Page 27 of Saved By the Marines (Soldiers Of Misfortune)

“Kip.” Brando sounded strained. “I’m patching through a call for you.”

I frowned. “Who the hell is it?”

He didn’t bother responding, instead putting the call through.

“Hello? Hello? Is this damn thing working?”

I rolled my eyes, but answered. “Senator Michaels. What can we do for you?”

“There you are. Where the hell are you and why haven’t I been able to-” the transmission garbled a little, but it wasn’t hard to guess what he was bitching about.

“We’re on our way to rescue Bailey,” I told him, trying to hold onto my patience. Jas was in the front muttering to himself and I didn’t need to listen in to know what he was saying.

“-got a call from the kidnappers.”

That piqued my interest. My eyes met Wolfe’s in the rearview mirror. I motioned for him to slow down, I didn’t want the signal to cut out. “What did they say?”

“They want one million dollars and for a whole list of people to be set free from prison. It’s ridiculous.”

I had to bite my knuckles to keep from raking this man up one side and down the other with my angry words. The fact that he cared so little for his daughter made me want to disembowel him, and I wasn’t even usually the most violent one in our little group. He brought the worst demons out of me.

Wolfe must have seen me struggling because he reached back, searching for the phone. I handed it over and let him talk to the bag of dicks making stupid excuses on the other end of the line. I was done listening.

I stared down at the cursor on the GPS screen and willed it to move faster. By the time Wolfe got off the phone with the senator we were getting close. “Half a mile.”

Wolfe flicked off the lights. The sun would be completely down when we got there. Shifting until I was on my knees, hanging over the back seat, I rummaged around in one of the bags until I found what I was looking for. I handed two pairs of night vision goggles forward.

These were state of the art and had a function that would keep us from being blinded as we fired our weapons. We’d be able to creep around in the dark and hopefully take out our targets before they were able to form a counter attack.

We left the Jeep behind and ran the last quarter of a mile. Given how rough the roads were, they would hear us long before we rolled in. We needed the element of surprise on our side. By the time we made it to a clearing that held a house, barn, outbuildings and fields of pot, my muscles were loose and limber, ready for the fight ahead.

Gunfire broke the silence of the night and we swore, diving for the sides of the road and whatever cover we could find.

“They must have sensors or cameras,” I shouted over the crack of gunshots splitting the air. I cursed at my own arrogance. I was so hyper focused on Bailey that I assumed that a compound in the middle of the jungle wouldn’t have electricity, let alone security systems. Clearly this was a false assumption and I’d underestimated Salazar.

I plastered myself against a tree and tried to peer around it. Exploding tree bark sent slivers of wood into my cheek as rifle rounds slammed into the tree. I rolled back behind it and glanced over to Jas and Wolfe.

The sun was still up, but just barely. We were in that orange dusk phase of the sunset, where it was too bright for goggles, but getting dark enough to degrade vision. They were close enough, I had no trouble reading the grim expressions they wore.

Wolfe made a series of motions with his hand, followed by a three second countdown, his fingers dropping into his fists.Three, two, one.I stepped back from the tree and leaned to the side, firing my rifle into the field. I wasn’t sure where Bailey was, and we couldn’t risk firing into the buildings and hitting her by mistake. But I could make some noise and hopefully distract the shooter. Jas did the same. We fired about ten rounds each before rolling back behind the trees for cover.

I looked back at Wolfe. He held two fingers up. Two shooters. He motioned again, this time toward the house. They were holed up in there. Finally, some luck. With both of them in one building we couldn’t get caught in a crossfire.

Dipping out to the left side of the tree, I ducked low and used the brush to conceal my movements. Wolfe and Jas were laying down suppressive fire as I moved, providing me cover by forcing the shooters to wait out their barrage of bullets. Now that we had a clear target, they could be more precise. Bailey could still be in the house with them, a hostage and human shield, so we still had to be careful.

If anything happened to her—especially at our hand—we’d never forgive ourselves. They wouldn’t fire into the building, which meant there was no way for them to take out the men there waiting for me. I’d be on my own once I got to the house. We just couldn’t risk the chance of her being inside. They were just keeping the shooters busy while I made my way over there.

I moved far enough through the brush that I could no longer see the window they were shooting from. That meant they couldn’t see me. Hopefully. I grasped my rifle by the fore grip with one hand and made a mad dash across the open clearing. My heart thundered in my ears as I ran. Excitement burned a path through my veins.

I lived for this shit. Not that I wanted Bailey to be in danger. I didn’t. But nothing brought me alive quite like the thrill of a good shootout. There was probably something wrong with me, wrong with us. We all dreamed of times like this and looked forward to it. Something about testing your courage and skill against other men who wanted you dead just made you feel fucking alive.

There was a small shed between me and the house.Run to the shed, use it as cover if need be, then on to my target. To where they were likely keeping my girl. My beauty.If they hurt her, they’d pay for it in ways they can never imagine.

My legs burned, propelling me across the open ground. I was more of a distance runner, but I could pull together a decent sprint when the need arose. The clearing felt like it was a mile long, though in reality it was probably two or three hundred meters. I closed in on the shed and immediately took a defensive posture on one knee, rifle raised to my shoulder. I scanned the barn as I crept around the side to look at the house.

The last thing I needed was to go barreling past the barn and have some asshole take a shot at me from inside. We’d only spotted two shooters so far, but we didn’t know how many men Salazar actually had out here with him. It could range from a handful to over a dozen. I needed to be careful, otherwise I’d be leaving my brothers one man down while still needing to find her.

Slowly putting one foot in front of the other, I stalked through the barn, quickly clearing it before moving on. I was hopping from building to building, using them as concealment from the men in the house as I cleared them. Once we went inside we needed to know that no one was going to double back on us. No one liked a surprise that nasty. It tended to end with one of us getting shot. We’d had it happen before in the past and always tried to avoid it when possible.

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