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“We’re going to need the climbing gear,” I muttered over the coms.
“Fuck that,” Yas shot back. “We should’ve stolen a fucking helicopter.”
As the other speedboats began dropping anchor along the jutting shoreline, bullets started whizzing down from up on high. Looked like the loony-bin Uncle had actually planned for attack.
He hadn’t planned for me though.
Standing up in the rocking vessel while more slugs zipped and sizzled into the water, I glanced at Konstantin.
Fire sparked in his eyes as he unpacked the weapon I most definitely wanted.
Hello rocket launcher.
Goodbye cliffside.
I blasted apart nests of Abdullah’s hired troops, listening to echoed yells and crashing rock.
In fast succession, I took out the advance forces and most likely alerted the rest to our presence.
Whatever.
Not exactly a subtle approach.
But then again, they hadn’t exactly been a welcoming party either.
We clambered from the boats, harnessed up, and quickly shot our grappling hooks up and over the cliff top until the claws latched on and held.
All my destruction-by-RPG had the added bonus of providing more ledges and handholds, as long as we avoided the rockslides.
Scrambling upward in full camo gear, I kept my gun at the ready for anyone foolish enough to take more pot shots from above.
Everyone managed to make it topside but, as soon as we heaved ourselves over, another round of rapid fire blazed from within the fortress’s narrow openings.
And that was when I pulled my semi-auto machine gun out.
Pop, pop, pop.
Shots harried back and forth.
We took cover, staged forward, listened to screams as our bullets hit targets.
Like the highly trained marauders we were, we kept up the attack and surged onward.
Not knowing exactly where Roya was being kept, I didn’t use the rocket launcher again. There’d be time to raze the fortress to the ground after I got her back.
And there were more stealthy ways to attack other than going hell for leather in broad daylight but I didn’t fucking care.
There was only one mission.
Retrieve Roya by all means necessary.
With the rat-a-tat-tat from the other side slowing, maybe they were falling back farther into the stone walls, or maybe there weren’t really that many of them to begin with.
So far, my soldiers remained as unscathed and as single-minded as me.
Once we breached the entrance, we had to split up. The place was one big sprawl of corridors and offshoots, and we had no blueprint to go by, just the bigger and bigger flashing dot with Roya’s location.
I signaled to all my men that we’d peel off and make a full circle of the place, killing all in our way.
I marshaled Konstantin, Yas, and Zain with me.
Following some deep internal instinct, I led the way through the building and into a sun-bright and completely barren courtyard.
I noticed Zain gripped his KA-BAR in one hand, a pistol in the other, always alert and earning more of my respect.
At the opposite side of the structure, I darted around a column and caught the glinting metal of a gun muzzle. In an instant, I smoked the would-be-slayer.
Then I heard a door bang from somewhere below and a squealing shout of alarm. Called toward that noise, I discovered a set of wide, worn stone steps descending to a subterranean level.
That was when I heard a sound that pricked all the hair along my arms and at the back of my neck.
“Stop! Get . . . Off . . . Me!”
Roya!
She was alive.
She was alive and coherent enough to try to repel whoever attacked her.
Blood boiling and my vision razor sharp, I sprinted down the steps, vaulting them two at a time.
The door I must’ve heard moments earlier hung wide open and I didn’t even stop to check for other assailants.
I barreled right in, intent on braining the man hurting my woman. Then I saw her.
Shackled by stretched arms and spread legs to the wall and the floor, she was naked with a very soon-to-be dead motherfucker groping all over her with his pants shucked down below his bare ass.
My rage fomented, pure poisonous black.
