by Liliana Hart
“Pot. Kettle.”
“Speaking of things to have in common, I need information. Are you ever going to tell me where we are headed?” Alex asked, his voice rougher than usual. He hated the fact she didn’t trust him enough to give him her father’s location. Suspicious little devil. Yet another trait they had in common.
Samantha bit her lip. “All right, I’ll tell you. The coordinates are for a mountainous high desert region in New Mexico. It’s down past Albuquerque, near a place called Socorro.
“Great.” Alex didn’t show his pleasure at her finally trusting him, but his heart felt lighter. “How about some directions, navigator?”
Just then, a spotlight from above highlighted the truck, and several rounds of bullets strafed the back end of the pickup, puncturing both of the rear tires. The truck swerved wildly across the road. Burning rubber gave way to glowing sparks as metal scraped the pavement.
Alex gripped the steering wheel hard, fighting to keep the truck on the road, but all control was gone. “Brace yourself!”
The pickup hit a boulder and flipped, end over end, before crashed into a ravine. Alex smashed his head on the side bar, but hung on to the wheel. The seat belts locked, the strap slamming against his chest like he’d been hit by a two by four. Loose debris in the truck became flying shrapnel. The vehicle landed on the roof, shattering all the windows and leaving Samantha and Alex hanging from the seatbelts.
He checked Samantha. She seemed shaken up, but mostly unhurt. Like him, she was working her way out of the restraints.
Alex said a quick thank you for the military’s insistence on wearing seat belts at all time. Without them, he and Samantha would have been dead.
He looked up at the Blackhawk hovering above them.
Then again, they still might be soon.
Seconds later, four well-armed soldiers descended from the helicopter on ropes.
“Incoming.” Alex shot a wall of flames out the front window to hide them from sight. The heat reflected back into the truck and the temperature soared.
“Do you have a plan?” Samantha asked, sounding calm and determined.
His respect for her grew. He’d need her to be strong if they were to survive. “I’ll take these four guys. You disappear and go after the chopper. We’ll need it to get out of here.”
“Got it.” Samantha blew him a kiss, then vanished.
Alex tore his seatbelt free and fired up for battle.
The Admiral picked up phone on his desk with anticipation since the call came from Carleton’s man in the tech division. “Midnight.”
“Admiral, you know we got a ping off the woman’s phone. It was only on for a moment, but it was enough.”
“Yes, tell me something I don’t know.” God, he hated working with fools.
“One of the chopper pilots said their team was nearby and en route to intercept Winters. Five minutes ago, they detected an aberrant heat signature in a vehicle nearing Shiprock, New Mexico. They went in for the attack.”
“Yes?” Frustration laced the word. “What happened?”
The dispatcher hesitated. “All communication just went dark.
Admiral Midnight slammed his fist on his desk. “What the hell does it take to catch one man? Get the other choppers there fast. I don’t care if the whole reservation knows we’re on their land. That bastard is not to get away.”
Alex kept up the firewall and aimed another small lightning bolt at the Blackhawk. He didn’t want to take the bird down, but he needed to fry the communications and transponder.
The lightning bolt revealed his location and a barrage of bullets ripped into the truck and him. Alex took a breath and shoved past the pain. He’d heal soon enough.
He hoped.
From the amount of bullets the men had fired, Alex suspected they knew exactly who and what he was. Interestingly, no shots had been fired into the passenger’s side where Samantha had been. Someone wanted her alive.
Alex did, too, so it worked out. He’d deal with anything else later.
Another round of bullets punched through the fire, two more slamming into him. Damn, he was getting pissed. Obviously, no such ‘bring him in alive’ order had been given for him. If dead or alive were the options, dead seemed preferable.
So be it.
He kicked out the rest of the driver’s window, squeezed through and rolled to the side. From there, he crept to the safety of some nearby boulders. The flame wall was dying out, and he could see through it in places. His heart clenched.
Three out of four of the men had been on his SEAL team. The hatred and determination on their faces, as they riddled the truck with bullets, stunned him.
Whatever conscience these men had had when he knew them, no longer existed.
What had been done to them? Could serums really do this?
They’d all been good men. Now they were just mindless killing machines.
The firing stopped. One of the men raised a heat scanner. “He’s not in there. There’s nothing behind the fire.”
A soldier Alex didn’t know took command.
“Split up. The woman’s gone and he’s out of the truck. Aim carefully so you don’t hit her, and watch out for lightning bolts.”
Alex’s heart shriveled in his chest as he prepared to bring down his former teammates. Men he’d fought alongside with honor and pride. He’d kill whoever had done this to them. Even if it turned out to be Samantha’s father.
Alex fortified the firewall, and threw up a few more, hoping to distract the team from looking for Samantha. They needed to concentrate only on him.
A short ways away, he saw the ropes the men descended on being winched back into the chopper. All the ropes swayed and jerked due to the buffeting rotor blades, except one. An invisible weight seemed to keep it straighter.
Samantha had made it.
“Good girl,” Alex whispered, reminding himself she was a trained federal officer and knew how to defend herself. He just wasn’t used to putting a woman at risk. Especially one he cared about like her.
“Be safe.”
The reality of the task he’d given her hit. She had to hang on to swinging ropes while they brought her in, then, unarmed, take out two armed men and not crash the helicopter that she probably didn’t know how to fly.
What the hell was he thinking?
The helicopter rocked and swayed, then took off into the sky, out of range of Alex’s lightning bolts.
Samantha hung onto the thick rope, grateful for the extra muscle strength that Alex’s blood had given her. Her hands burned on the rope and she looked down. The ground became further and further away. Even with super-healing abilities, she wasn’t sure she’d live through a fall from this height.
Below, she saw the four soldiers split up and work to surround Alex. Her heart raced and she continued pulling herself up higher.
Samantha couldn’t help him from here, unless she took the chopper out of the equation. Then, at least, they couldn’t fire on him from above.
Rotor wash pushed against her as she struggled, hand over hand, to climb the rope.
Sweat from her exertion coated her palms, and she slipped back a few feet before catching hold again. She gasped, then gritted her teeth against the pain. Rope burns stung her scraped and bleeding hands, but she held on anyway, despite the agony. Whoever attacked them was going down.
The helicopter rocked again, its movements increasingly erratic. Had Alex blown out too many of the controls, or did the pilot know she was there? The chopper dropped, then curved away to the right. Her stomach heaved. Were they trying to dislodge her? It was working.
Samantha caught her breath as her grip slipped again. Just when she thought she’d fall, the winches kicked in and the ropes once again rose toward the open helo door.
Samantha grabbed the wheel struts and the bottom edge of the door. Her bloody hands scrabbled for purchase on the slick surfaces. Somehow, she grabbed onto a strap inside the chopper and hauled herself in.
Two men with headphones were in the cockpit, arguing over how to control the damaged craft.
“All our communication units are lost,” the pilot bellowed. “Some operational equipment, too. We’ll be lucky to make it back.”
“At least, we refueled.”
“Great. We’ll have more fuel to blow up with when we crash.”
Both hit a series of switches with no response. The co-pilot called out, “Did they get Winters and the woman yet?”
The pilot checked. “I don’t know. The scanner for the heat signatures is blown. How are we going to track them now?”
Samantha rolled over onto her knees. So, that was how they’d found them. Alex’s heat signature had probably lit up like a Christmas tree. She wondered if the sensor could track her when she went invisible. The two men didn’t appear to know she was here yet. If they saw the bloody handprints all over their mat, the secret would be out.
Her palms were healing. She could feel the changes, even as she rose and inched her way toward the front. Don’t look back, fellas. Please, don’t look back.
The helicopter jolted and dropped several feet, throwing her off balance. She smashed face first into some boxes and equipment, knocking them over with a crash. Her concentration failed.
Two seconds later, she was staring down the barrel of a gun.
She vanished again just as the gun went off.
A dart imbedded itself in her leg and the numbness spread from the injection site.
Damn, a tranquilizer gun.
Needing to act quickly, she lurched forward, swinging a metal bar she’d grabbed from the pile she dislodged. She caught the shooter on the side of the head and he went down.
The pilot turned in surprise, jerking the stick as he did and the chopper rotated wildly. In desperation, he turned back and struggled to bring it under control again.
Samantha helped him, without his knowledge, grabbing part of the stick and holding it steady, she followed his lead and adjusted her hold according to his pressure. He hadn’t seen her, but he had to be aware of her help. She sensed his panic, as well as her own increasing dizziness, but she ignored both until he brought the chopper down.
She used the pipe again and knocked him out.
Then the tranquilizer fully hit. She grabbed for the dart and clutched the seat, but her efforts were too late. Samantha joined the co-pilot in oblivion on the floor.
Chapter Thirteen
Alex fought hand to hand with the final soldier, whose strength and training equaled his own. Blows were exchanged, as the man was out of bullets.
Alex hoped to keep him alive for interrogation. “If you give up now,” Alex said, holding the man in a head lock, “I won’t kill you.”
His answer was a knife in Alex’s gut.
Alex shoved him away, and yanked the knife free.
A gun was now in the man’s hands. “I found this on the ground. It uses hollow point ammo. You want to take a chance there’s a bullet left in here?”
“No.” Alex zapped him with a lightning bolt even as the man squeezed the trigger.
Alex bent over, breathing hard and willing his wounds to close. Thank God the guy had missed with the bullet, but damn, why hadn’t the fool given up? All of them. All four of the men had made the choice to die, rather than surrender. In their minds, there seemed no other option.
Who the hell controlled them?
Alex slowly straightened, every part of him sore, aching or bleeding. He caught sight of the downed helicopter crashed in a ravine about eighty feet away.
Thanks to the sliver of moonlight above, he could see inside the door. No movement showed there, or in the cockpit. He staggered toward the helicopter, praying that Samantha had survived.
He’d sent her there to do a job most men couldn’t handle. An image her body, riddled with bullets, flashed in his mind. Oh, God, no.
A crazy anger filled him, his roiling emotions darker than ever before.
She had to be all right. The men had orders to bring her in alive..
Blood dripped down his body from the various bullet and knife wounds, but he didn’t care. He felt shattered by the deaths of his men at his hands. Losing Samantha would destroy whatever humanity he had left.
Alex stumbled toward the Blackhawk. The chopper listed dangerously to the side. Black burns from the lightning strikes buckled the metal in places.
A terrible thought occurred to him. Had he killed her by taking out too many of the craft’s controls?
He peered in the doorway. The pilot lolled in his seat in the cockpit, his head tilted to one side. His head wound matched that of the man on the floor. Had they been so lax as to take off their helmets? Samantha had obviously taken advantage of that fact.
Bracing himself, Alex stepped into the chopper, careful not to rock it. From this vantage point, he could finally see her. He saw no wounds, but she lay sprawled lifelessly among the boxes and debris thrown around the helicopter.
He moved forward and carefully lifted her in his arms, then sat and settled her in his lap. It was then he saw the tranquilizer dart protruding from her thigh. Why hadn’t she pulled it out?
Because she’d been fighting for her life?
He yanked the dart free and held her to him, rocking her gently. “Come on, sweetheart, wake up. Use your magic healing powers to flush that crap right out of your system.”
No response came, but he hadn’t really expected one.. He grabbed her wrist and counted. Her pulse remained sluggish. Dangerously so.
Alex looked at the size of the dart, and doubted any dose that big had been meant for her. They probably planned to take down him or Begay with it. She weighed at least a hundred pounds less than either of them. A negative reaction to the tranquilizer drug combined with all the other insane chemicals in her system could be fatal.
He caressed her cheek, his throat thick with unfamiliar fear. “Hey, Gennaro. I’m getting pissed off. Wake up before I lose my temper and flame out on you.”
He wasn’t kidding. First, he’d killed men who’d been like brothers to him. Now this. She didn’t deserve what he’d put her through. He’d taunted her. Injected her. Dragged her halfway around the damn country and ordered her to pull off a critical mission he wasn’t sure she’d been trained to do.
Alex listened for the sound of approaching helos. Surely more would follow this one. He had to get Samantha out of here. They wouldn’t survive another attack with fresh soldiers.
He shifted Samantha to the co-pilot’s seat and tapped her check. “Wake up, Agent Gennaro. No sleeping on the job.”
She remained unconscious, her breaths barely perceptible.
An all too familiar fury churned within him, but he reined it in. His mind worked with icy control. Yes, Alex was angry about the harm he’d done to her, but Dr. Gennaro bore some of the blame for her condition, too. Samantha’s faith in her father made Alex question whether or not the doctor would risk hurting the daughter he seemed to love like this. Would he call her to come to him, thereby subjecting her to soldiers with no respect for life?
Alex didn’t know what to believe anymore, but one thing was clear. Gennaro didn’t have the means or the power to build an army of super-soldiers and outfit them with military equipment.
This treason, this betrayal of the military and basic human rights, went a lot higher than had first appeared. Was this an aberrant military op, or was the government in on it, too? If this was a government conspiracy, would there be a bloody coup d’état? Was Alex up against home grown terrorism by people who’d sworn to protect and serve their own country?
Sparks appeared around Alex’s hands and the heat of anger burst through him.
Time to clean up here and track these suckers down.
He made his way to the door, then leaped to the ground. Whoever had planned this missi
on, no doubt had others men on their way.
Well, they’d find they crossed the wrong man.
He’d take their helicopter, find their lair and exterminate them at the source. They’d created him. Now let them deal with the monster they’d made.
Alex stalked to the ruined pickup and salvaged what bags he could. Especially the one with the cash and false IDs. Hopefully, no one in Socorro would recognize the bullet holes in the bags.
Despite the fierce rein on his emotions, electricity flashed surrounded him as he walked. Small bolts of lightning shot off on either side. Flames flickered on his arms, but he kept the fires from burning anything. He kept control until he’d transferred their belongings to the helicopter.
Alex had walked around the soldiers’ bodies, not over them, as Begay always insisted. That went for the unconscious ones from the chopper he’d wrapped up like Christmas presents for the next assault wave as well.
Alex hoped Shaman was well and that his dark visions of an attack on the Rez did not come to pass. Alex would come back when his mission was finished. Hopefully, he’d bring Ramirez and Northbridge, too.
After stowing the last bag, Alex turned and let loose the pent up heat and energy. It felt good to release the power, to claim this once-hated part of himself.
He may never be ordinary Alex Winters again, but he could use his unusual gifts to save and protect those he believed in most.
He incinerated the truck and the dead bodies. No one would garner information from the remains. With no bodies, no crime could be tied back to Begay. He and his people had done nothing wrong. Alex would not let this psychotic traitor, however powerful or high ranking in the military or government, blame the deaths of his henchmen on the innocents here.
Alex walked back to the helicopter, wondering if it would even fly. He hoped he had enough fuel to make Socorro. He wasn’t sure he wanted to drag the Four Corners Regional Airport in Farmington into this. A lightning blasted chopper would be noticed.
He closed the helo doors and powered up. He’d blasted a lot of controls, but he had enough to fly, he hoped. He also had a full tank of fuel. Good, because this bird was heading to Socorro.