AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cole slammed the brakes, and the jeep skidded to a rocky halt. Just then a head popped up from the outer edge of the canyon. I saw the dark hair. The thick, bushy black beard and mustache. I knew who it was before he’d even finished climbing down. I knew by the shit-eating grin already plastered across his smug face.
Awww, crap.
“Joshua Pierce!” he called out jovially. “That was some of theworstfucking shooting I’ve seen since Paris Island.”
Imad looked a little older and a little slimmer than the last time I’d seen him. There still wasn’t a gray hair on his wavy black head though. Not in his beard either.
“Wait, I take that back,” he pondered. “You shot worse than that when we did that job in Sudan.”
“Alotworse,” Cole piled on. “Remember when he almost killed that Ostrich?”
“He was aiming for that Ostrich,” Imad smirked. “That’s why he missed it. In fact—”
“Asshole,” I grunted.
My eyes fell to the now-empty tube of the anti-aircraft rocket launcher he was lugging around. The business end was still smoking as he laughingly dropped it to the ground.
“It’s still damn good to see you,” I admitted. “And even better to see you came prepared.”
“What, you didn’t think I could come up with a Stinger missile on such short notice?”
“I didn’t think we’d evenneeda Stinger missile,” I admitted.
Imad grinned until his gums looked bigger than his teeth. “Good thing I did.”
I clapped him on the back hard enough to nearly knock him down.
“If you would’ve given me another day I would’ve rolled in on a Scorpion,” our friend bragged. “Maybe a little overkill,” he shrugged, “but better to have it and not need it than to—”
“No time!” Cole cut him off. He clapped a quick hand on Imad’s shoulder. “Later. Okay?”
Our heads swiveled back in the direction we’d just come from. Somewhere off in the distance, the sounds of a firefight broke out as we sprinted back to the jeep.
Fuck.
Forty-Eight
QUINN
The men closed the distance to our position, not changing direction. They advanced on us cautiously, rifles ready, putting one foot in front of the other.
Every step brought all of us closer to the inevitable.
Now.
Ripley’s signal was swift and undeniable — a short jerk of his head in the direction of our enemies. We stepped out together on either side of the rock, guns raised; his rifle, my pistol. Both were leveled at different targets as we squeezed our respective triggers.
That’s when the whole world exploded with noise and fire.
A cacophony of five different weapons split the desert silence, all going off at different times. Ripley mowed down the nearest attacker, who fired helplessly into the air as he fell. He was already turning his barrel on the next man in line when my own weapon went off, my finger squeezing through the trigger again and again as I fired at the man who was almost upon me.
I’d shot a gun before, but not anything like this. Not with my blood pumping and my heart pounding and the difference between life and death hanging in the balance. It was overwhelming at first. Then it was somehow cathartic. I found myself firing and laughing and weeping — a full gamut of emotions flowing through me — as I emptied most of my clip, center mass, into the dark stranger determined to kill me.
He crumpled forward and shuddered, leaving me utterly bewildered and standing over him. The smell of gunpowder was oppressive. My finger was still twitching wildly. Then I saw the fourth guy, and realized I was looking directly down the silver-black barrel of his raised weapon.
“HEY!”
The man half turned, half whipped backward as a half dozen rounds exploded around his chest and throat. It wasn’t just blood, it was other stuff too. Stuff you don’t really understand until you actually see it; the things a weapon of war could actually do to the human body at this close range.
