“Lorenzo!” Jill finally responded.
“You’ve got to get out of there. The Montalbans are coming to kill you.”
“I know. I just shot two of them, I think,” she replied, sounding rather flustered. “They showed up, but I had stuck out those claymores just like you showed me. I’m driving now. We’re both okay. I don’t know where we’re going though, I don’t think they’re following me, but I don’t know how they found us.”
“Tell Reaper that they’re triangulating off the radio signal he uses to fly the Little Bird. I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, still running. “Put Reaper on . . . Reaper? What do you see? What’s going on at the silo?”
“A counterattack. Exodus is getting slaughtered.” Reaper didn’t sound very good. He sounded kind of confused and out of it. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“What do you see?”
“Something . . . I don’t . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Come on man, focus, I’m going to be there in a second.”
“Don’t go there. Run, Lorenzo. Run away. Get out of there. Get on the chopper and fly away. Please.” His voice was desperate, and . . . afraid? He was miles away staring at a video screen.
“What is it?” It was unlike Reaper to freak out like this. He was young, but he had seen a lot. He had never choked on me before in all the years we had been doing this together. “What’s going on?”
“Quit yelling at me!” he cried. “I don’t know what it is, okay? Just get away from it!”
“Damn it! Reaper, listen to me. Take down Little Bird. The Montalbans found you because of that signal. Take it down now!”
“Okay. Okay. Okay,” he stammered. “Here’s Jill.”
“Honey, I’ll be in touch. Just keep driving.”
“Be careful, Lorenzo.” The line clicked off.
Then the choppers were in view. The four of us tore toward them at a full run, our breath leaving clouds of steam hanging behind us. The one working chopper’s blades were turning fast, only seconds from lifting off. There were a shockingly small number of people milling around near the choppers, and most of them were spread out in a skirmish line between the Halo and the pit, muzzle flashes indicating that they were firing against the silo.
Suddenly the chopper was airborne, blowing snow everywhere in a giant tornado. As I got closer, I could see a figure standing in the open door of the Halo helicopter. I only recognized that it was Svetlana by the big sniper rifle in her bandaged hands. She turned and shouted angrily back into the chopper’s interior, then turned around and gestured for them to go back down to pick up the other survivors.
There was a muzzle flash from inside the chopper, and Svetlana dropped from the back door of the helicopter and plummeted about twenty feet to the ground. She actually landed on her feet, but her legs immediately crumpled, broken beneath her.
“No!” screamed Phillips as we charged onward.
The rear of the chopper swiveled toward us as it continued to rise, tracers strobing from the door gun down into the Exodus wounded as Anders murdered everyone he could. A lone figure stood in the door, braced against a strut, her blond hair billowing in the turbulent wind around her. Katarina waved.
“Kat!” I shouted as I raised my gun and opened fire at the retreating chopper, but it was moving too quick. “Damn it!” That was our way out.
“Where’s the chopper going?” Fajkus shouted across the radio. “Wait, what the hell is tha—” His radio cut out suddenly.
“Attention, Exodus. This is Katarina. Our business arrangement has, sadly, come to an end.”
We’re screwed.
My team reached the remaining members of Exodus at the LZ. There were only a handful left, and all of them appeared to be injured. Anders had shredded the skirmish line with the chopper’s door gun, and there were screams from the dying. Shen and Phillips tried to help them while Roland attended to Svetlana, who was moaning in the snow, a jagged chunk of bone sticking out the side of her pants.
“Fajkus! This is Lorenzo. Come in.” There was only static on the line. I realized that all of the gunfire from the silo had ceased, and with the chopper getting further away, the compound was gradually quieting. After so much commotion, it was rather disconcerting. I glanced around. “Who’s in charge?”
The shell-shocked Exodus survivors looked at each other, trying to ascertain who was the senior member still standing.
“I believe that would be me.” A deep voice from the direction of the silo. I turned my flashlight on the approaching figures. One large man had a second smaller man over his shoulders in a fireman carry. I recognized them immediately.
“Antoine,” I said, glad to see it was somebody I could count on. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Fajkus is unconscious,” the tall African grunted as he gently lowered the other man to the ground. Fajkus’s parka was covered in blood and torn open in several places. “Everyone else is dead.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said tersely.
“Agreed,” he glanced upward. “Why did the helicopter leave? Why did it fire on us?”
“Long story,” I replied, looking over the carnage. Exodus had been exposed. “Fucking Anders. We can grab some vehicles and head for town.”
“Negative,” Antoine shook his head. “Reinforcements from the mines are blocking the road. They will be here soon.” What went unsaid was that whoever had just killed most of Exodus in the last few minutes was still in the compound with us.
I scanned the compound. Flames were billowing upward from a dozen points and the air tasted like burning rubber and diesel. “Okay, we take the back way out, the way my team came in. We rope down to the valley floor, and then hoof it up the canyon.”
Antoine glanced around at the many wounded, both of us already knowing that many of them were not going to make it. The Plan C escape route was a worst-case scenario even if you were healthy, let alone carrying a bunch of injured. He raised his voice so that everyone could hear. “Exodus, my brothers. Move quickly. Take ammunition from the dead and the other Halo. Everyone that can walk, help those that cannot. Follow Lorenzo. He will show us the way out.”
“Brother,” Shen said. I jumped, adrenaline-soaked nerves expecting another one of those silent, hooded freaks to have shown up, but Shen was just talking to Antoine. The two men embraced. “I’m glad to see you made it.”
“We must hurry.” Ling’s former teammates began helping the wounded. There were only a few of us in any shape to fight; me, Shen, Antoine, Phillips, and Roland. There were four others a lot worse off. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how many men Exodus had brought it, but it had to have been at least sixty or seventy. Svetlana screamed as Phillips shoved the bone back into her leg and wrapped it in gauze.
“Damn you, Katarina,” I whispered to myself as I led the way back across the compound, a horde of fanatics only minutes behind us. This was going to be tight.
My radio chirped in my ear. I hit the mike, expecting news from Reaper or Jill. Instead it was Katarina, calling to gloat. I felt an indescribable ball of rage bubble up from inside my stomach. It made me warm.
“Well, well, well, you’re in a predicament now, aren’t you, Lorenzo, my dear?”
“I thought you wanted The Crossroads more than you’d want revenge. I was a fool to believe you.”
“Yes, and I was a fool to trust you all those years ago. Now you know how it feels. You abandoned me when I needed you, and now I’m abandoning you.”
“So that’s what this is about, then?” I spat. I moved quickly through the wreckage of the compound, running forward, and taking up a cover position as the others followed more slowly. “You’re willing to let all these good men die just out of spite?”
Kat laughed over the radio, having a good old time. “No, of course not, silly. That’s absurd. I was going to betray them no matter what. That’s just sound business. This was a gamble for me to not only utilize Project Blue, but also to become the sole rul
er of The Crossroads, like Big Eddie before me. Being able to destroy you along with Exodus was just a happy bonus.”
I didn’t respond. Half of my brain was trying to watch my surroundings, the other half was a calculating how I was going to track Katarina down and kill her. I paused, waiting for Exodus. Something moved in the shadows ahead. I hit the spot with my flashlight, but whatever it was had already moved.
“Do you know why I’m calling you?” She didn’t bother to wait for my response. “I just wanted to explain myself, and perhaps, to hurt you a little bit more. I feel I owe you that. After all, I loved you once.”
“You chose Big Eddie over me.”
“Oh, how stupid you are. You still don’t get it, do you?” she asked as I leapt over more dismembered bodies. An arm dangled from a nearby roof, drizzling blood. “Of course I was loyal to the Montalbans. I always have been. Back when we worked together, all those jobs that we did, you were Big Eddie’s right-hand man, and yet you never met him. I was always the go-between. I was the one that had to prove myself to the Montalbans, not you. I had to earn their respect.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
“Do you remember, once, so long ago, you always warned me about how people like us should never reveal our real identities to anyone? I heeded your advice. I never told you my real name. You were weak, and you told me yours, Hector Romasanta. So allow me to return the favor. My real name is Elizabeth . . .”
One of the Exodus operatives slipped in the snow behind me. The injured man he was carrying screamed as damaged nerves struck the ground.
“Katarina . . .”
I kept seeing shapes moving ahead of me, just out of the view of my light, but I couldn’t catch them. I kept moving.
“. . . Montalban.”
I stopped. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Her laugh sounded distorted through the radio. The chopper was getting further away, and the reception on my portable was starting to break up. “No. My older brother was Rafael Montalban. He was father’s favorite, as he was the legitimate heir. Eduard, or Big Eddie, as he insisted on being called, was next in line, but Eduard was always a little off, a little crazy, but at least his mother was respected English royalty. Rafael was a prodigy, Eduard liked to burn things and hurt animals. I was the youngest, and least legitimate of all my father’s children. My mother was a Swiss whore.”
“Crazy and sleazy runs in the family,” I snarled.
“Yes indeed. Eduard hurt me many times, but I thank him for it now, for it made me strong. After Father died, Rafael took care of the legitimate family business. Eddie inherited the dark side. There was nothing left for me. I was unwanted, unloved. So if I could not receive my family’s love, then I would earn it. That is when I went to work with you, to prove my worthiness to my brothers.”
“You used me, even back then.” This changed nothing. I was still going to get out of here and kill her, but at least it put her damaged nature in perspective.
“Oh, at first, but I really did love you. You were the one that made me choose, choose between happiness and destiny. You never should have done that, Hector.”
A thought flashed through my mind, a memory of Thailand, a few years ago, as the Fat Man, Big Eddie’s indomitable bodyguard, had arrived to blackmail my team with information about our real families. I had never understood how Big Eddie could have learned so much about me. “You . . . It was you that gave Big Eddie my family. It was you that forced me into the Zubara job.”
“Of course. When Eddie told me he needed the best for Zubara, you were the only man for the job. I was glad to give him your real name. I prayed for your death every day. But somehow, impossibly, both of my brothers died instead. Brave Rafael murdered by Majestic, and beautiful Eduard, dead by your hand. The great Montalban dynasty, one of the great Illuminati families for over five hundred years, shattered, and now scorned by the other legitimate families. But fate has smiled upon me. Anders has given me the key to Project Blue, a brilliant plot to put the Illuminati in their place, and with it, I will reclaim my family’s glory. The other families will kneel at my feet.”
“You’re toast. Jihan will destroy you.”
“The Pale Man’s power ends at the border of The Crossroads. I hoped to use Exodus to end him and regain this kingdom that Eddie built, but I don’t need it anymore. I am on to bigger and better things.”
I reached the gap in the back wall. The guards’ bodies that we had left in the shadows under the broken rebar were gone. I saw no movement, so I proceeded to secure the rope, my mind still reeling from the information I had just been given. “What about my brother?”
Her voice was breaking up badly now. I could barely hear her through the static. “Hector, always so loyal to everyone except for me. Your brother is still alive, for now, but only because Anders has a use for him. Blue is coming—d” Static interrupted the transmission. “When it—the world—” The signal was fading.
I smashed the button on my mike. “You know what the last thing I told your darling Eddie was before I blew him to pieces?”
“What was that?”
“I’ll see you in hell.”
The signal was gone.
Chapter 23: Weakness
Leaving the Body
VALENTINE
The Dam
We’d been given a second lease on life. At least, that’s how it felt. The situation was still dire. We’d lost a large chunk of our force, we had many wounded, and our exfil plan had gone to shit, but we were accomplishing the mission, and it looked like we would actually live to talk about it.
Despite the good news, we were in a real hurry. There was no telling when Sala Jihan’s forces would return to the dam. We had no idea what was going on at the fortress. No one was answering the radio over there, and the distance and terrain made communications difficult to begin with. Nothing seemed to be happening in town as near as we could tell.
Only one of our original vehicles was still in driving shape, but it didn’t matter. We had plenty of trucks to choose from. One had only to pull out the dead driver and not think about sitting in someone else’s blood. In this fashion we put together a new convoy and tried to contact the people that were waiting for us at the rendezvous point.
Despite our heavy losses, Ling was actually smiling. Katsumoto, limping badly from a bullet in his leg, was still alive, and we’d beaten back the enemy, at least temporarily. There’s a certain rush that comes with completing such a dangerous mission that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. The look on her face gave it away.
It never lasts. Sooner or later reality always catches up with you. It caught up with us when the two of the wounded who had been at the dam with Katsumoto succumbed to their injuries. It was driven home when Katsumoto received a static-filled radio transmission from Antoine.
“Sword Three, Sword Three, this is Sword Four.”
Katsumoto and Ling exchanged a knowing look. Ibrahim had been Sword One. Fajkus was his support Element, Sword Two. Sword Four was Lorenzo’s team.
“This is Sword One,” Katsumoto replied calmly. “What is the situation?”
There was a long pause, filled with static. “We have failed.”
Katsumoto closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. Ling lowered her head. “Understood. What happened?”
“I do not know. Sword One took his element down into the pit. They are all lost. Sword Two attempted to come to his aid, and they suffered severe losses as well. Sword Two Actual is catatonic. I am in command now.”
“Are you egressing on the helicopters?”
“Negative. One helicopter was lost. The other left without us. The Montalbans have betrayed us. That woman took her remaining men. They fired on us as they left, killing several more men.”
“Treacherous whore!” Ling snarled, her hands balling into fists.
“We are cut off by reinforcements from the mines. Our only means of exfiltration is down the cliff, on foot.”<
br />
“We will come get you, brother. It will take us some time, but we will come get you. You will not be left to die. We will meet you at the emergency rendezvous point with enough vehicles to extract you.”
“We will lose radio communications as we go down into the valley. It is a long walk to the rendezvous point, and we are carrying wounded. Our chances of making it are not great. Do not wait for us too long.”
Katsumoto’s face was a mask of resolve. “The Montalbans have betrayed us, but they will pay dearly for it. Our part of the operation has succeeded. We are preparing to initiate as we speak. This foul place will wither and die.”
Antoine actually sounded happy about that. “That is the best news I’ve heard all night,” he said. “Good luck, my friend.”
“And to you,” Katsumoto replied.
“Wait,” I said, before the Exodus commander signed off. “Is Lorenzo still alive?” Katsumoto relayed my question to Antoine.
“He is still alive, Mr. Valentine. He is with us. Do you wish to speak to him?”
I took the radio from Katsumoto. “Not really. Did he find his brother though?”
“I’m afraid not. He tells me that that, too was a Montalban ploy. His brother was never here. We’ve all been deceived.” The radio went to static for a moment. “He also suggests that you go fornicate with yourself.”
“Likewise. Valentine out.”
As the last of us cleared the dam, Ling and Katsumoto consulted on a plan. We had too many wounded to all go to Antoine’s rescue. Some would not last the night if we had to fight our way to our friends. There was little choice: we’d have to split up.
Katsumoto wanted to lead the element that rescued Antoine, of course. He was the senior Exodus commander on scene now, and saving his people was his duty. His right knee had been shattered by a bullet, though. He could move under his own power only with the aid of an improvised crutch, and he’d lost a lot of blood. He looked tired and pale.
The rescue mission fell to Ling. She’d been through a lot this night, but she only had minor injuries. She accepted her task solemnly and swore to Katsumoto that she’d get Antoine out if there was any possible way. The call then went out for volunteers, those who were still able to fight and wanted to go. As near as I could tell, every single Exodus operative still walking (and some that weren’t) raised his or her hand, Skunky included.
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