Silence on the line.
“Up to us, then.” Matt. “Felicity, can we follow those trucks?”
“Yeah. I just hacked into their GPS. Let’s see. Two stops. One at 12304 Lawrence Street, which seems to be a warehouse in an industrial district. Then 11805 Vanowen, which is …” The sound of tapping. Then silence. Then … “Oh fuck,” on a whisper.
Matt, Jacko and Joe looked at each other, startled. Honor knew they didn’t startle easily. It probably meant that Felicity didn’t let the f-bomb drop often. Even though it was definitely an oh fuck kind of world.
“Guys, 11805 Vanowen is the PowerNorth Hollywood Pump Station, in North Hollywood. Where most of Los Angeles gets its water. They are going to irradiate the Los Angeles water supply …”
Joe tapped his ear. “Felicity, is there a staging area near the warehouse?”
“Looking.” The three men stood stock still.
“Yeah.” Felicity came online. “There’s what looks like an empty lot next to the warehouse. I took pictures off a satellite that passed over three days ago, so I can’t guarantee that nothing’s changed. I know you guys have a couple of drones in your kit. Give me the serial numbers and I’ll program them for you remotely and you can send them to those coordinates. The drones have IR capability. At least you’ll know what the situation is on the ground before you get there. But guys — hurry. I have a bad feeling.”
“We all do,” Matt said, shouldering that big heavy bag. He looked around. “What are we going to do with Honor?”
Honor stiffened. “What do you mean what are you going to do with me? I’m not a package.”
Joe and Jacko gave each other a look and backed away. Matt turned to her indignantly. “Honey, we have no idea what we’re walking into. A firefight, a nuclear disaster, a showdown. Your guess is as good as mine. I can’t have you there, it’s too dangerous and it would just distract me. Us.”
Honor set her teeth because she was going to have to convince Matt of something she had her own doubts about.
“Look.” She put on her serious reasonable look, when inside she was screaming Don’t take me with you! Take me with you! No, stash me somewhere safe, are you crazy? But I need to be with you! GOOD GOD I WANT TO HIDE IN A CORNER AND COVER MY EYES!
But she was used to hiding what she felt so she knew her face was bland and gave nothing away.
Matt crossed his arms, his entire body screaming I don’t care what you have to say the answer is no.
“Look, my father is being held by terrorists. What happens if he is wounded and I could have saved him but I wasn’t there?” She looked over at Joe and Jacko who were busy stowing their bags in the helicopter, pretending not to hear. “What happens if Joe or Jacko are wounded and I could have saved them but I wasn’t there? Or you.”
Her voice wobbled. The idea of losing Matt after finding him was almost impossible to bear.
“We were trained to deal with wounds,” he said. How he managed to get those words out through a tightly clenched jaw was a miracle of anatomy.
She just looked at him. No medic training could possibly equal her training. She’d dealt with gunshot wounds. Lots of them. More than they had, that was for sure. But she didn’t say that. No use pulling rank. Reason was needed here.
“And where would I go?” Honor swept her arm at the almost-deserted air field. Like most very small airports it basically shut down after dark. Though there were probably people in the admin offices about a mile away, there was no living being in sight. Not even jackrabbits. “I don’t dare call someone from my father’s office to come pick me up. We have no idea if there are people infiltrated into the company or whether they are bugging phones. I don’t know anyone who lives around here or who could make it here under a couple of hours. Calling a taxi would be insane. I don’t —”
“Matt.” Jacko’s deep voice cut through her litany. “We’re wasting time.”
Matt rounded on him. “Fuck that, Jacko! Would you let Lauren come with you into a potential firefight? With possible radiation as a side dish? How about you, Joe? You be willing to let Isabel walk into this?”
“No,” both men said at once.
“So — what? What would you do?” Both men shrugged, looking tense and uncomfortable.
“Don’t ask them, ask me,” Honor said, angry and scared at the same time. “I’m the one you should be talking to. And I’m the one who’d rather be with you, walking into a situation where my father could be at risk and where I could help, than cowering out here waiting for someone to pick me up.”
It was true. She did not want to go into the showdown, what they would think of as their mission. It was insane. She was unequipped in every way. She’d never held a gun in her hand, never hit anyone in anger. She was singularly unsuited to go along with them. But she was also unsuited to stay here, out on the open tarmac, all alone. She might be safer but then she’d have a heart attack or a stroke or an embolism, worried about her father and about Matt.
And besides, Matt made her feel safe.
“I need to come with you,” she insisted, forcibly removing the tension from her voice. She sounded calm and authoritative, the way she did in the ER, even when she had someone bleeding out and stroking out at the same time.
“Look,” she said, the very voice and picture of reason. “Let me stay in the vehicle. Wherever you go, I’ll just hide behind the seats or anywhere you put me and I swear to God I will not move an inch until you come to get me. Just don’t —” her voice faltered. She closed her eyes and saw herself, out here on the tarmac that felt like being abandoned in a warm Siberia, the only human in a thousand miles, “Don’t leave me here alone. Please.”
Honor met his eyes and put everything she felt into her gaze. Fear. Trust. Terror.
Matt made a sound in his throat, looked up at the sky which evidently was not providing much help, and held out his hand to her.
Yesss!
One hand holding a big rifle and the clanking bag, the other holding her hand, he stalked off to the SUV. She scrambled to keep up with his long strides.
“You do what I say,” he said, face grim.
“Absolutely.” God yes.
“You wear body armor and a helmet at all times.”
“Ah … yeah. Okay.”
The big black SUV had the trunk door open.
“Here.” Matt reached in and handed to her what looked like a metal half-barrel and a huge helmet. Matt handed his rifle to Joe, who was standing by, already in his own body armor. Which fit him.
“Hold up your arms.” It was amazing how clearly she could hear Matt over the tiny bud in her ear. Like he was talking right into her ear.
She held her arms up as if this were an old-style western and he was the bad guy saying reach for the sky. She reached for the sky.
Matt dropped an iron lung on her. It was rigid and heavy and hung halfway down her thighs. She staggered and staggered again when he dropped a heavy helmet into her hand. The helmet would either stop a bullet or break her neck. One or the other. He glared at her, daring her to complain.
No way. She smiled at him and held out a hand to be helped up into the SUV. Matt grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up. The armor was so heavy she would never have made it on her own. She sat down in the rear passenger seat and Matt rounded the back and sat behind the driver, Jacko.
Matt’s movements were those of an angry man, jerky and exaggerated. He slammed her door shut and then his.
Honor was not comfortable. The body armor ate into the tops of her thighs and chafed her around the neck and arms but she’d rather be whipped than complain.
“Dickhead,” Jacko said to Matt, turning around, again the deep voice surprisingly clear in the comms unit in her ear. These guys had serious gear.
Matt turned his glare from her to Jacko, who gave it right back.
Honor tried to get into a position that was not actually painful. Matt settled into the seat next to her and put a heavy arm around her, which
made the body armor eat into her thighs even more.
Damn right Matt was a dickhead. But he was her dickhead so she wasn’t about to say anything.
They were part of a convoy. Simon was riding shotgun in a black SUV. Riding shotgun was ironic because the man sitting in the rear passenger seat was holding some kind of weapon on his lap. A real shotgun. He’d made sure that Simon saw it and that Simon understood that he could blow a hole in Simon’s spine at any moment.
If he thought there was any hope at all of stopping this — whatever this was —Simon might have made a move. But even making this vehicle crash would do nothing to stop the ten trucks that had rolled off his ship.
He now understood, viscerally, how privileged he was and how respected Quest Line Shipping was. His credentials were more than enough to enter the port of Long Beach, get to where the Maria Cristina moored, and wait for ten trucks to roll off. Nobody stopped them, nobody questioned them, it went smooth as silk.
Of course Simon’s fingerprints were everywhere — the ID used to secure entrance, the retinal and handprint scan to access the inner port, the landing of the Maria Cristina authorized by him. He’d even authorized the switch of port from Los Angeles to Long Beach.
Whatever those trucks were carrying, and he was sure it was either drugs or material for some kind of terrorist attack, it would look like he’d planned it all.
Which meant they were going to kill him. Just as they had probably killed Honor.
A familiar sharp pain shot through his chest at the thought. Instinctively he tried to bring his palm to his chest. His wrists were bound by plasticuffs. He couldn’t mitigate the pain in his chest.
He couldn’t go anywhere and he couldn’t do anything. He was a helpless passenger along for the ride to nowhere good.
What was it? Were the trucks full of explosives? He knew just two trucks full of explosives in the 1990s almost brought down the twin towers.
As head of a shipping line he knew all the terrible things that could be shipped and cause horrible damage. Explosives, drugs, vials of deadly disease. Though vials were usually small, could be carried in a briefcase, because viruses replicated themselves. Whatever was in the truck beds was big, heavy and dangerous. Simon had seen the point of origin of the cargo. Afghanistan, via the port of Karachi. His best guess was drugs. A shipload of drugs would be worth millions and millions of dollars at the street level.
So these vile Russians had kidnapped him, possibly murdered Honor, all to smuggle drugs into the country via his shipping company.
Only the wild hope that Honor might still be alive kept him from trying to attack the big Russian driving the SUV. Even handcuffed, Simon could perhaps make him drive off the road, crash into a railing, topple over. If Honor was gone, Simon didn’t want to live.
But if she was alive?
Then he’d live to see them all behind bars. Particularly Chamness.
The Russian checked the navigator briefly then slowed down and took a sharp left.
They were in a part of LA Simon barely knew. They were on the decaying outskirts of Frogtown along the LA River basin bike trail. He’d biked it once, thirty years ago.
The Russian turned right then left again, entering a warren of abandoned warehouses. What the hell were they doing here? Finally, the Russian braked gently to a halt and through the side rear-view mirror Simon could see that the trucks had halted too.
They were here, wherever here was.
The Russian lifted the lid on the console between the seats and took out a remote control. He clicked it. None of the street lamps in the area was working and there was a new moon so there was very little light except for the headlights, which showed a rusty steel gate.
But the gate slid open surprisingly easily and looking more closely, Simon could see that the gate wasn’t rusted or broken. Just unpainted. And rolling in, he saw an apron that was clean, with no cracked concrete. A huge hangar-like warehouse was a dark blot against the dark sky.
What the hell were they doing here? Offloading?
And then his darkest imaginings proved true. The double doors into the hangar started sliding open on tracks revealing a huge lit area. Two men walked toward the opening doorway and Simon’s heart started pounding when he saw what they were wearing.
Hazmat suits.
Damn.
For an instant, Matt longed for Afghanistan. He’d give his left nut to be in a convoy heading out to yet another fucking dusty village full of crazy Talibans embedded in the population, ready to fire at him at any moment. Travelling along a rutted road with IEDs ready to blow at any time. Sweating in 120° heat in full body armor, in the back of a carrier vehicle with twelve other hot sweaty men who hadn’t showered in a week.
Piece of cake.
Certainly compared to walking into fuck-knows-what with a woman he loved sitting right beside him. It messed with his head and you do not walk into danger with a messed-up head. You walk into danger with icy nerves and total focus and knowing that you are in a pack of men who are locked and loaded and as well trained as you are.
Not with a slender woman who is drowning in body armor that doesn’t fit and whose delicate hands are designed for sutures not shooting.
Gah.
He tightened his hand around her shoulders and sat there, glowering and angry. The only thing that made this in any way acceptable was that she was with him and he was going to keep her safe no matter what. And, well, Joe and Jacko were pretty good wingmen and would do anything to keep her safe too.
The shittiest thing about this was that she was right. Where could he have put her? They were in a race against time and he couldn’t have just left her on the tarmac back at the airfield. There was no time to call someone and even if there had been, who? Couldn’t just summon up a fucking uber, to take her to a hotel. He had no idea how far reaching the conspiracy was.
Hard place, meet rock.
“You’re going to stay in the vehicle,” he said. He’d said it before. Often.
“Of course.” Her voice was soft and cool in his earpiece. Joe and Jacko were dialed into the comms system but he didn’t care if he was repeating himself and coming off as crazy.
He knew for a fact that if there was any danger to Lauren, Jacko would go apeshit and so would Joe if there was anything threatening Isabel besides sharp kitchen knives and boiling oil.
They didn’t react in any way, faces stolidly turned forward as Jacko drove them straight into the heart of danger.
“No matter what you hear, you don’t get out of this vehicle. It’s armored.” It was a miracle words were coming out of his mouth, his teeth were clenched so hard.
“No.” Then a beat later, “What? You think I’m crazy?”
No, he was the crazy one. Getting crazier by the second. “I don’t —”
“Cut the drama,” Jacko growled. “Two mikes out.”
Two minutes. A hell of a lot could be accomplished in two minutes. Matt could fieldstrip his rifle. He could check all his gear and check a teammate’s gear, while doing a thorough comms check.
He didn’t do any of that. He just sat and hyperventilated.
“Yo, Matt,” Joe said without turning around. “Get your head out of your ass. Right. Fucking. Now.”
Honor turned a startled face up at him. Did she expect him to push back? He couldn’t because his head was up his ass. They were about to go into a hostile and dangerous situation, against an enemy whose numbers and positioning they didn’t know, with radioactive material in the mix. Not a good time to be messed in the head. Going into battle was never a good time to be messed in the head. And this time, not only he could die. Honor could die, too.
She could die, anyway, if it all went south. They might be totally outgunned inside the warehouse. There might be a fucking army in there.
“What do the birds say?” They’d launched two drones to the place as soon as Felicity programmed them.
Joe’s head dipped forward as he looked at the tablet on the dash
board. “The ten trucks are entering the gates.” He tapped on an icon. “Each truck has a driver, no passenger. Just one heat signature in IR. That’s funny…”
“What?” Jacko’s head didn’t turn but you could feel his attention switching briefly from the road. In any situation, Jacko did the driving. He was a superb combat driver, probably because of some special freakish spatial thing in his head, the same thing that made him an extraordinary sniper.
“I don’t have any image of the back of the trucks. Nada. Zip.”
“Ahm.” Honor sounded tentative. “That might be because the back of the trucks could be lined with lead. If there is radioactive material, it would be shielded. Even if some of my father’s cargos can land without inspection, there could be random radioactivity checks.”
“Jesus.” Joe stopped tapping on the screen. “Yeah. Okay. The trucks and an SUV have rolled into the compound and the gates are closing. And we have —” he mentally counted. “We have four men coming out of the warehouse and four men still inside. Huh. The four men coming outside look … weird. They’re walking funny.”
Honor leaned forward and looked over his shoulder. “Those are hazmat suits they are wearing.” She looked at Matt. “Do you guys have hazmat suits?”
“No.” Jacko answered. “The Black Inc guys were supposed to bring them up. They’re still en route.” Jacko was the one responsible for gear. That same freakish lobe also made him good with gear. He could list everything in their bags, everything in the back of the vehicle, how many rounds of ammo they had.
“The NEST guys will definitely have them,” Joe offered.
“When will they be arriving?” Honor looked hopeful.
Matt turned his head to her. “Tomorrow, honey.”
Honor’s face turned to stone. She scooted forward until her face was between Jacko and Joe.
“Okay.” She pointed at the tablet which had switched from drone mode to GPS mode. The white arrow that was their vehicle was almost at the point of arrival. “I don’t know what kind of radioactive material is in those trucks. I don’t know if any of you have seen a case of radiation poisoning. Matt has, though he didn’t recognize it. But trust me when I say you do not want to be exposed. So I would advise you to get in there fast and get out fast. As long as there is containment — Jacko, can a bullet shoot through lead?”
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 23