She rounded the corner into a utility room and spotted a door. Opening it, she entered a cylindrical space that reached fifty feet up: the lighthouse. Steel grate stairs corkscrewed to a landing at least forty feet up, and behind the spiral staircase hunched the girl, her cute dog sitting beside her. Arms wrapped around her legs, Julie sniffled softly.
“So this is where you went.” Hammett was talking to the dog, but the girl answered.
“Don’t come near me.” She wiped her face with her fingertips. “I mean it. Stay away.”
Hammett didn’t move. “Afraid I’m going to try to hug you or something? Don’t worry, I’m not the type.”
“I’m sorry. I just…”
“Whatever.” Hammett craned her neck to peer up into the lighthouse tower. “Is there an exterior door back here?”
“There are only two. The front door and the one in the kitchen.”
And Hammett couldn’t slip through either of those with her sisters Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie waiting around for Pancho Villa to storm the fortress.
“You can see everything from the lighthouse,” Julie offered.
“I need something on this level.”
“There’s a big window to the side of the utility room.”
“Thanks,” Hammett said. That might do nicely. “Be sure to keep Kirk in here no matter what you hear. It’s the most protected place in the house.”
“Uh…thanks, I guess.”
Hammett smirked. “I could give a shit about you, little girl. But that’s a pretty cool dog.”
Hammett shut the door behind her, cloistering dog and girl inside. She found the window right where Julie said it would be. It had a large frame, plenty big enough to crawl through, and the corner of the house shielded it from view of the kitchen. The only downside was it looked as if it might be painted shut.
She gave it a wiggle, then a thump with the heel of her hand, and miraculously it slid open. Hammett eased through and closed it, leaving a small crack to fit her fingers into on the way back in. Holding the Skorpion at the ready, she moved out into the fog.
Hammett’s little reconnaissance mission shouldn’t take long. She’d be back well before nightfall. And by then, she intended to have compromised at least one or two of those tragic lovers and to be a bit more informed about The Instructor’s plans.
By all rights, Chandler should thank her, but Hammett wasn’t going to hold her breath. Her sister was putting personal feelings before the mission. Mistakes like that cost lives. She needed some sense beaten into her. Or a bullet to the head.
The terrain on the island was rough, low brush spotted with outcroppings of granite. In partnership with the fog, it provided decent cover. The trick would be finding the enemy, since they were sure to be taking advantage of the environment, too.
After fifteen minutes of duck and cover, Hammett had nearly resigned herself to taking on the two at the engine house and letting Chandler watch, when she detected a scent that shouldn’t be there.
Cologne. Polo by Ralph Lauren.
She followed the scent, walking softly on the balls of her feet, listening for a cough, a shift, the clearing of a throat.
There it was. A sniffle.
Hammett followed the sound to a ridge of stone near the cliff’s edge. A man hunkered low behind some stunted goldenrod. He was dressed in jeans and a flak jacket, a well-worn cowboy hat jammed on his head.
Of course he wears Polo. Must be attracted to the horse in the logo.
His location gave him a clear shot at the kitchen window. Even from Hammett’s current position, she could see the edge of the table Fleming had turned on its side.
He sniffled again. Probably from cologne fumes, as he’d apparently dumped the whole bottle on himself. A couple days’ beard growth stubbled his chin, and his teeth were movie-star white. Hammett knew the type. Redneck metrosexual. Tough rawhide exterior, but when you applied pressure in the right places, he could be made to crumble.
And Hammett knew all the right places.
She made a wide circle, using the distance buffer and crash of waves to hide her movement. She had over an hour left before sunset. No hurry. Best to take her time and keep the element of surprise on her side. Rush things and she might end up having to kill instead of capture, and then she’d be as clueless about The Instructor’s plans as she was now.
Unaware of her approach, the target reached for the radio on his belt and touched a button. Then he shouldered his assault rifle.
Under the barrel and forward of the magazine, Hammett recognized the distinctive shape of an AG-C/Enhanced Grenade Launching Module.
She’d gotten it all wrong. The enemy wasn’t waiting until dark to strike. They’d played her, and played her well. They were striking now, probably from multiple directions, and Hammett was in no position to stop them.
Chandler
“There might be times when your past will come back to haunt you,” said The Instructor. “Shoot first.”
I watched the monitor, then the fog, then the monitor, my mind racing. I had played every possible scenario of this siege through my mind, and every way it added up, our chances were poor. It would be one thing if we had a side we didn’t have to protect, or we had more weapons, or if it was just the three of us and Julie wasn’t in the mix. But the six operatives that we knew of were likely better armed and better rested, and didn’t have an innocent to protect.
I’d faced greater odds in the past few days and been incredibly lucky in the outcome. But there came a time when luck ran out.
I sure hoped this wasn’t my time.
The operative we’d identified as Isolde reached for the radio on her belt, but instead of bringing it to her mouth to speak, she merely pressed a button, then the hulk accompanying her turned directly to the camera, raised his gun, and static overtook the monitor.
Shit, shit, shit. We’d been discovered.
They weren’t waiting until dark. Either it had been a deliberate ruse, a staged radio conversation to throw us off, or Hammett had lied.
They were coming for us now.
I’d just completed the thought when the living room window shattered, followed by the hiss of a gas grenade.
Tear gas is horrible, and in an enclosed space, it’s hard to overcome. As soon as the smoke started, my eyes began to burn. I squinted and pulled the neck of my sweater up over my mouth and nose, trying to buy time. We had to get out of here.
“Fleming! Fall back to the lighthouse!”
Shotgun blasts came in response.
“Fall back!” I yelled again.
The sound of shattering glass came from the kitchen. More tear gas. Damn. How had they gotten to the back of the house unseen?
My sister swore, curses dissolving into coughs and sputters.
I peered out the window, struggling to see, something, anything. Movement stirred in the brush. I fired off a few shells, no idea if I came close to hitting anything. At this distance the shot sprayed so wide, it didn’t do much good.
“Fleming?”
Gunfire erupted from the kitchen, then more shattering glass from the windows next to me.
The explosions hit fast. Bang, bang, bang, blinding me and ringing through my head. I dropped my shotgun and stumbled forward, one hand clawing the wall in an effort to keep my balance. A high-pitched whine filled my head, muffling all other sound.
Flashbangs, or stun grenades, are nonlethal explosives used by military and law enforcement to disorient, when subjects are to be captured. They rendered me blind, dizzy, temporarily overloading my optic nerve and doing a number on the fluid in my inner ear. I clung to the wall, struggling to stay on my feet and regain my bearings.
The door gave way to a boot. Two figures rushed in, both wearing gas masks. One was a strapping black female, long hair plaited into cornrows. The other was male, lighter skinned, only one eye visible through his face shield.
Not the two caught on the security camera, but a different pair who had worked thei
r way closer to the house while I was focused on the monitor.
I fell to one knee. My balance was still off, and I was in no shape for a fight, but I needed to strike now. In a matter of seconds I would be dead. I had to reach my shotgun.
The woman raised a .45, which looked tiny in her gigantic hands.
“She’s mine,” the male yelled, loud enough that I could hear over the high-pitched ring. “Go.”
She hesitated.
My whole head felt swollen, my throat closing up, my nose running profusely. I couldn’t stand, and no matter how much I blinked, I couldn’t clear the purple ghosts the stun grenades had imprinted on my vision.
Figuring she was going to plug me no matter what her partner said, I threw my body from the wall and crabwalked backward, praying I’d run into my gun before her bullet ran into me.
“Now, Earnshaw,” the man repeated.
She moved past, toward the hall, just as my hand hit the sawed-off barrel of my gun. Heat seared my palm, but I grabbed it anyway. Fumbling at first, I managed to find the trigger and wrapped my hand around the stock.
Too late.
Through the burning slits of my eyes, I could see the male operative loom over me.
When he’d first burst in, I’d still been half-blinded by the flashbang, and I hadn’t noticed the patch covering one eye. I could see him more clearly now.
Clearly enough to realize I knew him.
Part of my training involved learning to memorize faces so I could recall them in detail months or years later. It was an automatic response, one I no longer had to think about. But even so, I wouldn’t have needed any of the training to recognize and remember this man. Tear gas or not.
“You son of a bitch,” I said between coughs.
I whipped the shotgun around from behind and pumped a round into the chamber.
He was on me before I could pull the trigger, wrestling the weapon from my grasp, planting a knee into the side of my head.
The blow reverberated through my skull, adding to my gas-induced misery, but I managed to keep my senses. I grabbed his leg with one hand, attempting a heel strike to his crotch with the other.
He caught my hand before impact, and bent it back at the wrist. Then he brought a pistol to my head.
Just that easily, he’d bested me. Again.
“I’ve missed you, querida.”
Ears still ringing, I couldn’t really hear his inflection, but I didn’t have to. I could see the amusement in his eye.
I’d known him as Heath, never realizing it was a codename, obviously short for Heathcliff. The last piece of the puzzle I’d failed to put together until now.
“He sent you here to kill me?” I asked.
“He?”
I gave him the hardest stare I could, considering I could barely keep my eyes open and he had a gun to my temple. No matter how many tight situations I’d faced and survived, a gun barrel to the head always made an impression.
Despite the gas mask hiding his lips, I could tell he smiled. “I’m not here for you at all. Although this is a pleasant diversion.”
If not me, why was he here? Hammett? Fleming? With the ringing in my ears, pain jangling my skull, and every mucous membrane on fire, my brain was as compromised as my balance.
“Why?” was all I managed to force out.
“Why am I here?”
I nodded.
“I only divulge my plans during pillow talk. No, wait…that’s you, not me.”
God, I hated this cocky son of a bitch.
“How’s the eye?” I asked.
“Good enough to see you’re as pretty as ever. So sad, though.”
“Tear gas will do that to a girl.”
He smirked.
That should have been a clue for me, back when I first met him. Never trust a man who smirks.
“I should kill you,” he said. “Or at least bring you in.”
“Why don’t you, then?” The longer I kept him talking, the better my chances of getting out of this.
“You aren’t the objective. And I have a soft spot for the pretty ones.”
“Even the ones who stab you in the eye?”
“I probably had it coming. Serves me right for letting my guard down around you.”
“So who are you here for? Hammett? Fleming?”
Gunfire erupted in the kitchen. But before I could figure out what to do about it, Heath hit me again, this time with the butt of his gun, and I could do nothing but slump to the floor.
Fleming
“No matter how prepared you are, you’ll eventually be surprised,” The Instructor said. “Your life depends on how quickly you can recover.”
Breached!
The past few days had worn on Fleming enough that controlling panic had become second nature. When the tear gas came in through the window and the firing began, Fleming spat on her shirt collar, pulled it up over her nose and mouth, and rolled out the back exit, overlooking the ledge. Through the haze of fog and gas, she made out a guy in a cowboy hat, hunkering down behind some rocks. She fired twice, keeping him pinned down, hearing the report of Hammett’s Skorpion somewhere to the west.
The tear gas meant this mission was a smash and grab, not a hit.
Fleming would not be grabbed. Not again.
If it came down to that, she’d rather eat her gun than go back to the secret prison. The only way they’d take her off this island was in a body bag.
Fleming fired again, counting her shells, making sure she kept two left.
One for her.
And one for Julie.
Julie
Julie covered her ears.
Oh my God! Oh my God!
The house was exploding, and she didn’t know what to do. Chandler said stay there. So did her sister. But they couldn’t have known there would be bombs.
Kirk pressed against Julie and licked her hand, warm and wet. She ran her palm over his head. He was worried about her, she knew. He wanted to protect her. But not even Kirk could protect her from bombs. No more than Chandler could.
And what about Chandler and her sisters? All Julie could hear were explosions and gunfire. Were they in trouble? Were they even alive?
How could she sit here cowering while Chandler was dying?
But what could Julie possibly do to help?
Julie had held a gun once. She’d shot someone. And she’d never wanted to touch one of the things again.
She wished she had one now.
She wished she could do more to help Chandler and her sisters. More than hiding. More than holding back her tears. More than keeping herself from getting hurt.
Julie couldn’t hear Kirk’s growl, but she could feel it. A tiny vibration ran through his body. The fur stood up along his spine.
The door to the utility room rattled.
Oh God, someone was here.
Julie scooted her butt along the floor, farther under the stairs. Her pulse was so loud her entire head throbbed with it. She grasped Kirk’s collar, her hand shaking.
He let out a flood of barks, low and brutal and meaner than she’d ever heard from him.
The door flew open.
For a second, no one came. Then a rifle barrel stabbed into Julie’s line of sight, followed by the biggest woman she’d ever seen.
At least Julie thought it was a woman. A mask covered the face, and long, black braids cascaded over broad shoulders, but her hips flared out and her waist was narrow. She was dressed in a military uniform, boxy and bulletproof and ending in combat boots. She moved like Chandler did, fast and efficient. And when she centered her aim on Kirk, Julie forgot to breathe.
She released his collar.
Kirk sprang at the woman, moving so fast he looked like a brown blur.
An explosion shook the air.
Julie clamped her hands over her ears, the blast echoing through the lighthouse. The gun. The woman had fired the gun.
Kirk kept going, clamping onto the woman’s leg.
She s
truck him with the butt of her rifle and then stared straight at Julie.
Julie’s ears rang, and although she saw Kirk barking and the woman yelling, she couldn’t hear a thing. She saw the woman coming, but she couldn’t make her body move. She couldn’t think. She had nowhere to go.
The woman grabbed her by the arm, by the hair.
Julie held onto the stair rail, pain searing her scalp. She stomped the woman’s feet, kicked her shins, but it made no difference. The woman bellowed something and gave a yank, and the iron tore from Julie’s hands.
Kirk latched on to the woman’s leg again, shaking and ripping, and she struck him, sending him smashing onto the floor.
“No!” Julie screamed.
The woman dragged her to the hall window. Julie hit and clawed, but none of it mattered, none of it made any difference.
They had come back. They were taking her. All her worst fears were again coming true.
Oh God, Chandler. Where are you?
Hammett
“Often during an operation, sacrifices have to be made,” said The Instructor. “Be willing to look past personal attachments and selfish needs and see the bigger picture. Prior to going in, know what’s expendable and what is not, so that in the heat of the moment, the tough decisions are already made.”
As soon as she heard the shooting start, Hammett raised the Skorpion and fired on the cowboy. But he’d chosen his position well, and had hunkered down a millisecond before she pulled the trigger. Lead pinged off rock and threw dust in the air, but the best she could hope for was to keep him pinned down. The moment he realized she wasn’t able to end him from her spot down slope, he fired the grenade into the kitchen.
Glass shattered, echoing the chaos Hammett could hear unfolding from the other side of the keeper’s place. A slow smoke wafted from the broken panes.
Tear gas.
Interesting. They aren’t here to kill us.
Contrary to Chandler’s obvious suspicion, Hammett hadn’t alerted The Instructor to their whereabouts. Much as Hammett wanted to kill Chandler and Fleming, she wanted that son of a bitch dead first.
But if this second Hydra team had come to take them alive, it could be to Hammett’s advantage. Allowing herself to get captured would give her access to The Instructor.
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