Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109245 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
He stayed tight on Gage’s heels, mouth near his ear, guiding him to the third floor exactly how they’d trained for weeks.
“Two steps…one eighty curve right, stairs in three, rails left, ten up…landing, ninety-degree right.”
Gage shifted on his whispers with the stealth of a panther, silent and precise.
At the final landing, he pressed his forehead to Gage’s for a split second, then vanished to into position.
He kept his head down as he walked toward a tired-looking hotel maid stocking her housekeeping cart, spotting the keycard clipped to the pocket of her smock.
Scar increased his pace as she bent to add some linen to the middle shelf. He brushed past her, barely grazing her right arm.
With two fingers, he pinched the keycard clip and slid it free.
“Oh, sorry,” he muttered, never breaking stride.
Scar didn’t stop or look back as he stuffed the keycard into his pocket.
“You’ve got forty-five seconds to clear,” Roz said in his ear.
Scar listened at the target’s door.
Six men inside: a traitor, a thug, and four guards. One American, polished and selling secrets, the other Spanish, celebrating and trading violence.
He waited for the laughs to crest, to cover the sound of him inserting the card in the door scanner and ducking inside five seconds before the guards turned the corner.
Scar checked the outer room before he walked around the wall divider.
Six heads turned his way with confusion in their eyes, then shock, but it was too late as he pulled his suppressed dart pistol.
A two-stage dart with an instant knockdown agent, followed by a slow-release sedative that would keep them out cold long past extraction.
He had a six-round dispenser, none to waste on a miss.
He fired all of them— the pops no louder than a breath—in rapid succession.
He dropped the guards first, and they went down harder than drugged elephants.
The disloyal American tried to speak, his eyes blown wide, as he slumped sideways in his chair.
The cartel lord surged halfway up in an attempt to fight through the fog.
Scar squatted, watching the man’s eyes roll behind his lids before his spine gave and he folded to the carpet.
“You better be glad my partner’s a saint. Otherwise, I would’ve put two bullets in the back of your skull and not lost a wink of sleep tonight.”
Scar began rummaging through the American’s bag. He found the disk and made the swap.
“Swap complete.” Scar said.
“Copy that,” Command answered.
He paused at the sound of boots, heavy and purposeful, coming his way.
His comm clicked.
Roz’s voice was clear and composed like a handler’s should be.
“Saint. You got four moving in his direction.”
“Hard copy,” Gage answered calmly.
Scar’s heart pounded at the thought of Gage fighting four drug lord guards, but he stayed focused on gathering the rest of the intel.
He trusted Gage, and his partner had proven time and again that he didn’t need saving.
White Ravens
Gage
“Four targets, twenty feet and closing,” Roz instructed.
Gage stood motionless and listened, shutting his body down—his breath, his pulse, even the rhythm of his heart—until it went quiet enough to hear his environments rhythm.
He could hear four sets of footsteps in the hallway near the room Scar was raiding.
Gage angled his head and let the corridor describe them.
He timed their cadences, assessing each man by the way their boots hit the carpet.
One moved with long, sluggish strides that landed hard—meant the man was tall and muscular. He’d probably fight with his brawn, instead of wits.
The two in the back were lighter on their feet, strides even longer than their leader’s. They were tall and lithe, the kind of men who utilized their speed in a fight.
The lone one on the left had clipped steps that were close together and aggressive. He was in a crew of giants, suffering from a short-man complex. He’d fight with misplaced, projected anger trying to prove himself.
Gage kept his back pressed to the wall, reached into his pocket, removed his Sound Ghost Beads, and scattered them a few feet in front of him.
Roz counted them down. “Contact in four, three, two,… ”
With a muted snap, the cane telescoped outward, locking into a six-foot length of hardened titanium.
The first man stepped on the bead closest to the baseboard, the crack sounding like a knuckle popping in a silent room.
Gage leaped from behind the wall with full momentum, whipped his cane around in a low arc, and slammed the shaft into the guard’s knee.
The crack reverberated as the patella shattered under the force.
The man hollered loud enough to be heard in the lobby as his leg collapsed, sending him down sideways.
The sluggish ones hand went to his leather holster. Before he could pull whatever he had, Gage reversed his swing and drove his cane upward, connecting with his elbow.
The joint popped with a sickening crunch, but Gage didn’t give him a chance to fully register the pain before he slammed the shaft into his throat, the damage immediate and eliminating his ability to scream.