Again, something in Russian.
“I don’t speak asshole.”
The guy spat into the mud but then threw down his weapon and raised his tattoo-covered hands. Marcus was no expert in Russian prison tats but recognized the initials on the back of the guy’s hand. He’d seen it before during his tenure with the FBI, knew the abbreviation roughly stood for “only execution will correct me.” This guy, here, was a bad dude.
Marcus didn’t want to take his eyes off the big guy, but he had to check on Mercedes. He saw Abel running toward him, but that woman was nowhere to be seen.
So much for their deal.
“Pick up the gun,” he told Abel when the kid got close enough.
Abel staggered to a stop when he spotted the Russians and stared with rounded eyes.
“The gun,” Marcus prompted. He hated using the kid, but he needed another set of eyes and hands since Mercedes had ghosted.
Abel lurched forward, grabbed the weapon, and pointed it. The muzzle shook. Props to Abel for still acting despite his fear. Not many grown men could do that.
Marcus returned his attention to the big Russian with the prison tats. If looks could decapitate, his head would be rolling in the mud right now. Mr. Prison Tats was a scary fucker, that was for sure. “Keys for the truck.”
The guy took a step forward, his fists curling, but Abel—God bless the kid—shouted something in French and shoved the muzzle of his weapon into the man’s stomach.
Mr. Prison Tats fumed—Marcus was half surprised he didn’t steam under the beat of the rain—then slowly reached for a ring of keys on his belt and tossed it to the ground.
Okay, now what?
If he let these two go, he and Leah would have the entire force of Volkov Group gunning for them within an hour. In a volatile country where HORNET had no assets.
Can anyone say clusterfuck?
“Leah,” he called toward the hut where he’d left her. “We gotta go!”
She peeked out, took quick stock of the situation, and must have decided he was right, because she darted across the road to his side. He didn’t like the hitch in her step or the fear in her eyes when she noticed Prison Tats.
Had this bastard been the one to hurt her?
“What are you doing with them?” she asked.
Haven’t gotten that far yet, he thought but said, “Pick up the keys and start the truck. I’ll be right there.”
Instead, to his horror, Leah approached Prison Tats.
“Be care—”
“He has zip ties,” she said in explanation, but stopped moving well out of the man’s reach.
Marcus nodded once. “Okay. Go slowly. Around his back. Abel, keep the gun pointed at him. He moves in any way you don’t like, shoot him.”
Leah circled around the man’s back and pulled a handful of zip ties from the side pocket on his cargo pants.
“Hands down. Slowly,” Marcus commanded.
Prison Tats did as he was told and Leah tightened the ties around his wrists. But that was when the guy Marcus held decided to be the hero. He threw his head back. Marcus managed to dodge the blow, but it put him off-balance enough that the guy broke free of his hold. Prison Tats made like a bull and charged Abel. The kid squeezed the trigger and bullets sprayed the side of the truck, not hitting anything that could help them—like one of the two assholes trying to kill them.
Marcus grabbed Leah and stashed her under the truck, then used the butt of his own weapon to smash Prison Tats in the head. It didn’t slow him down. If anything, it only pissed him off. He roared like a lion and broke the zip ties with a mighty tug.
Okay, then.
Shit.
Marcus raised his weapon, but it was a Kalashnikov, not meant for close quarters battle. Prison Tats knocked it out of his grasp and grabbed him by the throat, dragging him up to his toes.
Of all the ways he thought he’d clock out of this world, getting his head torn off by a rabid Russian gangster was nowhere on his list of possibilities. He gagged and unsuccessfully pried at the steel bands of fingers wrapped around his neck. Meanwhile, the other guy was running away to raise the alarm.
Spots of color danced across his vision. Only a matter of seconds now until he lost consciousness, and then there was no telling what would happen to Leah or Abel. He kicked out in one last feeble attempt to stave off the inevitable, but his foot found only empty space.
Prison Tats smiled at him. He had weirdly straight, startlingly white teeth. A gangster with good dental hygiene. Somehow, that made this whole situation funny. Or maybe that was the oxygen deprivation.
Darkness began to slitter in around Marcus and the fight drained out of him. He tried but didn’t have the energy left to keep kicking. Just as his vision narrowed to a pinprick, a rose bloomed on his assailant’s forehead.
Marcus dropped unceremoniously to the mud and oxygen rushed into his burning lungs, making him cough.
What the…?
He glanced around, and as the fog cleared from his brain, he realized what had happened. It wasn’t a rose, but a hole. Someone had shot Prison Tats in the head. For one soaring moment, he hoped it had been Seth, HORNET’s ace sniper. The team was here and Leah was safe and—
Nope. That wishful thinking was still oxygen deprivation at work.
Even if the team knew where they were, it’d take them a day to get here. At best, they were still twelve hours from rescue.
Leah scrambled to his side. “Marcus!”
“I’m okay.” Except his voice sounded like he had laryngitis. He tried to clear his throat but that didn’t help. “Where’s the kid?”
She pointed at Abel, still on his butt in the mud, frozen in shock. He didn’t have a gun. So if it hadn’t been the kid…
Then he saw her approaching. Mercedes Raya. Somehow that didn’t make him feel any better. “Are you sure you shot the right guy?”
“We had a deal.” She held out a hand to him.
He accepted and she pulled him to his feet. “We still do.”
She nodded toward the truck. “Then let’s scram before the other one comes back with reinforcements.”
He turned to Leah and before he could even ask, she held up the ring of keys. The brilliant, beautiful woman. Even in the height of battle, she hadn’t let go of them. He wanted to kiss her for it. “You two get it running. I’ll grab the kid.”
Rubbing at his sore throat, he walked over and crouched down in front of Abel. The teenager was in shock, staring through him rather than seeing him. Marcus reached out and he flinched back.
God, there was nothing worse than seeing a kid this scared. No child should ever live in this world of guns and blood, but as an FBI agent, then later with HORNET, he’d seen far too many scarred by the violence. And not just the kids in third world countries, but right on his home turf. He’d worked a hostage situation in a movie theater once. A gunman had taken several people hostage during the opening night of a big, highly anticipated Disney movie. Five kids saw a sniper blow the gunman’s head apart. One boy, a teenager not much younger than Abel, stared at Marcus like Abel was now. That boy went catatonic and didn’t speak for a year.
“I’m a friend,” Marcus reminded and deliberately reached out to set a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Remember? I’ll help you find your father.”
Abel blinked and finally focused his gaze on Marcus. He said something in French, but then switched to English. “You will?”
“It’s what I do, and I have a whole team on the way to help me. But we need to leave here now before more people like him”—he nodded toward the Russian’s body—“show up.”
Abel looked at the body for a long time. Marcus felt every second tick by until Abel nodded and climbed to his feet. Strong kid, but then he’d have to be to have survived here.
As Abel headed toward the truck, Marcu
s detoured to the body and took all the weapons and ammo he could find, including the Kalashnikov he’d dropped when Prison Tats attacked. With the whole of Volkov Group gunning for them, they’d need every bullet.
“Leah and Abel up front with me.” He figured Abel would prove to be a valuable navigator and Leah…well, he just wanted her close. “Mercedes, that means—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m cargo,” she said as she held the driver’s side door open for Abel to climb in and slide across the bench seat. Leah followed, claiming the middle. Mercedes jumped down from the runner and started to close the door. “I see how it is. I save your life and—”
It all happened so fast, Marcus barely had time to get his gun level before bullets chewed through the side of the truck. The squirter had come back with heavy artillery.
Mercedes threw herself in front of Leah and the kid while raising her own gun, but it fell out of her hand as the bullets ripped through her, too. Leah screamed. Abel shouted in frantic French.
Jesus.
Marcus swung around, sighted, and took the little shit out with three kill-zone shots that would have made HORNET’s sniper proud.
The prisoners still locked inside that big round building banged against the door. Much more of that and the door would fly off its hinges, and he wasn’t about to wait around to see if the prisoners would side with him or Volkov.
No other reinforcements had arrived yet. The guy was just trying to be a hero. Now he was a dead hero.
Marcus sprinted to the truck and shoved Mercedes over across Leah’s and Abel’s laps. It looked bad, a lot of blood, but he couldn’t focus on that right now. He had to get them out of here now, or else they’d all end up riddled with bullets. The truck spun its wheels in the mud when he hit the gas but then jolted forward.
“Abel, where do I go?”
The kid babbled in French.
“Abel! Get us the fuck out of here!”
“Uh, uh…” He sat up and scanned their surroundings then pointed to a road that cut away from the camp. “That way. My uncle lives close. He can help.”
Marcus hit the brakes, spun the wheel, and gunned the truck toward the village.
Chapter Seventeen
Blood poured through Leah’s hands as she pressed them to Mercedes’s chest. She didn’t know what else to do to help the woman. “Marcus!”
He spared a glance from the driver’s seat, and his complexion lost a few shades.
Danny.
He was thinking about Danny, reliving what happened to her husband.
And maybe this was the same, but Danny was gone. Mercedes was still alive. For now.
“Marcus! What do I do?”
He returned his attention to the road. “Just keep pressure on it.”
She pressed down harder, and Mercedes’s eyes flew open. The woman choked, but whether it was a scream or a sob, she couldn’t tell. Mercedes looked around, her dark eyes rolling in her head like they weren’t attached to intelligent thought. Was she dying?
“Hey.” Leah leaned over and put her face right in front of Mercedes’s. “You pushed me down, threw yourself in front of the bullets. Why? Why risk your life like that?”
Her eyes stopped rolling and focused. “No more innocents die.”
“What about you?”
She gave a weak smile. “Lost my innocence a long time ago.”
Marcus spared her another glance. “Looks like you finally decided on a team.”
“Looks like.” She drew in a breath and winced. “If I die, find Xander. You owe me. Again.”
He again glanced down at her, and something unspoken passed between them. He returned his attention to the road before he nodded. “We’ll find him.”
“Thank you.” As if that worry were the only thing keeping her awake, she relaxed and slid into unconsciousness.
“Who’s Xander?”
“Her brother. She’s been looking for him for over a year. Alexander Cabot.”
“Her brother?” Panic tore through her. “Marcus, he was back there at the camp. I saw him!”
“Shit.” Marcus slammed on the brakes and the truck rocked to a halt. “Where?”
“They had him in the same building you found me in. He was in bad shape. Dmitry Volkov used me to question him.”
“Used you how?” His voice carried a dangerous edge.
Ugh, he could be so like Danny sometimes. Always getting hung up on the unimportant details and never seeing the big picture. “They didn’t hurt me. They hurt Cabot, though. When he wouldn’t tell them anything, they beat him into unconsciousness and took him away. Dmitry said they took him to a doctor.”
The boy sitting next to her, cradling Mercedes’s head in his lap, let out a frightened squeak, like something a trapped animal would make.
She glanced back and forth between him and Marcus. “What?”
Marcus sighed. “Abel says those that go to the doctor at that camp don’t return.”
“Oh my God. We have to go back for him!” She felt more blood ooze through her fingers and stared down at the unconscious woman spread across her lap.
No. They couldn’t go back. If they did, Mercedes would die.
Marcus must have taken the same read of the situation because he jammed the truck back into drive. “We need to save ourselves first. Abel, how much farther is your uncle’s village?”
“Not far.”
“We go there first and I’ll try to contact the team, then we’ll worry about rescuing Cabot.”
If there was anything left of him to rescue. But she knew Marcus was right. They couldn’t go back with a bleeding woman, a boy, and no weapons. And as much as she hated to admit it, they needed HORNET.
They made the rest of the trip in silence, save from the occasional direction from Abel or the grinding of the truck’s gears.
Abel directed them to stop in front of a red and white building with a steeply sloped A-line roof. A cross hung over the front door. Abel jumped out and ran to the gate, shouting in French. The front door opened, and several men ran out into the rain. Abel directed them to the truck, but when they spotted Marcus and Leah, they froze. Abel squeezed between them, jabbering away in a different language now but obviously assuring the men these people meant no harm and needed help.
The men conversed quietly among themselves, then seemed to come to a consensus. They carefully pulled Mercedes out of the truck and placed her on an already blood-stained stretcher before carting her inside.
Abel popped up in the doorway with a big grin. “My uncle’s church. We will be safe here. Come. There is food and water.”
Leah glanced back at Marcus.
He nodded. “Go inside. I’m right behind you. I need to hide the truck first.”
And older man wearing colorful robes appeared behind Abel and set his hands on the boy’s shoulders. Had to be his uncle. The family resemblance was strong in their high cheekbones and wide noses. “You can park in the back.” His English was better than his nephew’s. “I’ll send men with tarps to help you hide it.”
“Thank you,” Marcus said and started the truck.
Leah climbed out and followed Abel and his uncle onto the church grounds.
“I’m Josue,” Abel’s uncle said.
“I’m Leah. And the woman they took inside is Mercedes.”
“We have a nurse here. She will help your friend.”
Leah breathed out a soft sigh. She hoped that was the truth. The last thing she wanted was more death.
She was surprised at the number of people huddled inside the church. Men, women, children, babies. They sat on thin cots along the walls and watched her with open curiosity. The children’s round bellies and sunken eyes spoke of too little food to go around, but everyone seemed to be offering her something as Josue led her down the center aisle.
This
wasn’t a mass, or any kind of church service like she first thought. For one thing, most of the women wore hijabs, and this was obviously a Christian church. “Who are all these people?”
“Refugees,” Josue said so matter-of-factly that her heart clenched with sorrow.
“They’re Muslim?”
“Yes.”
“And you let them stay here?”
“Of course. It is the safest place for them,” he said as if he had no idea how momentous that act of kindness would seem to the outside world. “The Anti-Balaka will not attack my church. They profess to be Christians and pretend they are fighting for God, but it is a lie. They are militants. They worship only blood and death and war. The Seleka are the same, but waving a Muslim flag as they tear apart our country. They will not risk an attack that ends in Muslim blood spilled, so my congregation is safe as well.”
She realized then that she knew next to nothing about this country. Honestly didn’t even know if she could pinpoint it on an unlabeled map. Yet these people were here, living through horror every day. Suffering, dying. She couldn’t imagine how all those mothers felt watching their children waste away in their arms and not being able to do anything about it.
Suddenly all of her problems back in L.A.—worrying about selling an overpriced, ostentatious house or paying for her kids’ school and extracurricular activities and therapy—seemed beyond petty. “You’re in the middle of a civil war?”
“Yes.” Josue sighed heavily and stopped in front of a wooden door in the back corner of the church. “For too many years now. And now others are involved, training the government troops to handle the Anti-Balaka and Seleka. I fear it will not help. It will make things worse.”
“The Russians,” she whispered, more to herself than him.
“They do not care about us. They want what is in the ground under our feet.” He stamped his sandaled foot to make his point. “Gold and diamonds—the only reasons they are here. They took my brother and my nephew, saying they had debts to the government to pay off. I did not think I would see them again.” He opened the door and motioned her inside. “Please take my private quarters as my thanks. There is a bed and a small bathroom with running water for you to clean up.”
Honor Avenged Page 16