Improvise

  HEADSTRONG

  BOOK ONE: IMPROVISE

  Melanie Rachel

  Copyright © 2019 by Melanie Rachel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  First printing 2019

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt from HEADSTRONG BOOK 2: ADAPT

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.

  — Audrey Hepburn

  Chapter One

  He was late.

  She’d arrived early at De Roos and grabbed a booth tucked behind the wooden front door. She tapped the heel of her boot on the floor, turned to count the large fieldstones used to build the long bar on the back wall, and tried to guess where each of the customers had come from. Local? Tourist? Embassy?

  At last, fifteen minutes past their meeting time and just before she stood to leave, Elizabeth Bennet saw him. Standing a few feet away, hands on his hips, canvassing the room before spotting her behind him, was Major Richard Fitzwilliam.

  “Staff Sergeant,” he said amiably.

  “Sir,” she replied with a grin.

  He raised his hand to attract the attention of a waitress. When a buxom redhead wearing black pants and a tight t-shirt turned and saw him, he held up two fingers and she disappeared behind the bar.

  “You made me wait,” she chided, showing the display on her phone. “Hardly the way to say, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’”

  Major Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Last meeting ran long.” He tossed his sunglasses down on the table. Elizabeth noted the tailored fit of his brown khakis and dark green polo shirt—casual wear that appeared expensive. Everyone looks so different out of uniform, she thought. He slid into the booth opposite her.

  “A regular, I see,” Elizabeth teased. She stretched her toes out in her boots, feeling comfortable at last. She’d spent her shift working on the embassy’s computer network, including carting away some truly ancient desktops and swapping them out for newer models. Then she’d needed to update the software. The assignment was way below her pay grade and boring as dirt. But it was easy enough, and it meant she was stationed in Brussels, so she wasn’t complaining.

  Elizabeth had found the major surprisingly good-natured for an officer in the months since she’d arrived in Europe. She’d worried a bit at first that he was flirting with her, but it turned out he teased just about everyone. She knew now that Major Fitzwilliam was too dedicated a Marine ever to break the regulation on fraternization. That being the case, Elizabeth felt safe enjoying his friendly banter. It was a bit like having a charming and sarcastic older brother.

  The major ran a hand through his sandy hair in a gesture that indicated a long day. “I am, but I’m not a lush, if that’s what you’re implying,” he said flippantly.

  “Well, sir, it would explain how you managed to purge thirty significant documents from your computer . . . don’t you officers know how to back up files?”

  “I’m still not sure how that happened.” He exhaled dramatically and tossed his hands up in frustration. “The entire program for the conference next month, including the papers, and the translations, all in the correct formatting. I could have gathered them all again, but it would have taken forever to redo the translations. You didn’t save my life, Staff Sergeant, but you sure saved my weekend.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, a little smug. “And because you are being so polite, and you’re buying me a beer, I’ll let you in on a secret.” She arched one eyebrow.

  “How do you do that?” he asked, leaning forward. “Move just one eyebrow?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno. I can’t roll my tongue or wiggle my ears, so it all evens out, I guess.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up. “You’re damn cheerful for all the menial labor I saw you put in today.” He leaned forward. “So tell me, what’s the big secret?”

  She raised both eyebrows before saying,

  “First, you really should back up your files.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes, so I’ve been told.” He motioned for her to continue.

  “You didn’t lose anything. The general logged onto your computer and tried to send the files to her own. She’s the one who did the damage.” Satisfied, she leaned back in her seat. “Sir.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Richard growled, banging a fist on the table. “I knew it! The old gorgon turned it on me before she even took a breath.” He spoke through his nose in imitation of the general, “‘It’s your computer, Fitzwilliam.’”

  “It’s unfathomable, really,” she said with a chuckle, “how the woman can command an embassy as well as she does and yet be so entirely computer illiterate. How difficult is it to transfer files?”

  Elizabeth’s playful mocking was interrupted by the arrival of what looked like a wine bottle and two substantial steins. The major allowed his eyes to linger just a bit too long on the prominently displayed breasts of their server, and Elizabeth grimaced. Was it really necessary to ogle the waitress? She made a face at him and he responded by lifting one shoulder and letting it drop before he poured them each a beer from the bottle. She lifted her stein and sipped from it.

  “What is this?” she asked. “It’s really good.”

  “It’s Fou’Foune,” he replied, taking a long draught of his own.

  She took another sip. “Mmm.”

  Richard heard a happy “tap, tap” on the wooden floor and shook his head. Sometimes he forgot how young she was. Twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe? Not so young for a Marine. I’m just getting old.

  “So,” he said, leaning back, relaxing. “Few months in Brussels so far, right? Like it?”

  Bennet nodded. “I’m hoping to get to see a bit more of Europe. They’ve had me everywhere but Europe. I was in Japan for a while, and that was nice, but my broken Spanish wasn’t much help.”

  “I was in Asia a few years ago,” he said amiably, reaching for his drink. “My Japanese isn’t great, though. My Dutch is good, French is better, and my Arabic isn’t terrible. I also speak a little Pilipino.”

  “Is that the same as Tagalog?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “The Philippines,” she mused. She gave him an assessing look. “I suppose you know Kali?”

  Kali was one name for the knife fighting style he’d learned there. “I know enough.”

  She seemed to be
waiting for more, but there wasn’t much he was authorized to say about his work in the Philippines. “I now carve a hell of a Thanksgiving turkey,” he said simply. “How’d you hear of it?”

  “I like to read,” she replied with a shrug. She took a drink. “I had a few tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places in the Middle East,” she said, “but I mainly stayed on base setting up networks, working out kinks in the existing computer systems and searching for intrusions and vulnerabilities. I was in Africa, too, but I couldn’t tell you where—we were usually in concrete bunkers doing our thing. It’s been really nice to have normal off-hours, even a weekend here and there, do some sightseeing.” She set her beer down. “Everything’s so close here—it took me less than two hours to get to Paris. And the work—well, it’s not exactly challenging, but that’s okay.”

  He thought she didn’t seem particularly concerned about it and asked her why.

  “I’m planning to separate at the end of my six. So coasting for a few more months doesn’t bother me at all.”

  He nodded. It made sense. “I’m getting pretty close to my ten.”

  “Are you thinking about separating?” she asked curiously.

  He shrugged. “Haven’t decided,” he replied.

  As Bennet set her mug on the table and reached for a menu, Richard saw her frown and tilt her head slightly to peer around the end of the booth. She became very still, very serious.

  “Sir,” she said, in a low, urgent whisper and gestured behind him with a slight movement of her eyes.

  Richard turned, careful not to move too quickly, and spied four men swaggering to the bar, dressed too warmly for the weather. They were looking around but not sitting. “Another . . . ?” he asked in a murmur, tipping his head behind him, towards the entrance.

  She responded with a minute nod of her head, indicating the approximate position of a fifth man.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  He reached for his sidearm, but there was nothing there. They couldn’t carry weapons outside the Embassy grounds, and he was suddenly glad they weren’t in uniform. At least they’d have the advantage of surprise. They’d need it.

  Bennet caught his eye. He pointed to her, the stein, and then down to the floor beneath her seat. He’d never fit in the small space between the bottom of the booth and the floor, but Bennet could. She’d be able to get in behind the sentry from that angle.

  She nodded, grabbed her beer, dropped to the ground, and carefully eased into position. Richard knelt down near the edge of the table, remaining out of sight while he tried to assess the situation. He reached up to grab his own beer, took a drink, poured out the remaining liquid on the floor behind him, and hefted the weight of the stein in his hand.

  The three men had moved into the restaurant, facing the other side of the room where everyone else was seated. One pulled a Luger, and then everything happened at once. There was an earsplitting shriek of gunfire into the ceiling that made his ears ring and his guts squeeze tight. The gunman’s torrent of words was nearly drowned out by the screams of the customers and staff as they scuttled for shelter, but he caught enough. Arabic, he thought clinically, but a terrible accent. Second, maybe third language. There was a sudden flurry of movement as several young men who had been seated on a booth at the far end of the room burst through an emergency exit into the street, yelling for help. The repeated klaxon of the alarm was deafening, but it abruptly ceased when one of the shots that followed destroyed the old box housing it.

  The attackers began arguing, the escape clearly rattling them. They sure didn’t map this out.

  Each man had what appeared to be a Luger. They shot randomly, angrily, at the overturned tables, the windows, the open kitchen. The sharp, ear-piercing ricochet of metal against the hanging pots was painful. There were screams and sobs as people hit the ground. Some tried to crawl away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur as Bennet made her move.

  Elizabeth was hyper-aware of the grit under her palms as she sized up her target and counted. One. Several college-aged boys fled into the street. Excellent. The men in the center of the floor began to argue. Two. The young man standing guard stepped a little farther into the room. She grabbed her stein. Three. Heart pounding in her ears, she launched herself out from under the booth, moved into position, and swung. The heavy stein impacted the attacker’s head with such force that it sent a painful jolt up her arm. In the second it took for the man to drop to his knees, Major Fitzwilliam appeared in front of him. He grabbed the man by the collar and delivered a powerful blow to the man’s face, breaking his nose. The sentry slumped backwards and collapsed to the floor, where he lay motionless. Elizabeth grabbed the prone figure under one arm, the major the other, and they dragged him a few feet back, out of his partners’ direct line of sight.

  She took a quick look at the middle of the room as they both searched the unconscious man for weapons—his team was still shooting in the other direction, backs to the front door, screaming at each other, making too much noise to hear what she and the major were doing. They had not yet noticed that their man was missing. She grabbed the Luger from the attacker’s slack hand, and the major shoved him up on one side, still hunting.

  The tallest attacker flipped his long coat back to reveal a rifle.

  “AKM,” they hissed at the same time, and their speed increased. Elizabeth’s hand closed around a second magazine and then the handle of a knife while the major grabbed a second handgun. The major held out his hand and she passed the knife over. Then they split up. He moved back to their table while Elizabeth slipped to the right and behind the bar itself. Once concealed, Elizabeth checked the condition of her weapon and ammunition—eight rounds in and eight in the magazine. She met the major’s eyes. He gestured to a group of upended tables down the left side of the room—he would keep between them and the wall, and she would provide cover. She nodded once.

  The firing stopped, and the jabbering began again. Elizabeth popped her head up over the top of the bar and took two shots. She ducked just as she heard four shots hit the front of the bar and two more hit the mirrored wall above her, splintering the glass. She dodged the shards as well as she could, then crept down the bar past the bartender and the waitress who were on the floor, curled into fetal positions with their hands over their ears. Once well beyond them, she rose just high enough above the counter to return fire with a pair of shots before dropping back to one knee.

  There were a lot of civilians scattered around the room in the line of fire. She didn’t have a lot of ammunition either—she’d have to pick her shots and hope for the best. She crouched again and scrambled all the way to the far end of the bar, took a breath, and peered over the top. The attackers were still aiming their weapons in the direction of her previous position. She steadied her weapon and squeezed off two rounds. One man went down.

  They all turned at once, but the man with the AKM was struggling to reload it. She took two more shots. Even as fast as she dropped to the floor, she saw another man fall to the ground and she grimaced as she reloaded. Eight rounds left. As she worked her way back to the center of the bar, she heard the major firing from his position across the room, and then an angry howl. They’ll take cover, she thought. We need to get them now. She peered over the top of the bar to see that both two remaining attackers were now behind tables, and the AKM was pointing directly at her.

  Her eyes locked on the rifle.

  “Down!” the major ordered. It must have been shouted, because she heard it clear as a bell.

  Elizabeth dove to the ground and pressed her hands to her ears as an entire wall of bottles above her exploded in a thunderous hail of bullets.

  Richard sneered as at least thirty rounds were fired at Bennet’s position. Did he just empty his clip to shoot up the booze? He uncovered his ears, but it hadn’t done him much good to protect them—he could hear nothing more than a buzzing sound. He ducked as the second attacker whirled to fire randomly at him, but fortunately the man
was unable to properly handle even his smaller weapon. He managed to clean out most of the front windows and not much else. A few jagged pieces of glass still clung to the frames, sending bright shafts of refracted light across the polished wooden floor. While the shooter reached for another magazine, Richard aimed and fired, striking the man in the arm when he turned at the last moment. Shit. That resulted in more wild shooting around the room, the bullets rising too high, Richard hoped, to hit anyone.

  Bennet popped up from behind the bar like a freaking jack-in-the-box, taking three more shots and briefly drawing attention away from him so he could move. The remaining two attackers, both wounded, backed up across the room towards the emergency exit, speaking excitedly, weapons still aimed inside. Damn, is that Russian now? No . . .I think that’s Turkic. Richard squeezed off several more rounds. One man went down, but the slide on Richard’s pistol didn’t retract. Out of bullets. He shoved the gun into his waistband and kept an eye on the fallen man as he moved from one source of cover to another. Bennet was watching their exit from a kneeling position behind the end of the bar on the other side of the room, weapon still in one hand but without a clear shot, holding the other hand up, palm out, as a sign to everyone to remain in place.

  He drew the knife from his belt.

  As the last attacker scrambled over the body that was now lying across the threshold, he lit a rag stuffed in a bottle and cocked his arm back to throw it inside. Just as the man was about to release the bottle, Richard whipped the knife at him. There was a flash of metal and a scream and the bottle’s trajectory changed.