Out of nowhere a rocket whooshed passed the team, straight for Kurt’s SUV. A fraction of a second later, a huge explosion lifted the men off the ground and threw them back as the SUV burst into a ball of fire. Rox felt a hot, churning wind blow past her face as she watched in horror. Chunks of concrete, rubble, and shards of metal pelted everything around them, raining from the sky like fire and ash.
“Holy FUCK!”
“Man down! Man down!”
“Kurt’s been hit! I repeat—he’s been hit!”
The Mercedes peeled out of the warehouse. Talon and Rox immediately started firing, but the bullets were pinging off the sedan like it was a Sherman tank.
“It’s fucking bullet-proof!” Talon shouted. “Aim for the tires!”
The car careened around the ball of flame that was their SUV, and the second truck started to follow but Simon rammed into the back like he was driving a rig from Thunderdome.
“Michaelson—there could be a goddamn warhead in there!” Rox shouted. “STOP!”
He immediately reversed, leaving about three yards of space between the truck and the SUV, when a figure stepped from the entrance wearing a long black coat, face obscured by a gas mask, holding an RPG.
Haug.
She aimed the rocket launcher right at Simon’s SUV just as he leaned out of the window, semi-automatic in his hand as he opened fire on the driver’s side of the truck.
Rox squeezed her trigger, nailing Haug in the opposite shoulder. She spun like a top, but the RPG teetered. Avi bum-rushed her from behind, tackling her into the ground and wrestling the RPG away from her.
Simon emptied his clip into the truck, sunk down in the SUV.
“I’m going after that motherfucking Mercedes!” he growled, shooting off after the sedan, swerving past what was left of Kurt’s SUV and weaving through the labyrinth of warehouses and containers at an impossibly fast speed for a truck that size.
“Hold your fire!” Rush shouted, sounding tone-deaf from the percussive force of the bomb, but he was moving like a running back. He made it to the truck, pushed open the door and dragged the dead driver out. He quickly rounded to the back, swinging open the doors.
“I have the package!” he shouted.
The bombs. They still had the bombs.
Oh, fuck. Oh, thank God. Rox nearly wilted in relief.
“Guys—we have a problem.” Henri’s deep voice came across comms.
“What’s your position?” Rox asked.
“Anand and I are still in the warehouse,” he responded. “We took gas masks off the hostiles.”
“Status?”
“All dead, including Dichter.”
She and Talon exchanged looks. “Repeat: You said we had a problem?”
“We have not secured the package,” Henri told them. “Repeat: we have not secured the package.”
“Rush, how many bombs are in the van?” Rox asked as the wail of sirens pierced the air in the distance. From their position on the roof, they could see a slew of police vehicles headed their way. Shit, they had to go.
Rush climbed into the back. She assumed he was checking inside the bomb to verify the nuke was still inside. “We have one B61 secured and intact.”
“We have two B61s secured inside and one casement missing the payload,” Henri said over the comms. “I repeat: One warhead is missing and Lightner isn’t here.”
Chapter 21
April—Late Night
Tel Aviv, Israel
R O X A N N E
Frederica Haug was one bad bitch, and that was saying something, considering that compliment was coming from Rox. The woman had passed out twice from the pain Rox inflicted while getting information out of her, waking up only to spit in her abductors’ faces when she’d been forced to come to. The first time was Rush holding smelling salts up to her nose like the properly-trained medic he was. The second time Rox had just pushed him aside and jammed her thumb good and deep into her bullet wound until the woman woke up and howled like a wolf.
But in the end, it wasn’t the threat of physical violence that got to Haug. It was her mercenary self-interest and her ability to see that aligning with Lightner was no longer in her favor. The bastard had left her to die, even though he’d already paid her fee up front to verify the warheads were legit and get them safely stored into the specially-designed transfer casks she’d built for the job.
“Not the first time some asshole left you high and dry,” Rox guessed as she wiped Haug’s blood off her hands with a dish rag.
“I get a reputation for being a snitch, and my career in this business is tanked,” Haug replied, spitting a gob of blood and saliva out of her mouth like it was mouthwash. Her face was pretty banged up thanks to Rox’s brass knuckles. Pity.
“You know what else could ruin your career?” Rox pulled out Anand’s razor-sharp khukuri knife. “Having no hands.”
Rox put the blade right over the other woman’s right wrist where it was tied to the chair.
To her credit, Haug didn’t even flinch. “Hoo-yah,” she said softly, eyes glaring daggers. Translated: Go fuck yourself.
Rox smirked, half-amused and half-impressed. “Man, you really are Navy.”
“Damn straight,” Haug spat out.
Rox crossed her arms, the knife glinting in the light of the bare bulb dangling in the basement that they’d hauled Haug into after they’d gotten out of the dockyard. “You know I cleared that man out of house and home, right?”
Haug didn’t react.
“About forty million in assets,” Rox continued. “Not bad considering. How much did Lightner pay you?”
Something flickered in Haug’s eyes. Made sense. Everybody had a price.
“I’m guessing a mil,” Rox continued, watching her.
A muscle ticked in Haug’s jaw.
“What—not even?” Rox replied, brows raised. “How about I pay you two mil of that asshole’s money to tell me where he’s going with that warhead?” she offered reasonably. “It’s just sitting in escrow right now. I was going to donate most of it to my favorite charity, but now I’m thinking you’re a hard-working lady.” Rox considered her, tapping the flat part of the blade against her arm. “Why not redistribute the wealth a little? Help another sister out?”
“I don’t know where he’s planning on going,” Haug gritted out.
“Maybe not, but you’re not a stupid chick, Frederica. You weren’t about to let that crazy motherfucker disappear with enough plutonium to take out Chicago, much less sell it without your knowing to whom.”
Again the flicker. Now they were getting somewhere.
Rox jammed the knife into a nearby wooden table and pulled out her mobile phone. “Tell me your account number. I’ll transfer the money right now.”
Haug studied her, clearly weighing out her best options.
“So what’s it to be?” Rox asked amiably, waving her phone. “Door number one: I take your hands and you tell me. In fact, you scream and beg and cry first, but then you tell me after a lot of bleeding and drama. Door number two: I transfer two mil of that asshole’s money straight into your account. You get to flip him the bird and live to fight another day.”
“How do I know you won’t just kill me afterward?”
Rox shrugged. “I won’t.” She looked at Simon and Rush looming just outside the door. “They might. You killed a good buddy of theirs tonight. They’re probably still a bit pissed.”
Haug’s eyes narrowed. “Throw in the knife and we have a deal.”
Rox chuckled. “You’ve got a set of balls, Frederica. I admire that. Now give me the account number.”
Haug recited the information and Rox completed the transfer. When she was done, she held up the phone to show her the screen.
“Untie me.”
Rox leaned against the table, casually crossing her legs at the ankle. “Tell me what I want to know first.”
Haug released a pained, frustrated sigh. “I put trackers on all the warheads. Untraceable, undetectable. E
xcept for my software.”
“Where’s your software?”
“It’s on my laptop.”
“Bullshit,” Rox replied. “You’re too careful. No way would you keep it on a specific device that could be stolen or destroyed. Where’s the software? You got a little cloud somewhere?”
“Untie me first,” Haug insisted.
“Is it on your phone?”
“Un. Tie. Me.”
Rox cocked her head. “Is it hidden in the code of some bullshit website?”
Haug remained silent.
“Fine.” Rox yanked the knife from the table and approached. She slid the khukuri knife under the rope of Haug’s left wrist, then met the woman’s defiant eyes.
“Last chance,” Rox murmured.
Haug just waited, the muscle ticking in her swollen jaw.
“Alrighty then.” Rox sliced through the rope effortlessly. Just as Haug started to wiggle her numb fingers, Rox reared up and slammed the knife deep into the woman’s forearm, pinning it to the chair as Haug screamed like a banshee.
Rox grabbed the woman by the throat so hard, the chair rocked onto its back legs, leaving Haug suspended as she choked and gurgled.
“Listen to me, you stupid, arrogant pinche puta,” Rox snarled. “You killed a good man tonight, and dozens of others needlessly. You let a psychotic asshole leave with a nuclear warhead, and you’re a goddamn traitor to your own country. Now you think you’re going to fuck with me and get away with it? Try again.”
Haug squirmed, gasping, trying to catch her breath, tears running down her face from the pain and lack of oxygen.
“I will slowly remove the skin from your body. Ribbon by ribbon,” she hissed into Haug’s ear. “It’s amazing how a little table salt burns like fire on open wounds, doesn’t it? Shit, I could keep this going for days—keep reviving you each time you pass out. Let the bullet wound really start to fester.” Rox smiled slowly, looking closely at her prey. “I’m sick like that, Frederica. I like it. You wanna try me?”
Haug gurgled something unintelligible. Rox loosened her grip just fractionally.
“I can’t hear you,” Rox taunted.
Haug said it again—named a website she used to track her goods.
Rox smiled, patting Haug on the face. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rox tweaked the handle of the knife, just enough to make Haug groan and squirm, sweat pouring down her bloody, bruised face. “Anything else you want to tell me in this little confessional?”
Haug grit her teeth as Rox continued to toy with the handle of the knife. “Who is he selling to?”
She cried out when Rox yanked the knife down sharply, slicing through more tendon and muscles. “Who is he selling to?” she repeated.
“I don’t know!” Haug shouted. “I just know the deal was for ten warheads—that’s how many isotope radiation casks I made for transport. The plan was to take Dichter’s team and take the warheads from the B61s,” she panted, sweat pouring down her face, her skin gray from blood loss and shock. “It was my job to help get the warheads loaded safely and to help them arm them. I only got to the one before the men in your unit secured the others. He must have taken it.”
“So Lightner was with you?”
“Yes,” Haug gritted out. “He was in the Mercedes.”
“Where is he headed now?” Rox put her hand on the handle of the knife, but Haug knew she wasn’t messing around anymore—that and the woman had clearly reached her tolerance for pain.
“I don’t know! I swear! Wait—!” she shouted as Rox gripped the handle. “I have a number—a one-time-use burner. Just in case something happened and we got separated.”
“Give it to me now.”
Haug panted out the numbers as Rox entered them into her phone.
“My arm—” she gasped as Rox turned to leave the room.
“Not my problem,” Rox said over her shoulder.
“I’ll patch her up,” Rush offered as she shut the door behind her.
“Not before I get to her,” Simon muttered, pushing his way into the room and slamming the door.
“We’re out of here within the hour,” Rush told her. “The guys are upstairs destroying all trace evidence that we were ever here.”
A high-pitch scream emitted before it was cut off in a strangle.
“Better get in there if you want to play the white knight, Rush,” Rox suggested, wiping her hands off.
Rush just looked at her for a moment. “You’re like Sam, except… darker—and more twisted.”
She smiled slowly. “Oh, honey, you have no idea.”
When she made it back upstairs, she saw Avi speaking to the Syrian woman who’d been taking care of Uzi Dichter’s daughter. The woman looked frightened, but she accepted an envelope thick with cash before she rushed toward the kitchen door, careful not to look at any of the heavily armed men hurriedly carrying equipment and gear out to the SUVs.
“What did you tell her?” Rox asked him.
Avi sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That the girl’s father was killed in a raid in Gaza. I told her to leave with her children tonight. There’s a van outside waiting to take them anywhere they want.”
“Where’s the little girl now?”
“Upstairs, asleep.”
Rox nodded, pulling out the black pouch of diamonds she’d taken off of Uzi Dichter’s dead body before they’d cleared the scene. “Give these to her.”
“What’s a little girl going to do with a bag full of diamonds?” he asked skeptically.
“I don’t know,” Rox shrugged. “College fund? She deserved better than a rat bastard arms dealing father, but at least something good can come out of it.” She went to the sink to rinse off her face and hands, get some of Haug’s blood off of her.
Avi came up behind her. “Talon told me you nearly took a nosedive off the roof.”
She nodded, turning on the water faucet so she could put her bloody fingers under the cool water. “It’s a good thing I have nine lives.”
“Tell me your name,” he murmured, so only she could hear.
Rox looked up. She could see their reflection in the kitchen window. “Neshama.”
“Your real name.” His breath was soft and searing at the back of her neck.
Rox finished rinsing her hands and her face before straightening. When she turned, Avi held a towel out to her.
“That’s not the agreement,” she reminded him. “We get Lightner first, remember?” She finished rinsing her hands and he took it from her, wiping the water drops from her face in the dim light of the kitchen.
“You could have died, and I would never have known,” Avi said quietly.
“You’re cunning, Avi. I’m sure you could have figured it out.” She stepped back, seeking a little distance from his discerning gaze. “Now I need to call Sam and let her know that we don’t have Lightner, we’re missing a nuclear warhead, and that Cameron Kurt didn’t make it. This should be a fun conversation…”
*
April—Morning
Wyatt Ranch, Texas
J A C K
They lay on their sides, facing each other on the quilt that Jack had spread on the sun-dappled, dewy grass by the headstone of Samantha’s brother. Jack had been uncertain when she’d brought him here on horseback, but she’d told him it was one of the places she felt most at peace, so he’d gone along with it, hoping it was a good sign—that she was willing to share one of her most sacred spaces.
They rested in the cool shade, surrounded by deep-red Japanese maples, tall and fiery as phoenix wings. The Wyatt family plot was a beautiful place on a small hill overlooking the ranchlands. Jack admired the half-crescent shape of the tended gardens, the scent of gardenias and Lily of the Valley resplendent in the crisp morning air before the summer heat started to bake the earth. He realized in that sun-gilded moment that in the frenetic amphitheater of their relationship, amidst the passion and the drama, they’d rarely had these slow and drowsy moments, s
teeped in a kind of languid quiet. And yet he wanted this as much as he wanted the passion and the almost unbearable, exquisite love. He wanted to know her. Every part.
“Tell me a secret,” Jack murmured, touching her cheek, his fingertips memorizing the planes and angles of her face like an erotic form of braille. “Something only you know.”
She smiled softly, eyes the color of bittersweet Venezuelan chocolate. “You first.”
“I was certain I was going to die in London,” he responded quietly, recalling fighting for his life in that half-constructed office prison, Mitch passed out at his feet, Lucien Lightner leering at him like a jackal. “It was the first time I’d ever been really afraid in my life. The second time was seeing you nearly die in Germany, right in front of my eyes, when I could do nothing to save you.”
Samantha closed her eyes. She turned her head and pressed a gentle kiss into his palm, the flutter of her lips light as butterfly’s wings.
“The first time I died was in Afghanistan,” she said after a moment, “Or so I’m told.”
His heart squeezed hard. “Do you remember it?”
Samantha shook her head. “Not really, no. But I remember something—or I dreamt it.” She looked up, touching the headstone. “Ryland was there, waiting for me. I think—” her voice caught. “I think he sent me back.”
Thank God… Jack sent a little prayer of thanks into the ether. Thank you for sending her back to me…
“I owe your brother a debt of gratitude, then.” He saw the sadness in her expression as she traced his name in the headstone. “Will you tell me about him?”
Samantha was quiet for long moments before murmuring, “Ry was my world, growing up.” She met his eyes. “My mother died giving birth, and her death sent my father into a spiral. My dad was an alcoholic. He’d be gone for months at a time, so it was up to me and my granddaddy to raise Ry.” She laughed then, softly, lost momentarily in recollection. “Between me and that old man, I’m surprised Ry survived the first few years. Thank God for Aunt Hannah and Uncle Grant.”
“I saw pictures of him in the library,” Jack told her. “He looked pretty precocious.”
“He was.” Samantha nodded with a sentimental grin. “Ry and Carey were always running around together, the two of them usually up to no good. But that boy was a charmer from the moment he could smile. Even when he was in trouble, Ry knew just how to get me to cut him some slack.”
Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three Page 36
