Without Law 18 by Eric Vall (most difficult books to read .txt) 📗

Bailey’s Barrett went off, but I didn’t see who she got, since I was too concerned with the men sneaking behind the vehicles.

Anna, Tara, Paige, and I picked them off one by one, but there were quite a few of them, and they were running to and from whatever vehicles they could in an attempt to get away from our bullets.

Bailey was picking off the men behind the MiG as best as she could, but we were still under fire, and we couldn’t risk letting one of the soldiers get away. They’d no doubt find a way to contact the troops down south and alert them to our presence. If that happened then we’d only win the battle and not the war, and I was in this to take home the championship, not the semi finals. ‘

The civilians and the SEALs were all firing again now, too, but the blue blasts from the NK side kept coming. The world was filled with the sounds of gunfire and the scent of burned sand and concrete dust. There were too many NK soldiers for us to take out like this, especially since they’d found a place to hide where we couldn’t get to them.

They may have lost a MiG, but it was clear they weren’t going to give up this fight, and I couldn’t risk the lives of my fellow teammates. They’d followed me this far because I’d protected them, and I wasn’t about to let them down now. We were all going to get out of this alive, even if it meant destroying the MiGs and every single NK vehicle in this convoy.

“Keep firing!” I yelled, and I yanked the walkie off my hip and held to my mouth. “Ben, Jeff, come in!”

“We’re here!” Jeff’s voice crackled in. “Are you okay? Shit looks crazy over there!”

“I need you to fire,” I told him. “Try and hit the center of the convoy. Ten meters east of where you fired last. We’re under heavy fire and we need to take these assholes out once and for all.”

“Copy,” Jeff said.

I hung the walkie back on my hip and yanked Anna, Paige, Tara, and Bailey down to the ground.

“What the fuck?” Tara asked.

“Everybody get down!” I bellowed and once again, I threw my body over the girls’ as the sound of the howitzer rang through the air.

My eyes were squeezed shut to protect them from the falling debris all around us, but I could hear the explosion, and I knew Jeff had to have hit somewhere good. The sound was deafening, to the point where I couldn’t hear anything else until my ears started to ring from the trauma to my eardrums.

After a moment, the debris settled, and I looked up and around. My team was still crouched down, so I lifted myself onto my knees and peered over the sandbags.

There was no movement, and everything was absolutely silent. The road on the peninsula was still covered in the dust from the explosion, but as it cleared I saw the damage the howitzer had done.

Jeff must have hit the convoy right in the middle like I’d told him to, because there was a clear blast pattern radiating from that area. The flaming, wrecked vehicles on either side were pushed back, some were flipped over, and where there had been bodies on the ground before, there were even more now. Not that I was sure they could still be called bodies, some of them were torn into pieces from being in the blast radius. What was left of the pavement was stained black from the explosion and red with blood.

I couldn’t see the other MiG, but the one closest to me was on its side, its wing busted from the impact of the howitzer blast. There was no way it was operational, but that was a small price to pay to have my entire crew alive and well.

“Shit,” Tara breathed as she leaned over the sandbags to take a look.

I smiled as I reached for the walkie on my hip to radio Jeff and tell him he’d fucking done it.

“What the fuck,” Anna said, and her eyes narrowed on something.

With my hand still hovering over the walkie, I turned my head to see what the redhead was looking at.

I scanned the area, and immediately I knew what she was referring to. There was a single arm sticking out from behind one of the totalled vehicles, and in that arm’s hand was a white T-shirt.

It was the universal sign of surrender, and as soon as I saw it, my body heated up with anger.

Who did these jackasses think they were to try and surrender? After they came to my country and raped and pillaged?

“Oh, fuck,” Paige breathed, and she turned to me. “Are they surrendering?”

“No way,” Tara scoffed. “Seriously?”

“It appears that way.” I nodded.

“That’s bullshit!” the platinum-blonde exclaimed. “What dickbags. Why not just keep shooting?”

“That was my thought as well,” I told her.

“We’re not just going to let them surrender, are we?” Tara asked. “After everything they’ve done, all the people they’ve killed. They don’t just get to give up, right?”

“Technically, in the rules of war, they do,” Paige said.

“What the fuck?” Tara asked, and her platinum-blonde eyebrows furrowed together. “Since when does war have rules?”

“I mean… I think it has for a long time,” Anna said, and she shrugged. “But I’m with you. Fuck these guys.”

“It’s called the Geneva Convention,” Paige explained. “It’s basically a set of international rules that are supposed to protect people from inhumane treatment during war.”

“Isn’t inhumane treatment kind of the point?” Tara asked, and she cocked her head to the side slightly. “I mean, if these fuckers haven’t been treating people inhumanely, then I don’t know what