The Fall (Book 5): Exodus in Black Read Online Free Page B

in the east, a wonderful profile shot.
    Spend enough time as a SEAL and you developed the ability to read a situation instantly the same way an art critic could look at a painting and tell you the mood of its creator based on brush strokes. Mason knew they were looking for prisoners. It was obvious. Their vehicles carried rooftop guns, and they had the backing of Rebound, which could easily have provided rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-mounted missile launchers, or any number of other weapons.
    The blocky, heavy machine guns on the vehicles weren’t being used. Instead they picked off targets with single shots from a distance. You didn’t do that when you wanted to simply destroy. Rather than let them have the time to set up a proper camp where detaining him would be easier, Mason gave up.
    After all, the easiest way to gather information was to get yourself close to the enemy. You were way more likely to overhear something you shouldn’t when they were actively engaged in something that took most of their attention.
    Like, say, taking out a small village full of enemies.
    He had stopped at the warning shot some marksman put into the ground in front of him. He went to his knees, put hands behind his head, and waited.
    Mason wore his usual sparring attire, which also happened to be his everyday clothes. Learning to fight meant practicing as you were at any given time. If you couldn’t fight wearing regular clothes, you couldn’t fight at all.
    Heavy boots, loose BDU cargo pants in black, and a light gray t-shirt. He briefly wondered what the attackers would think of that. It was easy to underestimate an unarmed man, especially when you had a weapon and armor.
    Granted, Mason was currently zip-cuffed to a steering wheel, which made him pretty easy to underestimate.
    “Any chance I could get a drink of water?” he asked the youngish guy tasked with guarding him. The kid was in his early twenties and wore the same black clothing and armor as the other attackers, but without the same predatory comfort. Not that the kid lacked the hard-eyed gaze of a practiced survivor. Oh, no. He had that look. He clearly wasn’t a soldier. The bearing was all wrong, his reactions grown from bald-faced terror and having to kill to live rather than the regimented practice soldiers went through.
    The kid slid his restless eyes, always scanning for danger, across Mason. “No.”
    “It’s just that I was working out when this happened…”
    The kid was certainly a survivor. His discipline was of the reptile-brain variety, tuned to make him aware of obvious threats. There was no subtlety to it, none of the self-control needed to mask his instinctive responses. Mason wasn’t sure if training made him good at reading them, or if some natural aptitude was what helped him become an effective soldier, but it was almost as natural as his glance at the battlefield.
    Mason listened and watched. The kid definitely wasn’t going to let anything slip by him, but Mason saw the twitch of frustration when he had continued to speak after being refused water. Every instructor he’d ever trained under in the service taught him not just to recognize and exploit weaknesses, but to understand and utilize his own strengths.
    Just so happened Mason’s strength was exploiting weakness.
    He heard snippets of conversation between the men in charge as they discussed the attack. He read intent in the body language of the soldiers laid out in a broad semicircle as they fired on the compound. Mason’s ears perked up when, between thundering reports, someone asked if the other one had been spotted. The tall, black bad guy.
    It was maybe twenty minutes from when he’d been cuffed to the wheel, but Mason had heard enough to satisfy his curiosity.
    “Hey, kid,” he said, pitching his voice low. Conspiratorial, a little rough, a dash of desperation. “Look, I ask you something.”
    The kid’s restless eyes finally stopped and he regarded Mason with outright