The Fey by Claudia Hall Christian Read Free Book Online Page B

healthy Green Beret, that is. Alex
checked her watch. If she finished in the next thirty-three
minutes, she would beat the simulation time.
    She had eliminated seventeen targets leaving
only the main target and his bodyguard. He was hidden somewhere
behind her. She rolled to her stomach and pulled her night vision
binoculars from her backpack. Scanning the snow brushed tops of
sage and prairie grass, she saw no one. It was even too cold for
wild life.
    She heard movement and turned to watch two
men moving through the brush. They were looking for her but didn’t
know where she was. Her mind ran through the map of this area of
the range.
    Of course, Raz gave her a rundown of the
simulation including its weak points. What did they expect? She was
an intelligence officer after all. But intelligence only gives you
an edge. She already looked at the places Raz believed they would
stash the main target. She smiled. Every once in a while even Raz
was wrong.
    Using her forearm crutch, she moved across
the landscape. Gunfire echoed through the canyon and she dove into
a small ravine. She rolled forward coming to a stop next to a small
pocket cave and the chief target’s bodyguard. One swift kick
knocked the weapon out of the bodyguard’s hands. She tossed a paint
balloon at the soldier and he mock died. The target was in the cave
behind this guard or so they wanted her to think.
    That meant
that the primary target was right here .
    Turning, she used her boot heel to dig into
the dirt across from the pocket cave. She pulled her Bowie knife
from the sheath strapped to her leg. Kicking and slicing into the
earth, she reached the airspace of the man-made cave below. She
widened the space with both feet then dropped into the cave. With
her paintball pistols in front of her, she startled the soldier
playing the target.
    “ You’re supposed to come
in the entrance,” said the sandy haired soldier playing the
target.
    “ Done,” Alex said with
twenty-four minutes to go.
    “ Done,” the soldier target
said. “You can lower your weapons, Major.”
    “ There’s another soldier
here,” she said. “I can smell him.”
    She grabbed the soldier target around the
shoulders. Her paintball pistol pressed against his ribs.
    “ Show yourself or he dies.
You are wearing body armor, aren’t you?” she screamed.
    “ Yes Major,” the young
soldier said.
    Two soldiers carrying paintball machine guns
stepped forward. As part of the simulation, they began screaming
butchered Arabic slogans. Pushing the target to the ground, she
shot the two soldiers with her paint handguns. She rolled forward
and shot another soldier hiding in the wings.
    “ Come on,” Alex
said.
    Grabbing the target, she worked her way out
of the cave. They reached the entrance to find what Alex expected:
a group of soldiers pretending to be a tribe. With her paintball
pistol at the head of the target, they made their way to the center
of the tribal gathering.
    Alex blinked her eyes.
    Jesse?
    Jesse Abreu stood on the edge of the
gathering. He was pointing to something to her right. When she
looked again, he was gone. Turning her head to where he pointed,
she saw two men cresting a small hill carrying machine guns.
    Live machine guns.
    Ah crap.
    “ M-16.” As he had for more
than a decade, Jesse called the weapon.
    “ Live rounds,” Alex
screamed.
    She tackled her target and, with her arms
around him, rolled sideways. Machine gun rounds pummeled the dirt
around them. Shards of dust and rock flew into the air. The soldier
tribe ran toward a ravine to get away from the live rounds. Alex
yanked the target back into the cave.
    “ Zack, get me out of
here.” Alex whispered into the microphone in her sleeve. “We have
live M-16 fire. Two shooters.”
    The soldier playing the target screamed in
pain. Pushing away from him to assess his injuries, she found his
leg askew, broken when she tackled him. Alex covered his mouth with
her hand and dug through her pack for a morphine