Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“Feck,” muttered Bradan despondently. “After all that.” He turned away.
I grabbed his shoulder. “Wait,” I told him. “Watch and learn.”
The tree slid along the road…and then it suddenly stopped, hard. The truck driver stopped and jumped out. The soldiers all gathered around the tree in confusion.
What I’d done was pick a tree that was tall enough that, once we cut it down, it would reach right across the road and stick out into the jungle on both sides. And I’d made sure there were other trees closer to the road so that when the soldiers pushed the felled tree forward, it would hit them and form an immovable obstacle.
“That,” said Bradan, “was very bloody clever.”
Major Zamora marched up to the front of the convoy. My jaw tightened. He was the one who’d kidnapped Olivia. He was the one who’d beaten JD. He’d cost me four hundred million dollars. Whatever happened here today, that guy was going down.
Major Zamora examined the tree, cursed in Spanish, and ordered everyone out of the convoy. We’d done it: we’d got them to abandon their vehicles. Now we had to slow them down as much as possible. “Go to work,” I told Bradan.
As the soldiers started advancing on foot towards the village, Bradan slipped into the trees. I tried to keep an eye on him so I could cover his ass but in seconds he was just…gone. I couldn’t see where—
A soldier fell, suddenly and silently, clubbed over the head with the butt of Bradan’s rifle. I glimpsed Bradan for an instant, then he was gone again.
The soldiers found their fallen man and a shout went up: someone’s here! They crept forward more cautiously.
Another soldier fell. And immediately, Bradan was gone again, disappearing into the shadows. When the soldiers found this one, they slowed down even more, yelling to each other to be careful.
A third soldier fell, right over on the other side of the road. I hadn’t even seen Bradan cross. Now the soldiers were truly afraid. Someone was in the trees, hunting them, and Major Zamora had to yell at them to make them advance at all. Pale-faced and twitchy, they crept towards the village, and instead of taking two minutes to cover the distance, it took them more like fifteen. Eventually, though, they made it to the edge of the clearing and we had to fall back.
I slapped Bradan on the back as he rejoined me. We’d bought the village some time. We just had to hope it was enough.
As we ran for cover, three guns opened up. We looked and saw JD, Colton and Danny firing from the windows of a house. Bradan and I slid into cover behind the corner of a building and started shooting too. Together, we did our best to hold back the advance but the soldiers kept coming, an unstoppable tide.
Then JD yelled an order in Spanish. More guns started firing from other buildings and I looked around in shock. JD had used the time we’d bought him to organize the locals, helping them pick out good defensive positions. Now they were fiercely defending their homes. It evened the odds a little: instead of us six versus eighty soldiers, now it was maybe twenty versus eighty. For a while, it looked like we might actually be able to hold them off and the tension in my chest eased a little.
But then the soldiers got smart and started fanning out through the jungle, hitting us from multiple directions at once. Within minutes, we were overrun and the soldiers were in the village. The battle turned into a brutal, house-by-house fight of the kind we’d all seen too much of in Iraq and Afghanistan. We yelled to the locals to fall back but some of them weren’t quick enough: I saw one Shuar man fall and then another.
That’s when I saw Olivia on the far side of the street, feet thumping against the dirt as she sprinted from one house to another, the medical bag banging against her back.
My heart shot into my mouth. I forgot where I was, I forgot I was hunkered down behind cover, I forgot everything. I stood up and reached for her, even though she was forty feet away.
I heard a gunshot. At the same time, Colton slammed into my legs. I hit the ground on my back and lay there wheezing: when Colton tackles you, you go down hard. A bullet zipped over my head: if not for Colton, I would have been going home in a body bag.
Colton panted and shook his head, staring at me: what’s gotten into you? Then he looked across the street and saw Olivia, crouched low behind a wall as she tried to reach an injured Shuar man. Colton’s face softened. “At least she knows to keep her head down,” he muttered.