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“By now the first campaigns should be coming in,” I shrugged. “You don’t even have to tell them how bad Skyline is. You could just show them.”

“That shouldn’t be hard actually,” he acknowledged.

I patted him on the shoulder. “And when you’re done, show them this place. Tell them we’re happy to go back to the way things were, but we’re gonna need a little more of a solid commitment this time around.”

He cleared his throat. “A new, less escapable contract I’m assuming?”

I pulled out my phone again, punched a few new buttons, and hovered my thumb over the send button.

“Believe it or not, I’ve got that too,” I grinned.

Fifty-One

GAGE

The first half of the mission unfolded silently, wordlessly, and with the utmost precision. Night fell. Our targets camped. We waited long enough for all but the perimeter guards to be fast asleep, then we crept up on them like the slow-moving shadow of death we truly were.

It took three whole hours to move just one-hundred yards, crawling along on our bellies, moving only when the lookouts had their heads turned or their attention drawn elsewhere. For those three long hours, it felt like some messed up life-or-death game of Red Light, Green Light.

But the second half of the mission took only three minutes.

On our orders, Evans dropped the guards from his position on the southwest ridge. His TAC-50 made no sound; only the brief whir of a supersonic bullet shattering the stillness of the night, followed by the noise of dropping bodies.

From there we converged on the camp from all directions, the beams of our laser sights sweeping like deadly lines, moving from target to target. Those beams were invisible to all but us, illuminated only by our night-vision optics. Our goggles lit up the encampment as if it were the middle of the day, while the groggy soldiers of Bashir’s army woke only to shadows, darkness, and ultimately, oblivion.

The hierarchy of the camp was something we’d made out long before we moved in, and here luck proved to be on our side. Bashir’s closest lieutenants and long-standing men made up the inner circle of the encampment, while the younger, recent recruits made up the outer rings. For this reason we started in the middle, eliminating the more dangerous element of the army before driving the newer, greener soldiers backwards and into the brush. Our goal here was to save lives, wherever possible.

Devyn, Maverick, Travers, and Langston each took a quadrant. They were tasked with clearing any potential threats so fiercely and loudly that most of the young, unarmed soldiers would flee, confused and screaming, into the night. The plan worked flawlessly, with just a few exceptions. Three or four young men had enough wits to take up arms against us, but were immediately neutralized by the butt of a rifle, or in one case, being tackled and zip-tied by an overly-anxious Hyde.

The whole thing happened so fast we almost didn’t notice the two men that burst forth from one of the bigger tents, firing AK-47’s as they retreated. I heard Parker cry out in pain, followed by the scream of another .50 cal bullet that caught one of the men in the upper torso. In a fraction of a second the arm that had been holding his weapon disintegrated, turning him a spinning, blood-splattered top.

“BASHIR!”

I was rushing toward Parker when Christian’s voice spun my attention in the opposite direction. There, outlined perfectly in my panoramic night-vision goggles, our unmistakably gangly target was making a beeline for the thickest part of the foliage.

“I got him!”

I hurdled two men who’d already surrendered, then kicked my feet into high gear. Bashir was shockingly fast, probably due to his long legs. He also wasn’t carrying sixty pounds of armor, weapons, and equipment.

Distantly I heard Evans over my ear-piece, telling us he no longer had a shot. My target was gaining ground. He was almost to the treeline.

I didn’t want to shoot, but I might have to. Our orders were to capture and not kill unless necessary. But was this necessary? Bashir was the highest value target on the continent right now. If he somehow managed to slip away…

Fuck.

I hated making these calls. I usually left them to Devyn or Maverick or—

I tripped. It happened so fast my legs didn’t know it until my chin was scraping the hard, dust-choked ground. It was a hard fall too. One that I really should’ve felt, if not for the adrenaline. Cursing and grumbling, I rolled back to my feet and shrugged off my pack. By my eyes…

My eyes were greeted only by darkness.

Raising my hands to my helmet, I realized my goggles were gone. They’d been torn away from the fall or they were shoved so far backward I couldn’t feel them anymore. There was no time to fix them anyway. Bashir had already disappeared into the brush.

“GAGE!”

The shouts from behind me sounded like warnings rather than encouragement. I was either being ordered to halt at the edge of the clearing or my pursuit completely waved off.

It’s a good thing my ear-piece had popped out during the fall, because there was no way in hell I was obeying.