She reached into Lightner’s suit jacket, pulling out a phone from the inside breast pocket.
“That’s mine,” Jack told her.
“Great,” she replied, tossing it to him. “Use it to call him an ambulance,” she said, pointing to Mitch.
Jack stepped over to Mitch. He’d blacked out from the blood loss. As Jack spoke urgently into his phone while checking his friend’s vitals, Rox hefted Lightner from under his arms, dragging his deadweight across the cement floor.
“Wait!” Jack called out. “The ambulance is coming! Where are you taking him?”
“She wants him, Jack,” Rox answered without stopping. “Alive.”
Jack immediately strode to her, his intent clear.
Rox stopped, dropping Lightner as she drew her weapon on him. “Jack, don’t make me shoot you. With the day I’ve had, I’d do it just to get my rocks off,” she told him, the surety in her voice clear despite being muffled from the mask.
Jack stared at her, throat pulsing. Even as a bloody, ridiculous mess, Jack Roman managed to look like a god come down from the mountain, pale silver eyes glinting with anger, his jaw set in furious anger. She admired his mettle, could see how he’d let nothing stand in the way of what he wanted. But he didn’t want Lightner, not really. He wanted his friend safe.
“If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead,” Jack pointed out, voice low with tension.
“True,” she shrugged, lowering the gun to aim at his leg. “But Sam wouldn’t want that. Now if I shot you in the leg to slow you down, she might forgive that under the circumstances.” Rox gestured across his shoulder at Mitch. “Give you and your friend matching scars to talk about.” She wondered how much time she had to get out of the building with Lightner undetected before the world descended in on them. She figured two, maybe three minutes in the mayhem. Shooting him may just be the fastest way out.
Jack’s head tilted as he considered the threat. “You know where she is?” he asked after a pause.
“I know she’s in trouble,” Rox said honestly, though the second she said it, she knew it was the perfect distraction. “Sam missed our check-in,” she confessed.
Jack rocked back on his feet, a dozen expressions chasing themselves across his face. Rox took the moment to lower her weapon, stepping back toward Lightner. “She wants Lightner, Jack. I don’t know if she’s okay, but she’s hired me to do a job, and I intend to do it.”
“Where are you taking him?” Jack asked, the sound of sirens becoming distinctly louder.
Rox shook her head. “Plausible deniability, Jack.”
He looked past the tarp over her shoulder, then back at her.
“You saved my life,” he stated.
Rox shrugged. “Sam would have wanted that.”
“Will you at least show me your face?” he asked, nonplussed.
Rox smirked under the mask as she pocketed the gun before leaning down and picking up Lightner by his arms again. “Plausible deniability,” she said again. “Call Carey Nelson. Tell him what happened, okay? He’s waiting for you.”
Jack nodded curtly, distracted as Mitch moaned quietly behind him.
By the time he turned back, Rox was already disappearing around the corner with her prey.
Chapter 33
Dec 21st—11:57pm
Nazar’s Processing Facility near Bunyad Khan, Afghanistan
S A M A N T H A
Moonlight was a blessing and a curse. Sam could see well enough to make good time, clearing the path down from the ridgeline with Rush at her back, his assault rifle at the ready as he watched the hills above through infrared lenses. But the problem with the silvery luminescence was that it made them that much easier to spot. Adrenaline surged through Sam as she quickly picked her way down, staying low and tight to the dark rocks. When they got about fifty yards down from the hills, she realized that they’d catch the attention of the guards if they went any further.
“Avi, Henri, go,” she ordered.
The once-still night air was suddenly punctuated with a tight cluster of shots, the suppressors masking the noise from Avi and Henri’s rifles.
Three guards closest to the front dropped.
The other guards closer to the river never heard the ST6 shots that took them out, but one guard let loose a salvo of fire from his submachine gun as he fell backward, body twitching involuntarily from the hits.
“Shit!” Sam muttered, crouching low. “Talon, cover us!”
Sam came out of her crouch, taking off in a zigzag run down the dark trail, a sudden spray of gun fire smashing into rocks and splintering trees above them. Sam slid into a boulder with a low-hanging edge that provided just enough cover, narrowly avoiding a bullet as it ricocheted off the rock above her head. Sam caught Rush’s leg in the slide, dragging him down with her under the ledge.
“Smoke grenades!” she told him urgently over the din of shots.
Rush pulled out a couple grenades, lobbing them up into the hills in the direction of the enemy fire.
They waited a scant second before the blinding chaos of the smoke set off another cacophony of artillery rounds. Sam and Rush pushed out of their hiding place, running down the trail through the hills under the cover of the fumes, heedless of the noise they were making as they made a run for the building.
Just before Sam hit the clearing, Rush yanked her back, tossing another set of smoke grenades into the air. They both yanked bandannas over their nose and mouth.
“We’re coming in, two o’clock,” Sam said into comms, unable to see Henri and Avi as they rushed the building through the smoke. “Davis, cover the building!” she shouted.
“Roger that.”
As she ran low toward the entrance of the building, Sam saw Avi ahead of her, shoving the butt of his rifle through a narrow window, shattering the blacked out glass before tossing a fragmentation grenade into the fray.
“Down!” Avi shouted just a split second before the deafening blasts volleyed throughout the clearing and into the mountains, shaking the building and knocking Sam off her feet. Rush caught her as she flew backward, ears ringing.
Sam sat up in time to see the door open before Henri could kick it in. Two guards stumbled out in a spray of automatic weapon fire, but Henri was already behind them, swift and silent, shooting one in the back, the second in head. The blood spray looked blackish purple in the darkness as the guards dropped dead beside their fallen comrades. Henri stepped over the bodies, entering first, dust and smoke rolling out of the building like thick, curling waves. Avi went in next, hanging a sharp left. Gunfire immediately broke out inside.
“Henri, Avi—talk to me—”
“Two hostiles down—” a smattering of gunfire. “Make that three,” came Avi’s reply.
“Workers, at least two dozen—Afghani—back of the building,” Henri said right after.
Another tight cluster of shots.
Up in the hills, Sam heard a smattering of gunfire, followed by bouts of distinct silence. Talon was picking off men on the bluff, the suppressor on his rifle making him almost impossible to detect in the darkness.
“I’m going in,” Sam said to Rush. “You hold up the rear.”
Rush nodded tersely. She saw the momentary flash of worry in his eyes, followed by determination. She gave him a nod, hoping her glance was reassuring. Anticipation and anxiety were like a frisson in her veins, that old instinct of fight or flight again rearing its head.
Fight, Sam thought grimly. Always fight.
Sam tightened her grip on her weapon. “Go in on my count,” she said, holding up her gloved hand. “Two, one, now!”
Sam led, crouching low against the wall as she entered the building. The dim interior was lit by gray fluorescence clouded with smoke and dust.
She moved quickly, comparing the building’s interior to the mental layout she’d memorized from the crude drawing Wes’s contact had given him. There was an office in the far corner if memory served. She imagined calling up Nazar from his own foreman’s phone. Im
agined his shock and surprise at hearing her voice at the other end of the line.
Sam figured Nazar would be well-alerted by now that his surprise attack hadn’t gone down as intended. He could wait in his compound for word, or, being the proactive man he was, he’d likely show up here with a fresh round of Leviathan soldiers at the ready, backed up by the mujahedeen. Simon would either take Nazar out on the road or he wouldn’t. Either way, Sam was planning to take Nazar’s facility and his drugs, light the whole damn thing on fire in a blaze of glory. She was going to enjoy that, stepping back and watching his money burn.
“Boss, get down!”
Rush released several shots, narrowly missing an enemy combatant as he ducked behind a loaded pallet. Sam landed on her side, sighting down her machine gun as she shot under the pallet, nailing the guy in the ankle as he howled and fell forward, right into Rush’s sights.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
Sam released a breath, glancing backward. “Thanks, Rush.”
He held his position, still tense and alert as he watched for others. “Anytime.”
Sam heard another round of fire across the building as she crawled back up to her feet.
“It’s a set-up,” Henri whispered urgently. “The workers are all on their knees. The guards were watching them—”
Sam felt a flush of heat spike down her body, then ice in her veins. There was only one reason that would be the case.
Nazar was already here.
And he was waiting for her.
*
Dec 22nd—12:07am
Shindand Air Base, Afghanistan
W E S L E Y
“Jesus H.!” Wes shouted, shoving his hands through his hair as he paced the war room. “Fuck, I can’t take this waiting. What the hell is going on?”
“Sir, here is the drone imagery highlighting thermal signatures over the area,” an analyst pointed out to Winch as he pulled up a massive screen.
“Christ, that looks like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade down there,” Winch retorted gruffly. He eyed the screen, then checked his own tablet. “Sam gave me this before she left. These are the trackers for their entire team. They took them just before they left.” He gave the tablet to the analyst. “Cross-check these against the thermal signatures. Consider anyone not on both screens to be an enemy combatant. Where you have the ability to do so, eliminate targets from the air with the drone.”
“Got it, sir.”
Wes stared hard at the red bodies moving through the darkened territory the drone hovered over. “There must be fifty people down there,” he murmured, shaking his head.
“I can tell you they’re sure as shit outnumbered,” Winch agreed.
“Fuck!” Wes uttered again, pushing back his hair. “Can you send more men in?”
Winchell shook his head. “This is a black op, Wes. Officially unsanctioned. We can’t have active military servicemen and women caught on this mission—”
“But what about Davis and that crew?”
“They’re SEALs,” came Winch’s response. “They’re used to this. Even if they’re outnumbered, my money’s on them putting the hurt on Nazar,” Winchell said confidently. “But I have to notify my superior about what’s going on.”
Winch picked up a phone at a console. Said a few code words of gibberish that flew right past Wes as he watched the analyst pan the drone’s camera back and forth across the visage.
“Admiral Morrissey, we have a problem—”
Among the worst words in the English language, Wes thought. No one wants to hear those words. Ever.
As Winchell described what was going on in abbreviated military speak, Wes stayed close to the monitors, watching the red figures as they moved across the screen.
“You’d better come back to me, Sammy,” he said under his breath as he prayed to God and no one in particular. “I don’t care what happens—just come back to me.”
*
Dec 22nd—12:10am
Nazar’s Processing Facility near Bunyad Khan, Afghanistan
S A M A N T H A
“Cover me,” Sam shouted at Rush, knowing what she had to do.
“Boss—wait!” Rush shouted as she launched into a crouched run, his attention centered on the guards who seemed to appear from nowhere, popping out from behind the vats and massive cloth sieves holding remnants of dried morphine base that looked like coffee-colored powder. Sam heard the sound of concentrated firing as Rush pinned hostiles down with Avi and Henri’s help.
The office twenty feet ahead of her seemed to stretch to a hundred feet in her mind’s eye. Everything felt protracted under the clamor of heavy fire. Sam lifted her sub-mac and aimed at the closed door, perforating and destabilizing it with a hailstorm of bullets.
She took a running slide on her side, using the heel of her boot to kick the door in, ready to release a salvo at whomever might be standing within her sight. But when she slid to a stop, all she saw was a dark office, her bullet holes riddling the wall.
Where the hell was Nazar?
She never saw him coming.
Chapter 34
Dec 21st—7:02pm
The London Bridge Hospital, London
J A C K
“Dad, something’s wrong with Samantha. She hasn’t checked in for hours, and even Carey can’t get ahold of her—”
Jack paced the waiting room of the hospital in his bloody clothes, a hand shoved in his hair as he fought against panic.
Stay calm. Keep your shit together, Jack. Just stay calm.
His fingertips were still a little numb from being tied behind his back for so long, and his hands were still shaking from the adrenaline. But he also knew it was the tremors of withdrawal. Recognized the signs as he swallowed the bile back.
“Gianni, I just got off the phone with Admiral Morrissey,” Sandro told him. “There’s a firefight near the border of Iran. They’re monitoring the situation, but Samantha’s badly outnumbered—”
“Wait—it’s happening now?” Jack asked, his heart racing. “It’s going on now?”
“Yes, Morrissey’s working on patching through to their receiving station,” Sandro replied. “As of yet, they haven’t had radio contact with the leader of the SEAL team sent in with Samantha in the last twenty minutes.”
Jack’s had snapped up. “I thought you said this was off-the-books. You said there would be no support—”
“Gianni,” Sandro sighed. “Of course we weren’t going to let Sam go in without support. Don’t you know me at all, Son?”
Jack stood in relieved silence, biting back his emotions before finally admitting, “I doubted you, Dad. I’m sorry for that.”
“No matter,” Sandro replied gruffly. “Is Mitch okay?”
“Yeah,” Jack answered, scrubbing a hand over his bruised and damaged face. “It was a through-and-through, but he lost a lot of blood and he’s running a fever. They’re giving him a transfusion. Keeping him in ICU overnight to make sure he doesn’t get worse.”
“Should we contact his family?” his father asked.
“No,” Jack rubbed his aching neck. “That will only alarm them and agitate Mitch.” He looked around the waiting room. Huddled together were the families and friends of people injured when Lightner’s car bomb detonated. “Cristo, if I never see the inside of a hospital again, it will be too soon.”
“Are you sure you’re okay, Gianni?”
“I’m fine, Dad,” Jack assured him. “Just a little banged up. Nothing like Mitch.”
“Did they find that sonofabitch Lightner?”
Jack thought about the faceless woman in the firefighter’s uniform. He could only imagine what she would do to Lightner.
And she worked for Samantha.
Of course she wouldn’t let what happened in Rio slide. Jack realized again how little Samantha seemed to need him. She was always going to have her revenge. She was always going to take out Lightner, with or without his help.
“No. He’s in the w
ind,” Jack admitted. “Dad, I need to know about Samantha. I need you to find out anything you can—”
“I know, Gianni. As soon as I know more, I’ll call you back. I promise you.”
Jack shut his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. The searing anger he’d felt while fighting the guard had given way to emptiness. Now, hearing that Samantha was thousands of miles away in a firefight with Nazar, Jack felt completely helpless. He felt the chasm widening as he stood at the edge of it, Samantha on the other side, ready to fall in when he could do nothing to save her—do nothing to help her.
“Just find her, Dad. Please,” he pleaded quietly. “Please just do what you can to make sure she survives this.”
*
Dec 22nd—12:26am
Nazar’s Processing Facility near Bunyad Khan, Afghanistan
S A M A N T H A
Blind, searing, excruciating pain… She’d only ever felt something like this one other time—
“So you encounter my knife again, jende,”49 Ibrahim Nazar rasped as he leaned over her, thrusting the blade he’d buried in her lower back even deeper, just underneath her Kevlar vest. “This is too good for you,” he hissed, twisting the blade, tearing through flesh and muscle. “You deserve far worse,” he hissed.
Sam couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, the pain almost vibrating in its intensity. She couldn’t hear the groans coming from her mouth, so lost she was in the sound and the fury of the agony; she even lost awareness of the firefight outside—
“I should have killed you that night,” Nazar continued, his face looming above hers, those strange hazel eyes of his leering, his mouth curled in a sneer. “I dream of it. I dream of killing you again and again for what you did to my son—”
He pulled out the blade from her back before plunging it in again and twisting it viciously as a soundless scream of agony wrenched open her mouth. Samantha lifted her weapon feebly, but Nazar was quick. He stepped on her wrist, forcing her to let go of the trigger before he kicked her MP5 away, his heavy boot landing on her wrist again as he pinned her to the ground. The pressure was unbelievable, almost enough to distract her from the blade. But a broken wrist was nothing compared to the damage he was carving into her—
Complicated Creatures: Part Two Page 34