The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  He rolled back and forth a little as the case was moved. The jostling went on for about half a minute before he was set down again.

  He tried to calm himself by counting the seconds since he’d stopped moving, but it was impossible to concentrate, and he had no idea how much time had passed when he felt a slight vibration. He assumed it was a precursor to being lifted up again, but as the vibration grew stronger and stronger, the case remained otherwise motionless.

  Then, without warning, the sensation ceased.

  The pressure in his head had become a cloud creeping through his brain. He should have put up more of a fight when they’d put him in the case. Maybe they would have at least sedated him. That would have been a hell of a lot better than this.

  Something bumped against the case, then up he went again.

  He pressed his eyelids closed and balled his fists, his nails digging into his palms.

  “Scheisse.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Quinn and his team reached the runway’s edge, they split off to their assigned positions—Quinn and Nate continuing straight toward the plane, Orlando going wide left, and Daeng wide right.

  Quinn and Nate were approximately thirty meters from the jet when one of the kidnappers ducked under the aircraft. They dropped to the ground, and watched the man disconnect a flexible pipe from the plane and carry it back the way he came.

  Soon, the fuel truck, parked on the other side of the plane, began to move. With the vehicle out of the way, Quinn could now see the bottom half of the building’s double doors, one of which was open, with someone standing in the threshold.

  A shout echoed across the tarmac. Not one of alarm, but the type used to get a person’s attention. More elevated voices that Quinn interpreted as a conversation between two people separated by several meters. When it ended, the person in the doorway disappeared inside and the plane’s engines fired to life.

  Without even looking at each other, Quinn and Nate jumped to their feet and ran.

  Using the distraction of the departing fuel truck as cover, Orlando crept forward until she found a spot from where she could see the area between the plane and the building. There, she stretched out on the ground and unslung the sniper rifle.

  Via the scope, she scanned the aircraft and tarmac. A short set of stairs led from the ground to the plane’s passenger door. No one on the steps, nor was anyone visible through the small slice of the plane’s entrance she could see. There was, however, someone in the cockpit, looking down at the controls.

  A man moved into the building’s doorway, drawing her attention away from the plane. He stopped short of the threshold.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  The man in the cockpit opened a side window. The two shouted back and forth for a few moments. The words that reached Orlando were garbled by the distance so she didn’t pick up anything.

  When the conversation ended, the man in the plane closed his window and started the engines.

  Seconds later, six people exited the building, four of them carrying a large gray case. Seven individuals had been in the satellite images of the helicopter’s arrival, so someone was missing. Using the scope, she scanned the faces. The woman was there, leading the group. A man walked beside her, and carrying the case were four others, all of whom Orlando was sure had been in the satellite photos. Brunner was the only one missing.

  She focused back on the case. It was long. Human-body long.

  Could it be…?

  She clicked on her mic. “Six people heading to the plane with a large case. I have a feeling Brunner’s inside it.”

  “Daeng, status,” Quinn whispered.

  “In position. I see them, too.”

  “We can’t let them get on the plane,” Quinn said.

  Orlando put the man carrying the far front corner of the case in her crosshairs.

  A shot from Orlando’s sniper rifle cracked across the airfield.

  Before Quinn and Nate were even able to drop to the ground beneath the wing, short bursts of assault-rifle fire from Daeng’s position added to the sudden chaos among the kidnappers.

  Quinn searched for targets.

  Two men lay motionless on the tarmac, pools of blood surrounding them, glistening in the lights. The other four were still upright. Two were manhandling the case onto the plane’s stairs, while the other two were returning Orlando’s and Daeng’s fire.

  Quinn picked out one of the shooters and sent a bullet smashing into the man’s hip. The guy spun and went down screaming, his rifle clattering away from him. The other man looked for where the shot had come from, but before he could lay eyes on Quinn, three bullets struck him simultaneously. The guy seemed to freeze in place for a moment before dropping to the tarmac.

  Quinn turned to aim at the pair moving the crate, only they were no longer in sight. He could still see the crate, though. It was hanging partially below the plane as it was being pulled up the stairs into the aircraft.

  “I don’t have eyes on the last two.”

  “Me, neither,” Daeng said.

  “Repositioning,” Orlando said.

  Pushing to his feet, Quinn hurried forward and ducked under the plane. “I’ve got this.”

  He reached the other side as the back end of the crate passed through the doorway. Unable to see anyone from his current position, he took several backward steps toward the building, his gun trained on the jet’s open entrance. He caught sight of an arm and pulled his trigger, but his target disappeared before the bullet could hit it.

  Someone started shooting at him from inside, the slugs hitting the ground a few meters from him. Quinn held his place, willing the shooter to come into view. Instead, the case was yanked inward until it cleared the entrance, then the door slammed shut.

  At the same time, the plane began to move.

  The second the jet started rolling, Orlando switched her aim to the cockpit window.

  “I’ve got a line on the pilot,” she said.

  “Take the shot,” Quinn told her.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The bullet smashed into the glass but didn’t break it.

  She shot again, but the window held firm. Apparently this wasn’t your typical, run-of-the-mill Falcon.

  As the plane turned toward the runway, she aimed at the cockpit’s side window, hoping it was weaker. But once more, her shot barely scratched the surface.

  “Why is it still moving?” Quinn asked.

  “Bulletproof glass,” she said.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I can try shooting through the fuselage.”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  There was no need for him to explain his decision. Their job was to recover Brunner alive. They couldn’t chance a shot hitting something that could set the aircraft on fire.

  “Copy,” she said.

  Nate clicked on his mic. “Orlando, you have the discs?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Coming to you.”

  He sprinted past the turning plane and across the field to where Orlando was rising to her feet, pulling on his gloves to make sure they were tight to his hand. Since they couldn’t stop the plane without the risk of accidentally killing Brunner, Nate knew there was only one other option. And he was in the best position to pull it off.

  “Give them to me,” he yelled as he ran up.

  When he reached her, she shoved a pair of long-range tracking discs into his hand. He picked up his pace again and checked the plane’s position. The Falcon had reached the runway, and was taxiing to the end from where it would make a one-eighty turn and begin its takeoff. At the speed it was traveling, it would be a close call on whether he’d reach it in time.

  He dug deep, running as fast as his artificial right leg would allow.

  He was beginning to worry he wouldn’t make it, but then the plane slowed to make its turn.

  He reached the aircraft as it was still coming around, and moved underneath it. After ripping off the prot
ective layer on the sticky side of one of the bugs, he slapped it onto the strut of the nearest landing gear. He prepped the second disc, but dropped it in the process.

  “Crap!”

  Thankfully, the sticky side stayed up, but he was out of time as the jet’s power increased. He stuck the disc on the support behind the wheel and raced out from under the plane, reaching the edge of the runway just as the jet started rolling again.

  Orlando’s comm crackled to life. “Nate, do you read me?” Quinn said.

  No response.

  “I don’t think he can hear you over the engines,” Orlando said into her mic. She was watching the end of the runway through her binoculars, and had seen Nate disappear under the craft then run out the other side. “I think he did it, though.”

  She lowered the glasses and watched the Falcon roar by.

  As soon as it lifted into the air, she said into her mic, “Orlando for Jar.”

  “Go for Jar.”

  “Nate put at least one tracker on the plane. See if you can pick it up.”

  “Copy.”

  “Hey,” Daeng said over the comm. Orlando turned and saw him standing among the downed men outside the building. “One of these guys is still alive.”

  “Good,” Quinn replied. “See if there’s someplace inside where we can all have a little chat. Orlando, you want to join us?”

  “On my way.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tiana Snetkov—the woman Clarke had known as Astrid and Eric Ferber as Lilly Becker—stared out the window, looking back toward the cement building as the jet taxied to the end of the runway. She counted two people standing among her dead soldiers.

  Who the hell were they? And how had they found her and the others? She and Grigory Krylov—aka Esa—had thought they’d been so careful in covering their tracks.

  Apparently not.

  The attackers couldn’t have been merely hired guns sent to stop her and her people. They must have known Brunner was in the box, or at the very least suspected he was on the plane. It was the only explanation for why, with the exception of a few shots at the cockpit’s windshield, they hadn’t fired directly on the aircraft. They must have been concerned about injuring her prisoner. Which meant they had come to get Brunner back.

  She noticed two more intruders. The farthest one appeared to be running toward the other one. Upon reaching each other, there was a brief pause before the larger shadow continued onward again.

  “Dammit,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Grigory asked.

  She nodded her chin at the window and he took a look outside.

  The running shadow was on an intercept course with the plane, and gaining ground.

  Tiana turned toward the cockpit. “You need to go faster!”

  “I can’t,” the pilot said. “We’re almost to the end of the runway.”

  She grimaced and returned her gaze out the window Thirty seconds later, the plane slowed to a near stop and began to turn.

  The shadow was close now. So close that Tiana could see it was a man, and that he would reach them before takeoff began.

  Her first thought was he would plant some kind of bomb to disable the plane without completely destroying it. But it didn’t appear the man had anything like that in his hands, nor did he have any kind of bag to carry such a device. Before she could think of what else he might try, he raced onto the runway and disappeared under the fuselage.

  A few seconds later, the engines roared, and the plane quickly reached a speed impossible for anyone on foot to match. She looked back to see what had happened to the man, but the side-facing windows denied her the angle she needed.

  As the wheels lifted off the tarmac, she breathed a sigh of relief. If the man had been trying to stop them, he had failed.

  “Who the hell are they?” Grigory asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “How did they know we were—”

  “I have no idea.”

  Grigory was silent for a moment before saying, “Nesterov will not be happy.”

  “No shit.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The building contained several rooms suitable for an interrogation. One of them was a windowless box with a cot and a ripe bucket that had been used as a toilet by someone with digestive issues.

  Brunner’s holding cell, Quinn guessed.

  But for the smell, the room would have worked nicely for their needs. Instead, they settled on the space near the building’s main door.

  Daeng and Quinn carried the wounded man inside and propped him up on a wooden chair, the guy grunting in pain throughout. While they held him in place, Orlando covered the man’s wounds with duct tape, then used the rest of the roll to strap his torso to the seat.

  The man said something that sounded like Russian, but wasn’t.

  “What is that?” Daeng asked.

  “Ukrainian, I think,” Orlando said.

  Quinn nodded, thinking the same thing. He grabbed the guy’s chin and tilted it up.

  “English?”

  The guy made no indication that he understood.

  Quinn removed his gun and pressed it against the man’s undamaged leg. “Do you speak English?”

  The man jumped and stared wide-eyed at Quinn. After a second, he nodded.

  “Good.” Quinn eased the pressure but did not remove the weapon. “Where is the plane going?”

  “I-I-I do not know.”

  “Bullshit.” Quinn shoved the gun down again.

  The man yelped. “I tell truth! I do not know. They do not tell us! They only—” The man winced in pain.

  “They only what?”

  “They…they say go to…” He paused. “I not know how to say in English.” He spoke a phrase in Ukrainian.

  Orlando pulled out her phone, tapped it several times, then held the mic end toward the prisoner. “Say it again.”

  The man repeated the phrase.

  She pulled the phone back and looked at the screen. “Lonely Rock.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Quinn asked. He turned back to the prisoner. “What’s Lonely Rock?”

  “I never go. Not sure.”

  “‘Not sure’ means you at least have a guess.”

  The man looked away, as if realizing he’d said too much.

  “Buddy, I don’t know if you fully understand this yet or not, but your friends are gone and they’re not coming back. You help us, I’ll make sure you get medical attention. If not, we leave you to bleed out.”

  Another wave of pain washed across the man’s face. As it subsided, he took a deep breath and looked back at Quinn. “Like…like a base, I think.”

  “A military base?”

  “Same but not same.”

  “What government do you work for?”

  “Not work for government.”

  “Then who do you work for?”

  “Anyone who hire us.”

  Quinn cocked his head. “You’re paramilitary?”

  Now the man’s whole face creased. “Para…what? I not understand.”

  “A mercenary,” Orlando said. “Private soldier.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Yes. Yes. Private soldier.”

  “All of you were private soldiers?”

  “No. Only men carrying box.”

  “The other two—were they the people who hired you?”

  The man nodded.

  “Who are they?”

  “We, uh, we call man Commander Krylov and woman Commander Snetkov.”

  “Are those their real names?”

  “I do not know.”

  “They’re Ukrainian, too?”

  “No. They speak Russian to us but never say where they from.”

  “Do you know who they work for?”

  “I have no idea. My boss maybe know, but not me.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  The prisoner’s eyes flickered toward the building’s exit.

  “One of the dead guys ou
t there,” Quinn said.

  The man nodded.

  “What was his name?”

  “Gura.”

  “Roman Gura?” Orlando said.

  The captive nodded again.

  “You’ve heard of him?” Quinn asked.

  “His group is, or was, I guess, part of Tonast Security.” Tonast Security was a Slavic network of mercenaries who tended to be more active in the Middle East and Africa than in Europe.

  “Any chance we can use them to backtrack who hired Gura?”

  “No guarantees, but I’ll check.”

  “You have any other question you think we should ask this piece of garbage?”

  Orlando shook her head. “He’s useless.”

  Quinn pointed his gun at the prisoner’s head.

  What blood remained in the man’s face drained away. “No, no! Please!”

  “What’s Lonely Rock?”

  “I tell you already all I know! I swear!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I do not know anything more!”

  “All right, then what about who Krylov and Snetkov work for?”

  Looking desperate, the man said, “Maybe…Russian government?”

  “Did they say this?”

  “No. But-but makes sense, yes?”

  Quinn stared at him.

  “I-I-I have no idea. Just guess. Please!”

  Quinn gave it another beat before he lowered his gun. Blood was beginning to seep out from under the duct-tape bandage, so he said to Daeng, “See anything we can cover his wound with?”

  “There’s a dirty towel over there.”

  “That’ll do.”

  When Daeng went to fetch it, the man pleaded, “I need doctor. I need to go to hospital.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure someone will be by to help you out eventually.”

  The towel Daeng returned with was actually not dirty. He put it over the man’s wound and said, “Keep the pressure on.”

  “Wait! You can’t leave me like this!”

  Quinn, Orlando, and Daeng headed toward the exit.