Skunky couldn’t see us. They were going to be on top of me in a few seconds, and I didn’t have time to back up out of their way. I’d need to pop both of these guys before they saw me, and I had to do it clean and fast enough that they couldn’t shout or yank a trigger. I had been working out, but there hadn’t exactly been ample opportunities to hit the shooting range. This was going to be tough.
Then Shen surprised me by appearing behind the man in the rear, wrapping one hand over his mouth and simultaneously running a black knife across his throat. That guard made enough of a noise to catch the other’s attention. He saw Shen, opened his mouth to shout something, but then my bullet caught him in the back of his skull. He dropped in a heap.
We’d put them down in the light. If anybody had been looking out a window, we were fucked. I rushed over next to Shen, who was already dragging his body into the shadows behind a stone bench behind the pool house. I grabbed mine by the drag straps of his armor and pulled. Between the armor and mags, the dude weighed a ton. His carbine dragged along through the grass behind him by the sling. It left a red trail. Looking down, I realized the .45 hollow point had gone through his brain and exited through his mouth. Then the fucker blinked at me and I nearly dropped him. It was like he was really confused and trying to ask me something. He was probably my age, had a big mustache, and I’d seen that same look on the faces of many of the other prisoners I’d had to kill for Sala Jihan’s amusement. Thankfully, he was dead by the time I caught up to Shen.
“How’d you know I was going to be there?” I whispered.
Shen was wiping his knife off on his guard’s pant leg. “I just did.”
Nothing else needed to be said. I noted our position. If we had to fall back, we now had a convenient stash of extra guns and ammo. We moved out.
“This is Skunky. I’ve got visual on Ghost and Slick again, approaching the gatehouse. There is one guard in the gatehouse. I have a shot, but he’s behind glass at an angle. Do you want me to take it?”
“Slick. Negative, Skunky. We got this.” Rifle bullets could deflect in weird ways hitting heavy glass. A hole would be one thing, but if the whole window shattered, it would make a lot of noise. Besides, I could see the guard now. He was sitting down inside the little building. The interior light was on. Outside was dark. He wouldn’t be able to see very far. This guard was younger, buzzed head, military look, pistol on his belt, but street clothes and no armor. Probably in the unlikely event some local farmer rolled up asking questions about the place and they didn’t want the neighbors talking about paramilitary looking dudes living here.
Samuel said there was a keypad at both sides of the gate for a driver to put in the code, and a button in the shack. He didn’t know what the code was, so that meant button.
I scooted right up on the door and rested one hand on the knob. Shen went down, crawled past me, and got under the window. I’d try the knob. If it was open, I’d sweep in and drop him. If it was locked, the guard would probably hear the knob move, and then Shen would come up and pop him flat through the glass with the EVO.
I put one gloved hand on the knob, pistol in the other. Shen nodded when he was ready.
And then a phone rang. We both froze.
It rang twice more before the man inside answered it. He must have been zoning out. I could barely hear the guard through the door. “Yeah, mate . . . Stokes is coming back?” There was a long pause. “What? We’re done! The fuck you say.” Another pause. “About bloody time that fucker Anders told the guv what to do with the prisoner.”
There was an electric hum, and then a metallic rumble as the heavy gate began to move. The guard had pushed the button for us. We had incoming.
“This is Skunky. The gate is opening. I repeat, gate is opening.”
“Nightcrawler. Rolling.”
They must have thought we’d done that. Shen hurried and tapped one for negative. They were opening it for somebody else. That meant Exodus would cross paths with them on the road. Sure enough, Valentine came right back. “We have a single vehicle moving toward the gate at a high rate of speed.”
The guard started laughing. “We’re done! So let’s deliver that big bald fucker so we can get paid and go home.”
They’re moving Bob.
I heard another noise inside, like a chair being shoved back. “I’m on my way.”
The door opened. The guard was beaming as he dropped his phone back into his pocket, probably thinking about how he was going to spend all that money he was getting paid for holding my brother prisoner all these months. He was so excited he damned near walked into me, crouched in the doorway. I jammed the Gemtech under his chin and painted the ceiling with blood. He crashed back, hit the wall, and began to slide down. I shot him again before he hit the floor, just to be sure. A .45 shell casing bounced across the sidewalk.
I glanced back toward the house. More lights were coming on. They hadn’t sounded the alarm yet, but they were going to move Bob. They were now five men short, and things were going sideways as soon as they realized that. But even worse, the guard had been acting like their job was done. That could only mean one very bad thing.
I came to a very terrifying realization. There was only one reason to move Bob.
Blue!
I keyed my radio. “Nightcrawler, can you intercept that car?”
“We can try.”
“Our secondary target is in the car.” That was Stokes. “Take him alive. Anders just called him. The target knows the Alpha Point.”
“Damn it.” I could hear the squeal of tires over the radio. “We’re on it.”
“Project Blue has launched. I repeat, Project Blue has launched.”
VALENTINE
The Highway
Blue was in motion? What the hell? Lorenzo said Stokes knew the Alpha Point, the very thing Majestic had spent months torturing me for. But there was no time to think through the repercussions now.
“Got them,” Ling stated with the utmost calm. Our lights were off and she was driving with NVGs. There was a pair of taillights moving along the dark and windy road ahead of us. Our man Stokes was in there, and if they arrived while Lorenzo and Shen were still on the ground, our infiltrators would be caught in the open. Ling mashed the accelerator and we began closing on the sedan.
“Get us closer,” I said. Hopefully running dark we could close the gap before they realized we were on them.
I pulled open the sliding door on the passenger’s side. Wind rushed in as trees whizzed by at a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour. As The Calm settled over me and my heart rate slowed, I took a deep breath. “Antoine, slide over and grab onto my vest so I don’t fall out. Ling, come up on them and match speed.”
“Affirmative.”
I leaned outward, bracing myself on the door frame, hoping to hell Ling didn’t swerve and send me flying. Antoine had hands like a vise, and he had remained buckled in, but I really didn’t want to test his grip strength if I didn’t have to. The sedan was just ahead of us and we were closing fast. They hadn’t yet realized what was happening yet. I aligned the red dot with the rear of the car as best I could while hanging clumsily out the door of a speeding vehicle, and rocked the trigger.
The G3 bucked against my shoulder as I fired over and over again, as rapidly as I could without losing the target. I didn’t know where Stokes was sitting, so I concentrated on the rear tires. They began skewing wildly side to side. Brake lights flared as a tire burst.
I had went through twenty rounds in just a few seconds. “Reloading!” I shouted as I dropped my mag, but Antoine was already handing me another.
Ling used that lull and put the hammer down. She put the edge of our front bumper on the wounded car ahead of us. A couple of muzzle flashes blinked at us from the back seat, as the surprised occupants desperately tried to return fire, but we had the initiative. Ling cranked the wheel into their back end, forcing them into a hard turn. The sedan flew off the road, spun through the grass, and crashed through
a fence, disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Ling stomped on the brakes and we slid to a stop on the gravel. Through the swirling dust I could see the car’s headlights. They had smashed into some trees. A car door was already open.
“They bailed out!” I leapt out of the van. Antoine was right behind me. Ling jumped out too. “We need Stokes alive!”
That was going to be difficult, because shots rang out from the darkened woodline. The moon was out, but it was hard to see through the trees. From the muzzle flashes, it looked like someone was firing wildly while moving away from us. The three of us crouched, as we moved up, keeping the crashed Mercedes between us and the shooter.
When we got to the car, the driver was still buckled in. His air bag had deployed, and from the way he was clumsily trying to get out, he had been dazed by the impact. From the his size and hair color, I could tell it wasn’t our target. When he saw us moving up he went for a pistol on his hip. Ling and I simultaneously shot him through the glass.
“Nice.” The back seat was clear. Stokes was our runner.
“Contact,” Antoine shouted as he spotted our target moving through the trees. Tall guy, white hair, that had to be him. He must have gotten hurt in the crash, because he wasn’t able to run too fast through the brush. Antoine fired a couple of rounds into the trees ahead of him, blasting through branches and bark. He didn’t want to kill him, but Stokes didn’t know that, and he dove for cover.
“Ling, go around to the left. Antoine, stay with me.” Guns up, Antoine and I pushed forward, jogging toward the trees while trying to stay low. Ling moved to our flank, but remained in sight. We were close and he was cornered, but a stupid mistake could still get us killed.
“Come out, Stokes,” I shouted.
“Piss off!” Stokes responded, as he hung a handgun over the top of a log and fired off several wild shots. “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?”
“Screw this,” I muttered. I took aim and smashed several rounds into the log next to him.
Odds were that he got pelted with fragments and splinters. That must have put the fear of God into him because he cried out, “Alright! Enough!” His breathing was labored and he sounded like he was in pain. He tossed his gun into the dirt, then slowly stepped into the open. “I’m coming out! Don’t fucking shoot!”
Ling turned on her weapon mounted light, blinding him. There was a bunch of blood on his face, but sure enough, he was our target. “Aaron Stokes,” I said, more as a statement than a question. “You’re lucky we didn’t kill you.”
“Who the fuck are you people?” he sneered. “Do you have any idea who I am? Who I work for? You’re in a world of shit, mate, a world of shit.”
I walked up and hit him in the chest with the buttstock of the G3. Not hard enough to break anything—I needed him to talk—but hard enough to let him know I wasn’t playing. He landed on his butt, coughing. I realized that he had something in his hand.
“Give me the phone, asshole.” I snatched it from him, stepped back, and looked at the screen. He was in a call with somebody, trying to give them information about us. I ended the call. “Nice try, bro, but I saw that movie too.”
“Get on your knees,” Ling ordered. She had pulled out some zip ties.
“Fuck you, cunt,” Stokes snarled. “I’d like to see you make me.”
“Oh?” Antoine really didn’t like anyone talking to Ling that way.
“We need him alive,” I warned Antoine, as I scrolled through Stokes’ phone.
“Indeed,” Antoine said, right before he slugged Stokes in the face. He crumpled to the ground, knocked silly.
“Jesus,” I said, looking up. “I said we need him alive.”
“He’ll live,” Antoine said, sounding a little defensive, as Ling hurried and zip-tied Stokes’ hands behind his back.
“You could have put him in a coma.”
“Being in a coma is still alive.”
“Haul him back to the van. We need to go. Lorenzo and Shen need our help.” I let my rifle hang on its sling and keyed my microphone as Antoine hoisted Stokes up and dragged him back toward the road. “Slick, this is Nightcrawler, we got him.”
“Say again?” Lorenzo replied, with lots of static. Down here in the trees our reception was garbage.
“Reaper, Nightcrawler, come back.”
Reaper responded much more clearly. He was in a vehicle with a more powerful radio. “Send it.”
“Relay to the others, we have our boy, I say again, we have our boy. How copy?”
“Understood, Nightcrawler. Is he alive?”
“Affirmative.” I glared at Antoine. “Probably. I’m going through his phone now.”
“Awesome!” Reaper said. “Probably useful intel on there.”
“And lots of porn. I mean, wow, lots of porn.” Lorenzo had said that Anders had just called and given Stokes the Alpha Point. I scrolled through his recent calls. The contacts were listed with really innocuous nicknames, but there was a call from Draco less than fifteen minutes ago. That had to be Anders. Then Stokes had placed a few calls immediately after. One number appeared twice, probably to tell his men to get ready, and then another to call for help when we attacked. But there was one other number he’d dialed immediately after speaking to Anders. I tried that one.
It didn’t even ring. It went straight a recorded message being spoken in French. Something, something, Gare d’Evangeline.
Evangeline?
I must have twitched or something, because Ling asked me what was wrong.
I couldn’t answer. I was lost in a memory. Colonel Curtis Hunter, buried in the rubble of a collapsed roof, trying to tell me something about Evangeline. He died before he could explain what he meant. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Then there was something I understood. “For English, press two.” I quickly lowered the phone, brought up the keypad, and tapped 2. Raising the phone back to my ear, I listened. “Welcome to the automated directory for the Evangeline Station. For train schedules, press one. For ticketing, press two. For customer service, press . . .” I hung up.
“Evangeline . . .” Images of Dr. Silvers asking me who she was over and over again filled my head. “My God. It’s not a person, it’s a place.”
“What are you talking about?” Ling asked.
I got on my radio. “Reaper, listen to me very carefully. Evangeline isn’t a person, it’s a train station. That’s has to be where the Alpha Point is! Evangeline is where Hunter hid his fucking bomb! Tell Lorenzo they’re moving it by train!” I let go of my radio. “Quick, get back to the van.”
“What about Stokes?”
“Leave him.” Before I’d even finished saying that, Antoine tossed the stunned man into the dirt. “Reaper, we’re on the way to Evangeline to stop that bomb.”
“What about the mission?”
Shen and Lorenzo were in a compound filled with mercenaries, and since their boss had called them, they knew they were under attack. I looked toward the lights of the chateau. It was so close . . . But if Anders was moving that bomb . . .
“I’m sorry, man, this is the mission. Tell Slick he’s on his own. We don’t have time.”
“But Lorenzo . . . shit, I mean, Slick and Ghost, they’re counting on you!”
“I know!” I didn’t mean to yell at the kid, but the hour had just turned out to be a whole hell of a lot later than we thought. “We have to go. Do you copy?”
There was a long pause before Reaper said anything. “Understood.”
I looked to Ling and Antoine. Skunky and Shen were like family. Lorenzo had saved Antoine’s life on the mountain. But from their grim faces, they understood what was at stake. “Slick, Ghost, if you guys are receiving this, I’m sorry. Nightcrawler out.” I let go of my mic. “Let’s go.”
LORENZO
The Chateau
Stokes’ men had come pouring out of the chateau when Exodus ambushed their boss. Judging by the sound, there were a lot more of them than we’d hop
ed. Shen and I were still hiding behind the gatehouse. They’d not spotted us yet, or realized we’d killed some of them, but they would soon.
With Valentine ditching us to go after that bomb, there went most of our firepower and our ride out of here. We could abort, and then Shen and I would have to make a break for it on foot, link up with Skunky, and have Reaper pick us up. Or badly outnumbered and on enemy turf, we could try to grab Bob, and fight our way out. Either way, we were fucked.
The sad thing was Valentine was still making the right call. I would have done the same thing in his shoes.
I gave Shen a look. He was thinking what I was thinking. Run or fight? Shen gave me a determined nod. Let’s do this.
There was a lot of movement around the front of the house. The garage door was open. Engines were turning over. This outfit was loyal enough to go after their boss. There hadn’t been enough time for them to get Bob ready, so he still had to be inside. I whispered to Shen, “We let those assholes drive out of here, then we hit the house.”
“Divide and conquer,” Shen stated.
“There you go, all Sun Tzu again.”
“That’s far older than Sun Tzu,” he whispered back.
I keyed my radio. There were only four of us left, so this was about to get really informal. “Skunky, hold your fire until their rescue car is down the lane. When I give you the signal, shoot everybody who isn’t us.”
“Got it.”
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 34