Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(80)

The guy who’d fallen against the SUV stumbled and pitched into the ravine, sprawling against the tumbled boulders. Bam, the guy who had investigated the chain was suddenly flat on the ground at the roadside, clutching his leg.

“Body armor,” Sean said tersely into his ear. “Go for the thigh.”

Bam. Bam. Sean kept firing, but Bruno couldn’t tell at who.

He stared at the wounded guys on his side of the vehicle. The guy who’d checked the chain was clutching a wet red wound in his thigh. The other was trying to climb up to the roadway. Bruno took a breath, let it out, aiming for the climbing guy’s leg . . . squeezed the trigger. Bam. The guy shrieked. He’d hit his target, amazingly.

Now the hard part. “Going to cuff them,” he muttered.

He hauled the plastic cuffs out and burst out of his hiding place, leaping, skidding, and sliding down the slope toward the fallen men.





18


Zoe scrambled for cover, gasping. She’d taken





a shot to the SAPI trauma plate that had slammed her down and knocked out her wind. Cracked a rib or two, maybe. It hurt to breathe.

Those scheming pricks. She was so angry she could bite out her own tongue. Her neck had been prickling since they stopped at the chain. Now Hal was dead, his head half gone. She was splattered with his blood and brain tissue. The rest of the team was likewise f*cked.

Jeremy and Manfred were down, whimpering. So accustomed to being unbeatable, they had no idea how to manage themselves when compromised. She wanted to shoot them herself to make them shut up. She peeked around a boulder, scanning for movement.

Yes. Thee, in a camo poncho, oozing toward her downed team members. She squeezed off a shot. Ranieri jerked but kept scrambling.

Zinggghh, the sniper returned fire and forced her back down.

They had body armor, too. The cunts. She should have known when she saw the chain. She hadn’t seen a chain in the satellite photos.

Of course not. That’s because there hadn’t been one, bitch.

So arrogant. So stupid of her to think she could manage without an armored SUV. So sure her elite, superbly competent team could handle it, with all their firepower. And now they’d been slammed.

She’d thought this through so carefully, weighing the need for speed against the safety of a larger team. The only other trained operatives in the area were the losers Hobart and Melanie, and that opportunistic whore Nadia, who was in any case too busy f*cking Aaro. It would have taken days to get more people, and it was so important to move today, while Parr and Ranieri were alone, relatively exposed. If she’d waited, they’d have been swept behind the protective wall of the McCloud family, which raised the stakes, the price tag, and the risk of exposure exponentially.

And look at her. Wasting time justifying her mistakes.

She’d felt so superior to Reggie, but she’d made his exact error. Underestimating those sneaky, steaming pieces of shit. Again.

She’d had several different possible plans in place. She’d been ready to jump in any direction, but she’d favored the simplicity of positioning snipers above the road to pick them off like rats.

Exactly like they’d just done to her own team.

She slithered through wells between huge tumbled boulders and found a crevice to peer through. Ranieri was already jerking plastic cuffs tight around Jeremy’s wrists. She estimated him at forty-five meters. She leaped up, took aim.

Bam. Her aim was off. The shot caught him on the torso, center mass. With body armor, that did nothing more than knock him backward. He hit the ground, scrambled for cover.

Bam, bam, McCloud forced her back down while Ranieri crawled toward Manfred. Her best chance was the thicket in the ravine.

She crawled into the brush-choked gully, scrabbling in rocks and roots and spiny foliage. Up over the edge of the drop-off. She wiggled through scrubby brush until she found a place to look down. A hundred meters, maybe a little more. Fuck, her chest hurt.

Jeremy lay on the ground, trussed and helpless in a pool of blood, but still writhing. Ranieri had cuffed Manfred, too, but he was bleeding out. It was a very long shot from here with a Beretta Px4 pistol, but the other M4s and the M110s had been packed into the vehicle out of reach. She’d improvise. She focused on Ranieri’s dirt-smeared face, took careful aim, relaxing, focusing, but the filthy bastard was a blur of constant, restless movement. She dogged Ranieri with the Baretta as he hoisted the writhing Jeremy under his armpits, dragging him over and throwing him right next to Manfred. Jeremy saw his colleague, the gaping leg wound, the blood. Manfred’s slack face, his staring eyes.

The realization of what was about to happen hit Jeremy the same moment it hit Zoe. He jerked up, arching and straining— Boom. She flinched as Manfred’s cell phone blew up, flipping his and Jeremy’s bodies both into the air. The cell had selfdestructed shortly after the cessation of Manfred’s heartbeat.

That blast had to have killed Jeremy, too. Zoe braced herself.

Boom, the other phone went off as well. She peeked out. Only the still, broken bodies of her team were lying there. So Ranieri had not been killed. He’d taken cover. Hiding like a lizard in the rocks. Cowed.

He must be so bewildered. So confused.

Her body shook with silent giggles. So funny. She hadn’t even considered those phone selfdestruct mechanisms as a danger at all. They were accustomed to easy, smooth victories. No losses. No contest.