Danger Close by James Sumner (classic novels for teens txt) 📕

someone else’s greater good. He now found himself fighting for his life in what was probably the most legitimate and worthwhile cause of his military career. There was no agenda here. The only politics were the ones he brought with him. This was about right and wrong. This was about defending the persecuted from a tyranny they inherited. Yet each death he saw… each one he caused… they all felt unnecessary. He wished he could have done more to stop this. To keep President Herrera alive. Everything that had happened, everything going on, everything to come…

It was all on him.

“Sir!”

A far-off voice dragged him from the ill-timed reflections of a guilty soldier. The noise of the world rushed back toward him the way the end of a tunnel approaches a train. The world was louder than how he left it.

Startled, Jericho looked around. One of his own men was yelling and gesturing behind him. As he looked over his shoulder, he saw the reason the world was more chaotic. Two choppers hovered ominously over the courtyard. Men were fast-roping down onto the balcony, flanking Jericho’s men and firing without hesitation.

It took him a second to realize what was happening.

He spun around, chambering an explosive round. A group of the general’s men had landed maybe twenty feet away, close to the doors that led inside, onto the second floor of the palace. Just behind them was a large stone pillar.

Jericho fired.

The bullet punched into the pillar and exploded on impact. A cloud of dust and stone fragments showered the men standing close by, sending them flying to the floor. The middle of the pillar was destroyed. The top of it fell away, dragging a large section of its roof down with it. The destruction was loud, temporarily drowning out the noise of gunfire. Brick and slate clattered to the floor, dropping on almost all the men sprawled across the floor.

They disappeared beneath the rubble. Only a couple of men remained, having been able to dive out of the way before the roof crashed down. Jericho moved toward them. He fired a couple of rounds, hitting both men in their legs, ensuring they stayed down.

The choppers overhead had flown away. The men with Jericho were engaging the team of enemies on the other side, now able to focus without fear of being attacked from behind.

Jericho looked over to where the stone pillar had once stood. It had left a gap in both the side and the floor of the balcony. He moved toward it and crouched at the edge. He used the back of his hand to wipe a cocktail of sweat and dust from his face, then peered around to assess the courtyard below.

Vehicles had been positioned at the far end to block access to the palace grounds, filling the gap left when the gates were removed. There were easily thirty men on the ground, forming a perimeter around the general’s tank. Jericho figured there was probably the same number again inside. He hoped Ramirez was holding up okay.

The general had disappeared inside his tank. The hatch was closed. There was a loud, mechanical whirring as the turret began turning clockwise, moving its long barrel away from the palace entrance to aim at…

Jericho’s eyes popped wide with shock.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. He jumped to his feet and ran along the balcony toward his team. He gestured for them to drop into cover. “Everyone down! Get down!”

But his efforts were futile.

The tank fired one of its huge shells, almost breaking the sound barrier as it decimated the upper balcony of the east wing. The impact was devastating. The middle of the balcony disintegrated, along with most of the roof and the wall below it. A hole the size of a small car had been punched into the building. The balcony collapsed in on itself, dropping in the center to the ground below, taking everyone who had been standing there with it.

Jericho didn’t see what happened to his team. In an instant, he fell almost twenty feet to the courtyard below and landed heavily on his right shoulder. He managed to roll out of the way before a large chunk of concrete crashed down, missing him by inches. His gun flew from his grip. He was trapped inside a cloud of dirt and confusion, unable to see the world around him. He was aware of blood running down his face, but he couldn’t pinpoint the exact location or severity of the wound.

He groaned as he tried to move, to look around and check on his team. His body was wracked with pain. He didn’t think the general would fire on the palace. He was wrong.

The sound of gunfire faded, giving way to a persistent ringing in his ears. He lay on a large heap of rubble, unable to get to his feet. After what seemed like hours of trying, he gave up, letting his body relax on the most uncomfortable of beds.

A moment later, he heard footsteps from all directions. Through the dirty haze of the explosion’s aftermath, shadows began to appear. Then they began to take shape. The general’s men fanned out, searching the debris for survivors.

One of the shadows emerged from the dust cloud and towered over Jericho’s beaten body. He stared until the image of First Lieutenant Gomez aiming his rifle at him came into focus. Jericho strained to lift his head and look the man in the eye. He had him dead to rights. There was nothing he could do to defend himself. He couldn’t move or fight back.

“You’re right,” said Gomez, sneering with the arrogance of presumed victory. “This is just as easy without a gate between us.”

As Jericho stared up at the angry, determined expression of his enemy, his mind cleared. All fear left him. People say that your entire life flashes before your eyes when faced with death. But that didn’t happen for him. The grim clarity of the moment brought with it only two images