Free Mega 4: Behemoth Island by Jake Bible

laughed softly and reached out, patting his leg.
    “Not right now,” she said. “But thank you.”
    Max took her hand and kissed it. He started kissing her wrist then working up her arm until she gently pulled back.
    “Don’t start,” she said, not unkindly. “We can’t get distracted.”
    “Baby, I’m always distracted when you’re around,” Max replied. “But don’t tell Uncle Vinny that. He’d never let us go on an op together again.”
    “I should tell him anyway,” Darby said. “A distracted shooter is a useless shooter.”
    “Woman, I got skills enough to handle distraction and still get the job done,” Max laughed.
    “Don’t call me woman,” Darby said. “Sugar tits is okay, though.”
    Max laughed again. “I wish the rest of the Team could see you like this. They have no idea the Darby I know. Does Ballantine?”
    Darby turned and looked directly at Max, but he couldn’t see the look on her face in the shadowed moonlight.
    “Ballantine has seen me a lot of ways, but not like this,” Darby said. “This is for you. This is for me.”
    “Got it,” Max said.
    A spot in his chest warmed at her words. He knew he was really, really into Darby, but he hadn’t dared admit the “L word” to himself. That moment changed a few things. He was about to say as much when Darby started talking again.
    “I watched them drag the girls into the jungle and there was nothing I could do,” Darby said. “They were fifteen, maybe, at the oldest. I wasn’t pinned down, but I had to hold my position and provide cover for the rest of the Team. The bastards kept coming at us and there was no stopping.”
    Her whole body shuddered.
    “By the time it was over, every one of them was dead,” Darby said.
    Max waited. It took a minute, but Darby continued.
    “The objective was to protect the mine,” Darby said. “It was small, not a huge producer, but worth enough that the company I worked for, not the “company” company, but a different outfit all together, had been hired as security until the latest load could be safely extracted and shipped out.”
    “Where do the girls figure into it?” Max asked.
    “They don’t,” Darby said. “Or they shouldn’t have. We were set up in a close village. Half of our Team was on site while the other half was in the village. We rotated out so there was twenty-four hour coverage. Nothing left to chance. Except we all know that’s bullshit, right?”
    “No shit,” Max said.
    “They came at us, some local gang,” Darby said. “They came at us in the village. I honestly don’t know if they were there to take us on or there for the girls. Doesn’t matter now. The firefight was brutal and we lost two of ours before we wiped them out. A few escaped, abandoning their junker trucks and SUVs in order to get lost in the jungle. I followed.”
    She swallowed hard, picked up her water bottle, drained it, belched, then sat there, her head held straight, her hands worrying the grip of her carbine.
    “Six of them,” Darby said. “They’d nabbed six of them. Dragged them into the jungle and destroyed them. Completely destroyed them. Even during a firefight like that the animals found time to whip out their dicks and have their fun. Then they went to work with machetes.”
    “Fuck me,” Max whispered. He’d seen some nasty shit in Afghanistan, but not that nasty. “Where was this? Africa?”
    “No,” Darby said. “Indonesia. A small island. Like this.”
    “Oh,” Max said. It all clicked. Too many similarities jammed together. It could overwhelm anyone.
    “One was left alive,” Darby said. “I had to make a choice. Let her live, with no hands or feet, her body so broken that it was doubtful there was a doctor within a thousand square miles that could put her back together. Or end her suffering right there in the jungle.”
    Max let the silence settle. He didn’t ask her what choice she made. He was pretty sure he knew. The seconds, minutes ticked off in his