The voice. Was she … talking to him individually now? Natasya felt her eyes narrow as she considered it. Was it a casual conversation or some form of instruction? She’d trusted the voice to deliver what had been promised, and what had been promised was a plan that sounded so slick in its execution that she was certain it would go off with only a minor hitch, like the depot heist.
Instead, she was sitting in a helicopter with two of her people lost and a trail of bodies left behind. She sniffed, and the smell of burnt flesh filled her nose.
There was no changing it, now. She knew what the voice wanted her to do, but she had no intention of being a sacrifice in the name of Eric Simmons. She stared out into the night as the helicopter swept over woods and fields, toward city lights in the distance. If all else failed, she still had her own powers to fall back on.
And those might be just what she’d need before this was all over.
49.
Sienna
“Where’s Harper?” I asked as the FBI chopper blew my hair back, roaring as it came in for a landing. I should have been wearing ear protection, but I wasn’t working in a training environment and I used to be able to heal from whatever happened to me, including hearing loss.
Used to. Hopefully would again, and the sooner, the better.
I swallowed that fear, saving it for later as J.J. answered. “I’m patching her in now.”
“Hello?” Harper sounded sleepy. Part of me wanted to remonstrate J.J. for not calling her earlier, but it wasn’t like this was something he had a ton of experience with. Plus, I could have had him call her earlier if I’d really been thinking about it.
“Harper, I need you on site now,” I said, “unless you’ve got access to a drone control at your house?”
“At my house?” she asked with a measure of incredulity. “Oh, yeah, Nealon, I always bring highly classified military hardware to an unsecured location. Because I love the idea of a court martial, it sounds like fun.”
“Doesn’t the military have some kind of prohibition on insubordination and smartassery to your higher-ups?” I asked as the chopper started to settle on the pad.
“One, you’re not in my chain of command,” she said, still sounding pretty sleepy, “and two, I’ve just been following your lead—sir.” She snarked with a smile on that one, and I had to smile in return.
“Fair enough,” I said. “We’ve got a situation here, and I need eyes on. How soon can you be there?”
“I live in Chanhassen,” she said, and I could faintly hear her moving around. “Be there in twenty.” She hung up without another word.
“She must drive like the wind,” J.J. remarked. “Or else she’s coming in in her PJ’s.”
“Maybe she sleeps naked,” Scott mused, causing me to turn and look at him. He just shrugged. “What?”
I just ran for the chopper. The door was already open when I got there, and I saw two seats available. A young guy, a little older than me, was standing there with the black tactical vest on, holding the door. What a gentleman. Handsome, too, I saw from the brief look I gave him as I stepped up.
“Jeremy Hampton, ma’am,” he said, with a tip of the finger from his forehead that looked like a salute. “FBI Hostage Rescue Team.”
“Good thing you told me that, Hampton,” I said over the roar of the helicopter rotors, “because I was sure that this was a Boy Scout party bus.”
He smiled and settled back on his seat, quickly glancing from me to Scott and Reed, then back again. His eyes then shuffled to the empty seats and back to me. I got his meaning.
“Reed, you stay here and start buttoning up the campus,” I said, looking back at him for only a second. “Scott, you’re with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Scott said, shrugging as he stepped into the chopper and sat down next to me. I saw Reed’s look of betrayal disappear as the chopper took off without him, bucking and shaking as we lifted into the air. I settled back in my seat. It was quasi-military, not built for comfort. The pilot certainly didn’t take easy turns. He spun us about and headed us back in the opposite direction as soon as we were marginally clear of headquarters, and we shook as the helo started to climb.
Hampton gestured to the wall behind me, and I grabbed a set of earphones and put them on, sliding the boom mike down over my mouth. “I heard you’ve had a good night so far, ma’am.” His smile told me that he was like me, a hunter.
“Not sure I know what you’re talking about, Hampton,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own. “I’ve had a prison break, I’ve had to kill about twenty mercenaries and three metas, blown up a building, and put the fear of me back into a bunch of my detainees.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Sounds like fun.”
“You should see what I do for an encore,” I said under my breath. He smiled like he’d heard me.
The chopper rattled on, bumping with turbulence. “Eden Prairie airport is zero-five mikes out. Intercept with target is estimated at zero-four-thirty mikes,” the pilot said.
“So we’ll beat ’em by thirty seconds,” I said, translating from military-ese. These guys. I liked them, but sometimes the way they said things was confusing.
“That’s affirm, ma’am,” the pilot replied, proving my thesis.
I sat there, a little antsy, wondering why I was suddenly feeling a little tickle in the back of my mind, like a faint and distance hum of chatter under the hiss of the headset, the chatter of the pilots, and the muffled roar of the helicopter.
It sounded a little like … whispers? Again.
“RPG!” Hampton shouted, and I spun my head to look where he was pointing. He shouted some other stuff, direction and bearing, but I was too busy looking out the side of the window. A contrail zipped through the sky toward us, an unerring finger pressing toward its mark. It disappeared behind us and I heard an explosion.
The helicopter pitched, gravity gave out, and we dropped into a spin that was as sudden as a car crash. We went around three times, and I suddenly felt like I was in a washing machine, yanked in a hard circle by centrifugal force as we descended. I didn’t count, but it was seconds before I felt and saw the first tree impact the side of the helo. It hit the closed door and shattered the windows on that side, showering me with glass.
The world slowed down around me, and I watched Scott close his eyes as we dropped the last fifty feet. The impact was sickening, the lurch and crash like the world ending around me. My head snapped back against the seat, all sound of whispers forgotten, and I collapsed into blackness.
50.
Natasya
“Idiot,” she pronounced, staring at the empty seat where Simmons had been sitting a moment earlier. She’d looked out the side of the chopper to see the RPG take down their pursuers, and when she’d looked back Simmons had been gone, taking their other unexpected passenger with him. The two remaining mercenaries were exchanging glances as well, but her eyes were locked on Vitalik, and his on hers.
“If she was in the helicopter, perhaps the landing killed her?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
Natasya pursed her lips. “Perhaps. But would you care to gamble your life on that?”
Vitalik’s eyes fell. “Perhaps not.” He looked out the open door where Simmons had jumped. “Do you think the—” he looked at his headset as though it were watching him, “—the voice is done with us?”
Natasya looked at her own headset, and down at the phone. Its faceplate was black, dead, and it had not responded to an attempt to turn it on a moment ago. She tried again, getting a similar response. “I don’t know how this technology works, but coupled with the absence of her presence on our headphones, yes, I would suspect betrayal.” She glanced back, as though she could see the crashed helicopter miles behind them. “One last hedge, one final smokescreen to be sure her beloved returns to her safely.”
Vitalik pursed his lips. “We’re the rabbit the dogs are to run down, then, if they live?”
Natasya felt the crude sense of being us
ed that she hadn’t felt since her training days with the KGB. “Yes.” It made her want to spit. “That would appear to be us.”
51.
Sienna
I awoke to screams, but they were all in my head.
Sienna!
Wake up!
“I’m awake,” I muttered, feeling my shoulders against the straps. “I’m awake.” I looked to my left, expecting Scott to be the one speaking to me, but his head was tilted sideways, his eyes closed. I looked around the helicopter in alarm, and found only Jeremy Hampton moving, moaning softly.
Who the hell was talking to me?
Sienna! Zack Davis shouted in my head, snapping me out of my torpor. I battled with the straps, fumbling for the buckle and slipping them off my shoulders.
Welcome back, Roberto Bastian said. You’ve got a pretty FUBAR situation here.
Nothing new about that, Eve Kappler added.
Same old story, Bjorn agreed.
“Ugh,” I said, shaking my head, which was aching. “It’s nice to see all of you, too.” I ripped the straps from Scott’s body and thrust fingers against his neck in a moment of panic.
There was a pulse.
Whew.
His eyelids fluttered and he looked up at me, dazed. “Sienna?”
I kissed him full on the mouth, relief overwhelming my good sense as I held my hands to his cheeks. I should have done this before, before my powers came back. I could have done it for longer … could have done it forever.
Uh … whoa, Zack said.
Sigh, Aleksandr Gavrikov added, a sound of mild exasperation.
I broke after counting off six seconds and looked right in Scott’s eyes. He blinked again, face vacant. “What … was that for?”
I felt a well of emotion inside and capped it. “Just … glad you’re okay.” I looked again around the helicopter cabin, the dim gunmetal dark in the night.
But not dark enough to hide that it was a tomb, filled with the bodies of the Hostage Rescue Team.
“Ouch,” Jeremy Hampton said, and I turned to see him easing out of his seat. He winced, then started checking pulses to confirm what I already knew. “Dammit.” He tapped the headset he was still wearing. “This thing’s out.”
I fumbled for my earpiece and found it missing. I looked around and caught a hint of glowing light on the deck and swept it up in my hand, shoving it in my ear. “Anybody there?”
“Still here,” J.J. said tensely. “Got Harper on the line, she’s here now. And Reed. Not Scott, though. Not sure what happened to—”
“Our chopper got shot down,” I said brusquely, no time for anything but business. “Harper, I need eyes on Eden Prairie airport.”
“Well, this must be your lucky night, because I’ve got eyes on Eden Prairie airport,” she said. “Clearly I’m growing psychic metahuman powers.”
“If only,” I muttered, banging my head on the chopper’s ceiling as I stood. Scott was trying to stand, weakly. He looked disoriented, possibly concussed. “We’ve got wounded here.”
“You’re in the middle of a field at gridpoint—” Harper started.
“Just send medical,” I said and stepped out into the freezing night. I was only wearing a windbreaker, and it didn’t do squat to break the howling, frigid wind that swept down on me across the field I was standing in. There was a massive oak a few feet away, the one we must have hit when we came down.
“What are you gonna do?” Reed asked, tentative, in my ear as I stood there, staring at the sky. It was showing a hint of purple, somewhere on the far horizon. Was it really getting close to morning?
“What I have to, I hope,” I said, then stared at the sky.
Gavrikov? I asked, inside.
Yes? came the blessed reply.
I fell my skin shiver in the cold. Can we?
There was a pause that lasted a night. Yes. I think so.
And I felt my feet lift off the ground.
“Whoa,” Jeremy Hampton said, standing at the door of the chopper, Scott’s arm around his shoulder. “I bet this is gonna be good.”
“Not for everybody,” I said with a chilling fury as I lifted up into the air, soaring into the night and arcing toward the eastern sky.
For at least a few people, it was going to be the last night of their lives.
52.
Natasya
She was out of the helicopter before it landed, dropping out the side and floating to the ground, feet landing solidly on the tarmac as she headed toward the plane. It was there, waiting, as promised, even though nothing else had seemed to go their way. Natasya felt like she was running down an empty hallway, pursued, and the thing—the person—that was dogging her was only steps behind now.
She shouldn’t have felt that way; she’d watched the chopper go down. That was the sort of thing that could kill a person. Maybe had, if she was very lucky.
But after the events of this night, lucky was one thing that Natasya did not feel.
She half expected the plane to be empty, the doors closed, but the helicopter pilot hurried over as soon as he had landed, went straight to the cockpit. So they did have a pilot, after all. The plane was a newer-looking thing, far different from what she’d been used to before she’d made the fateful decision she’d made, the one that had landed her in prison for thirty years.
Times changed. Enemies changed. She sighed. They were both getting worse, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“You planning to fly yourself to Cuba?” Vitalik said with a smile as he ran up the open steps onto the plane. He was feeling the light relief, sure they were free and clear.
Natasya felt nothing of the sort. “Only if I have to.” She did not smile.
The last two mercenaries boarded in a hurry. Surely they didn’t care to be left behind in the United States. Which was wise, because they’d certainly be hunted by every single resource the Americans had available to them.
Natasya stared into the night, and she could feel day approaching. The chill seeped into her clothes; the chill of the air, the chill of what had happened. Thirty years in hell, and now this. It had seemed too good to be true, and it had turned out to be just that. So much promise the voice had offered; but if they made it to Cuba, the promise would at least be fulfilled to some extent. Natasya had spit in the eye of the Americans, after all, given them a firm, open-handed slap to their capitalist crotches. They’d felt it, surely. Would feel it more, soon.
Was the comeuppance worth it?
Perhaps more than what she’d done her time in the gulag for, at least.
“Come on, Natasya!” Vitalik called from the entry to the plane. The stairs were built into the door, and he looked like he wanted to get going. She could hear it starting up, the sound of mechanical things moving in the still night.
With nothing but a hint of dawn on the horizon and a feeling of foreboding in her gut, Natasya headed for the plane. Luck. That was what was needed here. It was the only thing that would carry her through. Certainly not that damned voice, because she’d gotten what she’d wanted and called it done. Now it was all down to luck, Natasya knew, luck and her own skills. And she didn’t have much faith left in the latter to save her from Sienna Nealon.
53.
Sienna
The wind roared in my face like an old friend, whipping my jacket around my body as I flew. I felt reinvigorated. The pain in my shoulder from the cut had vanished like half my troubles, and now I was staring down the eastern horizon as I soared toward Eden Prairie airport.
“Harper,” I said, “what’s the status?”
“Got a plane taking off right now,” Harper replied, terse. “Gulfstream of some type, maybe. It’s in the air.”
“Eden Prairie PD have the airport surrounded,” J.J. threw in. “I gotta jump off to talk to law enforcement, BRB.”
I stared ahead in befuddlement until I realized BRB must be code for “Be right back.”
“Sienna,” Reed said, “the hostages are safe, campus is clea
r.” He sounded more than a little reluctant, and I thought it might be because I’d … well, you know. Ditched him. It wasn’t. “I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“Oh, goody,” I said, narrowing down by his tone who it might be. I had a suspicion.
“Nealon?” came the blunt inquiry of Andrew Phillips.
I left a few possible replies in the wind before I finally came up with one suitable for the occasion. “Yo.”
“What’s going on?” he asked me, even as ever.
“Well, apparently your plan to invite the Russians over for a party was a bad idea …”
“What’s your current status?” he amended, not sounding too happy.
“I’m zipping through the air at about a thousand feet, heading to Eden Prairie to catch their plane.” I sniffed, and felt all my nose hairs freeze. “What’s up with you?”
There was a long pause. “You are cleared to do … whatever you think appropriate. Act at your discretion.”
“Been doin’ that all night,” I said. “Shouldn’t be a stretch to keep on with it.”
“I noticed some of your handiwork around campus,” he said.
“You rethinking that discretion thing?”
He was silent for a moment. “We’ll talk about it after. Go get ’em, Tigress.”
I felt my face sketch a frown. “Will do, Euphrates.”
“Man,” J.J. said, coming back on, “is this thing over yet? I just, like, want to go home and play some Destiny. I got Crucibling to do.” He paused, and I smelled a set-up line. “Or Cruci-BALLIN’ if you know what I mean!” He laughed, and it turned into a snort.
I just shook my head as I caught sight of a plane lifting off into the clear sky ahead. “I feel like I never know what you mean. And that’s probably a good thing.”
“Who is this?” Phillips asked, breaking into the conversation. “Who’s on the call?”
Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3) Page 23
