Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Slick. I embraced him tightly. “Thank you, Emilio.” My gold was still in reach. All I had to do was get Olivia to safety, bring her back here on the chopper, and then run.
And never see her again. I wasn’t ready for how much that thought hurt. Then I shook my head. There was no other choice.
We boarded the chopper and Gantz got us in the air. Soon, emerald jungle was rushing past beneath us, and an hour later, we were hovering over a quiet clearing a few miles from the cartel’s camp. There was no place to land, so we’d have to be extracted in a different spot, a few days’ hike away. JD double-checked with Gantz that he understood. “Here,” JD told him, pointing to a mark on the map. “At dawn. Two days’ time.”
“That’s a big ten-four, chief!” Gantz grinned and I winced. The closest this guy had ever gotten to serving was Call of Duty.
We roped down, and as the chopper climbed away, the sound of the jungle surrounded us: the soft creak of trees, the chatter of monkeys and the calls of exotic birds. The trees were a little further apart here and shafts of sunlight stabbed through the gaps to light up golden motes of dust and scarlet butterflies. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, and after staring at nothing but concrete for three years, my brain felt almost overloaded. I turned in a circle, amazed. I’d missed out on so much life, being locked up.
Cal stood for a moment at the edge of the clearing, looking up at the sky. Then he spoke and everyone looked round: Cal saying something was a big event. “Weather’s going to change. Three days, maybe four and we’re looking at a storm, a big one.”
“We’ll be out of here before then,” said JD. But his jaw was tight: maybe he didn’t like storms.
We started through the jungle, with Cal taking point. I couldn’t believe how silently he moved through the trees. We all knew how to move quietly but this guy was a ghost.
JD waved for me to take the right side and I walked with my eyes glued on the trees, watching for ambushes, trusting Danny to do the same on the left and that Colton had our backs. The feeling took me instantly back to the Marines and it felt good.
Then I caught myself and crushed those feelings into dust. I wasn’t part of this team. I was just fooling them. I’d get Olivia, we’d get back to the airfield and I’d disappear.
A few hours later, we reached a hill overlooking the camp. We crept as close as we dared and then JD swept the camp with binoculars. He shook his head ruefully: nothing. My chest tightened. What if our information was wrong? What if she wasn’t there?
Then Cal, who was scouting around the side of the camp, waved us over to him. He passed me his rifle and showed me where to look. I put the scope to my eye. Where…
There! My heart leapt and I forgot how to breathe for a second. She was bedraggled and dirty, and just the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. The rifle’s scope put me so close to her, it was like I could reach out and touch her and my chest ached with the need to do just that.
I panned around a little, trying to see more. There were lengths of bamboo in front of her, in a row—
A cage. I blinked. Then the shock turned to anger, boiling up like lava, filling every part of me. They’ve got her locked in a cage?!
A guard came to the bars with a hunk of bread. Olivia reached out to take it, but the guard pulled it back at the last second, teasing her, motioning her closer to the bars. She glared at him, then glanced over her shoulder at a guy who lay on the floor of the cage. Her shoulders slumped and she stepped forward, pressing herself against the bars. The guard stroked her cheek and muttered in her ear, something that made her shudder.
Bastard! Take your hands off her! I surged to my feet, threw the rifle to Cal and started forward. A strong hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back. “Wait!” JD’s Texan drawl in my ear. “Wait!”
I shook his hand off, turned and glared at him. But to my surprise, the old hard ass actually looked sympathetic. “I get it,” he told me firmly. “I really do. But you race in there without a plan, you could get her killed.”
I stared at him sullenly for a moment, then grumbled and crouched back down. All of us looked at the camp.
“They’re better organized than I expected,” said Danny after watching for a while. “Regular patrols, they’ve got guards posted…I thought they’d be—”