by Angel Payne
The guy’s stinky grandfather bit took on a fucking creepy vibe now. Shay almost gave himself a mental cock punch to avoid the question that tumbled from him in response. “The…fun part?”
“Making your babies, of course.” Homer spread his arms, offering a full smile with it. “Your concubines will be hand-selected, of course. They’ll be tested for fertility and genetic perfection, and—”
“No.”
Homer stopped, his shock blatant. “Pardon me?”
Shay didn’t stop. He wasn’t sure he could, despite how Homer motioned forward several of his soldiers, implying the order to train their rifles at him. His mind careened, condemning himself for not foreseeing this would be Homer’s ultimate scheme, while refusing to accept it as the plan he’d even pretend to concede to.
With impeccable timing, Franzen’s bark filled the comm piece in his ear. “Good, I-Man. This is fucking good! Trip Adler up and draw out those guys from the porches. Keep it up, man.”
Not the best metaphor for the moment, but Shay sucked up courage from the boost. “No,” he declared again, meeting Homer’s glare with tight lips, drawn-back shoulders, and the hint of fight-or-flight in his stance. Homer, clearly terrified he’d opt for the latter, waved more guys off the porches and into the street. He was so consumed with corralling Shay, he left only two guards on patrol at the back of the street—who showed where their loyalties really lay by greeting Ghid with robust hugs before allowing him to swoop Mom into his arms, off to safety.
“Mama B is secure.” Ghid’s voice, gritty from the effort of holding back emotion, rasped over the comm. “Repeat, I have Mama B and she’s safe.”
Franz jumped on right after that. “Proceed to go positions. Proceed to go positions!” After a few frantic seconds, he came back on. “We need one minute, I-Man. Just one.”
A minute? Slam dunk. As long as he had Homer’s undivided attention, it was a perfect time to tell the prick exactly what he thought about this idea of “the fun stuff.”
“I’m not your super beast sperm bank, Homer. I agreed to be the lab rat and you need to be okay with that. You can have my blood, my hair, my tissues—make daisy chains out of my fingernails and fertilizer out of my spit for all I care—but I’m not fathering children for your personal Dr. Demento show. Don’t think I won’t lop the fucker off first, either.”
Homer’s spine straightened like a pissed cobra getting ready to strike. “Is this your way of telling me you want to go the messy way and not the civilized way?”
Shay jutted his lower lip and nodded. “Probably.”
Homer rolled his eyes before extending his arm as if pitching Shay a baseball.
No ball—at least not the stitched-seam kind. But who was he to make that assumption? For all he knew, one of the soldiers now coming at him had those goddamn black stitches hanging from his scrotum by now. These men didn’t want to be doing this shit any more than he did. As the dozen of them advanced, he confirmed his theory by directly confronting their gazes. Their rifles were raised and their feet were moving but he was damn certain they made the charade happen only because they mentally overlaid Homer’s face atop his.
He couldn’t wait to see their reaction to the surprise Franzen was about to bring on.
“Gentlemen, that’s far enough.”
Speak of the devil, in all his awesome glory.
“You can throw the safeties on those weapons now and lay them at your feet before backing up this way,” Franz instructed. As Shay accepted his own rifle, brought over by his brother, he noticed a few of Homer’s guys visibly expel their breaths after putting down the guns.
“My, my, my. Visitors. What a surprise.” Homer cupped his hands in front of his chest Pope-style, giving off a wing nut air that wasn’t entirely out of character but still suspicious. Really suspicious. Shay eyed the guy harder. The reaction didn’t feel right. He’d expected anything from a slow seethe to a full you-took-my-toy-and-its-box tantrum—but not serenity. Not now. The man had just lost the magic key to his fucking kingdom.
“Somebody frisk Doc Asshole,” he muttered. “Now.”
As Ethan performed that duty, the pontiff-perfect smirk spread wider across Homer’s lips. “All right, so I have a confession to make. I’m not that surprised. And what a shame.” He glanced over to Franzen. “I love surprises. Don’t you?”
Franzen’s lips twisted. Shay imagined he was contemplating the perfect way to tell the guy to shut the fuck up.
He never got that chance.
The earth shook as the compound’s new lab was ripped apart by an orange and red explosion.
As he hit the deck along with Tait, Shay thought he heard his mother’s horrified scream. Or maybe it was the ringing in his ears. Or the shock in his senses. He couldn’t confirm it, because the bomb blast was followed by a fire storm he hadn’t experienced since his team last tangled with a band of pissed off insurgents across a poppy field in the Helmand Province. He jerked his head up, half expecting to see the opposition advancing through the flowers with his head on a pike as their ultimate goal.
No flowers. No pikes. A sight much worse.
In less than a minute, the street was overrun by a small army of fighting men who looked like shiny movie extras, some running, some tumbling out of fast-moving jeeps. Every single one of them was outfitted in spanking-new mountain camos and classy black battle boots. On their heads were high-end battle helmets with GPS and heat-sensing capabilities that could see through walls.
“Start paddling, kids. We’re deep in the shit.” Franz greeted them with it as they scrambled on elbows and knees to join him, Zeke, and Dan behind a rusty horse trough.
Dan grunted. “Our buddy Homer’s been busy with his tongue on somebody’s balls.”
“Not-so-wild guess?” Tait returned. “Or am I just entertaining a wild fantasy that it’s Cameron Stock, finally within striking distance?”
Sure enough, riding shotgun in the lead jeep, was Cameron Stock.
Shay joined his brother in a dark grimace. To borrow from Homer’s knowing sarcasm, my, my, my. To borrow from himself, we should’ve fucking known.
He’d barely stabbed himself with the remorse before his attention was swerved. A second jeep sped up next to Cameron’s, making it clear that the man in that passenger’s seat was leader in equal standing with Stock. The guy, reeking of military might, was lanky, grizzled, and scowling hard beneath a black beret he wore in the Army Spec Ops style.
The moment the guy got out of the vehicle, Franz swore in what sounded like Polynesian profanity. Tait’s eyebrows kicked high but Shay only fired back, “Who the hell is that?”
“General Kirk Newport.”
His jaw hit the dust.
“Whoa.” Zeke snarled. “The Kirk Newport? Like, the boss of our boss of our boss?”
Franzen’s burnished skin paled by at least three shades. “Yeah. That one.”
“But what’s he—”
“Damn.” Shay laid his hand over his rifle then dropped his head to his wrists. “During the hijacking, he was the military representative who got on the line to try and talk Stock down—whatever that meant.”
Franz arched one incredulous brow. “I’ll bet that’s interesting in hindsight.”
“They talked smack to each other for a few minutes before Newport disappeared, a la your friendly car salesman ‘going to see what he could do.’ It wasn’t long before he got back on the line, magically granting us clearance for the landing at Groom Lake.”
“Motherfuckers.” Zeke’s growl was strengthened by the new volley of bullets that whizzed over their heads. “The three of them have been in on this all along!”
Dan shook his head, appearing like he needed to borrow a few ashamed ice picks from Shay. “I should’ve thought things out by more steps. Should’ve predicted this.”
“Using what fucking intel?” Tait rendered a chastising whack up the side of the agent’s head. “You were flying blind, Dan. We all were. Still are.”
>
Dan ignored him. “We played right into their hands,” he muttered. “They didn’t just know that we’d plan something. They were counting on it. Probably saw us jump from that damn plane. Listened to our radio chatter, too. Dammit!”
Shay longed to join their rants but there was no time. He wasn’t just the cause of this mess; he was the one who had to set it straight. Somehow…
Newport, still in his jeep, yelled into his head comm. The charge was like water to ants, making half the guerillas surge toward the old Mercantile where Ethan and Garrett were now cornered. The decrepit store was located on the same side of the street as the clinic, where the remains of Mom’s lab seemed to burn higher than ever. Shay wondered why the flames didn’t die down, seeming to whip higher and higher at the sky—
Because they were.
The wind had gusted embers from the blast across the narrow alley and onto to the roof of the Mercantile—where they caught like a match on tinder.
“Holy shit,” he gritted.
“No kidding.” Zeke put the pieces together just as he did.
“Not good,” Franz growled. “Those boys need out of there faster than bodybuilders at a romance writers’ convention.”
Shay was already halfway done scoping out the opposite side of the street. “That pile of boulders, between the saloon and the assayers…I can make it there, given proper cover. It’ll also break up the elephant, make this thing easier to chew.”
“And then what?” Franz demanded.
Shay cocked both brows. “You won’t have given half of them lead enemas by then?”
Franz conceded the compliment with a cocky head dip. “Fine, but half of a thousand cockroaches is still a lot of cockroaches. You’re the one they’re here for, I-Man. They’ll re-form and re-swarm.”
Shay unhooked a grenade from the guy’s belt. “That’s what this is for.”
“You’re going to need more than one.” Zeke pulled a pineapple off his own belt and handed it over. “Just don’t blow up your nuts with it, okay? Apparently they’re hot commodities these days.”
There were so many choices of how to tell the guy to go fuck himself. Shay had trouble picking one out.
The hesitation cost him the pleasure. The words, along with his breath, were strangled in his throat by a fist of pure panic, sporting fingers of disbelieving dread.
So this was what it felt like to hear his own mother scream. Then to watch her tear back down the street, arms outstretched and face contorted with horror. Pretty much sucked as bad as he’d expected.
“Stop!” Mom shrieked. “For the love of God, stop it! There are still innocent people in there! My innocent people!”
Next to him, a tight groan burst from Tait’s chest. Shay’s spirit cracked for his brother. The guy finally laid eyes on the woman for the first time in twenty years but was locked down from doing a damn thing about it. Especially now.
Ghid’s appearance lent no more clarity to things. Though his delay was explained by the painful contortion on his face and the hand gripping his crotch, it didn’t clean up the confusion now on board with Shay’s amazement. What was Mom talking about? Even if she’d been watching this shit go down, why was she coming back in the middle of a gun battle for three experienced men like Ethan, Garrett, and Dan? But she was so frazzed-out, she’d broken away from Ghid by going for his balls.
Innocent people. My innocent people.
“Holy crap.”
He spat it as the horror hit home. As if it needed any more fuel, Mom stomped in front of the soldiers, shoving their gun barrels toward the ground as she went. “And you call my patients the monsters? Three of my nurses are still in there, you cocksuckers. Did anyone ask about that before setting off bombs? Did anyone care?”
Her announcement clearly knocked the hired hoodlums on their figurative asses. They pelted each other with panicked stares, clueless as noobs tossed into a hypothetical crisis on the first day of training. Their hesitation was both a blessing and a curse. While this was the ideal distraction Shay needed to implement his plan, Mom’s nurses couldn’t afford another moment of delay. Hell. There was a good chance it was too late already.
“Thumbs out of asses, kids.” While the words were pure Dan Colton, it still stunned Shay that the agent was the first to spring to action—not just figuratively. As the agent popped to his haunches, he nodded fast at Shay. “You handle the field trip across the street, I-Man. I’ve got the nurses covered. The extra commotion will help Hawk and Runway get out, too. Zsycho and Dragon, you both ready with the lead enemas?”
“Fuck, yeah.” Zeke propped his rifle against the trough and growled with gusto.
“Shit.” Franz emulated the move. “I hate it when our best option still sucks bones.”
With that send-off, Shay jumped into action at the same second as Dan.
His sprint was a blur of adrenalin, exhilaration, and fear. Past the blood pounding in his ears, he heard a soldier yell toward him in Spanish. A bunch more joined in, soon growing into a mob. As he cleared the last three steps before the boulders, bullets sent up dirt clouds around his feet.
Bingo.
“Come to papa, sweet little sheep.” He muttered it while shucking the ninja jacket, reveling in the new freedom from his thinner, darker raglan shirt and the Kevlar vest beneath. The words lent him the focus to ease his breathing and reassess the logistics of all this chaos.
A laugh tempted his lips and he gave in for a second. Shit. In what other job on earth did “chaos” and “logistics” exist in the same action plan? The realization was either cause for celebration or compunction—or ambivalence between both, depending on the moment.
Like this one.
He crouched on the balls of his feet, grenade in hand, opening his senses for the right moment to lob the thing. Maybe a fast glance over the top of the rock would help. The boulders were stacked on a small rise of earth, which would give him the chance to study the area for about two seconds. Didn’t seem like much, but as he’d learned so many times over the last week, moments could be turned into eternities.
Mmm hmm. Just ask a dancer trying to look sexy during a major show finale at a dance rave pace.
“Dancer.” The whisper escaped him as the memory flared through him, a solid brick of emotional C-4. He promised her he’d live—and he would, dammit.
Even if everything had taken yet another terrible turn for the worse.
On the bright side, he watched Hawk and Runway break free from the Mercantile, ash flying off their shoulders but nothing else notably damaged or burned. Zeke was still in position behind the trough but waved them beyond his location to a group of old barrels, where they joined a trio of guys who’d originally been Homer’s minions. Shay was certain their defection wasn’t a stunner to anyone.
That was the good stuff.
The horror show didn’t start until he did a double-take on Z’s position—the spot he’d occupied five minutes ago with Franzen and Tait. But where the hell were they now?
“Fuck.”
Shay almost added a crap load of choice names to call the duo, synonyms for everything from first-degree idiots to gigged-up morons, as he caught sight of them behind a dilapidated wagon—engaging easily thirty of the guerillas in a disgustingly uneven firefight.
“What the—”
He cut himself off, finally spotting the treasure they were all shooting to kill for. Mom, bound by her wrists and ankles, was draped over one of the jeep’s hoods. Her eyes were so wide, Shay swore he could see their whites from here. Ghid, who’d clearly fought to keep the scum suckers from recapturing her, was splayed in a beaten-to-shit heap next to one of the jeep’s tires.
Shay barely kept his stomach from punching its way up his throat. While it was a damn righteous sight to watch his bad-ass brother and that half-Samoan warrior giving as well as they got when outnumbered fifteen to one, it was torture to keep his ass planted where it was. But Stock and Newport’s ploy was more obvious than a stripper spread
ing her legs. If Shay raced to join Tait and Franz, he’d play right into their fucking plan. Every visceral, vile reaction he endured right now was like dancing on their puppet strings, but the dick wipes weren’t getting the whole puppet show.
All he could do was pray for the right chance at lobbing these grenades—and about a hundred miracles after that.
“Help! Oh God, help me!”
The scream didn’t sound like anything close to a miracle.
Tait lifted his stare back over the rock and frantically scanned for the source of the cry. It was female but hoarse—and raw with desperation—
There. On the old boardwalk in front of the burning buildings. A woman emerged in soot-covered medical scrubs, every inch of her skin just as black from smoke. Her mouth was a stark grimace against the charcoal of her face, opened on imploring sobs as she dragged an unconscious body behind her.
A man.
“Christ.” Shay sagged against the boulder. “Dan!”
At a fast snap from Newport, a medic appeared. The guy started a vitals check on Dan. Shay gripped both sides of his head to keep his sights steady—or maybe his spinning mind roped down—while the fucking exam stretched on. And on. And on.
When the medic finally lifted his head, Shay couldn’t decipher anything from the man’s movement. It wasn’t fast enough to be urgent, but not slow enough for complete somberness. He only knew one thing for certain. Dan was still much too still.
“Alive,” the medic pronounced. “But barely. And the burns on his left side…” The guy shook his head. “They need immediate attention.”
“He saved—my life.” The soot-covered woman wept as she stammered it. “Viv and Megan…they were already gone…the smoke and the heat…and I knew I’d be next. Then he appeared, almost like he walked through the flames…” She dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, God! Don’t let him die!”
Shay swallowed hard. It was the same fucking prayer in his heart, too.
After the nurse revealed the news about her coworkers, Mom’s throat ripped open on a long, grieving wail. She torched the sound into a furious scream. “We could keep him from dying if we still had a medical building, you monsters. And Homer, you’re the leader of the goddamn pack. You signed this deal with the devil twenty years ago, and what’s it brought you except blood on your hands? How many more will it take? The life of this agent now? Or the man after him? Or after that?”