Page 1 of Near Miss

Chapter One

SomewhereovertheAtlantic

Blood, propellant, and death clung to the insides of Lachlan Mackay’s nostrils, burned into his olfactory memory as surely as the images of war were engraved inside his mind.

The barren browns and grays of the Hindu Kush dissolved into mist, banished from his internal gaze by the dimmed main cabin lighting and throbbing, ever-present hum of the triple seven’s engines. His heart pounded out a furious rhythm.

Some days, two years felt as close to his skin as two minutes.

The sensation of being watched prickled the back of his neck. The middle-aged Arab businessman in the window seat to Lachlan’s left regarded him anxiously from beneath his whitekaffiyeh. His rigid posture told Lachlan he hadn’t succeeded in keeping his nightmare private.

“Sorry, pal, bad dream.” Lachlan brushed to one side the unruly strands of black hair that had fallen across his forehead and made a mental note to get a trim when he returned to the States. He gave his seatmate a smile meant to reassure, although it felt more like an awkward twist of his lips.

After a hesitant nod, the man slumped back against his neck pillow and closed his eyes, dismissing Lachlan.

Lachlan stared down the aisle toward the galley next to the lavatories and caught the eye of one of the flight attendants. She gave him a sultry smile and navigated the aisle like a runway model in the distinctive uniform of her airline—tan suit, red cap, and white scarf, a slash of matching crimson adorning her lips. Her attire was fashionable but, he suspected, no more comfortable than his British Army dress uniform had been the few times he’d been required to don it.

He gave her a polite smile. “Scotch, please, and a bottle of water.”

“Glenfiddich again?” Her brown-eyed gaze roamed his face and dropped to measure the width of his shoulders.

“Aye, thank you.” He ignored her obvious interest. Women had found him pleasing to look at since he’d hit puberty and shot to six feet four.

There’d been a time when he would have returned her admiration, maybe made plans to share a meal and a bed on her layover. Now, he couldn’t look at a woman without wondering if everything he saw was a lie.

When she left to get his drinks, he took measured breaths to calm his rapid pulse that hadn’t yet distinguished between reality and memory. His singular nightmare never changed. In it, he rendered a crisp salute neither seen nor returned. He brushed his glove over his staff sergeant’s empty blue stare and zipped the black body bag. It was the last time he’d seen Thom, unless you counted the many times his staff sergeant had shown up in his head.

The flight attendant returned with his whisky, a bottle of water, and a cup of ice. Ignoring the cup, Lachlan twisted the cap off the small plastic bottle of Glenfiddich, drank the contents in one long pull, and then took a sip of the tepid water. The whisky burned his throat, and the ghosts receded from his consciousness but didn’t disappear completely. They lingered in his tense muscles and the headache forming behind his eyes.

The seatback screen showed the progress of his flight from Dulles to Dubai, where he’d board another flight to Kabul to meet with the security teams he oversaw as head of global security for Landry Associates International. According to the monitor, the plane was somewhere over the northern Atlantic, only four hours into the thirteen-hour flight. It was a grueling journey, made worse by the fact LAI’s US government contracts didn’t offer him the option of flying business class. He was jammed into a seat with no leg room and even less elbow room.

A slight smile lifted one corner of his lips. Some would say it was posh compared to his previous transports to Afghanistan. His memories fresh, he pulled his phone out of the seatback pocket, tapped out his unlock code, and opened the photos app, scrolling until he came to the photo he was looking for.

Sixteen men smiled into the camera behind the gates of the SAS compound inside Bagram Airfield, located an hour north of Kabul in the Parwan Province. His men had wanted a picture taken kitted out in full combat gear on the day they arrived for what ended up being Lachlan’s final deployment. The temperature already had been this side of Hell in the mid-morning hour.

The noobs on their first deployment looked confident and cocky, and why not? They were part of A Squadron in the 22nd British Special Air Service regiment. Blades. Those like himself on their second or third tour projected confidence as well, but the brutal realities of war had knocked out the cockiness. As his troop’s company officer, it had been Lachlan’s job to keep them safe and execute the mission. He’d trusted them with his life, just as they’d trusted him with theirs.

Almost without thought, his fingers strayed to the chain around his neck, hidden beneath his dark gray, long-sleeved Henley.

But he hadn’t kept them safe. He’d trusted the wrong person.

The wrong woman.

A familiar tightness gripped the back of his neck, and he lifted his hand to massage the constricted muscles. He’d find a way to avenge Thom, Fitzy, and the others, no matter how long it took. Even if it wouldn’t bring them back, maybe they could finally rest, and he could figure out how to move from beneath the constant shadow of his failure.

He pulled out the ID disc from beneath his shirt—what American soldiers called dog tags—and rubbed a thumb over the round piece of metal etched with blood type, serial number, name, and religious affiliation.O POS, 25068743, BARNWELL, T, CE. The hard edges dug into his palm. His other hand fisted and swept down to massage the round, puckered scar midway up his left thigh, hidden beneath his jeans.

I’m sorry.

Today would be a bloody long day.

Fifteen hours later, Lachlan descended the mobile boarding stairs off his flight and onto the tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. The milder temperatures of mid-March were notably absent today as a frigid wind swept down from the jagged brown mountains ringing Kabul to seep through his olive field jacket. Snow had receded from the majority of the mountainous terrain but still capped the highest peaks in this section of the Hindu Kush.

He rubbed gritty eyes and slung his black duffel over one shoulder, stifling a yawn before he headed across the tarmac to the arrivals terminal. Sleep had never been a problem in the stripped-down military transports that had ferried him across this landlocked, mountainous country, despite the deep-throated thump of Chinook rotor blades and the pervasive smell of diesel fuel that had clung to his gear long after he’d exited his ride.

But that was a long time ago. Before betrayal colored his days and the dead invaded his nights.

He scanned the area as he made his way to the terminal, always on alert for anything or anyone that felt out of place. Although no longer subject to daily shelling from the Taliban, IEDs and suicide bomb attacks on the airport and in Kabul were ever-present threats that Lachlan understood better than most, given his time in country with UK special forces.

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