Page 94 of Over the Edge

“Jojo, keep an eye on Lily.”

“Will do, boss.”

She made a disgusted face, but she could get over it. She was a baby SEAL out on her first operation. She was going to get buddied up with one of the experienced guys whether she liked it or not.

Extending his forefinger and pinky from a closed fist, Cal turned his fist back and forth by his ear, a signal borrowed from the aviation world indicating that they should start their engines…which was to say, get ready to roll.

The Reapers checked one another’s gear and then headed out. From the moment they left his side until they returned, not a word would be spoken aloud among them. They’d entered the silent realm of SEAL operations.

Unless something went seriously wrong, of course. Then they would communicate as needed. In that case, there was usually shit blowing up and bullets flying, so silence wasn’t necessary.

It was more tense for him to lay up here watching than it would be out there with his team, gliding through the shadows to their target. He practiced breathing exercises while the team methodically went about its work, approaching the camp, bypassing the electric fencing and cutting a hole in the rewired section of wire.

He watched the guards pass by his team, which was lying prone and still under camo nets just outside the fence, mere feet away from the passing sentries.

He counted the seconds, and on cue at sixty seconds, Leo rose up like a ghost and peeled back the wire panel. The others slipped inside. Axe and Leo crouched to each side of the opening while Jojo’s big shadow and Lily’s tiny one moved among the buildings, setting charges. He was pleased by how quickly they worked without appearing to hurry.

The pair finished and moved back to the hole in the fence. They glided through and Leo wired the panel loosely in place. Then he, too, eased back into the trees just as the guards came by once more. The timing had been perfect.

The Reapers headed for the cliff and the climbing gear they’d left dangling from its face.

The guards came around again, and Cal shifted his attention to the pair. They stopped, and a new set of guards emerged from a building, apparently to replace them. This pair started its first circuit of the camp.

Cal swore under his breath. These two were actually doing their jobs and looking around alertly, peering into doorways and looking in the shadows. They approached the spot where one of the charges was tucked behind a set of steps.

Don’t find it. Don’t find it—

Fuck. They found it. The first guard straightened abruptly and Cal saw a flash of white teeth as the guy opened his mouth to raise the alarm.

No choice for it. “Close your eyes,” he muttered as he mashed the detonator button, and simultaneously squeezed his own eyes tightly shut to protect his night vision.

Ka-boom!

The valley lit up like a torch as burning debris rained down and started small grass fires, a few of which started to spread. The hulls of destroyed structures burned brightly, sending flames some thirty feet up into the night. Dammit. The whole cliff was lit like day. And the Reapers were fully illuminated, moving up its face like so many ants.

Shouts rose from below, and what he’d feared happened. A trap door opened up out of the ground, and a dozen armed men swarmed out of it. Dammit. Patel’s intel hadn’t mentioned anything about an underground facility, here.

Pushing his NOD’s up, Cal plastered his right eye to his rifle sight and lined up the next man to come out of the tunnel. He squeezed the trigger.

Without waiting to see if he’d hit his target, he inched the barrel of his rifle right to target the next man, this one running toward where the fence was no more. The guy shouted and gestured toward the cliff.

Cal shot him and saw him pitch forward on his face as the next man ran into Cal’s viewfinder.

At least three men made it into the trees before Cal managed to pin down the rest with his sniper fire. He spared a quick glance over at the cliff face, where his team was still on the ropes and climbing frantically. But then he had to move back to the camp and continue peppering the men emerging from the tunnel with enough fire to freeze them in place on their faces in the dirt.

“Incoming,” he bit out into his microphone, warning the others to get a hustle on.

Axe reached the top of the cliff first and flopped down on his belly, unslinging his rifle and pointing it down the cliff. Muzzle flashes from his weapon announced that the first hostiles had nearly reached the cliff.

Cal had no angle to shoot from here. Swearing, he snatched up his rifle and hoofed it up the hillside, slipping and sliding as he sprinted across the top of the ridge in search of a spot to help his teammates. His back screamed bloody murder, but he grimly ignored it.

He was practically on top of his guys, about three hundred feet up the mountain from them when he raced forward and fell onto his stomach. His back spasmed violently and the pain was so intense he nearly passed out.

He blinked hard, fighting with all his might to clear his vision. There. A muzzle flash out of the woods. He zeroed in on it and waited for any sign of movement. A flash of green body heat poked out from behind a tree.

He pulled the trigger. A fusillade of rounds shot up into the trees as the hostile went down, squeezing his trigger as he fell backward. Lily had reached the top of the cliff and was also shooting down into the trees, now. No surprise she’d beat the other men up the ropes—she was monkey-like when it came to climbing.

There went Jojo flopping on his belly, and Leo was close behind.

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