AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even as I aim my rifle at a makeshift guard tower and pop the asshole sniper inside.
Even as a few more of my men catch up with me, and I hear Sexton over the radio, roaring louder than the storm overhead.
“Forward, boys! Shake your tails, right over the wall.Do notget bogged down. They’ve got backup moving in fast, about eight miles out.”
Son of a fuck.
I motion to my men when we come to the massive concrete inner wall behind the hole in the fence. This is where we need a break while we climb over it.
I cover Gering and Batista while they deploy the ladder for the escalade. Then the first men are flying up over the top like pissed off army ants, two at a time.
The plan said to hang back, secure this sector, wait for Sexton and the last of our crew to catch up while the diversionary force on the other side drew them away.
But that goddamned cartel warbird complicates everything.
Explosions erupt behind us, a proper firefight between our stragglers and the helicopter spraying bullets. As much as I want to join in, this might be our only opening.
“Go! Up, up, over the top!” I bark into my radio, moving swiftly behind my guys who have already scrambled up the ladder.
On paper, it’s supposed to be as easy as it gets from here.
A few paces through a courtyard garden to a kitchen with large glass windows that aren’t reinforced.
An entry into the compound’s living quarters, where we can split off in two directions—one searching for anything underground and the rest for the bedrooms upstairs.
It’ll be guarded, no question, but once we’ve barged inside and they’re forced to fight us on even terms, it’s just a matter of time.
I’m praying with all my might that somebody blows that bird out of the sky and we don’t spill more blood.
There’s nothing between us as we hit the ground on the other side—definitely the courtyard, strewn with vegetable vines and flowers—and we beeline it toward the dark gaping window just a few paces away.
Batista groans as he hurls a stun grenade through the window, shattering it instantly.
I give the flash one second, and then—
It’s like the blinding flash is speaking. What the hell?
“Hold it! Drop your weapons. One wrong move and you die,” a man roars in a thick accent behind me.
I wheel around with my finger on the trigger.
I’m expecting a couple lightly armed guards, the usual half dazed cartel henchmen you’d expect to find skulking around the living spaces for security in the middle of the goddamned night.
Not an entire group of tall, dark men in heavy armor. They’re decked out in what looks like SWAT gear swiped from Mexican Federales.
Shit, shit, shit.
There must be at least a dozen of them, and the heavy footsteps behind them announce more piling in by the second. A resoundingthudbehind the wall tells me they’ve taken down the ladder on the other side.
Fuck, what else can go wrong?
“Comprehende?I said guns down! Drop them!” the leader yells again.
I see Gering’s chest heaving, his back bowed like a drawn arrow, too ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
Except if we do that, it’s three on twenty and certain death.
I fucking hate that I have to be the one to make the first move.
