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The radio crackled. “He’s packing an M4 carbine.” Sean’s voice was calm. “Three more inside. I’m taking the driver. Ready?”
“Yes,” Bruno said.
“On my signal,” Sean said.
One second. Two. Three—
Bam.A bullet punched through the windshield. Red spattered the windows. Bruno hit “call”, covered his ears.
The vehicle doors burst open. Armed assholes came boiling out.
Bam,one of them slammed hard against the SUV, bouncing—
Boom-boom-boom.The stun grenades went off. Blinding flashes.
The guy who’d fallen against the SUV stumbled and pitched into the ravine, sprawling against the tumbled boulders.Bam,the guy who had investigated the chain was suddenly flat on the ground at the roadside, clutching his leg.
“Body armor,” Sean said tersely into his ear. “Go for the thigh.”
Bam. Bam.Sean kept firing, but Bruno couldn’t tell at who.
He stared at the wounded guys on his side of the vehicle. The guy who’d checked the chain was clutching a wet red wound in his thigh. The other was trying to climb up to the roadway. Bruno took a breath, let it out, aiming for the climbing guy’s leg…squeezed the trigger.Bam.The guy shrieked. He’d hit his target, amazingly.
Now the hard part. “Going to cuff them,” he muttered.
He hauled the zip ties out, and burst out of his hiding place, leaping, skidding and sliding down the slope towards the fallen men.
CHAPTER18
Zoe scrambled for cover, gasping. She’d taken a shot to the SAPI trauma plate that had slammed her down and knocked out her wind.
Those schemingpricks.She was so angry, she could bite out her own tongue. Her neck had been prickling since they stopped at the chain. Now Hal was dead, his head half gone. At least Hal’s cell phone explosives hadn’t gone off. That was luck, she supposed, but it was hard to appreciate while splattered with the guy’s blood and brain tissue. The rest of the team were likewise fucked. Or soon to be.
Jeremy and Manfred were down, whimpering. So accustomed to being unbeatable, they had no idea how to manage themselves when compromised. She wanted to shoot them herself, to make them shut up. She peeked around a boulder, scanning for movement.
Yes.There, in a camo poncho, oozing towards her downed team members. She squeezed off a shot. Ranieri jerked, but kept scrambling.
Zinggghh,the sniper returned fire and forced her back down.
They had body armor, too. The cunts. She should have known when she saw the chain. She hadn’t seen a chain in the satellite photos.
Of course not. That’s because there hadn’t been one, bitch.
So arrogant. So stupid of her, to think she could manage without an armored SUV. So sure her elite, superbly competent team could handle it, with all their firepower. And now they’d been slammed.
She’d thought this through so carefully, weighing the need for speed rather than waiting to gather more personnel. The only other trained operatives in the area were the losers Hobart and Melanie, and that opportunistic whore Nadia, who was in any case too busy fucking Aaro. It would have taken days to get more people, and so important to move today, while Parr and Ranieri were alone, relatively exposed. If she’d waited, they’d be swept behind the protective wall of the McCloud family, which raised the stakes, the price tag and the risk of exposure exponentially. And look at her. Wasting time justifying her mistakes.
She’d felt so superior to Reggie, but she’d made his exact error. Underestimating those sneaky, steaming pieces of shit.Again.
She’d had several different possible plans in place. She’d been ready to jump in any direction, but she’d favored the simplicity of positioning snipers above the road, to pick them off like rats.
Exactly like they’d just done to her own team.
She slithered through wells between huge tumbled boulders, and found a crevice to peer through. Ranieri was already jerking plastic ties tight around Jeremy’s wrists. She leaped up, took aim.
Bam. Her aim was off. The shot caught him on his armored shoulder and spun him, flailing. He hit the ground, scrambled for cover.
Bam, bam,McCloud forced her back down while Ranieri crawled towards Manfred. Her best chance was the thicket, in the ravine.
