Shattered (Anderson Special Ops #4) - Melody Anne Page 0,96

attempt at kicking the ball sent it a mile in the air. The end result, unfortunately, was a net length of only thirty-five yards. His next one was a little better, but the third was a thing of perfection. The ball seemed to be released out of a rocket launcher as he snapped his foot into the sweet spot of the ball and ended up going sixty-eight yards. Everyone in the stands went crazy, whistling, cheering, and clapping at the extravagant display.

From there, Brackish got to his next event, which was what he’d been waiting for, coding. An absolutely evil grin overtook his face as he looked into the stands, found Erin, and gave her a nod that said he’d just won the competition. She smiled back at him, gave him a proud nod, then shouted out her praise. He sat down, cracked his knuckles for effect, and started hammering the keyboard like a mad scientist.

“You know nobody likes you, right?” Smoke said over his computer pad.

“What?” Brackish questioned with an air of false hurt, not even pausing as he typed over one hundred words per minute — keeping direct eye contact with Smoke, showing his superiority in this realm.

“Shut up,” was the only thing Smoke could reply with.

Brackish stood, showed the person monitoring the event that his screen had a green checkmark, and he was given the thumbs up to move on. What each of his team members would soon learn was that he’d put a small hack into the system — so when they tried to submit their work it would all disappear, and start them at the beginning, leaving them a computerized hand, flipping off whoever was looking at the screen. He knew it was nefarious, and they’d scream bloody murder, but he couldn’t help himself — there was no rule book, and no one said it wasn’t allowed, so, why not have a little fun with it?

What he hadn’t realized was that he was showcased on the massive screen for all of their audience. The people running the event were quickly able to delete the entire program, and re-install before anyone else came up. They were able to get Smoke back to the spot where he’d been interrupted, as well. Not for nothing, a few people took a photo of what the screen had looked like and started sending it all around the cyber world.

Eyes was the first to pull the matching game — and trying to make his fifty matches on such a huge platform was frustrating and more difficult than he’d thought it would be. The crowd slowly started getting into the game, and after teasing him for a bit, they all but played the game for him — he just made his choices based on what the crowd told him to.

The same thing happened with sudoku, the chess game against the computer, and the craziest one of all of the games, taking themselves and five kids, all six of them blindfolded, through the maze.

The Special Ops men listened to the crowd while in the maze and followed their cues on each turn to take until they made it through. There was so much laughing and fun that at times the men would forget it was a contest between them and their brothers — until they saw one of the men working on a station. Then competitive juices started flowing again.

Everyone in attendance could feel the pressure start to mount as the end of the Olympics were nearing. Purposely the event was to end on the one-hundred-meter dash while wearing a seventy-five-pound weighted vest. The tides had shifted the second half of the day, and now the competitors were separated by only four points. It was a tight race.

The current point count was Brackish: 91, Chad: 92, Green: 92, Eyes: 93, Smoke: 95 and Sleep: 95. Anyone could win based on the race they were lining up for. The crowd was on their feet, some holding their breath, some screaming encouragement for the person they wanted to win.

“Well boys, I might be exhausted beyond belief, but I’m still the fastest man among us, and I’ll absolutely lock this entire thing up here,” Smoke said without a shred of doubt in his voice.

“You’re all but mathematically out of this. You’ll probably come in first, but you have such a low probability of winning that it’s sad,” Brackish replied.

Chad did some quick math, and knew he had to come in at least fourth to tie Smoke’s