I agree. They’re using military tactics on us.
Azami hesitated before venturing her opinion, but she’d thrown her lot in with this man, at least until they were out of the situation. I think the mercenaries are considered expendable. They had no idea you have a military compound anywhere close to them. They were too relaxed. The real soldiers are in front of us.
For one heart-stopping moment her breath caught in her throat as his lips seemed to press ever-so-briefly against her ear. I think you’re right. So the real question becomes, who really is after us, because they sure as hell know about the military compound and that they’re on a time limit. My people will be coming in hot and fast.
She turned her head to look at him. The moment their eyes met, his so dark and velvet soft, her stomach reacted with that strange fluttering. She smiled at him. Then we’d better get to work before someone else gets all the fun.
A slow grin spread across his face and reached his eyes. Approval was there and in spite of her determination to remain unmoved by anything else this man did, warmth spread through her.
My boss would kick my ass for deliberately taking you into combat.
I’m very proactive when it comes to saving my own life, she assured him. Or going after someone who endangers my brother. We need to know who is behind this. Thorn put steel into her voice.
She wasn’t going to back down. The attack hadn’t been directed at the compound itself. More than likely the threat was to her brother, and she’d been the one to allow him to take her place in the public eye. She moved subtly, telling him to let her go.
Sam nodded and signaled straight ahead. She liked that in him. They weren’t going to waste time and energy on the expendable mercenaries hired basically to get killed—he was going after the real threat. And he didn’t waste valuable time trying to argue with her; he recognized that she was no liability to him but rather a seasoned warrior.
They moved slowly, using the sounds of their enemy to cover their presence. Thorn would have preferred the night, but she could be invisible during the day nearly as well. The soldiers would be on high alert, hunting the two of them.
In the trees, she warned. Three o’clock.
Another at nine o’clock. Branches are too thick at twelve. Maneuver around and see if you can spot him. Take him out with your bow. I’ll handle the other two.
Her stomach muscles protested. The trees were a good thirty to fifty feet high. If he used a gun, the noise would draw the enemy in numbers. She could … Thorn stopped abruptly as another thought occurred. Sam was an enhanced GhostWalker. She hadn’t seen him cross that slope to get to the mercenaries, but he’d killed three of them before she shot the driver. True, she’d been distracted by the helicopter, but still, he’d moved too fast for anyone normal. Was it possible that he moved the way she did? Faster than the speed of light? A form of teleportation? Could there be two people capable of such a thing?
She slipped past him, careful not to disturb leaves as she used an animal’s tunnel to scoot through the heavier brush. She went about three feet before she turned to look over her shoulder. Sam wasn’t there anymore. She glanced toward the tree at nine o’clock and then tried to see the one at three o’clock. The view was entirely obscured, and in any case, she had a job to do.
Sam needed privacy to work his skills. Sending her off to find the enemy was a calculated risk. Could he kill both snipers in the trees before she was spotted? He didn’t waste time, taking the closest tree, the one at three o’clock. The man was up high, about thirty feet, sitting in the crotch of the tree, his rifle resting on the branch snaking out to provide both cover as well as support.
Trees were extremely dangerous when using teleportation. Too many sharp edges and the potential for missing smaller, unseen twigs made the idea terrifying, but his enemy was sitting up in that tree with a sniper rifle, hunting him and Azami. He wasn’t about to let that go. In any case, the foot soldiers had told him nothing about this particular attack. He wanted to find a way to follow the thread back to the snake’s head and he had to do it before Azami got hurt.
It was difficult not to think of her as a soldier. She was too well trained and it was easy to see her as a warrior rather than someone he needed to protect. She felt capable. She felt, gut-deep, like a partner. Still, he had to get into both trees and take out the snipers if they were to hold out until help came.
He studied the tree carefully, taking great care to find the perfect place to insert his body without damaging it and still get to the sniper before the man could alert the others—or kill him. He watched as the wind blew through the leaves and shifted the branches subtly. It was fortunate that the crotch of the tree was fairly bare of snapped-off branches, lessening the chances of making a mistake. He didn’t want to end up with a stake stuck through his leg—or any other part of his anatomy.
He picked his retreat, a spot closer to the other sniper, one that should afford him a good enough view to scope out an entry point. Unfortunately, the space was free of cover and he’d have only a moment to slip into the brush before the sniper would spot him. To ensure his chances, he would have to cause a small distraction, buying him just enough time to vanish.
Sam made the jump fast, a blinding, blurring speed that took less time than his thinking process had. His body hit the vee of the tree perfectly, but the momentum nearly threw him off the other side. Something bit hard at his calf and dug into his back, but he dismissed the pain and caught the sniper’s head by his hair, jerking it back as the knife bit deep into the throat. He shoved the body from the tree as he made the jump back to his retreat point, hoping the other sniper would look up at the movement of the body and give him those few seconds he needed.
He found himself a little disoriented, but he managed to slip into the brush and lie flat, his heart racing as he checked to make certain he was still all in one piece. Blood seeped from a stab wound on his calf where a broken branch had jabbed him. He couldn’t get his hand to his back without disturbing the brush around him to test for blood, but it hurt like a son of a bitch, so he didn’t need evidence that trees were not the place to try teleportation. Still—he was going to do it again.
He studied the sniper through the foliage. Dark hair, dark skin, yet not black, the man definitely knew the business end of a rifle. Sam found having enhanced vision was very helpful in just these situations. The sniper was much higher up in the tree, the branches thick and plentiful, making the tree easy to climb but much harder to teleport into. It would take seconds to actually make the jump and kill the sniper, but the hazards were far greater. He sighed. He was going to take a hit with this one.
Sam teleported through those close branches to the spot he’d chosen directly behind the sniper, another thick branch with smaller limbs sprouting in all directions. The sniper was speaking softly into his radio. The language shocked Sam. Farsi. What the hell did that mean? What would an Iranian sharpshooter be doing in the Lolo National Forest? How did soldiers from a foreign country make entry into the United States with the weapons they had?
As his feet found purchase on the branch, his weight sent a shiver through the tree, enough that the sniper turned his head while he was still talking. His eyes went wide with shock and he broke off abruptly. Sam lunged forward, kicking hard, driving his foot into the man’s chest, sending him tumbling out of the tree as he tried to swing his rifle around.
The man fell, his mouth wide-open but no sound emerging. The rifle fell with him, but not before Sam caught a good glimpse of it. There was no doubt in his mind that the rifle was a Dragunov sniper rifle, produced in Iran as the Nakhjir sniper rifle. He needed that evidence. He materialized beside the body and snatched up the rifle, projecting himself back to his chosen retreat spot before sliding into the brush once again. Bullets hit all around him, zipping into the brush from several directions.
“Surrender,” a voice barked out. The command was issued in English, but heavily accented.
Sam scuttled like a crab, his body hugging the ground as he slipped through the small animal trail into heavier brush. Bullets pounded the dirt, spat splinters from the bark on the trees, whipped through leaves, and hummed past his ears. One burned his back and another skimmed his arm, slicing hot and painful, taking a strip of flesh. But he found the depression he’d been looking for and scooted into it, burrowing deep.
The volley of shots ceased as if someone had given an order. “You will die if you don’t surrender,” the voice warned again.
When Sam made no sound, the hail of bullets seemed to increase their fury.
Where the hell was the cavalry? Azami? Are you clear? He was going to have to chance surrendering, because he was definitely going to take a bullet if this kept up.