Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games #2)(98)
His brows lift.
“How are you going to call your guards if you can’t speak?”
His brows pull together into a frown, which deepens when he sees my grim smile.
In a whip-crack move, I cock my arm back and then punch him in the throat.
Thirty-Seven
Connor
We’re lying on our stomachs at the top of a rocky slope, a line of six silent men scanning the dark terrain below with night vision goggles.
The narrow valley resting between two low hills is much less rugged and densely forested than what we came through. It was a deliberate choice to hump it through the rough stuff, for purposes of both concealment and the probability that the more direct route in through the mouth of the valley would be heavily defended. So far we haven’t encountered anything unusual except shitty weather and the discovery that Reid’s flatulence could qualify as a lethal weapon.
I’ve been careful since then to stay upwind.
The rain that made our trek in so unpleasant has tapered off, leaving the sky above us crystal clear. Stars wink and glitter on the black canvas of the heavens. An ethereal, wavering green aurora of light on the horizon is the famous Northern Lights, which none of us take the time to appreciate.
“Two o’clock,” whispers Ryan, to my left, his breath a frost of white in the air. I swing around a few degrees and spot what he’s already looking at.
“Huey 212,” I murmur, eying the bird. “Mounted with twin M240s.”
Murphy, lying on my right, whispers, “We’ve definitely got the right spot.”
I agree. A black helicopter mounted with large machine guns hidden under a camouflage canopy is a dead giveaway for a bad-guy lair. Add to that a chain-link fence topped with razor wire enclosing the perimeter of what appears to be only a quiet alpine meadow, security cameras mounted on trees, and a hatch work of infrared sensor beams slicing through the dark. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
With a toggle on my rifle, I switch my night vision to thermal. “Hello there,” I say softly, spotting a warm body in the trees about two hundred meters out. A sentry.
“He’s got two buddies,” says Kasey at the same time I locate them, another fifty meters south. They’re all armed with rifles, spread out in a loose formation around a boulder, which I believe is an ingress point to the caves below. The guards don’t appear to be on high alert. One of them is taking a piss. Another is crouched under the low, spreading boughs of a tree, smoking a cigarette. This is good news. They’re not expecting company, which means we haven’t tripped any silent alarms on our way in.
We lie in silence for another twenty minutes, observing them.
It’s the Marine nicknamed Big Swingin’ Dick who finally speaks, for the first time since we set out. All he says is one word, spoken in a deep, rumbling voice like the low roll of thunder.
“Dibs.”
I whisper, “Happy hunting, soldier.”
The quiet spit of his suppressed weapon startles a nearby bird, sending it into shrieking flight. The guards have two bullets in each of their brains in the time it takes me to count to three. They go down, the bird flies away, and then the quiet of the forest is momentarily broken as six men rise to their feet and begin a crouched forward descent through the trees.
Thirty-Eight
Tabby
One of the main principles of Krav Maga is to strike aggressively at the weak spots of an opponent’s body in order to quickly neutralize a threat. And one of the most vulnerable spots on the human body is the throat. Even light pressure applied to the trachea causes severe pain. A more aggressive strike can crush the windpipe, resulting in death by suffocation as no air can be drawn upward from the lungs.
The blow I land on S?ren’s trachea is extremely aggressive.
He stumbles back, clutching his throat, making a hideous gagging sound I find very satisfying.
But because he’s not technically neutralized, he’s still a threat. And so—because I’ve been well trained—I’m forced to go after another one of the body’s most vulnerable areas.
The feet.
Conveniently, his are bare.
I stride forward, grip him by the elbow, and, as hard as I can, drive my heel down onto the arch of his foot. I feel bone splintering, which is accompanied by the unmistakable sound of bone splintering.
S?ren drops like a stone.
He curls into the fetal position on the floor, clawing at his throat and gasping for air, his eyes bulging, unable to scream because of the sad state of his trachea.
He doesn’t look so elegant anymore.
I lean over him and say, “If your trachea is crushed, you’ll suffocate within one or two minutes. If it’s badly damaged but not completely crushed, there’s a likelihood of severe edema, in which case you’ve got about seven minutes before your windpipe swells shut. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
“Now I could just let you die. I planned on that, which you already guessed. However, your point was well taken. The one about if I murdered you, I’d be just like you, I mean. And so what I propose is this. You let me know where you’ve taken Juanita, and I will give you a pen. With this pen, properly applied, you’ll be able conduct an emergency tracheotomy on yourself.