Page 116 of What I Should Have Done

By my woman.

“I see you’ve put some of my training into practice,” I taunted through the comms, standing up. At least with her up on the balcony, if al-Jabari entered this room, he’d be killed the moment his face was shown. A thought flooded my mind, wondering if Dom was about to give a command that had me shivering.

“Doesn’t count until she bites a fucking throat out like you did,” Bernie replied.

I grinned and lunged toward the nearest enemy combatant. Tackling him to the ground, I made quick work of him with a single shot to the face before rolling off to the side and narrowly missing a barrage of bullets.

“Looks like it’s up to us,” Dom began with short breaths. “New orders. No airstrike. Time to find and eliminate the target. A platoon will be here once we’ve done that to take care of the armory. I hate to split us up, but the kids present a new conundrum so, Bernie and Tank, just make sure the armory is clear of our target and get out.”

His radio briefly silenced as I tucked the rifle into my shoulder and sent a round of gunfire toward four approaching insurgents.

“Breaching the armory now,” Ford radioed back, and I glanced to my left. Bernie kicked against the door, and both he and Ford raced inside with guns packed in their shoulders.

“Viper, you and I will extract the kids. Get the hostages to safety and then sweep the rest of the rooms as we are able. Our priority to make sure our target doesn’t escape still remains number one, which means, Crow, watch our backs from here,” Dom finished.

“Copy that,” Scottie replied, her voice even and focused. A shiver ran up my spine. Not an ounce of fear raced through my bones with the knowledge that she would be covering me.

“If at any point you spot Karim, orders are to eliminate immediately. A kill shot, no capture,” Dom added, panting through the words from exertion.

I quickly scanned the room and locked eyes with Dom, who was engaged with two insurgents. A quick shot from Scottie dropped one, and Dom used the momentary gap to disengage with his current assailant. He darted forward, narrowed in on the same room that had become my newly assigned target.

Sprinting to the right, I collapsed on my side and slid through the narrow chink between two insurgents. With my knife in one hand, I sliced the Achilles tendon of one of them. He crashed to the floor as I sprung upright and threw the weapon directly into his eye. Ignoring the other insurgent, I quickly ripped the blade from the screaming combatant. The knife plunged into his throat with a single thrust, and I took off toward the hole in the wall that had once been a door.

A couple combatants encroaching on me dropped dead with a single bullet hole to the head—Scottie’s quickly earned signature. My heart hammered as loudly as the ceaseless gunfire roaring around me.

Warm, red liquid dripped from my skin. Not my blood, but the owners long since lost in the pool of drowning death swarming this compound. The insurgents were never-ending. They were fueled by rage brought on by Karim al-Jabari and his skewed teachings and armed by the weapons illegally accrued by our target. Despite knowing we had him in a chokehold, that if Karim was here, he was a dead man, my head began to sink beneath the surface.

Wave after wave of insurgents sprinted at me. Each one draining more and more of my energy. The children, cowering in the newly exposed room, seemed to creep farther and farther away no matter how many insurgents I took out. No matter how much ground I gained. My arms moved slower and slower. Every blow drilling with a little less force. Scottie’s shots came later and less frequently until an arm wrapped around my torso, ripping me backwards, and this time, there was not a single shot from her to rescue me from my enemy.

Only then had it occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely invincible.

My back slammed onto the ground; oxygen snapped from my lungs. I gasped for air. Glancing through the stars up at Scottie’s perch, I found her engaged in a fist fight with two combatants. Her cheek stained bright red, a cut in her lip that matched the one delivered to me by the fist ramming into my face.

Iron pooled in my mouth, hot against my tongue as another blow clacked my teeth together. Weight around my waist pinned me to the ground. A fuzzy face filled my vision. One combatant should’ve been easy to throw off. But every swing of my arms connected with nothing but empty air.

A crack of bone against my jaw slammed my head to the right. The reverberation of impact clattering through my mind as my eyes hazily blinked. Squinting at the shattered doorway, I reached out, clawing the ground.

From this angle, I could see into a newly exposed corner of the room and found six local women huddled together. Cowering away from the fight.

“Wo…Women,” I choked through the blood collecting in my mouth. Attempting to radio my team. Someone needed to know.

A cough grated up my throat, retching some blood down the side of my cheek. How quickly the tides had turned as another fist landed against the exposed side of my face. Except this time, I managed to catch his wrist right before he pulled his punch back.

Digging my fingertips in, hot liquid slithered from the fresh wounds in his flesh. He jerked his arm away. The force raised my upper body from the ground, snapping some adrenaline through my veins again.

For a quick moment, my vision cleared. Rocketing a fist through the air, my knuckles slammed against his jaw, and I released my clutch on his wrist. He flew backwards but the win was only briefly celebrated as he was immediately replaced by a second assailant.

“There’s—” A hand tightened around my throat, cutting my radio call off.

“Repeat.” Dom grunted. “Viper.” Another gasp left the lieutenant commander’s lips. “Repeat, over,” Dom finally replied, each word of his jumbled and spotty.

But the weight of the hold around my neck deepened and there was no possible way I could answer. Gagging, desperate for air, I writhed beneath his choke. Spots of dark stars clouded my vision, the blackened face above me splitting into two and then four.

Every plea for air slipped further and further away as the black tunneled around my vision. Flailing for any weapon my fingers could find strapped to my body, I pulled my knee up just enough to slip a knife out of the sheath holstered on my thigh. My free hand grasped the arm that was stealing life from me.

And I plunged the blade into my assailant’s forearm just beneath my own fingers clutching his skin.

A shriek split the air. The insurgent ripped his hold from around my neck. Crisp oxygen flooded my lungs, and I inhaled deeply, filling every cell with a large breath. The grim reaper stepped back, his scythe disappearing as my vision cleared.

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