Lady Death

by Brian Drake

  The landscape around the little house had been cleared. Tall grass swaying in the breeze remained. Railed porch. No light behind the windows. Tanya and Omar were asleep inside.

  Raven checked his watch. Three hours till dawn. Three hours till the Navy showed up.

  A long way, but the goal was within sight.

  And then Hayden jabbed Raven’s left arm.

  “Chopper incoming.”

  16

  The chopper’s spotlight swung around the cottage grounds. Raven and Tiger Joe yanked off their night-vision goggles.

  The rotor wash whipped at the grass, exposing their position. The light flashed over them. A burst of automatic weapon fire crackled. Bullets tore chunks out of the soil as Raven and Hayden rolled away in opposite directions.

  Raven shouted for Hayden to run as he rolled onto his back. There was no solid cover; he was in the open, exposed. He extended the M4 and fired two long bursts. The chopper drifted left, and the salvo didn’t appear to cause damage. The carbine clicked empty. The chopper began to descend again as Raven rolled to his feet and ran.

  Hayden raced up the road they’d followed to the cottage. He jumped off the edge into a crevice of dirt and grass. He braced the M4 against his shoulder.

  The chopper landed near the cottage. Four troopers jumped out, two from either side of the cabin. Lights snapped on inside the cottage.

  Hayden cursed as he started shooting. Everything was going down the tubes and Raven had no cover. The M4 hammered against his shoulder. The troopers split into pairs as the chopper lifted off. The chopper’s engine noise faded as it flew over the hill to the barracks. They’d bring reinforcements. He and Raven were toast.

  But he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Tiger Joe tracked his targets, but they moved too fast, and the 5.56mm stingers missed their marks. He dropped down to reload. Rising again, he fired. Two of the troopers broke off. The other two started crawling through the overgrowth toward him.

  “Joe!”

  Hayden dropped from sight. “Still kicking!”

  “We go for broke!” Raven shouted over the com link. “If we die here, we take Tanya with us!”

  “Copy!”

  Hayden jumped up again and worked the trigger. His burst drove the two troopers into bushes. They were halfway to him. He was at a disadvantage without his NVGs. Return fire smacked the soil behind him. The crevice was no place to stay. Hayden plucked a grenade from his vest and pulled the pin. He tossed it toward the enemy. Springing from the crevice, he ran across the road toward Raven.

  The grenade blast thumped and unleashed shards of metal at lightning speed. The two troopers’ bodies broke apart like a dropped Lego toy as the force of the blast smacked them. They fell in dead heaps.

  The remaining two turned their guns on Hayden as he ran. He fired back, driving them to concealment. He joined Raven on a down slope. The cottage lights snapped off again. What was happening inside?

  One of the troopers jumped from cover, ran toward them, and dropped and rolled again. The two rounds Raven fired missed. He and Hayden ducked as the gunners fired back. Nobody could see anything. They were shooting at shadows on black backgrounds.

  “Chopper will bring more bad guys,” Hayden said. He grabbed for another grenade.

  “It’s a party for sure.” Raven pulled one of his grenades. “On three!” He counted. They tossed at the same time and pressed into the ground. Debris rained overhead as the explosions tore up the terrain. Chunks of wet flesh and burning scraps of fabric fell with the debris.

  Raven reloaded his M4 with one eye on the cottage. Now or never.

  “Joe, put a grenade on the front porch.”

  The sea breeze brought them the sound of whipping rotor blades. More than one. Getting closer.

  Hayden tossed. The grenade landed short, but the explosion gave Raven the desired effect. The explosion knocked the front door out of its frame and shattered the front windows. The concrete steps cracked and fell to pieces. The porch wood splintered and snapped.

  Two more helicopters passed in a long turn behind the cottage. Troops fired from the cabins. The projectiles rained on Raven and Hayden. Raven waited for the choppers to pass completely behind the cottage. The firing stopped. He sprinted for the wrecked porch. One of the choppers landed and let off four more troops. It lifted off and executed a sweeping left turn over Hayden’s position. The wind from the rotor blades kicked loose ground ash into his face. He shut his eyes tight.

  The chopper passed over. Hayden fired controlled bursts, shifting his aim with each squeeze of the trigger. The suppressed M4 whispered death. One trooper fell, the gunman behind him tripping over his body and tumbling. The others found cover. Return fire forced Hayden down. The rounds zipped overhead.

  The second chopper landed. Four more troops exited. Hayden tossed one grenade, then another. He hoped Raven was clear of the blast. One boom, then another. Pounding footsteps joined strangled screams. He’d killed some but not all. Shadows rushed him.

  Hayden fired on instinct. The M4’s near silent salvo brought down one shadow. He pivoted left and shot another with a triple-tap to the chest. The body fell, sliding across the ground to knock him over. He landed with a cry on his right arm. He pushed the body away, rolled, and jumped to his feet. Hayden swung the butt of the M4 into the head of another gunman. The impact rattled his body and the weapon. He spun right, the figure ahead shuffling to one side, then the other, as Hayden fired from the hip. A miss. He swung the muzzle to the target again, but another flash of flame filled his vision first.

  Hayden remained standing but stopped moving. His body burned for a moment. He didn’t scream. He collapsed near one of the dead troopers and moved no more.

  Raven leaped over the wrecked porch and slipped through the cottage doorway.

  He ducked and dived for the floor as guns barked. He rolled left and bumped into a couch. Scrambling over the cushions, he dropped over the back. Landing on the hard wood floor almost knocked the wind out of him, and he gasped as he rolled again. The legs of a dining table stopped him this time. He rose and started to shoot, shifting the M4 side-to-side, firing blindly. The weapon clicked empty.

  Raven dropped the carbine and grabbed his pistol. He stayed flat on the ground.

  He tried not to think of the sudden silence outside. A chill raced down his neck as men yelled from the porch. They spoke Arabic. A woman’s voice from across the room answered their sharp exclamations. Raven rose to a squat and fired in the direction of the woman’s voice.

  Two troopers rushed in. Raven pivoted toward them with the .45 in both hands. The Nighthawk spat a tongue of flame once. Neither fell. And then they were on him.

  They pounded him with rifle butt stocks. The first, against his forehead, sent him spinning. He lost his grip on the Nighthawk. The second impact smashed his right shoulder. His face hit the floor. More blows landed but darkness overtook him. He felt nothing.

  17

  Raven’s vision spun, his head hurt, and his right shoulder throbbed.

  Raven wiped his eyes and then frowned at his free hands and feet. They hadn’t restrained him. He was on a narrow bed in a small room. Before he took in more of the environment, nausea overwhelmed him. He vomited onto the floor but stopped mid retch. He wasn’t alone in the room.

  They’d dragged Tiger Joe’s body in with him. Hayden’s body rested in the center of the floor. A neat bullet hole sat in the middle of his forehead, another dead center in his chest. His still-open eyes stared at the fluorescent lights above.

  Raven let out a low wail and vomited more. When he stopped, he let his head dangle a moment to make sure he’d finished, then eased back onto the mattress. It hurt to breathe.

  He looked around despite his shifting vision. Wherever he looked, things tilted left or right. Small room. Two beds on either side. Wall-length lockers behind him. Had they moved him into one of the barracks? The door to the room was shut. He tried to stand up and see if they’d
locked him in but had no balance. He dropped back onto the bed.

  They’d stripped him of his combat rig, pistol and knife. But a glance at Tiger Joe’s body showed they’d made a mistake. They’d collected his rig and pistol too but forgot the knife. Hayden’s K-Bar remained in its belt sheath.

  How long did he have before the Navy showed up? His watch was gone too.

  He lay there breathing steadily for what seemed like an eternity. Tried not to think of the corpse on the floor. After a while, he tried to move. With every ounce of strength he could muster, Raven rolled onto the floor. He remained on hands and knees a moment. He took deep breaths. His vision had stabilized a little, but he still felt dizzy. Inside his head, it felt like somebody was banging a drum.

  He turned to look at Hayden. “Sorry, Joe,” he whispered. He reached for the K-Bar, unhooked the safety strap and tugged out the knife. The lights above flashed on the razor-sharp stainless-steel blade. He tossed it onto the bed. He crawled over to Hayden and closed the CIA man’s eyes with his fingers. “You were a good man to have in a fight.”

  Sitting up, he put his arms on the mattress and rolled back, drawing his legs close. He stayed on his side and kept the knife concealed behind his bent knees.

  His gaze settled on Joe Hayden again. How many more lives would Tanya claim before her reign of terror ended? What if the Navy failed? No. Raven pushed doubts away. Hold fast. He wasn’t dead yet.

  With a jerk of alarm, he grabbed for his neck. Raven sighed with relief when he felt the locket secure around his neck. A favor from Tanya? Or had they missed it?

  Time to make a plan.

  His mind wouldn’t cooperate. The dizziness stayed with him. He lay in a daze and wondered what was coming next.

  Tanya Jafari had won every battle so far.

  How much longer would luck be on her side?

  The door lock snapped.

  Raven rolled onto his back. The dizziness had subsided. His head and shoulder still hurt, but he thought he could manage.

  Tanya Jafari stepped into the doorway. She wore jeans and gray loose shirt with a Beretta pistol on her belt. Her hair fell onto her shoulders. She folded her arms and looked stoic.

  Raven glimpsed a man behind her but didn’t see his face.

  “You found me,” she said.

  Raven sniffed. “You left a few threads uncut.” He spoke low, his voice cracking. His throat felt raw from the vomiting.

  “Horn?”

  “Yarvis.”

  She shook her head. “Somebody always slips through.”

  “Your whole life is a lie, Tanya.”

  “No.” Her face flushed red. She straightened and pointed a finger at him. “My life is based on bringing justice to oppressed people. We’re the same, Sam. Only different sides.” She lowered her finger but still glared at him.

  “Your father started this, Tanya. No random mob in Berlin is responsible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He had goons attack the families of your boyfriend and Francesca’s boyfriend. Then he groomed them to start the Islamic Union in the aftermath. They were tools to him. Means to an end. He manipulated all of you and you fell for every trick.”

  “Who said this?”

  “Your sister,” Raven said.

  “She’s a liar. And since you killed my father, we can’t ask him, can we?”

  “You know I’m right. Has part of you ever been suspicious?”

  She flinched. Stoic became defiance and turned to doubt. She shook her head and laughed.

  “Poor Sam Raven,” she said. “In your last moments, you’re grasping at straws.”

  “You can kill me. When I’m gone, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if I was right.”

  “Stop.”

  Raven raised his voice. “You’ll wonder how your life might have been different.”

  “Stop!”

  “Or what, Tanya?”

  Somebody reached for her through the doorway. She shook the hand away with a curse. She took one step forward.

  “Aren’t you curious why I’ve kept you alive?” she said.

  “We meant a lot to each other for a short time, didn’t we?”

  “It was all an act.”

  “You deserve an Oscar.”

  “It was a performance only for one.”

  “What do you want, Tanya?”

  “I want your locket, Sam.” Another step forward. “I want you to watch me open it as I kill you. Your secret will be mine forever.”

  “Come and take it.”

  She snatched out her Beretta as she reached him, clawing with her free left hand for his neck. He batted her reach away and she slammed the gun into his head. Raven’s eyes rolled back, and another wave of dizziness took over. He felt her hand on his neck. She grasped the chain. The chain dug into his skin as she began to pull.

  Raven’s right hand flashed beneath him and he grabbed the hilt of the K-Bar. Her eyes never left his and she didn’t see the movement until it was too late.

  “Remember what I said I’d do to you if you lied to me, Tanya?”

  He slammed the knife forward. The sharp blade penetrated her belly with a tear of fabric and flesh. She gasped, eyes widening. Raven didn’t blink as he pushed the knife all the way in, then shoved upward. Her body jerked with the movement as the blade tore through her guts. Her mouth opened to scream but nothing came out but a line of saliva.

  “Tanya?”

  Raven grabbed the Beretta and fired over her shoulder. The man in the doorway stopped short as the first bullet hit him. His head snapped back as the second delivered its impact. Omar Talman dropped.

  Another man leaped over Talman’s body. This one carried a submachine gun. His identity registered in Raven’s mind. His was Sila Kaymak, the man who pretended to try and kill Tanya in Stockholm the night she and Raven met.

  Kaymak lifted the SMG as the Beretta barked again and again from Raven’s rapid fire. The 9mm slugs punched through Kaymak’s chest and he joined Talman on the floor.

  Raven dropped the empty Beretta and shoved Tanya away. She flopped onto the floor. She still had some life left in her and grabbed uselessly at the K-Bar’s hilt. Then her hands slipped and rested at her sides. Her eyes remained open.

  Raven rose from the bed. He breathed hard from the exertion but stood long enough to stare at her. He burned the image of her dead face into his mind.

  A roar in the distance grew louder. Raven snatched up Kaymak’s submachine gun and grabbed a spare magazine to stuff into a pocket. Alarms outside blared. A panicked voice began shouting over a loudspeaker.

  And then the first bomb landed.

  The building shook with the blast. The walls swayed and the lights popped out. Raven was in darkness once again. He dropped to the ground and crawled over bodies, ignoring the blood smearing his clothes, to the doorway. Emergency lights in the hall lit the way ahead.

  Jets thundered above. The F-18s, on schedule. SEALs on deck for mop up. Another bomb blast shook the ground. Windows shattered and glass flew inside. Raven covered his eyes with an upraised arm as he advanced and felt bits of glass hit him. A third blast crumbled part of the wall, and the ceiling collapsed behind him in a heap of sheet rock. Dust choked the hallway and stung Raven’s eyes. He ran for his life.

  18

  The Navy doctor turned off his pen flash after shining it above Raven’s eyes and asking him to follow the light.

  “You have a concussion for sure,” he said. “Plenty of abrasions. Nothing broken. You got off easy compared to these other guys. Rest while we head back to Italy.”

  “Right. Where’s my—”

  “Your personal effects are on the nightstand.”

  Raven turned his head. His locket sat where the doctor said in a clear plastic bag.

  The locket he almost lost.

  The one thing he couldn’t bear to be separated from. His reason for being rested inside.

  The doctor moved to the next bed. Several wounded
SEALs lay in the sick bay with Raven. Nurses hurried about. He ignored the commotion as he looked at his hands. Dried blood remained on his right hand. Tanya’s blood.

  Another man came over.

  “You all right?”

  Raven lifted his head. The man was Greg Macedo, one of the CIA agents who’d helped him get Hannah Schrader out of Berlin. He and his partner Mitch Storey had landed with the SEAL team because they knew what Raven looked like.

  “I’ll live,” Raven said.

  “Glad we found you when we did. You didn’t look so good.”

  Raven had exited the burning barracks only to collapse near a tree. His head barely missed a large rock. He’d decided to lay there and wait. Either the SEALs would find him, or the last of Tanya’s forces would finish him off. In that moment, he hadn’t cared if he lived or not.

  But then Macedo and Storey found him and dragged him out of the fight.

  “What did you get?” Raven said.

  “Plenty of prisoners, for one,” Macedo said. He stood with folded arms. “We took a bunch of stuff we hope will provide more information, too. With any luck we’ll shut down the Islamic Union once and for all.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll have Germany’s help.”

  “Really?”

  “We took Hannah back to Berlin so she could provide the BND with a statement. They found the information in her father’s safe tying him to the Islamic Union and various other groups. The guy who ran his servers, somebody named Phillip Dassler, is also cooperating.”

  “And?”

  “They’ve agreed to help us wrap things up as long as we keep them out of anything related to Operation Triangle. They’re embarrassed Schrader was operating under their nose and they missed the signs.”

  Raven nodded. “I suppose it’s a good thing.”

  “Is it?”