Max carried a human-sized duffel bag with a tranquilizer hypodermic in the side pocket—a present for Dr. Kuznetsov. He stored the bag in the back seat of the black Fiat Tipo sedan Angelo had acquired for them before he sat in the passenger seat next to Tom.
Tom fired up the engine and drove from the marina. Through the black of night, he steered out onto Strada Statale 145. “You know, having a reverend around might be good luck,” Tom said.
Max shook his head in disbelief. “You sound like maman.” He used the French word for their mother. Tom wasn’t old enough to remember her when she was alive, but Max was. “She believed in God and priests, and none of that saved her.”
Ahead, a bonfire blazed beside the road. A city sanitation truck dumped trash into the flames.
“What the hell?” Max asked. “The city’s going to burn their trash right there? Beside the road?”
“The mafia controls a lot of the municipal waste disposal,” Tom said. “They sneak around at night and dump metals, chemicals, and household and industrial waste on whatever land they find. Then they burn it.”
“That can’t be good for the people who live near the burning trash.”
“The Italians are discovering an increase of cancer in children. Probably adults, too.”
“Can’t the government kick out the mafia?” Max asked.
“The government is in bed with the mafia.”
They passed the toxic fire. The street carried them south under overpasses, between barricades, and out of the city, where small plots of farmland emerged. Cars on the road became scarce, and the shadowy arms and fingers of trees grasped at their headlights. A black mountain loomed, pushing at their vehicle as if to shove them off the road and into the black Bay of Naples. Lights from a handful of resort hotels guided them south, away from the phantom mountain. Up on a tuff cliff perched the coastal town of Vico Equense. Their street climbed out of the city before it squeezed into hairpin turns over a small mountain.
Max and his brother arrived in Sorrento, the city where their target was located. Chris broke squelch once on his radio, indicating that he and Hannah were in place behind the target building. As planned, Chris and Hannah would have to wait. Max donned his night vision goggles and switched them on.
Tom parked to the side of Dr. Kuznetsov’s house. Max broke squelch on the radio once, signaling that they were in place, too.
Chris broke squelch twice: ready to assault.
This was the point of no return. Max could call it off, and the doc and the Russian mafia wouldn’t be wiser. If Max broke squelch twice, there was no putting the Easy Cheese spray back in the can.
Max broke squelch twice: go. He and Tom exited the car.
With Max as point man, they hustled along the walkway between two parked cars and a wall shielding the front of the house. The Russians had no idea what was about to befall them. A door squeaked open somewhere, but Max wasn’t sure exactly where the sound came from. Rather than hesitate, he turned the corner.
Two additional cars were in the driveway. As more of the driveway came in view, so did one of the Russian thugs, less than three meters away. He hadn’t appeared in their surveillance videos, but he did appear in the photos that Willy had sent—his helmet-like hairstyle was unique from the others, who wore their hair short or shaved their heads bald. Helmet must’ve spotted Max because he reached to his waist for the pistol on his hip. Max lazed his forehead with his infrared beam and squeezed the trigger. The P90 emitted a click and a puff of air, and the Russian fell stiffly like a chopped tree.
The cliff to Max’s left and a protruding section of the house to the right blocked most of Max’s view to the beach in back of the property, but he could see along a sliver of an angle, past a line of potted plants to a boulder on the beach. More than fifty meters away, in front of the boulder, a roving patrol walked with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. He was only a second or less away from reaching Chris and Hannah’s position. Max had to supercharge. He fired two shots in less than a second, hitting him both times in the upper body. Rover stopped. With the small caliber of his submachine gun, Max worried that Rover might keep going, so he shot him four more times. He dropped, and Max was pleased that he’d made the shots in time to save his friends.
He paused for a moment to see if more men appeared. When they didn’t, he peeled right and entered a passageway between the wall and house, which was only wide enough for one person to pass through. He caught someone from behind. That someone must’ve heard Max because he spun around sporting a pistol in his hand. Max dispatched him with two to the head.
Max stepped over the body and examined the other side of the house, where the five lawn chairs were, and one man stood there smoking a cigarette. Max shook his head no, but the man went for his gun anyway. Max and Tom drilled him, and he fertilized the lawn.
Bang, bang! Two pistol shots were fired—by the Russians. It sounded as if the shots had come from the rear of the house.
“Man down,” Chris’s voice whispered.
Max’s heart and stomach dropped together. Hannah. Damn!
“We need to medevac Infidel,” Chris said.
“Leave Infidel there, grab the HVT, and we’ll take Infidel out with us,” Max said.
“I’m taking her out now.”
“Don’t abandon us,” Max said. “We need to get the HVT.”
“Bradley, Reverend,” Chris said. “Need immediate extract.”
“Okay,” Angelo said.
Damn it!
Max reached the door in the middle of the house. He was pissed at Chris for abandoning him and his brother.
Tom tapped Max on the shoulder: go.
Max turned the doorknob. It was unlocked—hallelujah! He opened the door and slipped inside. The hall was clear. To the left was a door to a small area that might have been storage or a bathroom. Before he made noise clearing it, he wanted to take down the bigger rooms first, where there would likely be more people and more resistance—better to use surprise on the big fish than to waste it on the minnows. He came upon a closed door. Slowly and carefully he turned the knob. It was unlocked, too.
Max threw open the door.
A man wearing a goatee opened fire on him, slicing Max’s shoulder. Max answered him with a flurry of shots that cast Goatee aside. Max expected a living room, but the furnishings seemed odd—three beds, a couch, and a TV. At the opposite end of the room, near the front door of the house, were two gargantuan guys, one bald and one with a buzz cut. Max ignored his wounded shoulder and kept moving. He peeled out of Tom’s way, so his brother could pitch in. Baldy and Buzz got off shots, and one popped the air near Max’s ear, but Max got off shots, too: two to the chest and one to the Baldy. Tom got a piece of Buzz and didn’t stop popping him until Buzz was out of action.
There was a door to the left. Max turned the knob, but it was locked. He kicked hard near the doorknob, and the door flew open and the frame splintered. Bang! At first Max thought he’d been shot again, but then he saw the Brigadier, Yuri Romashkov, stagger back into a bathroom. He must’ve been standing directly behind the door, and the door hit him in the face with a bang. The Brigadier grabbed his nose with one hand and gripped a pistol with the other. He fell backwards over the toilet and knocked off a roll of toilet tissue, but he held on to his pistol.
Tom fired multiple times. The first shots hit the Brigadier in the shoulder. The last one capped his melon and spurt melon juice. A dripping sound echoed, but Max couldn’t see if it came from the sink or the bathtub. He looked in the tub to see if anyone was there, but it was empty.
Max and Tom reversed roles, and Tom led them back around to the small room in the hall that they’d skipped over. The door must’ve been locked because Tom kicked it open and aimed inside. It was a small bathroom, where a man sat on a toilet with the seat down. Max couldn’t figure out why Tom wasn’t shooting, and then he realized that the man in front of them was Dr. Kuznetsov. Jackpot!
Max snatched him off his th
rone, bound his hands, gagged him, and put a black hood over his head while Tom covered the hall. Max yanked Doctor Kuznetsov out of the bathroom, shoved him through the hall, and out the door.
Max checked for threats left and right as he manhandled the doctor outside the house. He pushed the doctor past the cars and to their getaway car, the black Fiat. Max forced him onto the floorboard in back, where he sat with his feet on the doctor.
Now Tom was in the driver’s seat, and he accelerated out of the immediate danger zone.
Ahead, police sirens shrieked and lights flashed. The sirens became louder and the lights brighter. Tom slowed down.
Uh-oh. It’d be difficult to explain the prisoner on the floorboard. But the police cars whizzed past them.
Max and Tom had captured the HVT. Proper planning and stealth were a deadly combination.
But they still had to find a cure for the virus. And Max hoped Hannah was okay.
Chapter Nineteen
The powerful muscle yacht sped through the darkness. Chris walked backwards, so he wouldn’t trip on his swim fins, to the stern. Hannah did the same. They were two hundred meters from their target.
Chris turned and faced the black rooster tail of water spewing aft and grasped his face mask with one hand so it wouldn’t get ripped off from the impact of hitting the water at high speed. He took a deep breath and jumped. He balled up so no appendages would stick out and break off, and somersaulted into the black abyss. Bubbly hands of water cradled his descent until violent hands twisted and turned him. Heaven became hell and hell became heaven, and right was left and left was right, and extra hands tossed him until he didn’t know which way to go for oxygen.
Patience. He waited until the hands ceased tossing him. The buoyancy in his wetsuit raised him to the surface. He formed a tight circle with his lips and shot a bite of air to his lungs.
Where am I? The yacht’s diesel engines hummed behind him, becoming fainter and fainter. From earlier planning, he knew it was headed south, the direction he needed to swim. He faced the noise, then kicked, stroked, and glided. To keep his profile to a minimum and remain quiet, he swam a modified sidestroke: a hybrid between sidestroke, breaststroke, and crawl.
Where’s Hannah? Light from Doctor Kuznetsov’s house glimmered on the water, but the base of a massive cliff blocked Chris’s view of the actual house.
He noticed a bump in the water. Then he spotted the bump’s shoulders. Hannah. He was relieved to find her. He caught up to her for a silent rendezvous, and they swam to shore together.
When the waters became shallow, they sat on large rocks and sand with water up to their shoulders and removed their fins, which they attached to bungee cords strapped over their backs. Hannah gave him a nod—ready.
Chris took the lead and slithered like a water snake to shore. He rose to a crouch and stalked onto dry land, where he removed his night vision goggles from a waterproof bag. After he switched on the goggles, the night turned green. The doctor’s house cast a steady jade light on the waters, and a small bonfire created a flickering bloom of greenish white. He hugged the jagged volcanic wall of rock and edged closer. At the curve of a half circle formed by the bottom of the cliff, Chris stopped. The cliff blocked his view of the nearby boulder he’d seen during their surveillance, but he could see the other boulder, which marked the side of the house farthest from him.
He knew that Max and Tom had the more time-consuming route of traveling over land, and they needed more time to get into position, so Chris stood by to kill time. The only sound was his beating heart and the whispering ebb and flow of the tide.
After several minutes, Chris broke squelch on his radio. He received a single click in his ear bud—Max and Tom were in position, too.
Chris broke squelch twice—standing by. They’d reached the critical point. Max broke squelch twice. Now the genie couldn’t be put back in the bottle. Game on.
He advanced toward the house. In his peripheral vision it looked like a man went down—possibly someone Max and Tom had taken out. Then, like a black wraith, a man with a pistol materialized from the darkness. Chris’s whole body jerked with surprise. He aligned his laser on the specter’s chest. The wraith aimed his pistol at him. Chris fired first—three to the chest and two to the head. Tick-tick-tick. Tick-tick. The wraith melted into the dirt.
Chris had become so occupied with the wraith that he hardly noticed a second man, armed with a shotgun, who ventured out beside the boulder. Hannah aired him out. “Uhgh,” he grunted before taking a beach siesta. A third armed bad guy approached, and Chris smoke checked him. Each of these men were in the photos that Willy had sent. It seemed as if tonight the whole Russian mafia crew was out on the beach.
Hannah fired again, but from Chris’s angle, he couldn’t see who she was shooting at. Whoever he was, he didn’t shoot back.
Chris turned the corner and spotted a man with a shotgun and a gleam in his eyes, but before the man could squeeze off a shot, Chris put him down.
Chris needed to clear the area behind the nearest boulder, but a tattooed man emerged from the back door, and Chris unloaded on him instead. The first shots struck Tattoo in the chest, but Chris’s follow-up shot missed.
Meanwhile, a heavy-duty guy turned the opposite corner of the house, but Chris had to finish off Tattoo. Rather than go for the more difficult head shot, Chris lazed Tattoo’s chest and put three more shots into it. Tattoo dumped on his duff as if he couldn’t wait to sit. Then his body stiffened, and he toppled over.
Heavy D got off two shots in Hannah’s direction. Without sound suppression, the shots sounded like thunder echoing off the cliff walls. Hannah’s tick-tick answered Heavy D. Chris added his laser to Heavy D’s upper body and jerked the trigger rapidly. Heavy D plummeted. Chris shot him some more to make sure he stayed put.
He turned to check on Hannah. She lay on her side with one leg folded under, and she didn’t move. The side of her head leaked profusely.
“Man down,” Chris whispered. He knelt. Hannah’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t make a sound.
He didn’t want to believe she was dead. He felt the artery on her neck for a pulse. A gentle throbbing pulsated against his fingers. She’s alive! He put his cheek near her mouth to feel for breathing and watched her chest for a rise and fall. Her chest didn’t move, but air from her nose tickled his skin. She was breathing. Even so, her eyes remained closed and her body still. “We need to medevac Infidel.”
Max’s voice came over the radio. “Leave Infidel there, grab the HVT, and we’ll take Infidel out with us.”
Chris unpacked a dressing from the blowout kit on her dive belt and affixed it to her wound. “I’m taking her out now.”
“Don’t abandon us,” Max said. “We need to get the HVT.”
Chris heard Max’s words, but he was so focused on saving Hannah that he couldn’t process their meaning. “Bradley, Reverend. Need immediate extract.”
“Okay,” Angelo said.
One of the Russians from Willy’s photos, Godzilla with no neck, rushed out of the back door pointing his shotgun. Chris aligned his laser and pulled the naked steel trigger so fast that it seemed he was firing on full auto. Godzilla did a dirt dive.
Chris shifted his FN P90 on its sling to his back and his attention to Hannah. He picked her up. She was no lightweight, but he was filled with more strength than he imagined possible. He loved her, and he wasn’t going to let her die. He carried her into the ocean.
Her eyes popped open, she snorted, and her body twitched as if the cool saltwater brought her back to consciousness.
The water’s buoyancy made her lighter, and he popped the compressed air cartridge on her inflatable life vest. Soon she was floating without his help. Chris put on his swim fins. He kicked like a madman and distanced himself from the Russians. Farther and farther he swam out to sea.
The faint murmur of the yacht increased in volume.
Chris swam harder, and he barely had enough breath to speak: “Bradl
ey, I hear you. I’ll signal, you identify.”
“Okay.”
On the back neck area of Hannah’s vest was attached an unused glow stick. Chris bent it until the thin glass capsule inside broke, releasing its solution into the surrounding chemicals and casting an infrared glow.
“I see a red IR light,” Angelo said.
“That’s correct. We need an extract, ASAP.”
The engines hummed, and the dark vessel materialized from the night. “Engines stopped,” Angelo said. The engines continued to idle, but the yacht stopped moving.
Chris swam Hannah closer to the stern, where Angelo met them. Chris pushed her up and Angelo pulled until she was aboard. Then Chris kicked himself up out of the water and pulled himself onto the deck. Angelo hastily returned to the helm and got them moving again.
Chris jerked off his fins and dropped them on the deck. He picked Hannah up and carried her across the sundeck to the multi-cushioned sofa-bed, where he laid her.
Her eyes were closed.
Chris sat beside her and took off his night vision goggles. The emerald world surrendered to the real world. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.
Hannah stirred and opened her eyes—they were dilated. “Dad?”
“What?” Chris asked gently.
She closed her eyes again.
The yacht pulled forward to full speed, and the glowing lights on the mountainside glided past. Chris unzipped Hannah’s wetsuit partway to relieve some of the pressure on her chest and help her breathe more easily. He had no romantic thoughts now, his only focus was her survival.
She opened her eyes and sat up. “What’s going on? Why aren’t we attacking the objective?”
“We did. You were injured.”
Her body swayed unsteadily. “We did? Did we get Doctor Kuznetsov?”
“I don’t know. You need to rest.”
“I’m fine,” Hannah said.
“Do you remember what happened?”
Patriot Dream_A Special Operations Group Thriller Page 12
