Guided to a back corner where three hard plastic chairs waited, Madalina absorbed as much detail and information as she could. Whatever was going on in this hectic atmosphere had nothing to do with the acquisition of the dragons. That much became crystal clear in seconds. Somehow the dragons overlapped a much larger issue. She heard snippets of conversation regarding a man who appeared to have been captured and held across enemy lines, plans to take back a stretch of land, and that one of their other strongholds was in jeopardy of being overrun.
Madalina couldn’t figure out what the dragons had to do with a territorial dispute. In her experience thus far, the people after the artifacts had wanted only one thing: the dragons.
Spinning around, Lance produced a knife and deftly cut her binds. Beau did the same to her parents. Madalina rubbed her chafed wrists, relieved to have use of her hands.
“You three stay here, out of the way. The bathroom is right there, but don’t try anything cute. The men here have been given the green light to take you out if you try to escape, got it?” Lance said, sheathing the blade. He didn’t wait for an answer but turned away and gathered the other three men in his group.
Madalina glanced at her parents, reading confusion in their eyes. She didn’t know what to say. For the moment, she chose to watch Lance, Freddy, Julian, and Beau rearm themselves with even larger, more deadly-looking weapons. A comrade smeared grease on their faces, fitted them with radios, and led them to a particular map, where he pointed to a certain spot outlined in red.
“Are they here to fight?” Juniper asked, whispering.
“I don’t know, Mom. None of this makes sense to me,” Madalina admitted, keeping her voice low.
Her parents crowded closer, but continued to observe the action in the room.
“They were brought here for the same reason they came after us,” Wesley said at length. “For an extraction. Must be someone important to pull them off the job in California, as it were.”
“Why didn’t they just send in some of the other men already here?” Madalina asked.
“Clearly Lance and his men are experienced. Maybe out of all the people here, they’re the best at what they do,” Wesley said.
Madalina darted looks around the room, taking note of the two strategic exit points and another set of doors at the far end of the structure.
“Don’t even think about it, Madalina. They’ll gun us down,” Wesley said, as if he could read her mind.
“It never hurts to know where the exits are, Dad. Cole taught me that. We may need to get out of here in a hurry.” She didn’t admit to plotting ways to escape that wouldn’t get them shot. It was in her nature to fight, to find ways out. The mere mention of Cole’s name made her breath hitch in her chest. She missed him like crazy.
“That’s all well and good,” he said, “but I can see that look in your eyes. You’re calculating instead of taking a simple inventory.”
Madalina couldn’t deny it. Her parents knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. Of course they would know what she was up to. “We may have a reason to leave in a hurry. Did you see that car bash through the fence at the airport when we left? That had to be Cole. He’s not far behind, I just know it.”
“What? I didn’t see any car,” Juniper said.
“Are you sure? How could you know that?” Wesley asked.
“Who else could it be? If it were the local authorities, they would have arrived en masse, sirens and lights on. But it was just one car, a dark car. Probably the Jaguar. I snatched a paper off one of the desks back at that house, folded it up into a small square, and tossed it on the ground as we were leaving. Trying to give Cole a clue. I didn’t know for sure we would go to one of the places outlined in red on the map, but something is better than nothing. He might have found it and somehow deduced where we were going. His dad’s company has connections, and I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to think Cole would use those connections to find us.” Madalina knew luck and skill played a big part in that equation. She hoped Cole was on their trail, hoped like hell that he would find a way to follow her here. Maybe his father’s company could somehow track the jet.
“Madalina, you took a big risk,” Wesley said without any heat in his voice.
“I had to, Dad. I had to do something. I don’t know what they’ll do with us if we go to Nepal and find the dragons. We’ve seen their faces, seen this operation. I’m afraid they won’t just return us home like nothing ever happened,” she replied.
Wesley and Juniper’s silence told Madalina that they were as worried about what would happen as she was.
A good warrior knows when to fight, when to eat, when to rest. No matter how busy a mind might be, survival requires downtime. Cole reclined in his seat, staring at the ceiling of the jet, and went through his process of shutting down. He needed sleep if he wanted to have energy for what came next after they landed. Usually he had no trouble falling asleep in the field. Years in the military had ingrained an internal schedule that he could call upon anytime, anywhere. He began his shutting-down process going over plans and contingencies, and worked his way to a more pleasant subject: Madalina. The ring burned a hole in his pocket, a stark reminder that had all this not happened, he might be an engaged man by now. He considered all the ways Madalina might react to a proposal, and what it would be like to watch her walk down the aisle. The prospect didn’t scare him at all. For the first time in his life, he knew this was right. Marriage to Madalina would be exciting, adventurous, humorous, and sexy. Everything that she embodied.
He couldn’t imagine himself with anyone else, now or ever.
His dreams were calm, soothing, comforting. Islands and gentle waves, laughter, and Madalina’s touch. A peculiar ache accompanied the imagery, an ache that remained when his eyes popped open exactly three hours later. Sitting up in the chair, instantly alert, he shook off the remnants of slumber and glanced at his watch. He’d slept exactly as long as he’d planned. Another leftover habit from the military—he could sleep for any length of time and wake precisely when he needed to without an alarm. His mind and body were the alarm.
“We land in twenty,” Damon said on his way past the seat. He and Brandon had both chosen to catch some sleep as well.
For the duration of the flight, Cole mentally prepared himself for battle. He didn’t know what they were walking into exactly, only that there were hostile forces in the vicinity. He caught a glimpse of some of the fighting out the window as the jet descended for landing. Puffs of smoke rose here and there along well-defined lines of defense, an indication of live fire being traded back and forth.
Once the jet touched down, Cole was the first at the door, the first to greet the team of men Thaddeus had acquired to aid them in their task. Men who had been on a nearby island providing support to a US ally in the ongoing dispute. Cole made short work of introductions with his brothers while they loaded up on extra ammunition and weapons. The leader of the group, Talbot Hayes, a hardened warrior with buzzed hair and dark eyes, provided unexpected, welcome information.
“We had a man on the ground here, undercover. He was able to watch the jet in question land from the cover of the trees,” Talbot said, pointing to the thick foliage around the private airstrip. “He saw a group of men disembark with two older people and one younger, dark-haired woman in tow. The girl was wearing a light-colored pantsuit, according to our undercover man.”
“Yes, that’s her. That’s Madalina. The older people are her parents,” Cole said, a burst of adrenaline shooting through him to hear that Madalina and her parents were alive and present on the island. “Was he able to follow them?”
“He did, and gave me coordinates to a location not far from here.” Talbot gestured to a tabletlike device in his hand, with grids and terrain flashing on the surface.
“So, what’s the deal?” Brandon said. “What’s the recon from the location?”
“It’s a Vietnamese stronghold being used by leadership in charge of this
specific skirmish. They’re running the operation from this building, plotting troop movements, all that crap. They’ve got some ex-pat Americans on the payroll and a Vietnamese strategist who got captured yesterday by the opposition, hence the call to bring in the men who have Madalina,” Talbot said. “They’re the expert extraction team. Not really sure why they brought the girl and her parents here, but that’s the latest intel we’ve got.”
Cole didn’t feel the need to explain the details. “How many men, what kind of stronghold?”
“Our spy has counted at least ten men, could be more inside that haven’t come out. It’s a two-story building, no windows, with recon going on from the roof. Three doors going in and out, all reinforced metal. We don’t know if there’s a basement or not,” Talbot said.
“Sounds pretty solid,” Damon said.
“It is. They’re going to see us coming once we break the line of trees near the structure,” Talbot replied.
Cole considered the situation. Trying to plan a way in was harder when he didn’t know the exact layout of the building. The rooftop recon made it even trickier.
“Best way in would be through the roof, but he might see us coming and alert everyone else,” Cole said. “The only way that would work is if we distracted him on one side, and had a team hit the other while he wasn’t looking. We’d need grappling hooks and rope.”
“We’ve got that,” Talbot said. “I think the plan could work. Distract the recon man, then overpower him and go in from the top down. The men inside won’t expect that at all.”
“It’s the best plan we’ve got. Let’s do it,” Brandon said.
Taking the lead, Cole explained to the group of men what he wanted them to do. Four members of the group would provide a distraction on the south side, while the rest of them made a move on the north. No kill shots unless absolutely necessary. Once inside, they would depend on their guns to make the other men stand down.
On the way to two big military-type trucks, Cole took his brothers aside to say, “I think Lance’s team might be working for the Vietnamese to get the dragons as bargaining chips, like we thought. I’m pretty sure they’re working off the books, too, so the other men in the structure probably don’t know what Madalina and her parents mean to the mission. I don’t have hard proof of that, just a gut feeling. It makes sense to me that the opposition would want to minimize the number of people who know about the dragons. Lance and his group might use deadly force because they have other motives than the rest, so we need to keep that in mind when we go in.”
“I agree,” Damon said.
“Same,” Brandon replied.
“I don’t really want to mention to Talbot’s group why Madalina and her parents are being held unless there’s no other way. The fewer people who know why Lance has gone off grid, the better,” Cole added. He climbed into the front seat of a truck while his brothers got in the rear. Doors banged closed as the rest of the team embarked, and moments later, the big vehicles rumbled along the tarmac for a small road.
Senses heightened, Cole prepared himself for confrontation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fifteen minutes of careful observation revealed a pattern in the way the men of the stronghold operated. Madalina marked the movements while her parents took turns using the restroom, filing away which men seemed to lose more and more interest in the “visitors” as time passed. The activity bursts on the computer screens tended to command quite a bit of attention; every time something big happened in a monitored zone, a handful of fighters clustered around the screen to watch.
For the most part, Madalina and her parents were left alone in the corner, as if the fighters knew escape was nigh unto impossible. The metal doors would make noise, and with the openness of the entire floor, someone would see if she made a break for it. She wouldn’t call the men’s attitude lax—several pairs of eyes glanced her way often—but there was quite a bit of distraction.
The sense of urgency to do something, to act, became more and more prominent. Her concern shifted from a distant dread into a tsunami, as if she could feel the hands of an invisible clock ticking the minutes of her life away one second at a time. She didn’t trust that the people behind her abduction would do the right thing once the dragons were found.
If they were found.
With Lance and his group gone, Madalina knew this was the right time to strike. Cole’s lessons on strategy and escape played a big part in her decision to make a move. When you see an opening, take it. What she needed was a bigger distraction, something to draw the men’s attention away from her and her parents.
In the center of the room stood a pile of crates and boxes that held all kinds of weapons and ammunition: handguns, machine guns, grenades. She’d watched several men reload their vests with clips and stuff a few grenades into special pockets on a belt at their waist. Cole had taught her the difference between stun and fragment grenades, and it was a box of the former she was most interested in. If she could get her hands on one, she might be able to disorient and blind the fighters long enough to get her parents out the back door. The surrounding forest would provide plenty of places to hide as they navigated their way to safety.
There were two problems: she wasn’t positive which direction was safest, considering the gunfire she’d heard on the way in, and getting to the box of stun grenades in the first place was tricky. She couldn’t simply stroll across the room and pick one up. The ground floor of the complex was large, with several support columns dotted here and there, but it was still an open space, with a clear view everywhere except the bathrooms. Someone would notice if she took more than ten steps in any direction.
Several minutes later, an opportunity presented itself with a suddenness that Madalina wasn’t expecting. Urgent calls from two of the fighters drew the rest of the men to the monitors at a run. One man pointed frantically at a specific point that seemed to alarm the rest of the group. Madalina couldn’t make out details from her position, but she read body language well enough.
The fighters crowded close to the screens, all gesturing and talking. She caught only snippets of “break the line” and “attack” and “if they get beyond” before she shifted her focus. Unprepared to act this soon, she nevertheless seized the moment—another might never come.
Turning, she gave her startled parents a specific look that conveyed her need for them to follow her lead.
“Close your eyes and cover your ears when you see me lob something through the air. Run for the back doors as soon as you can once the grenade goes off,” was all she said before calmly but briskly walking across the floor to the pile of crates. Even the door guard had moved from his position to look at the screen, giving her precious extra seconds to reach the stash. Once she was within arm’s reach, she knew there was no going back. No time to second-guess or doubt. She reminded herself that to act was better than to die of inaction.
Her heart thrashed wildly in her chest as a burst of adrenaline kicked in at the last moment.
Snatching two stun grenades and a smoke bomb out of a nest of shavings, she pulled both pins simultaneously on the stun grenades and flipped them across the room. One of the men must have glimpsed movement or sensed danger because a warning cry rang out.
Ducking behind the pile of boxes, she covered her ears and closed her eyes to lessen the impact of the grenades on herself. It was paramount that she did not become disabled.
Two concussive bangs rocked the interior of the structure, one after the other. Even with her eyes closed, she detected a flicker of the blinding light that accompanied the explosions. Despite the blockade of boxes, she also felt the effects of the blast, rendering her mildly disoriented. She wasn’t so disoriented that she couldn’t think, however, and after activating the smoke bomb, she threw it through the air to create a veil between herself, her parents, and the men.
Then she was moving. Half running, half crawling, she aimed for the back door as smoke billowed out and upward, rushing toward all four
walls. Weak shouts and wails indicated that the men had indeed been caught off guard and were suffering the effects of the grenades.
Through the haze, she saw her parents hunched and moving as fast as they were able to for the doors. Her mother looked a little stunned; Wesley looked to be in pain but functioning.
Reaching the door first, Wesley wrenched it open and ushered Juniper out. Coughing and gasping, Madalina followed, using one hand on her mother’s back to guide her as well as for her own stability while she tried to get her bearings.
“This way!” Madalina thought she sounded odd, as if her voice came from a great distance. She staggered to the left, spotting a good place in the surrounding trees to enter and get lost.
Wesley wrapped an arm around both women to help propel them forward.
Madalina thought he was shouting, “Hurry, hurry!” but couldn’t be sure. She figured she must be in shock and suffering minor effects from the blasts. Stumbling, she caught her footing and kept going. The sense of urgency she’d experienced inside to get out and get away intensified. It was imperative that they reach the cover of the trees as soon as humanly possible.
Something whizzed by Madalina’s shoulder, kicking up a puff of dirt two feet to her left. The impact registered in periphery, and understanding came even as she heard the faint pop of a gunshot.
Someone was shooting at them. She couldn’t comprehend how any of the fighters had recovered enough to handle a weapon, much less fire and narrowly miss.
Another bullet zinged past, closer than the last.
Madalina twisted her body away from her parents so she did not inadvertently make them a target. Ignoring Wesley’s grappling hands, she wrenched a quick look over her shoulder. Smoke slithered out the open metal doors of the building, but no fighters were in sight.
A Dangerous Tryst (The Inheritance Book 3) Page 9