“Two exterior guards,” he whispered into his headset. “Marco?”
“Not a problem.”
Marco set up. The shot from this distance wouldn’t be much of a challenge for a sniper, and sure enough Jake heard two soft pops from the HK417—the suppressor at work—almost immediately.
“Clear.”
“Pick it up. We don’t have long before they’re discovered.”
They took off over the desert at full speed and for the first time Jake felt as if they were doing something. We’re coming, Tara. Just hang on.
They hit the fence and paused briefly while Trey checked for electronic triggers or alarms. A keypad dissuaded them from going straight through the front, and they had to detour around to the side of the property and then go over the barbed wire at the top. Security seemed too light to Jake, which set his nerves jangling. They had Tara. Shouldn’t they have been worried about law enforcement coming after her? They must have considered that they’d covered their tracks very damned well.
Still, he was grateful for any advantage they could gain.
The main floor windows at the back of the house had all been outfitted with iron bars. Trey handed Jake his rifle, then pulled a folding pole and a hook with a rolled-up, soft-sided ladder attached to it from his backpack. The pole folded out and attached to the hook, which he slipped onto the roof and tugged to secure. He pulled the pole clear, nodded at Marco, took the rifle back, slung it across his back, and began to climb. Jake put a foot on the bottom rung to follow him up, but Marco held him back. Trey disappeared into the second-story window. A minute later, he stuck his head out and beckoned them up.
Jake and Marco climbed while Trey covered them. Slipping his leg over the sill, Jake found himself in a bedroom. At one point, it had belonged to a young girl. Miniature horses, posters of princesses . . . all the trappings suited a kid. But the room was musty and a fine layer of desert grit covered everything.
“Fucked up,” Marco whispered, echoing his thoughts.
Trey shrugged. “At least she’s not here to see what’s going on now.”
“True that.”
Trey cracked the door and peered into the hall. “There’s a room across the hall. Jake and I will clear it. Marco, you cover us from the hall. Then we move. You and Jake will take the next, and I’ll cover.
Repeat.”
Jake’s heart slammed against his ribs and sweat slicked his hands. He wiped them on the MultiCam cargo pants Miguel had supplied for him and clutched his pistol more tightly. Harper had been right about his lack of experience in tactical maneuvers, but no way could he have allowed himself to be left behind. So he followed first Trey and then Marco as they checked rooms. The first held a bathroom, the second another bedroom. Gunfire erupted almost the minute Trey turned the handle on the third door, and all three of them jumped back, flattening themselves against the wall. Marco stepped quickly out and hit the door with a burst from the 417. Shouting exploded downstairs, but Marco paid it no attention, kicking in the destroyed door. In the bed opposite the door, Samuel sat, his back against the headboard, an AK-15 in hand, his eyes wide and blood pouring from a gaping wound in his chest.
A savage satisfaction filled Jake, but he couldn’t take time to enjoy it. Movement to his left had him spinning, pistol in hand.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” said the woman huddled in the corner.
Trey hesitated, but Jake didn’t. Obviously, she didn’t recognize him in face paint. “Not on your fucking life, Deborah,” he said. “You probably killed him yourself so he couldn’t give you away.”
Trapped, she raised her hands from her lap where she’d hidden them in pretend modesty. Jake saw the pistol and reacted instantly, putting three bullets into her before she got off a shot. He turned to the door and found that his teammates had already dispatched two men coming up the stairs and that those two had fallen backward, taking a third down with them. The man was struggling to his feet when Marco put a bullet in his brain. Jake ran to a door on the far side of the bedroom and shoved it open, hoping to find Tara, but he saw only another empty bathroom. Another door revealed a closet.
Two doors remained closed upstairs. Trey kicked one in and backed quickly out of the way while Marco cleared it and the bathroom and closet within. They reversed positions for the second, where they found Francis, his hands over his head. Jake identified him for the others and enjoyed a moment’s savage satisfaction when Francis’s eyes narrowed in recognition.
“Bring him with us,” Trey said. “He may be useful.”
Jake grabbed Francis’s wrists and slammed them down behind his back, securing them with flex cuffs. “Move,” he said, jabbing his Sig into the man’s back. Out on the landing, they paused while Trey watched for movement below.
“Want to tell your friends to be careful where they shoot?” Jake asked Francis.
“Fuck off, asshole.”
“Your life.” Jake shrugged.
They moved carefully down the stairs, sidestepping the dead bodies of the three guards.
A bullet splintered the wood next to Jake’s head, and he, Marco, and Trey fired in the shooter’s direction simultaneously. Francis took the opportunity to try to duck free, but Jake caught him.
“Where’s Tara?”
“Dead.”
Jake’s nerves flashed fire and ice, and he almost, almost let his trigger finger tense. But Trey saved him.
“I don’t think so. You don’t drag a woman across the border when you could shoot her on the spot unless you have other plans.”
Slowly they cleared the main floor. Off the kitchen, they found another staircase, long and narrow, leading down.
“Ah, a little basement dungeon? How traditional of you,” said Trey.
They descended the stairs, Trey in the lead firing forward, while shouting that they had Francis as a prisoner. Marco covered their six.
• • •
TARA FLOATED. IF she remained perfectly still, the whole word disappeared into a beautiful pinkish blue haze, like cumulous clouds tinted by dawn’s earliest rays. When she moved or thought too hard, pain burned olive, rust, and black.
At the edge of her consciousness, beyond the fog, strange sounds intruded. Voices. Thuds. Bangs.
She buried herself more deeply in the haze of the pink cloud. If she worked at it, she could almost imagine the comforting warmth was Jake’s arms around her. But inevitably the truth burned through. Jake was dead. She’d killed him.
A sudden crash and the door to her cell was flung wide. Filling the jamb, an angry, blond-haired angel carved of granite with blue diamond eyes.
“Got her,” the angel shouted over his shoulder, his voice echoing through the cavernous void in her head and heart.
And then, behind him, Jake appeared. Like the angel, he wore camouflage, and his face was streaked with strange, stone-like colors. Until this moment, she’d assumed angels smiled all the time, but the blond angel practically sneered as he stepped toward her, and Ghost Jake’s mouth was set in a flat, grim line.
“She’s high as a fucking kite.” Even the angel’s voice grated like rocks grinding against one another.
And he was right. She knew it. But Jake’s appearance had pierced the pink cloud, and sadness crashed over her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to kill you.”
• • •
WHAT THE HELL? Jake yanked off his NVGs and squatted in front of Tara. “Sweetheart, you didn’t do anything to me. I’m right here.” She reached up to touch the bandage that covered his stitches, and he saw the raw, oozing tips of her fingers where the nails had been ripped away. Her shirt had been cut open, and he saw both cuts and burns on her chest and neck.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, tears streaming down her face, every drop a bullet in his chest.
“You hav
e nothing to be sorry for.”
“We need to move out,” Trey reminded him. “We don’t know how many of them will have heard the gunfire.”
“How do we take her?”
“Fireman’s carry. You handle transport. We’ll handle cover. I’ve got the prisoner.”
“Jesus, that’s going to hurt.”
Trey’s eyes narrowed. “My mission, my orders. Pick her up and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Jake knelt before Tara, trying to focus on her eyes and shut out the sight of the marks the torture had left on her. “We’ve got to move you, sweetheart. It’s going to hurt. Try to stay relaxed.” He hoisted her up and draped her body around his neck, one arm between her legs, gripping her right wrist and forearm to hold her in place across his shoulders.
They headed up the stairs, Trey in the front, the pistol in his left hand jammed between Francis’s shoulder blades, the assault rifle in his right. Jake followed, carrying Tara. She panted, her breathing shallow and uneven, and muttered off and on, though he couldn’t make out her words.
Trey shoved Francis out the kitchen door, then slammed Jake to the side as Francis stumbled back in a storm of gunfire.
“Too bad, so sad,” Marco said as the man tumbled down the stairs. On the other side of the door, a babble of confused and angry shouting ensued, along with the occasional bullet fired to keep them in place.
“No time like the present. You set?” Trey asked Marco, who’d used their trek up the stairs to mount a grenade launcher to his rifle.
“Good to go.” Marco leaned around the corner and fired. A resounding crash, and dust and debris rained down on them in the stairwell.
“Go!” Trey shouted, leading the way through the decimated kitchen, hopping over the bodies on the floor, and heading for the front door. Marco cleared the whole doorway by simply firing a round through it, and Trey checked for trouble.
“Fuck. We’ve got company. But there are vehicles around the left side. Jake, put her down. You and I are going to hold off the guards. Marco, go get us something and pick us up.”
Marco disappeared into a room to their left, and Jake let Tara slide off his shoulders, propping her in the corner.
“Give me a gun,” she said, her voice surprisingly clear.
“Tara—”
“I’m right-handed, and you need all the help you can get. Even if all I do is confuse them.”
Trey darted back and grabbed one of the AK’s off a dead guard. “Give her your pistol. You take this.”
Although Jake hated Tara’s pallor and the dazed look in her eyes, and he worried she’d further injure herself, he respected her too much to argue with the decision. She needed to take control. He handed her the pistol and hefted the rifle.
Trey leaned out the door and let off a burst. The guards responded. “You’re low, I’m high on the next one,” he said. “You aim nine to twelve. Short bursts. Let’s see if we can’t take a couple more of these fuckers out of the equation.”
On Trey’s count, they fired for several seconds, and then Jake heard Marco’s voice over his headset.
“Coming in hot. Ready to roll in two. Just have to take out—” A resounding boom from the side made Jake wince.
“Ready? Three, two, one . . . ”
A Humvee slammed to a halt in front of the door, raising an enormous cloud of dust. Immediately, it was peppered with bullets, but Marco fired back and Trey darted out. Crouching behind the hood of the vehicle, Trey laid down suppressing fire to keep the guards from coming forward while Jake helped Tara to her feet and rushed her into the backseat.
The Humvee jolted forward and spun into a turn. Tara slid across the seat, smacking into Jake with her left side. She cried out, then curled over as if she were going to vomit.
“Get her down. You cover the rear.”
Jake helped Tara to the floorboards, where she would be safest, wishing he could make her more comfortable, then took position with his rifle out the glassless rear window. Two men were chasing them on foot. Jake put a bullet in one, and the other stopped. A third man joined him, and they ran around to the side of the house where Marco had found the Humvee.
“Gate closed,” Marco said, handing the grenade-launcher-equipped rifle to Trey. “Loaded.”
Jake laid down a spray of fire left to right behind them as Trey leaned far out the window, pointed the grenade at the gate, and fired. Marco didn’t even slow down, merely driving on through the cloud the explosion generated, the wheels of the Humvee bumping and crunching over the wreckage of the fence.
“Don’t head straight for the LZ. Miguel won’t be there yet, and we can’t secure it for any length of time if they’ve called for backup. We’ve got fifty minutes.” He reached into his ammo pouch and reloaded the grenade launcher. Then he switched out the magazine from his own weapon for a fresh one.
Jake heard another vehicle behind them coming fast but saw no lights. Dragging on his NVGs, he searched the darkness until he found it. “Behind us,” he called. “Looks like three men in a Jeep.”
“Range?”
“Five hundred yards? Maybe a bit more.”
“Swap,” said Marco. A quick change and he was in the passenger seat and Trey was driving. Then he crawled into the backseat. He took Trey’s rifle and rested it on the back of the window.
“Straight and smooth,” he ordered.
“Yeah. Like that’s going to fucking happen on this terrain,” Trey replied, but Jake noticed he held his hands steady on the wheel.
A bullet whizzed by their right side. Marco took in a breath, let it out, and fired. Another breath, another shot. “Driver down,” he announced. “Let’s get out of here.” They reached the landing zone without further interruption twelve minutes before Miguel was due.
Jake helped Tara out, and Trey slid from the driver’s seat.
“Ditch the vehicle,” he ordered. “At least two miles away. That should give us time.” Marco nodded and headed out.
Tara sank to the ground and rested her back against the trunk of a small bent and withered tree. Her face was the color of the sandy ground, pale with a yellow undertone, and shivers wracked her body. Jake knelt in front of her. “How you holding up?”
“Fine.” But her eyes darted from side to side and her leg bounced. Jake had seen both of those behaviors before.
“Isn’t there anything you can do for her?” Jake asked Trey. “Aren’t you a medic?”
“I’ll treat her wounds on the chopper. The heroin she’ll have to deal with on her own.” He studied her. “How long have you been using?”
“She’s not a fucking junkie, for Christ’s sake. She’s a victim.”
Trey shrugged. “Not mutually exclusive.”
Jake half rose, but Tara put out her hand and stopped him. “I’m not even sure what day it is at the moment. They started shooting me up when I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.”
“Why didn’t they kill you?” Trey asked.
“I’m sure they would have. Deborah hoped I’d give up in withdrawal and detail what we knew about their operation so they could change what was necessary and leave the rest of their distribution network alone.”
“So she was in charge?” Jake asked.
“No, she said Owen wanted to keep me alive.”
“Owen?”
“Well, she insisted on calling him the Leader. God knows why.”
“Because it wasn’t Owen. He was killed in the raid,” Jake explained. “For whatever reason, she didn’t want you to know who it was.”
“Paranoid,” Trey said. “On the off chance you escaped—as you did—this ‘leader’ didn’t want you to be able to identify him.”
“Could she have meant Francis?” Jake asked.
Tara shook her head slightly. “I don’t think so. I always got the feeling that she and Francis
were colleagues, for want of a better word. Not boss and employee.”
In Jake’s ear, he heard Marco’s voice. “On my way back. But they’re looking. I’ve seen two SUVs. Miguel’s gonna have to be in and out damned fast. I should be to you in couple of minutes.”
“He’s ten minutes out. We’ll be ready for whatever comes.”
Marco jogged in, gun and pack on his back. “Set them a bit of a false trail,” he said. “Though there’s not a lot that can be done in this territory. If they spot us, we’re toast.”
They waited, searching the darkness, until the whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopter rotors alerted them to Miguel’s impending arrival. Trey lit the landing area with a laser marker so that Miguel would know exactly where they were, and then Jake just crossed his fingers and prayed their enemies wouldn’t find them first.
• • •
MIGUEL LANDED SAFELY, but they were no sooner aboard than an SUV came racing toward them. Jake took aim, but held off when a man shouted “Stop! Police!” When the rotors kept moving, a bullet pinged off the front of the chopper. “Alto! Policia!”
“Can’t buy a damned break,” Jake said, peering out. The SUV was unmarked. Who even knew whether these guys were for real?
Miguel took off, and Marco aimed out the door.
“You can’t shoot at police!” Tara reached for him, but Trey shoved her back into her seat.
“He’s not shooting at them, he’s shooting near them. Provided you don’t fuck up his aim.” Marco kept up steady fire until the chopper was well away. Then they all donned new headsets with heavy, noise-reducing cups over the ears. When Jake went to hand Tara hers, she was sitting with her head between her knees, shaking.
“I don’t like it,” Trey said. “If that’s the cops, they’ll be tracking us in no time flat.”
“I can stay under radar,” said Miguel, “but they have to know we’ll be heading for the border. If they really are law enforcement, they’ll have their own air support.”
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