Chapter 12 #2
“Negative. We’re gonna have to flush the bastard out,” he muttered.
“Roger that,” Taylor answered. “Craig, you cover the left flank. Ryan, you and Cam take the right and we’ll come up and take the middle.”
“Roger. Wilco.” The right side of his undershirt was stiff with blood. More of it pooled warm against his ribs. Sooner you get this bastard, the sooner you can get that plugged again.
“Ready?” Cam whispered.
“Yeah. I’ll cover you.”
Cam shot up and ran to the right while Ryan watched the trees for more movement. Another shot rang out. Cam cursed but kept running. “To my left,” he reported, dropping behind the cover of a big boulder.
Ryan used his left arm to push to his knees, waited for Cam’s soft go before racing after him. No more shots echoed in the silence, but Ryan glimpsed a tiny shift in the underbrush ahead and to the left as he ran. “I got him.” Dropping onto one knee, he took aim, fired. Then he waited.
“I see him,” Craig reported. “To the left of your position.”
Ryan eased the barrel of his weapon to the left, consciously slowing his heart rate. Come on, asshole. Move.
A branch swayed in his night vision goggles. He aimed at it and fired.
“You winged him, but he’s not down,” Craig said. “I can’t get a clear shot, but he’s moving deeper into the woods now.”
Not for long.
With Cam backing him up, Ryan raced across the open space and into the trees, just in time to see someone stumbling ahead of them about forty yards in the distance. He and Cam both fired at the same time. The man grunted and toppled over, disappearing from view.
“He’s down and not moving,” Craig confirmed. “You’re clear.”
Ryan lowered his rifle, staying close on Cam’s heels as his teammate ran for the body.
Breathing hard, covered in sweat, Ryan followed him to where the man’s corpse was sprawled out on the forest floor.
One bullet had gone through the base of his neck, severing his spinal column.
The other had hit him in the upper back.
The man was lying on his stomach, eyes open, no movement in his torso. Ryan knelt down, took off his left glove and checked the pulse, just to confirm. “Dead.” He rose to his feet and slipped his right hand into his pocket to give his aching arm a rest.
The pain eased a mere fraction. He rubbed his left hand over his face, suddenly exhausted.
God, what a night. Now that this was over, all he wanted to do was get back to Candace and go lie down with her in their room, hold her as close as he could.
Unfortunately it would be a while before he could do that.
Taylor came up a minute later and looked down at the body. “That’s Coventry.”
Ryan relaxed. So the immediate threat had been neutralized. Together they walked out of the trees to find Jackson and Wade guarding March.
“How’s that patch job holding up, Went?” Cam asked, sticking a penlight in his mouth to have a look.
“Not too well.”
“Nope,” Cam confirmed around the light, and started pulling fresh bandages out of the kit he’d brought with him from the helo.
Ryan hissed in a breath when his buddy peeled the bloody bandage away from the wound to put another QuikClot one over it. His eyes watered at the cruel burn. Dammit, that hurt. “You know what, Sandberg?”
One hand gripping their prisoner’s upper arm, Wade looked over at him.
“I’m never coming to another wedding of yours. Ever. So next time, don’t bother inviting me.”
“Yeah, and not Jackson or me either,” said Cam, pressing hard on the bandage to slow the bleeding. Ryan bit back a curse.
Wade grinned, his teeth flashing white in the pale moonlight. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m only doing this once then, huh?”
Yeah, a damn good thing. Especially since Erin was a total sweetheart.
Taylor requested the pilots to move in to extract them and grabbed March by his bound wrists to shove him forward and down the hill. Jackson stepped closer to Ryan, aiming the beam of the flashlight at him.
A flurry of movement to the left caught his attention as Craig and Ruby appeared out of the trees. Craig hustled over to his brother and shoved March to his knees.
“Anyone got their phone handy so they can get this on video?” Taylor asked, aiming a flashlight into the prisoner’s face.
“Right here,” Ryan answered, reaching his left hand into one of his vest pockets to fish out his phone. “Smile pretty,” he said to March, then hit record and nodded at Taylor to begin.
“Is that him?” Ruby demanded in a pissed-off tone as she made her way up the hill. The years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes didn’t seem to have affected her lung capacity any. She was storming toward them at an impressive clip for someone her age.
“Uh, yes ma’am,” Jackson answered when no one else did.
Ryan looked up from his phone’s screen as Ruby stormed straight for March. The man’s head came up and even from where he stood, Ryan could see the guy’s eyes widen in alarm.
“Whoa,” he said to Cam, who was still poking and prodding at the wound. Suddenly the pain in Ryan’s arm wasn’t so bad anymore. Now he was even more glad he’d brought his phone with him.
Not even bothering to fight the grin spreading across his face, Ryan stood back and kept recording, eagerly waiting for the show to start.