Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 197(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 246(@200wpm)___ 197(@250wpm)___ 164(@300wpm)
The silence was stifling all of a sudden. I needed to talk. To vent. To strategize with Adrien. We had strengths and we had weaknesses. We needed manpower for a full-scale rescue mission here, and as irritated as I was with Gramps, he was one of our best assets in a jungle. He was a damn sniper. Why hadn’t he joined Elliott and Joel?
I chewed on the inside of my cheek and reckoned… Fuck. They’d probably need him with Carillo too. That man didn’t travel alone. He had seven guys with him. Okay, so whatever. We had Joel. He had to be the best of the best. Who else? I was good but not flawless. River and I were probably about the same. Reese was better with close combat—and so was I, for that matter. Uncle Greer was awesome, thankfully. He was a marksman. Dad…eh. Every Marine was a rifleman, but he’d walked away from the service and never looked back. Deer hunting wasn’t quite the fucking same.
Uncle Greer still visited a shooting range frequently.
I placed Dad in the close-combat category too. I had no doubts about his abilities in that arena.
Adrien? I mean, he was the brains. I hadn’t seen him in action, though I’d picked up a hint or two that he might be good with martial arts.
My fucking God, it was a merry band of has-beens. We might as well call in the action stars of the nineties. Where were Arnold and Stallone?
I pinched my lips together, still struggling not to drum my fingers or bounce my knee, and then I saw Adrien’s phone. He angled the screen toward me, just enough for me to see what he’d written on the display.
EP = Emerson Payne. DP = Daniel Payne. Hillcroft PMC instructors, former contractors, special forces: SAS and Green Berets. Worked extensively with Elliott and Darius.
And River and Reese, I noted to myself. I knew those names. Ryan had mentioned them, right? Elliott too. Right after the attack at his ranch.
British SAS and Army Green Berets? Cancel the action stars. We had a fighting chance.
Jesus Christ, I was seriously nervous now.
We. Had. No. Plan.
A few minutes later of trying not to freak out, I checked the phone once more and saw an update from Squeezy.
I’m adding you to a new server for this op. Does your agent need his own connection, or are you a team? If you lose access to your phone before the others have landed, stand by. I mean it. Stand by. Do not act on your own. We have to merge our ops to make this work.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and feigned a yawn as I slid the phone to Adrien. It was his call.
He nodded with a dip of his chin, probably his most reluctant agreement ever.
Still. It was an agreement. He knew everything had just changed. Everything. The stakes, the risks, all of it.
And we were heading right into the lion’s den.
Shay Tenley
I flew up from the concrete floor as someone opened the door across the room. A man left a tray with food on the floor before disappearing again. They wouldn’t bring me all the way to wherever the fuck we were just to poison me, would they?
I limped over to the door and picked up the tray, and I didn’t waste a second. I ate with my fingers. It was as if someone had dumped an entire buffet on the paper plate. Grilled bread, corn, some kind of bread roll stuffed with meat and vegetables, rice, fried fish, a chicken dish with more rice, and fruit.
I had to be careful and eat slowly or else my stomach might explode. I’d been given a bottle of water and bread yesterday after they’d thrown me into this cell.
My water bottle from last night was currently collecting rainwater on the floor. The ceiling had a big, square opening with nothing but a reinforced metal grid. I could jump and hoist myself up, but the holes in the grid were too small to fit my head through.
It was raining, so I stayed near the walls of the cell.
Even in the emptiness of this dark little spot, with the constant drip of water running down the drain in the middle of the floor, I had too many things to process. The humidity clung to me like a second skin, the smell of barbecue hadn’t left the air since I’d arrived, I was always hearing voices and laughter in the distance, and I had to push against a mental collapse every time my thigh hurt.
One wound didn’t wanna heal right. I could live with the sweat, the grime, the bruises, and the other lacerations that’d closed and faded, including a gunshot wound in the fleshiest part of my arm, but the spot in my thigh where I’d been stabbed kept fucking with my head. What could I do if a minor infection grew to something more serious?