Siren (Awakened Chronicles Book 1)

by Harley Austin

  “Follow them. Stay out of trouble. Got it.” He nodded.

  “This isn’t some game, Liam. If we screw this up—”

  He nodded, a look of dead seriousness crossing his face. “I know.”

  31

  W hat are you doing down here, Mac?”

  The XO was half startled to see two of his unit already in the engine room. Obviously Roberts had assigned them a new watch duty.

  “What I always do—just checking things out.”

  “You’re not supposed to be down here, Mac. Captain’s orders. You know better.”

  Mac sighed. “He’s going to kill her. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “It’s not like you’re married to her—”

  “You have a girlfriend, Camp. What if Roberts decides she needs to die next?”

  The former Navy Seal visibly struggled with the thought.

  “Wouldn’t you try to save her?”

  “Yea. Sure. Probably.” Camp agreed.

  “Well in less than forty-eight hours, Roberts going to kill my girlfriend. Think about that for a minute. And then put yourself in my shoes.”

  “Sucks to be in the situation, Mac. It’s why we don’t fraternize with the prisoners. You know that,” the other officer reminded him.

  “She’s not just a prisoner—she’s a goddess for Christ sakes! Doesn’t that mean anything you?”

  One of the guards motioned with his rifle, “Upstairs, Mac. Take it up with the Captain. We’re just following orders.”

  Mac frowned, looking down at the deck and turning back toward the ladder. “Alright. I just hope this never happens to any of you—”

  Both officers suddenly felt the sting of something in their thighs. Both of them went immediately for the darts sticking out of them, pulling them away quickly. But it was too late. The drug was already working its way through them quickly.

  “Aw, Mac—DAMMIT!” One of them frowned at him.

  Mac shrugged. “Sorry, gentlemen.” He watched both of them slump slowly to the floor.

  * * * * *

  “Monitoring is offline.” Another of the Seal team entered the bridge.

  “So bring it back online.” Roberts countered.

  “Can’t. Mac stole the hard drives running those servers.”

  “How do you steal a hard drive from a server?”

  “They’re hot-swap, Cap’n. In case one goes down. Instant replacement. It takes two seconds to pull them.”

  “So the whole ship is blind now?”

  “Except for Wi-Fi; cellphones and the walkie-talkies still work.”

  “Jesus. What about the freezer cell? Can you fix it?”

  “Negative, Sir. All of the compressors’ refrigerant was drained. We have extra Freon, but not enough to refill the whole system. It’s an exotic blend; it will take at least a week for us to get new canisters.”

  “And how long before her cell temp warms up?”

  “As cold as it is in there right now, a few days, tops. She’ll keep for a while.”

  “Long enough to get the last two shipments?”

  “If not a little longer. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Alright. All hands on deck. Double the guard around the freezer. Let everyone know we have a rogue officer at large. I want him found and put in the brig—alive. Do not kill him,” Roberts scowled, “not unless you absolutely have to.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  32

  W e’ve been following them for over an hour, Commander. The same M.O. They just drive around town.”

  “Any sign of Sinclair?”

  “No, Ma’am. Not hide nor hair. Either he’s dropped the ball and missed the target, or he’s one helluva tail—”

  Liam sat in the back corner of the van as the driver moved along the streets of New York’s Lower Manhattan. Psionically cloaked, there wasn’t a chance the mundane human driver was ever going to notice his unwelcomed stowaway.

  With the back of the van’s floor stacked to either side with seventy-five of the old telecom parts boxes, the older step-van moved practically invisible itself with the myriad of other New York street traffic.

  The driver didn’t appear to be in any hurry to go anywhere. In fact, he kept the speed of the van exactly at the speed limit, even in faster moving traffic. As the day progressed into late morning, Liam noticed the guy constantly kept checking his watch.

  “On a schedule—?” Liam mused to himself. It was the only explanation for the driver moving the vehicle as slowly as he was, never going above the speed limit, not even my a mile-per-hour, while looking at his watch.

  “That’s interesting.” Liam continued to observe from the back of the van.

  The driver took a cellphone call.

  “Yea.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Right on time. You know me.”

  “Perfect.”

  The call simply ended.

  Liam continued to sit in the back on some of the staked boxes just watching the driver who appeared a lot more focused on his watch now. He rounded a corner into slow moving traffic being held up by yet another construction area with traffic being diverted from three to two lanes. Looking out of the windshield, construction crews were now moving a large pipe across the intersection, bringing traffic on the busy street to a complete standstill.

  Liam was all at once aware of people beneath the van.

  “Huh?” He stood up as a well-hidden trapdoor in the floor of the step-van popped up and men in city workman attire began filling the inside of the van. Four men quickly entered the van from a now open street manhole below and began dropping the heavy cardstock boxes down through the floor in a near symphony of movement. Liam had to nimbly dodge them to avoid the men who were quickly emptying the van of its cargo.

  “80 seconds,” the driver called out in a normal voice, watching the workmen ahead move the pipe across the intersection.

  But the four pirates inside the van didn’t need nearly that much time. They were making quick work of dropping the not quite thirty-pound boxes down the trap door.

  “40 seconds,” the driver called out just as the last of the boxes were dropped through the floor. Then the men one-by-one dropped themselves into the hole with the last man climbing down, closing the hatch behind him.

  “20-sec—never mind.” He heard the hatch close. The driver continued to look at his watch, looking bored, as the construction cleared and traffic began moving again. He checked his mirrors and then looked back into the empty back of his van.

  * * * * *

  Armed and silent, Mac moved through the ship’s lower hulls and corridors. Few knew The Neptune half as well as he did. Hell, he’d rebuilt most of her after they’d commandeered the former fuel tanker and repurposed it as one helluva pirate vessel. With the money they’d fleeced from Middle-Eastern merchant ships, they’d remodeled the exterior into a massive luxury yacht, but the lower hulls were now a maze of holds, engine rooms, munitions storage and heavy weapon defenses.

  They’d be coming after him now. He silently grinned to himself. That would be a mistake—especially down here. A couple of the newer crewmen had already found that out, the hard way. He’d subdued them easily enough. They’d already be awake by now …

  Roberts glared at the two husky crewmen. Buck naked, their junk hanging out, both looked a little sheepish standing in front of their captain.

  “And what the hell happened to you two?”

  “Mac got the drop on us, Cap’n,” one of them offered, looking a little embarrassed with the rest of the bridge crew staring at them. The irony that Mac had stripped the two of them down to their birthday suits was not lost on Roberts. He’d been keeping the goddess naked in her cell the whole time. It was Mac’s way of giving him the finger.

  “And now he’s even more armed,” Roberts glared.

  Neither said a world.

  “Go get some clothes and get back to your posts.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” both
said in unison before quickly leaving.

  Roberts spread his hands over the edge of the bridge’s main control console, looking out at the interior of where The Neptune was being hidden within the city.

  “Mac’s not going to be an easy catch, Roy,” one of his inner Seal Team folded his arms, leaning against the same console.

  Roberts nodded.

  “These kids don’t have our training. They’re not cut out to go after even one of us.”

  “Obviously.” He fumed quietly to himself.

  “You want us to go after him?”

  “Gonna have to.” Roberts sighed. “I don’t want him dead, James. But if he doesn’t surrender quietly—”

  “We know what to do, Captain.”

  Roberts frowned, nodding.

  33

  L iam stood only a few feet away, still mentally cloaked while watching the boxes fall from the ceiling’s manhole and onto a small trampoline where four more men in city workman overalls caught the small but weighty boxes as they bounced into the air. Each box was then quickly placed on a steel pallet. Liam watched as a forklift driver moved into position picking up the one-ton pallet just as the men he’d seen above bounced themselves down onto the trampoline, caught and steadied by their teammates below. The entire operation was beautifully orchestrated. They’d cleared the contents of the van in just over a minute while it had been stopped in traffic. Liam raised a brow, rather impressed with the maneuver.

  He’d even had a momentary thought of wanting to join such an exceptional operation—well, maybe if these people hadn’t kidnapped his girlfriend and were about to kill her.

  Each man now grabbed hold of the forklift and rode it down the storm drain tunnel. The driver didn’t have to go far. They’d concealed a small dig between the storm drain and the foundation of another building’s parking garage. The forklift placed the pallet neatly into the back of a Cintas uniform van that drove off with just its own driver, a new pallet of gold bars—and one young god concealed between racks of hanging clothing.

  * * * * *

  Tori opened her eyes. Her shivering had stopped. It was still really cold, a lot colder than the room had been most of the time she’d been a prisoner here, but something was different. The fans that blew frigid air into the room were silent.

  She got up from her corner of the room where she’d felt the warmest. The room was definitely getting warmer. She was still cold, but at least she could move now, and her skin wasn’t blue anymore. She dusted the frost from herself and went to the door. Although it was too cold for her empathy to be of any use, she could still hear—”

  “Took you guys long enough. Lunch was over an hour ago.”

  “Yea, captain’s got everyone moving through the mess in shifts now. Sorry. What’s the goddess doing?”

  “She’s moving around in there now. Temperature’s only up fifteen degrees. Still colder than before though. She’s not going anywhere. Any word on the XO?”

  “Rumor is the captain just assembled his original unit to go after him. He’s still running around down here somewhere.”

  “Serious shit.”

  “Real serious. If he doesn’t surrender they’ll have to take him out.”

  “Jesus. Mutiny—over a woman?”

  “You weren’t here a week ago, before the new compressors were added. That’s no woman. Fucking Siren is what she is. Had the whole crew on edge, whacking-off in the heads.”

  “WHAT? No way.”

  “Serious shit, man. She really went after XO and now he think’s she’s his lover.”

  “Jesus.”

  Tori moved away from the door. She could still hear them talking about Mac. She needed to help him—he’d saved her life. Now she was pretty sure he was the reason the fans weren’t working anymore. But if the temperature continued to rise, they’d have to take action, sooner than later. He was probably trying to rescue her. But he was only one man against an entire ship full of armed men. Right now she was powerless to do anything—except listen.

  * * * * *

  The Cintas van pulled into the garage of an older warehouse building where a semi truck, pulling a short overseas shipping container on a trailer, was waiting. Liam was already in the empty container when the forklift deposited the pallet into it and the men sealed the container’s door. He felt the rig moving now.

  “So that’s why we never saw what they were doing,” he mused quietly. He was pretty sure they were heading for a shipping dock somewhere—the only problem was; now he was blind. New York was huge, with hundreds of piers, and he didn’t exactly know where this particular container was going to end up with him inside.

  34

  V oices outside of her cell door got Tori’s attention again. She was pretty sure it was getting close to evening as the crew talked about dinner. Then she heard other footsteps and more men outside her door.

  “Stay sharp. There’s a good chance he’ll try to spring the goddess before we get the last shipment tomorrow.”

  “And if he does show up?”

  “Shoot to kill. That’s an order.”

  “I thought the cap’n wanted him taken alive?”

  “Change of plans. You don’t know Mac like we do. He’s not going to give up trying to free her and you won’t survive trying to take him prisoner. If you see him, kill him. Period. Any questions?”

  Tori heard the sound of many footsteps leaving the area. She was suddenly having second thoughts about her plans of broadcasting her natural attraction all over the ship and enticing the men’s feelings, especially Mac’s. She’d deliberately seduced the man. Maybe it was worth the cost, but now he was about to be killed—because of his feelings for her. He was obviously deeply moved, maybe even in love with her. She’d really not known the deep affect her empathy might be having on the man.

  The sad truth was, out of a sense of survival, she’d empathically made love to him. Teased him. Seduced him. Made him want her. He was a nice-looking guy, even kind. But she wasn’t attracted to him like he’d been to her. She wasn’t in love with him. Now those actions were coming home to roost. She knew what kind of man he was, or at least had been. Whether she wanted to or not, she needed to help him—somehow. He’d saved her life! But—how could she now? A deep pain gripped her soul.

  “Don’t die, Mac. Please don’t die,” she pleaded softly.

  * * * * *

  Automatic gunfire rang through the corridors of the lower hulls. Mac grimaced as he returned fire after getting a bead on a man who a decade ago had saved his life in Kandahar.

  “Sorry James,” Mac breathed to himself. He knew James wouldn’t be getting up after those last few shots.

  The other team members looked at each other while another dragged James’ lifeless body from the corridor.

  “GIVE IT UP, MAC!” One of their team called out. “THERE’S NO WAY OUT OF THAT BULKHEAD.”

  Mac reloaded. Tom was right. They’d pushed him halfway through the ship. There was no way out now. If he gave himself up, he was a dead man. He needed to keep going. He’d taken out one now. Six more to go. It was more than a long shot. He didn’t have a prayer and he knew it. But she needed to live. Even if he didn’t get to.

  * * * * *

  Now dusk, the container truck parked along the side of the pier next to a huge container ship; its onboard crane already moving swiftly as if operated by an expert video gamer. The swift claw took hold of the short container and lifted it from the trailer in a smooth motion while the truck left empty of its cargo, barely having to stop.

  Liam felt the swing of movement within the solid steel container. What he couldn’t see was himself being quickly lowered into the hold of the container vessel and onto the fine upper deck of The Neptune, sitting quietly within the shell of what looked like any other container ship moored along the piers of the Hudson.

  Still cloaked and standing at the back of the mostly empty container, Liam watched as the steel doors were opened and artificial light flooded into the
container from floodlights above. He recognized Roberts immediately, watching the pirate pickup one of the rugged cardboard boxes and open it, revealing its shining golden contents. Now others began removing the bars from their boxes and carrying them below one by one. A couple of the guards entered the container to search it. But the clandestine god was no longer within it.

  * * * * *

  Monica answered her phone. Her Washington meeting was over and she’d prepared to leave with Mr. Harlan dropping her off at the airport to finish her assignment back in New York. They were running out of time.

  “Yea.” She answered the call from the now empty Oval Office with only herself and Harlan looking on.

  “We’re getting a signal from Teen Wolf, Commander. It’s faint, but we’ve pinpointed the location. A cargo pier on the Hudson.”

  “Mobilize your agents for Iwo Jima. Roberts isn’t going down without a fight.”

  “Already in motion, Commander.”

  She ended the call.

  Harlan raised his eyebrow with a half smile; he’d overheard the report from her phone. “That sounded like good news.”

  “We’ve got her location.”

  “I thought you didn’t use untrained agents?” he smirked.

  “I was—desperate.” She admitted.

  “I gathered. Seriously? ‘Teen Wolf’?”

  “You haven’t met our Mr. Sinclair—” she winced, and then grinned.

  35

  S artled by sudden automatic gunfire right outside her cell door, Tori quickly backed away to the far wall. The commotion outside sounded like fighting with more automatic gunshots. It was quiet for a moment, just before the bulkhead door of her cell came completely off its thick hinges with the loud, ugly sound of rending steel as numerous watertight latches bent and twisted away. The door landed with a loud skidding and sparking thud behind him.