It wasn’t terribly complicated, and the mission shouldn’t be hard, but he was nervous. Because it was his first assignment for the colonel? Because he wanted to prove himself to the guys he’d pledged to work with for the next three years?
“Holler when you’re ready,” he told Cutter. “We’ll initiate the sequence on your go.”
“Got it.”
Zy glanced up to see Trees peering through the charcoal morning with infrared binoculars. He was still scowling.
“What do you see?”
“Same three guards, still in the same basic place.”
“Makes Walker’s job easier.”
“I guess. It also makes me uneasy. Why aren’t they patrolling?”
“Laziness?”
Trees scoffed. “Show me a lazy member of a cartel, and I’ll show you a dead one.”
He had a point, but… “We have no indication they’re onto us.”
“We don’t.”
But Trees didn’t like it. Zy had known his buddy long enough to read the signs.
“Shit,” the big guy beside him hissed suddenly.
“What?”
“A fourth guard just emerged.”
Dread pinged Zy’s gut. That wasn’t normal. They’d been watching this compound for days. “Over an hour early?”
“Yeah, and he’s not empty-handed.”
“Abort!” Cutter screamed over the radio.
The warning had Zy on even higher alert. “Trees?”
He paused, peering through the binoculars before whipping them away and bending to scoop up his pack. “Abort. GTFO now!”
Zy didn’t stop to ask questions, just secured his gear and ran after Trees.
“Did you hear me? Abort!” Cutter’s voice urged over the radio.
“We’re out,” he shouted into the handheld unit, legs pumping across the desert sand.
“Run fast. They’re onto us and they’ve got an RPG.”
Oh, fuck! Somehow, the cartel had figured out they weren’t alone in the middle of nowhere, and they were coming for blood.
Behind him, Zy heard the hum of an engine. The growl told him their vehicles weren’t standard-issue. Unfortunately, he and the rest of the team were a good half mile away from their stashed vehicle—and even longer to reach the chopper.
A dozen questions sat on his tongue, along with at least that many expletives. Now wasn’t the time. If they lived, then he’d want to know what the fuck was going on. Details. An explanation that made sense. The truth.
The sound of tires eating their way up the side of the hill carried over the sawing of his breath and the pounding of his heart. He ran every fucking day, but not at this pace. Not on sand that shifted and slid beneath his feet. It was going to wear him down, probably before the cartel caught up. And that scared the shit out of him. They weren’t known for their hospitality.
To his left, he caught a glimpse of Cutter and Walker sprinting, as he and Trees were, for their vehicle, which stood a few hundred feet in the distance. Behind him, the sounds of the engine grew louder. Next, he heard an explosion, followed by a whine and a whoosh.
An explosive landed in the soil half a football field in front of them, kicking up sand, rocks, and brush. Zy squinted and covered his eyes as he approached the brown cloud of dust, then tried to outrun whatever came next. It would take the crew behind him less than a minute to reload and launch again.
“We’re fucked!” Trees shouted beside him.
“We’re almost there,” he tried to encourage his buddy.
But deep in his heart, Zy feared his buddy was right; they were fucked.
The engines roared closer as the second explosion filled the air. Zy craned his head over his shoulder—and saw the fucking grenade coming straight for them.
“Drop!” he shouted as he rolled to the sand, trying to avoid the explosive’s arc.
Trees hit the deck. Cutter started to do the same, but Walker either didn’t hear or intended to be the hero. At least until his spotter tossed him down with a tug on his arm.
The grenade hit the sand not twenty feet from them, too close to their vehicle for comfort.
“Go, go, go!” Cutter demanded.
They all raced to their feet in an all-out dash for their Jeep. If they couldn’t reach it and hit the gas in the next sixty seconds, they were toast.
Finally, they managed to reach their open-air vehicle and dump all their contents in the back. Over his thudding heart and everyone’s furious breaths, he heard the tick, tick, ticking of a silent clock in his head, counting down the moments to impending death. It blended with the snarl of engines closing in as they tore off the camouflage covering and all hopped in, Cutter taking the briefest glimpse to ensure they’d all piled in before he stomped on the gas and the vehicle lurched forward.
Zy’s ass barely touched the seat before they began tearing through the desert, jockeying their way toward the public road, which was at least ten miles away.
“We’re not going to fucking make it,” Walker spit. “You should have let me shoot the son of a bitch with the RPG.”