Chapter 40
SCOTTIE
With a final heave, I thrust a knife into the throat of my last assailant. The squelch as the blade plunged just below his Adam’s apple pierced loudly like a war drum announcing death to our opponents. Why was it so loud? There should’ve been shouting and grunting to muffle my blow. There should’ve been gunfire and the sounds of sinking ships sailing to the underworld.
Panting, drawing air through what felt like a thin straw, I raised my gaze from the dead body at my feet. A gasp slipped from my mouth. There was no way. No possible way. My team never gave up. My team…
Scurrying back to my corner, I tucked into the shadows. Fear ripped like hot iron through my veins.
Below me was a pool of death. Bodies strewn at angles and in ways that will forever haunt the deep recesses of my mind. But as every strained breath slipped through my esophagus, devastation seeped into my pores.
Mikey lay face down, unmoving with a single insurgent standing over him. Blood dripped from a gash in the back of his head. Unconscious.
To the right of Mikey, knelt Dom. His hands restrained behind his back with two rifles pointing at his head. Three final assailants were alive and had bested two of my teammates.
“Fuck off,” Bernie’s unusually flat voice sliced through the air, spinning my attention away from Mikey and Dom. Emerging with a clang from the armory came Bernie and Ford, stumbling with their hands shackled behind their heads. Four more insurgents followed, not nearly as covered in blood as the rest of my team.
Despite the massive blow we’d delivered it had not been enough.
We’d failed.
I’dfailed to keep my team secure.
“You pisshats,” Ford grumbled, and one of his captors kicked him in the back of his knees. He collapsed to the ground, kneeling away from me, just as Dom was. Facing the very room that Mikey and Dom had tried to get to.
Slipping silently down from the boxes I was seated on, I laid flat on my belly. Cool metal bit through my uniform, raising goosebumps on my thighs as I packed my rifle back into my shoulder. Through the scope, I scanned the far side of the compound again. There was a reason that Bernie, Dom, and Ford all faced away from me. There had to be a reason that they weren’t dead just yet.
Yet…
Swallowing stiffly, my heart raced in my chest as Mikey groaned, but a boot to the back of his neck had him falling still again without a fight.
No Karim. No airstrike was possible. No extraction of the hostages. There were women in that room too, but from this angle, I’d only seen a few feet filter into view behind a row of children.
“You’ve lost,” came a voice I recognized. A sound that would forever be seared into my brain because, at one point, I’d thought that man had been the cause of Mikey’s death. My stomach plummeted like hard stone to the ground. Adrenaline seeped through my veins, the stench of drying blood and dying flesh permeated thick through the air.
Karim al-Jabari was in that room. Yet, no matter where I pointed my rifle, no matter what I looked at, I couldn’t see him. I was useless to my team.
There was nothing but a row of six children in my view through the massive hole in the wall despite Mikey saying he’d seen about a dozen. I served no purpose up here any longer. Seven combatants stood beside my team, threatening death.
And a massive fucking wall was the barrier between Karim and my bullet trained to deliver death to his front doorstep.
“As you can see, I knew you were coming,” Karim stated. Boots plunking against stone sounded in my ears, and I scanned the wall once again, but so far nothing.
Dom lifted his head slightly. Enough to most likely look directly at the man who threatened destruction upon our home. “You think you’re going to make it out of here alive? There’s only seven of your followers left.”
Karim’s laugh echoed off of the rough walls. “Can’t you tell I’m prepared to die? My men know that our mission doesn’t end when our lives end. But I’ll be damned if I go out without taking a few of you with me.”
Bernie hucked a wad of snot forward. “That’s a coward’s way out.”
Ford shook his head, staring at the ground in front of him. “At least let the women and children go.”
“They’re not as innocent as you think they are. They’re my wives. My children,” Karim replied. A startled, soft gasp slipped through the cracks as a woman bumped forward into the row of kids. The first female hostage I’d seen. She quickly threw her arms around a young girl and cradled her into her body.
“What do you get out of this?” Dom muttered with a heavy sigh.
“What do I get out of this?” Karim cackled, the shuffling of footsteps sounding once again. “My name will be remembered in history. My legacy will help our cause thrive. Someone else will step up and finish what I’ve begun.”
“Which is what? Drop some bombs on US soil? For what?”
“Because the United States needs to be reminded that they are weak. That letting women—” Karim immediately stopped talking. The compound fell so quiet, so still, you could hear the scratching of a scorpion making its way through the cracks in the walls. I leaned farther forward, training my gun through the massive fissure, but still. Nothing.
Blood pumped in my ears. Anticipation and doom setting in as dank as the stuffy atmosphere.
“Where is she?” Karim asked, a hiss through his teeth.
“Where’s who?” Dom tipped his head in reply.
“Your woman sniper. The one who thinks she’s amazing, but you know she’s the reason you’re all about to be sacrificed!” Karim screeched. The volume of his voice amplified, sharpening to a tone that left a ringing in my ears. Why was he being quite dumb? I mean, I wasn’t hiding anywhere fancy.
“WHERE IS SHE?” he roared. “TELL ME BEFORE I BLOW THIS PLACE TO PIECES!”
And then I saw it.
Not through the massive hole left by the grenade that had blown the door apart. But a yard or so to the left there was a small crack, maybe three inches in diameter, created by the aftershock of the grenade.
What I was looking at was unmistakable. Raised to his side, he held a trigger in his palm facing outward. Luckily, it was not a dead man’s switch as he wasn’t pressing the button on top of the crudely made device.
“Phoenix, look to your left if Karim has explosives strapped to his chest, over,” I whispered as silently as possible into the radio.
My finger slid onto the trigger of my gun. Cold metal rested against my skin as I tucked my left arm beneath the gun and placed the palm onto my right shoulder.
I needed to know where this bomb was that he might detonate before I did something as irrational as the idea that swam through my head. This wasn’t a far shot, but if I was even a millimeter off, I could set off the explosives and kill us all. It would kill the women, the children, everyone in this room.
Inhaling a shaky breath, I braced tighter against the gun. Dom had yet to move.
“Tell me where she is, or I’ll have my man blow the head off of one of your guys,” Karim instructed again and the man pointing his rifle at Mikey tightened his finger on his trigger.
Dom slowly turned his head to gaze at Mikey—at the man whose life would be lost if Dom didn’t give away my location. Dom looked left.
There it was, the signal.
“Confirmed, Phoenix,” I radioed. And trained the barrel of my gun back at the hole.
Three fucking inches, that was all I was given. All the calculations, all the minor tweaks and adjustments I very quietly made weighed on my mind. There was no room for error here. None at all. Drawing in my calming breath, I was ready to squeeze the metal that rested beneath my index finger. I wasn’t worried.
But I hesitated.
A fleeting, last minute thought raced through my mind. One that had me drowning in conflict. If I took this shot and disarmed Karim, that would still leave my team with guns to their heads.
Four against seven.
If Mikey wasn’t unconscious, if Dom, Bernie and Ford weren’t restrained, there would be no uncertainty in my procrastination. But right now, considering the circumstances, if I pulled this trigger, the rest of my team could be killed. I would lose them all. I would lose all of them, not just Duncan, and then Karim’s men would find me and kill me.
And it would be all my fault.
The other option fared no better. If I tried to shoot one or several of the enemy combatants standing around my teammates, Karim could easily trigger the explosives and, again, he’d wipe us all out. So, we’d all be dead. Or those I didn’t manage to kill would shoot my team and then me.
And it would be all my fault.
“Wait a minute. Not counting your female sniper who shouldn’t be allowed to even be in the military. Where’s your other team member? Weren’t there five of you? I only count four?” Karim’s conviction in his voice wavered.
He didn’t know Duncan was dead, which meant he probably didn’t know Reyes was dead either. The first flicker of hope surged in my belly. Along with a mixture of rage. How dare that bastard tell me what I can or can’t do?
I was a woman.
I was a powerful woman.
I was strong.
I was a bad bitch.
Mikey loved me just the way I was right now.
My team trusted me. Relied on me. They treated me as an equal, though that sometimes included being involved in extremely crude and dark jokes I would’ve preferred not to be a part of. But the people in my life that mattered, didn’t see me as less than for being a woman. They saw the strength that came with it.
Fire burned at the tips of my fingers. Everything in me roared with a focus I’d never felt before.
A flash of the brightest blue swirled in my peripherals.
Glancing away from the crack in the wall briefly, my gaze landed on Mikey’s face. His cheek pressed against the dead body he lay prone on. But his eyes were wide open. He was awake.
He didn’t move, but his stare sliced directly into mine. A wicked darkness swirled behind his ocean irises.
Mikey wasn’t restrained. Nothing held him to the ground other than a rifle plastered directly against his skull.
And I grinned.
Then squeezed my trigger.