“You good?” Jess said. Despite her reservations, she couldn’t help her sense of camaraderie with Massarra.
The Israeli nodded as she laid her backpack on the table. “A little cold,” she said, and attempted a convivial smile.
She hadn’t answered Jess’s questions about how she knew Erdogmus. Just some vague things about Ufuk being involved in the Levantine Council. The same people that had dragged Jess and her family into the whole mess that had gotten them killed. Half of the people in Sanctuary she’d met had blamed the attack and destruction of the Vivas installation on Ufuk’s drones. And now it appeared he had his own mercenary army. They were standing right here now.
Just what was going on?
But there was no denying that Massarra had just saved her life. Again.
The woman, however, wouldn’t look Jess in the eye, and instead turned away and continued to unpack her backpack. “I’m very happy to see you, Jessica. Truly.”
“Is this your contact, Mr. Erdogmus?” Ufuk’s man continued to study Massarra.
“That’s right.”
“I have the radio equipment you requested.”
“Müller will be monitoring communications.”
“It’s digital. Encrypted,” replied the man. “Unbreakable.”
“Nothing is unbreakable, and at this distance, they could still triangulate the position from signal strength. Even just the fact of an unknown encrypted signal going out would alert them to something. Right now we have the advantage of stealth. I want to keep it that way.”
Giovanni reappeared from the stairwell. “The door to the toilet is jammed shut. I won’t be long.” He headed for the door.
“One of my people will accompany you, sir,” Ufuk’s man said. “We need you to stay close to the building. Keep you covert, understood? The drone patrols use infrared and thermal imaging.”
“I can urinate alone.”
“I’m sure you can, sir.” He gestured to the second man who followed Giovanni outside.
Jess shivered. A small fire blazed in the inglenook, but the room was large and still quite cold. She walked over in an attempt to warm herself. At least it sheltered them from the savage wind. Better to be in here than outside in the wind and snow. Glad she didn’t need to relieve herself.
A minute passed, and then another. Where was he? No reason for Giovanni to take so long out there, in the cold.
Why hadn’t he come straight back inside?
Ufuk and his private contractor were discussing something over a holographic map on some special device of Ufuk’s. A pistol was holstered on the man’s chest, and an M4 waited on the table beside the projection. The blue light glowed pale and dull on the cold metal.
Jess looked at Massarra and mouthed the word: Giovanni. Massarra’s expression soured and she nodded toward the door. She walked casually to her backpack.
It had been too long.
There was no reason for Giovanni to be out there this long. Up here, in the mountains, it was possibly thirty below. Giovanni was an experienced polar explorer; he would know he shouldn’t be out there, exhausted and weary as he was, for longer than absolutely necessary. He wouldn’t want to be.
She went over to the door.
Ufuk’s man put a hand out. “Where are you going?”
“Just wondering where Giovanni is.”
“He’s safe with my man.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to check.”
“It’s not safe out there.” He reached up and tapped his comms unit twice.
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
“Miss Rollins, please remain inside.”
The door opened behind her, sweeping a flurry of bitter cold air and snow inside. Two men, perhaps the men from the snowcat, she couldn’t tell as they wore full-face respirators, came in. Jess stepped back. Something wasn’t right.
Ufuk looked up from the holographic projection, confusion in his expression. “What’s going on?”
Massarra backed away from the table to her backpack.
“Where’s Giovanni?” Jess said.
“This doesn’t need to be unpleasant, Miss Rollins.”
“You’re keeping us here,” she said quietly, watching him. “For Müller, right? You work for Müller?”
“Jess, take it easy,” Ufuk said. “These are my people.”
“That’s right, Mr. Erdogmus,” the man said. “There’s no problem. But for now, I think you should all take a seat at that table over there.” He laid his hand on the holstered pistol.
Ufuk paused, then said: “That seems sensible.” He reached for the device that powered the holographic projector. “Let me shut this down. No sense in wasting power. Don’t know when we will be able to recharge.”
The man allowed him to play his fingers across the device.
The projection faded and vanished. Ufuk stepped away and sat on a chair beside the table. “I think that will do it.”
Silence, apart from the wind outside that undulated in pitch and tone. Snow beat against the small windows. An uncomfortable silence hung heavy.
One of the windows exploded in a spray of glass.
The surprise of it paralyzed Jess for an instant. Something sleek and gray, glistening wet and impossibly fast, surged into the room. Rotors whirred as it collided into the opposite wall and exploded into fragments. What was it? Some kind of drone?
No time to find out.
The soldiers were as surprised as she was, and Jess crashed into the man nearest to her, bringing every ounce of her weight, every sinew and muscle, to bear on him. He staggered backward. She wrapped her hands around his weapon, pushing it away as she drove him into the small porch beyond the common room. They stumbled and fell, clattering down the steps onto cold stone. Jess drove her fist twice into his throat as they tumbled. He tried to kick her away. She crowded him, keeping the M4 close to his chest, flat and angled away.
She wasn’t far now. Jess saw what she needed.
She held him back with every ounce of strength she possessed, twisted and turned, knees, arms, elbows, everything she had to counter his own movements. She reached for the ice axe that stood against the wall. Her fingers closed around the wet rubber grip. A garbled shout came from the common room, then gunfire. Two short cracks, then two more.
No time to think about that.
Only one thing mattered.
The first swing met with stone and jarred her wrist. The soldier understood now. He fought back more viciously, every movement driven more by that professional fear that fighting men harness. Her reserves of energy were depleted, the trek from the mountain’s flank still drawing on her. Soon he would overpower her. She fought wildly, technique foundering and replaced by a savage, unbridled violence. He forced her back, teeth bared. She fell away, sweeping the axe across into a slash across his upper arm. It bit, snatched blood and flesh. He grimaced, but made for her again.
She was flat-backed to the floor now. He towered above her. She swung wildly with the ax again and struck his carbine as he swung it around. The point of the ax cut into his hand. He screamed and dropped the weapon into its sling, then reached for his pistol with his other hand.
She was too far away. She couldn’t get to him in time.
The door to the porch swung open fast. Snow swept in. A shape came through the dim light, a shifting mass. Roaring in rage, it collided with the soldier.
“Giovanni, he has a gun,” Jess screamed.
She stooped, twisted the axe in her grip to bare the spike at the base of its shaft, and drove it sideways into the gap where the armpit lay just exposed. A muffled scream followed. She hooked the serrated pick of the axe around the elbow and pulled hard. It bit into muscle and tendons, cutting deep. Blood flowed and slicked the shaft. The arm came away, its hand empty. Another muffled scream and Giovanni pressed down, punching repeatedly.
Behind her, the door to the common room crashed open. Jess brandished the ice axe, but it wasn’t the mercenaries. Ma
ssarra and Ufuk came through the door, followed by Raffa with Hector in his arms. Jess seized Giovanni by the hand and they stumbled out into the snow together. Through the white flurry she glimpsed the Predator-style drone sweeping toward them.
“Get away from the building!” she screamed, her words fighting the confluence of wind and jet engine.
She stumbled away, boots sinking into the snow. Staggering. Deep, sinking steps. Behind her, the others clawed their way through. The stuttering glow of the drone’s strobe lamps flickered bright.
“Get down.” She threw herself flat as the aircraft swept past.
“They must have seen us.” Massarra crawled beside her.
“It was armed. We need to put as much distance as possible between us and the refuge. Find some cover, somewhere to hide.”
Jess pointed to a shadowy fringe of alpine pines.
They ran, pulling Raffa and Hector with them, staggering through the snow, fighting against the bitter wind. The drone would complete its turn in a matter of seconds. Even as she fought her way forward, she knew the trees were too far. The whine came over the sound of the wind again, distant but slowly intensifying.
The strobes seared through the fog.
Another glance to the tree line—too far. She kept running, but the others lagged behind. Exhausted, not used to this harsh environment of the mountains as she was. Or maybe it was her new bionic leg, pumping her forward. The drone materialized through the fog. Headlights stark bright. Low, precise. Zeroed in on them.
Something shifted just below it. A vibration in the forest canopy.
An object swept upward, small and moving fast. It slammed into the drone and exploded in a bright pink fireball. The Predator’s wing sheared off, and it tumbled into the darkness. A flash of light and thudding explosion as it hit the mountainside.
“The snowcat,” Jess shouted, waving everyone back. “Behind the refuge. Get to the snowcat!”
Chapter 7
Italian Alps
Giovanni manhandled the snowcat over the torrid landscape for an hour before Jess told him to slow down. Distance was everything now. Distance between them and the smoldering remains of Sanctuary Europe, widening the search grid for whoever was hunting them.
They were on the run again.
Six of them in the snowcat—Giovanni, Ufuk and Massarra on the front bench, with Jessica, Hector and Raffa on the second bench. The third bench was filled with as much gear as they could collect from the refuge in their frantic rush to leave. Jess had yelled at Ufuk, told him to help, but he had rooted around inside the snowcat with a screwdriver, holding his tablet. He ripped out what he said was a tracking device and threw it into the snow. Said that nothing else in the snowcat seemed to be transmitting.
The first few minutes of churning across the snow were terrifying, in almost pitch-blackness, with the snowcat’ s headlamps illuminating only a swirling whiteness that extended a dozen feet in front of them. They might plunge over a cliff, into a crevasse. Jess knew the treacherous landscape high in the mountains, but they had no choice. Another drone might return to the cabin. They had to get away.
“Just follow the blinking red light,” Ufuk had instructed. He pointed at a tiny dot hovering in space in the near whiteout conditions.
“What is it?” Giovanni squinted.
“Our guide. It will take you down the mountain. Just follow.”
At first Giovanni was hesitant, but after an hour of safe churning through the snow, with just flat whiteness appearing before them, he relaxed and kept his eyes on the red dot that always seemed to hover just in sight in front of them. At least the snowstorm provided some cover, and would hide their tracks from whoever tried to attack them.
The feeling of déjà vu was almost overpowering. Back in a crowded vehicle, the smell was of bodies and sweat and fear. It brought back strong memories, but some of their group was missing. Old Leone, the groundskeeper from Castel Ruspoli, killed protecting Hector. Now Lucca was missing as well. Raffa was silent, his arms folded tight, his eyes ahead.
Was Lucca still alive? They had no idea. They also had no choice.
Jess sat in silence for the first hour as the snowcat ground its way down the mountain. Hector shivered beside her, but not from cold. With the heaters blasting, the freezing cab had become uncomfortably warm. It wasn’t the cold. Hector was terrified of being outside again, and Jess was just as scared as he was, but she held him tight, told him everything would be okay, that they were safe.
But were they?
They’d barely managed to survive two weeks out here after Nomad, as the temperature had fallen and the remains of civilization had been buried ever deeper under layers of snow and ash. They scavenged what they could to survive, but now, almost three weeks later, what would be left out here? They were six hundred kilometers further north than where they were before, and winter was just beginning to bare its fearsome teeth.
How much colder would it get?
Jess waited until Hector had fallen asleep beside her before quietly starting to ask some questions.
“So those were your drones that saved us?” Jess whispered to Ufuk. The thing that had crashed through the window at the refuge looked like big version of the toy drones she’d seen—four spinning rotors at each corner. “And that”—she pointed through the windscreen at the red dot that hovered in the distance—“is the same thing?”
“That’s right,” Ufuk replied, keeping his voice low as well.
“Won’t they be able to follow…” Jess searched for the right words. Technical stuff wasn’t her thing. “I don’t know. The signal?”
“I’ve created many diversions. Don’t worry.”
“You see, that’s the thing,” Jess hissed, trying her best to keep her voice down. “I do worry. I didn’t even know Massarra was leading me to you when I followed her.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I trust her.”
“Then you should trust me,” Ufuk replied, his voice still calm.
“I trusted you, and they threw me in goddamn jail.” It was a struggle not to yell. “And suddenly, you’re gone. For two days. And they’re questioning me about a bomb going off. Did you do that?”
“Of course not.”
“And you didn’t just destroy Sanctuary?”
Ufuk didn’t answer this aloud, but shook his head.
Jess gritted her teeth. She could usually tell if someone was lying, but Ufuk’s face was almost placid, as if driving down the side of a mountain in a snowstorm, hunted by killer drones, was something he did every day.
“I would be buried under that mountain if Massarra hadn’t come to get me.”
“I came to get you, too,” Giovanni said quietly.
“I know, I know, it’s just…” Jess took a deep breath.
It was her fault they were here. It always seemed to be her fault. She should have gone with Abbie Barnes. She seemed genuine, and her father, Eugene Marshall, had been on Jess’s side. Had she made a terrible mistake? What did Ufuk Erdogmus want with her? And why would he have sent Massarra to get them? The Sanctuary people looked like they at least had some resources, some kind of emergency plan. She should have gone with Abbie, taken Hector to safety. The Sanctuary people obviously hadn’t bombed and destroyed their own home.
So who had? And why?
“You lied to me,” Jess said after a pause of a few seconds.
“About what?” Ufuk whispered back, his face furrowing into a frown from frustratingly impassive nonchalance.
Jess poked Massarra’s shoulder, a little aggressively. “Her. You lied about her. You told me you didn’t know where she was.”
“I honestly didn’t—”
“You said you hadn’t heard of her before.”
The frown dissipated. “Ah, yes. A small omission of truth.”
“Any other omissions you might want to make me aware of?”
The man filled his lungs with a deep breath. “I had been supporting the Leva
ntine Council, before Nomad arrived. I might have spent the last twenty years in America, but the Arab people—”
“So you supported terrorists?”
“Not terrorists,” Massarra said gently, speaking for the first time since they left the refuge. “As I explained to you, our organization is entirely peaceful.”
“But connected to terrorists.” It seemed the San EU military interrogators hadn’t been the ones lying. Ufuk was connected to them, and to Massarra.
“We were trying to begin a dialogue…” Ufuk began to say, but then sighed. “I am normally against the use of violence to any political end.”
“And yet you employ killers like Massarra.” Jess flinched inwardly as she said it, but it was true. Up at the cabin, Massarra killed four of the highly trained soldiers. Wiped them out. Killing seemed to come easily.
For the next minute, nobody said anything. The snowcat’s engine growled and they bounced from side to side as it churned down the mountain.
“I assume you have a plan?” Jess said finally. “Somewhere we’re going?”
“I did have a plan. Those contractors were supposed to secure our perimeter while some helicopters came to retrieve us, and take us to a facility in Turkey.”
“Helicopters? In this?”
“Drone-copters, I guess you could call them. Not air-breathing engines, but electric. They can operate in the ash clouds.”
“Battery-powered helicopters? That was your plan?” This seemed to stretch believability.
Ufuk turned in his seat to face her. “My companies did a lot of work for the US military. These drones are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Ten times the power of electric. I can explain more—”
“Not now,” Jess interrupted. “Okay, so we were going to Turkey? How do we get there now? Do you have some other magical—”
“This thing, Jessica. It has surprised me as much as you. I only had a few minutes to respond when the bombs when off in Sanctuary. I had as little idea as anyone else. I am…scrambling…as well.”
“But you had mercenaries on the ready, just like that?”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 9