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I caught a flash of movement from the side, ensured it wasn’t someone from my team, and set my crosshairs on him. After a quick calculation, I adjusted and squeezed off a round. My fourth kill now.
“Keep your head down, Seven.” Constantine’s voice cut over the line, using my call sign, as I swapped my rifle for my pistol.
Jesse set a hand to my shoulder and tapped, letting me know he was there. I kept my head low and carefully opened the door. A bullet punched the door, almost hitting me.
“Fuck. Sorry,” Constantine groaned. “You’re clear.”
“A little close there, brother,” I hissed while moving inside.
The cabin was pitch-black, but with my night vision, I could make out two bodies not going anywhere, face down in the room. And another in a chair. Head hung. Probably cuffed to it. “Cleaner is down,” I alerted the team in a low voice. “But we have movement. Looks like one officer is still alive.” And he was crawling, trying to get cover.
“This is Alpha One. That’s a good copy. See if he knows anything. Get him to talk. We’ve got your back out here.”
War rumbled around us from outside and from every direction. And from the sounds of it, we’d be needing that backup and soon. By my guess, we had more than one team of bad guys out there trying to get inside the cabin, and we were all that stood in the way of them doing it.
A few more bursts of fire tapped at the exterior of the cabin, and I ducked out of view of the window and put eyes on Jesse, ensuring he was still good. He nodded and flicked his wrist and pointed to the guy crawling.
“We’re friendlies,” Jesse told him. “Here for a rescue.”
The man on the floor went still, and I spied his hand curling into a fist. Did he have something he was trying to protect?
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked, still flat on his belly. No weapon in hand from what I could tell, and whatever was in his palm was too small to be a grenade.
“And how do we know we can trust you?” I countered. “The government sent a small team for such a valuable man. It’s almost like your boss didn’t clear this mission.” I took a knee, keeping my arm extended, pistol on him.
“Everyone wants the cleaner, but he’s dead. If you get me out of here, I’ll give you the client list he gave us just before the attack,” the man said instead. “Do we have a deal?”
Fuck, that was good news. “Deal,” I said without hesitation, but then a prickling sense of awareness washed over me as a red dot appeared on the guy’s back.
“Move,” I yelled to him, but it was too late, and he collapsed as the round made contact.
Jesse and I searched for cover as an unrecognizable voice came over comms. “This is Echo One. Sniper down.”
Echo One? And was he British? “Tell me that’s our backup,” I mouthed to Jesse, and he nodded.
“Sorry we’re late to the party, boys,” the Brit went on, “but we’re here now. And it looks like we have company. Two vehicles are en route, and they’re armed to the teeth. I suggest you get cover now.”
“Roger that,” Jesse replied, then low-crawled to the downed officer, and he unfurled his palm. “We have jackpot,” Jesse announced, letting the team know we weren’t walking away empty-handed.
“Wait for my orders to leave the cabin,” Carter said. “We need to get you and that package out of there, and there are too many threats out here.”
A whooshing sound of static hit my ear from the comm, followed by rapid sounds of gunfire outside the cabin as we made our way back to the side door. I exchanged my pistol for my rifle while we waited for orders.
“This is Echo Two. You want any of these fuckers rolling up in armed vehicles alive, or do you prefer them extra crispy with a side of bacon?” A Southern accent rolled through the line, hard to miss even over comms.
Who the hell were these guys?
“This is Alpha One. Keep a few alive if you can.”
“Roger that,” the Southerner answered.
“Echo Two’s my wife’s brother,” Jesse shared with me in a low voice. “So don’t worry, he’s highly motivated to get us out of here.” He looked back at me, and a flash of his bright-white teeth from a smile was visible through the green hue of my night vision.
“So your wife will kill him if something happens to you?” I asked.
Another smirk from Jesse. “Let’s just say you don’t want to get on a Southern woman’s bad side.”
“That’s the truth.” Another unfamiliar voice, and I detected a Boston accent. I forgot the fancier-than-normal comms meant they could hear us whether we wanted them to or not.
