The bullets are still soaring around us and Lucky continues to shout through the mic, but I tune it all out. I don’t have time to get sucked into the past; I have a fucking job to do.

As I weave in and out of trees and shrubs, I take a few of my own shots in the direction where the bullets are coming from. With all the foliage, I don’t have a clear view of where these assholes are. I specifically put Lucky and Zeus on the other side of the house because that’s where the men have been coming and going and where they would have a clear view of everyone. Hoss and I are running blind, shooting at anything we can as we rush to Lucky and Zeus.

“I see them, fifty yards to the right!” Hoss yells from behind me.

I continue firing as my eyes locate Lucky, crouched down on the ground, hovering over Zeus.

Swallowing back the bile that hovers in my throat as I get closer, I see blood seeping between Lucky’s fingers as he holds pressure to the wound in Zeus’s shoulder.

Hoss and I dive to the ground next to Lucky. Hoss covers us with a rain of bullets while I unzip the pocket in my tactical vest that holds medical supplies. Pushing Lucky aside, I quickly press a wad of gauze to the hole in Zeus’s shoulder. His eyes pop open and he screams in pain when I push down on the wound.

“Hey, look who’s awake. Stop being a pussy, it’s just a flesh wound,” I tell him, lightening the situation with a little humor so I don’t completely lose my shit.

Grabbing the medical tape out of the pocket with one hand while I continue to hold the gauze to Zeus’s arm, I rip off a long strip with my teeth and wrap it around his upper arm.

Lucky moves back in once I’ve got Zeus bandaged up. He grabs Zeus’s good arm and pulls him up, wrapping that arm around his neck while he holds him around the waist.

“Get his ass to the retrieval point, Hoss and I will finish this off,” I tell Lucky.

“Fuck you! I’m not leaving!” Zeus argues as he winces in pain when Lucky starts to drag him away.

“This is not up for discussion. You’re wounded and you need to get the fuck out of here!” I yell back as I load a new clip in my piece and give Lucky a look that clearly says ‘Get him the fuck out of here before I beat both your asses’.

Lucky drags Zeus away bitching and moaning while Hoss and I get back into the game.

“They stopped firing, I don’t like this shit,” Hoss mutters as we get in position behind a huge tree and look towards the house.

“Where the fuck is everyone?”

I search all around the house and see nothing but five black SUV’s still parked in the driveway on the side. There’s no one outside and there’s no movement in any of the dark windows. The sun has started to set but luckily there’s still enough daylight for us to not have to pull out our night vision goggles.

“We need to get closer. They haven’t left. Those fuckers must have been shooting at us from inside the house. We’re going to have to go in,” I tell Hoss.

It’s a bad idea. I know this and Hoss knows this, but he keeps his mouth shut. We don’t have backup and even though we know how many people are inside that house, we don’t know what kind of firepower they have. They know we’re here so the element of surprise is good and truly fucked. Our only option is to turn tail and get out of here, or do what we came here to do. I want this to be over, one way or another. Hoss knows I’ll do whatever it takes to end this, even if it means I don’t make it out of this rainforest alive.

“Well, what are we waiting for, let’s end this piece of shit,” Hoss says with a nod.

We silently get closer to the house, covering each other while keeping an eye on the house for the glint of a gun poking out of one of the windows. We make it to the front door easily and with one last fist-bump for good luck, I take a deep breath, kick in the door with my booted foot and charge into the house with Hoss right on my heals.

Luckily, the dick heads gathered inside didn’t think we were suicidal and had no clue we would just come barreling inside their little hidey-hole. They were too busy arguing and looking out the windows to worry about us walking right through the front door.

In a matter of minutes, seven of Fernandez’s men have matching bullet holes between their eyes as they all lay slumped in the middle of the living room. They managed to fire off a few defensive shots, but Hoss and I were faster and better skilled. Even though it was decided that I wouldn’t go near Fernandez, once I found him cowering in a closet, I wasn’t about to hand the kill over to Hoss. I looked right in the bastard’s eyes, said the name of my friends he took from me, and emptied my clip into his pitiful face, blood and brain matter splattering the entire inside of the closet by the time my gun began clicking, signaling it was empty. I continued to pull the trigger, growing angrier and angrier by the second that I had run out of bullets.

“Dude, I think he’s dead,” Hoss states, his arm coming down on my shoulder.

With one last look at the mess I made of Fernandez, I turn to face Hoss and a sharp pain shoots up my right leg. I lose my footing, my leg unable to hold my weight and Hoss quickly moves to catch me before I hit the ground.

We both look down and a wave of nausea rushes through me when I see my shattered kneecap with a bullet lodged right in the center of it. During the commotion, I was running on so much anger and adrenalin that I didn’t even notice one of those fuckers managed to get in a shot at me. Now that I’m coming down from that high, I can feel every single mangled piece of my knee radiating so much pain that I can’t stop the blood curdling scream that comes out of my mouth.