Out of Range (Ranger Ops Book 6) Read online

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  Out of Range

  Ranger Ops

  Book 6

  Copyright Em Petrova 2019

  Ebook Edition

  Electronic book publication 2019

  All rights reserved. Any violation of this will be prosecuted by the law.

  Arielle Jackman grew up as an Army brat—and then she became an Army wife. Now she’s widowed and looking for something she’s never had… roots. Back in her favorite Texas town, she’s teaching middle-schoolers, and since she and her husband never had any, she considers them all her kids. But the evenings are lonely, and Arielle’s wondering if she should get out and make some friends. Then friendship finds her again, in the form of an old childhood acquaintance, Cavanagh Wraggs.

  Known as a weapon of mass destruction for the Ranger Ops team, Cav is always neck-deep in danger. He hates admitting that he’s struggling to deal with the stresses of the position, especially after a strike goes sideways—and he’s responsible. As a way to take his mind off things, he volunteers at a park cleanup program, but finds another distraction in a very sexy Ms. Jackman as she bends over to pick up trash. Talk about hot for teacher. Then he recognizes the big soft brown eyes of the girl he once knew and is instantly hooked.

  As things heat up and Arielle begins to let go of her past, she’s smacked in the face to learn the sweet-talkin’ muscled man is part of a special ops team. Her heart can’t take the military life a second time around, especially knowing how it could end. Now Cav is facing some harsh choices—lose the job and team he loves or the woman who makes him happier than he’s ever imagined. Maybe, just maybe, he can find a way to keep it all.

  More in this series:

  AT CLOSE RANGE

  WITHIN RANGE

  POINT BLANK RANGE

  RANGE OF MOTION

  TARGET IN RANGE

  Out of RANGE

  by

  Em Petrova

  Chapter One

  “Step back, amateurs—we’ve got the Weapon of Mass Destruction here.”

  Alerted by the sound of his nickname, Cavanagh Wraggs shouldered his way past the bomb squad to get at the explosives. Housed in a titanium computer case, they’d tried everything but backing over it with a tank, and the thing had been befuddling the Texas Rangers bomb squad since it was first discovered an hour ago.

  Cav’s primary concern wasn’t with what the thing was made of so much as where it was sitting—on a side street that also happened to be a route running directly from the local middle school.

  As he crouched next to the case, he eyed it. The captain of the bomb unit hovered over him.

  “We can’t find a way to get into the case. Drilling could set it off. It was discovered and reported by one of the bus drivers on the way to drop off kids at school. Said he spotted the silver case glowing from the bushes along the road.”

  Giving a nod, Cav got right to it.

  He inspected the case carefully and reached for his bomb kit while the other man hanging nearby continued to fill him in on the particulars that Sully, the captain of the special ops team he was part of, had already briefed him about on their drive here.

  What is an explosive doing in Rose, Texas?

  There wasn’t a quieter small town, one of the last places on God’s green earth where people knew each other’s names and still had coffee at one another’s houses after church services. This terroristic threat was a little too close to home for his liking.

  Accustomed to traveling to the Mexican border at least once a week to defuse some threat or other, when he’d learned the bomb had been located on the road leading to the very middle school he’d attended as a kid, things got personal.

  Throwing a look at his captain who’d just approached, he said, “I need Jess to back me up here. Get him into a bomb suit too.” His long-time buddy and teammate knew Cav’s next moves without asking, and right now, he needed all the help he could get.

  Sully nodded and spoke into the comms unit. Long minutes later, Jess lumbered up to them in the thick Kevlar suit with the bulletproof glass visor, same as what Cav wore.

  Jess let out a whistle. “Wow, an hour and the bomb squad still couldn’t breach the case?”

  The commander of the squad shot him a glare and walked away, leaving Cav and Jess alone with the explosive.

  “Way to piss him off,” Cav said with a grunt.

  “Got him out of the way, didn’t it? I could hear his nervous chatting from two hundred paces.”

  Cav examined the case. Carefully, he turned it so it was lying flat. There wasn’t any way to determine what side was up or down—and either could mean disaster. A case of this size could contain enough C-4 to take the road off the map and blast out the windows in the school… not to mention all the children’s eardrums.

  “We’ve got parents coming to the scene trying to collect their kids,” Sully was saying. “Get more cops here to hold them off. Tell them their children are in good hands.”

  Cav squinted up at him.

  “The best hands,” Sully amended into the comms unit.

  With a shake of his head, Cav redirected his attention to the device. Could be operated by remote. Could be on a timer. Nobody would know until they cracked into the housing.

  He dug out his tool kit and got to work. Jess handed him tools and searched details on the national security databases about explosives that might help them figure this one out. In the end, it was pure instinct that had Cav breaking into the case.

  Jess barked out a laugh. “A fuckin’ pen knife. That’s all it took?”

  “Very sophisticated,” he answered, snapping the knife shut and dropping it into his tool kit again. Then he placed his hands on the sides of the case… and carefully lifted it.

  A collective gasp sounded around him by those members of the bomb squad who hadn’t moved away.

  “Holy shit,” Jess said on an exhale.

  “That thing’s far more complex than the shit we deal with on a weekly,” one of the other guys said.

  Cav stared at the network of electrical wires all leading to a trigger. “It doesn’t take a specialist to know this sucker isn’t built with a set of Lego instructions.” He chewed his lip a moment, constructing a plan of action in his mind.

  But fuck if he knew what this thing was—or what it was capable of. He’d never seen the like either. The network of wires was running all wrong, totally opposite of any other engineered explosive.

  Jess knew it too. His fellow teammate was staring at him with a crinkle of concern between his brows.

  “You good, man?” Jess asked.

  “Fuckin’ peachy,” he grated out. “Clear the area, and I mean everyone. Let’s pull this thing out. I need to look at the bottom and find out what we’re dealing with.”

  A minute later, with Jess gripping the edges, Cav removed the housing from the central system, a motherboard wired to explosives that only military personnel had access to and were more dangerous and unpredictable.

  “What the fuck? Is that what I think it is?” Jess asked.

  Cav nodded.

  “You can’t even get that shit on the black market. Whoever built this has access to stores that are guarded by armed military officers.” Behind the glass visor, Jess’s forehead b
eaded with sweat.

  Cav felt a good amount of sweat himself, and it wasn’t only trickling down his spine—he was feeling it on the inside.

  “What’s the plan of attack here, Cav?” Sully asked.

  Did he admit he didn’t have a damn clue either? Not only was everything wired back-ass-ward but the explosive made use of a highly classified and protected explosive. And it included some equipment that Cav had no knowledge of and never seen before.

  “I think this was machined. The person who built this has that much knowledge, even if he doesn’t go by a copy of Bomb-Making 101.” He pointed out a part that wasn’t quite cylindrical like the usual housing containing explosive materials.

  Jess said nothing. Nobody did. In fact, Cav felt like he’d been sucked into a vacuum—everything had gone silent in his own head.

  He had to figure this shit out and fast. The learning curve he could handle. It was not knowing how much time he had that was giving him chest pains.

  He stuffed down his anxiety and chewed his lip again. What he had to do was take all he knew about bomb making, deconstruct it, toss it into a box and come out with a brand-new creation. Then he might have a better understanding of what he had to do.

  “What the fuck is that?” Sully pointed out what looked to be a third way to detonate the device.

  “This thing’s either put together by a mastermind or a complete idiot. I’m skewing toward the latter.” Cav hovered his finger down one wire, following it to the second trigger feature. This one is not as stable as the others.

  “Man, you all owe me a shot of whiskey after this. The good stuff, too, not any of that cheap shit that was distilled ten days ago.” After giving his demand, he set to work. Bit by bit, he stripped the explosive. Everyone looked on, the bomb squad watching his every move.

  When he reached the final few parts and wires, he glanced up at Sully.

  Knowing he had something to say, his captain moved in closer. His eyes were serious as he looked at Cav.

  “I don’t want anyone on this road. Tell the school personnel to move the kids to the wall farthest from the road and prepare for one of those tornado drills. Hands over the head and all that.”

  Sully narrowed his eyes. “What’s the plan, man? Talk to me.”

  “First, we need to remember this is a dire situation and we have to treat it like one. Remember that training where they told us to drive the thing to the desert and blow it up if necessary?” Cav asked.

  Sully nodded.

  “That’s the plan. But first… this here.” He pointed out one of the metal pieces. “It’s got its own code. I think I can disarm it with my phone.”

  “How the fuck’d you figure out the code?”

  He shook his head. “Too much to explain. My plan is to carry this thing as far away from the school as I can. Then I’m going to try to send it the code and disarm it.”

  Sully leveled a look at him. “Who’s to say the person who has the code doesn’t set it off first?”

  Cav gave him a wry smile. “That’s the only other problem. But since this is the only road to the school, and buses cannot come near this thing to evacuate, I have to take action. My options are try to deactivate here or carry it as far away as possible first.”

  “Fuck. There’s no other option?” Sully asked.

  “I can’t think of any. Whoever planted this knows the code to detonate it, and since we can’t find him, then we need to do this—now. Before something worse happens.”

  Sully nodded. “I’m on it. Where are we taking it?”

  Cav twisted to look at the road, now clear of emergency vehicles and patrolmen. He didn’t even see the rest of the Ranger Ops team. “There’s a gully close to here, not far down over that hill.” He twitched his head toward the opposite side of the road. “It’s got some high walls to buffer an explosion. Nothing around it, and it’s far enough from the roads that it should be safer if it does blow.”

  “All right. I’ll come with you. Jess too.”

  Jess got to his feet, legs braced and ready to roll out.

  Cav inched his gloved hands under what was left of the object. Overall, it was built well. It wasn’t going to detonate from being handled. But yeah, if the code was entered…

  Cav picked up the device and carefully carried it, not removing his eyes from it.

  Sully shouted out orders to get far away, and people parted to make way for them. Cav’s pulse was pounding from the adrenaline powering him through this entire mission. One slip and they’d all blow. One slip and they could kill countless innocent people.

  The walk to the gully wasn’t far, but he was convinced that if a bomb had to detonate, this was the best possible place to do it. As a kid, the gully was rumored to be haunted by a young girl who’d fallen to her death between the rock walls. Because of the intrigue, kids came here at night and shined flashlights around and tried to scare the hell out of each other.

  But right now, in the middle of the day, he was pretty certain nobody would be around.

  He and his teammates stopped at the rim. “Get me out of this suit. I can’t walk down that grade wearing this.”

  Sully shook his head. “You don’t know what that thing can do to you. You’re not taking off the suit.”

  “If it blows, we’re all dead anyway, suits or not. I need to place the device as deep into the gully as possible. It’s the only way, and you know it. We don’t have time here, and there are lives at stake.”

  Sully released a heavy breath. “Fine. But don’t get yourself blown up, you son of a bitch.”

  Cav offered him a wry grin. “Don’t plan on dyin’ today. Jess, hold this.”

  He passed the device into Jess’s hands, and he held it level as Sully helped strip him from the heavy bomb suit. Most men weren’t trained to bear that much weight and still maneuver, and though Cav considered himself a tough motherfucker, it was still a relief for him to get out of it.

  Sully and Jess looked at him. Without a word, Cav took the device and set off walking. He carried the explosive device down a steep grade. If he didn’t keep his footing now, he was a goner. His buddies too.

  That couldn’t happen.

  Sully’s voice projected into his ear through the comms. “Authorities have declared the area’s all clear. This gully’s a wildlife preserve and nobody is within range.”

  Cav grunted. “Except wildlife.” But better a few deer and birds than humans.

  He found a flat area to lay the device and then stepped back from it. Weird how it felt he was saying goodbye to something he had created himself. Just by picking it apart, he’d gotten to know it—and the creator of it—better.

  It lay there like a half skeleton, almost lifeless but still drawing a few shallow breaths.

  He turned away, climbed the grade and returned to his teammates. The Ranger Ops SUV was also parked there, with Woody behind the wheel.

  “A getaway car. Good call, Sully.”

  “Better means to get some distance between us and that gully.” He waved for Cav to take shotgun.

  Woody drove a short distance from the gully, and everyone was dead silent. When Sully made another call, they got the all-clear.

  “Time to play ball, boys,” Cav drawled as he punched in the code to defuse the bomb.

  He didn’t have time to draw a breath, didn’t have—

  The explosion hit, the blast so loud it seemed they were merely yards away. Cav folded forward in the seat, arms thrown over his head as the sound carried on for several long heartbeats.

  Silence.

  He jerked upright. “Goddammit!”

  Woody took off driving fast, back toward the school, but the calls came in almost immediately that they were safe inside.

  At least there was that, but it didn’t make Cav feel any damn better.

  Woody reached over and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t perfect, man, but at least nobody died.”

  “Doesn’t make me feel a damn bit better. I was sti
ll fucking wrong,” he muttered.

  He was the best of the best—dubbed the Weapon of Mass Destruction by his teammates. And he’d fucking failed to get it right. So what if nobody died? What if another bomb like it was found and he failed a second time, or someone else didn’t know how to disarm it either?

  “Son of a bitch.” He got out of the SUV and kicked the side hard enough to leave a divot with his size fourteen military issue.

  The guys gathered around him, talking in low tones and trying to help him put things into perspective, but it wasn’t enough. In his world, there was no room for error. He couldn’t be anything less than perfect.

  The kids are all right. At least there’s that.

  But Cav’s mind kept returning to all the steps he’d taken and where he’d gone wrong.

  Then twelve hours later, two hikers were discovered dead in that gully where the bomb went off.

  And goddammit, he was responsible for their deaths.

  * * * * *

  As the bell rang for the end of the school day, Arielle turned from the white board she was printing notes on. The eighth-grade students jumped up, books and notebooks clutched to their chests.

  “Have a good weekend, guys. And don’t forget about the park cleanup day!”

  “Bye, Ms. Jackman,” one of her hardest working students called out as she sailed by, arms full of books.

  “Bye, Katie.”

  She left the notes on the board for those who had missed writing the last few sentences down and followed the students to the classroom door. The hallway of Roosevelt Middle School was total chaos.

  Seeing her students carrying on and gearing up to let loose for the weekend, just as she had once done in these very halls after a long week, her heart was warmed.

  As an Army brat, Rose was one of the few places she’d lived that had felt like home. Not only had she loved the Texas suburb but the teachers and students were all so nice to her.

  When given the choice of where to put down roots as an adult, she had come straight to Roosevelt Middle School. After all, she wanted to continue the tradition of being a wonderful and supportive role model for her students in a place where she’d received so much attention.