Chief pulled the knife out of the man's hand and looked up. Jacob and Doc were in the corner huddled over someone. A man Chief vaguely recognized swooped in, turned Ski over and secured his hands with a double pair of zip ties. Chief drew a breath and looked for Tatyana. His gut clenched as his eyes caught a flash of color between Jacob and Doc.
"Fuck! Get me my pack now!" Doc was doing compressions and counting. Another man ran in with Doc's pack and started whipping out equipment. An electronic defibrillator hit the ground, and the two men placed the patches on Tatyana's chest. Jacob stood and swung an assessing eye over the area. He strode over and held out a hand to Chief. Jacob helped Chief up, but Chief's eyes never left Tatyana. Her small form jumped as Doc and the man worked to start her heart. "Doc will do everything he can, Mike."
Chief nodded his head and watched as her small body jumped again. The men scrambled after that. "She's back." Doc's hands flew to a bullet hole as he directed the other man's action. "Get a stretcher in here and tell them to get a plane fired up. We need to get her out of here."
Doc sent a quick glance toward Chief. "You okay?"
Chief could only nod. He stared at the tiny form on the floor. His mind raged with fury. He reached for his weapon while his eyes searched the area for the fucker that shot his woman.
"Stand down, Chief." Jacob's warning barely registered.
Doc was in his face with that damn eyepatch pushed right into Chief's personal space. "Mike, I have to go with her. Mitch will take a look at you as soon as we get her stable. I will take care of her." Chief blinked trying to formulate a response. He pushed toward her, but Jacob held him tight.
"You'll just be in the way. Trust Doc to take care of her."
"You don't understand, Skipper." Chief pushed against his friend trying to free himself.
"I understand more than you think. We have to take her in, Mike. Let Doc do his job, so she has a chance of mounting some kind of defense. If we don't stay out of the way, you'll lose her forever." Jacob whispered the words so only Chief could hear them.
"What am I going to do?" Chief watched as Jacob's people brought a stretcher in and they transferred his lover onto it. They were out of the area within thirty seconds.
"Live one day at a time." Jacob pulled him into a bear hug.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chief drew a deep breath after the stretcher carrying Tatyana was taken away. A crush of unimaginable anguish intensified with each step the medics took. Every fiber in his soul demanded he stay with her and yet he knew in his heart she was already lost to him. Any armor he'd tried to put in place against this moment crumbled into dust. He watched until he could no longer see her. The finality and loss consumed him. Doc would do everything humanly possible to ensure the woman survived. However, Chief had already started a mourning process. He mourned the life he would never have with the only woman he had ever loved. He drew another breath, pulled away from Jacob and finally took in the devastation around him. Fuck. "Where is the older man?"
Jacob had been watching and assessing him. He remained quiet for a moment before he nodded toward the green expanse covering the back acreage. "Ran to the interior. He's probably looking for the team the Russians sent to the far side of the island when they landed."
Chief rolled his shoulders and hissed at the burn of his upper arm. "Yeah, Didn't think he'd come alone." Jacob slung his M-4 around his back and tugged his first aid kit out of one of his pockets.
"Get your shirt off." Chief reacted automatically to his Skipper's order. They'd done field care for so long, having his team leader bandage his bicep was second nature.
"The uncle?" Chief's mind was still with Tatyana. He could hear a sea plane powering up. Dixon and Drake would break the laws of physics to get her to a hospital. They knew Chief had feelings for her. At least, he assumed they did. No, knowing the twins, they knew it.
"Joseph and Jared are out there." Jacob lifted Chief's arm, and he pulled in a sharp breath of air at the movement. "Stop whining." Jacob reprimanded him with a gentleness that came with familiarity. "It's just a through and through. Not even near the bone. You'd think you've never been shot before."
Ski moaned drawing both of their attention to the floor. "Did he say anything? I hit the ground running as soon as I recognized him. I wasn't listening. Too worried about getting here in time to save your ass." Jacob wiped away as much blood as he could with the gauze he had before he started wrapping a tight compression bandage around Mike's upper arm.
"Should have been closer," Chief grunted.
Jacob snorted and shook his head. "I was one hundred yards away. Any closer and I would have been in your fucking lap. This last year softened you that much? What did he say?"
"Fuck you too." Chief smiled through the insult. God, it was good to be back with people he knew and trusted. "He knew he wasn't getting out of here. He stopped the older man from trying to run and chose to fight. I don't know why, but the whole resignation thing was almost like he wanted to get caught."
Jacob uprighted a bamboo lounge chair and pointed to it. "Sit your ass down before you fall down."
Chief bristled at the command. "I'm not going to fucking fall down, Skipper." He caught movement in his peripheral and blinked to try to focus on the three men walking through the lush tropical foliage behind the house. Damn, his vision was fucked up. Maybe he hit his head a little harder than he thought.
"Yeah, I know. Sit your ass down anyway, Chief." He looked at the chair and watched as Jacob uprighted several more. Ski groaned again and moved against his restraints before he stilled. Chief sat down and pulled his arm away from his body.
"What you said about Ski not wanting to leave. Tell me about that." Jacob took off his comms mic and sat it on the armrest that Chief's uninjured arm wasn't using.
"Are we on with Arch Angel?" Chief needed to know his audience.
"No, there is no transmission out. Jewel is circling somewhere above us at thirty thousand feet and has us shut down tight. This is so we have your gut instincts on record."
Chief nodded and cleared his throat. "I'm not sure why, but something felt off when Ski just folded. Accepted that we had him surrounded without any surprise. He did a fucking wonderful job at trying to kill me, though, I'll give him that."
Jacob cocked his head and listened for a moment. "Jason got word that there was an MI6 operative high up in the Bravata."
Chief drew that statement inside and turned it around. MI6 had someone inside? With all the intel he had, plus whatever the MI6 resource had acquired there was no doubt Ski and his uncle were going down. Unless… "You don't think he's the operative for MI6 do you? Skipper, that fucker was not acting. He was going to kill me."
Whatever Jacob was going to say was interrupted by Jared and Joseph as they escorted Kowalski's uncle back into the seating area. "Fucker is quick for an old man." Jared pushed the man into one of the chairs. The Russian bounced back up, and Joseph slammed the cuffed man down again, none too politely. The Russian's sweat stained face bulged against a makeshift gag. Chief's lip twitched. The mans designer tie was never going to be the same.
"The rest of the Russian's team?" Jacob looked directly at Joseph when he asked. Joseph smirked as he replied, "They won't be a concern."
"I guess I need to rephrase that… are any of them left alive?" The older Russian's eyes cast fearfully toward Joseph. Joseph held up his vicious looking blade and then casually wiped the blood from the shining metal on the back of his uniform before he placed it back in its sheath. The man walked over to the refrigerator and got out a bottle of water ignoring his brother's question.
"I sent Hanson and Berube out to find what is left of them and to tell Temple to bring the boat around for the prisoners." Jared relayed the information before he sat down across from Chief. "As soon as we get all this shit settled, we need to do a full debriefing. I
'll need the recordings of all conversations with the Bravata to include with a statement about the involvement of the Concierge. She's notorious, and it will be a good thing when she's off the streets." Jared stood and turned toward the dock. "I'm going down to help Jazz and Thompson deal with the ladies on that aircraft." Jared turned back before he left. "It is good to see you again, my friend."
Chief nodded. It was good to be among friends although Jared's comment about Tatyana pushed yet another stake through his heart.
"She'll live." Jacob's words punched through his thoughts. Chief lifted his eyes to meet his Skipper's. "She means something to you?"
Chief held Jacob's gaze while he clicked every plate of armor he could around his dying heart. "No, nothing." His spirit screamed in pain at the blatant lie he'd just told his best friend, but the rotting wound eating his soul couldn't dent his determination to never reveal how much this mission had cost him.
Temple strode into the area and grabbed the older Russian, breaking up Chief's pity party. "I'll come back with Thompson for that one in a minute, Alpha."
Chief watched the younger man escort the Russian out as Mitch came in with his medical pack. "I did a quick visual of the ladies in the cargo plane, sir. I didn't see any immediate distress, although, like the others in New York, they appeared to be under the influence of something. The stewardess from the plane has them all wrapped up in blankets and is directing the men down there like a taskmaster."
Mitch unwound the dressing and started cleaning his wound. The sting of alcohol brought Chief back to the present with sharp stinging clarity. Temple and Thompson came back for Kowalski while Mitch was packing his wound which hurt like a motherfucker.
"We can do the interviews later. We have the head of the serpent, and over the last few months, we hit the distribution arm hard. Give Jared's people time with these two and the Concierge, and we will be able to close down this disgusting business once and for all. You're coming home, my friend." Jacob stood and walked over to where Joseph was standing, leaving Chief to Mitch's care. He looked down at the $15,000 watch he wore and then past it to the hand-crafted leather shoes. He was going back to South Dakota, but would the training complex ever be home again? He closed his eyes and blocked out the sounds around him as he called up an image of Tatyana and focused on the vision of her beautiful eyes. His life was as empty as when he'd left over a year ago. The abyss he felt now was more than a fissure in his soul, but there was nothing he could do to repair it.
Chapter Thirty
The utility gray walls and florescent lights added to the maze feeling of the underground levels at Vauxhall Cross, the renowned building better known as MI6 Headquarters. The James Bond mystique had earned the agency acclaim as a high-tech wonder, but this level consisted of cement, closed doors, and continuous questions. Tatyana yawned and scrubbed her eyes. The caffeine she'd lived on since she'd been released from the hospital had failed about two hours ago. She was crashing. The adrenaline, anxiety, and nerves were expected and had worked in her favor, especially during the countless hours of interrogation. She'd been interrogated, as any deep cover operative would need to be, but after five days of questioning and seclusion, she was ready to move on. To what, she had no idea, but rehashing the last eight years had been excruciatingly painful. Eight years of her actions and decisions were dissected and second-guessed. She'd managed to deal with the constant accusations of alternative decisions until her handlers had mentioned David Xavier. She'd lost any sense of decorum at that point.
Thank God she'd played off the defensiveness as a reaction to the injuries she'd sustained on David's island. Tatyana's arm ached even after downing the painkiller the staff doctor had prescribed. It had been eight years since she'd seen a doctor for any reason, so the hospital stay had turned into a myriad of tests, procedures and boxes MI6 ticked off to ensure their asset was healthy. Tatyana rolled her eyes as she glanced down at her useless arm pinned to her side in a sling. The bullet the older Kowalski had shot at her shattered her shoulder and damaged the muscle. According to the specialists that had been paraded into her hospital room, she would never regain full function of her arm. Seemed like karma for the last eight years had come around and bit her in the arse, and it chomped down hard.
Taty waited in the small room listening to the heating system cycle on and off. Over the course of the last eight years, she'd convinced herself she did the best she could within the confines of her cover, but the relentless questions seemed to reinforce the fact she'd failed miserably, even though she'd succeeded in reaching the top of the Bravata. Another agency, one that employed the man portraying David Xavier had succeeded in taking down the top of the organization. Taty prayed that the information she had documented and the DNA she'd been able to save from the victims would help prosecute the bastards. Her handlers made it seem her efforts to reach the top was all for naught.
Taty wiped at a tear that fell. Everything she'd done, the people she'd… No, she wouldn't lose it here. Not in front of the people who sat in judgment now. Where had they been when she was making life or death situations? Damn them for their sanctimonious discernment years after the events and outside any stressors. Since being released from the hospital, a cloak of depression had settled over her. The overwhelming sense of guilt made it hard to breathe, impossible to sleep and brought the 'what ifs' to her thoughts almost constantly. Almost. When the thoughts became too much, she'd pull up the one memory in the last eight years that made her smile—David. Taty shook her head. No, he wasn't David. The younger Kowalski had called him Chief. Her handlers had informed her the man was a member of Guardian Security. The international company, the world's largest private security firm, had seemed to rise out of the mist in the last six years.
The man's single operation had lasted just over a year, and in that time he and his organization saved almost fifty women and brought the Bravata to its knees. What had she done? She'd become a pawn in the Bravata's organization while trying to reach the top. She'd killed, sold people and lost herself in the swirling cesspool of the Russian underworld. Maybe her handlers were right to question the entirety of her mission. Exhausted, Tatyana dropped her head to the laminate tabletop. David… oh, what she wouldn't give to have his quiet strength next to her now. She wanted…
The door opened, but she didn't open her eyes or lift her head. She needed another pain pill, maybe two… a drug induced sleep would be better than the exhaustion she was fighting.
"Are you Tatyana Petrov?" an American voice asked. Taty nodded her head but didn't lift it from the tabletop. She simply didn't have the energy or the desire.
"My name is Gabriel. Mike White Cloud works for me." Taty rolled her head and cracked an eye open. The dignified man in the bespoke suit wasn't what she expected. He was over six-feet tall. His dark hair had gray at the temples, but the man was hard and physically fit. He reminded her of David. He stood beside the table and stared at her as she took inventory of him with the one eye she'd expended enough energy to open.
Taty waited, but the man didn't speak. Whatever, she didn't know a Mike White Cloud nor did she care to be introduced to him. She closed her eye, rolled her forehead back down to the face the table and drew a deep breath. The ache in her shoulder pulsed down her arm and back. She really did need another painkiller.
"It would seem he believes you are a criminal," the deep voice spoke again.
"He needs to find a place at the end of the que. I understand it is quite long." Tatyana finally lifted off the table and carefully slumped back against the uncomfortable gray metal chair.
The man pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. He placed his hands on the table and steepled his fingers. His index fingers tapped for several seconds while he stared at her. Taty knew this game, and it was one she was damn good at playing. She closed her eyes and waited. If he wanted her to speak, he needed to
ask a question.
"I don't believe it is. While debriefing from a mission as long as yours can make you question your actions, you are not a criminal, and you don't deserve to be treated as one. Your organization has provided the information you brought out with you from your op. The evidence and your testimony will pin human trafficking charges against at least fifteen extremely wealthy and powerful men. When people are cornered, they will strike out. Since you are the only one that can put those men together with the Bravata and the crimes they have committed, my organization believes you will become a target, from not only those men but any remnants of the Bravata that are still functioning—although the risk of the latter happening is very small. Between Guardian, MI6 and all the other organizations around the world, I have every confidence we have stopped the Bravata."
Taty opened her eyes and blinked several times. Well, damn it. She hadn't thought that far into the future. Yes, her testimony would be the stake in the heart of the soulless bastards that bought those people. She weighed the information and shook her head. The Russians would be stopped, but what about the Asian's, the American Syndicate or the flood of humans being shipped out of the war-torn areas of the Middle East? The Russian sales were just a drop in the bucket.
"I'm offering you a place where you will be safe. No one will be able to reach you."
Tatyana looked at the door and back at the man. She knew what her organization had planned. She'd be stuck in some safe house and moved as needed until she was no longer useful. Then she'd be dismissed. Her shoulder would prohibit her from working.
"Mr. Churchill has worked diligently to get the Home Office's permission to assign you to me until the trials are over. As I'm sure you are aware, your current disability will not allow you to continue in service to MI6 as an operative."
Chief (Kings of Guardian Book 7) (The Kings of Guardian) Page 22
