by Keta Kendric
Aaron’s pained voice sounded in my ear. “If D says go, fucking go! He knows what to do.”
“Nine remaining. They’re in the tree line now. Get down! Get down!” D barked into the earpiece again.
There were fucking mercenaries in the tree line, and the twins had lost Megan.
“Striker four near ground zero,” Marcus informed through the earpiece in a hushed voice. With Marcus someplace near the tree line with us, it meant that half of Aaron’s hardheaded-ass team and Scott were still out there. So was Megan. DG6 had been serious about keeping my cousin and about protecting their property. There had to be more to this damn ranch than DG6 was letting on.
“Megan!” I yelled as Aaron’s crumpled body clung to mine. Wade let Aaron go so he could watch our back as I made my way towards the vehicle. I propped Aaron against a tree and aimed to the right of us when the hairs on the back of my neck stood. I fired off three shots, aiming for the head. The bastard went down, but him being that close to us let me know that they likely had us surrounded.
“Megan, where in the fuck are you?” I called out, but not too loud because we had company now. Her little ass didn’t answer me, but I swore I spotted her creeping towards me, tiptoeing over the grassy plan of the woods. It was dimmer inside the tree line than it had been in that open stretch of land, so my eyes were still adjusting. It was a strange mix of light and darkness that made night goggles fifty-fifty for usefulness.
It was Megan that I was watching, and her fucking gun was aimed at my fucking head. Something was wrong. When she waved for Aaron and me to get the fuck out of the way, I knew one or both of us were dead.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
I didn’t know where Megan learned to shoot, but the bullets from her gun passed so close to the side of my fucking face that they warmed my cheek. When I glanced back, she’d taken out a mercenary that had managed to sneak up on Aaron and me. The damn sun was starting to crest, so we didn’t have the cover of nightfall to hide us anymore.
“There are more of them around here, and another truck just pulled up,” Megan informed us as she yanked a set of night goggles over her head and tossed them aside.
I handed Aaron over to her. “Get him inside the truck,” I instructed.
When I turned, my body went flying back against the side of a tree. Megan and Aaron stumbled to the ground or maybe she’d pulled him down. I couldn’t tell. My vest caught the bullet that struck me, and I gasped, choking on the last remnants of wind that had been knocked out of my lungs. Two days in a row I’d been shot in the chest. This shot, compounded with the one from yesterday put me down, although I was sure the bullet hadn’t gotten through.
Wade lit the bastard up that shot me and ended up taking two shots to his chest and shoulder area that sent him flying back to the ground. His agonizing cry signified that he’d also been shot.
“Everyone down!” My anguished voiced cried out, hoping the men understood me as I was just now accepting that this mission was getting more out of hand by the second.
DG6 must have sent one hell of a backup crew. Jake and Jackson were engaged in their own gun battle. Blasts from both their guns went off to the left of me. Megan struggled with Aaron in front of me. Marcus had the damn 50 Cal talking. Our snipers were out there shooting anyone who wasn’t us. Wade writhed in pain on the ground to my right. All I wanted was a breath of air.
On all fours, I struggled to get air into my crumpled body, and my fucking hand refused to work. It wasn’t until the peppery sparks of pain awakened in my arm that I felt the warm liquid drizzling down the inside of my arm. They had clipped me in the arm, and I hadn’t even realized it.
When I looked up, Megan had propped Aaron against the next tree. She had her little body in front of his, facing him. She peeked around the tree that protected them and was aiming her gun out into the trees on the opposite side. Neither she nor Aaron had a fucking vest on, so they were in the most danger.
A cold chill hit me, making me turn in time to see a shadowy figure approach Megan, as two were approaching Aaron’s front. They had motherfuckers coming at them both ways. I was sure I was yelling my fucking head off, but I couldn’t hear the words coming out of my own mouth.
Aaron spotted the ones in his view first. He raised his weapon, and as Megan turned to help him, he pushed her to the ground and started firing. I could see bullets shredding the tree trunk next to him as pieces of bark flew into the air. Without a Kevlar vest on, any shot could kill him.
Although Aaron had pushed Megan to the ground, she was still shooting at the man approaching them from the opposite side of that tree. Aaron’s bullets were hitting the men in front of him, but the handgun I’d given him was no match for the automatic weapons aimed at him. I shot round after round at the men. Relief swept through me when one fell. They were definitely wearing body armor. Aaron shot the second man, but the bastard wouldn’t fall.
One of my bullets dropped the man continuing to fire at my cousin, but a final shot escaped the man’s weapon before his body hit the ground. It was as if I could see the moment with crystal clear, high definition vision. The shot struck Aaron in the head, jerking him back so hard that it sent his body slamming into the tree trunk behind him. He tumbled, head first to the ground, his lifeless body falling in what appeared to be slow motion. Dead or not, I unloaded the rest of my clip in the man that had shot my cousin.
Chapter Twenty-four
Ansel
I stood there, frozen, not believing what I was seeing. Reality smacked me in the face, and I snapped out of my trance.
“No!” I yelled so loud that it likely alerted every enemy to my position. I didn’t even realize I was running until I was standing over Aaron. Megan’s scream lit up the woods as she scrambled over to him on her hand and knees.
“Aaron! Aaron! Get up please!” she begged through heart-wrenching wails that raised goose bumps on my arms. She pushed with all her might to turn Aaron onto his back. Once he faced us, I could tell at a glance that my cousin was almost gone—the tremble in his limbs, the involuntary jerking of his muscles, the haunting, hollowed, glazed-over look in his eyes.
When a bullet struck the back of my Kevlar and yanked my body forcefully in the opposite direction, I didn’t feel the pain of the powerful impact. I simply turned and started firing. The sight of my cousin so limp and lifeless had numbed me.
As I continued to fight off the fucking roaches that kept creeping through the cracks, Megan’s cries continued to seep into my mind, reminding me that the bastards I was killing had shot my cousin. All I saw was red at this point, so angry that my nostrils flared as bullet after bullet left my gun. Two new clips had been fed into the weapon by the time I stopped firing.
“Ground Zero, go now. There are three more trucks heading for the tree line,” D announced into the earpiece. The eagerness in his voice hinted at the amount of danger headed our way.
I dragged my body over to Aaron and Megan who was kneeling over him rubbing his cheek. She clutched his limp hand against her chest. When I saw his eyes fluttering open and closed, I leaned down further to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I’d seen in the dim lighting. Only minutes had passed but they had brought with them more of the sun’s rays that allowed me to see Aaron clearer than before.
Had he been shot in the head? I squinted. Was that blood pooling under his shoulders? The pool of dark liquid expanded before my eyes as the rusted scent made its way up my nostrils. Life was seeping from Aaron’s body. I froze, no longer able to recall my motor functions.
When I forced my body to move, I leaned close enough to make out the small entrance wound near the hairline of his left temple. The bullet must have exited somewhere out of the back of his head or neck. His skin had already started to pale as his lips shivered from the coldness of approaching death.
I placed my ear over his mouth when he tried to speak. “Take her. Take care…”
He was telling me to take care of Megan, who looked about as crazy as an
escaped insane patient. Aaron turned his gaze away from me, looked up at Megan and smiled before his eyes closed, and his hand went slack inside hers.
Aaron’s body sat frozen in time. My face relaxed. Every emotion within me raced to the surface when I reached towards my cousin. When I shook his shoulder, my hand on his lifeless body sent chills racing through me. My heart stopped pumping blood, and my brain ceased to send messages to the rest of my body. My eyes forgot how to blink.
“Aaron,” I called, aware that my voice was too low for anyone to hear. All my senses went away, and I was only left with sight and the numbing silence that my cousin was no longer there with me.
The moment Megan realized he was gone she started screaming. Her loud wailing cries snapped me out of my daze and made me realized we were still in danger. The pain in her anguished voice took the last pinch of strength I had left. The way she clutched Aaron’s lifeless hand and the pleading in her eyes and voice took whatever little piece of my heart that wasn’t already shattered.
She’d completely lost control of her own body, unsure of which way to turn or move. I had never seen someone love one of us as much as I knew she loved Aaron. She would do anything to bring Aaron back, to see him open his eyes or to hear him speak again, but he was gone.
“No, Aaron, please. I love you, Aaron, please. Don’t leave me. Please, Aaron, please don’t leave me,” she begged desperately, her cries mingling into one long continuous word.
Her hand shook so badly that she appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Her unblinking eyes were deadlocked on Aaron’s face as tears spilled from them in fast-moving currents. Aaron was gone, but Megan continued to hold on to his limp hand, shaking it to try to wake him up.
“No. No. No. Aaron, please, Aaron, don’t leave me,” she begged and pleaded so hard that I was sure she’d forgotten about us being hunted by the same assholes who had shot my cousin.
With hair all over her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, and what must have been Aaron’s blood smeared all over her disheveled clothes, she looked deranged. Megan had lost her shit right in front of me, and I didn’t know how to help her because I’d lost my shit equally as bad.
“We’ve gotta go!” Jackson yelled and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Aaron laid out on the ground in a pool of blood.
Megan continued pleading. I remained kneeling next to my cousin in shock, my eyes darting back in forth between him, silent and still, and Megan, frantic and crying. For the first time since I was a kid, I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless, useless, and worthless. This was a situation I couldn’t fix, a problem I couldn’t solve.
Jackson looked from me to Aaron and back behind him. When he reached back, aimed, and started shooting, I knew we were out of time.
“We’ve gotta go, Ansel. There is about ten more of them coming.”
I heard Jackson, but at the same time, I didn’t. I knew we had to move, but my body wouldn’t. Jackson clutched my shoulder, shaking me out of my daze.
“We’ve gotta fucking go, or we are going to die too. We go, regroup, come back, and avenge our cousin,” he urged.
Jackson was right. I couldn’t die. Not today. I couldn’t die because I had to avenge my cousin’s death. I had to take down DG6 if it was the last fucking thing I did with my life. Jackson ran over and started the truck. He left the back passenger’s side door open for Megan and me.
When I could think straight enough to get Megan to safety, I saw that the girl was just standing there in front of Aaron with her eyes closed. She’d turned towards the area that Jackson had fired into moments ago, where the bullets were flying from. It took me a moment to realize what she was doing. She was standing there waiting for a bullet to hit her. She was facing a fucking firing squad with not an ounce of regard for her life.
I could clearly see in the dim lighting that she wasn’t in her right frame of mind. I tried to shake her out of it. “Megan! Megan! We’ve gotta fucking go.” But she was too far gone for me to shake some sense into her.
Jake came running towards me from the direction of the truck behind the one we were supposed to be climbing into. “I’ve got Wade in the second truck. We’ve gotta go! Get in the fucking truck…”
Jake’s words slammed to a stop when he noticed what was holding us up. Flying bullets made him duck and shoot in the direction the bullets traveled from. Megan yelled at the top of her lungs, continuing to face the fire. “No! Aaron! No!” She’d become nothing more than a screaming target. I tried to force her to follow me, but that crazy-woman strength was powering her.
“I’m not leaving him! I’m not leaving him!”
When a bullet struck the tree near her body, the damn girl didn’t even acknowledge that death was seconds away from her. She was ready to die. The will to live was supposed to be an overpowering force that made you fight for your life. Megan’s will had been extinguished when Aaron died. She was ready to die. I picked her up and tossed her over my shoulder, kicking and screaming. Jake had my back, firing off round after round as I ran towards the truck.
Once we were safely at the vehicle, I tossed Megan in before I entered after her. Jake ran around to the vehicle behind us and took off. A bullet struck the window next to me with a hard thump right next to my face, but the bullet-proof glass stopped it. Jackson threw the truck in reverse and proceeded to get us the hell out of there.
Our teams were specially trained for this type of battle, but with the number of mercenaries swarming around the place, I didn’t even know if they were going to make it. I was the one who had called D, so if they died here on this Texas ranch, their deaths would be on my hands.
“We can’t leave him. We can’t leave him.” This crazy woman had gotten most of her body across my lap and had sprung the door open. I had to keep her from hopping the rest of the way over me and out of the damn fast-moving vehicle as bullets continued to pelt the body of our SUV.
“Strikers, the package is down. Please pick up the package on the way out!” I yelled into the earpiece as I slung an arm over Megan’s chest, pinning her against the back of the seat. I didn’t have the heart to tell the men that the package, Aaron, was not only down, but he was dead. I’m sure they already knew what I was telling them to do. If they escaped the ranch, I wanted them to pick up Aaron’s body. I’d fully intended to bring my cousin with me, but I’d had to pick up Megan to keep a bullet out of her.
“Roger that.”
“Tracking.”
A few other acknowledgments came across the static-filled earpiece as I sat in the back of the SUV feeling like a lump of worthless shit.
Chapter Twenty-five
Ansel
Scott and Marcus and the three from Aaron’s crew, D, Dax, and Gavin were still at war. Marcus and Scott weren’t going to stop fighting until they or the enemy was dead. I was confident that Aaron’s crew would do the same.
The scratching in the earpiece wiped out the constant sound of gunfire. I’d lost my connection with the rest of the team as Jackson drove us further away from the ranch. He was driving the vehicle like a mad man, giving the engine a run for its money. We followed the dust of Jake and Wade in the vehicle in front of us. This was the first time I’d fled from a gunfight. Seeing Aaron dead had fucked me up so badly that even I knew to call it quits.
This mission was fucked. If only we’d had Aaron to do the planning. He was one of those people who would plan for weeks or months if he had to. The bastard would study every angle, escape route, and every other damn aspect of a mission down to the shit schedule of the guards before he would proceed and carry out a mission.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of time on our side and had gone in half-cocked. Now, Aaron was dead, and his team and mine were still back there fighting.
Aaron’s dead. The words burned through my mind, eating at my brain like acid through flesh. The image of Aaron, lifeless and devoid of anything that made him the Aaron I knew, fucked my head up. I’m never going to
see my cousin again.
“Fuck!” I yelled as the idea of him being dead drilled its way deeper into my tortured brain.
My curse had erupted through the cab of the vehicle and caused Jackson to glance back over the seat at me. Tears started to fall from my eyes. The foreign droplets slid down my cheeks, leaked from my eyes, and scared the shit out of me, but I couldn’t stop them. Aaron was more than just my cousin. He was my brother. He was my fucking big brother.
***
We drove until we came to the small town of Engles, Texas, about sixty-five miles away from the ranch. I’d managed to get my wounded arm to stop bleeding and was thankful I’d only been grazed by a bullet.
The fact that I could see Wade’s head moving in the vehicle in front of us was a good sign that he was still alive. As long as he was breathing, we would find him help.
I hadn’t figured out how to tell Uncle Shark that Aaron was gone. He was going to kill me or Megan or both of us. But, knowing my uncle the way that I did, he would wage full-fledged war on DG6, and I would be right there with him.
We couldn’t take Wade inside the hospital in the condition we were in, so I had Jake and Jackson set him near the emergency entrance. I instructed him to hobble into the emergency room and lie his ass off about how he’d gotten shot. We’d stripped him of the gear and equipment and cleaned him up as best we could. We’d ditched the second vehicle in the hospital parking structure like it belonged there. We sat across the street and watched the hospital staff run out to help Wade.
“We’ll come back and check on him later tonight,” I informed Jackson. “For now, find a motel where we can hold up.”
Jackson’s red-eye glare met mine in the rearview mirror before he nodded his head. Jake sat in the front passenger’s seat with his head laid back on the headrest. I didn’t have to look in his face to know that he was crying. His shaking shoulders and repeated sniffing told me so.
