Page 24 of Hazard

“I handled it.” He sounded as cool as a cucumber. Fucking kid. “I’m heading back to give you cover. I’ll let you know when I’m in position.”

“Ice,” Hazard said. “He better hurry. We’ve got a big problem.”

Breakneck picked up his pace. Hazard said they had a technical coming in, a non-standard tactical vehicle. The NSTV was a run-of-the-mill pickup truck modified to mount a fifty-caliber heavy machine gun. His mission was to prevent that fucking tech from drawing down on his brothers. It would rip them to shreds, that flimsy warehouse not enough cover for a fifty-cal monster. But that was the way of monsters, and they ignored the little guy, a David and Goliath story. Well, he was Uncle Sam’s baby-faced killer, and he wasn’t carrying a slingshot. He was toting a lethal weapon with premier sights that gave Breakneck the ability to use his masterful perfect zero. Yeah, DEVGRU didn’t skimp on their tools of war, allowing him to punch far above his weight and fight on his terms.

He loved his rifle, loved the weapons that allowed him to do his job. But it was his uncanny and unwavering marksmanship that had really made a splash in BUD/S. People were taking bets on how many career kills he’d have before he even pinned on his Trident. Not that he cared about that. He only cared about hitting whatever he was aiming at. He was immediately tagged for sniper school, and he graduated at the top of his class. Several teams had tried to poach him, but he went where he was told.

He modified his barrel length to a fourteen-point-five-inch, and for short-range work where punch and reach were offset by a need for compactness, inches in a man’s firearm, like in a man’s dick, often counted.

He was the sharpest and most deadly part of that spear. The tip. Right out there on the edge, the eyes and ears of the team. Their snarling, snapping overwatch watchdog.

His dad had saved his team just like Breakneck planned to save his. But he’d only heard that in stories, since his dad was killed in combat when he was just a kid. His mom was happy when he played his video games and excelled in school. She thought he was going to be a geek and settle into normal life. But that wasn’t where he was headed. He always knew it.

His dad had been one hundred percent warrior, and every moment of his adult life after his training had been spent operating. Although he couldn’t understand it back then when he was growing up, he understood it now. Operating was where SEALs wanted to be, and by going into the life his father had lived, he understood him better than he ever had. Time away from family was extensive. Everyone from parents, wives, and children had to cope with an operator’s absence. For him and his mom, his dad’s absence became permanent, and the struggle of a small boy moving from childhood to manhood with no father at home was as hard as hell. But his dad chose to be a full-time warrior and a part-time dad. Breakneck had come to terms with that, and what was more important to him was to make the most of his own life. Without having to think about it, he knew that above anything else that would make his dad proud.

It’d been six months since he’d seen his mom, and now that he was fighting for his life, he wanted to see her in the worst way.

He reached the best spot on the battlefield. The one those five guys had chased him away from. He went to his knees, then to his belly, releasing the tripod on his rifle, then sighting down on the enemy as they pounded his guys below him, the view clear, magnified, and primed.

He swiveled his rifle, taking in all the targets through the high-powered scope, but didn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t yet time. He spied Hazard in a copse of trees.

“I got you, Hazard. Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

The first shot he put in the engine, the second into the driver, and the third into the gunner, bang, bang, bang in rapid, precision succession. Breakneck took aim at the field, following Hazard’s progress, as gunfire chased him. But Breakneck’s rapid shots were true. He continued to protect him, even as they discovered his position and began firing back, peppering the hill he perched on just below the crest. As Hazard sprinted toward the armored pickup, sonic cracks of bullets were all around him, but he ignored the incoming fire. Once Hazard was close, Breakneck depressed his radio. “Iceman, now!”

Hazard jumped onto the technical’s bed, grabbing up the butterfly triggers of the Browning Machine Gun, Cal. .50, M2 HB, Flexible—a recoil-operated, air-cooled weapon that had been a mainstay in every war since World War II, and used against infantry, light armored vehicles, watercraft, light fortifications, and low-flying aircraft. It had been designed by John Browning and stood the test of time with only minor modifications and design changes. But today, he was going to smoke the cartel members who had ambushed them.

He had to hurry. His team would be coming out of that sorry-excuse-for-cover warehouse to engage the enemy, and he needed to lower the odds.

Noting this was an older model, as the newer ones changed the handgrips to squeeze triggers, he remembered enough about the deadly weapon to fire it effectively. The bolt latch was already locked down into fully automatic mode. This lethal belt-fed weapon had no safety, and neither, at this moment, did he.

He couldn’t worry about his back, that was for Breakneck’s precision shooting to handle, and he put his life in his young-as-hell hands. Taking the weapon out of his team’s field of fire, he left the cartel members to his right to his teammates as small arms fire erupted. He opened his stance for better balance to handle the recoil, then depressed the triggers, absorbing the shock vibrating through his body in rapid succession, and swept the gun on the swivel, mowing down everything in its path in a volley of rapid, unrelenting fire. Those bastards had no chance of survival. The sound was deafening, the pinging of hundreds of cartridges hitting the metal of the bed and sides of the truck never-ending.

Bullets flew at him, hitting the metal plates designed to protect the gunner. Small metal shards peppered his face and ballistic glasses. Half a second later, there was a slight impact on the side of his head that sounded as if he’d been slapped. It was a ricochet or grazing blow, a direct hit would have killed him.

With steely focus, he didn’t even wince. He just kept thinking of his brothers, the people who might need them right now at TOC…and Leigh.

Geezus, if anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself or be able to live with the agony of never finding out where everything still hanging in the air played out, never really know her. The revelation was profound and unexpected as trickles of blood slowly rolled down his cheek. Was there even a chance for them? Was there even hope?

The shove against Leigh’s back was the last straw. She was in pain, held against her will by men who hadn’t blinked an eye at eliminating a whole task force, and despite the late hour, the air didn’t move, the heat cloying. She whirled on the man, heedless of his gun or his sour attitude. “Do you think pushing me every five freaking seconds is going to make my body change so that I can take longer strides? Why don’t I go behind you and test the theory out.”

“You talk too damn much, punta.” He was one of five men who had assaulted TOC. He was the one who had caught her when she’d run. Someone had called him Conde.

“Oh, insults? Really, are you in high school? Do you think that bothers me?” He didn’t have an answer, and Leigh’s plan was just to slow them down as much as possible. They were on foot, which surprised the hell out of her. Their temporary TOC was in ruins about two miles back. Anna had woken up about a mile ago, and she wasn’t moving very fast either. Just another reason to be argumentative. And the fact that if she used all the anger inside her, she could avoid the guilt that twisted her like a pretzel inside. They had been after her, and they had killed everyone in TOC as if they meant nothing. All that blood was on her hands.

Conde narrowed his eyes at her, and she wasn’t intimidated, using her anger to mask the sick feeling working its way into her gut and mind. She’d looked at cold, deadly eyes like that across a courtroom. Threats were spewed at her almost every trial. She’d never back down from evil. She’d fight until her last dying breath, and that could be way, way too soon. But Patch, Jack, and the others deserved her courage and fortitude. If this mission was going to be salvaged, and it had to be, they couldn’t back down from this thuggery and sheer evil. She couldn’t, not for one moment.

“Leigh,” Anna said weakly.

Feeling that bad edginess growing stronger and starting to crawl up the back of her neck ever since she saw her photo, she gave Anna a hard look. The woman gave it back to her in spades, even wounded and concussed.

They wanted her for a reason, and it wasn’t going to be good for her at all. Spit in the face of justice. Yeah, she was the symbol of American justice, a United States Attorney sworn to bring Angel Alzate to stand for his crimes against her citizens, and residually get justice for all the other people he’d murdered in cold blood for profit.

Angel Alzate was going to make an example of her, then he was going to kill her, probably publicly.

There was only one thing she could do. Fight, argue, be a royal pain in the asses of these men, keep them riled up and off guard dealing with her. If they had wanted her dead, they would have killed her back at TOC. Besides, did it matter if they killed her in this dank, dark place in the middle of nowhere or at her final destination?

---