Page 12 of Delta Mission
She shouldn't be here. She shouldn’t even be in this fucked-up country. It was one thing to serve as a DEA agent in America, but in a hellhole like this . . . it was suicide.
If anything happens to her . . .
A vice clamped around my heart. We hadn’t spoken in over nine years, and I’d never wanted to see her again. But the second I had, my mind had careened all over the damn place. Just like it had when her mission went to shit in Colombia.
She came home alive that time. Just. She better be okay this time.
I pulled out my gaffer tape and stripped off my tactical vest and shirt. As I rolled the tape over the bloody gash in my arm, I scanned the area, searching for a way out of this damn pit.
After I put my gear back on, I dodged around metal drums and broken furniture, aiming for the trapdoor I’d fallen through. My rifle still dangled six feet above me.
I removed my NODs and peered upward. The ceiling was fifteen feet high, and the ground above that was at least three feet thick. No wonder my signal was compromised. I had a narrow visual of the mud shelter above. Nobody was up there.
“Moose, Wildman, it’s Wolf. Can you hear me?” I whispered into my mic.
Nothing.
Without any choice, I risked announcing my position, and yelled. “Hello, is anyone there?”
Goddammit.
Where are they?
A thought crashed into me like an atomic bomb.
Are they dead?
No! I refused to believe that.
They were retreating. That was what Moose had said.
They had retreated. It was the only explanation.
I jumped up, trying to reach the barrel of my rifle, but couldn’t.
Scraping an old metal chair over, I stood on it and leaped upward, knocking the chair flying, and grabbed my rifle. My legs swung beneath me and the gash in my arm stung like a bitch.
Straining, I pulled my chin as high as the floor above me, but there was nothing to grab onto.
“Hey! Is anyone there?”
My heart thundered in my ears. My arms trembled.
Fuck. I couldn’t do it.
I lowered back down, checked where the toppled chair was, let go of my rifle, and plunged back into near darkness.
I removed my helmet and drove my fingers through my cropped hair.
Has my team abandoned me? Did they think I was dead?
A faint light in the distance caught my eye. I yanked my NODs back on and searching the green hue, I marched toward the glow. On the opposite side of the room, a narrow beam came through from the corner of the ceiling.
I thumped the wall that I’d thought was made of concrete. It wasn’t. This one was hollow.
I took a few steps back, and shoulder charged into it.
A massive section of wall caved in, and I landed on top of it. It had barely been a wall at all. I jumped to my feet and pulled my gun, ready for an attack. Light streamed in from a jagged four-foot hole in the roof of a room that was as still as a funeral home.
