Recon By Fire (Sniper Team Bravo #3)

Prologue

“Fuck! Incoming!” Sam

Wilson heard his teammate Marcel Cross call out moments before the

night around them exploded into a cacophony of gunfire. The

deafening boom of a fifty caliber weapon being fired steadily from

somewhere ahead of them rang through the continuous tat-tat-tat of

semi-automatic fire. When Sam stepped out into the street just feet

behind Marcel, he fired in two tap short bursts at the two men

running toward them, each of them firing small caliber pistols in

their direction.

Sam moved to the right of Marcel,

knowing that Maddox Devereaux and Glenn “Reaper” Webster would be

moving to flank Marcel’s other side and cover the right side as

their CO, Lieutenant Devon Roberts, would cover their ass, just as

he had for the past six years. They were Sniper Team Bravo, and

they were the team that the powers that be sent in when someone

needed to be erased. They were known for their skills, but also

their ability to get in and out unseen. Well, this mission had

pretty much blown that reputation right out the fucking

window.

Ironically it was their very last

mission as well. Each of them had taken the option to leave that

had presented itself a few months ago and had plans for a future.

One that would see them still living and working as a team, and

passing on the skills they had each learned over the past six

years. But first, they had to finish this one last

mission.

Their team had been sent in to

eliminate a target that had been a thorn in their side for a long

time now. Hafez Maher al-Hassad had been supplying weapons and

munitions to the fuckers hell bent on taking over the world for

whatever radical belief they had, and he had been on their shit

list for a long time. When they had been given the go ahead to take

the bastard out it has been poetic justice as far as Sam was

concerned. That was right up until the moment they got caught out,

and the building he and his team had been set up in was targeted by

an RPG.

Sam had taken shelter beside a wall in

the room he had been in, and the whole thing had fallen down on

him. At first, when his teammates had managed to get him out from

beneath the rubble, Sam had thought he’d made the wrong choice and

he should have made for the south wall of the room. That was until

he looked in that direction and saw nothing but sky and air. That

wall had taken the brunt of that warhead and had been blown open,

and if he’d been there he would have either been blown to pieces

along with it, or fallen the three stories to the street below. Sam

figured he’d take his current injuries and what he suspected was a

fairly significant concussion over either of those.

Now, they were heading for the EVAC

site, and the only route open to them was covered in insurgents.

Sam caught movement above him and to the right. He spun his weapon

high, and shot three rounds center mass, the man falling to the

street. Sam cursed the nausea the movement caused and swallowed the

bile that rose.

Yep, definitely a

concussion.

“Marcel! We have some

unfriendlies coming up our ass pretty fucking fast,” Dev snarled

from behind them, and there was a tension in his tone that told Sam

that things were not looking good. He wanted to turn and look for

himself, but every man on this team had their job to do, and if one

of them failed then it was all their asses on the line.

Literally.

“Copy that,” Marcel called

back, and then they were moving quicker, jogging down the street

toward their extraction point to the north.

Sam kept his eye down the barrel of

his M4 and continued moving in the direction of their EVAC. They

were about halfway down the street when Sam heard a pained cry from

behind him.

“Maddox, you hit?” Sam

called out.

“Flesh wound to the upper

right arm,” Maddox growled. “Nothing lethal, just hurts like a

bitch.”

“It’s bleeding badly, too,

but looks like a through and through,” Reaper added. Sam knew that

Maddox would have downplayed the wound, but Reaper would give it to

him straight.

“To the left!” Marcel

shouted, and like the well-trained team they were, the five of them

moved to the left, circling around the remains of a burned out car

on the middle of the street, and closer to the houses that lined

Sam’s side of the street.

They were nearing the corner of the

street where they would need to turn right, for the last three

hundred feet remaining to their extraction point, when the door to

one of the buildings burst open and a man ran out. From where Sam

stood, he could see that the guy wore a vest, and in this place and

at this time that could mean only one thing.

“Bomb!” Sam shouted as he

lifted his weapon. He dropped to one knee in order to steady his

weapon a little better, trusting his team to protect him while he

did what needed to be done.

He lifted, sighted, and fired in the

space of seconds, and the man flew back as Sam’s bullets struck

center mass. Sam heard increased bursts of weapons fire as he got

back to his feet, and felt a slice of white hot pain across his

thigh and knew he’d been creased by a bullet himself. With a grunt,

he kept his feet beneath him and started moving with his team once

more. Sam would have liked to have told them that he was hit and

they needed to change formation and move without him. It was

obvious they could move faster without someone slowing them up, but

he also knew it would be a complete waste of time.

Bravo team never left a man behind and

if one went down, they all would. Sam gritted his teeth against the

pain and kept moving. Just as they stepped passed the man Sam had

shot, he saw the man twitch slightly and knew the man was still

breathing. Not by much and not for long, but he was definitely

still alive. The medic in him wanted him to stop and render

assistance, but the warrior side, however, cursed the fact he

hadn’t killed him outright. It was an internal battle Sam had

fought on many occasions, and one he knew he would always

face.

Bravo team moved past the man, and Sam

continued to cast his eyes around the street, firing and hitting

his targets with unerring accuracy. The familiar sound of his team

firing their own weapons had a calming effect on him. If they were

firing then they were alive, and if they were all alive, then they

had a chance of getting out of this hellhole in one

piece.

They rounded the corner, and Sam moved

up a little when he saw movement down one of the alleyways between

two of the buildings. He saw a metal tube come flying out of the

alley.

“Pipe bomb!” Marcel

shouted, and all five of them sprinted for the shell of another

burned out car that sat on the opposite side of the

road.

Sam was airborne, heading for as much

cover as he could when he heard the thing detonate. He was the

closest to the bomb and the furthest from cover when that thing had

been thrown into the street. He’d already survived a fucking RPG

attack that day. What were the odds he would live through a pipe

bomb as well? He had no idea. All he could do was pray as he moved

as fast as he could, and try to make himself as small a target as

possible.

If he didn’t make it, he hoped the

rest of this team did. The world would be boring as fuck without a

little Bravo in it.