For Honor: A Secret Baby Military Millionaire Romance (Elite Force Protectors)

One

Honor

The old truck swerved violently to miss yet another pot hole — or maybe a landmine.

Who knows.

I gently bit the inside of my cheek to remain calm, stared at my feet, and focused on carefully placing my camera lens back into its bag.

The lens was old but special; it was from the set my dad had left me before his last assignment…

I let a sigh out.

He never even got to see me graduate with a degree in photojournalism, just like him. But I couldn’t think about now.

This is not the time to get emotional, Honor, I said to myself.

I was crammed onto the back of a dirty pickup truck that sped frantically towards the US Military Green Zone and away from one of the most dangerous conflict areas in the Middle East: The Red Zone.

In truth, the Red Zone was really more like a small city. Once a perfectly peaceful place with lush landscape, beautiful buildings and happy folk, it was presently being ransacked and pillaged by various militia groups. Families torn apart and kids everywhere, abducted to serve as boy soldiers and child-brides to a brutal rebel force called The Fear Division.

Some of my fellow journalists called it ‘Hell’s Backyard’. The soldiers just called it ‘The Dump’. And the people who managed to escape called themselves ‘The Lucky’.

We were not so lucky that day, at least as far as work was concerned. We’d left well before sunrise, me and a handful of reporters, photojournalists, plus a couple of doctors and medical support personnel, and we wanted get some interviews and hopefully good video footage of the Doctors Without Borders’ volunteers and Red Cross workers. But unfortunately it was complete chaos and frustration and we were mostly coming home empty handed—except for the increasingly loud explosions in the distance—hence the frantic drive back to safety.

I personally had hoped to get a couple of good shots of the damage that The Fear Division rebels had caused during their last rampage through The Red Zone, but we weren’t allowed to “go that deep”. So I spent most of the day taking pictures of aid workers and local children, just waiting for our military chaperone (a soldier who had accompanied us that day) to tell us it was time to go home. I was exhausted and very, very sandy. I was looking forward to heading back to my temporary home.

The Green Zone was, not surprisingly, the complete opposite of the Red Zone: it was a US Military safe, beautiful, and expertly organized mini city with a huge training facility, several pretty apartment complexes with parks and walkways, a well equipped medical centre, and even some decent restaurants for those times when the journalists and medical personnel could no longer stomach eating in the military canteen.

Three weeks ago, when I first came here, I was overwhelmed, to say the least.

It was a big shock to leave California—but I wanted to make my dad proud and besides, you can’t be gutsy in Santa Cruz. It was scary at first, this crazy world where I felt so close to danger at every moment, but I was slowly becoming accustomed to it and almost starting to crave it.

Two

Axel

Where the hell did we find this guy, I laughed to myself as we swerved all over the road on our way back to the Green Zone. This has got to be the worst extraction driver we’ve ever had.

I almost let a small chuckle escape at how bad he was, but the poor kid, a local we hired just last week, he was barely a teenager and he was clearly terrified. I quickly surveyed the passengers on the truck and decided that it was an equal split between those who seemed excited, those who seemed scared, and those who really didn’t give a shit.

I wasn’t the least bit anxious. In fact, I was irritated that we were headed back to safety, back to The Green Zone. I can’t do my job, my duty, this far away from the action. It’s never been my calling to sit back and let the bad guys win. It’s not how I’m built. I’m not like the others. Never have been. I’m not even really a soldier, I’ll admit that. What I am is a warrior.

Sure, it’s cost me at times over the years, I live a lonelier life than most—few people know the real me, or where I actually come from—but it’s also why I was chosen to be an Elite Force Protector.

There’s only six of us at any given time—each of us chosen for our own unique expertise and each of us given our own secret mission—and, aside from our on-site “contacts”, we work alone.