Page 4

Too fucking loud.

We might be in the middle of fucking nowhere, and miles out from our target, but it still makes my hackles rise.

Shaking my head, I smirk as Levi and I exchange a look. His expression is as serious as ever.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen SO1–Special Warfare Operator, First Class–Graves smile, much less laugh. Before Levi Graves joined my team, I was considered the moody one, but he makes me look like little-miss-fucking-sunshine by comparison.

Beau—the green beret frequently tasked in our joint operations—is always the sunshine to his grumpy.

Levi’s reply is a gravelled murmur. “Better be good at deep-throating, princess, because I’ve got a big dick, I won’t be gentle, and there’s no fucking way I’m sleeping in the dirt again tonight.”

Beau’s muffled laughter crackles through our comms. “You’re a sick man.”

Levi’s eyes are locked ahead of us on the dark foliage surrounding us, but I swear I see the faintest tilt of his lips in an almost smile. “It’ll be like a fist punching through a wet sheet of paper.”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek so hard it bleeds as Riggs’ and Mal’s muffled snorts of laughter sound behind us.

When they calm, Beau’s comm crackles in our ears.

“I just came.”

More than half a mile away andsafely tucked away in a mountain alcove, Beau’s voice is barely a murmur.“Target at 700 meters.”

An eerie calm comes over me even as my heart thumps like a war drum in my chest. Each one of us takes slow, steady, silent breaths as we creep through the last barrier of jungle foliage that remains between us, a significant number of hostiles, and the hostage we’re rescuing.

Long moments pass, steadily closing forward until my eyes lock on two armed men—both of whom look bored as shit—pacing the perimeter.

“Eyes on two. Hostiles’ patterns are lazy.”

Levi, a handful of feet away, studies them for a beat longer.

“Copy. We’ve got a twenty-second patrol loop.”

On missions, we only ever refer to one another by our call signs as a safety precaution. Should someone have both thetechnology and skill, they could hack into our radio signal, so for obvious reasons, using our real names is not an option.

“Hunter, you got eyes on any other hostiles patrolling the perimeter?”

Hunter—AKA Beau—pauses.“Negative. Too much tree cover along the fencing, but I’ve got clear eyes. Not a soul in sight, but you’ve got at least a dozen inside the compound. Stay quiet.”

My eyes briefly flick to Levi at my side.

“Copy. Ghost, you’re with me. We’ll take the western perimeter. Bear and Doc, fan out and sweep the south perimeter. Rendezvous at breachpoint delta.

Mal comms. “Copy. Moving.”

For a brief moment, my eyes scan the vicinity where Mal and Riggs are headed, before I move forward with Levi close at my side. When we’re equidistant to the hostiles on the western fence, we sling our primaries and switch to the Benchmade SOC-P daggers clipped to our chest rigs, using an icepick grip.

As soon as I’m out of range of my hostile’s peripheral vision, I keep low and silently close the distance between us.

My arm slips around his neck—compressing his carotid arteries—his arms come up to try and prevent the cerebral hypoxia, or in layman’s terms, lack of blood flow to the brain, that will make him pass out. His defence is an exercise in futility, but it’s what I hoped for because it creates the window for me to sever his brachial artery.

In the fleeting moment of his struggle against me, I swiftly switch my grip on my dagger by whipping the blade around the retention ring in its handle, and drive it into the upper, inner flesh of his arm near his armpit.

In seconds, his fight weakens, and in under a minute, he’s unconscious, and I’m dragging his body back into the forest. With the now dead hostile still locked in my hold, I lower to oneknee and quietly deposit his body on the ground. As soon as I stand, I look up to find Levi doing the same.

As one, we move toward our breach point to find Mal and Riggs creeping through the forest ahead to meet us. Just as I kneel to begin clipping the fence for us to slip inside the compound, Beau is in my ear.

“We’ve got movement. Four hostiles just pulled the target.”