by Zoe Dawson
With everything left in him, he pulled himself back from the scream that was caught in his throat. Flash-backing SEALs were dead SEALs, and they sure as hell weren’t good to anybody else.
The sound of footsteps behind him made him realize that it was over. If they didn’t surrender their weapons, they weren’t going to live to see another second.
“Drop the weapons and get to your knees.”
2-Stroke stiffened. That was Darko’s voice, and his hand clenched around the gun he held. Everything in him wanted to blow the man away. He looked over at Aella, and there was defiance on her face for a split second until she realized that any move she made would be her last. She dropped her weapon, and 2-Stroke did the same.
“Knees!”
He and Aella sunk down next to each other. Zasha dragged Chry forward. He met Chry’s eyes. In them were the shadows of the torture she’d endured, but stronger, brighter was her concern for him, her fear for him. He didn’t want it. Couldn’t handle that kind of look. He wasn’t what mattered. She mattered, and this ATF agent who had risked her life to get them out mattered. He was a SEAL, a weapon of Uncle Sam.
Automatic gunfire erupted outside, and everyone jerked their heads toward the sound.
Never give up, never give in, and you’re never out of the fight.
Those words echoed in him, embedded in the deepest part of his soul along with his love for his brothers, who were right now fighting their way toward them. Everything jumbled up in his brain as Darko moved around Aella and backhanded her across the face. He kicked her and beat her for several minutes. 2-Stroke reared up off the floor intending to stop him, but two of his thugs restrained him with several punches to his gut and face. When he looked back at Darko, for a split second, he thought it was his father’s face. He blinked several times, and everything went back to normal.
“Stop it! Stop, you animal!” 2-Stroke shouted, struggling to break free, but Darko ignored him.
Then while Aella was helpless, her lip bloodied, a gash across her temple, he pointed his gun at her.
2-Stroke went wild, unable to take another death because of him. She had come here, risked her life to save them. He could do no less. He elbowed one of the guards, who reeled back, then punched the second one.
Leaping across her protectively, 2-Stroke covered her with his body. “No!” he shouted the sound of his voice reverberating in the hall, in a place where men had been debased and tortured, denied the most basic needs of life as death smiled and waited for its chance to take them.
She wasn’t going to die here. Not for him.
“Move,” Darko said.
2-Stroke raised his head and stared at the crime lord. He was handsome, dark and tall, but like a fallen angel, he had only emptiness in his black heart.
“She can be another hostage. You can use her like us.”
“She drugged and tricked me!” he shouted. “She’s dead!”
“No, I will say anything you want,” he pleaded, a wave of dizziness and nausea washed through him. “Record it, sing it, write it down in fucking blood.” They had tried to strip him to the bone, take the last ounce of his sanity and shred his self-respect into nothing. But regardless of their efforts, he hadn’t broken. But he would do anything so they all survived, even though he had to sink into the mire and the muck with them. So be it. He could recover from his own emotions, his own pain, but Aella couldn’t recover from a bullet between her eyes.
He turned toward Zasha, meeting her feral gaze. “Anything. Let her live.” He injected a wobble into his voice and breathless gasping as though he’d given up.
In a way, he did surrender to the situation, knowing that the measure of him as a man was wrapped up in his duty, service, and love of his country. There was nothing they could strip from him that he didn’t willingly allow. They might have control over his body, but they would never control his mind or his heart.
Zasha sheathed her knife, kicking Chry’s feet out from under her, sending her crashing to the dirt floor. He clenched his teeth. His hands wanted to curl around her neck and break her like a rag doll.
She touched Darko’s arm. “Baby, you said they would be mine.”
Darko sighed and turned toward Zasha, and it was clear that she had some pull with him, like holding the leash of a very big, very vicious dog.
While he pondered, Aella looked up at him. “You don’t even know me.” She sounded distraught and puzzled, and he understood, but that wasn’t the point. He didn’t need to know someone to lay his life on the line for them. It was his job to lay his life on the line, whatever line Uncle Sam drew, whenever and wherever he drew it.
“Your decision,” Darko finally said, as he lowered his weapon.
Zasha smiled and walked over and shoved her hand into his hair, grasping it painfully in a tight grip and jerking his head back. “Tell me something I can use right now, and I’ll let her live.”
“She’s an ATF Agent here to rescue us.” Zasha didn’t seem convinced that was vital information. He had no choice. “My team is here,” he bit out, his scalp stinging from her vicious hold, swallowing hard, his throat working with his head bent back at that angle. He silently sent an apology to the guys. He knew how disappointed they would be. But like before, they’d found a way to track him down. He was confident that they would be able to do that again.
A gust of wind blew through the broken roof above them, bringing a sweep of snow inside to swirl around Zasha’s feet.
“Clever bitch,” she said with a boot to Aella’s face. She turned to the crime lord. “Darko, baby, we’ve got to go.”
2-Stroke could finally breathe. He got up from Aella, then offered her his hand for her to rise. Then he went over to Chry and drew her to her feet. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him. He could feel the frantic beat of her heart. It was fast but welcome, telling him that she was still hanging in there. As brave as any SEAL.
“It’s okay, babe. We’re okay,” he whispered, so glad to find her warm and vibrant. She shivered and he set just enough space between them to catch her mouth, kissing her to reassure her, to let her know that he was all right. She responded with a soft gasp.
Then the guards jostled them, shoving them forward. 2-Stroke slipped his arm around Chry’s waist and the three of them, prodded by guards, stumbled along behind Zasha and Darko.
The ridged hull inflatable boat, piloted by one of the members of the SEALs’ boat crew, slapped through the waves at full throttle, lifting and falling, sloshing through the chilly Adriatic as waves and sea spray soaked Saint’s uniform. It felt like BUD/S all over again.
The island was a dark blob on the landscape, showing a sickly green through his night vision goggles, lying low, bald, and gnarled in the water. The island was once a notorious prison and labor camp to hold political dissidents. Croatia’s own The Rock.
Except in this terrible place, prisoners were pitted against each other in brutal psychological exercises designed to eliminate their personalities.
It was no mistake that Zasha and Darko had chosen this place to take 2-Stroke and Chry. Their personal torture madhouse.
They had grabbed a ride on one of the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, the USS Ronald O’Rourke, currently doing joint maritime and air training in the Adriatic Sea. The training mission was the second repeat performance of an ongoing integration of US Air Force Europe and US 6th Fleet, the goal to refine joint air defense procedures to better defend Navy ships.
Riding the ship down to the target area was an experience. The crew offered the team berthing, but they declined, preferring to get what little sleep they could back in the hangar area where their gear was. They did splurge and eat in the chief’s mess, another stunning experience. The captain took care of them.
Saint disembarked the moment the RHIB hit the beach. Immediately, they came under fire and they all hit the deck, working to neutralize the gunmen and get through them to find Aella, 2-Stroke, and Chry. He was wor
ried about Aella. They hadn’t heard from her in thirty minutes. The tracker had gone offline. He feared the worst.
Crawling, he used his night vision goggles to locate the muzzle flashes and take down the shooter. Milo “Professor” Prescott had joined them on this op, and he was next to Saint.
“Time to move,” Professor said as they got into a crouch, and all eight of them began moving in from the beach toward the rundown structures.
They were assaulting blind after not getting Aella’s intel about where they were keeping 2-Stroke and Chry as expected. They were going on instinct and nothing solid, except for the last location Aella’s beacon had pulsed from.
“LT, Jugs has her scent,” Mad Max said, a grin in his voice. “He’s chomping at the bit.”
“Let him go. Damn, I love that dog,” Fast Lane said.
Now they at least had a direction in this huge compound. They could be here a week searching all these buildings without a definite direction.
They moved through the eerie quiet punctuated by the whizzing or plinking of bullets until they took cover and eliminated the threat. Every building was empty and abandoned. The earlier feeling of pushing through a ghost town was even stronger. They were moving at a fair clip but maintaining a watch on their flanks. It was cold, but the chill wasn’t just from that. Vehicles were abandoned along the road. Structures stood open and mute. It was like they were jogging through one of those last-man-on-earth science fiction movies.
They approached an old building that housed many cells, crumbling silently beneath some trees, vegetation clinging to its lower regions, dry, thorny, sparse.
The doors were barred—new boards. Hemingway stepped up, driving home that their breacher was absent, making it feel discordant and wrong. As Hemingway prepared to breach the boards and door, Professor and Saint moved to the windows with their new panes of glass. Saint pulled a flash-bang from his vest, a stun grenade thrown inside a building to distract occupants and give the SEALs the advantage of the first shot as they entered.
After they had found cover, Hemingway counted off: “Three…two…one…” Hemingway detonated the breaching charge and the door blew, shaking the whole building, sending chunks and splinters of wood and debris everywhere.
Fast Lane shouted, “Go, go, go!” Saint barely needed his LT’s order. Breaching was now automatic after so many years of training. He was through the door covering his sector while his teammates piled through and fanned out, covering all points. No one was there, but Jugs still clearly had the scent. They blasted through the structure. Dirt and weeds filled the building, swallowing tools and machine parts, furniture and bedding. Paint peeled from pockmarked walls. Dark bars corroded, broken, and cracked. Moonlight punched through collapsed ceilings. Girders, bent and brown with rust, like old titans, were barely able to hold the decay at bay.
Everywhere there was rubble, on every rotten floorboard and piled in every corner. Jugs didn’t hesitate. He forged ahead unaware and uncaring about the devastation. His only mission was to follow his nose to the woman they had asked him to seek.
They broke out the back of the building. There was a road that led up a hill to a clearing, and on the road was a tightly packed contingent of people, including Darko, Zasha, 2-Stroke, Chry, and Aella. She was alive! The half a dozen men stopped while the rest of them, the prisoners being prodded as they slowed, continued toward the clearing. The guards took up a defensive line, spraying gunfire at the SEALs as they breached the hill. Saint dropped to one knee, returning fire. His team cut through their line.
Saint heard the chopper before he could see it. Everyone picked up their pace without any orders from their LT. Running full out, he and his team crested the hill only to see that 2-Stroke, Chry, the crime lord, and Zasha had already boarded. Aella resisted as a man carried her, her chest against his back. Her hair flew wildly as she threw her head back into the man’s chin, making his steps falter. For a brief moment, she swung around ready to run to Saint, but the man recovered and grabbed her. Saint locked onto her gaze. Then the guard heaved her in through the open chopper door like a ragdoll.
Christ, that woman was a fighter. He loved that about her.
His heart sank. They were too far away to stop the chopper as it took off, flying low and disappearing over the rocky side of a short cliff.
He felt the weight of their failure, his heart sinking, the bitterness of getting here just barely in time spreading in a numb climb through him.
“What a major cluster fuck!” Fast Lane yelled, losing his cool. Saint turned to see blood on his LT’s arm. He stood there for a moment realizing that he needed to take care of the wound, but his body seemed rooted and as dead as this godforsaken place.
The chopper pulled away so violently that everyone was jostled around inside. Then it evened out and 2-Stroke was shoved into the seat next to Aella. She was groggy, stunned, and she sprawled across him. The guard roughly pulled her up and bound her hands, righting her. He wiped at the blood on his mouth, then backhanded her across the face. Zasha still had a hold of Chry in the seat across from him.
The door was still open, the black of a night sky filled with an array of white stars, their captors breathing hard, recovering from the sprint away from the building to escape the inevitable capture by his SEAL teammates. He was elated, adrenaline pumping through his system. His brothers were magnificent, and he couldn’t be prouder of them. The sight of them bolstered him.
Then he saw the way Darko was eyeing Aella. He knew the man’s depravity and his ego. Aella would not survive whatever he had planned for her. In a split-second decision, he pushed off his seat, and with all the strength he could muster, he hit her hard enough with his shoulder to send her out of the chopper and plunging to the sea below. The chopper was low enough that she would have a chance of survival. Her only chance.
As he got close to the open door, he could see Saint standing on the edge of the cliff, then the chopper swung back around.
Someone grabbed him as he lurched to his feet, planning on sending Chry out.
He struggled until he felt the hard barrel of a pistol against his temple, satisfied that at least one person wouldn’t suffer because of him. A second later the electrical charge of a Taser lit him up like firecrackers. He hit the deck, his head slamming hard. His darkness was punctuated with brilliant color before there was nothing.
Saint saw the body fall, his heart climbing to his throat when he realized it was Aella. He pulled off his weapon, his helmet and tac vest. Without any hesitation, he arched off the cliff in a swan dive, heading down, down to the turbulent ocean below. When he cut through the surface, he went deep, but immediately righted himself and started swimming until he broke the churning swells. He started resolutely for the spot he’d seen Aella hit after her harrowing free-fall.
Everything in him screamed for him to hurry, his body pumping blood, his arms strong and sure cutting through the waves. When he was certain this was the spot, he dove and searched all around until he saw a dark blob in the water beneath him.
He plunged deeper, going after the wriggling form. She wasn’t panicking but undulating her torso and legs, using the natural buoyancy of her body and her kicking feet to reach the surface.
Once again…this woman turned him on in more ways than just sexual.
He closed in on her and grabbed her by the back of her shirt and headed for the surface. When they broke, she let out a hard breath, sucking in air as they bobbed in the rocking crests.
He untied her hands, and she threw her arms around him as he clasped her close, and they held onto each other.
Fifteen minutes later, the RHIB picked them up and another fifteen, they were back aboard the USS Ronald O’Rourke where his angry but determined LT finally let him repair his shoulder so the stitches would stay and shoot him up with a steroid. Their LT didn’t have time for painkillers. They were once again on the hunt.
As one, the wolfpack howled again for their missing member.
Never give up, never give in, never stop being ready for that fight.
4
They left 2-Stroke on the floor of the helicopter, and during the flight to wherever they were going, he didn’t once wake up. Chry was forced to sit close to Zasha, who was worried that Chry would also try something. But once again, Chry was going to bide her time. It was patience, clear thinking, and calm that were going to get them out of this.
She looked down at the man she’d known as a boy and found that nothing…nothing about his character had changed. She had to admit Neo was different. Quieter and far more reserved until someone was threatened. Then there was another side to him that almost scared her.
Chry smiled slightly, remembering what he had been like when she’d first met him. They had been in the same grade since Neo was eight and had come to live with his father after his mother’s death. It had been whispered around school about his circumstances, that he was Pierce Teller’s bastard son, the rumors ugly and strange to her at eight before she’d grown up and matured enough to understand what rape was and the consequences of it that had brought Neo into the world.
As he grew up, he appeared indifferent and somewhat unapproachable, and there was something about him that had made her feel uneasy. It was clear, however, that was not an opinion shared by the other girls in the class.
In high school, he had been tall, with his mop of chestnut hair, he had a slim but wide-shouldered build. Neo garnered considerable attention. Granted, he had the most incredible eyes she’d ever seen—deep-set and sexy, with thick curling lashes—and a tan of the perpetual surfer boy. His looks were never a debatable issue, but his aloofness was, and Chry personally thought, at first, he was a little too stuck on himself. He always sat at the back of the room, his long, lanky frame semi-sprawled at his desk, an expression of disinterest on his face, as though he had mentally separated himself from the rest of the class. He was by far the best student, and both teachers and students openly acknowledged that fact.