by Cindy Gerard
Vadar glared at the clock. He’d designed this mission to be in and out in fifteen minutes. They were nearing fifteen minutes now, and he hadn’t yet descended to the fourth level and collected the Russian scientist and Eagle Claw.
“You!” he shouted at the tech manning the computers. “Use those cameras. Find whoever is behind this, and direct my men to that position. And you,” he said, turning to the remaining three men assigned to the team and the second technician who might be of value when they confronted Corbet. “Come with me.”
He had to chance going after Corbet, even though the facility wasn’t secure yet.
• • •
“Cooper. I’ve lost you.”
Coop ducked lower under the stairwell on the second level and whispered, “Good. That means no one else can see me, either. Where’s our Russkie on the second floor?”
“Hold on.” She replied less than a minute later: “By the stairwell door. But there are two of them, and judging by their constant radio communication with their team, they’re clearly on high alert.”
“They’d better be, if they know what’s good for them. Let me know if their location changes.”
“Damn. I just lost control of the cameras again. You’re on your own until I figure out how to get it back. Be careful.”
“Always.”
So far, he’d been lucky. Rhonda had come through in spades, manipulating the cameras and locating the threats on the third floor. The Russians had doubled their efforts there. Good call on their part. Bad call assuming he wouldn’t find them.
Five minutes later, two more Russians were down, and he dragged the bodies beneath the landing. He felt better about Rhonda’s safety now that this floor was cleared—at least, for the moment. The fact that all four men he’d taken out were Spetsnaz didn’t bode well for his continued survival or for Rhonda’s.
So, if he was a bad guy, with an unknown force picking off members of the team, where would he start the sweep-and-destroy mission?
They’d want to control the access points, and then they’d control the facility, which was why every bad guy he had run across had been positioned near a stairwell or the elevator.
That left the elevator. He headed that way.
The problem with the elevators was that they also had cameras inside. He couldn’t count on Rhonda to shut them down. Not when the bad guys were intercepting her commands as soon as they realized there was someone else maneuvering the system.
So if he wanted to move between floors, the only option left was the elevator shaft. Which meant he’d need an emergency elevator key. He knew of only one place to get one: the dead guard at the other end of the hall. Keeping clear of the camera’s roving eye, he made his way back to the body and found the hex key on his key ring.
Then he lit out fast for the elevator. The hex key opened it easily. He gently pried the doors open and saw the elevator suspended above him. Quickly, so he wouldn’t be seen, he squeezed through the opening, then reached out and grabbed the maintenance ladder that ran along the greasy shaft wall just as the door pinched shut behind him.
Now, up or down? If he was in command of this siege, he’d leave most of his operators up top to cover the exit. So he opted for down, since the odds were better there—until somebody figured out that was where he was.
He started descending the ladder.
• • •
It had been over five minutes since Rhonda lost control of the cameras. Frustrated, she continued to work the system. Whoever was manning the keyboard knew what they were doing. It was computer geek against computer geek, and by God, she would not be beaten—even though she was at a disadvantage, since she had to be careful not to reveal her location.
Then, bam! She broke through. She had control again.
“Take that, you dog!” she crowed, and quickly started searching for Cooper.
“You calling me a dog?” he asked through the earbud.
“Oh, thank God. Where are you?”
“Looking for a midnight snack.”
Which meant level five. He was such a damn smartass. She was glad when she finally located him on camera. He was crouched low to the floor. Searching another body, she realized, and swallowed back a rush of nausea. It was us or them—there was no other way.
She sat up straight when the camera caught a door open at the other end of the hallway and two big, heavily armed men creeping in.
Cooper was so focused on his search that he didn’t hear them.
“Cooper,” she whispered, so as not to startle him. “You’ve got company. Two big guns coming up behind you.”
He didn’t move. Hadn’t he heard her? Had the radio stopped working?
“Cooper!” she screamed, just as he leaped up and swung around, firing and dropping both shooters like stones.
“You broke my freaking eardrum,” he grumbled as he scrambled over to search the downed Russians.
“I didn’t think you heard me.” Her heart still raced like a freight train.
He grinned up into the camera. “No problem. Thanks for having my six.”
“Your six?”
“My back. You had me covered ten ways from Sunday. You might make a field agent yet.”
“Not in this lifetime.”
“If there’s anyone else on this floor, those shots are going to bring them running.”
“Let me have a look.” She quickly checked each camera, then breathed a huge sigh of relief. “None that I can see.”
“Our odds are getting better, but I’ve got to get to Corbet. These guys aren’t about to cut their losses and run.”
“Hold on. Let me search level four.”
She’d barely gotten the words out when a loud, reverberating boom shook her desk.
Coop’s shocked expression filled the camera screen. “What the fuck?”
She found the camera that guarded Corbet’s lab door, and all she saw was smoke.
“I think they blew up Corbet’s lab. Or at least blew the door.”
“On my way.”
Fear for him coiled in her chest as he ran straight into the belly of the beast.
• • •
Vadar choked and coughed as black smoke filled the fourth-floor hallway. He’d found no way to circumvent the lock, so he’d ordered Nikolai to blow it. After the man set a breaching charge over the door latch, Vadar had stepped well back from the door and nodded for Nikolai and his other two men and the technician to cover their ears.
The smoke was still thick but clearing as Vadar walked over the ruined door and stepped inside the lab.
Dr. Corbet was on the floor, clearly knocked there by the force of the blast.
“Get him up,” Vadar ordered.
Pavel and Mavriky picked Corbet up under his arms, then held him steady on his feet.
Vadar approached him. “Hello, Adolph,” he said as the older man gasped for breath and pressed his palms to his ears. “Sorry about the extreme methods, but we’re in a bit of a rush. Now, tell me that you’ve compiled all of your data and are ready to go.”
Corbet looked back at him with the eyes of a beaten man. “Svetlana . . . my daughter—”
“Are both awaiting your return to Moscow,” Vadar assured him. “That was our arrangement. One we will honor. Now, do you have the data compiled?”
The old man nodded reluctantly and handed Vadar a memory stick. “It’s all here.”
“It’s all here, comrade,” Vadar corrected, unable to resist the opportunity to goad this man, who had been not only a traitor to his country but also a pain in the ass to retrieve.
Corbet lowered his head, clearly shamed.
“Say it,” Vadar commanded.
“It’s all here, comrade,” Corbet repeated in a monotone.
“You will understand if I have our technician verify that for me.”
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He nodded to the tech, who quickly inserted an empty memory stick into Corbet’s computer and copied everything on his hard drive.
“Wonderful. Then let’s go.”
37
She’d lost Cooper when he took off running for the elevators.
“No, no, no!” she told him. “There are cameras inside. They’ll spot you.”
“I forgive you for underestimating me.”
Instead of pressing a button and calling the elevator, he used something that must be a key, pried open the doors, and disappeared into the shaft.
Okay. So he’d have the element of surprise on his side, but who knew how many men were on the fourth floor? And who knew if Dr. Corbet was even alive after that explosion?
She rapidly flipped through the camera feeds, intent on getting a view of the lab door.
But when she landed on the fourth-floor hallway that was sixty yards from the lab, she stopped. And gasped.
A man lay dead, facedown on the floor. The good news was, it wasn’t Cooper. The bad news was, Cooper was also down.
“Cooper,” she whispered, overwhelmed with fear for him.
No response.
“Cooper. Damn it. Please . . . please answer me.”
Still nothing. He slouched on the floor, leaning against the wall, his legs sprawled out in front of him. His head lolled down on his chest. Blood oozed between the fingers of the hand he’d pressed against his shoulder.
Pressed against his shoulder.
That vital detail finally registered. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead if he had lifted his hand and could hold it against his shoulder.
“Cooper!” She tried again.
Maybe he didn’t hear her. Maybe his earbud had fallen out when he’d gone down.
And then she saw them: five men, one of them Corbet. He was being led down the hall by a man with a gun. Three in all had guns, and they were heading directly for Cooper. They might not see him yet in the dim hallway, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She was in the office of one of the system directors, so there was probably a facility-wide intercom. She studied the phone, quickly found what she was looking for, hit the “Emergency facility broadcast” button, and shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Cooper! Three shooters straight ahead!”
His head came up—thank you, God—and he lifted his rifle.
Then, to her horror, the camera feed went black again.
• • •
Rhonda’s intercom blast shocked Coop awake. He managed to focus on five men and fired. It was a wild shot, but they quickly ducked for cover. That wasn’t going to last long.
He had one good arm and a half-full magazine and was short on blood. That officially made him a damn sitting duck.
Worse, Rhonda had just outed herself. It wouldn’t take them long now to realize he hadn’t been acting alone or where she was when she’d accessed the intercom.
Damn it. He’d held out hope that even if he didn’t come out of this alive, she’d escape unharmed because they wouldn’t know she was here. That they’d just leave quickly once they had their prize scientist and the Eagle Claw data.
Cradling the M4, he scooted left as fast as his bleeding body would let him and almost fell through a door into a room. He dragged himself inside, flipped over onto his belly, and, gritting past the pain in his shoulder, propped his rifle on the floor. Ever so slowly, he eased his head out into the hallway—and saw a head pop around the corner. This time, he didn’t miss. The Russian went down, his head hitting the floor like a watermelon.
He ducked back into the room and quickly looked around. Lab tables, computer desks. Too flimsy to stop any bullets.
If only he had a couple of hand grenades. They’d come after him soon, realize that they had him cornered, and probably call for reinforcements.
So this was where it ended. He was okay with dying; he’d made that decision years ago when he’d signed up with the Marines. But he wasn’t okay with what was going to happen to Rhonda.
He’d promised her that he’d protect her.
But he hadn’t saved her. He’d as good as killed her.
A blast of noise, so piercing it nearly made his ears bleed, broke out through the halls.
Fire alarm, he realized. Then the strobes came on, disorienting and blinding, while the shrill scream of the alarm echoed off the walls and tore through the halls.
Holy hell—it was Buttercup to the rescue! She was creating a diversion, giving him a chance to escape. This wasn’t over yet!
A renewed surge of adrenaline shot through him—just as two hulking silhouettes appeared in the doorway.
He tried to lift his M4 but didn’t have the strength.
He steeled himself to die.
Then the rattle of another M4 cracked through the hallway, and he watched, mystified, as both Russians dropped to the floor.
“Cooper?”
Holy shit—Rhonda?
He looked up. And there, through the haze of gunsmoke, stood the Bombshell, a shocked, victorious, and horrified look on her face and a smoking M4 in her hands.
• • •
“Can you stand up if I help you to your feet?”
Coop still couldn’t believe he was alive. And alive because of this amazing woman. “Sweetheart, I can do anything for you. Except maybe stop bleeding.”
She walked him back into the room, catching him when he stumbled, then leaned him against the wall. She quickly stripped him of his shirt and assessed the damages. “Hold this,” she said, handing him his rifle. “And don’t fall over.”
Then she raced across the room, rummaging through drawers, tossing things aside until she found what she wanted. When she returned, she had a bottle of alcohol and a stack of gauze.
After she’d unceremoniously dumped the entire bottle of alcohol over his bullet wound, upping the excruciating factor by about one hundred, he gritted out, “Could have . . . warned me.”
“Like I’ve got time.” She pressed the gauze pads over the open wound, then used his T-shirt as a stretch bandage to keep them in place. “Stay there,” she ordered, picked up the M4, and peeked out the door. “Shit,” she swore, and backed into the room. “He’s holding Corbet at gunpoint.”
“He? Only one?” Cooper asked, fighting to keep his head in the game.
“Yeah. Only one.”
“If you want the doctor alive,” a heavily accented voice said in English, “you will toss your weapons out into the hall and come out with your hands up.”
She looked at Coop for guidance.
“You’re not going to shoot Corbet,” Coop said as loudly as he could. “You need him if you’re going to salvage any part of your mission.”
“Do you really want to take that chance?”
Before Coop knew what she was going to do, Rhonda flew out the door, rolled to the right, and came up on one knee, firing.
Coop shot out the door after her, if only to throw himself on her and protect her. All he managed to do was land on his face.
“What are you doing?” She helped him get upright.
He glanced down the hall. Dr. Corbet was on the floor, clutching his leg. The Russian was spread-eagled on his back, moaning in agony.
“Making a fool out of myself, apparently.” He looked at her then. “I thought you didn’t know—”
“Anything about close-quarters combat? I never said that. I said I’d never been involved in it. I had to take the same weapons classes you did. Aced them, by the way.”
She walked over to the moaning Russian and kicked his gun out of his reach. Then she tended to Dr. Corbet, who, Coop now suspected, she’d intentionally wounded in the leg so he would fall and give her a clear shot at the Russian.
Before he could digest that amazing decision on her part, a small ma
n stepped out of the shadows, hands raised.
“No shoot,” he pleaded in broken English. “I surrender.”
• • •
He turned out to be one of two technicians the team had brought along against their will. He also ended up being a wealth of information, more than willing to cooperate.
He radioed the other tech on level one—who was also more than ready to surrender—and discovered that the tech was the only man left on that level. Based on the body count and the numbers the techs provided, that left only three Russians outside guarding the building.
“Now what?” Rhonda asked as they rode the elevator to level one.
“Now we wait.” His vision was for shit, and he tried to blink away the cobwebs. “The guys outside, they’re going to start to wonder what’s . . . taking so long. Sooner or later, they’re going to send one in . . . to find out. Shouldn’t be . . . much of a problem . . . picking them off.”
He felt Rhonda’s arm wrap around his waist. Damn good thing. He was about to go down for the count.
She turned him over to the tech when the elevator hit the first level and lifted her rifle to her shoulder, just in case.
The elevator doors opened, and waiting for them was what looked like the entire U.S. military, rifles pointed directly at their heads.
“Thank God,” Rhonda said, lowering her weapon.
Coop grinned. “Glad you could make it, boys. We need . . . cleanup in aisle three.”
Then he passed out cold.
Sunday
Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid.
—David Hackworth
38
11:37 p.m., United Flight 383, Eastbound
Helluva wake-up call, Coop thought as he sat beside Rhonda on the flight back to Langley late Sunday night.
During the thick of the siege, when he’d thought he was going to lose her, when he’d thought he was going to die, he’d come to terms with something unexpected. And he’d known that if they got out of that mess alive, there were going to be some huge changes in his life.
And all of them started and ended with her.