by Amy McKinley
The hostages are free. Now to get them out safely.
“Jack,” Hannah rasped, her voice thick from possible dehydration, “help Henry.” With a gentle nudge toward Henry, she whispered in his ear, “His heart.”
He took in the sickly complexion and knew their timeline had to be moved up even more if they wanted to get him out alive. One explosion followed by a second rocked the ground and tossed his body forward. The impact to their ears dulled their hearing. He regained his feet and turned to help Henry. Muffled shouts and bursts of gunfire trickled in amidst the chaos.
Close to Henry, Jack turned to check on Hannah, who slowly rose and dropped her hands from her ears. “Do you need help?” At Hannah’s negative response, Jack turned and hoisted Henry’s arm over his shoulder. A few steps past the thick tree, he shouted for Trev, who glanced over his shoulder at him. “Get Hannah to safety.” A puzzled expression crossed Trev’s face, but Jack didn’t have time to ponder it. “Got the package. Meet at the extraction point,” he ordered through their communication pieces.
With a little more ground covered and the thick tree behind them for added cover, Jack half carried and half dragged Henry down the same path they’d taken to get there. The extraction point was less than one hundred yards ahead. “A little longer, sir,” Jack said, encouraging the struggling Secretary of Defense.
A third explosion shook the night, and Jack stopped, glancing back. She wasn’t behind him. “Hannah!” he roared as he searched the chaos of raining debris and bodies. He faltered when he caught a flash of blond by the flames. He narrowed his eyes. Nothing. Hannah. She was nowhere to be found. Not directly behind him. Not with Trev. Not anywhere.
His knees almost buckled. Locking his legs, he gritted his teeth and shoved the pain aside. This can’t be happening. He’d found her again only to lose her. Pain flooded his body, but he shut his mind down.
The night was loud with bullets infusing the air. Fire licked at anything dry within reach—the hammocks, some ground cover, the clothes on the dead... His team was closing in on the enemy, which was one good thing to be thankful for. Bodies fell, and the acrid scent of burning flesh permeated the air.
Connor, Matt, Trev, and Liam were alive.
Liam was empty-handed.
“Where’s the case?” Jack shouted.
Liam shook his head. “Couldn’t find it. They must’ve moved it out.” They exchanged a look—not finding the prototype was bad.
“No. That can’t be.” Henry’s stricken voice filtered through Jack’s muffled hearing. The older man looked around. His eyes widened. “Where’s Hannah?” He clutched onto Jack. “Is she safe?”
Their orders to return Henry no matter what the cost grated on Jack’s very last nerve. Still, he had to calm Henry, so he mumbled something incoherent that caused the older man to falter in his mounting panic.
Things had gone to hell. Frantic for a glimpse of Hannah, he scanned the area once more. He shoved Henry into Trev’s arms then turned to run. Mission be damned. Hannah wouldn’t be left behind. He couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.
She can’t be dead.
He was almost to the fire when Liam stiff-armed him. Jack struggled against his friend’s hold.
“No!” Liam yelled. “You can’t go back. I saw her too, and there’s nothing you can do.”
Fire licked along the ground, leeching onto anything dry and burning it in its path. Body parts and the scent of death lay scattered in its wake.
Jack locked eyes with his friend—his teammate—and let him see the hell that was inside him. “I’m going after her.” He shoved Liam away.
He only came back more determined, stronger. “No.” Liam wrapped his arms around Jack as bullets peppered them through the trees. “There’s nothing you can do.”
His mind screamed to go back, and his body shook with barely restrained emotion, trembling with the need to act. The smell of death overtook his mind, and he stopped resisting. She’d been there. Now she isn’t. Liam is right. He fought against every fiber of his being and turned away.
“Move!” Liam growled, and Jack’s body went into autopilot. It wasn’t much farther. They barreled through the forest, and as they neared the extraction point, the muted sound of their stealth helicopter whirling above urged them to increase their pace. Matt and Connor brought up the rear, the wounded body of the bulky security guard supported between the two.
In the small clearing, a harness attached to a thick metal cord dropped. With the dense trees, the helicopter couldn’t land. Their retrieval was in a different place than where they’d jumped in—upon their arrival, stealth and a quiet entry point had been key. Leaving was a different story. Helicopter blades whirled, their whomp whomp loud and not far from the enemy camp.
Working in tandem with Liam, they got Henry secured in the harness. When Henry was settled, Jack signaled for him to be pulled up to the cabin where Hawk, co-pilot to Hayden, waited to help him inside.
Safely inside, the line dropped again, and they did the same for the guard. Once Hawk had the guard inside, he lowered the cable, and they attached and ascended.
Hawk bent to check Henry and gave him some water and a pill Rich had given them for his heart. They would take him to their jet in Texas, where a medic would be waiting to start an IV with fluids and anything else Henry would need during their next leg of travel. From there, they would board their private jet and fly home.
“Where’s Chris?” Panic laced Trev’s alarmed shout.
They had been sure he would have met up with them at the extraction point, if nothing else.
Hawk met Jack’s gaze for a brief second, and worry overtook the usually steady countenance of the sharpshooter. “We lost sight of his tracker right about when you guys touched down.”
A gunshot, crash, enemy tampering, or electric shocks were the only things that could’ve disabled Chris’s tracker. Jack’s eyesight went fuzzy as past horrors briefly eclipsed the present ones.
Suddenly aware of the heat, Jack’s thoughts whirled. They’d lost two. The weight of grief sat heavy on his chest as his mind screamed with the pain of losing more people he loved.
No way. Jack lurched to the helicopter’s open door, hand reaching for the rappel line and locking eyes with Trev. Orders be dammed.
Chapter 9
Jack
The fire crackled and popped, warding away the chilly Maine air that felt so different from the oppressive heat of the Darien Gap. After they’d delivered Henry to DC, per his and Rich’s mandates, they’d flown home. The wait for action was driving them all crazy and, per Rich’s words, they weren’t doing anyone any good.
Jack had tried to stay in Colombia to continue the search. With a hand on the rappel line, he’d attempted to descend, but Liam and Matt had held him back. As they restrained Jack, Hayden quickly ascended the helicopter to a safe height. Jack met Trev’s frantic eyes, and an understanding passed between them. Chris was Trev’s actual brother, and Jack knew that the pain he felt at Hannah’s loss was nothing compared to what Trev was going through.
It wasn’t over. They would return and find out what happened to Chris—if he was shot or wounded.
Hannah. She had been within his grasp, and he wondered how she could be dead. He took a long pull of his beer, and his mind played a crippling game of the potential horror of her left behind, injured and suffering. I let her get away. I was too soft, too careful with the two women I’ve ever loved, and I lost them both. Jenni had chosen to go. But I could have insisted. Then I let Hannah walk away. Some stupid shit about not having her own life, and I didn’t fight her on it. Now this. Dammit. It was my job to save her—she was there and I turned my back. I fucking know better. He dropped his head into his hands, the thought of her dead or being tortured tearing him apart.
Before they’d even left the helicopter for their mission, Chris had insisted that they stick to their orders. Liam had been the voice of reason the night of their mostly failed rescue. He and
Trev had disagreed. The choice had been taken from them when Henry took a turn for the worse. They’d had to get him to a hospital. Fluids and meds were what would set him to rights, but only if delivered quickly.
Their orders had been to return him to the States and to make no other stops aside from transferring to the jet and awaiting the standby medic’s assessment. Henry was top priority. They couldn’t risk stopping in Colombia or a hospital in Cuba. The mole Rich worried over could have had the hospitals watched.
She can’t be dead. In his mind, what made the most sense was that Chris was with Hannah—maybe he’d deviated from the plan somehow and had gotten her to safety or was working on it. It was the only explanation that kept Jack from going ballistic. He took another long pull on his beer and looked at his teammates—his friends, his brothers—as they passed the night in exhausted worry for Chris, all aware that something had gone terribly wrong on their mission to retrieve the Secretary of Defense. Chris hadn’t landed with the rest of them, wasn’t seen in the camp as they executed their rescue, and never made his designated checkpoints.
In silence, Jack mourned for Hannah, unwilling to undercut Trev’s grief over Chris. Hannah was his and his alone, as was the pain of her loss. He wasn’t ready to share or to let the others in. The situation reflected that of his former girlfriend Jenni all over again. Even though the circumstances weren’t the same, both women were dead, casualties of war.
It nearly killed his team to leave a man behind. That wasn’t their code. However, they’d all agreed to put the mission first, and Chris had been the most adamant.
Adhering to their mission’s timeframe, they’d returned, but Jack vowed to go back after delivering Henry safely. Tension was high. It would be a difficult night.
Their intentions weren’t meant to find fruition, at least not as they’d planned.
“Look, Rich told us to hold off while he looks into movement in a specific area of Colombia. It sucks, but the more information we have, the better,” Hawk said as he lounged in his chair with determined intensity.
What he said was true. There was nothing they could do… yet. Every moment as they waited was sheer agony. The minutes turned into hours, and a new day broke. Even with Hawk’s words, their hope faded until Rich called hours later. Satellite images revealed new intel, and they were to wait for Rich’s debriefing.
Rich probably had vital information, so they did as he asked and waited. It wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t easy, but if it helped bring Chris home, it was necessary.
They waited together, gathered outside on Liam’s patio. Diagonally from Jack, Trev sat with his head in his hands, the occasional shake to his shoulders enough to telegraph the sheer terror he experienced for his older brother.
Jack shifted and caught Hawk’s fierce frown as he crossed his arms over his thick chest, taking up the entire lounge chair. Liam was on the other one with Liv cuddled against him. She’d been a wreck, waiting for the mission to be over. Liam found her in her studio, where she had spent hours pouring her feelings into a new sculpture. As an artist, her emotions bled into clay. Things had been tough for her before she’d found Liam, and they’d only connected thanks to Trev. He was the one to fly her to where Liam’s boat was docked. That seemed like a lifetime ago.
Connor, Hayden, Mike, and Keegan were silent, lost in their own ominous thoughts. Regardless, Connor, Keegan, and Hawk weren’t chatty types by any means, but the dark promise of retribution in their eyes stirred Jack’s blood to take action as well. None of them said anything. They hung out by the fire and drank. Being in each other’s company was enough until they could act.
The sharp thunk of Trev’s beer bottle hitting the slate patio jerked Jack’s attention back. Trev jumped to his feet and started pacing.
“He’s not dead. He can’t be.” Trev’s heated words rose in volume. “I’d know. I’d feel it.”
“None of us think he is. We’ll find him and bring him home.” Liam’s Irish lilt thickened with his emotions and added another level of reassurance to Trev’s barely restrained panic and abrupt movements.
“Say the word, Trev.” Connor had gone still. The air thickened. Dangerous power emanated from him. “You know we’ll do anything.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, and dark intent flashed in his eyes.
“Yeah, I do.” Pain laced his voice. “Thanks, man.” Trev kicked the bottle at his feet. It sailed through the air before striking the stone retaining wall in an explosion of liquid and glass. “We never should have fucking left.” His hands tangled in his hair as he bent over in agony. Liv disentangled from Liam and pushed to her feet. She stopped in front of Trev and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“He’s not gone,” she murmured as she hugged him. “Do you remember the sculpture I made a while ago, the one that’s in Liam’s office?”
Trev frowned.
“The one that looks like Chris and a woman. We don’t know her… I just… Trust me, Trev. I think we’ll see him soon.”
No one said a word. Each lost in their own thoughts. Worry pinched Hawk and Liam’s features as they watched their friend breaking under the weight of the unknown. Thank God they had Liv to inject compassion and softness to their often-harsh existence. “From what I’ve learned of Chris over these past months, he’ll survive.”
Trev seemed to be a little more under control. Renewed hope flashed in his eyes. He sucked in a breath, touched his forehead to hers, and whispered, “Thank you.” As she returned to Liam, Trev resumed his restless movements.
“Tomorrow. Rich has to come through for us by then.” Jack lent his support as Hawk’s all-seeing eyes followed Trev’s pacing. “If he doesn’t, we leave regardless.”
“Damn straight.” Trev growled then leveled Jack with a penetrating stare before Liam tossed him another beer.
Shit, it’s gonna be another long night. It’d been two very stressful days.
Hannah
Hannah’s ears rang. The explosion had robbed her of a portion of her hearing, at least temporarily. Her stomach cramped. Not being able to hear properly in enemy territory was detrimental. An escape while relying only on gut instincts and vision was a risk even she was uneasy about. But she would do it. There was no other option, especially since she had orders.
It’d been so long since she’d been in contact with and working alongside her Russian counterparts. Her breath sawed in and out. Her training came back to her, and she slipped into her old skin, the one she’d worn nine years before in Russia, with relative ease. But the operation was real.
She popped her ears, the aftereffects of the grenade going off so close to her finally gone. The first one that went off when Jack and his team arrived while she was in captivity had been the perfect distraction, as was Henry’s condition. Then another went off, and she edged away from them.
Jack and his men had been focused on Henry and on keeping the enemy at bay, so slipping away hadn’t been a problem. She yanked a grenade off a fallen insurgent. It was the perfect cover, the third explosion to rock the night. Jack’s reaction had been hidden by the wall of raining debris and body parts, but she knew he would think she’d died. It was time to go. Almost. She’d planned retribution, and it couldn’t be denied before she slipped into the waiting arms of the night.
With a gun she’d taken off a dead man, she ended the lives of five others that’d caused problems for her and Henry. Forgetting the abuse those men had dealt wasn’t an option. An older man and a woman were easy prey to a bully.
American life had changed her. Jack changed me. Pain lanced her heart. She would hurt both Jack and Henry by her actions. Hardening herself to the cause, she blocked them from her mind. Russia needed her. She shut down all thoughts of those who had broken through her wall and found a way into her heart.
There were only seconds until she would be spotted. She pushed herself, fully focused on the present once more. Clothes. She searched for the soldier who was similar to her in height and frame. What she
wore was not an option. The jungle was dangerous, and she needed to be prepared for what lay ahead.
She targeted another in the camp. He was smaller, so his clothes would fit her. She wanted—needed them. With very little time to spare, she scanned the turbulent clearing until she spotted the insurgent she’d had her eye on. He was just past the line of fire from the grenade. He faced away from her. In quick steps, she cleared the destruction and hit him on the head with the butt of her gun. He crumpled at her feet.
She dragged him to the cover of darkness and began stripping him of his pungent-smelling clothes, compass, weapons, and boots. She traded her clothes for his, keeping an eye on the Gray Ghosts. They’d pulled out. Stay safe. Like the ghosts they were named for, they’d infiltrated the camp and were gone without anyone realizing. Will they come back? Look for me?
A tremor shook her before she severed the connection to her American life, to Jack, and to what could have been. It was no more. There would be no coming back from what she was about to do.
As she escaped the chaos within the camp, she managed to snag one of their backpacks and located her purse, which she shoved inside the backpack. She prayed that the bag contained a canteen. While searching, she stepped farther into the cover of night, surrounded by the natural barrier of the jungle’s vegetation.
She sprinted in the opposite direction of where Jack had gone with Henry. The dull whirl of a helicopter thrummed above, and the sounds of gunfire surrounded her. Their ride was nearing.
Chris hadn’t been among them. Sven, the shooter the pilot had mentioned, must have hit his target. She clenched her teeth and pushed herself to go as fast as she could through the dense jungle. There was a path through the thick vegetation, and she utilized the relative safety of it. Soon, she would have to abandon it.
Time passed faster than she would have liked, and with enough distance traveled, she knew she would have to change direction. Chris wouldn’t be terribly far. Sucking in as much oxygen as she could, she stopped. It was time to see what she had in the pack.