Tactical Rescue

by Maggie K. Black

  “But never underwater, in the freezing cold, in a submerged truck,” he argued. “Besides, you could get down there and discover someone has just smashed it open. And I still remember your birthday.”

  She paused at the camper door and turned back.

  “Okay, but if someone rushes out of those trees and starts shooting while one of us is underwater, it’s better you’re the one who’s up here having our back.”

  She hopped up into the camper.

  “But you’re hardly a strong enough swimmer, are you?” His hands rose in frustration. “Remember that time Seth tossed you in the pool at the martial arts team barbecue? You flailed and panicked and shrieked like a nut. Until I dropped my plate of food on the deck and jumped in after you and dragged you back to the shallow end. The water wasn’t even that deep.” Then Seth had picked up Zack’s food and thrown it in at them, while they’d both been there flopping around in the water, fully clothed, while everyone else laughed. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but flailing is the very last thing we need right now. Just the slightest touch could cause that truck to sink.”

  The color drained from her face.

  “Wow, I can’t believe you brought that up, or would use that day against me.” She turned away from him, but he could see that her shoulders were shaking.

  Okay, that was probably not how he should’ve phrased it.

  “Look, I’m sorry, that might’ve been out of line, but—”

  “You think I don’t remember that day or how humiliated I was?” She spun back. He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him get a word in edgewise. “I’ll have you know that six months before then I’d been on holiday with my family in Cozumel, learning to scuba dive in the hotel pool, when Seth had snuck up behind me and switched off my oxygen tank. He said he’d done it to teach me ‘buddy breathing.’ All I’d known was that I suddenly couldn’t breathe. At all. I’d been petrified and spent the rest of the holiday hanging on land with my mom, while he was out on the water with the General. That barbecue you remember was my first time near water since then. So yeah, I had a panic attack in a swimming pool in front of you, when I was sixteen years old.

  “Now, I’m scuba certified. Now, I have more than one wet suit, plus scuba gear in my camper from some preliminary underwater shoots I’ve done. It won’t fit you. Also, considering I’m about half your size, if the truck is sinking, we need the least amount of weight added to it as is possible.” She ran both hands through her hair. “You knew who I was as a teenager, Zack. Don’t presume to have any idea who I am now.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Dark clouds were building overhead, blocking out the setting sun. Seconds ticked by. The camper crept closer to the water.

  “You’re right,” he said, “I don’t know who you are now and I was wrong to jump to conclusions.” Just like she’d only known the infatuated oaf who’d wrapped his arm around her waist, and huffed and puffed his way with her to the shallow end. She’d never known the man who’d once escaped the trunk of a sinking SUV with two panicked foreign aid workers. “It makes the most sense to have the person with the most tactical experience watching the shore and the person who’s most familiar with the truck searching it. But if that truck starts to sink, I’m coming in after you. My top priority is keeping you safe. Got it?”

  She nodded. “Yes and thank you.”

  She disappeared into the camper. The door swung shut behind her. For a second he thought it was too damaged to close. But she yanked it so hard the latch finally clicked.

  Zack could’ve kicked himself for bringing up the swimming-pool story. He couldn’t imagine how bad he’d feel if she’d brought up some embarrassing story from his past to win an argument. It had been hours since he’d stopped her from getting in the Black Talons’ van. Yet she hadn’t once brought up how overweight and awkward he used to be. Then again, she’d hardly been the type to comment on it back then, either.

  He paced the ground. His eyes first ran over the bullet holes in the side of the camper, then the spent shell casings, scuffed footprints and the glass on the ground, trying to piece together the clues around him and reconstruct what had happened. He ran one hand over his head.

  Come on, man, he lectured himself like a new recruit. Like Rebecca said, solving puzzles used to be your specialty. Put it together. What can you see? What do you know?

  He knew that Seth had stolen Rebecca’s truck and camper. Then Seth, or someone else, had driven it through the woods at a breakneck speed along a narrow dirt track, before swerving off the road and driving straight down through the woods. The truck had ended up in the quarry. The camper had probably been saved from the same fate by being detached from the trailer hitch after the truck went in. Only someone had then attached the camper to a winch on the back of the truck, probably in an attempt to keep the truck from sinking. The direction and size of the bullet holes in the camper implied they were fired on while the vehicle was moving, as opposed to after it crashed.

  That was the extent of what he could figure out by sight alone, and even then it involved far more guesswork to fill in the gaps than he was comfortable with.

  Then he mentally ran down the list of questions he still didn’t have answers for.

  Like, had Seth been driving the truck when it crashed, or had it been someone else? Either way, where was Seth now?

  Had anyone realized that the computer program he’d had on the memory stick was now on Rebecca’s laptop? Was the laptop still in the truck? If so, had the laptop’s waterproof case even survived the impact?

  How was Black Talon involved in this? How had a female Black Talon operative infiltrated the provincial police? How had she recruited Seth to steal whatever it was he’d stolen from a government facility? Had she then been murdered by Seth or by someone else?

  What could possibly prompt Seth Miles, the only son of General Arthur Miles, decorated military hero, to turn traitor and steal something from his own government?

  And what had Seth even stolen?

  He raised his eyes to the sky as he directed his last question to the Lord as a prayer.

  And Lord, how can I catch a traitor, stop Black Talon and protect Rebecca, when just being near her is threatening to unlock parts of my heart I thought I’d shut down for good?

  He heard the camper door swing open. He turned.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some more bad news.” Rebecca stood in the doorway in a sleeveless “shorty” wet suit with pant legs that stopped just above her knees. Less coverage than what she’d probably want for a dive into a quarry that deep. Her hand held just a swim mask and flippers. “Some of my scuba gear is missing.”

  * * *

  “I did a complete inventory of the big stuff,” Rebecca said. “Well, as much as I could. I don’t have much that’s worth stealing. They definitely tossed the place, and they might’ve grabbed some food from the cupboard and I wouldn’t necessarily notice. But the computer and videography equipment is all still there. The only thing really missing is some scuba gear.”

  She hopped out of the camper and started toward the lake, barefoot, with her snorkeling mask and flippers in one hand. The ground was cold beneath her soles but that was nothing compared to what the water would be like. Anxiety over what was happening to her life was building painfully in her chest. But she ignored both the devastation of the camper behind her and the wrecked truck in the water ahead, and focused on just taking one step in front of the other.

  Her camper and truck had been her entire life. Not just her home and her business—her freedom and her security, too. But she wasn’t going to let herself break down and cry. She was going to stay strong. It was bad enough Zack apparently still thought of her as the teenager she used to be. She wasn’t about to fall apart in front of him, too.

  “But your scuba gear is missing,” Zack said. He followed her down to t
he water.

  “Yup. My full-body wet suit is gone, along with my oxygen tank. I guess someone’s already tried to dive down to the truck. Hopefully they didn’t find the laptop.” She bent down and pulled on her flippers. “Looks like I’m going to have to hold my breath. Fortunately, I’ve got pretty good lungs.”

  “But we don’t know who stole your gear or where they are now,” Zack said.

  There was that edge of warning to his voice again. The one that sent shivers down her spine. The sun sat low in the sky. Red-tinged clouds reflected on the surface of the water. She pulled the mask on so hard she felt the elastic snap against her skin and stepped in water up to her ankles. There was a narrow ledge of rock just under the surface, slippery with algae. Beyond that, she’d have to jump.

  “Hang on,” Zack said. “Maybe I should do it.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But you should also be up here on land, planning our way out of this and having our back in case whoever tried to attack us comes back. Sadly, there’s only one of you and the only backup you’ve got right now is me.”

  She took a deep breath, leaped out into the lake and slid beneath the surface. Even with the wet suit protecting her core, the water was so cold it was hard to breathe. Thick, wet tendrils of seaweed curled up around her body. A wall of gray-green water swam before her eyes. The sound of her own breath filled her ears. Then the cab of her truck loomed before her, a dark, ghostly shape suspended in the darkness.

  The quarry was so deep she couldn’t even see the ground. The truck hadn’t sunk to the bottom. Rather it was suspended, between the surface of the water above and the murky depths below, held in place by the cable connecting it to the camper.

  Her lungs ached, demanding that it was time to come up for air. But instead, she focused on the truck. Her limbs propelled her toward the driver’s-side door. The window was a mess of shattered glass. She reached for the door handle and pulled. The door swung open slowly.

  She grabbed her lips to keep from gasping.

  There was a man buckled into the driver’s seat.

  A gray jumpsuit billowed around his body as if trying to pull him through the seat belt. A thin stream of blood floated from the side of his head. Huge hands still gripped the steering wheel. Ivan, the Black Talon mercenary who’d held a gun to her head and forced her into the van, was now dead in the front seat of her truck.

  Fear flooded her limbs and for a moment the heaviness of the shock she felt threatened to pull her downward. She grabbed the door to steady herself. The truck lurched and then dropped another few feet. She flung her body backward in the water and barely avoiding being dragged down with it.

  She spun back and swam upward. Sunlight flashed on the surface above her. Her lungs begged for air. Her chest ached suddenly for the strength of Zack’s arms encircling her and the comfort of his hand on the back of her head, as he told her it was all going to be okay.

  Her body broke through the surface. She gasped, as air filled her lungs.

  “What happened?” Zack shouted. The camper was now teetering close to the water’s edge. Zack’s arms were braced against it, using his own strength to keep the camper from falling into the water. “The truck just suddenly sank like stone!”

  There’s a body in the truck, Zack! There’s a dead body in my truck!

  The words screamed through her mind, but her depleted lungs could barely make a sound. Her hands and feet scrambled for the feel of solid ground beneath them.

  “Was the laptop still there?” His questions flew at her rapid-fire, with the precision of a military sergeant frustrated from watching a mission falling apart around him. “How about my bag? Did you get it at least? Did you get any sense of how deep the water goes?”

  She shook her head and gasped for breath.

  “Well, this was a mistake.” He rolled his eyes toward the setting sun. “I can’t dive down now or the camper might go under. You’re not strong enough to keep the camper from falling into the water and I can’t unhitch the cable. I tried but it’s under too much strain. I’m going to need some tool to either cut the cable or break the camper hitch off altogether. But if you can’t get the laptop from the truck, either—”

  He bit the end of his sentence back without finishing it and instead just shook his head in frustration.

  She felt useless. As though he thought she was nothing but some frightened waste of space.

  A liability.

  “I never should’ve put you in this position,” he said. “You’re hardly trained for any of this. Just swim back to shore and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do from here.”

  Rebecca took a deep breath and felt the comfort of air filling her lungs. Then she dived down again.

  She could hear the distorted sound of Zack shouting echo above the water. She didn’t stop. She didn’t need to hear what he was saying. The look on his face had been clear. Zack thought she was some awkward klutz who’d flailed around foolishly, made the truck sink and cost him their only chance at recovering the stolen material.

  Zack and Seth might be fighting on different sides of a battle, but their opinions of her seemed to be the same. She was going to prove them both wrong.

  The swim was deeper this time. The pain in her lungs was sharper. But her focus was clearer. Her arms and legs propelled her swiftly down to the truck and around to the passenger side. Broken glass ringed the hole where the shattered windshield had been. She grabbed the passenger door handle. The truck dropped another foot, yanking the handle from her hand. She tried again. The door was stuck.

  Rebecca held tight to the door frame as the sinking truck pulled her down toward the bottom of the quarry. She slid around over the hood and swam through the open windshield. Ivan’s dead face loomed toward her. She forced her eyes away. The handle of Zack’s bag floated up from under the seat. She looped it around her wrist. Then her hands grabbed the glove compartment and she punched in the code, praying it would open.

  It fell open. Her laptop slid out still in its case. Thank You, God. She grabbed it with the other hand and swam upward. Her lungs were screaming so hard for oxygen now that she had to press her lips together to keep them from parting. Lights swam before her eyes.

  Just two more seconds. Two more kicks.

  Then it would all be over. Then she’d be able to breathe again.

  A figure in a black wet suit loomed above her.

  Like a shark encircling its prey.

  Blocking her way to the surface.

  EIGHT

  She was going to drown.

  That was the first thought that filled her mind.

  The figure in the black wet suit turned. He swam at her.

  Seth’s blue eyes focused on hers through her stolen scuba mask.

  Years of getting over her fear of drowning and her stepbrother was actually going to try to drown her.

  He grabbed her arm. She struck back hard, hitting him squarely in the jaw, trying to knock the breathing apparatus from his face. Seth let go. She kicked back hard, her feet pushing off against his body as she swam hard for the surface. The bag dragged her down. The laptop was slipping from her fingers. She shoved it into the shoulder bag praying it wouldn’t fall out.

  Her body broke through the surface.

  “Zack!” she gasped. “Help!”

  But she’d barely managed a breath when she felt the squeeze of Seth’s hand clamp her ankle. Seth yanked her back under. Bubbles filled her eyes. Water filled her lungs. She felt herself dropping. Her body tumbled down into the cold, dark depths. Seth’s arm was around her neck. He forced something to her mouth.

  Oxygen.

  Air filled her lungs. His eyes met hers through his swim mask. Seth had given her his oxygen. She held it to her mouth, and they stayed there, for a long moment, locked together by a single tank of oxyge
n, as their bodies sank down to the depths, beside the sinking truck.

  Then with one hand, Seth grabbed the strap. With the other, he grabbed the breathing apparatus.

  Give me the bag. She could read the words in his pale blue eyes. The oxygen or the bag. You choose. She took a deep breath. Seth yanked hard on the bag. Just let go, Rebecca. Give up. Quit fighting. And then this’ll all be over.

  The water churned above them. Something was coming toward them, tearing up the water in its path.

  Zack!

  He grabbed Seth from behind and yanked him back. Then he leveled a blow on the back of Seth’s head, the water moving around them as if they were fighting in slow motion.

  Rebecca let go of the oxygen mask and kicked Seth back with every ounce of strength she had left. Seth grabbed the oxygen, gasped a breath and spun toward Zack. His hands locked on Zack’s throat. Seth might’ve gone easy on Rebecca, but she had no doubt that if it came to it, Seth would let Zack drown.

  Desperately, her fingers ran through Zack’s bag until she felt the cold edge of a utility knife. She yanked it out, grabbed Seth’s oxygen line and drove the tip into it. Bubbles filled water as oxygen escaped in a rush around them. She swam for the surface, praying with every stroke that Zack and Seth would both make it up alive.

  Four strong kicks and her head burst through the surface. She crawled to shore. The camper was hanging over the edge of the quarry and tilting sharply. She tossed the bag and climbed inside the camper. It shook under her feet.

  She dropped to the floor, threw open the hatch under her bed and yanked out an ax. Then she climbed out, braced herself on the ledge and swung. The ax blade screeched against the metal cable. Bubbles rose to the surface of the water. Please Lord, bring both Zack and Seth to the surface alive. She swung again, throwing her full might into the blow. The cable snapped. Sharp wire flew back toward her. The camper broke free. The surface of the water surged as the truck dropped like a stone.

  Seth’s face broke through the surface of the water. Pale. Ragged. Alone.