Читать книгу Bullseye: Seal - Carol Ericson - Страница 8

Prologue

The boy tottered close to the edge of the shimmering pool, and Josh Elliott held his breath. A woman, her long, dark hair falling over one shoulder, swooped in and plucked up the toddler, lifting him over her head. The boy’s face broke into a smile, his little body wriggling with joy in his mother’s grasp.

Safe in his mother’s arms—or he would be once she got the hell out of there.

Josh puffed out of the side of his mouth to dislodge a bug crawling on his face. He’d become part of the dense foliage on the hillside in this southeast corner of Colombia, not far from the Amazon. If this mission took any longer, the plants would grow right over and through him.

The woman dipped next to a chaise longue to grab a towel and tucked it around her child’s body. She gave a curt nod to the men gathered at the other end of the pool, and then headed for the house via the sliding glass doors. Josh released a long breath.

A voice crackled in his ear seconds later. “Go time, boys.”

Josh swept his M91 away from the retreating figure of the mother and her child and zeroed in on his intended target—her husband.

Ricky Rojas folded his arms, his expensive jacket tightening across his shoulders, as he cocked his head in the direction of the three men seated at the table. What Josh wouldn’t give to hear their conversation right now—their plots, their plans—but his SEAL team’s assignment didn’t include capture and interrogation.

It only included death.

These men had already killed and would kill again. In the crack of two seconds, his team would be responsible for bringing down a high-ranking member of a vicious terrorist cell and the mastermind of a brutal drug cartel...and a few of his associates.

And the father of that child.

Josh swallowed. The kid would get over it, especially after he learned what a scumbag his old man had been. The wife? That might be another story.

A muscle ticked in Josh’s jaw. They’d been told to keep the woman out of the range of fire. More senior people than he had made the determination that Gina Rojas had nothing to do with the Los Santos drug cartel.

If they believed the daughter of Hector De Santos, the kingpin of Los Santos, and the wife of Ricky Rojas was an innocent bystander while her father and husband traded arms and passage to the United States for terrorists in exchange for drugs, who was he to question their common sense?

A pretty face could still buy wiggle room out of anything—and Gina Rojas had a pretty face and a body that could bring a grown man to his knees.

Once the kills were accomplished, the CIA would be descending on the De Santos compound to search for leads and evidence, but he and his teammates would be long gone, swallowed up into the Amazon.

A maid scurried from the palatial house to deliver a tray of drinks to the men on the patio. When she disappeared inside, the crackling in his ear resumed.

“All clear. And five, four, three, two...”

At the conclusion of the countdown, Josh dropped his target, and all the other men fell with him courtesy of the other navy SEAL snipers positioned in trees and dug into the hillsides ringing the compound.

The maid rushed from the house and threw her hands in the air. She must’ve been screaming because several other servants joined her on the patio.

Josh shifted his scope to encompass Gina Rojas emerging from the house, without her son, thank God. While the domestic staff flailed and scurried about or dashed off for parts unknown, Gina stood still like a statue amid a battering sea. She put her arm around the hysterical maid and surveyed the carnage, her head held high, her gaze sweeping the hillside.

“Josh. Josh, you on the move?”

“Copy that.”

He lowered his sniper rifle from the intriguing sight of Gina Rojas’s unflinching demeanor and began to break down his weapon.

Either this hit was no surprise to Gina...or she didn’t give a damn.