Page 114 of What I Should Have Done

All feelings, all thoughts rushed from my head. There was nothing but the numb cruelty of the world around us left to fill in the holes left by the reality of his death.

And then everything resumed like the whir of chopper blades. “Find cover,” Dom quickly commanded, realizing we were sitting ducks here.

Jolted from my frozen stupor, I reached down, threw Duncan’s body over my shoulders, and sprinted after Scottie. We raced around the building to the opposite side, using the cement structure for cover from the possibility of a second shot.

Once we had regrouped, I squatted down and gently slid Duncan off of my back. His hollow gaze stared back, ripping anger through me unlike ever before. I quickly closed his eyelids and tucked him against my feet.

“Bernie and Viper. You’re to take Matrix’s body back to the rendezvous point and meet the chopper,” Dom instructed, his gaze as blank as the rest of the team’s.

There was no way.

“What about who fired the shot?” Scottie quietly asked through the comms.

“Oh, right,” Dom muttered, shaking his head. “Uh…”

“I see a scope,” Scottie quickly filled in.

Nothing seemed to compute even in my own head.

Duncan was dead. We still had to complete a mission. There was a scope that—

A scope. Shifting on my heels, I raised my own weapon, training it in the direction of Scottie’s around the corner of the building and followed her line of sight. Rage roared hot in my veins. “We know who that is,” I hissed through the comms.

Ford and Bernie crawled behind Scottie and me, peering around the edge while remaining behind cover. Straight across from us, a direct line to where Duncan had been standing, on the third floor of a neighboring structure rested a well-concealed sniper rifle.

Alex Reyes sat back from the gun, a smirk crossing his face.

And a crack split the air.

Watching through my scope, a gaping hole seared through the center of Reyes’s forehead. “That’s for Duncan you fucking asshole,” Scottie muttered beside me, not even waiting for Dom’s command to fire upon our enemy. Reyes slumped backwards, a single drop of red liquid slithering from the wound.

It felt both satisfying, and very unsatisfying that a man who had brought so much misery and destruction to our team was taken out with one single, anticlimactic shot about eight hundred yards out. Hold up…

“He’s fucking eight hundred yards away and you hit him directly between his eyes,” I said through the comms.

Scottie merely shrugged her shoulders and pulled back the bolt lever on her rifle, releasing the shell. “Sorry to take away your thunder, but he pissed me off for the last time,” she replied.

And for a brief moment, a smile slid across my face.

“Alright,” Dom began, a blaze igniting behind his eyes. “If Reyes was posted up, clearly expecting us to come, we have to assume that Karim knows as well. We’re holding up here until Bernie and Viper get back. Crow, you’re with us. I’ll call in for the squad of soldiers now to come clear the surrounding buildings so we can all move in as a team. Sweep together unless I see a risk of al-Jabari possibly escaping, then we may split. Only if we have to. We’re getting this bastard. Today.”

Anger rolled hot through my veins, mixing like a drug with the adrenaline that fueled me through every fight. This one had just become more personal. I would grieve for Duncan after. Right now, it was time to kill that motherfucker.

Meeting the chopper to pass off Duncan and returning to Dom, Ford, and Scottie went smoothly and quickly for Bernie and me. Fifteen minutes later, we were posted up, ready to breach with the news that a squad of soldiers were on their way. Time to deliver the devil to the fool who had been gambling with his life for far too long.

Stalking forward as silent as death itself, we slipped into the open courtyard. Still not a trace of anyone else peering out from their homes around us met our movement. They must not know we’re here. Dom raised a fist, and we paused as he quietly hoisted the lid to the underground bunker.

My stomach twisted. My gaze narrowed. The tunnel lay before us. My weapons at the ready, poised to cut down any fool standing in our way. One by one, my teammates disappeared down the rungs of the cool metal ladder. Scottie gave me a final nod, her face hidden behind her balaclava just as mine was, as I slipped into the black tunnel in front of her.

The familiar green glow of my night vision goggles laid out the crudely assembled entrance way. Descending rung by rung, not a sound passing beneath my hands and boots, I plopped down silently beside Bernie at the base of the tube. Ahead lay the door that blocked our path into the compound itself. Doing a quick scan of this completely empty, circular room, Scottie plunked down beside me, hoisting her rifle to her shoulder.

Dom signaled, and we crept behind him, all in single file once again, waiting to breach through the door. Everything hinged on clearing this compound silently. We were supposed to come and go as ghosts. Enter quietly, locate Karim and the armory, and disappear as quickly as we had arrived.

With a nod of his head, Dom reached forward and pushed down on the lever, disengaging the latch to the door. It swung open, piercing the darkness with a stream of light, and Ford quickly lifted his night vision goggles, stepping into the opening with his raised rifle.

He immediately whipped back around as gunfire ripped through the crack in the doorway. Peppering the wall across from us, I clenched my jaw, removed my own night vision goggles, and inhaled deeply. They’d been expecting us.

Reyes had been expecting us. Somehow, they knew we’d broken into the Black Box.

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