Black and Brown: Raven Assassins (Ravens #1)

Chapter Twenty-six

Mirage

Five years later

Valdivian Rainforest

La Araucaria Region, Chile

South America

“I have movement. Multiple vehicles approaching.”

“Confirm target.”

Seconds of silence went by that turned into minutes.

“Confirm. Target,” Grace repeated.

Mirage chuckled under his breath.

“Adding bass in your voice won’t make the confirmation come any faster.”

“Spectre,” Grace growled.

“I understand you’ve been in that ceiling for four hours, but if you can’t withstand extreme boredom, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong line of work,” Mirage answered dryly through the comms.

Mirage was six hundred yards away, perched on a rain-slick branch, eighty feet above the forest floor. His camouflage fatigues helped him blend into the damp vines and moss of an evergreen tree.

His eye was an inch away from the scope of his SAKO sniper rifle. He kept his finger poised over the trigger and his left hand clutching the stock.

It hadn’t been easy to get into position with the almost four-foot-long weapon. The mono and bipod were braced on two branches while he sat nestled in a semi-enclosed cavity, with an angry male baboon watching him from a few limbs over.

As long as it didn’t move, he was safe. But Mirage kept his bowie knife unsheathed and resting on his thigh. If the baboon shifted to strike, Mirage would remove its head, let the body drop to the ground, and return to his position without a second thought.

The intense humidity made sweat drip down his temples and beneath the high collar of his camouflage jacket.

Grace growled harder, sending a warm vibration through Mirage’s ear canal and down his damp throat.

He could imagine Spectre rolling his dark eyes at Grace’s bitching.

“The convoy stopped, but no further activity. Awaiting visual. Stand. Fuckin’. By. Grace.”

Mirage tried soothing his partner’s impatience.

“You’re lucky you’re inside, Grace. This goddamn primate’s been eyeing me the entire time. I think I’m starting to look like a worthy challenge.”

With his cheek pressed to the cool metal, the scent of animal musk and swamp water made him long for this mission to be over.

The three hundred and sixty minutes he’d been separated from Grace was beyond excruciating.

It wasn’t the first time they’d had to deviate from their back-to-chest battle position, but when they did, it hurt badly.

It’d taken their intel department four months of recon to discover the leader of the Crimson Crime Syndicate’s secluded safe house. And just as long for their shadow division to devise a covert plan to take out the SOB.

A long-range shooter and close-contact attack would be the best option to make this mission successful.

The leader of this ruthless rebel force was known only as Afonso. His organization was violent in the ways they instilled fear in the inhabitants of the poverty-stricken Chilean commune in Arauco.

The Browns had been called in after multiple aid imports to the surrounding countries were hijacked.

There was but one way to take down a small-scale but no less powerful influence of criminals. And that was to cut off the head of the snake. The body of a reptile could continue to jerk, the head still capable of releasing a venomous bite.

Grace and Mirage were ordered to eliminate the leader, his followers, friends of the followers, and even the fucking pets of the followers.

Mirage pulled the rifle closer as several armed men began to exit the run-down pickup trucks.

The guards took a moment to scan the proximity, but they were untrained in the true game of warfare. The men were inefficient and had grown comfortable with the lack of resistance from the locals.

“Confirmation on the target,” Mirage whispered, regardless that no one could hear him from this distance.

“We got bogies,” Spectre responded. “Afonso is flanked by five guards and thirteen around the perimeter.”

“Heard.” Grace’s tone was deep with raw ruggedness. “On your mark.”

Mirage bit his bottom lip. Even after all these years, Grace’s voice still moved him. Through the comms, it sounded like an out-of-tune slow-bow violin.

“Ready in one.” Mirage notified his partner of their attack time.

His scope had thermal vision, but the dumbass guards hadn’t blacked out the windows in the one-story rickety structure, and the lack of electricity made Mirage’s job that much easier.

He narrowed his gaze on each target with a level heart rate.

His countdown was short and quick like Grace preferred.

“Two, one.”

Mirage pulled the trigger.

The shot of the .338 caliber bullet firing through the chamber would’ve sounded like cannon fire, but the attached silencer still made the sharp pop make love to his soul.

Nearby birds and wildlife scattered, and so did the baboon.

The freight train force of the bullet into his target sent him slamming into the wood structure.

The spray of crimson and human tissue on the wall was as beautiful as a Picasso abstract.

Mirage’s second shot followed so quickly that the guards had yet to shake off their shock before the guard closest to Afonso took a direct hit to the center of his chest.

And only because Mirage felt like showing off, his third round was instant and catastrophic. The guard’s head snapped back, the bullet entering his right eye, exiting the back of his skull, and going into the man’s forehead behind him.

Blood and brain matter sprayed the room, and if Mirage could feel revulsion, the sight might have upset his stomach.

“Tragedy,” he tsked before he eliminated the last two.

“Stop peacocking, Mirage,” Spectre chastised. “Grace, you’re a go for green.”

Grace dropped from the ceiling, wielding two suppressed Berettas, his rich brown trench billowing out before falling back into place. Like an angel ascending from the depths of hell. Mirage watched through the scope as his partner approached a terrified Afonso with silent grace.

Grace

Grace scanned the room full of bodies, ignoring the additional shots Mirage continued to fire and the sound of men dying outside.

Afonso’s back was against the wall, scanning for somewhere to run.

What kind of dumbass doesn’t have multiple exits in a safe house?

Afonso’s only way out was past him.

Grace narrowed his eyes, then shook his head in warning.

Deciding to press his luck, Afonso tried to dart past. Grace allowed him to make it a few feet from the threshold, giving him a modicum of hope before he snatched it away.

He didn’t have to look as he fired a single shot behind his back that went through Afonso’s ankle only inches from an artery.

Grace didn’t want him dead…yet. Spectre might have a question or two if they didn’t recover what was needed.

Afonso screamed and hit the ground with a hard thud, his head slamming into the floor.

Grace ignored him. The screams of agony did nothing to him.

He scanned the small hut. It appeared that all the documents he needed—shipping schedules, contacts, ledgers—were all laid out on a dilapidated table.

Grace removed his camera pen—it sent all images directly to their forensics department—and snapped photos of the papers.

“That looks good. We got everything we need,” Spectre confirmed.

Grace removed his woodgrain Zippo from his inside coat pocket and lit the table on fire.

On his way past the cursing crime boss, Grace looked him dead in the eyes and then shot him once in the gut.

The screams of agony were comforting to his lack of a soul.

Crying won’t save you.

Grace watched Afonso writhe on the floor until he became annoyed with the wailing.

“For fuck’s sake, Grace. Shut him up. I’m ready to get out of this damn jungle,” Mirage bitched in his ear.

Grace shot him twice in the chest.

Even if Grace did possess empathy, he wouldn’t feel sorry for a man who’d intimidated and tortured a near desolate, starving community for years.

Grace cleared the threshold before Spectre ordered, “Leave ’em without a trace, Mirage.”

His partner fired rapid rounds from his SAKO, which tore through the structure, sending splinters of wood and shards of glass soaring into the air until there was nothing left of the small hut but rubble.

The vehicles parked outside met a similar fate, their metal frames crumpling or exploding under the barrage of bullets.