The DAUGHTER ~ Book 5
CHAPTER ONE
The Second to Last Mission, 2050
With a grind of mulch, Major Cassie White adjusted position. An orange-lashed, green eye pressed against the lens of the gun sight. Small fingers caressed the knob, fine-tuning the focus. With an eighth of a turn, the target solidified to a crisp, clean image.
“Do you have this, Shaughnessy?” Cassie awaited her subordinate’s answer.
Lying prone as they were, the damp rich odors of the jungle floor filled their senses. “I got him, boss.”
A gold front tooth glimmered in Cassie’s mouth, a memento from a rite of passage early in her career. “Okay, you’re up. I’ll be second gun.” A subsequent adjustment of position crimped the thick letters sewn into the right cuff. CDF they read—Combined Defense Force—the title of the unified branches of the U.S. military.
The target, a dark-suited swarthy man with a striking black goatee, had exited from the rear passenger compartment of a limousine parked in the driveway of an expansive villa. A minor prince from one of the new Middle Eastern sultanates, he ran afoul of U.S. interests through his drug dealings. After exhausting the usual diplomatic exhortations for restraint, the American government put him on a Mission List. Cassie’s team drew the assassination assignment.
How uncomfortable the prince must’ve been in the dense humidity of Central America, she mused. Undoubtedly anticipating imminent relief inside the air conditioned villa, he had no idea Cassie planned a quicker end to his inconvenience. Behind him trailed a trio of wives, plainly more comfortable in their loose-fitting garments. Each wore a pastel-colored robe and hood that completely covered her except for the top half of her face. Despite being almost a mile away, Cassie’s optics permitted detailed facial features. Dark, forbidding eyes peered over the veils.
“Any time you’re ready.” Cassie ignored her own discomfort with the omnipresent jungle humidity and dampness. Within hours of arrival, her shoes filled with a spongy wetness that defied even the most sophisticated efforts of waterproofing known to podiatry.
The sergeant inhaled deeply and held that breath. From the corner of her eye, Cassie watched as a lean finger slowly squeezed the trigger.
“Hold! Hold! There’s a wind change. Hold for update.” The forward spotter cried his warning an instant too late. The final word faded into the rifle’s report. The vagaries of wind speed and direction had almost certainly doomed the shot.
In order to get a wider field of vision than the gun’s telescope offered, Cassie rotated her helmet binoculars into place. Her heart pounded with anticipatory frustration as she stepped up the magnification. Part of the security entourage crowded around someone lying on the ground. A flutter of pale blue fabric, visible between the throng of moving legs and bent backs, told Cassie she’d missed. Four guards lifted the corpse of a wife aloft and bore her away. A thin trail of blood splatters followed the morbid little procession. The target cowered behind the shield of his bodyguards.
“They’re ranging your position,” the spotter reported. On either side of the villa, a brief metallic glint made every heart on the mission team skip a beat. Listening antennae, separated by a half mile, turned toward the bearing of the rifle shot. The lines would cross at approximately Cassie’s position.
Sergeant Shaughnessy nudged her ribs. “Time to clear out, boss.” The warmth of his breath on her neck evoked memories of shared intimacies from off-mission.
Locking her eye to the sniper scope of the long-barreled weapon covered in shaggy camouflage, Cassie waved him back. “Get everybody to the rendezvous point. I’ll be along.”
“Getting him was a long shot anyway.” Shaughnessy tentatively applied pressure to her shoulder, encouraging her to follow. “Let the flyboys take it from here.”
Stretched out prone, Cassie remained focused on the gun sight. “I’ve never had to use an air strike to finish a job. I’m not going to start now. Sergeant, you have your orders. See to them. Move out.”
For an instant Cassie thought how much she sounded like her mother, Samantha, who as CEO vaulted the multinational corporation Subspecies, Inc. to world prominence. A mother-daughter relationship forged in Hell if there ever was one. A light tap on her ankle brought her back. “Okay, boss. I’ll hold the chopper as long as I can.”
“Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.” While preparing the shot, she listened to her sergeant’s footsteps fade into the general jungle noises as he murmured rendezvous instructions to the forward observer. Then she hunkered down as the first rounds of return fire probed the thick foliage with sharp whistles ending in abrupt smacks.
Under the circumstances, almost any other person would’ve dumped their bowels, but Cassie felt only adrenaline coursing hotly throughout her body. Bullets impacting everywhere, she set an eye to the sighting scope. From a mile distant, her stone cold stare willed the target to be still. Two seconds was all she needed.
Ten meters away, a spray of heavy caliber bullets stitched diagonally across the broad trunk of a tree, saturating the area between knee and shoulder height. Cassie had chosen her cover well. A small berm of dirt, now churned by the avid fire, proved impenetrable. The shots that got through flew at least a foot above her diminutive motionless form.
The prince stubbornly refused to abandon the protection of his guards’ bodies, but the crouch he assumed had to be uncomfortable. Sooner or later he’d rise, shift position; all she needed was a foot’s worth of elevation to get off the shot, and ten minutes to clear out. How many times had she been in this situation, waiting for the prey to make a fatal mistake?
Prey? An ironic grin crossed her lips. She wondered if this was the same delicious surge Mom and Dad used to experience when they hunted. Two seconds and it’d be over. From head to toe, her body throbbed with breathless anticipation. Fulfillment of her mission loomed just ahead. Despite the mortal danger, or maybe because of it, this was when she felt most alive. Afterward, the clock would strike midnight. Cinderella’s ball would end and Cassie would face the irritation of returning to the people and mundane events of everyday life.
For now, she savored the rush as volleys of automatic gunfire swept closer.
A tanned narrow face with a goatee peeked above the heaving and swaying human shield of dark jacket backs. The onyx eyes stared directly into Cassie’s scope. A spot of red light, invisible to the target and his bodyguard, reflected off the narrow forehead. The adrenaline-induced roar racing and plunging inside of her abruptly ceased, replaced by dead cold calm. Her lungs froze in mid-breath as she depressed the trigger. Other than the one finger, not another muscle moved, and for an instant she, the weapon, and the chambered round, became a single continuous entity. No scientific explanation existed, but her ability to meld with the firearm set her apart from nearly every other marksman in the world.
With a muted thump and no flash, the bullet broke from the silencer into open air, travelling at three thousand feet a second. She imagined the same strong will that impelled the target to make the critical self-exposure now guided the projectile.
The shot was low and to her right, entering the victim’s left eye. Cassie cursed the shot’s imperfection as he sank to one knee, leaving a smear of cranial blood and tissue on the car door. Security guards sprang upright. Their heads snapped around in a tense desperate back and forth search for something to shoot.
Cassie didn’t worry about them. The direction-finding equipment offered the greatest threat. If the first shot hadn’t betrayed her location, the second would pinpoint it. Already she was clearing datum as fast as she could crawl. Vehicles, filled with armed men, departed the villa driveway. In ten minutes, her former position would be overrun. As she drew farther from the protection of the berm, the terrain sloped uphill. The distance between her crawling frame and the gunfire zipping by overhead narrowed.
To make better time, she abandoned the sniper rifle. A shame, too; the piece was a favorite. She kept the side arm and debated ditching the grenades. They dragged the ground, slowed her down. She decided to keep them.
Voices approached from the left, still distant, but soon that would change. Is this how it ends? She’d been in tight spots before, some as tight as this one, and always came through.
“When your number’s up, you’re done.” Her first mentor, a lycan named Rabina Lopez, often said. “Until then, act like you’re bulletproof.”
Today, I choose to be bulletproof.
“Do you have this, Shaughnessy?” Cassie awaited her subordinate’s answer.
Lying prone as they were, the damp rich odors of the jungle floor filled their senses. “I got him, boss.”
A gold front tooth glimmered in Cassie’s mouth, a memento from a rite of passage early in her career. “Okay, you’re up. I’ll be second gun.” A subsequent adjustment of position crimped the thick letters sewn into the right cuff. CDF they read—Combined Defense Force—the title of the unified branches of the U.S. military.
The target, a dark-suited swarthy man with a striking black goatee, had exited from the rear passenger compartment of a limousine parked in the driveway of an expansive villa. A minor prince from one of the new Middle Eastern sultanates, he ran afoul of U.S. interests through his drug dealings. After exhausting the usual diplomatic exhortations for restraint, the American government put him on a Mission List. Cassie’s team drew the assassination assignment.
How uncomfortable the prince must’ve been in the dense humidity of Central America, she mused. Undoubtedly anticipating imminent relief inside the air conditioned villa, he had no idea Cassie planned a quicker end to his inconvenience. Behind him trailed a trio of wives, plainly more comfortable in their loose-fitting garments. Each wore a pastel-colored robe and hood that completely covered her except for the top half of her face. Despite being almost a mile away, Cassie’s optics permitted detailed facial features. Dark, forbidding eyes peered over the veils.
“Any time you’re ready.” Cassie ignored her own discomfort with the omnipresent jungle humidity and dampness. Within hours of arrival, her shoes filled with a spongy wetness that defied even the most sophisticated efforts of waterproofing known to podiatry.
The sergeant inhaled deeply and held that breath. From the corner of her eye, Cassie watched as a lean finger slowly squeezed the trigger.
“Hold! Hold! There’s a wind change. Hold for update.” The forward spotter cried his warning an instant too late. The final word faded into the rifle’s report. The vagaries of wind speed and direction had almost certainly doomed the shot.
In order to get a wider field of vision than the gun’s telescope offered, Cassie rotated her helmet binoculars into place. Her heart pounded with anticipatory frustration as she stepped up the magnification. Part of the security entourage crowded around someone lying on the ground. A flutter of pale blue fabric, visible between the throng of moving legs and bent backs, told Cassie she’d missed. Four guards lifted the corpse of a wife aloft and bore her away. A thin trail of blood splatters followed the morbid little procession. The target cowered behind the shield of his bodyguards.
“They’re ranging your position,” the spotter reported. On either side of the villa, a brief metallic glint made every heart on the mission team skip a beat. Listening antennae, separated by a half mile, turned toward the bearing of the rifle shot. The lines would cross at approximately Cassie’s position.
Sergeant Shaughnessy nudged her ribs. “Time to clear out, boss.” The warmth of his breath on her neck evoked memories of shared intimacies from off-mission.
Locking her eye to the sniper scope of the long-barreled weapon covered in shaggy camouflage, Cassie waved him back. “Get everybody to the rendezvous point. I’ll be along.”
“Getting him was a long shot anyway.” Shaughnessy tentatively applied pressure to her shoulder, encouraging her to follow. “Let the flyboys take it from here.”
Stretched out prone, Cassie remained focused on the gun sight. “I’ve never had to use an air strike to finish a job. I’m not going to start now. Sergeant, you have your orders. See to them. Move out.”
For an instant Cassie thought how much she sounded like her mother, Samantha, who as CEO vaulted the multinational corporation Subspecies, Inc. to world prominence. A mother-daughter relationship forged in Hell if there ever was one. A light tap on her ankle brought her back. “Okay, boss. I’ll hold the chopper as long as I can.”
“Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.” While preparing the shot, she listened to her sergeant’s footsteps fade into the general jungle noises as he murmured rendezvous instructions to the forward observer. Then she hunkered down as the first rounds of return fire probed the thick foliage with sharp whistles ending in abrupt smacks.
Under the circumstances, almost any other person would’ve dumped their bowels, but Cassie felt only adrenaline coursing hotly throughout her body. Bullets impacting everywhere, she set an eye to the sighting scope. From a mile distant, her stone cold stare willed the target to be still. Two seconds was all she needed.
Ten meters away, a spray of heavy caliber bullets stitched diagonally across the broad trunk of a tree, saturating the area between knee and shoulder height. Cassie had chosen her cover well. A small berm of dirt, now churned by the avid fire, proved impenetrable. The shots that got through flew at least a foot above her diminutive motionless form.
The prince stubbornly refused to abandon the protection of his guards’ bodies, but the crouch he assumed had to be uncomfortable. Sooner or later he’d rise, shift position; all she needed was a foot’s worth of elevation to get off the shot, and ten minutes to clear out. How many times had she been in this situation, waiting for the prey to make a fatal mistake?
Prey? An ironic grin crossed her lips. She wondered if this was the same delicious surge Mom and Dad used to experience when they hunted. Two seconds and it’d be over. From head to toe, her body throbbed with breathless anticipation. Fulfillment of her mission loomed just ahead. Despite the mortal danger, or maybe because of it, this was when she felt most alive. Afterward, the clock would strike midnight. Cinderella’s ball would end and Cassie would face the irritation of returning to the people and mundane events of everyday life.
For now, she savored the rush as volleys of automatic gunfire swept closer.
A tanned narrow face with a goatee peeked above the heaving and swaying human shield of dark jacket backs. The onyx eyes stared directly into Cassie’s scope. A spot of red light, invisible to the target and his bodyguard, reflected off the narrow forehead. The adrenaline-induced roar racing and plunging inside of her abruptly ceased, replaced by dead cold calm. Her lungs froze in mid-breath as she depressed the trigger. Other than the one finger, not another muscle moved, and for an instant she, the weapon, and the chambered round, became a single continuous entity. No scientific explanation existed, but her ability to meld with the firearm set her apart from nearly every other marksman in the world.
With a muted thump and no flash, the bullet broke from the silencer into open air, travelling at three thousand feet a second. She imagined the same strong will that impelled the target to make the critical self-exposure now guided the projectile.
The shot was low and to her right, entering the victim’s left eye. Cassie cursed the shot’s imperfection as he sank to one knee, leaving a smear of cranial blood and tissue on the car door. Security guards sprang upright. Their heads snapped around in a tense desperate back and forth search for something to shoot.
Cassie didn’t worry about them. The direction-finding equipment offered the greatest threat. If the first shot hadn’t betrayed her location, the second would pinpoint it. Already she was clearing datum as fast as she could crawl. Vehicles, filled with armed men, departed the villa driveway. In ten minutes, her former position would be overrun. As she drew farther from the protection of the berm, the terrain sloped uphill. The distance between her crawling frame and the gunfire zipping by overhead narrowed.
To make better time, she abandoned the sniper rifle. A shame, too; the piece was a favorite. She kept the side arm and debated ditching the grenades. They dragged the ground, slowed her down. She decided to keep them.
Voices approached from the left, still distant, but soon that would change. Is this how it ends? She’d been in tight spots before, some as tight as this one, and always came through.
“When your number’s up, you’re done.” Her first mentor, a lycan named Rabina Lopez, often said. “Until then, act like you’re bulletproof.”
Today, I choose to be bulletproof.