Page 190 of Beat of Love
One he’d been turning over in the quiet hours of the night, when logic gave way to something sharper.
Something personal.
*
That night …
The feed flickered in grainy night-vision green. From the KS command center, Rafferty leaned in toward the screen, arms braced against the console. His jaw clenched as the camera — mounted on Kosta’s shoulder — panned across terrain he once knew by heart. Now it was a half-collapsed skeleton of what had been Kamila’s stronghold.
A voice crackled in his earpiece. “First tripwire located.”
The view shifted, centering on a gloved hand hovering over a taut filament strung across a fallen beam. An ungloved hand entered frame and snipped it clean.
“Tripwire down. Proceeding.”
The team moved as one — silent, fluid, lethal.
An arm signaled the entrance. It lay behind a crumbling stone well, nearly invisible. What looked like part of the well’s base was, on closer inspection, a narrow gap behind the outer wall — just wide enough for a man to slip through.
Rafferty’s breath hitched. The opening, disguised with moss covered stone and jungle debris, led into a reinforced tunnel sloping steeply downward into darkness.
He remembered it all too well.
The drag of his body. The gag. The moment he thought daylight would never come again. His prison before being taken to the coca farm.
He blinked hard and refocused.
A second tripwire was cut.
A voice came through, low and tight. “We’ve got movement. Infrared’s picking up three heat signatures farther in — one of them pacing.”
The tunnel narrowed. Darkness pressed in. The team advanced, boots whispering over concrete.
Another wire — snipped.
A door.
Wood.
Stupid. Steel would’ve held longer.
Kosta placed the charges. Held the remote.
A fierce whisper. “Now.”
Bang.
The feed went chaotic — blurred motion, shouting, boots pounding, weapons clattering off stone.
Then stillness.
The camera refocused, sweeping a brightly lit circular chamber.
Three holding cells.
Rafferty shuddered, suppressing the memories.
Kosta’s voice came through. “Target subdued. Others neutralized.”
