by Keta Kendric
When I turned the knob and pushed the front door open, I heard Aaron tell Ansel, “I’m going to kick your ass. Keep your hands off my woman.”
Hearing them laugh was a good sign, considering what they were likely about to face. Their laughter was the last pleasant sound I heard before I closed the door behind me. I stood against the inside of the front door, listening as the roar of Ansel’s truck faded with each passing second.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Shark walked into the living room. He stood in the doorway that led into the kitchen and stared at me as tears streamed down my cheeks. The flow had started, so there was no stopping them now, so I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“He’s going to be all right. All you need to do is believe in him. Believe that no matter what happens, he’ll find a way to come back.” Shark nodded his head once to ensure I understood his words.
I bit into my quivering bottom lip, trying but failing to stop the flow of my tears and the tremble that had started in my body. As soon as I nodded my head towards Shark, he turned and left me there. I assumed Shark hated me, but I was starting to find that when it came to these men and this MC, I’d grossly underestimated them at every turn.
My head leaned back and against the front door before I pushed my body forward and headed towards the bedroom that Aaron and I shared. Aaron hadn’t left me without company. I bunked with a PK380 pistol to the right side of the bed and a Beretta to the left. Aaron was sure that the safe house was safe, but the unease that plagued my body had me sitting in the middle of the bed staring up at the shadows that waved along the dark ceiling.
Chapter Thirteen
Aaron
The hardest thing I’d ever seen or done was witnessing my younger brother Ryan’s death and standing by helplessly as he was being lowered into the ground at his funeral. Now, I had another to add to my list of hardest things.
Leaving Megan took it out of me. I understood why she was worried. I was more worried about her if something happened to me than I was worried about death. Although I was a tad confident, I wasn’t as arrogant about facing deadly situations as my cousin was. Any number of circumstances could occur that would send death in our direction.
Although I was willing to do what was necessary to stay alive, I accepted the fact that I had no control over it. My only concern at this point was leaving Megan to face this harsh life alone. This was a new experience for me. I never used to think about dying or how it would affect anyone until I met Megan. Now that I had someone to live for, it appeared death lurked at every corner of my life.
Ansel must have noticed my solemn mood because he didn’t tease or taunt me during the hour-long drive to James County. Instead, we talked strategy and how best to handle the situation without getting ourselves killed. That we were both ex-military was a plus. It meant we knew how these guys thought and how they would react to an attack.
It took us hours of searching the spotted patches of thick woods behind the targeted house to find a good spot to park Ansel’s truck.
Thankfully, the house was situated in an area where the nearest neighbor sat about a mile down the partially-wooded road. I’d assumed the place was in some type of subdivision, but the large homes clearly belonged to owners that could afford to buy hundreds of acres of land. The space was congested with fat pine trees, their barks bore a reddish tint, giving the area its name: Redwood Pines.
Between Ansel’s duffle bag and mine, we had enough weaponry and firepower to take out a small military installation. I’d brought my grenade launcher, and Ansel had brought a damn 50 Cal machine gun. Who did he think we were fighting, Al Qaeda? I didn’t have much room to judge my cousin’s choice in weaponry, though. Since I’d essentially started a war in those woods with DG6 and their operatives, I suppose we had unconsciously planned for one.
It had taken some swift maneuvering, but we’d gotten the truck through the congestion of the dense woods. There were a few areas where we’d had to exit the truck and cut a path through the woods. We’d even re-mapped the path to mark our way and ensure we had a good understanding of how to get out of the woods swiftly if things went sideways. Ansel maneuvered his truck over large ruts and dips until we made it to within a quarter mile of the target location.
The house stood large and stately enough to be classified as a mansion. Its dark bricks stood strong, covering two levels that reared over a pool in the backyard and supported a three-car garage. If DG6 could afford to put their hired guns up in a place this nice, I’d like to see how they treated their bosses.
The gangbangers that had DG6 tatted all over their bodies were nothing more than a bunch of untrained foot soldiers and were likely why the leaders of the gang had opted to use mercenaries to take care of what they’d deemed serious business.
I found it difficult to believe that they had sent an army of men after a five-foot-five, barely over a hundred-pound woman. Well, I take that back. I could understand them upping their efforts to capture or kill Megan. She had killed an original member of their gang as well as the gang member’s nephew and wife, so they weren’t going to stop until she was dead.
She’d also managed to elude the group on her own for nearly a decade, which proved she was fully capable of taking care of herself and worthy of their efforts. But, Megan had me on her side now, and I was determined to put an end to the threat that constantly loomed over her life.
“D, what you got for me?” I asked after my phone rang only once. I put the phone on speaker and sat it on the tailgate of the truck so Ansel and I could listen.
“Knox, you have your laptop up?” I had no idea why D had insisted upon me bringing a laptop, but I was curious to find out. “I sent you the blueprints of the house,” he explained.
“I’ve also tapped into a satellite near your location, and it’ll get us a peek inside the house by allowing me to tap into other digital devices.”
“No shit!” Ansel said before I could respond to D’s statement. I’d introduced Ansel to D over the phone so they’d know each other’s voices and so that Ansel could listen in on whatever updates D discussed.
“No shit,” D answered Ansel back with a chuckle. “Watch this.”
My laptop sat on the tailgate next to the phone. D took control of it remotely, and with a few clicks, he had an aerial map of the area we were in on the screen. He zoomed in tight enough that roofs of houses started to come into view. Since it was after six in the morning, the sun had chased away the darkness, allowing us to clearly see what D was showing us.
As soon as the house we targeted came into view, D zoomed in close enough for us to see the guard standing inside a small guard shack near the front gate. D spied so close in fact that we could see the guard place a cigarette up to his lips and take a drag from it. When D hijacked the camera on the guard’s smartphone that was sitting someplace behind him, we were that much closer. We actually saw the ingrown hairs on the back of the man’s neck.
The shit was something straight out of a damn spy film. I’d known D for over seven years, had deployed with him, had slept in a foxhole with him, and had killed enemy forces with him. However, I’d never gotten used to the amazing shit he could do with a computer.
More spying showed us guards on either side of the house and one in the backyard. Ansel and I stood in wide-eyed shock at what we were seeing. D had been able to do this type of surveillance in the military because we had top-secret clearances that gave us access to technology and devices we weren’t supposed to be able to touch as regular civilians.
The crunch of nearby twigs breaking caused Ansel and I to draw our weapons and aim in the direction of the noise almost immediately. The clicks of our weapons caused the surrounding woods to grow eerily quiet. The moment Ansel and I holstered our weapons, D asked, “Everything all right in your neck of the woods?”
“Yeah. It’s a fucking rabbit hopping his happy, little ass around. He was about a second from getting his ass blown off.”
> D laughed at Ansel’s comment before he returned to giving us live views and angles of the property we were planning to infiltrate. Just like he’d said he would do, D adjusted the zoom close enough to one of the unobstructed windows to allow us a view of the inside of the house. He tapped into a few devices, a smart television, a few smartphones, and a laptop that gave us close-up snapshots of our enemies’ faces.
We counted three contractors sitting around a large table eating breakfast and talking, likely discussing their assignment. We didn’t have audio, so we were left attempting to decode their words. Another guy sat on a couch, flipping through the channels on a large-screen television mounted on the wall.
We couldn’t see anything through any of the top windows, and D had been unable to connect to any devices that could sneak us a peek. However, we got a peek at the top of the stairs and a small piece of the hall on one of the two upstairs wings. We’d also taken a trip down the hall on the first floor. One of the first-floor bedrooms was being used as a possible surveillance room, but there was nothing in the room that D was able to connect to that allowed us a look inside.
“How long do we have this feed?” I asked D. “I want to study these motherfuckers and the blueprints.”
“You’ll have this feed for as long as you need it. Believe it or not, it was easier hijacking this satellite than it is to get into the lowest level NSA encryptions.”
I didn’t want to know the kind of national security violations D was breaking or was involved in.
“I appreciate this, man,” I said, my words edging out quickly because I hated any type of sentimentality. Megan was the only person who could somehow drag any emotional shit out of me.
“Yeah, man. We appreciate this shit,” Ansel repeated. “My cousin didn’t tell me he had high-level contacts like you on speed dial.”
“No problem. Happy to help.” D chuckled. “Knox, remember if you need me, just give me a call. I counted at least twelve in that house the first time I scanned it. There could be more.”
Although I knew D couldn’t see me do it, I nodded my head.
“If shit gets bad. You know what to do, D.”
I’d filled D in on every aspect of Megan’s story and my feelings for her. Well, except for the personal shit like our explosive sex life, but D knew about as much as Ansel did. If shit went bad, D would link up with Ansel to keep Megan safe. If both Ansel and I perished, D knew where the safe house was.
“Yep. Later, Knox.”
“Later, D.”
I didn’t have to glance up from my monitor to know that Ansel’s glare was upside my head.
“What?” I asked, not bothering to lift my gaze to his.
“Motherfucker, I knew the military put you into some black-ops shit, but you didn’t tell me you were connected like this. Your man highjacked a fucking satellite and was talking about NSA encryptions and shit.”
I waved Ansel’s comments away. He used to be a damn ranger, so I knew with a great degree of certainty he had as many, if not more connections than I did.
Also, two of the men who had traveled from California with him were his ranger buddies, Scott and Marcus. I hadn’t missed the matching tattoos on their arms, which told me they all used to be in the same squad. Ansel had introduced them to me the day he’d arrived, but I hadn’t seen them since.
After D had shown us what was inside the house we targeted, Ansel contacted Scott and Marcus, and they had agreed to join us. They were likely already on the road heading in our direction. With them on the way, we would be four trained killers versus two, which meant this party was likely going to be a bloody one.
Chapter Fourteen
Aaron
Scott and Marcus arrived a little after nine o’clock that morning. The tailgate of Ansel’s truck had become our operation’s center.
We’d laid low most of the day, studying our targets. We’d lost the satellite feed a few times, but D had gotten it back for us. Shit, he may as well have been our fifth man. When we were studying the targets and figuring out a way into the house, he entertained our concerns and made suggestions.
I, as well as Ansel, had packed a bedroll and his men didn’t have to be told to do the same. However, I did recall Ansel telling one of the men on the phone to make sure he brought Tina. I assumed Tina was an object, but when I asked Ansel about Tina, he remained tight-lipped and kept a huge smile on his face.
We’d studied the people in the house and the blueprints for hours. We took advantage of the satellite feed to spy on and get real-time accounts of the activities taking place inside the house. The all-male crew mostly lounged around, but there was one thing—the most important thing—we noticed. None of them were too far out of arm’s reach of a weapon. The men who surrounded and guarded the perimeter of the house were a part of the crew. They took turns guarding the place, rotating every six hours like they expected to be attacked.
The nearest neighbors were about a mile or more away, which was good news because we didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. If the nearest neighbor heard the distant sound of gunfire, hopefully, we’d have completed our mission and disappeared before the authorities arrived.
Speaking of the mission, our aim for this one was to obtain the grid coordinates or some type of a geographic location for DG6 other than a dude ranch in Texas. The man Ansel had tortured at The Copper Grand Hotel revealed that the last two original members of the gang frequented the ranch and that some of their family lived there. Two out of three of the men we’d tortured informed us that there was another DG6 heavy hitter that hung out at the location in Texas as well.
The concept of taking out the leaders in this gang and making it crumble from the top was a far better plan than picking off the little guys. However, we had to find these infamous leaders first, preferably, the one sending groups of men to hunt Megan.
As the sun started to retreat, Scott offered to run a recon on the house of mercenaries to find out if there was anything we could have missed using the blueprints and our spying eye in the sky. I didn’t understand the extent of what Scott was offering until Ansel explained it.
“When he says recon, he means all the way in, up the stairs, down the stairs, and throughout the house.”
I glanced at Scott with a questioning gaze. He was over six-feet with a medium build—a big ass target, so how he planned to do what Ansel had suggested was beyond me. Like D, Scott looked harmless, but if he could do what Ansel was saying, he was as dangerous as my cousin.
Often, I found myself in situations where I had to be stealthy, but to get into a house filled with contract killers and snoop around was on another level. To do it with cameras and motion detectors surrounding the place was going to make the man a magician.
“I know what you’re thinking, Aaron, and the answer is yes. He’s that good,” Ansel assured as a sneaky smile crept across Scott’s face.
“I’ve seen this fool slink in and out of so many enemy camps that I’ve lost count. Then, he’d come back with a map and detailed descriptions of anything or anyone that might have been a threat to us.”
I glanced at Scott again.
“Do you guys even know why we’re doing this? Do you even know why we are about to engage a group of mercenaries that we’re probably going to torture and kill?”
Scott and Marcus said the same thing—that they were there to help Ansel. I didn’t have to be a psychologist to see that these men craved violence, maybe even lived for it. They were also loyal to my cousin and were possibly the same caliber of crazy as him. I guess it was the same thing D was willing to do for me. If I called D, Dax, Gavin, or Luke, they’d be willing to jump into the fray, and I’d do the same for either of them in return.
Scott agreed to go on his recon mission a little after 7:00 p.m. When he returned an hour later with details on the location of guns, where everyone slept, and confirmation that D had been right about twelve members, I was floored. And it took a lot to floor me.
Scott
had been able to locate and cut the feed that triggered the motion lights. He’d been able to get into the surveillance room and had gotten a few glimpses at what the cameras saw around the house, finding us a few extra blind spots. He’d been reluctant to manipulate the devices because he was a reconnaissance expert, not a tech guru like D. Earlier, D had attempted to manipulate the cameras and motion detectors, but the technology of the security equipment had been too much for the satellite technology to overcome.
We studied the information Scott had provided along with the live feed. By ten o’clock, we’d all pulled out our bedrolls or whatever we intended to sleep on and were resting. We decided the best time, like we’d been trained, was to strike around 2 a.m. while the crew was relaxed and most of them would be asleep.
With my sleeping bag spread out on the hood of Ansel’s truck, I stared up at the stars glistening beyond the fluttering leaves of the trees surrounding us. Megan was the last thing on my mind before I started to drift.
Chapter Fifteen
Aaron
When my eyes popped open at Ansel attempting to pull my sleeping bag from under me, I had my gun aimed at his head before he got his sneaky fingers around the edge of it. He threw up both hands with a devilish grin on his face when he caught sight of my weapon. The darkness lurking in the woods around us was alive. Its lingering silence pressed down on me, making me more aware of my surroundings.
“Just seeing if married life has softened you up, that’s all,” Ansel added. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I could tell there was amusement all over his face. I didn’t think either of us had ever been in a committed relationship before. My affair with Megan was the longest relationship I’d ever had. Ansel didn’t have relationships. He had subs that he either broke or dismissed when they couldn’t keep up with his demanding lifestyle.