Page 3 of Delta Mission (Alpha Tactical Ops)

Wolf

Skidding to a halt, I spun around, clutching my rifle and crouched with my back to the wall. Trent was sprawled in the dirt with a bullet hole to his forehead. I didn’t need to check for a pulse to know he was dead.

“Son of a bitch!” I grabbed my mic. “Moose, Wildman, they have a sniper. Trent is down. I repeat, they have a sniper.”

A scream erupted from the women’s shelter.

Fuck! “Makenna!”

Through the window, Makenna fought with a local woman. Her high ponytail whipped around as she dodged a knife thrust toward her face. She kicked the local woman, and the bitch stumbled backward.

Go, Makenna .

The local woman yelled something in another language. I could only see her from the shoulders up, but her stance and her stern expression suggested Makenna had her weapon aimed at the woman.

Makenna could definitely handle herself.

I’d done an exercise drill with her years ago when she was still in training, and she had some serious determination in her then.

From what I’d seen today, she still had that determination, and then some.

She’d finished top of her class at Quantico.

She was still super fit, and damn sexy. And should not be catching any of my attention.

She nearly ruined me nine years ago, and it took me too fucking long to get over her.

I didn’t need her fucking with my mind again now.

A boy on the tricycle rode past the alley and kept going. He didn’t even glance at Trent’s lifeless body. Poor kid had probably seen more gruesome deaths than I had. And I’d seen more than I could count.

Although Makenna would hate me helping her, I needed to.

I shoved off the wall and a bullet slammed into a rock in front of me, missing my boot by three inches.

Fuck!

I snapped my gaze to the asshole I’d chased into the alley. He fired twice more, missing me by a bee’s dick.

“Fucker.” Jumping to my feet, I aimed my rifle, but the bastard vanished through a doorway.

Shouts from my men, and blasts from a sniper rifle, erupted behind me.

“Move. Move. Get your asses down,” Moose yelled.

“Get that bastard,” Wildman replied.

“Somebody nail that sniper!” I yelled into my mic.

“We’re working on it.” I could hear the grin in Moose’s voice. We hadn’t seen any action in weeks, and Moose was a hothead who got bored easily. Chasing down tangos was what he did best.

Deciding my men could handle one sniper, I sprinted after the asshole who’d taken shots at me. I shoulder charged the wooden door he’d gone through, and the weathered timber burst inward. With my finger on the trigger, I scanned the hut.

It was empty. Four walls. A roof. A dirt floor. Nothing else. Not even a window.

What the fuck. The bastard was a goddamned Houdini.

I raced back into the alley to see if there was another doorway he could have slipped into. But there was only one.

“Where the hell’s that shooter?” Moose’s voice boomed in my ears.

I backed up to a wall, searching for a secret tunnel. “What’ve you got, Moose?”

“Fucking sniper is a ghost.”

“Stop fucking around and get him. I have a tango of my own,” I said. “Keep me posted.”

“Roger that.”

Near the Hummers, the kid on the tricycle had his feet on the ground and looked like he was staring right through me. Bullets punched into the bullet-proof windshield of the Hummer behind him, and the kid didn’t even flinch.

Clutching my rifle, I marched back into the empty shelter where the asshole had vanished and frowned.

Where the hell did he go?

I kicked the base of the walls, searching for a hidden doorway. Nothing. I stepped back, and the floor sagged beneath my boot.

A fake floor. The sneaky fuckers had glued dirt to the covering to make it look like the rest of the floor. I stomped my boot and the floor collapsed beneath me.

Clawing at the edges, I cried out as I fell into a pit. My rifle strap snagged on something, halting my fall.

Dangling midair, I searched the blackness around me, but couldn’t see a fucking thing.

A bullet slammed into my chest.

Fuck!

The Kevlar saved me. It still hurt like hell.

Wrestling with my rifle strap, I tried to release it from a metal spike embedded in the dirt, but it wouldn’t budge.

Another bullet slammed into my chest. “Son of a bitch!”

I let go of my weapon and tumbled ten feet onto a concrete floor. I yanked down my night vision goggles, pulled my Beretta from my holster, and did a three-sixty spin.

Large plastic tanks lined a wall.

A massive explosion erupted above me, raining bits of crap from the ceiling over my helmet and shoulders. Shouts from my men seemed miles away.

I slammed my back against the nearest tank and spoke into my mic. “Moose. What’s your position?”

Another explosion boomed overhead, and more dirt rained onto everything.

“Wolf to Moose, do you read? Over.”

Static buzzed in my ear.

“Wildman. Moose. Do you read? Over.”

Voices crackled in my receiver. “Retreat . . . kill that shooter . . . where the fuck . . .?”

Moose sounded panicked. It wasn’t good.

“Wolf to Moose, do you hear me? Over.”

Squinting into the darkness, I strained to hear the jumbled voices of my five soldiers fighting above me.

“. . . ambush . . . too many . . . where’s Wolf?”

Fucking hell! Moose was losing it.

“I’m here!” I yelled into my mic.

A shadow moved to my left. A bullet narrowly missed my shoulder and took a chunk out of the concrete wall.

In a crouching run, with my weapon ready to put a bullet through the asshole’s brain, I raced through a gauntlet of rusty old equipment. Scanning left and right, I searched the green glow for movement.

Where’d he go?

“. . . gotta retreat.”

“But Wolf is . . .”

“Need to go . . . surrounded . . . hundreds of—”

The shit storm above was spiraling out of control.

Giving up on the asshole, I sprinted to the wall and raced along it, searching for an exit.

Another explosion boomed overhead, further away than last time.

“He’s dead,” Wildman screamed in my ear.

“Get out! Get out!” Moose yelled.

“Who’s dead?” I asked. “Moose, Wildman! Fucking talk to—”

A man shot out from behind a forty-four-gallon drum.

I swung my weapon and fired twice, missing him by inches as he dove behind another steel drum. I aimed for the barrel and fired again. The drum exploded.

I flew backward, crashing into a pile of crates. The wind punched out of me as I slammed onto my back on the dirt. Flaming debris rained all over the place.

A shrill squeal rang in my brain, and I rubbed my ears, trying to clear it. Potent fumes burned my nostrils and piercing pain blazed through my left arm.

My NODs were gone. My Beretta was missing, too. Other than a few glowing embers, it was so dark I could barely see.

Groaning, I sat up, and a howl blazed up my throat.

Falling back to the concrete, I felt my left arm.

Fuck! A two-inch piece of shrapnel stuck out of my bicep.

Fighting against searing pain, I pushed my receiver back in my ear and found my mic. “Moose, do you read? Over.”

Wild crackling was the only noise.

Pain shredded my left arm as I searched the dirt around me for my weapon and night vision goggles. I found the NODs first and pulled them on.

Through the green glow, I searched the crap that had blasted everywhere. Bits of metal. Bits of timber. Bloody bits of the asshole who’d shot at me. What was left of him was a mangled mess against a large plastic tank.

Stupid fucker.

“Moose. Wildman. Can anyone hear me?”

An explosion cut through the silence, and I stared at a bloody spot on my thigh, straining to hear what was going on.

A stillness fell over me again that was so intense my ears squealed. I hated silence. It provided a highway to my thoughts. And they always tumbled to places I’d been trying to claw my way out of for years.

I heaved a breath, and toxic fumes burned my throat.

I had to get out of there. I pushed to stand again, and pain ripped up my arm.

Son of a bitch . The chunk of metal in my bicep was rusty and jagged.

Fighting a wave of dizziness, I pinched the metal between my fingers, clenched my teeth, and, growling, I yanked out the shrapnel.

The fucking thing was five inches long. It had buried deep. That’s gonna need stitches.

Not now though. I tossed the shard away, and blood dripped from my arm and splattered onto my pants.

Nausea swirled through me. My head spun.

A dark cloud swept over my eyes, and I slumped over.

Everything went black.