Chapter 38
MIKEY
Not much other than the silent footsteps of my teammates sounded around us. In a single file line, we crept around a building, heading straight for the underground bunker’s entrance. Scottie brought up the rear, right behind me as Duncan moved a step ahead of me. Dom led the way with Ford right on his heels and Bernie in the middle.
Goosebumps prickled on my skin, alerting me to the adrenaline coursing in my veins despite the calm patter of my heart in my chest. Simple orders for a not so simple ending. I couldn’t believe we were this close to finally getting our target. To finally shutting down Karim al-Jabari and his radical followers once and for all.
No more destroyed villages who protested him here in the Middle East. No more possible threats of a terrorist attack back home.
I knew I didn’t deserve such fulfillment in life, I hadn’t exactly led one that by any means brought me to merit such a reward, but here I was. A girl I was absolutely in love with who loved me back, headed to bring some peace with men I called family.
Inching forward, we paused at the edge of the building closest to the hidden escape underground. No wonder Karim had managed to stay off of our radar for so long. His compound was a literal fortress beneath the surface, affording him an extra sense of safety.
But no longer.
Peering over Dom’s shoulder, I scanned our surroundings. In the very middle of this town lay a circular courtyard with a single metal covering in the center labeled “water”. Disguised as a drainage system, Karim’s compound entrance waited for us.
“Phoenix, I’m not sure about an airstrike with how close these buildings are. There could be innocents,” Ford muttered into the comms.
Dom nodded once and sucked in his bottom lip. “New game plan.” He peeked around the corner through the scope of his gun once more as the stars above us twinkled brightly. Despite the full moon and clear sky, the night felt heavy and dark. Nothing unusual, but all the same, the weight of how important this mission was, clung to the curtains of Mother Nature herself. “First off, no matter what happens, preventing Karim al-Jabari from fleeing is top priority. Crow, once we’re clear of the door, once we’ve breached, I want you to pull out and find your vantage point where you can call in another squad to come clear the surrounding buildings for us without having your location compromised.”
Duncan snorted, and he shot a glance behind him at Scottie and me. “I bet Crow had to teach Viper how to properly pull out.”
A thwunk ripped through the air as Bernie chuckled in response.
Hot, red liquid misted my cheek and Duncan crumpled to the ground.
The pulse of life paused within me. My hands froze around the rifle tucked tightly into my shoulder.
Everything stilled as the Earth held its breath.
Of their own accord, my gaze drifted to the awkwardly collapsed man between Bernie and me.
I stared at Duncan’s glassy, lifeless eyes. “No.” I whispered. This wasn’t possible. Not like that.
There was no way.
He was unmoving. Unblinking. His chest wasn’t rising and falling.
“Matrix’s…” My voice caught in my throat as my gaze finally locked onto the gaping hole in the side of his head. Right below his helmet. Red stained the outer edges of the bullet wound, but there was no blood actively seeping out. And I knew what that meant.
“Matrix’s down,” I managed to croak out.
There was no way.
The three men in front of me whipped around.
A shaky exhale from Scottie whispered across my neck. “He’s dead,” she quietly gasped.
Bernie collapsed to his knees, quickly pressing his fingers to the side of Duncan’s neck.
I couldn’t find the strength to breathe. To move. To feel.
He’d been standing directly in front of me. Cracked a joke.
And then…
A slow shake of Bernie’s head told me that this wasn’t some cruel prank.
“Phoenix to command, requesting a medic evac. We have one down, over,” Dom radioed through the comms as I continued to stare at Duncan’s dead body.
“Command to Phoenix, ten minutes from evac point,” came the response through the comms.
All feelings, all thoughts rushed from my head. There was nothing but the numb cruelty of the world around us left to fill in the holes left by the reality of his death.
And then everything resumed like the whir of chopper blades. “Find cover,” Dom quickly commanded, realizing we were sitting ducks here.
Jolted from my frozen stupor, I reached down, threw Duncan’s body over my shoulders, and sprinted after Scottie. We raced around the building to the opposite side, using the cement structure for cover from the possibility of a second shot.
Once we had regrouped, I squatted down and gently slid Duncan off of my back. His hollow gaze stared back, ripping anger through me unlike ever before. I quickly closed his eyelids and tucked him against my feet.
“Bernie and Viper. You’re to take Matrix’s body back to the rendezvous point and meet the chopper,” Dom instructed, his gaze as blank as the rest of the team’s.
There was no way.
“What about who fired the shot?” Scottie quietly asked through the comms.
“Oh, right,” Dom muttered, shaking his head. “Uh…”
“I see a scope,” Scottie quickly filled in.
Nothing seemed to compute even in my own head.
Duncan was dead. We still had to complete a mission. There was a scope that—
A scope. Shifting on my heels, I raised my own weapon, training it in the direction of Scottie’s around the corner of the building and followed her line of sight. Rage roared hot in my veins. “We know who that is,” I hissed through the comms.
Ford and Bernie crawled behind Scottie and me, peering around the edge while remaining behind cover. Straight across from us, a direct line to where Duncan had been standing, on the third floor of a neighboring structure rested a well-concealed sniper rifle.
Alex Reyes sat back from the gun, a smirk crossing his face.
And a crack split the air.
Watching through my scope, a gaping hole seared through the center of Reyes’s forehead. “That’s for Duncan you fucking asshole,” Scottie muttered beside me, not even waiting for Dom’s command to fire upon our enemy. Reyes slumped backwards, a single drop of red liquid slithering from the wound.
It felt both satisfying, and very unsatisfying that a man who had brought so much misery and destruction to our team was taken out with one single, anticlimactic shot about eight hundred yards out. Hold up…
“He’s fucking eight hundred yards away and you hit him directly between his eyes,” I said through the comms.
Scottie merely shrugged her shoulders and pulled back the bolt lever on her rifle, releasing the shell. “Sorry to take away your thunder, but he pissed me off for the last time,” she replied.
And for a brief moment, a smile slid across my face.
“Alright,” Dom began, a blaze igniting behind his eyes. “If Reyes was posted up, clearly expecting us to come, we have to assume that Karim knows as well. We’re holding up here until Bernie and Viper get back. Crow, you’re with us. I’ll call in for the squad of soldiers now to come clear the surrounding buildings so we can all move in as a team. Sweep together unless I see a risk of al-Jabari possibly escaping, then we may split. Only if we have to. We’re getting this bastard. Today.”
Anger rolled hot through my veins, mixing like a drug with the adrenaline that fueled me through every fight. This one had just become more personal. I would grieve for Duncan after. Right now, it was time to kill that motherfucker.
Meeting the chopper to pass off Duncan and returning to Dom, Ford, and Scottie went smoothly and quickly for Bernie and me. Fifteen minutes later, we were posted up, ready to breach with the news that a squad of soldiers were on their way. Time to deliver the devil to the fool who had been gambling with his life for far too long.
Stalking forward as silent as death itself, we slipped into the open courtyard. Still not a trace of anyone else peering out from their homes around us met our movement. They must not know we’re here. Dom raised a fist, and we paused as he quietly hoisted the lid to the underground bunker.
My stomach twisted. My gaze narrowed. The tunnel lay before us. My weapons at the ready, poised to cut down any fool standing in our way. One by one, my teammates disappeared down the rungs of the cool metal ladder. Scottie gave me a final nod, her face hidden behind her balaclava just as mine was, as I slipped into the black tunnel in front of her.
The familiar green glow of my night vision goggles laid out the crudely assembled entrance way. Descending rung by rung, not a sound passing beneath my hands and boots, I plopped down silently beside Bernie at the base of the tube. Ahead lay the door that blocked our path into the compound itself. Doing a quick scan of this completely empty, circular room, Scottie plunked down beside me, hoisting her rifle to her shoulder.
Dom signaled, and we crept behind him, all in single file once again, waiting to breach through the door. Everything hinged on clearing this compound silently. We were supposed to come and go as ghosts. Enter quietly, locate Karim and the armory, and disappear as quickly as we had arrived.
With a nod of his head, Dom reached forward and pushed down on the lever, disengaging the latch to the door. It swung open, piercing the darkness with a stream of light, and Ford quickly lifted his night vision goggles, stepping into the opening with his raised rifle.
He immediately whipped back around as gunfire ripped through the crack in the doorway. Peppering the wall across from us, I clenched my jaw, removed my own night vision goggles, and inhaled deeply. They’d been expecting us.
Reyes had been expecting us. Somehow, they knew we’d broken into the Black Box.
“Fuck it,” Bernie stated, ripped two flash bangs from his vest, pulled the pins, and tossed them through the doorway. Ringing split the air and the gunfire ceased. Ford quickly breached the entrance, his boots clunking against the stone floor. With blood pumping in my ears, we followed, knowing we had to risk it all in order to bring down Karim once and for all.
There was no turning back.
Dom was ripped sideways the moment he stepped through, immediately engaging in a fist fight. Bernie threw an insurgent over his shoulders, while Ford blasted a hole at point blank range through another insurgent’s throat. We were outnumbered with the entire room full of waiting combatants. Chaos ensued with no time to check how Scottie was fairing.
Two insurgents rushed toward me as I emerged, and I had no time to actually count how many assailants were here. Squeezing the trigger on my rifle, I dropped both of them in a couple shots and rushed forward. Slipping a knife from its sheath, I threw it to my right, plunging it into the eye of another encroaching enemy target.
“Tank, Bernie, Viper,” Dom shouted through the comms as an arm twisted around my throat from behind. “Let’s get to the armory.”
Gunfire peppered the air, coming from all directions. Through the drowning sounds of violence, the arm around my throat tightened.
Without thinking, I rammed my head backwards and a crunch split the air. Bones shattered and the arm released its hold. Spinning around, I charged at the insurgent, who was dressed in the same traditional garb all of Karim’s men typically wore. Fear heightened in his brown eyes as I tipped my head sideways, shot my hand forward, and snapped his neck without hesitation.
As I jumped over his dead body, my knee cracked into the chin of an enemy, sending him backwards. He crashed against the cement floor with a dull thud. Next to me, I snatched up a metal stool knocked sideways beside the table bolted to the floor and bludgeoned it against his skull. He fell still, half of his face smashed like a pancake as another insurgent raised his rifle at me.
“Crow,” Dom’s voice sliced into my ear. “Get up on that fucking balcony at my nine o’clock and give us some cover at a vantage point.” I shot a quick glance to my left, taking note of the stairs and surrounding balcony, and then returned to the fight at hand.
There was no time to think. No time to feel. Only act.
Hucking the stool at him, it slammed into the gun. The insurgent released the weapon with a shake of his hands. I stole the momentary pause and lifted my own rifle. Firing two quick shots, he collapsed to the ground just as my eyes caught Bernie and Ford rushing through a newly opened gap toward the single door on the far side of this circular room.
“Crow, do you have eyes on the target? On Karim?” Dom asked through the comms as my heart dropped to my feet.
“Bernie, duck!” I radioed before Scottie had a chance to respond.
He immediately crashed to his knees as a grenade sailed over Bernie’s head. It slammed into a door that, from the map we studied, would lead to the laboratory.
A boom ricocheted through the structure, vibrating the walls and the very floor I stood on. The only person who I wasn’t sure was okay, was Scottie. Quickly scanning my surroundings, I found her engaged in a fist fight with someone twice her size, and seemingly winning. My relief was cut short with the realization of my mistake.
Knuckles slammed against my jaw, snapping my attention away from the ensuing chaos. Vibrating pain ricocheted through my teeth, but the agony was dulled by adrenaline and years of experience. Ducking on instinct as the second swing crashed in my direction, I jabbed a punch into the stomach of my assailant and then cracked a fist against the side of his face as he doubled over.
With a massive groan, debris split the atmosphere, turning the surrounding room misty with dust. And just as I wrapped an arm around the back of the assailant’s throat, I hesitated. Through the brand-new fissure in the wall where the door should have been, came a pair of innocent eyes. The insurgent squirmed in the crook of my elbow, unable to scream as I tightened the choke.
I was unable to break away from the piercing gaze of a child. A child standing in front of at least ten more kids.