Extraction

by Marcus Richardson

  A scream from down the hill pulled Danika away from finishing the job. Darius had little chance of surviving two gunshot wounds, out here on his own with a ruined vehicle. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to walk up the hill and plant one between his eyes, but the knowledge that someone had survived the helicopter crash proved a stronger magnet. Her pistol still at the ready, Danika sprinted down the hill.

  She crashed down the side of the gentle slope like a rhinoceros in full charge. Danika felt the heat long before she reached the crash site and emerged from the trees into the blinding light of burning aviation fuel to find the twisted wreckage of a Russian Hind.

  That’s some serious hardware…

  As she approached the crash site with one hand up to block the light and heat from her face, she realized there was no way Cooper survived if he'd been in the pilot seat. The front half of the aircraft was…gone.

  Danika’s nose burned from the acrid, chemical-laden smoke, and though she felt blisters rising on her hands, she pushed through the pain and managed to find the source of the screaming. The ambassador's wife lay under a half-melted chunk of airframe, the left half of her lower torso just inches from the raging fire. Her scream set Danika’s teeth on edge—and she'd seen and heard just about anything a human in pain could say or do in her long career with the Council.

  "I'm here to help you!" she called out, tapping into all the strength she could muster to lift the flaming debris off of the poor woman's body.

  “Help me!” a woman—Mrs. Marquadt—screamed, the skin on the back of her hands blackened and blistered.

  “Is there anyone else?” Danika yelled as she got into position.

  “The pilot…”the ambassador’s wife cried. “And Cooper! Oh, God—he…he was with me!” she yelled, throwing her head back in pain.

  Mercifully, the ambassador's wife passed out as Danika dragged her a safe distance from the wreckage into the treeline. She had to duck a flaming branch that dropped out of the sky on her way back and realized time was quickly slipping through her fingers.

  The crash had ignited the surrounding forest—the winter-bare branches lighting like tender. If there was any chance she could find Cooper, it dwindled with every second it took her to paw through the debris.

  Sweat streamed down her face, and her hair hung slack, plastered to her face from heat and exertion. A small explosion—perhaps an oxygen tank or supplemental fuel-cell—sent a fresh ball of fire into the air on the far side of the wreckage, causing her to throw up both hands. She screamed in pain as the heat washed over her. Danika dropped low to the ground and used an arm to brush away another flaming branch that fell out of the canopy overhead.

  As the branch disappeared out of sight, she caught sight of one bloodied hand under a charred seat cushion.

  Please let this hand be attached to someone…

  Danika ripped the cushion away and found a smoldering, camouflage combat suit—and its arm—emerge under looked like a collapsed seating section.

  She tried to grab the metal frame and haul the wreckage off of the body—she didn't know if it was Cooper or the pilot—and yanked her hand back, hissing a curse. Using the charred cushion she’d just removed, Danika managed to pull the frame off of a body, and gasped when she saw the extent of the man's injuries.

  His left leg had been shredded by a close-range gunshot, and she hoped that the shoddy bandaging job was due to an amateur instead of the severity of the wound. The man—it turned out to be Cooper Braaten after all—was covered in blood from head to toe, his clothes singed and burned, and a nasty head wound was leaking blood down the side of his face.

  The front half of the passenger compartment collapsed under its own weight as the raging fire weakened the airframe. Sparks and flames flew over Danika and she swatted at them in a desperate attempt to keep Cooper's clothing from catching fire. Heaving and dragging his not inconsiderable weight, she managed to get him clear of the fire just before that part of the airframe collapsed.

  She wasn't quite sure if he was dead or alive until she pulled him next to the ambassador's wife and he let out a low moan.

  Exhausted from the heat and the effort of digging through the wreckage—and pulling two bodies free—Danika crumpled to the ground next to them, gulping sweet, cool air. With shaking, burned hands, she rummaged through her own pockets and pulled out a first-aid kit that included emergency burn packets.

  Slapping on the synthetic skin laced with medication and antibiotics to cover the open burn wounds on her hands and arms, Danika sighed in relief and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. She pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and hauled the unconscious form of the ambassador's wife up over her shoulders in a fireman's carry. She stood and let her anger at Jayne, Darius, and the entire situation tap into the relatively untested reserves she'd discovered in the Edinburgh gas attack.

  Danika glanced down at Cooper. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back." She settled the ambassador's wife on her shoulders, narrowed her eyes at the path before her, and raced up the hill to her car.

  36

  A Willing Volunteer

  Isle of Man, United Kingdom

  MacTavish knocked on the open door to Jayne’s ready room and poked his head in. Her castle on the Isle of Man was running on a skeleton crew, so informality was the rule of late.

  “What?” Jayne snapped, fussing with her hair and an uncooperative flat iron. She wondered who the hell decided to make Lisa Melton have straight hair. Her own hair was naturally wavy—it was going to be a bitch if she had to straighten it first every time she went out.

  “Just got a location on Braaten and the ambassador’s wife,” MacTavish announced. “They survived the stramash at Mikhailovich’s dacha.”

  Jayne stared at him in the mirror. “The what? Stra….” She closed her eyes. “Nevermind. You found them?”

  “Aye,” he said, leaning against the doorframe, right thumb tucked under the belt at his waist. “A Council crew embedded with the…” he looked down at his tablet in his left hand. “521st Air Mobility Operations Wing…dinna have a clue what—”

  “And?” she snapped, losing her patience with both the recalcitrant hair straightener and her right-hand man.

  MacTavish cleared his throat. “As it happens, these lads know what’s going down between yourself and the Council—they’d like as to offer their services to ye.”

  Jayne dropped the flat iron to the makeup table in disgust as pain flared in her thumb. “I hate these fucking things!” She spun on her stool to face him, half her hair straight, the other half curly and partly singed. “Remind me to find a new stylist,” she said, rubbing her burned digit. “What is it they’re offering?”

  “Access to Braaten. And the wife.”

  She pulled her wounded thumb out of her mouth and pursed her lips. “No, we’re not going to take him out, not on an Air Force Base—it’s too risky. And…” Jayne sighed. “I don’t know, it’s too…boring. That’s what Jayne would have done. I think Lisa is more of a smart, shifty bitch.” She looked up at MacTavish with a hint of a smile on her face. “Wait a minute. Didn’t Myles say something about that what's-it-called—that mind erasing thing…and a portable prototype?”

  MacTavish narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Aye…I believe he did.” He scrolled through some screens on his tablet. “Aye…here t’is,” he said, handing the device over.

  Jayne skimmed the document and smiled. “Clever boy, Jared. You’re going to make me a lot of money.” She handed the tablet back. “Get in touch with him—tell him we’ve got a donor for him.”

  “He’ll nay like it—wee gobshite wants a volunteer, aye?”

  Jayne rolled her eyes. “Fuck it—tell him Braaten volunteered then!” she said, rolling her ‘r’ in a crude mockery of MacTavish’s brogue.

  He grinned and nodded, unperturbed. “Aye. Not like the lad will ever know the difference.”

  “Thank you,” she said, turning back to the flat iron in exasperation.
/>
  “Oh, and I’ll find ye a hairdresser,” MacTavish said on his way out the door.

  Jayne stared at the hair straightener. “If I get burned one more time, I swear to God I’m going to use you for target practice.” She picked up the wicked thing and started in on her hair one more time. A second later, trying to see the far side of her head in the unfamiliar mirrors, she bumped her finger tip with the iron.

  “God damn it!”

  37

  Debriefing

  Ramstein Air Force Base

  Miesenbach, Germany

  Kyrsten Marquadt’s eyes fluttered open as she emerged from a sleep so deep and dark that it had been completely dreamless. She blinked in the harsh light of…

  Where the hell am I?

  She turned her head and a wave of nausea nearly overcame her. She clamped her jaw shut and swallowed audibly.

  "Easy…" a gentle, male voice said. A large hand embraced hers with a soft touch.

  "John?" she whispered without much hope that he was actually there. The touch was incongruent with her husband's normal attitude toward her. The last time he’d touched her so softly had been the night of their wedding. Normally he was cold and standoffish—like he was doing his duty just by standing next to her, and she should be thankful for it.

  "John?" she called out again a little stronger. Lack of sentiment and feeling aside, her spousal obligation compelled her to ask for him first.

  "I'm sorry ma'am, no, I'm not your husband."

  Her eyes opened wide and focused on a bank of monitors and medical equipment. For the first time she felt the tug of an IV in her right arm.

  Soft, clinically clean sheets pressed against the exposed skin of her right leg. Her left…a lance of pain shot up from her foot as she tried to wiggle her toes.

  "What happened?" she asked, as a dull ache seeped into her consciousness and threatened to bring tears to her eyes. "Oh, my God…" she gasped. The pain—and the memories—took a tighter hold.

  “Cooper?” It came out as a whisper.

  “Uh…nurse?" the stranger called, his hand still resting on hers. He hadn't squeezed or done anything. It was just simple human contact—she wasn’t alone. “No ma’am, I’m not Cooper. Nurse!” he yelled the last word.

  Another voice appeared in the distance. "You're awake, that's good…" a woman said, in a no-nonsense voice. "How are you feeling?"

  "How the fuck do you think I feel?" Kyrsten muttered through clenched teeth. She felt the warmth of a tear slide down her cheek. "God, it hurts," she whimpered.

  "Well, that's a good sign, actually. You've suffered severe burns to about half of your body. It's a miracle you’re even alive—so pain is good. It means you're still with us, you're still kicking and fighting."

  Kyrsten tried to arch her back as a lightning stab of pain from her seared nerve endings along the left side of her body shocked her torso. Something restrained her against the bed, making the raw skin chafe even more painfully. She shrieked, then clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed at the outburst.

  "Sssh, easy there," the deeper, male voice said. "Look, they've got you restrained to keep you from hurting yourself—it’s okay, see?"

  "He's right, Mrs. Marquadt—"

  "Don't call me that…" she said, her jaw tight with the effort to control the pain. Kyrsten closed her eyes, feeling the moisture against the side of her face as tears soaked the pillow supporting her head. "Don't call me that…not anymore…"

  You got me into this shit, John. You promised me everything and lied. You lied to me! Then you got yourself killed! You left me!

  "I can give you something to help take the edge off the pain…" the nurse said, grudgingly offering her a favor. "It's your call, but it’d be better if you held out. Trust me, you don’t want to become dependent on this stuff."

  "Please…" Kyrsten whimpered.

  “Look, you're not cleared for a full dose yet, but it's been long enough that I can give you at least a partial. How’s that? Hang on, this will take effect pretty quick…just hang in there…" the nurse said.

  A few seconds later, as Kyrsten did her best to keep from screaming out again, a warmth spread through her body, from her right arm into her torso and down into abused her legs. A second behind the warmth, she felt the cool tingling of a winter wind against her skin. The pain immediately subsided into something she could at least tolerate. For now.

  She took a long, shuddering breath, and exhaled.

  "Thank you…oh God, thank you…" she whispered as the pain receded to a manageable state.

  "You’ll be all right, Mrs.…uh, Kyrsten," the nurse replied. "You’ll be just fine." Kyrsten felt a hand pat her good foot.

  "Ma'am? Can you give me an update on my friend?" asked the stranger.

  Kyrsten heard what sounded like papers shuffling. "No, I'm afraid not. According to this…nope, he hasn't changed. But that's a good thing," she said quickly. "In situations like this, it's largely up to the patient." The sound of the clipboard being dropped back on a hook made Kyrsten's ears twitch.

  "At this point we’ve really done everything we can. He lost so much blood…he wasn't as severely burned as Mrs…uh, as Kyrsten, but with the gunshot wounds and the head injury…I just don't know. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more."

  The man grunted. "In that case he's going to be just fine. He's too damn stubborn the die."

  The nurse gave a slight snort of amusement. "I hope so." She paused for a second then asked, “Well. I'll be right outside the door, okay? Just let me know if you need anything—either of you."

  "Thank you ma'am."

  “Thanks,” Kyrsten mumbled.

  When she heard the door close tight, she risked turning her head and opening her eyes. The room swam about her in a fuzzy blur that reminded her of the last sorority party she'd been to back in college…how many years ago had that been?

  "Is it better now? The pain?" a dark shape said, just on the other side of her bed.

  She focused, frowning until the blur before her resolved into the concerned face of a rugged, rough-looking man. She blinked and regarded him closely. No, not rough after all, she corrected herself. Just tired. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he hadn't shaved in a week. A smear of something across his forehead look like soot, but could've been dirt. His eyes were clear and intelligent. She detected no malice whatsoever in his expression.

  "Who…where…?" she tried to ask, the words slurring out of her mouth as the powerful medication fought the pain and her consciousness at the same time. “C-Cooper?”

  "My name is Charlie Marshall, ma'am. A friend of Coop’s—Cooper. We uh…we used to work together."

  Kyrsten tried to smile. "That's…nice…wait…whoa—where is he?"

  Charlie moved, and after the world stopped spinning, her eyes focused on the slumbering form of a man resting in the bed next to hers. The blanket had been pulled up to his chest, but his exposed shoulders showed plenty of scars and one clean white bandage across his torso.

  "Cooper?" Oh God, he looks terrible!

  Charlie nodded. "He's a very close friend of mine…when I heard…ma'am, I'm sorry for your loss."

  Kyrsten shook her head, immediately regretting movement. She closed her eyes tight and clamped her jaw, forcing herself to breathe through her nose until the nausea subsided. Without opening her eyes, she whispered "Don't be…I'm not—not really. The only…John never loved me…"

  The gentle hand atop hers squeezed ever so slightly. "Ma'am, I'm happy you’re okay. And I know Cooper is, too—he wouldn’t allow them to treat him until he knew you were going to be okay.”

  She looked at Cooper and smiled, thinking back to that moment on the road when she’d first met him and he told her he was going to get her out of Russia. He’d been shot and laying in a pool of his own blood, but made the statement as if it were a fact, not a hope.

  “He doesn’t quit easy, does he?” she whispered, still watching her savior’s chest rise and fall in a stead
y rhythm.

  Charlie snorted. “No ma’am, not ever. He doesn't know the meaning of the word.”

  She nodded, suddenly remembering the sickening lurch of the security car when the Russian mafia had attacked them in Moscow. Her breath caught in her throat. She could still feel the hot bullet casings rain down the back of her neck. Her mouth twitched.

  "Max…Maxwell Kind…do you know—?"

  "I'm sorry ma'am, I don't know who that is," Charlie answered matter-of-factly. “Was he at the crash site?”

  "Stop calling me ma'am," Kyrsten said through clenched teeth. She allowed herself to relax a little, then tried again. "Please. It’s just Kyrsten."

  "Alrighty then, Kyrsten," Charlie replied softly, a hint of a smile playing across his lips.

  "What happened?" she asked. "We were…on a helicopter?"

  “You and your husband were kidnapped by the Russian mafia,” Charlie said softly.

  “I remember being pulled out of the trunk of a car…there was a gun…a man named Mikhailovich…oh God, he had John killed…” Her hands gripped the sheets and the heart rate monitor picked up its pace, beeping rapidly.

  "Sssh, easy now, Kyrsten,” Charlie murmured, taking her hand again. “He's gone—he’ll never hurt you or anyone else again."

  "How can you be sure?" she snapped, jerking her hand out of his.

  "Because Cooper put a bullet between his eyes," Charlie said, crossing his considerable arms and leaning back in the creaking hospital chair. "I don't know how, but he managed to get you out of a burning helicopter as well."

  “Beslan?" she whispered. On Charlie's blank look, she tried again. "The…the pilot?"

  Charlie frowned. "If he was still in there…I'm sorry, nobody could survive that. I saw the pictures—I'm not exactly sure how you two survived." He glanced at Cooper. “Your legs…you couldn't walk—and he was in no condition to escape the crash either. I think you two got lucky and were thrown clear in the explosion.”