Veil of Vengeance (Guardian Security Dynasty #7)

Chapter 1

The rain came sideways off the jungle, slicing through the heat.

Yeah, wet and hot versus sweaty and hot. Big fucking difference.

Berserker moved through the downpour with the patience of a man who'd learned to love discomfort.

He had. Everything he encountered during his work were just data points.

His mood, his speed, the terrain, and the target were all data points and the means to an end.

His mission. This time, he would have fun.

He was pulled in to blow shit up. A ghost of a smile flitted across his face.

He needed to pull his target out of hiding so he could eliminate him.

Well, who was he to argue? The more he blew up, the more he enjoyed his job.

The humidity clung to his skin. It was thick, suffocating, and heavy with the smell of rotting vegetation.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have bet the jungle he was working his way through had been decomposing for a thousand years.

The smell was the worst part of this mission.

So far. He had little doubt that, eventually, something else would top the list.

His boots sank into soft ground with every step, and mud sucked at his heels.

It was almost like the damn earth was trying to hold him in place.

Water ran down his face and into his eyes.

He fucking wished it was salt water and that he was soaked from riding the perfect wave, but that was another life.

Levi’s life. This life was when his darker side came out to play.

He crouched low near the edge of the clearing and raised a pair of wrapped and camouflaged binoculars.

Rain hammered against the lenses, distorting his view, but he wiped them clean with his thumb and pressed them back to his eyes.

Across the wet expanse sat a small airstrip, which was his first target.

It wasn’t much. Just a narrow scar of dirt carved between the palms and the dense jungle underbrush.

Two hangars stood on either side of the dirt strip.

The tin roofs glinted faintly beneath weak floodlights that turned the rain silver.

A truck idled near the runway, its engine rumbling loud enough to hear over the rain.

A cloud of exhaust mixed with the rain to create a fog that hung low around the wheels.

With patience, he counted guards. Four were outside, hunched against the weather, weapons slung carelessly or even better, under the thin ponchos.

Two more were inside the hangar. The truck driver leaned against his door, cigarette tip glowing red in the dark.

He was the only smart one of the bunch. He’d placed a piece of tin on his truck roof and stood under it, keeping relatively dry in the monsoon.

Levi's lips quirked. Sloppy, unworried, and untrained.

He checked the waterproof satchel slung over his shoulder, feeling the familiar weight of it against his ribs.

Inside, five pre-molded charges nestled in foam, each tagged, wired, and wrapped like gifts only he could appreciate.

C-4 mixed with det cord and a proprietary polymer blend, which, in his opinion, was Guardian's finest not-so-silent persuasion.

He tapped a finger against his comm. “Visual confirmed. Two hangars, one runway. Light security. Morales's boys are lazy tonight.”

Con's voice crackled in his ear, dry and familiar, cutting through the static and rain. “Copy that, satellite confirms two planes inbound from Colombia, unregistered and unmarked. Your timing's tight.”

“Isn't it always?” Berserker murmured. His Australian accent was thicker when he was tired or when the adrenaline hadn't quite kicked in yet.

“Yeah, there isn’t much play in your schedules, Z.” Con seemed worried, but that was Con, a cackling cartoon version of a mother hen.

“Keeps things interesting,” Z agreed. He wasn’t worried. Timing was everything. Time itself was a parameter that was fluid. “I’m moving.”

“Copy that.” Con’s voice turned serious.

That was why he liked his comms specialist. He was a riot until shit got real.

Then it was all business. They had similar personalities, and they meshed well.

Not everyone appreciated Con, but he sure as hell did.

The man had taken him through some hellacious moments and got him out the other side. Mostly in one piece.

He slipped through the trees, every movement fluid, economical.

Years of training had turned his motions into pure instinct, and he moved with caution and repetition.

Step, breathe, check six, advance. The jungle pressed in close, vines catching at his vest, thorns scraping his arms, but he moved through, leaving no trace.

When he reached the far edge of the clearing, he pulled a small remote camera from his pack and set it against a tree trunk.

Its lens blinked once, a tiny red eye in the darkness, syncing with Guardian's uplink somewhere in the sky above the storm.

“I’ve got you,” Con said after a moment. “Time to go to work.”

And that was exactly what he did. Coming in from the blind side made by the parked truck, he set the first charge beneath the truck.

He took his time, mud squelching under his knees, the smell of motor oil and exhaust caught in his nose.

He checked angles, calculated the blast radius, and tucked the shaped explosive into the recess between the axle and fuel tank with the precision of a surgeon.

His hands were steady despite the rain, despite the exhaustion pulling at his bones.

He backed out the way he’d come and circled around the back of the hangars.

The second and third charges went on the hangar struts.

He chose the weight-bearing beams, exactly where the structure would fold in on itself rather than spray shrapnel outward. By the fourth charge, he was smiling.

God, he loved this shit. Explosives were honest. You treated them right, and they behaved. You cut corners, and they bit. It was the only relationship in his life that made complete sense.

He crouched to check his timer, rain running down his wrists, soaking through his gloves.

Five minutes per charge, staggered detonation.

The resulting chain reaction would destroy the airfield, collapse both hangars, and ground the smuggling operation in this location for weeks.

An added plus, it would leave nothing behind but questions and ash.

Exactly what Guardian wanted. They wanted chaos, which he’d sure as shit provide and be happy doing so.

Lightning split the sky, and the brilliant flash turned the dark world into daylight for a second. In the flash, he caught sight of himself reflected in a puddle at his feet. He looked like shit. A ghost wearing his skin. Whatever.

“Con,” he whispered, straightening, feeling his knees crack. “Are we clear?”

“Affirmative.” Con's voice held a thread of amusement. “Try not to spook the locals too much. You never know what’s hiding in that jungle.”

Levi gave a soft laugh, the sound swallowed by thunder. “No shit. Let's give them something to remember.”

He pressed the detonator, then slipped back into the jungle, invisible in the sheeting rain.

The first explosion rolled through the night thirty seconds later.

Rather than a chaotic blast, it was a deep, deliberate boom.

The sound hit him in the chest, a shockwave of compressed air and heat that made his ribs vibrate.

Fire licked up the hangar's side, orange and hungry against the rain, steam hissing where water met flame.

He paused beneath the trees, water streaming from the canopy above, watching the blaze spread. Beautiful. Controlled. Perfect.

A second detonation followed, two seconds apart, the way he'd calculated. The air rippled, heat washing over him even from this distance.

“Happy now?” Con asked, voice distant over the roar of burning fuel.

“Almost,” Z said softly, watching the flames climb higher, painting the underside of the storm clouds in shades of amber and crimson. “Give me ten seconds.”

The final explosion lit the sky. The truck went up in a fountain of flame, a pillar of fire that climbed fifty feet before the rain beat it back down.

Molten light threw shadows across the jungle canopy, turning every leaf and branch into stark relief.

The heat was a physical thing, pressing against his face even from a hundred yards away.

Levi's smile returned, slow and genuine, the expression of a man watching his art come to life. “Now, I'm happy.”

He turned away, vanishing deeper into the forest while, behind him, the world burned.

“Heading to the next point?” Con said in his ear.

“To the river, then north,” Z acknowledged.

He’d spend three days in the jungle before arriving at the next airstrip.

There was no other way to remain unseen.

A vehicle would be stopped, and the occupant questioned.

His Spanish was okay. He’d mastered several phrases, but he wasn’t fluent.

Suspicion would put him in a world of shit.

Better to be safe mosquito bait and live than try for comfort and be eliminated.

But safety was a theory, and theories didn't last long in the jungle.

Behind him, the fires roared higher, crackling and spitting, eating everything they touched. Somewhere to the west, engines revved. Fuck.

“Con? Vehicles?”

“On it.” Con’s voice was immediate in his ear. “Shit. Cartel patrols. I can see them on the camera and the satellite uplink. There was no intel on them, I swear, Z.”

“Don’t doubt it, but they’re going to be on me like shit on a cow’s ass.

” He could hear them shouting, voices carried on the wind, angry and frightened and far too close.

The sound of a bullet ripping through leaves and branches registered right before the report of the weapon reached his ears. More bullets followed.

He adjusted his pack and pressed forward through the mud, each step heavy, deliberate, his boots making obscene sucking sounds with every stride.

Blood ran warm down his arm from a graze he hadn't bothered to treat, just a flesh wound, nothing important.

The rain washed it clean as it flowed, pink water dripping to his fingertips.

Another round of bullets sprayed in his direction.

He felt several hit his vest. A burning lance went through his armpit.

He grabbed under his arm. Fuck, some lucky bastard had hit him where the body armor gapped.

The pain was blinding, and he went down.

Sucking in air as deep as he could, he moved.

The vest stopped the other bullets. And yeah, they all hurt like a son of a bitch.

But for the ones that hit the vest, the pain of the impact was just a data point.

He clawed forward and used a tree to stand again.

Then again, the bullet that screamed through his skin below his armpit was going to be an issue.

He pulled up the vest to cover the wound and cinched the fucker as tight as it would go.

It probably wouldn’t stop the bleeding, but it might lessen it.

Once again, pain bloomed suddenly, sharp and hot, stealing his breath.

His knees hit wet soil, and the world blurred for a heartbeat.

The edges of his vision went soft, colors bleeding together.

He forced himself upright, one hand pressed to his side under his arm, feeling the warm slickness of blood mixing with rain.

He looked down. His leg. Damn it. It was a through-and-through, but he was bleeding…

badly. His breath came harsh and ragged.

Not good. Not good at all.

“Con,” he rasped.

“I’m here.”

“I’m hit.”

“How bad?”

He tried to draw a deep breath and coughed. Shit. His wound under his arm was bleeding like a bitch, and his leg was fucked…“Some minor, some major…bleeding pretty bad… Could be our last rodeo, my friend.”

“Nope. Not going to let that happen. I’m going to get you the fuck out of there, man. Get to the river. I’ll get you some help.”

“Okay,” Z agreed. He kept moving forward.

The rain thickened, a curtain of silver that swallowed sound and light alike, turning the jungle into a maze of shadows and streaming water.

He stumbled toward the river, half-running, half-falling, one hand still pressed to his leg where blood pulsed hot against his palm.

Trees blurred past. His vision tunneled, darkening at the edges.

When the jungle finally broke open, the sight of the black water ahead was salvation. The river, wide and fast, exactly where it should be.

Then the bullet struck the tree beside him.

Bark exploded, sharp fragments stinging his face.

He dove on instinct, rolled through mud, and came up firing.

Two silhouettes went down, their bodies crumpling in the rain.

The third dropped behind cover, a fallen log, maybe fifteen yards out.

Levi's next shot silenced him, the wet sound of impact carrying over the storm. He didn't wait to confirm the kill.

Adrenaline surged, bright and chemical, shoving back pain and fatigue and the voice in his head that whispered, Bleeding out, you're bleeding out.

He staggered the last few meters to the riverbank, legs trembling, vision swimming.

The mud gave beneath his boots, slick and treacherous.

He went down to one knee, teeth clenched hard enough to crack, tasting blood.

Above, through the storm, he heard a hum.

Then it faded, swallowed by thunder and distance.

He tilted his head back, rain hitting his face like a baptism, cold and clean.

Blood mixed with the water at his feet, spreading out in thin pink ribbons that the mud drank down.

The jungle blurred at the edges, going soft and dreamlike.

Somewhere in the distance, engines approached again—more patrols, more guns, more death coming to find him.

He took one slow breath.

One last push. Just had to make it to the water. Just had to—

And that was when he saw it.

A silver plane, breaking through the clouds like an angel, flying impossibly low over the river, bright against the storm. Its engines roared, drowning out the thunder. It buzzed past him … and for one moment, one perfect, impossible moment, Berserker thought he might be hallucinating.

But the plane was real.

And it was coming back for him.

“That’s a hell of an exit route, dude.”

“What?”

“The airplane.” Z waved at the plane and headed straight for it.

“Z, I didn’t send a plane. Be careful.” Con’s words rang in his ear.