She laughed.
“You're right, it did pack a pretty hefty punch. Well, do you feel like dancing to work some of that alcohol off? They got a great little dance floor downstairs.”
“Wow, this place really does have everything!”
“I told you, it's an awesome little spot. So, what do you say, shall we head downstairs to dance some of these calories off? We've got figures to maintain, you know!”
“We sure do.”
For a moment, a sudden thought of Everett barged into my mind. I suddenly felt a stab of guilt. Had I misjudged him? Had I been too harsh on him? What if I'd been totally mistaken, and something terrible had happened? I mean, now that I thought about it, why would he just stand me up like that? Maybe I had been too quick to judge. I was about to turn on my phone, just to check if he had left a message or anything, when a deep voice interrupted me.
“Excuse me, ladies, but my friend and I couldn't help but notice you two.”
I looked up and saw a pair of jacked, handsome young guys who were dressed to the nines standing in front of Angie and me.
“Would you ladies like to accompany us to the dance floor?”
Angie looked at me with excitement and eagerness in her eyes. I slipped my phone back into my purse, leaving it off, and stood up with a smile.
“Hi guys,” I said. “I'm Vivienne, and this is my friend Angie, and yes, we'd love to dance with you.”
Chapter Ten
Everett
It was hot, sweltering hot, and beads of sweat were running down my back and the sides of my face. They made me itchy, and I had a maddening urge to scratch at them, but the thick bulletproof vest I was wearing and the combat armor all made that impossible, so I simply had to bear the torture in silence. A hot gust of desert wind whipped sand across our faces, and I turned from it and held up a hand to protect my eyes.
“There they are,” whispered a gruff voice to my left. “The insurgents. You ready to do this, Lieutenant?”
“I am, Mills.” I turned to Jimmy, who was at the back of the squad. “You ready, Jimmy? I can tell you, there are gonna be some wounds to fix after this encounter.”
He nodded.
“Hopefully, we'll be dealing out most of those and not receiving them,” he said.
“That's the aim. Alright, the truck is outside the compound gate, people,” I said to my squad. “As soon as those gates open, we charge. Everyone clear on their positions?”
“Yes, Lieutenant!” they all replied in unison.
“We don't leave a single terrorist alive in there; you got it? These are the bastards who have been shooting women and children in the streets, remember that...”
Then we heard voices from inside the compound shouting in Arabic, giving instructions to open the huge steel gates to allow the munitions truck access to the fortified compound.
“That's it, boys; the gates are about to open! Lock and load; we're going in!” I shouted.
The enormous gates creaked open, hauled by a diesel motor on the inside, and once they had started opening, the process couldn't be stopped until they were wide open, giving us a 20-second window to get into the compound. It was going to be a hard and bloody fight, but for the sake of peace in the region, someone had to do it. Someone had to stop these guys, and that's exactly what we were gonna do.
&
nbsp; “Three, two, one... go, go, go!” I commanded, and we all rose up out of the ditch in which we'd been hiding and charged, our assault rifles hammering out a thunderous symphony of aggression as the battle began. Bullets were flying fast and furious around us as the terrorists in the compound scrambled about in confusion to try to fight back against our surprise attack.
Still, their half-hearted efforts couldn't stop us, and we began pouring in through the now-open gates, shooting them down as they ran about in confusion. Now, however, they were beginning to get some semblance of order together, and a defense was mounting.
“Take cover!” I shouted as one of them got behind a machine gun turret mounted on a tower and started spraying us with deadly heavy machine gun fire.
“Someone take that son of a bitch out before he takes us out!” I yelled.
I dove behind a big steel oil drum as the machine gunner started spraying his hail of deadly lead in my direction, and right there I found a trapdoor.