Broken Justice (Justice Brothers) Read online

  BROKEN JUSTICE

  Copyright © 2014 by Suzanne Halliday

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Edited by: www.editing4indies.com

  Book Cover Design by:www.ashbeedesigns.com

  Formatting by: Self Publishing Editing Service

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Excerpt FIXING JUSTICE

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to my daughter and my grandchildren. Thank you for being the best!

  Thwack. Clink. Thud. “Aw, suck my balls, Cam!” Draegyn yelled, clutching his crotch with a wicked laugh as his last two horseshoes made contact with the metal stake in the ground about forty feet away in the sand pit that was Afghanistan.

  “Fuck you, Drae!” Cameron yelled back heartily. “You totally pussied out last week when the frisbees were flying with that weak-ass excuse that your neck ached. I think you set me up with all your wah-wah crybaby shit, so don’t go thinking this means anything!”

  The two men grinned and flashed each other the finger during some downtime at their base deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. All around them, sand bags were stacked high as a shield against every imaginable type of attack, while overhead an American flag hung limp from its standard in the stagnant air of a blisteringly hot day.

  Their special forces compound was a rag tag set-up of tents, combat housing units, tin siding, barriers, sand dusted tables, lopsided chairs, and car backseats that had been thrown around an area where the men gathered to forget about where they were and what they were doing.

  Dressed in backward baseball caps with sweaty bandanas around their necks and standard issue green military t-shirts that the sleeves had been ripped from, Drae and Cam were fending off the long stretches of isolated boredom that descended upon their team between missions.

  Cam was wearing a pair of camo pants, lopped off at the knee, and an old pair of combat boots that were half-laced and covered in the desert sand that seemed to cling to everyone and everything. Dark, polarized sunglasses shielded his eyes from the relentless sun while a serious beard covered the bottom half of his face.

  In tip-top physical shape after eight long years in the military, muscled arms sporting a deep tan presented a tattoo wrapped bicep that matched the one Drae displayed. Together as brothers-in-arms for the last five years, they were men of the Justice Squad. A gruff, no-nonsense special ops team who had been sucking in the arid sands of the God-forsaken place they had been in for far too long.

  Shuffling across the hard-packed sandy ground, they stooped to retrieve their horseshoes, and continued to rib each other relentlessly about all manner of things that brought their manhood into question. It was a light-hearted moment in an otherwise deadly serious existence.

  The low woof-woof of an approaching K-9 grabbed their attention as one of their squad newbies, a soldier they nicknamed ‘The Kid’, approached with a serious looking German shepherd on the end of his tether.

  Everyone liked The Kid, although at twenty-five and after several long tours in various hot spots around the region, he was hardly considered a greenhorn. A communications expert who spoke several native dialects and handled his K-9 with adroit skill, he’d impressed even the most battle hardened of their squad. He wasn’t standard military. Not exactly. Most likely he was CIA or one of the elite, super secretive counter-terrorism operatives deployed throughout the region. One of the norms in this corner of the world was that these men didn’t ask questions of each other and rarely, if ever, used their real names. It was as if the time out of place nature of what they were ordered to do required a completely different mind-set than the one they’d relied on in the real world.

  “Hey Kid, what’s up with McLain? He seems a bit tense this morning,” Drae asked while he studied the dog on high-alert, pacing this way and that, at the end of the tether.

  True to a soldiers’ habit for creating nicknames and catchy terms for nearly everything, this particular shepherd had been named after the Bruce Willis character in Die Hard because he had a small bald spot on top of his head. Their special tactical squad was even called Justice after the Justice League, the Stan Lee created superheroes operating out of a hidden cave with a top-secret mandate to take on all villains who threatened the American way. Seemed oddly fitting in some perverse way.

  Tugging on the tether to bring the dog under heel, The Kid shrugged, directing his reply to both men. “I don’t know, Sirs. He got all antsy earlier at the south checkpoint but none of the other canines reacted so maybe he’s just having a bad day.” When the animal finally settled at his feet, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted and ever watchful in his capacity as a bomb-sniffing guard dog, all three men studied the brown and black shepherd with keen interest.

  Never taking anything for granted or at face value, each mulled private thoughts as eyes, alert and ever-vigilant, surveyed the scene around them looking for anomalies that might explain the dog’s tension. Improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers had become the enemies preferred fuck you method when striking the coalition forces. Attacks had been happening more and more frequently, and in unexpected places, coming closer and closer to their secured areas.

  Turning his attention away from the dog he had at his side, The Kid held his M-16 rifle protectively across his chest. “Hey, did you hear about Team Matrix? They were doing an overnight near the border when one of those motherfuckers blew a device on the convoy. Killed six, including an imbed from the BBC.”

  Hearing that bit of news, Cam and Drae looked at each other behind the dark lenses of their sunglasses. Fuck. Talking about body counts was usually immediately followed up with a swift change of subject that Draegyn was quick to provide.

  “Have you been over to HQ yet, Kid? The Major has been holed up there for way too long with a bunch of heavy-vested pussies. Oh, my bad - I mean politicians who were making his life hell, last we heard.” The disdain Drae felt for those so-called public servants was dripping from every word with special emphasis on the pussy.

  Alex, the third wheel and most senior member in their long association, was a brilliant tactician with the body and brawn of a battle-hardened warrior. He was spending way too much time these days holding the sweaty hands of the never-ending stream of nervous politicians and state department yahoos who flew in under cover of darkness. After a dog and pony show visit, they would high-tail it back to the safety found on U.S. soil so they could whip up their constituents and department heads with dramatic tales about the sights and sounds of life in a forward operating base in the middle of what had become a never-ending war. All that PR shit wasn’t exactly what Alex thought he’d be taking on when he was promoted last year.

  “I saw Badirya headed that way earlie
r with Asef in tow. He asked where you were, Lieutenant,” The Kid said in Cam’s direction.

  Thinking about Asef and his mother Badirya lightened Cameron’s thoughts. Asef was nine or ten years old and accompanied his mother nearly every day when she came into their compound to work as a translator and secretary in the HQ. The youngster was bright-eyed and extremely personable. He loved all things American with a special enjoyment for anything and everything connected to Batman.

  He liked the boy a lot and reminded Cam of him at an age before innocence got lost and life became serious. In his case, it was the year or two before his mother stuck one too many heroin needles in her drug-wasted body. She took her last breath on their wobbly stained living room couch, leaving him to an uncertain and complicated future.

  Drae cast him one of those knowing looks that bordered on a leer before chiming in, “You’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the lovely widow and her son, Cam. You find a way underneath that hijab yet, dude?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Drae,” Cameron snapped. “You’re way more likely to go for a pair of brown doe-eyes beneath a veil than either of us would,” he added while gesturing with the tilt of his head to where The Kid stood. “Asef is a good kid and it doesn’t hurt to show the boy that not all Americans are bloodthirsty dickheads worthy of jihad.”

  “Hey, leave me out of that argument, Sirs,” The Kid added with tongue-in-cheek humor. “My fiancée would seriously kick my ass if she thought for one minute that any of the female locals were fraternizing with the enemy.” Mention of the fiancée gave pause to Cameron and Draegyn. They’d seen pictures of the couple during happier times and had listened to many heartsick stories from the lonely warrior during his time assigned to their squad.

  From Cam’s deep-seated mistrust of women and ability to compartmentalize sexual encounters, to Drae’s man-whore behavior and Alex’s cold-hearted view of romance, the three of them made quite a trio. Truth be told, each of them envied The Kid in his own way. The battlefield hadn’t robbed him of the ability to feel or diminished the desire to forge a future beyond the shit storm they lived in now.

  Suddenly, McLain jumped up from his at ease position and lifted his snout in the air. All three men, ever vigilant to even the slightest signal of danger, stopped in mid-thought and actively scanned their immediate surroundings. Something was up, they could sense it. By reflex and from sheer habit, Cam and Drae immediately hoisted their ever-present M-16 rifles and began moving toward the other side of the well-protected compound.

  Shit got real when the K-9 took off running at a fast clip around a mortar pit with The Kid right behind him. A commotion was building just beyond their view. They could hear angry shouts and commands to stand down being barked out in Arabic.

  All hell broke loose in the next ten seconds as gunfire erupted followed by a small explosion and then a massive BOOM that knocked Cam and Drae off their feet. Smoke, dust, shrapnel, and debris clogged the air.

  Choking from the blast, Cam was on the ground, unable to move as debris covered most of his body. Frantically clawing away from the mess, he called out for Drae in the ensuing chaos.

  “Draegyn! Drae! Are you alright? Where the hell are you?” he hollered as fear and adrenaline coursed wildly through his body. Spitting the putrid sand and dust from the blast out of his mouth, he crouched low, on alert, gun pointed in case of attack while the smoke cleared enough for him to finally see something more than the inside of a dark cloud.

  Catching sight of Draegyn’s unmoving form laying thirty feet away under a pile of tin and wood, Cam immediately sprinted to assist his fallen comrade. As he came to the spot where Drae fell a sudden movement from the corner of his eye caused him to swing his weapon into a defensive posture, ready to annihilate any further attack that came their way. When four shit-kicking Marines raced by he stood down, returning to Drae’s aide.

  With a burst of superhuman strength and determination, Cameron lifted a tremendous piece of tin attached to a wooden post from his prone friend and wildly tossed it aside in an effort to reach Draegyn. When his battlefield brother was freed and able to slowly lift to his knees, Cam knew a relief that equaled none he’d known before.

  A heartbeat later, years of training took over. After helping Draegyn to his feet and checking to see that their weapons were ready to go, they started forward again in a fast sprint toward the center of the explosion.

  Upon reaching the area of the HQ, the men stopped and assessed the scene before them. Bodies and parts of bodies were everywhere as shouts of “medic” and “Code Red” filled the air. Half the HQ building was gone and a fire had broken out in another structure nearby.

  “Holy fuck, Cam!” Drae shouted. “God damn, motherfuckers,” he growled. “We’ve got to get to Alex.”

  Both men took off in the direction of the building where they hoped their friend would be found unhurt. Along the way they encountered McLain, who was untethered and clearly in distress, wandering in circles around a clump of brown camo on the ground. Cam’s stomach dropped away as he realized that The Kid had taken the worst from the blast while the dog had somehow survived. Fear arced up his spine, propelling him forward in search of Alex.

  Drae got there first, shouting, “Alex, Alex! Talk to me, man! Where the fuck are you?” All around them soldiers were frantically tossing debris aside in search of the dead and injured.

  They found Alex, badly hurt, with blood pouring out of every inch of his body and a leg wound that looked like ground meat. He was alive, barely. The instinct to survive, no matter what the situation, had been branded on their souls in such a way that a pulse meant victory in an otherwise horrendous scenario.

  Luckily for Alex, it took only seconds for an entire team to descend on the area and take control of the situation. In the end, sixteen military personnel had been killed or injured along with seven civilians. Magically, the visiting politicos had escaped unscathed, having left for the airfield earlier that morning.

  After seeing to Alex’s care and satisfied that he was alive and on the way to the hospital at Ramstein , Drae and Cameron were left to deal with the aftermath of what turned out to be a suicide bomber. In the days and years to come, each battlefield brother would have wounds and emotional scars to contend with. Not only was Alex critically injured and The Kid going home to his fiancée in a body bag, the bomber turned out to be the doe-eyed widow Badirya who sacrificed her only child Asef in some deranged act meant to re-unite her with her dead Afghan husband.

  On that fateful day The Justice Bothers were born from the smoke, death and despair of an Afghan battlefield. Things would never be the same for any of them and each would carry demons, ghosts and nightmares from that time into the future. In the two years that followed, one by one, they would leave the desert hell-hole behind and seek a future together, far away from war, in the hot, dusty winds of southern Arizona.

  It was fucking hot. Balls hot. It was always hot in this part of the world. He was used to the smell of his own sweat and had been since the years he spent in the arid dust of the Middle East. It made ignoring the perspiration running down his back easier. Using the t-shirt crumpled up in his hands as a towel, he swiped it absently across his chest and face before dropping it to the floor and laying his head on the back of the chair.

  Above him, an ancient ceiling fan cranked in useless, lazy circles. From his room on the second floor of the pensión, sounds from the bustling street below choked in the oppressive heat of the mid-day sun. The only noise inside his dingy, cheap-ass room came from the Mexican Lolita on her knees between his legs, who at this moment had his dick stuffed in her practiced mouth.

  He should probably give a shit that he was getting a first class blowjob from Amada, or whatever the fuck her name was, but he didn’t. This was just one of those things that happened in his line of work, something that was not always wise to turn down. He’d been south-of-the-border for months, working on an assignment that he knew was just this side of being illegal and
seriously dangerous to his health. He would have preferred to wrap things up and silently vanish, leaving behind the distasteful scenario he found himself in currently.

  After a troubled youth of neglect and social poverty that was leading him nowhere, the military had straightened him out in a hurry. With a record of minor scrapes with the law, stuff that wouldn’t even get an eye-roll these days, his life had been quickly careening out of control. He had been headed for a shit storm of trouble. The military knocked some fucking sense into his thick head and had given a nineteen-year-old in a downward spiral the skills to manage his adult life. Following ten long years of a hardened soldier’s life and the acquisition of some rather unique skills, he and two battlefield brothers had gone out into the real world and created an exclusive agency dealing in surveillance, protection, and cyber security.

  Most of their assignments were straightforward but at times their unusual abilities, and the promise of a substantial payday, brought them to off the radar places like where he was today, doing work that required some of those dubious skills learned on the modern battlefield. He’d been in this dingy room for eight weeks, blending in effortlessly due to his long dark hair and beard that gave him the appearance of a local and let him disappear into the background. Having completed this particular assignment, he was due to start the careful transition from undercover work south of the border to his regular life, but first there were a few loose ends to tie up.

  Letting Manuel Santos show his appreciation and satisfaction with the outcome of their professional arrangement meant sitting here in this God-awful room while one of Santos’ best whores ate his cock for lunch. He probably should give a shit, he thought yet again, but why bother? The ability to compartmentalize gave him an edge. The military taught him that, as did years of fending for himself on the mean streets of New York City. He could sit there in the oppressive heat, think about the rivulet of sweat slowly making its way down his spine as he mapped out his departure from this hellhole, and not even miss a beat while a much-practiced mouth sucked him off with neat efficiency.