Unleashed (Mr. Black Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

to spin, kicking up a tornado of dust and pebbles as we took off from the airfield, headed to position itself on a rooftop 500 yards from the drop point. We sat quietly and waited until the heat signature from our thermal imaging binoculars no longer registered movement outside the confines of the dilapidated building that the intel identified as the target’s home.
    “Go! Go! Go!” Commander Almen hollered as he vigorously jabbed the pilot’s shoulder.
    The loud propeller blades chopped through the ominous, almost eerily calm, sky. As the Black Hawk made its final descent to its hovering position over the building, the spinning propellers kicked up a blinding hurricane of sand and concrete dust, as if the whole city was made of a giant sand castle.
    We could do nothing but hold our breaths as we simultaneously repelled onto the roof, waiting for the chopper to fly away. The dust dissipated once the helo disappeared into the night, awaiting the beacon to return for extraction.
    “All right, folks, we got about two to three minutes before the entire building is awake and armed with their machine guns. Be ready to shoot and disable anyone that doesn’t look like the three other men staring at you right now,” the commander said as he raised he gun and turned toward the door which led downstairs. “Remember, don’t kill anyone unless we’re sure he’s not the target, otherwise we just took a long ass plane ride for nothing, and someone is going to answer to POTUS with a stripe. And it ain’t gonna be me, bitches.”
    We moved in unison, clearing rooms like a well-oiled machine. We had cleared about five rooms when the familiar sounds of ammunition from automatic weapons zipped through the stillness of the night. The bursts of light produced from each armor-piercing incendiary round strobed through the darkness giving away our enemies position. My team fired back, keeping our fingers on the trigger, taking out insurgents as they popped into view. Unfortunately, there were more rebels than were originally expected, and we were quickly outnumbered.
    “Take cover!” I yelled as I ducked inside a dimly lit room that was positioned at the end of a long hallway.
    We were trapped unless we could somehow shoot our way out. We motioned an improvised plan via hand signals to one another, intending to take out the insurgents in one fell swoop. The insurgents moved slowly toward the room, the old wooden floors creaking underfoot, giving their position away. The commander gave the signal that he would be first up and that he was going ahead with the plan. Unfortunately, the disastrous consequence of what transpired next would be forever engrained into my brain.
    As the commander leapt from behind a wall― bang! The commander was the first to take a bullet right to the middle of his forehead. If the bullet had only struck a few inches higher, it would have hit his helmet and possibly ricocheted off. But fate hadn’t been on his side that night, and as he fell backwards, time slowed for me.
    “No!” My scream trailed off as I reached my arm out toward his body, which landed on the dirty floor, kicking up a puff of dust around him.
    The rebels continued to riddle his body with hundreds of bullets from their automatic weapons. His body convulsed, as though he were having a seizure. His head fell toward me. I looked on in horror, my blood boiling at the sight of my mentor lying on the floor, dead; his eyes still open and staring directly at me.
    My eyes blurred with tears at the loss of a man I considered to be a father. I turned toward the rest of the team, who were equally stunned that the decorated war vet with over forty missions under his belt had been taken out so easily by a random piece of metal careening through the air. The loss didn’t bode well for the rest of the mission.
    I motioned for them to lie down in order to take out the rebels from below. When the bullets stopped perforating the commander’s body, I took