Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  It was hard for Buck to believe that this was Ty’s one hope as he looked at the small, slender woman in front of him. No expression crossed her face. The eyes behind the yellow lenses were steady, unafraid, sure.

  She nodded to Mitch Palmer and the rest of the team.

  Nike looked at the man the agent in charge had called Buck. Other than that, they hadn’t given her any names. She didn’t even know the name of the agent she was going in after. It was better that way. If she were caught, there was nothing she could tell.

  Something about this ‘Buck’ nagged at her. He seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t put a finger on it.

  He was clearly concerned about the captured agent.

  “I’ll get him out,” she said. “I know you want to go in guns blazing. Wait. I’ll find him, I promise, and I’ll get him out. I won’t leave him in there. If you don’t hear from me in two hours, then you go in.”

  By then it wouldn’t matter. She and the hostage would probably be dead.

  If he was there.

  An image of the recording played through her mind. The agent they held was unrecognizable beneath the blood and bruises in the grainy dark black and white video, bent over in the chair. She had a pretty good idea what they were doing to him, what had happened to him already, and she flinched reflexively in response. Whole parts of her anatomy responded to those memories.

  If he wasn’t here, they’d look somewhere else.

  She paused. “No matter what you’ve heard, know that I won’t kill him.”

  Suddenly Buck understood why Watson had been so concerned. Just the idea of it blindsided him. He was stunned. It had never occurred to him.

  They wouldn’t kill one of their own, would they? Had it gotten that bad? After all, they’d outed one of their own, that agent, the woman in Africa. The cowboys were now running the game. Suddenly everything he’d believed about his own government was turned on its head.

  As the woman turned he noticed the weapons holstered at the small of her back. In the near darkness he caught a faint hint of wings…tattoos on her back. For some odd reason that reassured him. She was clearly no angel, but Nike - the ancient Greek Goddess of victory - and wings? That was no coincidence. Not an angel, but clearly an avenger.

  They were a safe distant away from the truly dangerous quarter of town and concealed by the shadows of an alley. It was an older part of the city, though, where a hostage and hostage takers would most likely hide, the alleys narrow and filled with refuse.

  What happened next was the most incredible thing Buck had ever seen and he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself with his own eyes.

  Nike Tallent defied gravity.

  She ran lightly, quickly and then leaped, pushed off from one building to one across the alley, reached up to wrap her fingers around the coping of the roof to pull herself up and over.

  Then she was gone.

  Vaulting onto the flat roof, Nike ran along it silently in the thin flexible shoes she wore for missions like this. She sprang silently to the next roof, oblivious to the ground stories below her.

  Nothing mattered now, but the objective.

  She smiled into the darkness.

  The enemy would tell her where they held their hostage. They would have watchers on the rooftops and guards on the streets. She ran keeping her head low, then leaped almost silently from roof to roof, landing on her feet, diving and rolling to dissipate the force and noise. Every motion was fluid, flowing from one to the other. She rolled to her feet, stayed low, moved quickly.

  Movement.

  She waited only long enough to be sure there wasn’t another guard nearby before she crept up on the guard. He watched the streets below. She was close enough to touch him when she caught him with a flying back kick. It was enough to stun him, to drop him to the rooftop. Even as he caught himself, tried to get up, she grabbed his chin and the back of his head. In one swift motion she snapped his chin to the left and his spine with it. She dropped the limp body.

  Reaching behind her back, she pulled her silenced weapons and went into hunter mode.

  If there were guards then she was going in the right direction. The thicker the protection, the more likely it was that her target was close. She remembered the maps they’d shown her, oriented herself and leaped from that building to the balcony on the opposite side. Going from one to the next, she circled the building to the other side and then leaped for the next roof.

  There were guards. They were in the right places, but they weren’t looking in the right direction. The building they guarded should be the right one, if the team’s intel and guesses were correct.

  Silently she holstered her guns and lifted the trap door that gave onto the rooms below.

  She dropped straight down into what lay below her.

  A sidekick drove the wind from one man and sent him to his knees whooping for breath, silencing him for the moment as she pulled her knife and slashed the throat of the other. Blood sprayed. Another kick drove the head of the first man into the wall. Hard. He stopped whooping as the other staggered and fell.

  Quickly she moved the bodies enough out of sight to buy herself and her target a few more minutes. Peering around the door, she could see the hall beyond was empty, as was the stairway at this time of night.

  She vaulted quietly over the railing, dropped to the ground level, landing on cat feet as she listened to the building around her.

  It was late, so only the guards at the distant doors were awake.

  She slipped down a corridor.

  A single silenced shot took out the guard on the stairs to the basement. It was still alarmingly loud to her ears, but no one seemed to notice. No alarm was raised.

  The basement. It was the most likely location for a prisoner. With walls and earth to muffle sound, outcries.

  Nike moved silently down the hallway, alert, wary.

  A groan of pain, an involuntary grunt, echoed down the hall. Something inside her twisted to hear it. Even at this hour, they wouldn’t leave him alone. Any more than they had her.

  The door was open. Only the enemy’s own people would be about at this hour. Or so they thought.

  She stepped into the room.

  Two men occupied it. One was bound in the chair, naked, blood-spattered and bleeding, his head bowed, his breathing harsh as his muscles twitched. The other stood before him, blocking her view.

  Suddenly aware of a presence behind him, the standing one turned, his expression cruel, but satisfied. He brandished the ends of the wires he’d used on the captive. Electric shock. Crude, but effective.

  Dear God, she thought, and her heart twisted again.

  Emotions were dangerous. They would get you killed. The words whispered through her mind. They’d become inconvenient lately.

  Even so, she went still, cold inside, empty. She shot the man as he advanced on her with a vicious smile, the extended wires his only weapon beside his size. He seemed surprised as he fell.

  Even as she slid her guns back into the holsters and started toward her target, the man in the chair lifted his head. Battered, exhausted, blinded by agony and exhaustion, he was still defiant, still determined, sensing her presence, but thinking he faced his captors.

  Nike’s heart stopped, froze. Something inside her snapped.

  She knew those blue eyes, that fine-featured face, the hollows beneath the cheekbones.

  A part of her somewhere deep inside cried out in denial.

  Ty.

  It was Ty Connor.

  Her heart broke.

  Seeing him was shattering. Memories shot through her. It had only been that one night, but she’d held that one night to get her through all the rest, through the horror and the torture, the pain and the shame. That was one part. Another part stepped forward and took his face in her hands, seeing the haze of agony in his blue eyes, knowing the pain he suffered all too well. She could see him try to focus, to gather himself.

  Rage exploded inside h
er.

  Victor.

  He’d known, had sent her here with no warning, no preparation.

  One last test of her loyalty.

  Her throat locked as she remembered her orders.

  Ty.

  She saw the bruises on his face, his body, the cuts, the burns, and the blood. They’d stripped him. It was normal procedure, to humiliate him, to expose him in front of them. They’d beaten him, cut him, used the bare electrical wires like a taser. His wrists were ragged from where his hands had twisted in the ropes. There would be scars, she knew. Like hers.

  Her heart wrenched.

  “Ty?” she whispered as she dropped to her knees to look into those eyes, as blue as the sky. “Dear God. Ty?”

  Her stomach twisted into horrified knots.

  Weakly, Ty responded to the sound of her voice. He looked up, blinded by shock and pain, sweat and blood.

  Emotions hammered through her at the sight. For the first time in years, for the first time since Victor had come to her in the hospital, she felt...too much. Grief and sorrow burned through her, ripped her shuttered heart to shreds.

  Bastards.

  Both those who’d done this to him and the ones who’d sent her, knowing what she’d find here. Victor. Knowing it was Ty, knowing he’d been something to her once. If nothing else. as part of the rescue, there were records.

  And knowing what her orders were.

  It threatened to destroy her.

  If Victor had been there she would have killed him.

  But there was Ty. Tears stung her eyes.

  What they’d done to him was horror. Where there weren’t welts and bruises, there were cuts and burns. Everywhere. They’d spared him nothing. Every part of his body showed damage. He was covered with blood and filth, some of it his own. Her mind rebelled, but she couldn’t deny it. Once she’d looked like this. He’d tried to save her. She would save him.

  “Ty,” she whispered, as she used her knife to slit the bonds that bound him to the chair instead of using it to slit his throat as they’d ordered. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  God help anyone who tried to come between or tried to stop her.

  They would learn who and what Nike Tallent truly was.

  She guided his arm across her shoulders carefully, knowing how much it would hurt him, and then put one of her arms around his lean waist. Her gun was still in that hand and the other was in the one that was free.

  Looking at his feet, seeing what they’d done to them, too, Nike wasn’t aware of the tears that spilled down her cheeks. Every step he took would feel as if knives cut through them.

  “Can you walk?”

  Rage and fury powered her, blinded her to anything except getting Ty out of that terrible place.

  She would kill them. She would kill all of them.

  He nodded.

  “Just lean on me,” she said, making her voice gentle with an effort.

  Barely aware that someone talked to him, the voice soft, but vibrant with emotion, Ty nodded, vaguely conscious of his nakedness.

  His body was a mass of agony. Every movement was another kind of torture, but somehow he understood that if he didn’t move, he’d die here in this place. A traitorous part of him, aware of everything they’d done to him, wanted that. He set himself against it, his rational mind knowing it wasn’t what he wanted. Not really. The bastards wouldn’t win.

  Ty tried desperately to focus, to obey the words, somehow understanding through the haze of pain that someone had come. To his bewilderment, he thought he smelled the scent of the sea, a soft aroma, gentle and soothing.

  It was agony, but he went.

  Lifting her hand to her ear as she guided Ty out of the room and up the stairs to the main hall Nike spoke into her headset.

  “Move,” was all she said and turned it off instantly before anyone picked up the short transmission, knowing that Mitch and the team would be waiting with Buck, prepared for this very moment.

  Now she understood why Buck seemed familiar, although she’d only seen him briefly once before and in poor light. He was Ty’s partner.

  Even as she spoke, she knew that Mitch, with Buck and the others, targeted the guards between them and the door. Andy would provide covering fire for Brad as he ran for the doors to set the explosive charge that would blow them open, before Brad retreated to cover the others.

  The chatter of automatic weapons outside gave rise to sounds of alarm in the living quarters above, but Nike turned to face them, Ty’s arm across her shoulder, as someone ran to the head of the iron-railed stair. A single shot dropped him. Another took the one who came out the door toward the front.

  Safe in the shelter of the cellar doorway, she waited for the explosion. She didn’t wait long, only seconds.

  Debris and dust blew past them, the sound enormous. Nike shielded Ty as much as she could.

  The team would be right behind the blast, waiting only long enough for the worst of the debris to settle.

  Reaching up, Nike touched Ty’s face, knowing he wouldn’t remember her words.

  “You came for me. I came for you.”

  He would have if he could, she knew that. He’d tried so hard. She could do no less.

  What would he think if he knew what she’d become…? Suddenly she was heartsick.

  Turning on her headpiece, she heard Mitch. “Where are you?”

  She heard them coming through the doors. The team. Her people.

  “Here,” she called, looking up into Ty’s blue eyes one last time. The memory of those eyes had been something she’d clung to over the years.

  A deep and abiding fury burned inside her.

  Through the smoke and the last clatter of the entryway doors coming down, she saw Mitch and the team.

  And with them, Buck.

  It nearly broke Buck’s heart to see what they’d done to his friend. He wanted to swear.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  Nike Tallent’s still, impassive face bore the tracks of tears through the dirt, as stark as diamonds in the uncertain light.

  So she was human.

  “It’s done, Ty,” he said, reaching for his partner and friend. “It’s over. You’re safe now, buddy.”

  “Take him,” Nike said to Mitch, to Buck, before she turned away. Ty would be safe now.

  Her orders had been to rescue the captured agent and shut down the terrorist cell. She’d done the first. Now she would finish the second.

  Her expression grew grim.

  There had been that other command… She knew the rumors about her and her team. Rage, fury, and a terrible grief roared through her. She barely saw the team or Buck. All she saw was Ty and what they had done to him.

  She turned back toward the house.

  Mitch looked at her, stunned at the implacable expression on Nike’s pretty face, even as he and Buck took Ty Connor from her. Tears shone on her cheeks. He’d never seen Nike cry. Or that look in her eyes. Or any expression for that matter. What he saw in her eyes rocked him to his core.

  It was despair, deep, terrible, merciless…and lost.

  God help those inside, was all he could think.

  “Get him out of here,” Nike said to him, her tone flat and expressionless. “Get him somewhere safe…”

  They’d stirred a hornet’s nest. The building boiled with men spilling out of rooms and hallways.

  With Brad and Andy covering them, Mitch and Buck hustled Ty out.

  Buck glanced back once as Nike Tallent turned to face those who appeared at the top of the stairs. She fired even as she spun away from the first burst of gunfire. She stalked steadily forward, danced away gracefully to avoid a tracer of bullets, ducked and spun. She pointed in the direction of the shooter, her weapon an extension of her hand. The gun bucked.

  She fired several times as she picked up speed.

  The shooters fell.

  Behind them shots were fired, the sound steady, nearly metronomic.

/>   She disappeared into the smoke of the fire the explosion had started as they carried Ty out.

  It was the last Buck saw of Nike Tallent.

  In the depths of night, the hospital room was quiet; only the steady beeping of the monitors broke the silence. Otherwise, it was peaceful. On the bed, Ty moved restlessly, dreaming and unable to escape the dreams because of the drugs they’d given him to ease the terrible agony he suffered.

  “I’m going to touch your hand,” a soft voice said, a gentle warning so he wouldn’t be startled.

  A slender hand slipped into his as soft lips brushed across his forehead.

  Ty smelled the scent of the sea, or a tropical island, the delicate aroma of flowers and fresh salt air.

  “You don’t have to be so strong, tough guy,” a voice whispered in his ear, fondly. “Let it down for a while. You’re not alone.”

  A tear dropped to his bare chest, at first warm and then cool as it slipped over his skin.

  “You’re still a beautiful man,” the voice said.

  He could hear understanding, a knowledge, an understanding that he would need to hear that. Something inside him eased.

  That soft voice spoke to him so he would know someone was there and he wasn’t alone.

  A hand brushed his hair back, soothed him, and gave him rest.

  In this section of the building, the corridors were silent, but Nike’s every sense was alert as she slipped down the darkened hallway of the cement block building that were the headquarters of her group. She slid into the office, alert for anything, even though she knew the other teams were out on a rendition. One of Victor’s pet projects.

  She bowed her head, her jaw tightening. She would know the truth.

  Grimly, she smiled as she searched, placing her precious finds on the desk before she settled behind it.

  Every sense still alert, she disconnected Victor’s computer from the main server then turned it on.

  Knowing Victor, he wouldn’t have taken any chances. He would have saved his files locally, not to the server where they could be monitored.

  As she read, she grew more still.