Ricochet (Renegades #3)(3)
Author: Skye Jordan

The drivers threw their doors open, stood, and started yelling at each other in a mix of broken English and Pasto, an Afghan language Ryker recognized well.

His mind cracked a little around the edges, and he found himself moving before he’d made a conscious decision to intervene. He would have anyway, but it would have been nice of his brain to inform him of this shit before he was standing in the middle of three dark-haired, dark-skinned taxi drivers, shouting.

“You always do this.” The second driver, the one who’d swerved into the first taxi’s rear panel, was a big man. Ryker’s height but fifty pounds heavier. “This the third time in a week you cheat me out of customer. What your problem, spee bachee?”

“You hit my car.” The driver who’d taken the coveted curb spot inspected the damage to his cab. “What wrong with you, dawoos?”

The Afghan language, the aggression, the swearing, chipped away at Ryker’s mind. He cut in front of the third driver, who was skirting the T-boned taxis toward the first. Ryker put his hands up. “Hold on. Calm down—”

“Ghwal ukhura,” he yelled over Ryker’s shoulder. “You deserve it.”

The second driver started around his trunk, closing in as well toward the offender.

“Don’t do it, man,” Ryker called.

Driver two paused at his trunk, but not to reconsider. He pulled out a tire iron. “You going to learn a lesson.”

“Shit.” Ryker turned and sprinted toward the crunched cars, stepped on a bumper, a hood, and dropped to the ground again between the two men. He faced the one with the tire iron. “Just cool down. You don’t want to go to prison over this guy.”

Ryker might as well have been invisible. All the drivers kept shouting obscenities, escalating the confrontation. Real alarm tore up Ryker’s spine.

“Back off,” Ryker ordered the attacker as he inched closer.

The third driver came around cars, joining the second in taunting the first.

“Back. The fuck. Off,” Ryker repeated.

“Zma ballolai wichisa!” the first driver yelled from behind Ryker yelled.

The man’s order to the other cabbies to suck his dick yanked on the last string of the other two men’s threadbare patience. Driver two with the tire iron bellowed, and his yowl echoed off concrete. His face twisted in fury. The hand holding the iron rose.

Ryker’s alarm amped to fear and flashed like fire. His mind crackled a little more, and he lost a few more pieces. And as if the fragments created a passageway in his mind, Ryker saw through those holes to the past and jumped onto a Ghazi dirt street, eight thousand miles away.

“Wadrega!” he yelled with every ounce of authority he’d developed over the last sixteen years. “Wadareja ka ne daz kawam.”

All three men froze, just as he’d ordered in Pashto. Their gazes darted toward Ryker, confusion replacing anger. He reached for his weapon, something he should have already done. It would be good to have a gun aimed at someone he threatened to shoot. Christ, he hoped none of his guys had seen that rookie screw-up.

But his hand landed on an empty hip where his 9mm should have been holstered. Confusion tore away a few more pieces of his brain.

He slapped both hands against his chest. No M14.

What the hell…?

“Put that down,” Ryker said, fighting to clear his soupy mind, adding the threat of shoving the tire iron up the guy’s ass. “Pelay ke dala ona mandam.”

The driver behind Ryker laughed. “That’s where it belongs,” he yelled at the others, “up your ass.”

Rage coiled in the second driver’s face as he lunged for the first. Ryker blocked the strike with his forearm, gripped the attacker’s wrist with the other hand, and twisted until the iron clattered on the asphalt. Then he spun the man around and wrenched his hand up between his shoulder blades.

“Wadrega!” he ordered again, his own voice fading in a buzz filling his head. Nothing made sense—his missing weapon, the sound of the metal on pavement…

Pavement?

His mind stalled like the batteries had run out. But his body was still functioning, his training buried somewhere in his fuzzy head. He turned the attacking driver by the arm, fisted his shirt collar, and rammed him face-first against the hood of the nearest car.

With the threat neutralized, Ryker’s immediate fear ebbed. But when his senses returned, he found himself in the middle of chaos—people running, horns blaring, men shouting.

Panic pinched his chest again, and Ryker reached for the radio on his shoulder. Where was his team? Why was he out here alone?

And where was his radio?

“Let him go and step away.”

The authoritarian American voice sounded behind Ryker and kicked his shaky world into another spiral. He jerked the attacker from the car and swiveled, putting the other man’s body between his own and the new threat—men in blue uniforms. Men…and uniforms…Ryker didn’t recognize.

Two of the uniforms stopped, their weapons drawn and pointing at Ryker’s chest. More came from another direction and secured the three taxi drivers.

“LAX police,” one of the uniforms called, voice clear and confident. “Let him go and put your hands up.”

LAX police… LAX police…

Ryker’s brain touched on every extremist group he’d encountered, every paramilitary unit, but he’d never heard of LAX. Didn’t even know what it stood for. A new terrorist group his unit hadn’t been briefed on? A civilian corps of men filling in the gap between Afghan military and police?

“Sir,” Uniform repeated, “let the man go.”

American. Definitely. Why didn’t Ryker know him? Why couldn’t he figure out what unit the man was with? Afghan police wore gray uniforms. And they had patches, not shiny gold badges. Afghan military wore fatigues, just like Ryker’s.

He cut another look around. Where the fuck had all these blue uniforms come from? Maybe this was just another one of his wicked nightmares…

“Is okay, friend,” the man in his chokehold coughed out. “I sorry. I lost my head. You can let go. I not going to fight no more.”

Ryker darted a look right, then left. The bystanders were a mix of every nationality—black, white, Hispanic, Asian. He scanned the traffic, the complex paths of asphalt creating walkways and bridges between buildings. So many buildings. So many cars. So many people who didn’t belong…

The fog in his head slowly parted, like the retreat of rain clouds, and reality slivered back in.