Page 53 of Bullets and Dandelions

Silent and deadly, Stone rose out of the water, raised his silenced handgun and fired twice. There were muffledthwapsand the men fell into the water.

The guy on roof called, “Sam? What’s going on?”

Thwap!The man toppled off the roof and hit the water with a loudsplash.

Gunfire erupted.

A child screamed.

A woman cried, “Kamous!”

The sudden silence was jarring.

Something moved in the shadows.

I focused on the ominous form. A man, bleeding from a head wound, raised his pistol. I fired.

He toppled into the water.

Stone stepped into view and gave me the ok hand signal.

Whew! That had been a little too close. I carefully studied the house for more enemy combatants. There were none.

I smiled. Kamous was raining kisses on a woman and child. The love on his face almost brought me to tears. I wanted that. The whole shebang. Marriage, children, and a place to call home.

Standing next to a rickety table, Rodriquez and Stone rummaged through a thick pile of papers. The rest of the squad checked the dead.

A thunderous roar sounded in the distance.

Airboats. Shit! It was too soon to be Jeb. I swung my scope to the north. Racing through the mango trees were two airboats full of heavily armed mercenaries. Dammit! Roberts wasn’t with them.

I clicked my radio mic, “Alpha One, we have two airboats inbound with eight hostiles.”

“Slow them down, Alpha Five.”

“Copy that.” The idiots hadn’t noticed the massive spiderweb in front of them. At their current speed, I should fire about… Now! I pulled the trigger twice, splintering the rotted wood.

A huge branch swung down. It clobbered the mercenaries in the first boat, knocking all but one of them into the water. The airboat zoomed off with the pilot trying to fight his way free of the webbing.Bam!The boat crashed into a tree.

A massive curtain of webbing engulfed the second boat. Horrified shouts filled the night as the mercenaries fought to get free of the sticky spider silk and the attacking arachnids. The airboat raced past my island, careened off a mango root and went airborne. The boat rolled and bodies hit the scummy swamp.Sploosh!Sploosh! Sploosh! Sploosh!The airboat smacked down on some rocks and the propeller churned the water violently.

Huh? Guess it was stuck. One shot took out the engine. The mercenaries weren’t using it to escape on.

“Well done, Alpha Five,” Stone commented.

“Thank you, sir.” I quickly scanned the water and to my surprise several spiders had hitched rides on the mercenaries swimming for their lives.

A loud crack echoed around the swamp.

Three seconds later, a bullet whizzed by my head and embedded in the tree. Crap! A sniper had pinpointed my location. How had I missed him?

“Where is the shooter, Alpha Five?” Stone demanded.

Hell, if I knew. As I dropped to the branch below me, my night vison goggles caught on a broken limb, stopping me dead. I hung there for a moment, trying to breathe and fighting to get my helmet’s strap to release.

I pushed the button again and again. Funny black dots were dancing in my vision when I suddenly fell. I slammed into a thick branch, rolled off it and plummeted to the next limb. I wrapped my arms around it and hung on for dear life. Holy hell. How come I wasn’t dead? Had the squad taken the sniper out?

My breath coming in painful gasps, I looked around. No sign of the squad or the sniper.

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