“Dr. Schneider!”
She didn’t even turn around as I hopped off the bed, my footfalls silent and of no concern as gunfire continued to rip through the Colorado mountain air. I crept up behind her and locked an arm around her neck in a sleeper hold, another gift from Ivana, as I shoved her head forward with the other hand.
Immediately, her voice gagged, cut off as her hands reached back and frantically tried to grab at my face. At our feet, Schneider and Douglas continued to wrestle, their pants and heaving breaths filling the makeshift examination room.
Finally, my victim stopped fighting, her body going limp as I briefly cut the flow of blood to her brain.
Unfortunately, so did Dr. Schneider and his assistant.
Chapter Forty-one – Peter
The charges set by Wayne and Jones ripped through the compound, nearly knocking me and my men from our feet as we squatted against the wall. The noise was deafening as the shock ripped through the air in a wave, shaking the stonework we were leaned against like it was the drumhead of a snare.
I pulled out the scope and scanned the back. Men chaotically ran, suddenly on high alert as they flooded out of the house and over to the newly opened gap on the eastern wall. And out of the banquet hall came our friend the giant, his heavy footsteps adding to the tremors my legs were still feeling.
He glanced back toward the carriage house as he entered the yard, then swung his massive head back around to the other side of the building, almost as if he was deciding which was the more important objective to defend.
I held my breath as, for a moment, I considered that he might even head back inside.
We’d be up a creek, then.
I exhaled long and hard, though, as he eventually swung his body into motion and began trekking around the castle to the opposite side of the compound. I patted Murdoch’s shoulder firmly, giving him the signal to get me up the wall.
Both men linked their hands and I vaulted up, gripping the top of the stonework. I scrambled up, pulling my body into place, rifle in hand, and checked the perimeter again, just to make sure we were in the clear.
The building, a vine covered castle, seemed to reach so far into the sky that it might impale the moon if it tried something funny. Windows were all over the place, some lit, others unlit, as men and women scrambled to respond to the attack on their headquarters.
Gunfire opened up on the far side of the compound, the familiar rapid-fire crackling of the squad automatic weapon Jake Wayne favored. Already men were yelling, their voices distinct even among the sounds of rapidly firing bullets ripping into the compound.
I dropped my rifle and swung back around, planked on top of the wall with a hand extended down. Murdoch’s grip slapped into mine, and O’Dwyer lifted as I pulled. With our second man up top, we both pulled our third to the apex of the wall, then dropped down into the lush turf of Burton’s Folly backyard.
I scanned the back of the yard, my rifle ready but hanging low. You sight with your eyes, you bring the barrel of the rifle up to your target. A soldier doesn’t kill with their weapon, their weapon is only a tool.
As we covered the back of the yard, O’Dwyer moved to the jamming tower we’d dropped in next to, its lights blinking ominously over us as it powered out a signal that canceled most of the benefits of modern life over the small town in the valley below.
He popped the box and checked over the hardware.
“Can you do it?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I reckon so. Worked with these things, kind of, over in Djibouti for a hot minute.”
A few tense moments later, after stripping wires and crossing them, turning a few dials, and whacking the electrical box with his fist a few times, he slapped the metal box back into place.
“We good?” I asked, the bullets still sending a cacophony up into the world, making it a place of hellfire and chaos like any warzone I’d ever heard. “If not, we gotta go.”
“We’re good,” he said. “I think.”
“Gonna have to be good enough,” I said without looking back. I waved him on, pointing out toward the carriage house.
Body low, profile minimal, Frank streaked through the darkness of the yard, skirting along the wall we’d come in over. Even with my stellar vision I could barely make him out as he raced at a quick jog down toward the little garage and to our two unfortunate pack members that had been caught up in this whole thing.
“Godspeed,” I whispered before tapping Richard on the shoulder and pointing toward the twin doors leading into the banquet hall at the rear of the house.
And, like that, he and I were across the yard at a run, guns low, the world around us drenched in the smell of propellant, C4, and fear of what might be coming.
The only problem was, the stench of fear wasn’t coming from just them. It was coming from us, too.
Chapter Forty-two – Vanessa
Douglas dropped like a sack of potatoes, apparently due to a weak jaw and a crippling inability to take a well-placed kick.
“Ms. Springer!” Dr. Schneider shouted as he crab-walked back from me and the slumped form of his grad student, whom he’d just been happily pummeling. “What are you…?”
I advanced on him, fists clenched so tight at my sides the knuckles were whiter than the pale horse death is supposed to ride in on.
“What are you doing?” he stammered out again, actually completing his sentence this time. The look on his face had changed from one of a concerned parental figure, or learned professor, to a man who’d been caught by his wife doing something naughty. He kept crab-walking back, desperate to try and stay out of my way.
I corrected my own course to match his. “Can’t let you be awake, doc. Take it like a man.”
Finally, though, he’d backed himself into the corner of the room, and I came to a halt in front of him. In just my hospital gown and bare feet, I must have been pretty terrifying. He was trembling, after all. “Ms. Springer!”
“Doc,” I said as I glared down at him. “Give me two reasons why I shouldn’t beat you black and blue before I finally knock you unconscious.”
“I-I-I was kind to you.”
“You strapped me to a goddamn gurney,” I growled. “You pumped me full of drugs and you drew out my blood for these bastards. Try again.”
He opened his mouth, as if he might actually have something that could convince me to change my course, but shut it again.
“Why are they doing this?” I yelled. “Why are they trying to…to harvest us?”
“I-I don’t know! All I know is that they wanted your blood! That I’m able to study what’s left over.”
“Left over?” I asked, stopping as I heard feet go running by outside the door, men and women yelling about their radios not receiving anything, and not being able to transmit with them. When they’d passed, though, I continued my line of questioning. “What do you mean left over?”
“I mean, normally Mr. Finney just gives it to me. I don’t really even know why I’m here, Ms. Springer. I swear! I’m just a researcher they brought on recently. I’m not really part of this whole thing.”
“Tell me what you know!”
“Just that they call themselves the Council or something. The people who Finney works for, the ones who really own Jaeger-Tech. I don’t know, I don’t ask questions as long as the funding keeps coming and I get to work in peace!”
“So you can’t give me any real information? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He meekly nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Then I’m through with you.” His eyes went wide as he realized his usefulness had just run out the moment he admitted that he didn’t know anything worth my while.
I’m not going to lie, popping him with a firm snap kick to the face was one of the best feelings of my life.
His head rocketed back and cracked against the brick wall behind him with a sound you get when you thump a ripe melon. His eyes rolled back int
o his head at the trauma and he slumped over in the corner.
Outside, the gunfire continued to pop like firecrackers on New Year's Eve. In times like this, with the adrenaline pumping and your reflexes ratcheted up to eleven, there seemed to be space between the ticks of the clock, space where you could dance, and love, and live whole lives you’d never thought possible. It felt like it had been hours since the explosion, but I knew it had been barely moments.
Goddamn, I realized, I was starting to sound like Peter and the rest of those Special Forces guys.
Now, as the immediate threat began to fade away, I could feel his presence more strongly than before. He was close, so close somewhere just on the outskirts of my senses. And he was coming for me.
I went over to Douglas’s unconscious form, bent down, and untied one of his shoes. I wrinkled my nose in disgust as I pulled off an exposed dress sock and stood, the sweaty piece of cotton dangling from one hand.
Peter was here somewhere, and he was coming for me. But that didn’t mean I needed to just sit on my ass and wait for him. Jessica was still somewhere above me, locked in her tower like a low rent Rapunzel.
And, as her pack leader, she was still partly my responsibility.
Chapter Forty-three – Peter
We swept through the banquet hall, our carbines raised, our shoulders squared, our eyes lowered. Clearing a building like this with a two-man team wasn’t what we’d trained for. I knew we were opening ourselves up for error and to being blindsided by our opponents, but what were we supposed to do? You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.
“Clear!” Murdoch barked after sweeping his gun over the right side.
“Clear!” I shouted back as I finished on our left. “Move!”
Together, the pair of us streaked across the room with our gunner walk, careful heel-toe with each step that kept our rifles leveled. I opened the door and Richard covered the area on the other side.
“Clear!”
The majority of them were outside on the eastern side of the compound, facing off against Jones and Wayne, both hidden in the thick foliage beyond the walls of the castle.
We moved through the hall.
Just on the other side was the entrance to the circular stairs leading up into the tower where they were keeping our mates. It was the kind of stairs that wrapped around the outside of the tower, like you’d see in an old Robin Hood film, but each floor had its own room in the center. We moved across the floor, rifles raised.
As the gunfire outside sputtered to a pause, the sound of Matthew Jones’ rifle picked up during the lull. With as much ammo and explosives as we’d draped onto the two of them, they’d be able to hold out for a while, no matter what size of the force they were fighting.
Murdoch and I headed up the stairs, our bodies off the walls and in the center of the walk. With stonework like this, ricochets were one of our biggest concerns, and we wanted to keep our silhouettes minimal as we kept our bodies out of harm’s way.
Combat and firefights are about discipline and about habit and training. The moment you doubt your movement, the man on your flank, or your aim, is the moment you begin to lose. You drill conservation of movement, speed, and ammo into your head, heart, and hands. You make your body move the way it needs to move, to the point where it’s second nature, because if you don’t, you end up going home draped in a flag.
We ran into our first sign of resistance just as we reached the second floor.
The guard’s eyes widened as he saw us in our full tactical gear, and he tried to fall back with a measured stride as he attempted to draw his sidearm.
His hand only made it to the grip on his pistol. He never had a chance of it even clearing the holster. I looked right into his soul as Richard and I opened fire with our suppressed rifles, the subsonic ammunition popping barely louder than fireworks as half a dozen bullets dropped him like a sack of potatoes on the steps of the stairwell. His radio, crackling with impotent static, tumbled from his fingers with the weird finality of hard plastic scraping on polished stone.
Unflinching, we stepped over him and continued up the rightward bend to the second floor.
On our left, the second floor of the main manor opened up. Both of us swiveled our guns that way, and I briefly considered if we should sweep it. Earlier, when I’d been peering through the thermal scope, I’d seen Vanessa on the third floor of the central building which the tower was attached to.
But what if there was something else here? Some bit of information we could use as leverage against Jaeger-Tech?
No, it wasn’t worth it. We didn’t have the time.
We moved up the stairs to the third story.
We spotted another two guards approaching, this time running toward us as they went to join the fight outside. We didn’t speak, but just reacted: two to the head, two to the chest. We swiftly moved around their bodies, proceeding up the stairs. Our hands were blurs as we reflexively popped our jungle-clipped magazines and switched them from the one that was partially empty to the full side. As we reloaded, we reached the top of the stairs.
If this hadn’t been so deadly and real life, I’d have felt like I was in a video game as we advanced up the levels. The only question was when the final boss was going to appear.
We were at the third floor—the last one of the main building that the tower was attached to. The other two floors above us were simply rooms, makeshift holding cells where they were keeping Jessica.
“Sweep?” Richard asked, his voice low and close to my ear.
This was the floor I’d seen Vanessa on with the scope—the one where they’d had her lying down on some sort of bed or table, with equipment and personnel surrounding her.
What to do? Go in and find Vanessa now, then try to move up the tower and get Jessica so we could come back through? There was no telling what condition she was in.
Or did we get Jessica first and come back through to this floor, then recover Vanessa with an unarmed civilian in tow?
Somewhere far below us, I could hear the gunfire and a raft of more explosions from Matt and Jake, and my mind drifted over to Frank, Lacy, and Gen out in the carriage house. Had he managed to get them out safely? Was he encountering any resistance?
“Frost,” Richard said, his voice more urgent than before. I could hear the edge to his voice. I could hear his own desire to reunite with his wife, his true mate. “Make a decision.”
“Sweep. First Vanessa, then Jessica.”
His face twitched slightly and I saw the hurt in his eyes.
“Once we get her,” I whispered, trying to explain, “it’s a straight shot out of here if we already have Vanessa. We already know where she is.”
He sighed, and I could nearly feel the flash of resentment but he knew that he didn’t have time to argue the point. I think he also realized that, tactically, it made more sense for us to find Vanessa first.
We moved into the halls, our eyes searching for the room where they were keeping Vanessa, the second hand on my watch ticking away like the clock on a time bomb.
Downstairs, Jake and Matt would still be able to hold out for a while longer, but not indefinitely. What was going to happen when the personnel of Jaeger-Tech realized it was just a distraction?
If we were still stuck inside the building, we’d be cut off from any escape route.
And at the back of my mind was still that same worm of doubt and concern which had been there when we’d first reached this floor of the building: when was the final boss going to show up?
Chapter Forty-four – The Hunters
The man who’d called himself Jasper Davis decades ago stood across from Mr. Finney in the small study off the main hall. From the unflinching look on the man’s dark features, one would be hard-pressed to believe that the world outside was falling apart around their ears. Instead, he was casually pouring them both a cognac as bullets flew outside in the courtyard, and men scrambled to their defense.
Not that the
two men inside cared one way or another about catching a stray bullet. There was only one type that would hurt them, anyway, and Finney seriously doubted the shifters would have figured out which kind.
They'd moved inside from the carriage house doorway minutes after Jasper had arrived, Finney leading the way as they crossed through the garden. As far as they knew, the battle still raging on the other side of the compound was safely contained.
Jasper Davis broke the silence of the room. “I see from the events outside that you’ve made quite the mess of things, Finney.” His voice was thick, dripping with culture. At first, one could tell his accent was French Moroccan in origin, but once he continued to speak, the well-trained ear began to detect hints of other cultures mixed in like a melting pot—Russian here on the inflection of certain words, Arabic there on others.
“Is that the reason for your timely arrival?” the Brit asked as he graciously took the offered drink from his superior. “Did you not believe me capable of any action otherwise?”
“Oh, come off it. You know I’m here because this was an important operation, not because I doubted you.”
“Is that why you’ve been keeping tabs on me with Klaus? Because you’re fully confident in my abilities?”
The one-time Jasper Davis eyed Mr. Finney over the top of his glass as he took a drink of amber liquid. “I should have known not to put my faith in him.”
“Correct. Instead, you should have trusted me to do this on my own. I don’t need second-guessing from that oaf. No, instead I need loyalty and reliability from him.”
“How long have you known?”
Finney paused and considered lying to his superior, saying it had been since before yesterday. But what would be the point? He was likely as good as, if not better, than Finney at reading people. He'd see right through him. So he opted for the truth. “Yesterday at breakfast. His eye twitched.”
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