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After eleven years in the US Navy, he didn’t have much to show for his life and didn’t really care. Things were replaceable.
People weren’t.
He couldn’t replace the seven members of his team that hadn’t survived the crash landing that had also killed the pilots, the gunner and the man they’d been sent to rescue. All in all, eleven of the twelve men on board that Black Hawk had died.
Griff, the sole survivor, had been thrown clear of the fuselage before it had hit the ground and burst into a fiery ball of flame fed by half a tank of aviation fuel meant to get them back to the relative safety of their forward operating base.
All Griff had suffered was a compound fracture to his left leg, a dislocated shoulder and a concussion.
When he’d come to, the helicopter had been a mass of fire, lighting up the sky. Even if he could have run to it, he couldn’t have saved anyone inside.
As he’d watched from thirty yards away, the ISIS rebels had gathered around the burning hull, firing their weapons into the air, shouting and laughing at what they’d accomplished.
Fighting the fog of semi-consciousness, Griff had used his good arm to drag himself away from them and had hidden behind a boulder where he’d succumbed to the pain of his broken leg and the loss of his friends and brothers in arms.
Now, after months of rehabilitation and being medically retired from the Navy, he was on his way to what he hoped wasn’t his next big mistake.
Stone Jacobs, an old friend from BUD/S training, had come to see him in Bethesda, where he’d spent most of his time in rehab, getting back as much mobility out of his damaged leg as he could. Stone had heard he was being released from his commitment to the Navy by the medical review board.
Though his leg was repaired, it would never be the same. He’d never pass the physical fitness tests required of a Navy SEAL, nor would he want to be in a position where a team member was relying on him to move quickly. No, his Navy days were over.
Not that he wanted to go back to the job. Not after losing his entire team. The only one to survive, he’d also had to answer to the US senator whose nephew had died in that crash as well. Not only had he lost his team, he’d failed in his mission to extract Joe Franklin from the hands of ISIS and return him to the States alive.
He should have died in the crash along with his team. At least then, he would have died a hero, not live on as the lone survivor of a failed mission. He didn’t care about being a hero. He didn’t care to live after his teammates had all perished.
So many times over the past six months of pain, he’d asked himselfWhy me?
Why had his life been spared and the others not?
He sighed and pressed his foot to the accelerator. His heart was not in the meeting he was going to have with Stone Jacobs at the Lost Valley Ranch just outside of Fool’s Gold, Colorado.
What good could he bring to the Brotherhood Protectors, the brainchild of the legendary Hank Patterson, another Navy SEAL whose exploits and successes were stuff legends were made of?
He’d promised to at least meet with Jacobs and Patterson before he told them he wasn’t interested. They’d paid for the gas he’d used to get from San Diego, where he’d cleared out his apartment.
He hadn’t had a single call, note or text from Rachel West, the woman he’d been so focused on before their operation had gone to shit. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to see her or anyone when he’d come back. He’d wanted to forget he’d ever existed.
If not for the cleanup crew who’d come looking for the bodies of his team, he would have died where he laid behind the rock. And he should have. But they hadn’t given up. They’d had a certain number of bodies to retrieve, and, by God, they’d looked until they’d found him, unconscious, hiding like a coward behind a rock.
Griff stared at the road ahead, slowly picking up speed. The sooner he got this meeting over, the sooner he could be back on the road.
To where?
He didn’t have a home. His folks had died in a freak boating accident his first year in the Navy. He’d relied on his team to be his family. Now, they were dead.
And it was getting late.
He’d left Colorado Springs before dusk. The road through the pass had been crowded with people going home from work. Dusk had dropped over the mountains as soon as the sun slipped past the peaks.
Now, with little light remaining in the sky, he drove the curvy road toward the Lost Valley Ranch.
As he rounded a bend in the road, he spotted an SUV in front of him heading in the same direction.
A four-wheeler burst from the woods in front of the SUV and passed directly in front of the swiftly moving vehicle.
Griff’s foot hit the brakes on his truck as the SUV swerved sharply, drove off the road into a ditch and flipped over, landing upside down.
His heart pounding, Griff sped up and came to a screeching halt on the shoulder, his headlights aimed at the overturned vehicle. He punched the hazard lights button on his dash, grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and leaped out of the truck.
