Xtreme Measures (Xtreme Ops Book 5)

by Em Petrova

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Xtreme Measures

  Xtreme Ops

  Book 5

  Copyright Em Petrova 2021

  Ebook Edition

  Electronic book publication 2021

  Cover Art by Bookin’ It Designs

  All rights reserved. Any violation of this will be prosecuted by the law.

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  More in this series:

  HITTING XTREMES

  TO THE XTREME

  XTREME BEHAVIOR

  XTREME AFFAIRS

  XTREME MEASURES

  XTREME PRESSURE

  XTREME LIMITS

  The mafia, a smuggling ring and the wilds of Alaska are no match for this special operative. But a brazen redhead might be.

  Elias Gasper’s known as the do-it-all guy. From HALO jumps to calming hostages, he’s on it. When he stumbles across a woman in hiding, he meets a new challenge in getting her to talk. While he’s willing to add breaking through her silence to his list of skills, fighting his attraction still needs work.

  Ruby Ryan is an alias, but doing anything it takes to save herself is real. She’s used to switching sides, so cozying up to a hunky military man proves easy…maybe a little too easy. Not only are his kisses irresistible, but he has a way of making her laugh—something she hasn’t done in a long time.

  Gasper’s abilities are tested even more when he must choose between helping his team and saving the strong woman with a hidden sweet side. His motto of “quitters never win” is his driving force, because for this mission, he’s going to defend his teammates as well as the woman he’d give his life for.

  Xtreme MEASURES

  by

  Em Petrova

  Chapter One

  “Let’s play a game of which challenge do you choose? Not taking a breath for two minutes on a dive in the icy Bering Sea or hiking twenty miles through the Alaskan wilderness carrying a full load?”

  Special Operative Elias Gasper pinned his captain with an are-you-screwing-with-me stare. “That’s easy. I’d take the two minutes.”

  “And risk hypothermia?” His captain arched a brow.

  “Damn right. I’ve been on enough hikes through these mountains with hunger pains gnawing at my stomach. At least after a dive in the cold sea, I can take a breath and have dinner.”

  The banter between Gasper and his captain cut off as they reached what appeared to be little more than a metal shack. On missions, he’d seen more than one pile of scrap passing as a structure in Alaska, and this one was no different—rust-streaked walls with paint flaking off and a roof that appeared to be patched in several spots.

  They’d find the same things they had in the past—drugs, girls or both. Whatever it was, he was ready. Gasper’s training had landed him here at the top of his game. Earning a position on the Xtreme Ops team had been the high point of his career.

  “You know, regardless of what people think”—his breathing remained even as they ran through thick trees to the front of the building—“Alaska’s as primitive as the Wild West was back in the day. Too many men, too many weapons and too few law enforcement officers.”

  “Don’t forget whiskey. We all deserve a shot after this,” his captain Penn Sullivan said into the comms unit. He skidded to a stop and waved in a series of gestures that would send the team to surround the exits. He flicked two fingers toward Gasper, indicating he was with him.

  He gave a single nod of understanding. Then Penn ticked down on his fingers. Three…two…go.

  Gasper lifted his rifle and fired clean through the lock. The report echoed through the metal structure, so when he and Penn ran in, weapons up, two men were already waiting for them.

  A bullet whizzed past Gasper’s ear. He looked the shooter dead in the eyes and returned the favor shot for shot. Only Gasper didn’t miss. The man was thrown backward, hitting the floor with legs sprawled.

  Penn dealt with the second guard in record time, and they moved into the building, swinging their weapons left and right. Shouts sounded in Russian.

  Shit. He and Penn traded a glance. Just as they thought. The Bratva—the Russian mafia—was back in Alaska. Their presence was so insidious, the Xtreme Ops team had never completely driven them out the first few times.

  Gasper translated the Russian in his mind, and Penn was fluent too. In his ear came Shadow’s drawl. “Who keeps inviting these assholes? Captain, did you know we’d be dealing with the Russians again?”

  “Negative.”

  Stopping this group was like sticking a finger over a water leak—it always popped up in another place. No matter how many times Homeland Security’s Operation Freedom Flag sent their team to eradicate the crime group, they always showed their faces again.

  In his head, he translated several conversations going on at once. When he heard the word “ship,” he opened his mouth to speak to Penn. The explosion of a round of fire had him flattened on the floor. A hailstorm of bullets ricocheted around the big open room, and Gasper spotted two other team members pinned down.

  Soldier-crawling on his belly, arm over arm, he attempted to move into a position where he could take out those guns. Right ahead of him, his captain crawled so fast that Gasper had to turn up the speed if he planned to guard his six. He wasn’t about to let his team down.

  “Anything goes!” Penn shouted to the team. Meaning if they didn’t take a single survivor out of here to hold prisoner, then these motherfuckers asked for it.

  Two of his teammates popped out of nowhere, spraying bullets over the shooters. One fell. Another dropped with a scream of pain.

  So did Pax.

  Gasper watched his teammate crumple, his leg shot out from underneath him.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Penn, safe for the moment, took his eyes off the threat long enough to see what had Gasper bellowing.

  “Go, go, go!” He waved for Gasper to reach their fallen brother.

  He scrambled, slithering across the gap. The breeze off a round of bullets fluttered the cloth of his pants. Too damn close for comfort.

  Doing a tuck and roll, he pitched up beside Pax. Through his face paint, the man was sweating. Hands clasped around his shin, he met Gasper’s stare.

  “I got you, bro. Hang on.” He whipped out some cloth and knotted it around the worst of Pax’s wrecked lower leg. Pax didn’t make a sound, but his face grew paler, and sweat poured off him.

  “We’ll cover you, Jack! Move him out!” Penn’s order flooded into Gasper’s ear and hit his brain. His nickname of Jack, for jack-of-all-trades, spurred him to action.

  “I’m gonna throw you over my shoulders. It’s gonna hurt.”

  “Hurt you or me?” Though Paxton joked, he looked about to throw up, pass out or…

  Gasper didn’t want to think about what the other possibility might be. He positioned himself for a fireman’s carry, gripping Pax’s right arm and leg, and then stood so his body draped across his shoulders.

  As he whirled, several bullets meant for his skull slammed into the wall in front of him.

  “Fucking hell.” Pax’s voice expelled as a groan.

  He was losing a lot of blood. He may lose his leg. Gasper had
to move him the hell out—now.

  “Gasper to Helo,” he called to their chopper pilot Cora.

  “10-4, Gasper.”

  “I’m on my way out with Pax. He’s hit.”

  A pause sounded on her end, and then her voice came steady and clear. “I got him covered.”

  As Gasper burst out of the building, the pops of gunfire faded. He ate up the ground, hauling slightly more weight than his full pack that Penn had been bantering with him about just minutes before. Paxton weighed a good two-twenty’s worth of pure muscle.

  As he ran, Cora pummeled him for information about Pax’s injuries, his current status and ETA to the waiting chopper. Gasper answered them all, breath coming in spurts as he ran for both of them.

  Cora sounded concerned, but that didn’t mean the situation would end badly. Paxton and Cora had graduated from their special forces training together. As far as teammates went, they were tight, and her pause when Gasper told her who was hit told him the woman had taken a moment to compose herself.

  Could be worse for her, though. Her husband and their fearless captain, Penn, could have been hit.

  Paxton’s body suddenly went slack, and he realized the man had passed out. The pain of being jostled had probably proved too much for him. At least Gasper didn’t have to worry about hurting him more as he sprinted with all his speed through the trees.

  His boot caught a root, and he almost went down, but he managed to find his footing and burst into the clearing half a mile away. The chopper sat in the darkness, a hulking beast made of metal and blades.

  The person standing at the chopper spun toward them, weapon ready. Through darkness, he couldn’t make out her face, but the set of her shoulders revealed it was Cora, and she was relieved to see them. She slipped her weapon along her spine and ran to meet them.

  “He’s unconscious.” Gasper grunted as he dropped to his knees and lowered Paxton to the ground.

  Cora was already in first-aid mode, checking the man’s pulse and respirations. Then she glanced at the blood soaking his camo, inky black in the night. “Help me put him on the chopper. I’ll stabilize him there.”

  He picked up his brother, this time slinging him onto his back, and carried him the few feet to the silent chopper.

  Cora knelt beside Paxton. “Go, Gasper. I got this.”

  “You sure?” If something went south and the man started to code, Cora would be left alone to save his life.

  “Yes! Go! Our team needs you!” She was already at work, cutting off Paxton’s pantleg and assessing the damage, which, to Gasper, appeared to be pretty damn catastrophic.

  He took off for the trees, though, and minutes later made it out the other side. For a crushing heartbeat, he noted the silence hanging over the building the Russian mafia had been operating out of.

  “Where the hell are you guys?” he asked his team.

  The words were cut off by all hell breaking loose. Shots and screams. The stench of fire fueled by oil.

  Never quit. Slow down when you’re dead.

  He rushed inside and picked up where he left off. Paxton and Broshears had been teamed up, but Broshears and the captain were now partnered. When Gasper joined them, Penn eyed him.

  “Nice to see you, Jack.”

  “What’s goin’ on?” he asked as if they weren’t pinned down in a deadly turf war.

  A wall separated them from the main space, but from what he saw, two men lay dead on the floor.

  “Lip’s sharpshooting is winning the day. He’s got the advantage and has taken out half a dozen men. Shadow, Beckett and Winston are cut off from us, though. Over there.” He pointed. “They found the women.”

  “There’s always women,” Gasper said.

  Broshears snorted in response. Although the Bratva preferred drugs and women as their main trade, the Xtreme Ops team had seen a lot more crimes from them. The war in Alaska would definitely be hard-won, and this was but one more battle.

  Broshears and Gasper took orders from their captain’s silent commands. They got into position, prepared to end this.

  Then Cora’s voice came into their ears. Penn’s head snapped up, and for a moment, he didn’t move.

  “I’ve got to evacuate Paxton. He’s on the downslide. Lifting him out is his only chance.”

  Penn’s throat moved in a long swallow. He gritted out, “Go. We’ll find our way to safety and rendezvous with you later.”

  After Cora ended the communication, determination broke over his captain’s face. “Let’s end this, Xtreme Ops. For Pax.”

  Ruby Ryan twitched aside the dark green curtain, sewn by her grandmother’s own gnarled, arthritic hands decades ago, and peeked outside.

  White Fog, Alaska, population 202, looked the same as it had the day before. And the day before that too. The town clinging to the Alaskan coast boasted a gas station with inflated prices, a convenience store, a laundromat, and B&B with a cranky owner past his prime.

  And one bar/restaurant/hostel. At least that was how Ruby’s Place appeared on the surface to anyone happening to wander into White Fog. They came to photograph the mountains and seals basking on the rocky shores in the sun, and they left because the people of White Fog were pretty damn unfriendly. They stuck to themselves.

  And nobody did that more than Ruby.

  Today she wished for once that she could sleep in, rather than wake up to see to the bar and restaurant and check on the girls who worked here and lived on the upper floor.

  A few thumps and bumps coming from above told her some of them were awake. Some probably never went to bed—their gentleman callers saw to that. Hostel…brothel…what was a few letters’ difference?

  She pushed out a sigh and surveyed her small quarters off the kitchen. She always hated this place growing up when her grandmother, the original Ruby, owned it. Now that duty invaded each and every corner of her life, she despised it more.

  But those duties called, and she had to walk out there with a smile slapped on her face and endure it for another day.

  It was harder this time of year. Some folks around here told rumors that she suffered from seasonal depression, but she knew the real cause to be much darker than that.

  She pulled on stretchy black pants and a long-sleeve white top that hung off her shoulder to reveal skin freckled by the barest hint of the Alaskan sun. Then she wandered into the bathroom to tame her wild red hair.

  Peering at her reflection always made her sigh. Each day that passed, she saw more of her grandmother in her face, which meant she was fading, right? What beauty she had wasted on slinging food to ungrateful staff and customers, sustained on caffeine and the occasional decadent bite of chocolate bar she snuck on her break.

  And dealing with the guys only added to the dead expression behind her eyes. Her bouncers.

  Too many layers went into Ruby’s Place, many buried so deep beneath the foundation that even ghosts couldn’t burrow down to find them. The bouncers preferred it that way, and she was tasked to keep it as such.

  If anything slipped through… Well, she had a lot of reasons not to let that happen.

  After scrubbing her face so it was shiny and using eye drops to cut the redness that always seemed to be there from lack of sleep, she went out of her room and made certain to lock it behind her. The last thing she needed was a strange man in her bed, and so many were coming and going at all times that she couldn’t take the risk one might wander into her room.

  Out front, the glow of the few lights she kept on over the bar looked green against the glass liquor bottles. She walked over to the breaker panel and flipped a switch to light up the entire bar area as well as the restaurant.

  More bumps sounded above her, and seconds later, a man lurched down the stairs, half tumbling in his drunkenness, with her girl Abby right behind him. Abby was one of the few girls who spoke English.

  The man stumbled to his feet and staggered against the wall.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Ruby reached for her baseb
all bat. “Is he giving you trouble, Abby?”

  “He pissed in my bed. The disgusting, filthy hog!”

  Ruby stepped up to the customer who Abby had entertained of her own free will. All the girls got to pick, and if they said no, then Ruby enforced their decision. Ruby didn’t force them to work here—other people did that—and the least she could do was take care of them.

  She held the wooden bat an inch from the man’s face. “You got cash on you?”

  He blinked and finally nodded.

  “You just bought yourself a soiled mattress. Put what money you have on the bar and get the hell outta here!”

  He took a single glance at Ruby’s face and saw she was as serious as the beat-down she’d give him if he didn’t comply. Not to mention the bouncers who were coming out of the woodwork to stand on either side of the exit.

  The customer dug through his wrinkled clothes until he located his pockets. A bunch of bills hit the bar top, and Ruby gave him a satisfied nod. “Get out.” She twitched her head toward the exit.

  When the man didn’t move fast enough, the bouncers came forward to assist him on his way. Both were huge, muscled, with shaved heads and a ton of Russian tattoos.

  Mafia tattoos.

  Ruby turned away from the scene and tipped her head to peer up the stairs at Abby. “You okay other than the mattress?”

  “Yes.” She set her stubborn jaw.

  “Get cleaned up and dressed. I’ll have the guys carry your mattress out and we’ll find you a new one.”

  “Thank you, Ruby. You always have our backs.”

  Until the day she couldn’t stand it another minute and she took off.

  She examined the girl, whose vitality was fading fast too. When Abby had come to White Fog, she was in the blush of youth, with blue eyes and waist-length thick brown hair bearing a healthy glow. She learned English quicker than most girls who arrived, and her accent had fled the fastest.

  But men such as the last customer had placed a hard knife edge in those blue eyes and her hair hung more lifeless every day as her unhealthy lifestyle took over. But the girls never did drugs—that was Ruby’s single, solid, hold-fast rule. If she found out they did, she no longer had a room for them.