“Keep it up, little one, and I’ll be on the phone to your Dom. Reggie will be more than happy to tan your hide tonight.”
The secretary giggled. They both knew Colleen loved to get spanked by her Master. “Yes, Sir.”
Turning back to Kat, Jake pointed to the stairs. “All kidding aside, please go lay down for a bit, Kat. Take Beau with you. As soon as I hear them nearing the house, I’ll come get you.”
She grumbled, but headed for the staircase, her eyes feeling heavy from the stress. “Bossy Doms. Heir, Beau.”
* * *
As the canine followed Kat, Jake turned to Colleen. “Did you get a hold of Tiny yet? I want him here as an extra precaution.”
“I spoke to him, and he said he’d be here as soon as he can, but it’ll be about two hours. He had to take his mom for an MRI of her knee to see if she needs surgery. As soon as he drops her off, he’ll be on his way.” The phone rang, but she continued as she reached for it. “And don’t forget I’m leaving in about a half hour. I have to go take the firearms training course Ian scheduled me for, but I can cancel if you need me to.” Not waiting for an answer, she brought the phone to her ear. “Hello, Trident Security. How can I help you?”
Happy it would leave him with one less person at the compound to worry about, Jake gave her a quick wave indicating she should leave for her course, and then headed for the war-room. He’d promised Brody he wouldn’t touch anything except the camera feeds and communications equipment. The geek was very anal about who was allowed in his technological lair. There was also a spare company laptop which Brody had set up for him, refusing to give him access to the mainframe computer, or as Egghead called it, his baby.
Gripping the desk chair, Jake made sure it was under him before sitting. His perception was off because of the eye patch, but he’d gotten used to it after the first two days. Still, when he went to grab things, he didn’t always get it on the first try. Waking the laptop from sleep mode, he checked the time. About fifty more minutes before they got there. Nothing to do, but wait…
Chapter 21
“Can’t you drive any fucking faster?”
“Relax, Boomer.” Ian waited for an oncoming car to pass, then drove around the little old lady behind the wheel of her seven-year-old Ford Taurus, cruising at ten miles under the speed limit. The communications van driven by Marco followed suit, as well as Devon in the other SUV. “We’re loaded to the gills with weapons and ammo, so I have no desire to get pulled over. They said two hours, and we only used an hour and ten of it. Five more minutes and we’re there. Now chill, or I’m leaving you in the com-van.”
“Like fucking hell!”
Ignoring his youngest employee, Ian continued to the Michaelson’s house in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. He parked a few hundred feet down from the driveway, out of view of anyone looking out the windows. The other vehicles pulled up behind him and the occupants got out, scanning the area. In this part of Sarasota, the property lots were larger, so houses were more spread out. Rick and Eileen Michaelson had fallen in love with their semi-retirement home after house-hunting for days with a realtor eleven years ago. It was secluded enough for quiet and privacy, yet close enough to others, so they could become friends with their neighbors. A six-minute drive was all it took to reach the more populated residential and commercial areas.
While it sucked their neighbors had been too far away to hear screams for help, if there’d been any, it was to the team’s advantage. Once they blended into the tree-line, they wouldn’t have to worry much about someone calling the police regarding a small army of men with guns running around. While Boomer got out, joining the rest of the team, Ian tapped on the microphone of his headset. “Reverend, you there?”
A burst of static came through then cleared. “Yeah, Boss-man. What’s your status?”
“Just pulled up. How are things there?”
“Five by five. Just going to go get Kat. Stay safe, brothers.”
“Amen.” Ian exited the vehicle and met the rest of the team by the side of the com-van where weapons and equipment were being double-checked and strapped on. The men were dressed in camouflage and armed to the teeth. “Carter, find yourself a sniper position. My guess is they’re in the family room. It’s the largest and has the most windows to see if anyone is coming. Rear of the house, northwest corner. Scan the front and side windows for tangos on your way.” Without a word, the spy disappeared into the trees with his trusted MK-11 sniper rifle. “Polo, Dev, take one of the SUV’s, drive past the house and park up the road. Approach by foot from that direction. Work your way around and stand-by to breach the kitchen door. Check the windows on your way too. Egghead, I want to know where the heat signatures are and how many, then use the side door to the garage. Wait a count of three after we breach—I don’t want you getting in the way of any crossfire.” He turned to Chase’s two men. “Burke, Dusty, you’re with the geek.”
Brody reached into the van and pulled out the handheld heat-detecting device, then took off after his two temporary teammates with all of them using the tree-line as cover.
“Boom, you’re with me at the front door.” Ian waited for a reply, but Boomer was staring in the direction of his parent’s home. “Boomer!” He got in the younger man’s face. “This is just like every other mission, frog. I need your head in the game.”
Knowing his boss was right, Boomer took a deep breath and went into battle mode. Anything else could result in one of his teammates getting hurt or killed, and he’d be damned if he was the cause of that happening. “I’m good. Let’s just do this.”
Ian waited a moment until he was clearly satisfied his friend was in the right mindset. Then readying his assault rifle, he took point, leading the way to the edge of the property. The house sat back from the road, and, thankfully, Boomer’s mom loved to landscape with trees, shrubs and flowers. There wasn’t too much to use as cover, but enough, so it was better than nothing.
Going about twenty feet into the trees parallel to the property, they stopped and waited for the team to check in with intel. Carter was first. “Blinds are all pulled shut. No signs of movement.”
“Fuck!”
Ian glared at Boomer, but didn’t say anything about his low volume outburst. He’d do the same if the situation was reversed. “Heat signatures?”
It was a few moments before Brody’s reply came over the airwaves. “Nothing at the front end of the house. Going around the east side. Blinds are shut here, too.”
The waiting was killing Boomer, but he knew it was necessary. The more intel, the better chance they had at ending this without getting his parents killed—if they weren’t dead already. Pushing the ugly thought from his head, he listened for his teammate’s next report.
“No heat, east side.”
“Take it around back,” Ian replied before taking off for the front door. Staying low and watching for anything out of place, Boomer followed him. After using two trees to stop and scan the area, they reached the porch and silently flanked both sides of the front door, waiting for another update. Devon and Marco alerted they were ready for the breach command at the rear kitchen door.
“Two positives, full heat, ninety-nine and ninety-eight degrees. Both on the floor of the family room.”
“Just two? What the fuck? Take it around the west side, Egg. Make sure there are no surprises. Dev, Burke, make sure there’s no booby-traps on your entrances…I don’t like this.”
Boomer didn’t either as he began to inspect the door frame. The only good thing was, if it was his parents lying on the floor, they were still alive, otherwise their heat signatures would be cooler. Unless they’d been killed and the tangos left only moments before the team arrived. But why would they have done that without Kat and the money?
On Ian’s side there was a thin row of paned windows down the length of the door. He took a quick peek then shook his head. “Nothing that I can see.”
Brody rounded the house, jogging up to t
hem. “No one else in the house, Boss-man.”
Grimacing, Ian acknowledged him with a nod. Something was wrong…seriously wrong. But the only way to find out, was to enter the house…very carefully. “Burke, Egghead’s with us, so it’s just you two. Since you can’t see inside, I don’t want to take a chance the door is rigged, so wait for us to let you in. Dev, how’s the back look?”
“Clean.”
“All right. Pick the lock, instead of knocking it down. Let me know when you’re ready.”
Boomer was working on the dead bolt and once it clicked he turned his attention to the lock on the knob. In less than two minutes, they were ready to go. Ian got the ‘ready’ from Devon as Boomer stood with his hand on the doorknob, waiting for the signal.
“On three. One…Two…Three.”
The front and back doors opened simultaneously, and the five teammates stormed in. Since he didn’t have a shot from the trees, Carter had shouldered his rifle and hoofed it to the back door, two steps behind Marco, with his Sig Sauer pistol in hand. Weapons at ready position, they moved systematically through the house, clearing each room, closet, and hiding place along their way to the family room. Brody stopped at the door leading to the garage, and after checking for booby-traps, opened it for the others.
Nothing could have prepared Boomer for what waited for them in his parent’s family room. His mother was frantically trying to get out of the duct tape which was wrapped around her bare legs from ankles to knees. Her arms were also taped behind her in similar fashion. The bastards had even put it over her eyes and mouth. All the poor woman could do was squirm futilely.
But it was his dad who held Boomer’s shocked attention. Lying in a pool of blood, the man was ashen. Like his wife, Rick had been trussed up, but it appeared the Russians didn’t see a need to cover his face as well. Boomer’s feet were nailed to the ground as the others pushed past him, cursing and dropping to their knees to help the couple.
Next to him, Ian was barking into the phone, demanding 911 send an ambulance to their location for a home invasion gunshot victim. That broke Boomer from his shock and he dove to help Devon and Brody free his father. Now that he was closer, he began assessing Rick’s injuries. In addition to a gunshot wound to the abdomen, he’d been beaten….viciously. His face and torso showed bruises, swelling, and split skin which had to have occurred over several hours. Brody began handing them items from an emergency medical pack, ripping open the packages as he went. Pressure dressings were applied as Devon worked to start an IV. Rick’s breathing was labored, but thank fuck, he was alive.
Behind Boomer, Marco and Carter cut through Eileen’s bindings, and began to peel of the tape from her face, very slowly. They’d wait until they got her to the hospital and let the doctors use an anti-adhesive to pull the rest off. Duct tape could be like glue against the skin and was more painful to remove the longer it was on. As it was, they couldn’t help but peel off a layer of skin from her lips and parts of her eyebrows. But it didn’t seem to bother her, because when they freed her mouth, she started screaming for her husband, desperately trying to get to his side as they held her back. Knowing he needed to calm his mother, Boomer switched places with Marco, who took over holding the pressure bandage to staunch the flow of blood from Rick’s abdomen.
“He’s alive, Mom. Pop’s a fighter. We got this. We’re gonna get him to the hospital and he’s going to be all right.” Sitting on the floor, Boomer had his arms wrapped around his crying mother, rocking and assuring her everything was going to be okay. He released her only for a moment when Burke and Dusty began collecting everyone’s weapons to hide them in a concealed compartment in the van before the cops showed up. Since none of them had been fired, the guns weren’t needed as evidence and would only cause trouble with the locals. The camouflage clothing could be explained by saying they’d been on their way to play paintball or something stupid like that.
Ian squatted down next to Boomer and his mom. Taking her hand, he squeezed until he got her attention. “Eileen, we’re doing everything we can for Rick, but I need you to tell us what happened before the cops get here.”
When she didn’t answer right away, Boomer knew her adrenaline was wearing off and shock was settling in. He gave her a shake and tugged her chin so she was facing him. “Mom. Help us out. You gotta tell us what happened. Where’d they go? When did they leave? How many of them were here?”
“I…uh…oh God, Ben!” Her body began to shake.
“It’s going to be all right, Mom. But we need to know. When did they leave? How long ago?”
Eileen shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She’d no concept of how long she’d laid there, struggling to free herself or reach Rick after she’d heard the gunshot. “It was…it was a few minutes after you called. They…there were three of them…they said that was all they needed us for, then they covered my eyes and mouth. They were being…being rough with me, and Rick yelled for them to leave me alone. That’s when I heard the gunshot. They had beaten him a few times while…while we were trying to get a hold of you.”
Boomer swallowed the guilt swarming through him. He’d been getting laid while his parents were being brutalized.
“I don’t know how long it’s been. They left right after that. Rick was able to talk for a while, but then he started fading. When he stopped talking, I thought he was…” She choked on the last words.
“He’s not, Mom. Pop’s alive and he’s going to stay that way.” When she began crying harder again, he pulled her back into his arms and looked up at Ian, who now stood next to Carter. “They’re going after Kat. This was all a ruse to get most of us away from her.”
The two men nodded in grim agreement. Boomer reached for his headset only to find it’d fallen from his ear in the confusion of the room. “Tell Reverend to get her to the panic room.”
Ian looked at Carter and jutted his chin toward Eileen. The spy knelt and took her from Boomer so he could stand to talk with his boss. Ian grabbed his arm and pulled him into the kitchen. It was far enough away for Eileen not to overhear them, yet Boomer could still see what was going on in the other room. “We can’t get a hold of him. He’s not answering the com or his cell. There’s also no answer at the office or front gate.”
“Fuck!” His words were hissed low, but urgent and desperate. “They’re already there! We’ve got…shit!” He looked at his watch. “If they left right after the call…an hour drive…fuck, they would’ve gotten there almost thirty minutes ago. How are we going to get back there? It’s probably too late! Shit!”
At the beginning of Boomer’s panicked rant, Ian had hit a speed dial number on his cell. He held up a hand to shut him up as the connection was made. The younger man glared at him, then turned to watch his teammates work on his dad. Fear like he’d never known punched him in his gut—fear for his father, and fear for the woman he loved more than life itself. Sirens penetrated his brain. Help was on the way and it was getting closer by the second. Help for his father, but what about Kat…and Jake and the others?
* * *
Placing his hand on his teammate’s shoulder in sympathy and solidarity, Ian waited impatiently for his call to be answered.
“Can this wait, Ian? I’m walking into a meeting with POTUS.”
He didn’t give a crap that the deputy director of the FBI was entering the Oval Office. Not when Kat, Jake, and the others were in danger. “No, it can’t.”
Larry Keon sighed heavily over the phone then said something to someone else before coming back on the line. “You’ve got two minutes.”
After filling the man in, Ian told him what they needed. “How fast can you get me a chopper back to the compound? And as much as I hate to ask, can you send Stonewall’s SWAT? Things may go to shit by the time we get there, if they haven’t already.” The Tampa FBI Special Agent in Charge, Frank Stonewall, and the men of Trident weren’t the best of friends after a few past incidents. The man hated Carter even more with the feeling being mutual. The o
rder coming from the SAC’s superior would ensure there were no arguments or delays in the SWAT team’s response.
“I’ll call you back in a minute. Text me the coordinates of their house. And tell Carter to stay out of trouble. I’m going to need him by the time my meeting is over, and I don’t want to have to bail him out.”
“Will do.” He hung up just as a slew of police officers and paramedics filled the house. Burke and Dusty had met the cops outside and told them the suspects were long gone, so no weapons were drawn. Brody, Marco, and Devon moved out of the way for the emergency personnel to take over, but stayed close to assist if needed. Carter stood by Eileen, holding her hand as a female EMT began to assess her for injuries.
Next to Ian, Boomer’s brow was scrunched in confusion. “Why didn’t they kill both of them? I mean, I’m thanking the good Lord they didn’t…but why? These guys don’t give me the impression they have any ethics, so why let them live?”
Ian gestured to the organized chaos with his hand. “For this. This is to hold us up even further. It’s giving them more time to get to Kat and force her to give them the money. If we walked in, and there was nothing more we could do here, we would’ve already been on our way back to the compound.” He was about to say more, but his phone rang. “Keon, what’ve you got?”
“State Police chopper will be landing in the schoolyard up the street from the Michaelsons’ within the next ten minutes. SWAT is on the way to the compound. Give me the officer in charge at the scene, and I’ll clear you out of there.” Waving over a sergeant, Ian explained who the other man on the line was then handed him the phone, ignoring the supervisor’s astonished expression.
* * *
Boomer was being torn in half. He wanted to stay with his folks, but Kat needed him. As the paramedics placed his father on a gurney, he approached his mother who was sitting on the couch with Carter. Boomer knelt in front of her, taking her attention away from Rick. The pale complexion of her face served to make the tape’s sting glaringly obvious, and he winced, knowing it had to be painful. “Mom…”
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