by Delta James
He didn’t have so much as one flashbang anywhere on him. Pulling back, he slammed and barricaded the door and went to Plan B. He had no idea what Plan B was, but he had to get down into those caves, and the only other way to do that—without a boat and without going down either of the two secret staircases—was to scale down the sheer rock cliffside the fortress was built on.
He needed rope. He was going to have to raid the armory… or the linen closet.
The second trap was in the alcove doorways of the long hall that led past the merc sleeping quarters to the armory. Four men outfitted as only soldiers with orders to kill him and who’d happily raided the armory had stationed themselves, one man to a door, opened fired the second he rounded the corner.
He nearly got his head blown off.
They had percussion grenades because, of course, they did.
Back flat to the wall, his gun clasped in both hands, he glared at the ceiling, slowly blowing out his breath as he steadied himself to kill or be killed.
A crackle suddenly broke through the alarm speakers that punctuated every corner of this old structure.
“I could watch you make a fool of yourself all day long,” Fariq said over the intercom.
Reid almost laughed. “You’re not watching me. You’re running for your life with a Bluetooth on your ear. And you should because I’m right behind you, asshole.”
Ducking to the floor, he shot down the hallway, hitting the shoulder of one man too slow to yank back into the safety of his doorway and killing another who jumped out a little too soon. It was a grownup soldier’s version of the arcade Whack-A-Mole game, played down the length of the hallway, with bullets instead of a hammer.
Yanking back himself, giving them a chance to waste bullets and grow cocky again, he was about to make himself comfortable when his phone rang. It was Fariq.
“You should have planned this out a bit better,” the other man said when Reid answered the phone, more out of curiosity than anything else.
“I thought it through enough to get her away from you,” he replied. “You’re never going to touch her again.”
Fariq snorted. “If you say so, but I’m willing to bet your life, I have her back in my safekeeping within the hour.”
“Safekeeping?” There was little point in baiting the man, especially with a fresh round of bullets right chipping away at the plaster and stone of the corner not three feet from his head. “Do you have any idea what your latest ‘punishment’ has done to her? You could have killed her!”
“She was promiscuous. I had plans for her. I have been cultivating certain wealthy individuals for years that they need a well-schooled, intelligent, beautiful, and pure woman to grace their beds and tend to all of their needs. The auction was to have taken place on her twenty-third birthday. She needed to be taught a lesson.”
“Promisc—” Reid caught himself, but not before his temper exploded. Holding the phone up to his mouth, he bit out, “She. Is. Your. Sister! Not some priceless work of art or the newest in rocket launchers or defense systems. Your sister!”
“She was a virginal cunt on legs,” Fariq returned. “Created by fucking, for the sole purpose of being fucked, but her maidenhead had to be intact. I had arranged for a doctor at the auction to certify her as pure, and the little whore just gave it up. She denied me what was mine to use for my advantage and enrichment,” he emphasized, the coolness of his tone giving way to the faintest hint of anger. “I have earned that right, over and over, for all twenty-two years of her life. She was three days old the first time I saved her life, did you know that?”
Anger made a man sloppy. Reid tried to breathe through his, but he was still taking an unacceptable risk when he ducked around the corner and shot four quick rounds down the hall. He hit one of the three men still alive, leaving the one he’d wounded and another to return fire while he ducked back behind the wall again.
“If you’re looking for a medal, you’ve got a wait coming,” he muttered, ejecting the now-empty clip, slapping another into the gun, and chambering the next round.
“We had different mothers.”
“So what! She’s still your half-sister. Sorry, bud. You’re still sick.”
“My mother died before I came of age, and I’ve often wondered if she shared a similar fate as two of the others. My father remarried three times, although he never did have good luck with women. One died shortly before their third anniversary. I was, I think, five by then. The other successfully divorced him, pretty much shocking everyone. I have no idea what happened to her. Then my father met Aliya’s mother and married her when she confessed her pregnancy. She probably should have confessed it wasn’t his to start with, but he found out when Aliya was born, a very healthy three weeks too early. He strangled the woman and would have done the same to Aliya, but I took the baby and crawled out onto the roof. I was ten at the time. I couldn’t have stopped him, but being seen by so many of our neighbors guaranteed my sister could not be claimed as stillborn. So… she lived. Because of me.”
“Now she lives in spite of you,” Reid shot back. “In spite of what you did to her.”
“I allowed her too much freedom… allowed her to see and learn things too quickly. That’s why she turned to you in her confusion.”
Tipping his head back against the wall, every breath tainted by the smell of freshly fired gunpowder, he lost his iron-clad grip on self-control.
“My God,” he said with an incredulous laugh. “You really are delusional, aren’t you? She didn’t turn to you because you’re an abusive, conniving, evil, controlling jackass!”
“You think so?” Fariq softly inquired.
“After this many years together, I know so.”
“She’ll have to be re-educated. There is a doctor who says he can re-virginate her, make it appear she’s still intact. Aliya can still have a life that will provide both of us with luxury. What do you think Finn will think of all this?”
A tiny spark of cold ignited in his gut, the fuse of it hissing and spitting and spreading the dread of its impending explosion all through him.
“What did you say?”
Despite the gunfire echoing through that hallway, he’d heard the other man just fine, and Fariq knew it.
“I’m not the only one with a sister to protect. You really should have planned this out a little better.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Reid said flatly. “Lay one hand on her, and you’ll have the entire Wild Mustang team raining shit down on you every second of every day from now until you die. And that’s only if I don’t get my hands on you first.”
“My men collected your feisty sibling not twenty minutes ago. I’m a big believer that wrongs should be revenged. You turned my darling sister against me. You soiled her purity, stole her virginity. I want you to think about that,” Fariq told him. “For what few minutes you still have, I want you to think about all the ways I intend to spoil your sister in turn. I’ll take my time with her, I promise. Not only will she learn how to endure without screaming, but I’m going to teach her those lessons so often, she might just learn to prefer it that way.”
“You’ll be dead long before you lay so much as a finger on her,” Reid predicted, hardly aware of the bullets still chipping away at the stone corner at his back. “If you’re trying to propose a trade, you don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”
“If you think I would stoop to negotiate with a traitor, you don’t know me, either. Come to think of it, I don’t think either one of us has anything of further import to say to one another. I’ll give both our sisters your best, shall I?”
“You don’t have them.” Aliya was with NATO… she had to be. She was safe. He’d made sure of it. There was no way Fariq could have Finn, either. He barely knew her anymore, knew even less about Croft except what he’d come to know of the man as an adversary, but there were telling things in that kind of relationship. He’d bet everything he had on the certainty Croft was a protective, caring, cau
tious man. He wouldn’t leave Finn undefended, and if by some miracle Fariq did, in truth, send men to kidnap her immediately after they’d taken Thom, the Mustangs really would come raining down on him with all the fury and firepower they could muster. “You’re an idiot if you do.”
“We’ll see,” Fariq scoffed. “Or at least, I’ll see. You, on the other hand, have reached the end of what you’re going to do.”
“You really don’t know me as well as you think,” he said, the hot bud of anger igniting through the dreaded cold that had taken hold of him. The phone clicked, and the call disconnected.
He had to get to that boat before Fariq abandoned the fortress. He was running out of time, and all he could feel right now was the impending consequences descending on him.
No way did Fariq have either Aliya or his sister. He’d said that to rattle him.
It worked.
Erupting off the floor, Reid whipped around the corner, shooting the gun out of the wounded man’s hand, and hitting the other square in the chest. His successful advance didn’t make it farther than the end of the hall. He rounded the corner and very nearly collided with a small squadron of Fariq’s mercenaries. He had a half-second to recognize the guy in the lead before he—and all of them, for that matter—jumped back around the corner. It was the same one he’d chatted with back in the security room, waiting for Avery to attack.
“Fancy that,” the man cautiously called around the corner. “We were just on our way to find you.”
“Yeah, fancy that.” Quickly reloading his gun with a fresh clip, Reid looked up and down the hall. It was a good forty feet to the nearest doorway deep enough to provide him with any kind of protection.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider not shooting us?” the other asked.
Reid laughed, mentally calculating his odds. Six of them, one of him. If they came charging around the corner after him, there was no way he could shoot them all faster than they could kill him. He’d get a few, but they’d definitely get him.
“No,” the man tried again. “I’m serious, actually. We know you’re good with a gun, and we stand a very good chance of being killed. Especially if we have to go head-to-head with you, but if you don’t mind, we’d really appreciate it if you’d give us half a minute just to talk.”
If they had to go head-to-head? If?
“All right,” he just as cautiously agreed. “What, in particular, are you in the mood to talk about?”
“Fariq,” was the blunt reply. “He sent us to kill you.”
Reid chambered a new round.
“We’d really rather not,” the other quickly added, obviously having heard that ominous click. “Frankly, we like you better than we like him.”
That stopped him again. Expecting they might be trying to lull him into enough complacency to make killing him easier, he said, “Excuse me?”
“The thing is, see… Can I inch around the corner? I feel silly talking to a wall.”
“Only if you want to get shot,” Reid replied.
“Fair enough. The thing is, you hired me a few months back to be extra security detail. I guard things, which is what I prefer. Now, I can kill things if I have to, but I really don’t like doing it. Neither does Brody. In fact, none of us—with the possible exception of Alex, who robbed a bank once—has any particular desire to use the gun that came with the uniform, if you know what I mean. And none of us—including Alex—has any desire to shoot, much less kill, well… you.”
He had allies in this fortress? Reid stared at the corner, afraid to believe it, knowing there was only one way to test it. He’d have to walk around the corner and hope they didn’t shoot first and laugh later over his gullibility.
“That’s a lot to take on faith,” Reid said, startling himself because he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“For us, too,” came the reply. “I mean, I walk around that corner, and you’ve got me.”
“There’s five more of you who won’t make that same mistake.”
“Fat lot of good that does me. I’ll still be dead.”
True.
“On three?” the other man asked.
“We’re grown men,” Reid told him. “Just rip the Band-Aid off. It’ll only hurt for a moment.”
He regretted it the minute he said that last part, but there was no help for it now. Taking a breath, fully expecting to get shot, he shoved off the wall and stepped around the corner.
All six men stood there, fully armed, their guns in their hands, but not one of them raised. He could see in their faces, they were every bit as uncertain of his motivations as he was of theirs. That uncertainty was the only thing that proved they weren’t Fariq’s men. They were his.
“If I said I wasn’t happy to have this conversation, I’d be lying,” Reid finally said, extending his hand. “What’s your name?”
Breaking out in a crooked smile, the other clasped his forearm. “Cobb.”
“You realize I’m on my way into the lion’s den, not running the other way. I want to stop the son of a bitch.”
Still clasping his wrist, Cobb leaned slightly toward him, that crooked smile of his broadening. “When a gun comes with the uniform, sometimes you have to use it. The trick is, making sure you’re using it for the right reason.”
In his opinion, no reason could have been more right than putting Fariq in either prison or his grave. He said as much but saying it was a lot easier than accomplishing it. He had six men now, but that didn’t make the fight any easier. Fariq still had a fortress, and they were still grossly outnumbered.
“What’s the plan?”
“Get to the boats and stop Fariq before he launches. If he escapes, he’ll disappear.” Christian shrugged. “I was going to scale down the cliff and was headed for the armory to get climbing rope, then go in via the water.”
“He has men stationed on the balconies, ready to pick you off if you try. There’s no cover out there. We’d have a better chance at survival if we jumped.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen the rocks directly below my balcony,” Christian said. “The waves wash over them, but there’s only about two inches of water there.”
“I never said it was a good chance,” Cobb reminded with a smirk.
Trust him to get stuck in an impossible shot-out situation with a comedian.
“Down the stairs we go.”
The stone staircase that led down to the boats was accessed through the kitchen’s wine cellar. Cut directly into the rock, the tunnel was a circular descent, sporadically lit by battery-powered lanterns. They stopped at the armory, gearing up, head to foot in the flak armor Fariq kept in stock, complete with tactical helmets equipped with communication headsets, night vision, and thermal vision goggles, and loading up on as much ammunition as they could carry.
“Grab your communicators,” Reid told them. “Radio channel three.”
Aliya was very much on his mind as he set his own radio and battery pack and hooked it onto his belt. By now, NATO would have her, and they’d be safely flying over the ocean, far away from Fariq and his long-range weapons. Right now, they would be flying as fast as they could and would be doing everything they could to stabilize Aliya and assess her injuries. As soon as they could, they’d get her to a doctor, and she would be fine.
There was enough information on the microdot he’d given Avery to guarantee the NATO handlers kept their word, whether they wanted to or not—she was Fariq’s sister, after all. Her brother had made a lot of enemies, but both he and Aliya had made a lot of sacrifices for them over the years. That had to count for something. Before he was done, Reid was determined to make sure he collected every favor those sacrifices had bought him, and he would keep her safe—from the good guys as well as the bad.
From the moment they moved out, abandoning the armory to make their way to the kitchen on the main floor, it became apparent Reid was the only one who had never been in the military, but he had picked up enough over the years to blend i
n with the mercenaries who accompanied him. His movements were every bit as cautious and confident as he took point, leading the way to the underground cellar. This was his operation, and he wasn’t Fariq. He wasn’t about to let someone else take the risks for him.
They didn’t make it through the first full circle to the next landing before they were pinned down in their first gunfire. There were no places to hide, just the jagged cracks and crevices in the carved-out stone tunnel and the descending curve of the staircase. For every step down they crept, another step below was revealed. Sometimes, there was a gunman on it, sometimes not, but there was no such thing as sneaking up on them or taking them by surprise, not after that first round was fired and the first enemy soldier killed. All he could do was keep pressing forward and hope it took Fariq longer to launch his fleet than it did him to get to the man.
Reid had his doubts, and those doubts only grew in dread and volume the further down he went. The resistance against him began to dissolve, but even then, those doubts didn’t lessen. More and more, instead of men ready to open fire, he began running into men kneeling on the dark stairs, arms laid down and hands folded in surrender behind their heads.
He wasn’t prepared to take prisoners. Apart from zip-tying them wrist-to-ankles on the stairs before continuing, he couldn’t afford to take the time to deal with them properly. The more of them that gave up, the faster he was able to go, but even so, the dread inside him grew. They were giving up because they knew they’d been abandoned, and few had the stomach to play kill-or-be-killed with him, the man who had been Fariq’s second-in-command. While that might mean he was able to move faster, it didn’t mean he was moving fast enough.
It was a long way to the bottom, made longer with every gunfight or give-up he had to deal with before he could continue on. It took hours to reach the bottom, but he knew he was close when the gun fighting stopped altogether, and everyone he encountered was kneeling in surrender. He knew why the minute he broke through the tunnel into the open cave, its secret doors thrown wide open to let in the early pre-dawn light of yet another day. It had taken him all night to reach the bottom, and Fariq and his fleet were gone.