Free To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) by Edward Crichton Page A

with mine.  We wore our night ops combat fatigues with our olive drab MOLLE vests over them.  We were lightly armed, but Helena also had a small grappling hook dangling from her vest, which I dutifully retrieved and prepared to toss over the wall.  I made a few quick circles in the air as I spun the hook, releasing it on the fourth.  It went sailing over the wall and silently made contact with the rampart’s floor thanks to its rubber tips.  I pulled the rope until it was taut, giving it another tug just to be sure it was secure.  Satisfied, I started my ascent, Helena right behind me. 
    A short climb later, I bounded over the lip of the wall, landing quietly onto the rampart.  I side stepped immediately to the left so Helena could land behind me.  When she did, we gathered up the rope and I reattached everything to her rig.
    I risked a quick look out over the camp, seeing for the first time an endless sea of torches illuminating an incalculable number of tents, all lined up in neat little rows.  In that moment, I couldn’t avoid a slight sense of unease tickle the back of my mind at the fact that I hadn’t brought Santino instead of Helena, because this was when we could have really used him.  I could see guards aplenty scattered through the interior of the camp and there were thousands of resident randomly going about one bit of business or another.
    We ’d anticipated as much, but the idea of sneaking through the forest of tents below us was unsettling.  Santino could have walked down the via principalis stark naked and go completely unnoticed, but I had to be here since I was the only one with enough facts to talk to Galba and Helena’s ghilli suit didn’t fit him.  It hadn’t been out of the question for us to craft his own ghilli suit out of locally made materials, even if it wouldn’t have been up to the standards of our modern ones, but none of us had voiced any concerns during the planning stage about his absence.  Four years ago, I probably wouldn’t have considered bringing Helena on such a dangerous mission.  She’d been a green rookie, chosen for Pope’s Praetorians because of a falsified record, but four years of operating with Santino and me had honed her into an effective military machine.
    I tried to push it out of my mind as Helena placed her hand on my back, indicating she was ready to move.  I reached behind me to tap the side of her leg to confirm I was ready as well.  When we reached the first guard, I took aim with my air pistol fitted with tranquilizer darts, but didn’t fire.  I knew enough about Roman camps to know that if this guard didn’t meet up with his partner, now at the other end of the wall, an alarm would go up almost immediately.  Instead, we took advantage of our dark camouflage and quietly shifted positions to the inner edge of the rampart, and crawled our way behind him.
    At one point , I thought I would have to shoot him when I saw his head snap around in our direction, but it turned out he was merely swatting at an insect.  He turned towards the center of the wall to meet up with his buddy a few moments later, and I let out a slow breath through my balaclava.  I glanced at Helena, only my eyes revealing my relief.  She returned my look with a flick of her own green eyes and a gentle nudge to urge me forward.
    When the guard was out of sight, I pulled Helena’s grappling hook and rope from her MOLLE vest once again .  I placed the hook on the rampart’s wooden floor near the corner and tossed the rope out over the inner wall.  The corner was pitch black so we had no insecurities about standing out against the lightly colored stone wall.  I maneuvered myself out over the wall and fast roped to the bottom, taking stock of our surroundings after touching the ground, waiting for Helena to join me.  Our corner of the camp seemed deserted at the moment, but that could change at any moment.  When Helena’s boots hit the grass behind me, I turned to