Page 19 of Remade
Most of them had died.
It’d been the first time I’d legit seen limbs flying through the air.
It’d also been the first time I’d killed someone solely to end their suffering.
I didn’t know why the smell of burned hair had lingered the most in my nostrils, but it was the smell I associated with this little girl who’d lost both her arms and one leg in the explosion. She’d been around six or seven. Big brown eyes. She’d been theclosest—the only one we’d been able to approach without risking setting off more mines. She’d peered up at me in the destruction. Blood fucking everywhere. Dust and debris. Torn clothes. Not a single tear or scream. She’d been in shock; those big eyes had stared into my goddamn soul and wrenched something out.
I took another pull from my smoke and realized I’d forgotten to tell Leighton probably the biggest pain from what we did. I was much like him—I didn’t give two shits when I killed a target I knew had done some fucked-up things. Pulling that trigger was about as difficult as changing batteries in the TV remote.
But seeing young children bleed out? Seeing drugged teenagers crawl out of cages they’d been held captive in by human traffickers? Witnessing a frantic mother search for her baby whom the father had sold off?
I turned to Ryan. “I wanna get Hyatt down here. We don’t exactly have a bomb technician on staff, but he’s the best we’ve got. He used a two-drone system to map out and detect land mines in Afghanistan right before we pulled out of there.”
He inclined his head. “Let’s do it. I’d rather wait a few hours extra than…”
Yeah. Because we couldn’t be sure.
Hyatt arrived at our previous campsite on foot two hours later, after leaving his truck at a safe distance. He had an assistant with him, none other than junior operator Wilde, and it was good to see her. She’d graduated this summer and was getting ready for her first overseas assignment.
Those drones were much larger, plus Hyatt had other equipment too, so the Juniors and Crew hurried over to assist.
“Remember the good old days when I just flew operators in and out of combat zones?” Hyatt muttered.
“Don’t pretend you don’t get off on this,” Coach stated, side-eyeing Wilde. “You treat these drones like they’re your children.”
Yeah, and let’s not forget the fucking happy dance he did last year when Quinlan announced they were investing two hundred million in our drone defense.
“Can’t a man complain in peace?” Hyatt bitched.
“Depends. Did you bring the supplies I asked for?” Coach wondered.
“Yeah, they’re—” He stopped and looked around, and then he must’ve spotted what he was searching for with Crew. He was carrying a duffel. “There we go.”
Coach jogged over to accept it, and that gave us a job.
We couldn’t set our next plan in motion with the ultra-low lighting we’d clipped on our helmets, but without a better campsite, we didn’t dare use stronger lights. We weren’tthatfar away from the bunker.
Coach, Ryan, Crew, and I made quick work of getting the tent up, and Hudson and Junior attached the walls.
That felt better.
Now we could get to work.
I didn’t understand much of the tech Hyatt worked with, but I’d witnessed enough demining in my days. Aside from the drones, he had a device that needed to be dug into the ground. From there, it would send out pulses through the soil to detect where mines could be, and I honestly didn’t know what I hoped for.
If we found explosives, we’d know their strategy. While flawed as fuck, I’d understand that they were relying on the mines to take care of enemy forces. Except, of course, there were no mines on the road itself. But maybe they assumed an enemywould sneak up away from the road. Far from foolproof, but neither was this crew.
If we didn’t find anything…I’d have no choice but to send my operators down there and just hope our targets were stupid enough.
Technically, only two of them had to be stupid. The driver and the passenger of the van, both of whom were dead and waiting for someone to ship them home to their mothers.
The rest of them, though? Six men had emerged when Coach and Leighton had defended their position by the van, followed by two vehicles on their way up. Crew had arrived on the scene and taken care of four of the men. The rest, vehicles included, had retreated once our guys were in the forest.
According to Coach, the vehicles had turned around swiftly, as if someone had summoned them back with a command one didn’t disobey.
Other than that… They could obviously not get into contact with the other crew, since we’d taken care of them this morning. They knew something was wrong; that was for sure.
The Feds hadn’t reported anything weird at the house, where they’d kept their workers.
