by Dana Marton
Not in a million years. She shook her head, holding on for dear life. She didn’t mind the acrobatics, but she hated heights. Unfortunately her arms were killing her already. Hanging from a moving object required a hell of a lot of strength. If she didn’t get in, she would fall in minutes, especially with the way the chopper was jerking around in the high winds that were getting stronger now by the second.
Could this even be done in real life? The whole scenario was unreal, something out of a movie. But if the stunt doubles could do it…
She took a deep breath and let go with one hand, reached for his. Their fingertips touched first. She leaned out more until her hand was clamped over his wrist and his around hers.
Rain started suddenly, without warning, and pelted them from above. What else could go wrong? She gritted her teeth, determined not to be done in either by nature or by conscienceless bastard terrorists.
Cal held her gaze and nodded. And she put her life into his hands, literally, taking a deep breath and pitching forward.
Her heart stopped for that moment when she hung in midair. She kicked her feet on instinct, then stopped herself, realizing she was making matters worse. Then her free hand closed around the metal bar and she pulled herself up, gaining purchase with both hands after a second.
She didn’t have a chance to catch her breath, had to grip tighter as the helicopter lurched from the sudden shift of weight. She held her breath while the pilot steadied the chopper again, struggling against the wind.
She needed a moment of respite before they began climbing for the door. She didn’t get it. The barrel of a rifle appeared in her line of view.
“Watch out!” Gina warned.
This was it. They were going to die.
She looked into Cal’s eyes, wanting him to be the last thing she saw instead of the flare out of the end of the barrel.
But when the bullets came, they missed them by a wide margin. The shooter couldn’t see them; he was squeezing the trigger blind.
Cal didn’t give him a chance to get into a better position. He grabbed the barrel and heaved. A dark mass flew by them with a drawn-out scream. She didn’t have it in her to look after the man. They were still over the island. He wasn’t going to have a soft landing.
“Three more to go,” Cal shouted over the noise that seemed to pulsate in her brain.
He reached up, hooked his leg, then in a few moments disappeared from sight. Gunshots exploded above. The chopper lurched again, leaving her dangling precariously, threatening to send her after the man she’d just seen fall to his death. Not a happy thought. She had to get up there.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Swing, catch, pull.
She had to climb over one dead body to get in, to get to the hand-to-hand combat Cal was fighting. The pilot was going for his weapon. Gina grabbed the dead man’s handgun and put it to the pilot’s head, ignored the hate on his face and the savage swearing and threats she couldn’t understand.
“Set the chopper down,” Gina shouted at the man at the end of the barrel.
Where was Tsernyakov? She looked around bewildered. He hadn’t been in the other chopper, either. The crafty bastard probably had a whole list of backup plans and hadn’t fancied getting on a chopper with his terrorist business partners who might blame him for the screwup, nor with a cooler full of virus phials.
She kept one eye on the pilot and one on Cal and the other guy fighting in the back. The cooler was strapped down not far from them. At one point the terrorist hurled Cal against it, and she held her breath until Cal fought him off, with inherent elegance, and they moved away. There was nothing she could do to help him. She had to stay where she was to control the pilot. “Set it down.”
“Or what? You shoot me?” the man shouted back in broken English. “Who is going to fly it?”
Cal finally got in a solid punch. The man he fought teetered back and crumpled.
“I will,” she bluffed straight-faced.
The man put his hands in the air and leaned back. “Go ahead.”
She held his gaze. With each passing second his grin got wider. Slowly he took control of the levers again.
“Land. Now.” Cal had come up. He reached into his pocket, then extended his hand in front of the pilot’s face. The parts he’d taken out of the other chopper lay in his palm. The winds tossed the chopper now as if it weighed no more than a seagull. “Do it before we crash.”
The pilot’s gaze flew to the dashboard, then back to the nuts and bolts. He swore in Russian again. Then he adjusted a few things and the helicopter began to descend.
She held her breath the entire time, gripping the gun hard enough to get a cramp in her wrist, not daring to move it, worried that the pilot might still have some trick up his sleeve.
But just this once, in the middle of their worst-case scenario, their luck finally held and he didn’t make any sudden moves.
They barely touched down before she turned the handgun around and slammed the butt into the back of the man’s head. Then she shot up the dashboard for good measure. Nobody else was going to take this chopper anywhere.
Cal was grinning at her, his masculine lips stretched from ear to ear.
“What are you so happy about?”
“You’re really sexy when you take care of business, you know?” He jumped to the ground and she followed.
Sexy had been the last thing on her mind. Served to show that all that research stating what men thought about an average of every seven seconds was exactly right on the money.
She would have mentioned it to him but was cut off when hell broke loose somewhere around the bay. Three explosions followed each other in quick succession, the sound of other helicopters filling the air.
Did Tsernyakov get back to the bay already? Was he doing all this? He must have had a backup plan. She hoped against hope that the choppers had been sent by Brant, but it seemed too soon for that. Hariumat wasn’t that close.
“The cooler. Quick.” Cal reached back and was unfastening the restraints already. “Even if it’s our backup, they might decide to take out these choppers from the air, not knowing what’s inside. It would be better for all involved if we didn’t let the virus get airborne.”
She helped him lift the heavy cooler to the ground. The choppers were nearly on top of them.
“Go, go, go.” Cal ran toward the woods.
She followed, holding up the other end. They just made it into cover when the two Apache helicopters came into view. The choppers on the ground were history in a few seconds.
“They’re here.” Cal visibly relaxed.
“Thank God.” But she wasn’t sure that they were out of the woods just yet. “We’d better get rid of this.” She nodded toward the cooler, not altogether comfortable to be this close to a deadly virus.
In the confusion of the battle, it would be too easy to meet up with one of the enemy or even some gung-ho commando soldier who thought to shoot first and ask questions later. She didn’t want to walk out onto the beach with the cooler in her hands.
“By the tower?” Cal asked.
A spot easily found again and not too far from here. “Perfect.”
They took off running in that direction, going as fast as the uneven ground and the heavy case allowed. She could hear the choppers circling overhead but couldn’t see them through the thick canopy. They reached the tower without trouble. When the cooler was hidden in the kudzu at the base of it, they started back.
“Backup got here faster than I thought,” Cal remarked as they moved forward at a rapid speed, keeping an eye and ear out for soldiers and/or terrorists moving through the woods. The wind snatched some of his words, but she could make out enough to understand.
“That’s my team.” She grinned, grateful to Anita, Carly and Sam.
The whole nightmare was almost over. They’d done it, accomplished the impossible. And if they could do this, then wasn’t it possible that they might be able to start new lives, as well? Despite the
danger they were still in, hope coursed through her body, filling her with more optimism than she had felt in a long time.
Then Cal slowed, lifting his hand in a sign of warning. The next second, a man in a dark suit stepped from behind a clump of bushes—an expensive suit, although now heavily soiled. He held a gun but didn’t point it at them.
“I wouldn’t go that way.” He nodded toward the direction he’d come from. “The bay is a mess.”
“Good to see you in one piece, Joseph. Anyone make it with you?” Cal kept up the charade. “What in hell is going on?”
She stared. Joseph Tsernyakov, one of the most dangerous and evil men in the world, was standing not ten feet from her. She and the team had worked for so long that to get near him now felt surreal.
He looked so…ordinary. Good-looking, too, although she could see no family resemblance between the cousins. Maybe Cal was right and she had expected horns. She kept quiet, trying to melt into the background, letting Cal run the show.
“Some people are making a nuisance of themselves.” Tsernyakov looked her over, raising his gun slightly.
Her heartbeat slowed as underlying tension filled the air.
Cal moved between them. His hand inched toward the gun at his back.
She willed the men not to make a move. They were all standing within a few feet of each other. No way to miss. The chances of who would end up dead on the ground were about even.
“Your friend?” Tsernyakov drew up an eyebrow as he lowered the gun casually, as if he’d never meant any harm at all. “We’ll make the introductions later. Let’s get to the choppers.” He was walking that way already.
Gina shot Cal a questioning look, her pulse slowly returning to normal. He shook his head slightly.
“Good idea,” he told Tsernyakov and fell in step behind him.
Tsernyakov waited, however, until they were in line with him, as if he didn’t want them at his back.
Gina kept up with the men. Her handgun was tucked into the waistband of her shorts, behind her back, as was Cal’s into his. Tsernyakov had his weapon in his hand. A pretty lousy setup.
He clearly didn’t trust them. But then why was he taking them with him?
Insurance? If something went wrong, he could hold them as hostages.
Movement in the woods caught her eye. She didn’t dare fully look that way. She didn’t want to draw Tsernyakov’s attention to it.
Chapter Ten
“Have you seen anyone else?” Tsernyakov asked.
The wind was howling now, bending trees, the rain soaking them to the skin.
“No. But we heard some choppers above,” Cal said, giving Gina a look she couldn’t understand.
What was he trying to tell her?
“What were you doing in the woods?” Tsernyakov kept grilling him. Then he looked at Gina and flashed a half grin. “Never mind.”
If Cal meant to make a move now, what was he waiting for? Gina walked with them, expecting some sort of a clear signal that the time was now, but it never came. Then they finally reached the clearing and stopped to listen and watch for danger before they stepped out.
It was clear at first glance that both choppers were completely destroyed. Tsernyakov swore. Not as cool and unaffected as he appeared to be, was he?
“What do we do now?” Cal asked and moved into position so that, whatever happened, he would cover Gina with his body.
She made a point of moving away, trudging in mud that was deeper in the open area. She wanted a clear line of vision to Tsernyakov so she could shoot unencumbered when the time came.
“I have a boat hidden.” Tsernyakov was cutting through the clearing already. “In case of emergency.”
“In this weather?” Gina asked.
“I already called in a ship to pick me up.” Movement behind the trees in their path cut him off.
The next second, a dozen camouflaged soldiers stepped from behind the trees and surrounded them, crowding them into the middle.
The three of them stood back-to-back. She still wasn’t too happy with the setup. “Don’t shoot,” she yelled to no one in particular. The commando knew there were undercover operatives on the island.
“We can take them,” Joseph said and aimed.
But Cal turned and pointed his gun at him instead. “No, we can’t.”
Gina followed Cal’s example.
Surprise flashed through the man’s eyes, then understanding, then fury. “How can you betray your family?” He spat at Cal but missed.
Cal didn’t even flinch. “How can you betray humanity?”
The soldiers moved closer.
Tsernyakov pulled up his gun and aimed at his own head. Both of them lurched forward, but Cal was faster. He knocked the man’s arm up, and the bullet went wide.
Tsernyakov didn’t seem upset. She realized too late that the move had been just a feint. With attention diverted from his left hand for a split second, Tsernyakov grabbed her by the arm and spun her in front of him, shoving the barrel of his gun hard against her temple. “Back off.”
Everything slowed for a second. Blood rushed through her ears so loud she couldn’t hear what people were saying, although she could see their lips move. Then it all returned to normal just as suddenly, and she was alert and poised to fight, her training and experience on the force returning.
Everybody was shouting at once. “Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!”
She could make out Brant’s voice over the din. “Hold your fire!”
Where was he? She hadn’t seen him before.
Tsernyakov would shoot if he didn’t get what he wanted. He had nothing to lose. She needed to reassure him by complying. She relaxed her fingers and let her gun slide to the ground, cursing through clenched teeth. How could she have been so stupid and let him get hold of her?
“I want a chopper now,” Tsernyakov said calmly, full of self-assurance, a man expecting his orders to be filled.
“Let her go.” Cal put his hands in the air. “Take me. I’m bigger. I’ll cover more of you.”
“If I didn’t think taking the gun off your little whore was a bad idea, you’d be dead by now,” Tsernyakov responded. “Stay where you are. I don’t want to see as much as a muscle twitch.”
“Okay, okay.” Brant made his way forward among the men of his commando team. “There isn’t enough room for another chopper to land here. How about we put one down for you on the beach?”
Tsernyakov thought for a second. “On the south beach. And I want the whole beach cleared. I don’t want to see a single boat on the water.”
“Fine. Nothing but the chopper and the pilot.” Brant sounded reassuring.
“No pilot.”
He could fly? She wasn’t overly surprised, actually. The man was notorious for mistrusting everyone. Made sense that he was prepared for every eventuality.
Would he take her with him?
Probably.
Then what?
Toss her into the ocean when they were far enough away?
“It might take a while to get one here in this weather.” Law was playing for time.
Tsernyakov required but a split second to come up with the response. “You already have the Apaches here.”
He could fly an Apache? Her future was looking dimmer by the minute. She shivered in the rain despite the fact that it wasn’t that cold. Small branches dropped now and then from above, twisted off by the wind that wrestled with the treetops.
Tsernyakov held her by her midriff with his left hand, pointing the gun with his right. She glanced at her own weapon not three feet from where she stood in the mud. She had one chance to make a move. If she didn’t succeed…
To hell with that. She looked into Cal’s eyes. What she saw there was worth living for. She had no intention of failing.
D ON’T DO IT. DON’T do it. Cal transmitted his silent message, but Gina looked determined to make some move. His heart had stopped beating when Joseph had grabbed her but now lurched into a sprin
t. All the double-oh stuff had been fun and games, but having Gina in danger—Fury burned through his veins.
He watched with horror as she fell forward with her full weight, pulling Joseph off balance. A shot rang out and went wide as the man came down on top of her. She lifted her head and smashed it into his nose with full force. Her other hand was going for her gun. Joseph pulled up his weapon to aim. All this happened in a brief moment, all at the same time. Then Cal jumped on top of his cousin, grabbing for his hand.
They were rushed the next second and disarmed in the blink of an eye.
Brant Law was there, extricating Gina from the bottom of the pile. “Undercover agent. She’s with me,” he said as a dozen guns pointed at them.
She reached over for Cal. “Undercover agent. He’s with me,” she said, repeating the agent’s statement.
He liked the sound of that last sentence in particular.
Law was rolling his eyes, but a smile played on his lips, relief clearly evident on his face. “Capture by sandwich? Amateurs.”
His men were hauling Tsernyakov aside.
“And where would the virus be?”
Gina told him in detail. He sent two men to retrieve the cooler, then turned to Cal. “Nice work here. There are a couple of British bad boys down the beach looking for you, Mr. Spencer.”
He wished they’d been here and saved him from shaving ten years off his life by watching Gina in his cousin’s clutches. “Glad you made it here,” Cal told Law, then turned to Gina. “Are you all right?”
Brant was speaking at the same time. “You okay?” He was handing her a pair of handcuffs. “I thought you might want to do the honors.”
She hesitated only for a second before taking them, brushing mud and wet leaf bits off her legs. “How are the others?”
Brant shook his head. “Wouldn’t be left behind for anything. Why didn’t that surprise me? You have a tight team.”
“I’ve got good friends.” It sounded as if there was a lump in her throat. “How did they get to you so fast? We didn’t expect you for a while.”
“We kept the island under surveillance from the air. Once we saw them go out on the boat, we sent in our men to meet them halfway.”