War-torn Bosnia had been the first time in his life he’d felt such mind-numbing pain. The bullet had torn through his shoulder, wreaking a path of destruction through the muscle and tendons and nerve fibres there. Two inches to the right and the bullet would very likely have left him paralysed from the neck down, if he’d survived at all. In fleeting moments, he’d contemplated whether that would have been a better outcome – it would at least have taken away the ferocious pain that swept through his body.
He’d been travelling with three other men. Their mission was to extract a high-ranking officer of the Scorpions – a Serbian paramilitary unit believed to have been involved in various atrocities in the Bosnian War, including the Srebrenica genocide.
The mission had run its course. It was a success. Their man was bound and gagged and lying shackled in the back of the pickup truck as they raced back toward the safe zone, where the prisoner would be transported out of the country for good.
It was only through sheer bad luck that everything turned to shit.
Deep inside territory held by the Army of Republika Srpska, one of the front tyres of their vehicle exploded when they rode over a piece of shrapnel. They frantically battled to fix on the spare wheel, but it wasn’t long before Serb forces found them. Outnumbered and outgunned, they would all have been killed at best, captured and tortured at worst, if it hadn’t been for a heroic helicopter rescue team that plucked them to safety.
In the process, he’d been shot. As had two others on the team. The first man died in the helicopter, the other two days later in a military hospital.
His mind was replaying those moments – the bombardment by Serb forces, the bullet tearing into him, the agonising helicopter ride that followed – over and over as though he were living it all once more.
The pain he felt was real, that was for certain. Pain that strong, that horrific, couldn’t be imagined. This time, it wasn’t emanating from his shoulder, though, but from his head. It was almost unbearable. It seemed to be rushing through his bloodstream, infecting every inch of his body. If someone had offered to put him out of his misery there and then, he very possibly would have agreed.
Yes, the pain was real. But he wasn’t in Bosnia anymore. It was only when he finally opened his eyes that his weary brain began to recalibrate. It took him a few agonising moments to recall where he was and why.
Kazakhstan. The planned exchange.
He should have walked away from that place a rich man. Instead, he’d been betrayed.
He tried to move but couldn’t. Yet he could feel his arms, his fingers, his legs, his toes. So why couldn’t he move? He looked down and saw the answer.
Using all his strength, he heaved the deadweight body off him. The lifeless mass rolled away. He looked at the face of the dead man and a strange concoction of emotions washed through him: sadness, fear, hatred. It was the hatred that stuck. Not for the blood-soaked man who lay dead next to him, but for the man who’d caused this to happen.
Carl Logan. This was all down to Carl Logan.
In that moment, Captain Fleming determined two things. First: he wasn’t giving up. He would survive. He would battle through the pain; he would fight on. Eventually he would recover. And second: one day, he would make Carl Logan pay.
THE END