Viper: A Thriller Read Free Page B

sight through the trees and down the slight slope onto the camp, he
watched Aguilar emerge from the commandant’s hut. From Aguilar’s confident expression
and body language, and the way he addressed his men, Avery was sure they’d
nailed Reyes. Next, they’d quell the remaining resistance and then perform site
exploitation.
    When Avery took
his head away from the scope, the slightest movement in his peripheral commanded
his attention. He flicked his eyes in that direction in time to catch a dark
blur disturb the stillness of the jungle, so quick that he nearly missed it,
and an untrained eye would have likely not caught it at all.
    Avery focused on
the thick layers of jungle understory, studying the smallest details. He heard
leaves rustling and twigs snapping, but his eyes couldn’t find the source of
the sound. Finally, several seconds later, fifty feet away, he saw hanging
branches shudder, and this time, through his night optic, he clearly caught a
glimmer of a man hurtling through the foliage, arms raised high with his rifle
in front of him to clear and push his way through the tangled growth.  
    Avery’s eyes
followed the trail of shuddering brush and shrubs to a clear space, where the
man turned around to check his six, facing Avery without seeing him.
    It was Aarón
Moreno.
    How the hell did
he manage to slip away?
    More
importantly, why the hell did he have to make his escape right near Avery’s
hide?
    Moreno stopped
until a second man caught up with him, and then they continued forward,
swallowed by the understory growth.
    Avery waited a
couple seconds, expecting gunshots to follow, or Colombian troops in pursuit,
but there was nothing. Instinctively, he started to get up, but then he stopped
himself. It wasn’t like he could go after them. The last thing he needed was to
be spotted and mistakenly dropped by a Colombian soldier.
    As he nestled
back into his hide, content to wait out the assault, Avery recalled the pre-mission
briefing with the Colombian squad leaders. Moreno had personally killed a
number of undercover operatives, including Americans, and friends and former
teammates of Aguilar’s men. Reyes might be the man the politicians in Bogotá
and Washington wanted, but Moreno was the man that the Colombian cops, intel
operators, and special ops troops, plus the DEA agents, wanted to see taken
down.
     Avery pictured
the debriefing sessions, having to explaining how he sat back and watched Aarón
Moreno make a clean getaway.
    Shit. He hated when
his conscience kicked in.
     Avery sprung up
from his hide, coming up onto one knee while shouldering his M4, then rising
onto his feet, letting the camouflage netting fall behind him. His legs felt
stiff and sore from the lack of circulation, and the small of his back was
briefly uncomfortable suddenly supporting his full weight in an upright
position.
    He scanned his
surroundings. Turning his head slowly left, he gave a startled jump when he came
suddenly face to face with a boa wrapped around a drooping limb from a kapok
tree. The massive snake hissed and began to stir . Avery jumped back and
stepped clear of the boa. Then something scurried quickly by on the forest
floor, brushing against his leg, and he gave another jump, but didn’t bother to
look. He also didn’t want to think about the spiders and bugs that he knew were
crawling along his back.
    Visualizing his
movements in advance, Avery carefully covered four yards through the understory
foliage, maneuvering around trees, over deadwood, through the understory
curtains, and over the mud and decaying plants on the jungle floor, ducking and
weaving around low-laying branches, following Moreno’s path. He stopped when he
caught the blur of movement somewhere far ahead—strands of branches parting.
    Avery was
immediately reminded of another aspect of the jungle he detested. It was damned
near impossible, especially at night, to track and subsequently hit a target through
the endless trees, hanging