by E. M. Smith
She reacted without thinking. Jabbed. Missed. A knife scraped off of her vest, cracking one of the plates. She slammed her elbow against the side of the assailant’s head. Squeezed the trigger on her rifle. A three-shot burst. Blood sprayed upward. He tried to stab her one more time, but she kicked him off.
By the time Whiskey got to her feet, he was dead. She took a second to adjust her headset.
“Romeo,” Whiskey said. “Your new job is to keep an eye on the ceiling.”
Romeo looked up. “Roger that, boss.”
“Whiskey, this is Mike. We’ve got a staircase—one side leading up and the other leading down.”
“Take the upstairs,” Whiskey said. “That’s the most probable slave quarters. Downstairs will be the massage tables and rooms. We’ll clear that after we locate the kids.”
“Roger.”
Whiskey continued down the hallway. An empty room. Looked like an office. APTF could worry about that later, sort out the paper trail.
More shooting from somewhere upstairs.
A right turn brought them to a foyer and the split staircase Mike had mentioned.
“Whiskey, this is Foxtrot. We’ve got the kids secured. Repeat, we’ve got the kids secured.”
“Roger,” Whiskey said. “Get them out. We’re at the staircase, going down. We’ll clear the basement, then rendezvous at the APTF mobile station.”
“You got it,” Fox said.
As Whiskey led the way down the staircase, the tightness in her chest relaxed. She hadn’t even realized she was anxious.
They cleared the basement’s main room, then the massage areas behind the partitions, and finally the private rooms. In the last room, Whiskey found a well-dressed older woman cowering between the bed and the wall. The brothel owner. No weapons.
“All yours,” Whiskey told the APTF officers. Then she gestured at Romeo. “Let’s go.”
On their way out of the building, Whiskey pulled her communication device. It was the size and shape of a pager, speech-to-text, and encrypted. Someone could break into the feed if they knew what they were looking for, but the technology was so outdated that hardly anyone still bothered checking for it.
Whiskey turned the comm on and raised it to her lips. “Fox, get us an untraceable flight ASAP.”
A few seconds later, the comm beeped. Text scrolled across the small screen.
Distance?
“South America,” Whiskey said. She wanted the hell out of Thailand. Every second they wasted here was another chance for Juliet and Bravo’s op to go wrong and another chance for Dawson to slip through her fingers.
Present
I couldn’t get enough air. Felt like I was breathing in boiling water. Except I was still so fucking thirsty.
Bravo was right. We weren’t getting out of this box alive.
I had fucked up. Screwed up the op, let us get captured, and left my babygirl nieces on their own with that psycho Ms. Baker. I should’ve done better. I should’ve protected them.
Another run of chills. I curled up, trying to stop the shivering, even though somewhere in my brain I knew I wasn’t actually cold.
The worst part was that I hoped it wouldn’t be long. If I was fixing to die, I just wanted it to be fast. This wasn’t fast, this was torture, and I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. I didn’t even want to handle it anymore. I just wanted it to stop.
I told Owen I was sorry and I asked Jesus to take care of the girls. Then I asked Him to please make it fast.
Twenty-four hours ago
When they made it into international airspace, Whiskey called her FBI contact.
“Any chance this is a social call?” Samson asked.
“I need you to get me a location on a pair of tracking devices,” Whiskey said. “Both NOC-Unit issue, probably within a mile of one another.”
“Any guess where?”
“Brazil. If your people can backtrack, they should’ve landed in Rio de Janeiro yesterday at oh-five-thirty local time.”
“My people are just a friend and she’s in the wind right now,” Samson said. “Something to do with a mysterious POW recovered in Afghanistan last week.”
Whiskey clenched her fist. “Do you have anyone else?”
“Anyone else and I can’t guarantee it stays off the record.”
“You owe me,” Whiskey said.
“Not officially, I don’t,” Samson said. “Officially, Wes owes you. Trick Sacre was a Company boy when he disappeared.”
“Wes didn’t send me to a cave a stone’s throw from the Korengal Valley on a hunch,” Whiskey said. “And I’m not afraid to start pointing fingers at the FBI special agent who did.”
The line was silent for several seconds. Then Samson sighed.
“I’ll find someone,” he said. “But I told you, I can’t guarantee it’ll stay off the record.”
“I don’t care,” Whiskey said. “Just get it done.”
Present
The sound of the tin clunking and popping woke me up. Someone grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled.
“Ah!” I grabbed the hand and fought to get to my feet. I didn’t make it.
When I hit the ground outside the box, the hand let go. I tried to convince my arms to push me up and my legs to run, but I was too weak. All I could do was lie on the ground and breathe. I could feel the sun beating down through the canopy, roasting the exposed skin, but being out of that fucking box was the still best thing I’d ever felt.
Bravo yelled, then dropped to the ground beside me.
“Get on your knees,” a voice yelled.
I opened my eyes and tried to focus. Two big guys, both wearing suits and loafers, both armed with handguns. They seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place them.
“Knees,” one bruiser barked and grabbed my hair again.
“Fuck,” I yelled, and scrambled up to my knees.
They jerked my arms behind my back and zip-tied my wrists together with the name brand Flex-Cuffs. Definitely not jungle revolutionaries.
Beside me, Bravo was getting the same treatment.
We were both out of breath when they finished. I was having a hard time keeping my head up. I slumped on my heels and let my chin rest on my chest.
“Let’s talk, shall we, gentlemen?”
I lifted my head as far as I could manage. The speaker was a tall, blond man in an expensive-looking suit. My brain finally got its shit together enough to remember where I recognized him and his bodyguards from—Dawson Kroeger. The man Bravo and I had been sent to take out.
“Don’t try to sell me any bullshit about being tourists who were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kroeger said. “Your passports and identification are fakes and neither of your photos existed in any national or international database before two days ago—and trust me, I have the contacts to find out.”
I couldn’t keep my head up. My eyes shut, too.
Someone slapped my broken cheek. Pain exploded inside my skull. I yelled.
“Pay attention,” Kroeger snapped. “This is your only chance to walk out of here alive.” He stepped back and looked from me to Bravo. “Did Mina send you? Don’t even try to tell me she’s dead. I’ve felt her breathing down my neck these last few years. I know it’s her. Where is she?”
Mina? I glanced sideways at Bravo. He was confused, too, but he covered it up fast.
“Go fuck yourself with a sharp stick,” he told Kroeger.
“In a shark tank,” I added.
Bravo snorted. “Good one.”
“Thanks.”
Maybe all that heat had given us brain damage.
“Kill them,” Kroeger said.
The bruiser behind me put a gun to the back of my head. The cold circle of the bore felt electric against my scalp. My whole body started shaking.
What had it been, an hour ago that I was praying to Jesus just to get it over with? Maybe less? Now that I was about to have my brain splattered all over the ground, I didn’t want to die.
A gun went off. If I’d had any water left in my body, I probably would’ve pissed myself.
The guy who’d been about to execute me collapsed, knocking me over as he went down.
Another shot and the guy behind Bravo dropped. Part of his head was missing.
Snipers.
Kroeger pulled a pistol out of his jacket and started backing away. His eyes darted around the clearing, looking for the direction the bullets had come from.
“Mina?” Kroeger called. “I know you’re here.”
He waited.
Then he said, “You just can’t stay away from me, can you?”
Silence. His face turned red.
“Goddammit, Mina! You fucking answer me when I speak to you!”
The leaves and plants to Kroeger’s left rustled. He opened fire.
Whiskey stepped out of the jungle a few yards from where he was shooting, keeping her M16 trained on him.
Kroeger spun around and drew a bead on her. His gun hand was shaking. He tried steadying it with his other hand.
Whiskey closed in on him.
Kroeger’s face contorted with something halfway between anger and fear, but he didn’t shoot.
“Mina, you get that fucking gun out of—”
She shoved the barrel into his mouth.
“It’s Whiskey now,” she said. “And I give the orders.”
Then she pulled the trigger.
*****
Romeo was the first one out of the trees after Kroeger went down. She hung her sniper rifle over her shoulder, pulled her knife, and went around behind me.
“Stellar job with the op, guys,” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said.
She cut the Flex-Cuffs off, then went over to Bravo and cut him loose, too.
I sat up and started working my fingers, trying to get some blood back into my hands. The buzzing in my head turned into roaring white noise.
Then I was flat on my back in the mud. Mike was touching my face. When he grazed my cheek, I groaned.
“Sorry, Juliet,” he said. “Are you having any double-vision?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t feel like your arch collapsed. Probably just a hairline. Try not to get hit in the face anytime soon and you won’t need surgery.”
“Bravo’s out,” Romeo said.
“Don’t hit Bravo in the face,” I told her. “He’s got a concussion.”
Romeo got down on her knees by Mike.
“Are you okay, Juliet?” she asked.
“If I promise not to play Xbox all the time, will you be my girlfriend?” I asked.
Romeo didn’t laugh. “Why’s he slurring like that?”
“Dehydrated,” Mike said. “We need to get them back to the plane so I can set up some saline drips.”
He looked over his shoulder at Whiskey. She was standing over Kroeger’s body with her back to us.
“Whiskey,” Mike said, louder.
Whiskey turned around. She looked disgusted. And pale.
“Juliet and Bravo need fluids,” Mike said. He was talking slowly and enunciating everything. “We have to get them back to the plane. Now.”
Whiskey shifted her weight to the other foot. The sun was angled just right to make her face glow like she was burning from the inside out.
“Firewater. Whiskey. I get it.” That was my voice, but I was pretty sure I didn’t say that.
“Let’s move,” Whiskey said. “Mike, you and Fox had better get Bravo. Romeo and I should be able to manage Juliet.”
*****
I don’t remember much about the trip back through the jungle. I remember realizing I was talking but not knowing what I was saying and being kind of embarrassed that I couldn’t stop.
When I looked around again, I was lying in the aisle of a plane. The interior was grungy and weathered-looking, and some of the rows of seating had been removed.
Romeo was asleep in the seat to my right. There was an IV bag hanging from the corner of her seat with the line running to my arm.
“Air conditioning,” I mumbled. “Thank you, Jesus.”
Romeo woke up and stretched.
“Hey,” she said. “Welcome back.”
My mouth was dry and sticky. I tried to swallow.
“Water?” I asked.
“Mike said you’re NPO until you go through three bags of saline.”
“That sucks.”
Romeo shrugged. “You only have that one left.”
I scrubbed my hand through my hair. Grit and grime built up under my fingernails. I really needed a shower.
“Where’s Bravo?”
Romeo pointed down the aisle.
I lifted my head up to look, but it started pounding like crazy. I let it back down.
“Just take your word for it,” I told her.
“Do you really want me to be your girlfriend?” she asked.
“Nah. I was delirious.”
“You like me.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
Romeo grinned. “You do. You think I’m hot and you want me to be your girlfriend.”
“You’re such a dick,” I said.
She laughed, then stopped and looked at something behind me.
“I need to talk to Juliet,” Whiskey said.
“You got it, boss,” Romeo said. She stepped over me and headed down the aisle toward Bravo.
I watched her go until I realized Whiskey could probably tell I was looking at Romeo’s ass.
I looked up at Whiskey.
“So, did you send us into a trap so you could go after that guy or was it all NOC-Unit?” I asked. “You said you’d been tracking him for a while, waiting for your chance to take him down. Were me and Bravo the bait?”
“Can you sit up?” Whiskey asked.
“Maybe.”
It took me a couple seconds, but I managed to get up and lean against Romeo’s empty seat. Whiskey sat down across the aisle.
For a long time she didn’t say anything, just stared at me. She almost looked upset. I got the weird feeling that she didn’t want me to think she would do something like that.
So I said, “It wasn’t you.”
“You don’t know that,” Whiskey said, but she seemed to relax a little.
“This ain’t a NOC-Unit jet,” I said. “Do they know where y’all are?”
“They will,” she said. “My team is returning to the US tomorrow from Thailand on the jet we left in. We’ve been cooperating and coordinating with the APTF. We haven’t heard from or seen Bravo or Juliet since they left for Rio de Janeiro.”
“How bad is it?” I asked. “I mean, they wanted us dead, sure, but when they find out that we’re still breathing—”
“You need to strike before they find out,” Whiskey said. “We’ve got three and a half hours before we land at Fox’s private airfield. There’s a lot I need to tell you. I’m not even sure I can get through it all in that much time, but you need to understand what you’re up against.”
“Sounds pretty bad when you say it like that,” I said.
“It gets worse,” Whiskey said. “I think I know why Dr. White wants the girls.”
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
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Bad Decisions
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About the Author
E. M. Smith is the kind of guy who puts his initials on the cover to seem professional, but continues to act like a completely unprofessional hick everywhere else. You can call him Mason if you want to.
If you just can’t get enough Mason in your life, you can hang out with him over on Twitter at @masondixonsmith or drop him a line at [email protected].
