He doesn’t look so elegant anymore.
I lean over him and say, “If your trachea is crushed, you’ll suffocate within one or two minutes. If it’s badly damaged but not completely crushed, there’s a likelihood of severe edema, in which case you’ve got about seven minutes before your windpipe swells shut. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
“Now I could just let you die. I planned on that, which you already guessed. However, your point was well taken. The one about if I murdered you, I’d be just like you, I mean. And so what I propose is this. You let me know where you’ve taken Juanita, and I will give you a pen. With this pen, properly applied, you’ll be able conduct an emergency tracheotomy on yourself.
“It’ll be messy. It probably won’t work. But if you get lucky, you can stab yourself in just the right spot on your neck and use the hollow part of the pen as a breathing tube, allowing you to live long enough for the authorities to arrive. And if you don’t get lucky, I can rest easy in the knowledge that I gave you a fighting chance, and you died because you were just too lame to save yourself. What d’you say?”
Søren’s lips are turning an interesting shade of blue. He flails an arm at me, but I lean back, cross my arms over my chest, and shake my head. “I think you’re wasting valuable time here, but hey, it’s your life.”
His eyes are watering. He nods frantically, pointing at his desk. At the drawer beneath the keyboard.
I open it and find a pad of white paper and two mechanical pencils. “You and your pencils, Søren. Seriously, who uses pencils anymore?”
He rolls to his knees, tries to find his balance, can’t. He falls over, collapsing to his side. He jabs his finger in the air repeatedly.
“I’m telling you, there are no pens in this drawer—oh. I found one. Here you go.”
I drop the pen and a pad of paper on the floor. He scrambles over to it, wheezing, his entire face starting to turn the same blue as his lips. He scribbles something on the pad, shoves it toward me over the floor, and then frantically unscrews the top of the pen.
“Press F1,” I read aloud. Must bring up a schematic. It’s not like he has time to hand draw me a map of the caves.
I turn quickly to the desk and its sea of buttons, hunting for the F1 key, surprised to find it so easily. I press it, and instantly all the white lights in the cave change to flashing red ones. An alarm blasts. I hear shouts, barked orders, boots pounding up the stairs.
I whirl around and stare at Søren. Like an animal, he savagely bares his teeth at me.
Then he plunges the pen straight into the base of his neck.
Blood spurts through his fingers. His body jerks. He makes an awful gurgling sound, and that’s all I can watch. I turn quickly back to the computer because I’ve only got seconds left before the guards are at the top of the stairs.
I press F1 again to get the alarm to stop, but it doesn’t work. There’s a different kill key, so I’ll just have to do my business with a horn blasting in my ears. Although there are many unmarked buttons on the console, the keyboard is a standard computer keyboard—I start there. I have just enough time to enter a set of instructions and hit the Enter key before I hear an angry shout behind me.
“Stop! Put your hands up!”
Slowly, I raise my hands in the air and turn.
The guards.
Three rush to help Søren. He’s sitting upright, although he looks like he could pass out at any moment. His white shirt is covered in blood, as are his hands. A small silver metal tube protrudes from the base of his throat.
Son of a bitch. He actually did it.
Søren looks at me. He looks at the guard with his rifle trained on me. Then he points sharply at his thigh, a motion I don’t understand until the guard readjusts his aim, pulls the trigger, and shoots me in the leg.
Thirty-Nine
Connor
When we’re approximately ten meters from the fence, a noise breaks the stillness of the night. I hold up a fist, and the team instantly stops.
The repeating electronic bell is faint but unmistakable. We haven’t yet reached the fence or the field of infrared beams, but somehow we’ve triggered an alarm.
Shit. I wonder briefly if there are pressure-sensitive triggers buried in the rocky soil underfoot, but push that aside. It’s time to switch gears.
I look at Ryan, make the hand signal for a breach, and point to a spot in the fence. He slides off his ruck, removes a small breach charge, and sets it on the ground adjacent to the chain link. We pull back about twenty meters, each of us with our back to a tree. Then Ryan blows the charge.
In a way, this makes things easier. Or at least more direct.
On my command, we move out in file, moving fast through the mangled chain link. Big Swingin’ Dick stays behind as overwatch to lay down suppressive fire if we encounter any hostiles, but we make it to the boulder and the three dead guards without meeting resistance.
When we’ve established there’s no one coming out of the tunnel the boulder concealed, I signal the all clear to Dick. As soon as he’s made it to us, I glance at each member of the team.
“Stay frosty. And remember, no quarter asked, no quarter given.”
Which basically means that anyone who doesn’t surrender gets a bullet in their brain.
Everyone nods.
Holding my M16 at low ready, I lead the way into the tunnel. It’s dark and damp, but thanks to the night vision goggles, the details of our surroundings are perfectly visible in gradient shades of green. We move quickly, heading toward a barrier at the end of the tunnel that appears to be a solid steel door or entry gate of some kind, listening to the alarm growing louder. And then we hear another unmistakable noise, this one worse than the alarm.
A single gunshot.
My blood turns to ice. Tabby! If she’s hurt, I’m gonna go Old Testament-style retribution on that motherfucker. If she’s worse than hurt—No. Don’t even go there.
I clench my jaw and force myself to focus.
The tunnel widens. Silent as ghosts, we move at a steady pace until we reach the steel door. It’s about eight feet tall, double that in width. No handle. No lock. No way in.
No problem.
“Blow it,” I instruct Ryan. I don’t have to ask twice.
After he’s set it and we’ve retreated to a safe distance, we crouch down with our backs turned and wait. Then—whump! A flash of light, a blast of heat, a concussion of air blows past, bringing chunks of metal, rock and earth with it. I’m on my feet and charging through the hole in the steel before the smoke even clears.
I run straight into hell.
Red flashing lights and a blasting alarm, hot air and the smell of sulphur, screams of pain echoing off craggy rock walls—it’s something right out of Dante’s Inferno.
Another gunshot. A bullet whizzes by inches from my left ear. I duck and roll, take cover behind a console of computer equipment, and watch as Ryan and Murphy drop to a knee just inside the tunnel, rifles raised. Behind them stand Dick, Kasey, and Reid, flanking the walls. A blistering volley of shots ring out as they all open fire on two guards standing at the railing on the raised platform across the cave. Jerking and flailing their arms, they go down in a hail of bullets.
At the top of my lungs, I holler, “Tabby!”
When I hear her scream my name in answer, I move faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. It’s like I’ve been shot out of a cannon. I leap to my feet and charge toward the spiral stairs that lead up to the platform from where her scream came. All thoughts of my own safety vanish. I don’t heed the bullets whizzing by my body, or the shrieking alarm, or the armed men who leap out at me with rifles raised. I cut them down and keep moving.
I take the stairs three at a time. I don’t hesitate at the top, even though there might be a man with a gun waiting there—the woman I love is in peril, screaming my name. Nothing on this earth could stop me or even slow me down.
I fly up the last step, fully prepared to spray death on anyon
e standing in my way. But I see only two dead guards riddled with holes and Tabby, lying in a pool of her own blood.
I quickly sweep the area. No one else in sight.
Tabby says, “They’re gone.”
I rip off my helmet and goggles and go to her side. She’s white, shaking, curled around herself, gripping her thigh.
It has a big fucking hole in it. And it’s leaking. Bad.
“You’re okay, princess.” I keep my voice completely steady although I’m anything but sure she’s going to be okay. In fact, if the bullet nicked an artery—
Nope. Not going there either.
“Søren and two guards,” she says through gritted teeth. “They went—” She jerks her head toward an opening in the cave wall, a tunnel that curves out of sight beyond a bank of computer servers. A smear of blood leads to the tunnel. I don’t know if it’s her blood that he’s trailing or if he’s injured, but if he isn’t, he will be soon.
I shuck off my rucksack, tear it open, dig out the IFAK, remove the tourniquet and the QuikClot pack. I rip a larger hole in Tabby’s pants around the bullet hole, quickly tie a tourniquet above the wound—my heart thudding as she groans in pain—and then tear the packet open and carefully press the gauze directly on the wound. The product is coated in a mineral clotting agent that will help stanch the blood flow, but she’s already lost a lot.
Then Ryan is at the top of the stairs, gun raised. When he sees only Tabby and me, he lowers his weapon, crosses to us, and takes a knee. “Hey, Red. Funny meeting you here.”
Tabby nods, her eyes closed, her lips pressed together so hard, they’re white all around the edges. I know she’s in excruciating pain. Ryan and I share a look.
“First level’s being secured. Doesn’t look like there are any more guards than those we’ve already encountered. Here?”
“Two points of egress, two non-breathing hostiles, and a couple of runners, including the Big Bad.” I nod to the tunnel with the smear of blood leading to it.
Ryan checks his watch. “Exfil in twenty.”
We share another look.
The Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment arrives within a thirty-second window. We have to be in the extraction point exactly on time. Which means I don’t have long.
Ryan says, “I got her, and I’ve got your six. Go get some.”
“Get some” doesn’t mean to a soldier what it means to civilians. When I hesitate, not wanting to leave Tabby’s side, he repeats more forcefully, “Go!”
I squeeze Tabby’s arm and then leap to my feet and follow the trail of blood to the mouth of the tunnel.
I know I’m getting close when someone takes a shot at me.
“Where the fuck did you learn to shoot, numbnuts?” I mutter, ducking back around a corner of the tunnel. Not that I’m complaining, but that shot was wide by a mile. After a few seconds when I chance a look around the corner, I can see why.
Two guards are dragging a third man—who must be Killgaard—between them. He’s hopping on one bare foot, barely able to stay upright, his arms slung around their shoulders. One of the guards is looking back, moving forward while shooting to the rear.
I take a knee, take aim, and take him out.
When he falls, the other guard spins around, dropping Søren in the process. The guard lifts his rifle and points it at me—
And then he’s dead too.
I’m in a loping run before he even hits the ground. When I’m about three meters away from Søren, I hear the noise.
It’s a wet, wheezing, sucking noise, like nothing I’ve ever heard.
He’s on his hands and knees, looking at the ground. His breathing is labored. There’s something wrong with one of his feet—it’s black and blue and looks a bit flat.
Slowly, I move around in front of him. When he lifts his head and looks at me, I realize what the strange noise is. The man has the hollow metal part of a pen sticking out of his bloodied throat.
I snort. Guess he got a close-up look-see at Tabby’s temper.
He falls to one side, drags himself to the tunnel wall, props himself up and glares at me. I left my NVGs behind, but thanks to the LED strips spaced every few feet a few inches from the floor, I have enough light to see that the front of his white dress shirt is no longer white, but dark, garish red. He’s disheveled, drenched in sweat, and his skin has the waxy pallor of a water-logged corpse.
“So this is the infamous Søren Killgaard,” I muse aloud, studying him. “I gotta say, you look like a bag of smashed asshole. And that”—I motion to his neck—“looks like it hurts.”
When he just stares at me, his eyes full of fury, I say, “Oh—forgot to introduce myself. I’m Connor Hughes.” I add deliberately, “Tabby’s man.”
His lips slowly peel back over his teeth.
The feeling is mutual, you piece of shit.
“Since it appears you can’t talk, I’ll keep the conversation short. I’m under orders from the United States government to bring you in alive if I can. The ‘if I can’ part being the important one.”
I let it hang there. We stare at each other. He glances at the rifle one of his guards dropped, only a few feet from his right hand. His gaze jumps back to me. I can see him trying to decide.
Pick it up, I think. Do me a solid and pick it up.
A cricket chirps nearby. Another one takes up the song. Somewhere in the tunnel ahead of us, a bullfrog croaks, adding a bass line to the chorus.
Then Killgaard snatches up the rifle and points it at my chest.
But this time he isn’t the one who’s a few steps ahead of the game.
His head snaps back as the bullet rips through his brain. It leaves a perfect, round hole right between his eyebrows. The rock wall behind him is painted in blood.
Slowly, his blue eyes still open, he slides sideways and slumps over, dead.
Into the silence I growl, “Checkmate, motherfucker.”
I lower my rifle and spit on the ground.
Then I turn and jog back the way I came, Killgaard forgotten as I rush back to the one thing in the world that matters more than anything else.
Tabby.
Forty
Connor
She’s in surgery for four hours. I’ve seen war, lost people I love, been through a lot of tough shit in my life, but those four hours are the longest and darkest I’ve ever spent.
SOAR picked us up right on schedule in the designated LZ. The Black Hawk has a capacity for eighteen fully loaded soldiers, and we were only six, plus one injured woman and one injured girl. Juanita was semiconscious when Murphy and Reid found her, dumped on the floor like trash in a storage room on the first level of the caves. The doctor at the hospital in Fairbanks says she’ll have a nasty scar on her back, but she’ll eventually be fine.
Physically, she’ll be fine. How she reacts mentally to her ordeal remains to be seen. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, her mother and all six siblings are being flown in, which hopefully will help begin the healing process. It’s always better to have your team by your side in times of trouble.
We’ve been debriefed by the CIA, which is exactly as bad as having all your teeth pulled by a medieval dentist. The four Marines who teamed up with us on the op—Murphy, Kasey, Reid, and Big Swingin’ Dick, a man of few words and one hell of a reputation—have gone back to Camp Pendleton, after receiving my thanks and an invitation to join Metrix once they leave the corps, should they be of a mind.
Now it’s only Ryan and me, pacing the halls of this cold, depressing, podunk hospital, doing everything I can not to do something I haven’t done in over twenty years since Mikey died.
Cry.
“Brother,” says Ryan, watching me from his plastic chair in the waiting room. His bulk makes it look like a piece of child’s furniture. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“Yep,” I say, and turn around and pace the other direction over the crappy, frayed brown carpet. The chairs are brown too. The walls are a lighter brown. Even the plants are brown. It’
s like this place is one giant turd.
“She’s a fighter. You know that.”
“Yep.”
“She was conscious during the flight to the hospital. That’s a good sign.”
Conscious, but not speaking. She just gripped my hand and stared up at me, her green eyes huge, her pulse faint.
Her blood leaking all over the goddamned place.
“Yep.”
Ryan sighs, realizing that no matter what he says his pep talk won’t make me feel peppy.
After another half an hour, a doctor walks into the waiting room. He’s a different doctor from the one who attended Juanita. This one, although younger, looks tired and more than a little cranky. Because Ryan and I are the only ones in the waiting room, his glower is directed at us.
“Mr. West?”
“Hughes,” I correct without thinking.
The doctor turns his glare to Ryan. “Are you Mr. West?”
Ryan looks startled. “Uh…”
“Who is the husband of Tabitha West?” snaps the doctor.
I step forward, my heart hammering. “Yes. Sorry. That’s me.”
The doctor sends me a sympathetic stare. “Your wife is out of surgery.”
I can tell by the way he’s acting that Tabby is anything but dead. But wife—God. That stops me cold. Did she tell him I was her husband? The thought makes me dizzy with hope.
“I can see her?”
“Oh, she’s all yours,” says the doctor. “Room 204.” He turns and walks away.
Ryan says, “Go on, brother,” but I’m already running.
I navigate the winding hospital corridors quickly to find the right section of rooms. When I’m halfway down the hall from room two zero four, I hear muffled shouting and slow from a run to a trot.
It’s a woman who’s shouting, her angry voice echoing down the hall. She’s demanding to see someone right now, shouting like she’s possessed.
I yank open the door of Tabby’s room and step inside. Tabby is lying in bed, hooked up to a lot of machines and some hanging bags of clear liquid. A nurse is leaning over her bed, trying to calm her.
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