Page 92 of Burdens
I halted in my tracks, nearly causing Nassim to collide with me. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” I groaned. “How and why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“My father used to work here, remember? And besides, it was quite entertaining seeing your face when I started singing,” he said, amused.
If only shooting him were an option…
“Just… fucking lead the way,” I whisper-shouted gesturing with my gun for him to walk ahead of me.
After a few minutes, he stopped short and faced the wall.
My eyes narrowed on Nassim’s back. “What are you doing?” I questioned, frustration licking at my veins if he was stalling us again.
“Just wait,” he replied, his fingers brushing against the wall as if he were looking for something.
I was on the verge of leaving him behind to continue searching for where Barrera was hiding when the faint echo of voices sounded behind the concrete wall.
I listened closely, straining my ear to eventually discern that both Barrera and Hamza were on the other side. “We could have saved precious minutes if you’d just told me you knew where he’d be.”
He peered at me over his shoulder with a grin on his face. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“If your wife wasn’t pregnant, I would have shot you myself,” I said, the grip on my gun tightening.
He shrugged off my comment. “Ready?” he asked, reaching for something strapped to his thigh. He then stuck it onto the middle of the wall and stepped back, examining it.
My eyes widened. “Is that C-4?” I asked, my voice a mixture of shock and disbelief. “You’ve been carrying C-4 this whole time?” I whispered-yelled at him.
He faced me. “Yes, now let’s move back before we get blown up with it,” he said, guiding toward the end of the hallway where we came from.
Once we were both shielded behind the wall, he retrieved a small remote from his pocket and pressed on a small button, detonating the bomb.
The force of the blast blew the wall, shocking the ground beneath us, and I reached out to steady myself against the wall. A thick haze of smoke billowed out of the wall, shrouding the corridor in a ghostly veil.
Quite poetic for what we were about to do.
We swiftly made our way back, weaving through the debris, their acrid smell stinging my nostrils. As the dust slowly settled, it revealed a clean hole through the wall.
The room inside, one I’d never seen before, bore the scars of the explosion, the surfaces charred and marked with debris. The furniture lay strewn about haphazardly, some of the pieces overturned from the impact.
I could count about ten or so men scattered around on the floor, shielding their faces and disoriented from the sudden explosion.
Nassim and I each took a side, immediately getting to work before the haze from the impact dissipated and they realized we were intruders.
Gunshots and screams rang through the air from my left while I scanned the room on my side and spotted Hamza, cowering in a pressed suit in the far corner of the room. He was hunched with his hands above his head to protect himself.
Jodidamente patético?3.
I headed in his direction, executing every guard on my way to him before they could reach for their guns, leaving a trail of corpses in my wake. I’d almost made it to him when Nassim’s voice thundered above the gunfire.
“Watch out.”
I looked just in time to duck behind a chair as a bullet came straight at me. It whizzed right past my head, so close to hitting me that it moved my hair from the closeness.
I lay flat on my stomach and shot the bastard in both of his kneecaps. He collapsed to the floor and I aimed my gun at his face, pulling the trigger and shooting him between the eyes.
That’ll serve you for trying to fucking shoot me.
I sensed movement in my periphery and turned just in time to fire at Hamza, who had attempted to take me out.
The bullet hit him in his shooting arm, which made him drop his gun. He tried to reach for it, but I quickly got to my feet and rushed to close the distance separating us.
