Ghost Soldiers Read Online Free PDF

when he should’ve, and we lost all contact shortly after.”
    â€œPack it up. We’re getting out of here.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œThe mission’s burned. Your guy’s dead; that means we’ve all been made.”
    â€œNo way. This took months to put together. Just because I told you a secret doesn’t mean I’m ready to bag the mission. We check out the last place the Watchers tagged him and go from there. If Sorin Cojocaru shows his face…” she pointed at the Barrett sniper rifle, forming her hand into a pistol and closing one eye as if aiming, “…then you introduce him to your little friend. Simple as that.”
    But of course he knew it would never be as simple as that.
    Â 
    Bailey killed the diesel engine, and the surrounding slopes and trees settled into an expectant hush. She’d raced here fast enough, pushing the converted ice cream truck to speeds that made the frame shudder and groan and the entire truck feel as if it would tip over on the curves. Karl pushed open the truck’s back doors and stepped down off the bumper onto the ground with the sniper rifle in his hands. Unease sank its teeth in even deeper.
    He scanned into the night with his vampire senses. Nothing but thick stands of trees and the half-circle clearing of a turnout. High mountain slopes, rocky crags, cliffs and peaks. The two-lane road behind them sat deserted. The cool air smelled of evergreens, tainted by a whiff of diesel fumes. Then the breeze changed and he smelled blood.
    He shut the door behind him and advanced along the side of the truck in a combat crouch with the Barrett up at his shoulder. He slipped into the darkness of the tree line. Light—a faint flicker of amber—drew his attention across the stand of pines to something on the other side. He knelt near a fallen trunk and lifted the sniper rifle, staring at the scene farther down the road through the high-powered scope.
    â€œI have visual through the crosshairs on the monitor,” Bailey confirmed over the com.
    He sighted in on two vehicles parked a few hundred meters away, where the road curved past a thick mass of evergreens. An RV had stopped on the dirt shoulder, and its hazard lights threw pulses of gold across the asphalt and into the trees. It leaned drunkenly to one side as noxious black and gray smoke drifted from its frame and blew into the tree line. A man’s body lay near the RV’s metal steps, sprawled in the carpet of pine needles. The scope’s magnification brought his shredded flesh into sharp focus. On the other side of the road, a tractor trailer had careened into a tree, smashing the cab and jackknifing across both lanes.
    He kept his voice a breath above a whisper as he spoke into the mike. “You getting this?”
    â€œAffirmative,” Bailey answered, but her voice seemed dazed, muted. “Civilian casualties. Any sign of hostiles?”
    He sent his vampire senses sweeping farther outward. No strange sounds, but he caught a chaotic mix of scents—blood, wolves, decay, the metallic stink of fear and other things too intertwined to isolate—and he sensed the lingering echo of magic. “Nothing. I’m heading in.”
    â€œKeep frosty. This is some bad shit…”
    He stalked through the trees, cutting a direct line away from the curving road. He placed each foot carefully, setting the outside of his boot to the ground first, then rolling the rest of his foot slowly down to avoid snapping twigs, and he watched for branches that might snag on his clothes or the rifle.
    The smell of blood intensified as he crept closer. Everything lay silent, except for the ticking of an engine as it cooled and a steady drip and splatter of fluids onto the road. He headed toward the RV. No movement. Nothing alive. The night held all its cards face down, and silence ran the game.
    He stepped out of the tree line onto the dirt shoulder,