TA - Arm Break

Brett didn’t have time to think about what he did next—he just did it. He rolled toward the opposite edge of the roof, away from the enemy soldiers, and fell off the roof forty feet toward the ground.

Time slowed as he fell, the wind brushing his blood-smeared cheeks. He had time to think that he’d fallen in the wrong position, that his arm was awkwardly stretched behind him. Then he hit the earth, and the searing pain in his arm told him that he’d broken it. Worse, the smashing noise from his waist told him his comms were dead. Above, he heard the Taliban men running toward his side of the building.

He struggled to his feet, his nerves shrieking in excruciating agony, and staggered toward a nearby alley. He didn’t even hear the bullet coming—when it hit him in his broken arm, he didn’t even feel it.


It had been three hours. Brett sat in another alley in the slums of the town, separated from his men—if any of them were still alive—listening to the silence of a city at peace. A city in the enemy’s hands.

He gripped the empty pistol tighter.

- True Allegiance, Part 1: Brett