Forged in Ember

by Trish McCallan

  Damn it.

  There was nothing worse than admitting when someone you despised was right. “I’ll activate the protocols.”

  “I’ve already done so,” Coulson said, with gloating satisfaction. “Link has been wiped from the system, and the board is voting on electing Poussey as interim chairman until Link or Embray is deemed fit for duty.”

  The protocol, which had been designed to prevent anyone from making a run on Dynamic Solutions if Link were to be assassinated or kidnapped, had been Eric’s baby. His responsibility. A duty that Coulson had apparently usurped.

  “Excellent.” Eric forced the word through gritted teeth.

  It didn’t matter who pulled the trigger on the protocol. What mattered was that the company was protected. That whoever had kidnapped Link wouldn’t be able to use him to ransack or investigate Dynamic Solutions creations . . . such as clean energy generators that could be repurposed as clean energy bombs.

  “We’ll need to alter our plans for the next meeting. Link is aware of the location and host.”

  “Agreed.” Coulson sounded bored. “I’ll take it. Since I hosted it last time, it’s unlikely they’ll suspect me of doing so again. Assuming Link is alive and leaking like a damn sieve.” Which his tone said they should both be assuming.

  “Who do you think went after him?” Eric asked, his mind turning to the underlying problem.

  “Who the fuck do you think?” Coulson retorted. “Either those fucking SEALs or those fucking redskins. Or, hell, both. The attack on our lab indicates they’re working together.”

  Eric nodded. His instincts insisted this as well, even though it didn’t make sense. “How would they know Link was working with us?”

  Hell, it wasn’t like they sent announcements out when someone joined their organization. Nor did anyone, ever, announce their involvement in the council. The whole damn point of a clandestine organization was to keep it secret.

  “How the fuck did they know where the lab was or that we even had the new energy device?” A cold front formed in Coulson’s voice. “We have a fucking leak somewhere.”

  After another prolonged massage of his temples, Eric had to agree. “We need to find it and plug it. Permanently.”

  Coulson grunted his agreement. “In the meantime, how is the hunt at Denali doing? Any word from your men on the ground over where these bastards are holed up?”

  “Nothing.” Eric forced himself to stay calm. No sense in alerting Coulson to his building frustration on that front. “There’s no sign of a non-US military base. And although there is sign of military aircraft, there’s a fucking army base in Anchorage.”

  Another grunt traveled down the line, this time a thoughtful one. “I have a guy. He’s motivated. I’ll send him up to poke around.”

  Eric shrugged. “Fine.”

  The only good thing about adding Coulson to the council was his effectiveness. While brutal, his methods did tend to get the job done. If Coulson’s man could track down the Shadow Mountain crew—or, hell, even Mackenzie and the rest of his damn SEALs—more power to him. They couldn’t afford much more of this interference.

  “How’s the manufacturing going?”

  “It’s going. We’re on schedule. We need to wait until we have enough in stock to hit everywhere at once. We don’t want a regroup and counterattack.”

  “Agreed.” It was the strategy the council had developed as soon as Link had informed them of the clean energy generator’s potential. It was their very best chance of removing enough of the population to make a difference—of achieving what the council had been created to do: to reset the planet, thus preserving it for all the future generations that wouldn’t exist without the sacrifices made in the here and now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  MAC LEANED THE back of his head against the chopper’s padded wall. From the decrease in the vibrations numbing his ass and thighs, he could tell they were slowing down, which indicated they were closing in on the base. Bulky shadows stirred in the dark interior of the chopper. He stretched, rolled his neck, avoided looking in the far corner at the black vinyl body bag.

  Sharing the bird with their dead, after a mission gone sour, wasn’t exactly new. The trident promised that no man would be left behind. It didn’t promise that everyone would return alive. Just that the same number of bodies would return on the chopper as had left on it.

  Still, a body bag was something nobody wanted to sit next to on the return trip. No one liked losing a friend. A buddy. Someone you ate with and joked with and talked with mere hours earlier . . . it was never an easy thing.

  The grim silence in the chopper was edged in grief. In thick yet unspoken sorrow.

  Mac recognized the atmosphere all too well.

  Rawls and the healers had tried to save him. They’d worked frantically, but a shot to the neck meant he’d been dead before he’d hit the ground.

  Zane’s wound had been bad but treatable. Jude, on the other hand . . . Jesus. Eventually it became painfully obvious that nothing the healers or Rawls did was going to make a damn bit of difference. They’d halted their high-speed retreat so One Bird could climb over and heal the hit to Zane’s thigh.

  That wild flight across Lake Washington, the Zodiac flying over white-tipped waves and the moon leering down through patchy clouds, merged with dozens of other missions in his memory. Different bodies of water, different teams, but identical imagery.

  A snatch and run was a snatch and run whether you did the snatching in Seattle, Washington, or Herat, Afghanistan.

  And a dead warrior was a dead warrior whether he came from Shadow Mountain or HQ1.

  The chopper slowed again. Mac glanced at James Link. Their prisoner was barely visible in the darkness between Zane and Rawls. Just a dark, indistinct blur. He’d been the perfect captive so far. No attempts to escape. No bravado. Just calm, quiet compliance.

  The bastard’s submissiveness raised questions. Did he know who’d kidnapped him? Had he shut down to avoid retribution, or did he not care what happened? Maybe Amy was right. Maybe the guy was so riddled with guilt he’d already checked out of life.

  It would have been nice if they’d had a chance to question the man prior to arrival at the base. Been able to give Amy some immediate answers. But the chopper was too noisy to carry out casual conversation, let alone an interrogation. Pantomime and hand gestures weren’t exactly conducive to grilling a suspect.

  Mac rubbed an exhausted hand down his face, feeling the slime of grease paint and dirt on his palm. Jude might have been irritating sometimes, even a downright pain in the ass, but he’d been a good man. An honorable one. A warrior to respect. His instinctive, selfless move as he’d thrown himself over Link and Zane had saved their lives. He’d sacrificed himself so that they would live.

  Without that one act of courage, he’d be mourning Zane’s death right now, and likely Benji’s and Brendan’s down the road, if Link had died in that courtyard.

  Jude had saved multiple lives with the giving of his own.

  Once the bird set down, the cargo lights came on. He caught Zane’s grim gaze, the green eyes so dark they looked black rather than emerald. Link stirred, straightening against the padded wall, but he didn’t try to get up.

  Good little NRO asshole.

  The Eagle’s engine slowed and finally cut completely, and the bird slowly descended as its lift drew it into Shadow Mountain’s gut. It was the third time he’d taken this journey, but the descent, without the engines going, still felt wrong. Abnormal. Like they’d experienced engine failure and were in a free fall.

  After so many hours of the rotors beating the air, the sudden silence was surreal. He levered himself to his feet, waiting for his ears to stop ringing. Cosky rose to his feet too, then reached down to haul Link up beside him.

  The bastard came quietly, as he’d reacted to everything so far. But this time his compliance was no surprise. He had no place to run.

  When the cargo door slid back, they waited for t
he Shadow Mountain team to disembark, only to find themselves waved forward by the copilot, who’d stepped forward and waited in the cockpit doorway. Mac hopped from the bird and straightened. Then he froze. The chopper was surrounded, as far as the eye could see, by grim-faced, silent men and a few scattered women. Everyone was there: mechanics with their grease-stained overalls next to cooks in their grease-stained aprons next to doctors and nurses in their hospital scrubs.

  Jude was returning to a hero’s welcome.

  Neniiseti’, his face more lined and solemn than Mac had ever seen it, stepped forward as Cosky dragged Link from the chopper. He paused before them, raked Link’s shrinking form with eagle-bright eyes. “I hope what this one reveals is worth the one we lost.”

  So did Mac.

  “I’m so damn sorry,” Mac said, his voice rough and halting, the ability to find the right words foreign on his tongue. Offering condolences to the bereaved never got easier.

  A single, dignified nod greeted his words.

  Mac searched Neniiseti’s eyes, expecting condemnation. He’d been the one, after all, pushing for the mission. Wolf wouldn’t have taken the request to his CO if Mac hadn’t convinced him to. But there was no condemnation in the black eyes. No anger. Just an eternity of sorrow.

  As Neniiseti’ stepped up to the chopper, Kait pushed her way through the throng of men and women. Her hair caught in a tousled, untidy braid, she reached for Cosky’s hand.

  “We can try to heal him, right? We can at least try.” Her red-rimmed eyes clung to Cosky’s. Drying tracks of tears were visible on her cheeks.

  “It’s been six hours, sweetheart,” Cosky said, his voice a gentle rumble as he drew her into his arms.

  “But it won’t hurt to try!” she mumbled into his chest, her voice thick with tears. She turned in Cosky’s arms to face Neniiseti’, her face raw with grief.

  “Such efforts will do no good. His spirit already roams free.”

  “Maybe. Right? It will do no harm.” When Neniiseti’ didn’t agree, she reached out and caught his hand, entreaty in her eyes. “Please. This is going to kill Wolf.”

  A pulse of silence fell, and Mac could see Kait’s chest still, as though she were holding her breath. An audible whoosh escaped her lips when Neniiseti’ finally nodded agreement. She didn’t wait for him to change his mind. Grabbing Cosky’s hand, she bolted for the chopper, her long golden braid flying behind her.

  “Any chance they can do it?” Rawls asked, his gaze locked on Kait and Cos as they climbed into the chopper.

  Mac heard the hope in his corpsman’s voice.

  “No.”

  Neniiseti’ dashed their hope with that one word mired in certainty.

  “They’re pretty damn powerful together. They brought me back from the dead. Faith too.”

  “You were not six hours gone,” the old man reminded him. “Jude already seeks the path to the ancestors.”

  Silence fell once again. A grim silence devoid of hope. From the fresh tears on her face, when Kait finally emerged from the chopper, Neniiseti’s negativity had been proven true.

  Four Shadow Mountain warriors stepped down from the Eagle, each gripping one of the body bag’s handles. As they carried their fallen warrior home, Neniiseti’ moved forward to greet them, his voice raised in a rhythmic, deep-chested chant. The words were foreign to Mac but Arapaho from the sound of them.

  He shifted to the side along with Rawls and Zane, who tugged Link back as well, as Neniiseti’, still chanting, slowly walked toward the hangar’s exit. The four warriors carrying Jude’s body followed behind him. Slowly, the rest of the men in the hangar fell in step behind them.

  When he and his men and Kait were the last ones left in the hangar, Mac stirred, indicating Link with a jerk of his head. “Where are we supposed to take him?”

  “Hell if I know,” Rawls said, turning to stare at the empty exit. “Hate to ask, as our hosts are kinda busy right now. Suppose we could take him to your quarters?”

  Fuck, he sure as hell didn’t want to intrude when they were mourning the death of one of their own. But they needed to get some answers. Amy’s kids’ lives were depending on it. Might as well question the asshole in his quarters. They could ask their questions anywhere.

  “I don’t understand,” Kait said, her voice still thick with emotion. “One Bird’s and William’s healings should have worked. Why didn’t they?”

  Cosky caught her fingers with one hand and stroked her cheek to wipe away her tears with the other. “You know the healings don’t work all the time, sweetheart. Maybe he falls into that percentage that can’t be healed.”

  “But that’s just it,” Kait said, pure bewilderment on the face she raised to Cosky. “He’d been healed before—multiple times, from what he told me. He wasn’t in the percentage that can’t be healed. So why did he die?”

  “One Bird and William were able to heal him before?” Rawls asked, an uneasy expression skittering across his face. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Positive.”

  Rawls raked visibly tense fingers through his hair. “Have to admit, Kaity, I’m not fond of this news. Here I was thinking you healers were our own trio of angels, keepin’ us from kickin’ the bucket and all. But if Jude was in One Bird’s and William’s thirty percent, and he still died—”

  “Then nobody is safe,” Kait whispered. Her gaze clung to Cosky.

  Mac watched fear edge the grief in her red eyes. He still found it hard to believe in the miracle of Kait’s hands, but the rest of them obviously did, and this monkey wrench to their sense of invincibility had rattled them.

  Time to give everyone something else to think about. He made a big production of clearing his throat, satisfied when everyone turned in his direction.

  “There’s a couple of lives right now we might be able to save,” he reminded everyone.

  And a desperate woman who was waiting for some answers.

  He turned to Kait. “You mind going to the clinic and letting Mrs. Chastain know we’re about to question Link? Tell her to head to my quarters.”

  They watched her leave, her blonde braid swinging against her back.

  Once she was out of earshot, Rawls turned to Mac, his eyebrows climbing so high they merged with the hair brushing his forehead. “Mrs. Chastain?” He smirked. “You ain’t foolin’ anyone there, Skipper.”

  Mac ignored him.

  “Mrs. Chastain?” Link said, sudden awareness darkening his eyes.

  “That’s right.” Mac took a step toward him, anger loosening muscles stiff from inactivity. The bastard had recognized her name. “Amy Chastain. Mother of the two kids you bastards poisoned. Widow of the FBI agent you fucktards murdered.”

  Link flinched, his face blanching, guilt so heavy he could have drowned in it, and Mac knew they were right. James Link was up to his balls in the NRO—complicit in their murderous, violent attacks on innocent people, complicit in whatever horrific plans they had for Faith’s doomsday device.

  “I see you’re familiar with her.” Mac balled his fist, fighting the urge to slam it into the bastard’s face long enough and hard enough to require some major cosmetic surgery.

  But they needed the bastard awake and lucid enough to answer questions.

  He shoved Link forward instead. “He was aiming for you, you know that? Your buddy on the rooftop. You were his target. He could have slaughtered the rest of us easy enough. He had the position and the time. But the only men who got hit were the ones protecting you. Jude died because he knocked you down. Zane got hit because he was covering your worthless hide.” He shoved Link forward again, his words gaining momentum. “The assholes you’re in bed with would rather kill you than rescue you. Shows how much they value your services.”

  Zane nodded, matching Mac’s pace and tone. “I wouldn’t count on them coming to your rescue.”

  Link turned his head and caught Mac’s eye. “You’re Mackenzie.” It wasn’t a question. More like an internal confirmation.

&
nbsp; “Glad you’ve heard of me,” Mac drawled.

  They held their questions until they reached Mac’s quarters. Cosky shoved their captive into a chair, circled the table, and casually unholstered his MK3 knife. After dropping into his chair, he laid down the weapon in front of him. Mac followed suit, removing his blade. He considered driving the knife into the table, but, hell—the surface was Formica—with his luck the blade would glance off and stab someone. After pulling their knives, Rawls and Zane took their seats too.

  Link studied the knives, with their lethal tips and serrated edges, and shook his head. But rather than appearing terrified, worried, or even smug, he looked exhausted.

  For the first time, Mac looked at him. Really looked at him. It had been too dark in the field to see him clearly. In the chopper, Link had been stashed between numerous men, his body and face completely hidden in the darkness. Once they’d disembarked, the reminder of Jude’s death had consumed everyone.

  But in the bright light of Mac’s quarters, the guy looked a thousand times worse than the pictures Amy had dug up.

  The man was a fucking skeleton.

  Link’s passivity combined with his appearance could mean one of only two things. Either the guy was sick as hell, or Amy was right—he was consumed by guilt.

  “You aren’t going to need the knives,” Link said quietly, holding Mac’s gaze. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “How accommodating of you,” Zane said, his level tone in direct contrast to the ice in his eyes.

  Link glanced at him then back to Mac. “How are the Chastain boys?”

  Mac froze against the urge to maim. As the fury surged in a red-hot haze of murder and mayhem, he bolted from his chair and took a couple of tight turns around the room.

  You can’t kill him . . . not yet.

  He took another tight walk around the room. “You don’t have the fucking right to ask that question. Got it?”