . a bald head, crowned by a bloody bandage . . . brown eyes . . . a big black knife protruding from a narrow chest . . .
Pachico . . .
Pachico, who’d died in their safe haven less than fifteen minutes earlier. Pachico, whose corpse had been unceremoniously cremated when their hidey-hole had been blown to Venus and back.
Sweet Jesus . . .
Disbelief swarmed, flooding him like helium, and his feet said adios to the ground again. The man—or thing—laughed, and the knife bobbed up and down.