The Thousand Dollar Man by J.T. Brannan

Author:J.T. Brannan [Brannan, J.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Publisher: Grey Arrow Publishing
Published: 2015-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Chapter One

I sipped on an espresso, relaxing into the wicker chair out on the café’s outdoor patio as I watched the blood-red sun slowly starting its descent over the horizon.

Half the city was probably looking for me by now, with murder on their mind; but after getting out of that little jam earlier in the day, I felt I’d earned a bit of relaxation time.

I’d bought a med kit from a local pharmacy and fixed my arm up, but it was still painful and I’d struggle to fire a gun with my right hand for a while. In fact, gripping anything was going to be difficult. Not impossible though, I consoled myself; not impossible.

My ribs were sore from the beating they’d given me, but I didn’t think anything was broken. My piss didn’t have any blood in it either, so my kidneys must have come through relatively unscathed too.

There was a huge welt on the back of my head from where I’d been knocked out by the cop’s nightstick, but it was covered by my hair at least, which was more than could be said for my face. I had nice purple bruises under my eyes, my nose was broken, and one of the guys had knocked a crown out. My jaw and cheekbones had held up okay though.

My nose had been spread halfway across my face, but I’d managed to straighten it back myself, so it now bore at least some semblance to a straight line. The cartilage was bust up pretty good though, and it made breathing more difficult than it should have been.

The pain itself didn’t bother me; it was nothing compared to what had happened years earlier, in another life.

Another world.

My thoughts drifted back there now, the dry heat of the day so similar to Iraq. I tried to fight the memories away, but couldn’t; they were too strong.

I’d been in the Rangers for nine years when it happened, the youngest solider to ever make it into the Regimental Recon Detachment – the top unit in an already elite regiment. Not bad for a poor boy from Rock Springs, Wyoming. But then again, maybe my early years in the great outdoors helped – it was a good introduction to working in the field on operations, it put me in tune with nature and exposed me to the necessity of a strong survival mentality from a young age.

That period of my life, while undoubtedly useful, didn’t last long though – my parents were both killed in a car crash before I was seven. I was taken in by my grandparents on my mother’s side, and life couldn’t have been more different; from a smallholding in Wyoming – poor perhaps, but with the vast plains as my playground – to a rundown apartment in downtown Denver.

Life there was a different kind of hard, and I soon found that surviving in a city was a whole other ball game. My school wasn’t great, and there was a lot of pressure to run with the local gangs.

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