At Any Cost Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” she asked casually.

  Green grimaced in pain, but didn’t say anything, and Garrett jumped quickly to his feet. Well that hadn’t been part of the plan. But he wasn’t going to complain. He yanked his gun back up and pressed the muzzle to Green’s forehead.

  “Move again and you’re dead,” he said, matching his tone to Alice’s.

  Then he whirled around, dashed to the kitchen sink, and went to his knees in front of it. And there, just as he’d hoped, was the key ring. Now that he had the key from the first soldier, the other keys on this ring were unnecessary. But that skeleton key was absolutely necessary if they were going to escape.

  He grabbed the keys, stuffed them in his pocket, and dashed back to where Alice and Green were still standing. Stooping down, he yanked the knife out of Green’s thigh and handed it to Alice.

  “We need him to be able to run, and this might hamper that,” he muttered.

  He yanked the man around, grabbed the gun from the side table, and then noticed a pair of handcuffs lying there.

  “Perfect,” he muttered, grabbing them.

  He made quick work of handcuffing Green’s hands in front of him—easier for running, he thought—and shoved him toward the door.

  “Wait, we’re taking him?” Alice snapped. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Change of plans,” Garrett answered. “He’ll be perfect as a hostage.”

  They dashed through the door and headed right for the brig. The clock was running, now that they had Green, and they didn’t have time for any more sneaking. With Green as a hostage, though, he hoped they wouldn’t have to bother.

  Anyone else they ran into should back off immediately when they saw that he had their leader with a gun to his head.

  Chapter 25

  Then they were running down the hall, neither Garrett nor Alice looking anywhere but forward. Garrett yanked Green along behind him by the hands, forcing the man to run to keep up with them, their feet heavy and loud on the floor. Garrett didn’t care. If he was right about Green having had some sort of alarm button in his apartment, then the other soldiers were already aware of their escape. And if he hadn’t had such a button, they would be aware as soon as one of them happened across one of their fallen comrades.

  There was no way they could hide now. And there was no time to try. They needed to get to the brig, get their friends out, and then run like hell for the exit. All thoughts of going for any supplies were gone from his head now. The only thing he cared about was escape.

  He didn’t want to see what would happen to them if they were caught. He had a strong feeling none of them would survive the experience.

  They went skidding around the last corner before hitting the brig and found two soldiers in their path, though neither of them was prepared. The men took one look at Garrett and Alice, out of breath and towing a very stunned and obviously wounded Green, and immediately went for their weapons. Garrett pulled Alice back around the corner just before the first bullets started flying.

  “We’re going to have to shoot them if we want to get into that room,” Alice huffed, her gun up in front of her face and her eyes looking to Garrett for confirmation.

  “Shoot them and there will only be more to take their place,” Green ground out.

  Garrett turned and shoved the general to the ground. “Your input isn’t necessary, Green,” he snarled. He nodded once at Alice. “Shoot them it is. Give me some cover while I get to the other side of the hall. Then we shoot in tandem, take them down.”

  Alice gave him a curt nod, and almost before he could brace to run, she was shoving her hands around the corner and firing haphazardly, not bothering to aim but just laying down cover the way he’d asked her to. Garrett flung himself into action—also before he could think about it—and a moment later he was rushing across the hall, his arms over his head, his legs pumping to get him to the other side as quickly as he could.

  The soldiers had started shooting now, though he didn’t know whose bullets came closers—those of the soldiers or Alice’s, from ricocheting off the wall.

  When he made it to the other side of the open hall, he slammed his back up against the wall, took three seconds to breathe, and then looked over and met Alice’s eyes. She had stopped shooting and the hallway was full of a thick, threatening silence, and though Garrett listened hard, he couldn’t hear any footsteps.

  If the soldiers were creeping toward them, they were doing so more quietly than he’d thought possible. Those men were the opposite of subtle. Which meant, he thought, that they were still about fifty feet down the hall, right outside the door of the brig.

  He motioned for Alice to hold tight for a moment and went quickly through his training, trying to find some way to handle the situation. Something he could do to get closer, something he could do to take those guys out of commission. In the end, the only thing he could think of was so completely suicidal that only a crazy person would attempt it.

  So completely suicidal that he hoped they wouldn’t even see it coming.

  Looking over at Alice, he motioned once again for her to stay put and keep an eye on Green. This was his risk to take, and he didn’t want to have to be thinking about protecting her while he did it. He was going to have plenty on his mind already. Then, taking a deep breath and sending a quick prayer heavenward, he darted out into the hall, his gun up and ready.

  Just as he’d expected, the two soldiers had put their weapons down at their sides and started listening for Garrett and Alice, rather than staying prepared—and rather than trying to get any closer. Neither one was ready for him to come exploding out into the hall, and neither one had any prayer of getting his weapon up and the safety off before Garrett had finished his action.

  Garrett threw himself into a roll anyhow and came up on his knees on the other side of the hallway. He quickly shot at one soldier and then threw himself into another roll without waiting to see whether he’d hit the guy. When he came up, he shot the other soldier right between the eyes.

  The second soldier fell on top of the body of the first, who Garrett had indeed hit, and silence settled on the hallway.

  But it wouldn’t last for long. Those shots were going to attract the attention of the rest of the guards in the base, making their timeline even shorter.

  “Get to the brig!” he shouted. “That was enough noise to wake everyone up, and we’re going to have company soon.”

  Seconds later he was on his feet and sprinting forward, leaving Alice to deal with Green and get to the brig to help.

  He jerked to a stop in front of the door, pulled out the key ring, and jammed the first key he found into the lock. It was one of the generics, and he had been right. The lock on the door slid open soundlessly and it rolled open, exposing the rows of cells.

  This time he knew that only eleven had been occupied. Well, nine now, since Alice was out of hers and Raoul was dead. The prisoners the general had decided to use for things like fieldwork weren’t housed here, but were outside in a different building, and Garrett wasn’t worried about them. Not right now.

  Right now, he was only worried about the people who were inside this building, where the guards were.

  When Alice came skidding into the room with Green, he was already on the second cell, having released Manny first. The skeleton key was opening the cells—another correct guess on his part—and he was going to be able to make quick work out of getting through them. The prisoners, to their credit, were on their feet already and prepared to go as if they’d been warned ahead of time.

  Maybe they had, he realized. Maybe Alice had known when she left here tonight that they’d be escaping, and had told everyone else to be ready.

  That reminded him that there was still one person who hadn’t arrived yet, and he allowed himself enough time to throw a glance at the door to the brig, wondering. Wondering if she’d found his note—or if someone else had. Wondering if she’d been able to secure her door the way he
’d showed her, so that the lock didn’t engage when she was “locked in” for the night.

  Wondering if she’d bother to come at all, or if she would refuse to believe that he was going to do such a thing.

  Then Julia appeared in the doorway, her cheeks flushed with running, her chest heaving.

  “Thank God I found you,” she muttered. “I was terrified I’d be too late. What can I do?”

  “Take the guns off the soldiers in the hallway,” Garrett said quickly, ignoring the shocked look on Alice’s face. “Give one to this guy.” He pointed at Manny. “And keep the other for yourself. We’re going to need all the cover we can get to get out of here.”

  Five minutes’ work saw the rest of the prisoners freed from their cells, and moments later they were bunched up together at the doorway, Garrett barking orders at them.

  “I have a specific route out of here, so no freelancing,” he said firmly. “Everyone on my heels and stay together. The closer we are the more protection we have and the harder it will be for them to get anyone. If the person next to you is hit, you help to carry them. If they go down and you can see that they’re dead, you leave them. Don’t bother with bodies, they’ll just weigh us down. We take turns encouraging the hostage to keep up, and we don’t stop until we’re outside. Alice, Julia, Manny and I are the ones with the guns. We’ll be in the front and the back to lay down cover.”

  He ran his gaze over everyone in the group and saw eleven heads nod. Green’s lack of agreement didn’t matter, and Garrett didn’t give anyone a chance to ask any questions before he was out the door and darting down the hall, counting on them to follow him.

  They ran into a set of guards almost immediately, and though Garrett screamed that he had their commander, the guards shot anyhow, not bothering to aim. Their bullets went high and wide, and though Garrett knew they could hit him at any moment with a lucky shot, he went to his knees, aimed carefully, and took both soldiers out without much thought. Then he was on his feet and rushing through the complex again, aiming for the dark hallways at the back of the campus where the soldiers would never think to look for them—and where the exit he’d chosen lay.

  Then they came to a gate across the hallway. A gate that he didn’t recognize, because it hadn’t been included on the blueprints.

  When he shoved his key into it, the one that should have opened any locks, it didn’t turn.

  “Come on, come on,” he hissed, trying again.

  But the universal key evidently didn’t work in this unknown gate—which meant, he hoped, that this was one of the locks that required the skeleton key.

  Garrett fumbled through the keys on the ring, searching desperately, and finally came across it. Shoving it into the lock, he turned, desperate for the lock to engage.

  Nothing.

  “Dammit!” he huffed.

  Why hadn’t this gate been included on the blueprints? Why hadn’t he seen some sort of marker here to indicate that there was a barrier? And if there was a gate here, did that mean there was a gate like this in all the hallways? Had the general actually walled off the set of rooms he wanted to use, and ensured that no one would be able to escape in the process?

  He whirled around, located Green with his eyes, and rushed toward him. When he reached him, he grabbed him by the front of the shirt and threw him up against the wall.

  “Are there gates like this in every hallway?” he hissed. When Green didn’t answer, he slammed the man against the bricks of the wall. “Are there?”

  Green merely grinned, showing a broken tooth, and Garrett punched him again in the nose, earning himself a howl of pain.

  Cursing, he turned back to his team. “My escape route is blocked and I suspect that we’ll find every tunnel has a gate just like this one,” he said quickly. “That means we’re going out the front doors rather than the back. I hope everyone’s ready.”

  A chorus of agreements told him that they were, and they turned and ran right for the front of the complex—and the place where all the other soldiers were no doubt congregated.

  It didn’t take them long to find the other soldiers, but instead of engaging with them and using what ammunition they had left, Garrett decided to evade as often as he could, zigging and zagging down various hallways to stay away from where he thought the soldiers might be, while still making their way toward the front of the compound.

  And this was where his memorization skills came in handy. With every intersection that came up, he brought up his memory of the blueprints of the place, figuring out where they were and which way they needed to turn to get to where they needed to be. The front door was the most dangerous for them, certainly—but it was also their only option. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember any usable exits on this side of the campus, and even if he could have, he now suspected that Green would have put some sort of gate across the hallways that led to them.

  Gates that evidently didn’t have keys. At least not keys that he’d kept.

  They tore down the hallways, the other prisoners turning whenever Garrett turned, one of them always dragging Green along with them. The man was kicking and cursing up a storm, but had little choice in the matter, and though Garrett still thought he’d be valuable as a hostage, he was also beginning to wonder if it was worth the trouble.

  Then they were suddenly in a hallway that he recognized as one that ran parallel to the front of the building. If his calculations were correct, they were only about two hundred yards from the front doors he was aiming for. They were almost out. Almost free.

  But something told him they were going to have to go through fifteen armed soldiers before they got to the desert beyond the complex.

  “Guns ready!” he shouted, his mind flying through the things they would be passing between here and the front doors, trying to find something they could use as shields. He wasn’t stupid enough to think his faux suicide act was going to be enough for them to take down fifteen soldiers, but he wasn’t sure what else they could do. There weren’t any handy pieces of metal laying around to use for cover, and if they just ran out into the yard, guns blazing, they were sure to be shot in seconds flat.

  To his surprise, they got to the front door of the building and found…no soldiers outside at all. They were just…

  “Where the hell is everyone?” Alice snapped. “Why aren’t they out here trying to stop us from escaping?”

  “What makes you think they’re not going to stop you from escaping?” Green rasped, sounding as if he was amused.

  Garrett turned to look at the man, wondering what he was hiding, and saw several soldiers sneaking up on them through the hallway. A trap, he realized. They’d walked into a goddamned trap!

  “Everyone out!” he shouted. “They think they’ll be able to corner us here in the doorway.” He gestured behind them to the three soldiers who were now rushing toward them, shouting. “Everyone out into the yard! Find whatever cover you can and shoot back at the doorway! Anyhow you see, shoot them!”

  Then he was running for the nearest tree in the driveway, his heart racing, his back bared to the bullets that could be coming his way at any moment. He could hear guns firing furiously behind him, though he didn’t know whether they belonged to the soldiers or his own team. He knew only that any of them could hit him and take him down, and according to the orders he himself had given, the rest of the team would leave him here, to be recaptured.

  Well he wasn’t going to let that happen.

  He hit the tree, slung an arm around it, and brought himself skidding to a halt, then faced the door of the building and crouched down, breathing heavily. The three original soldiers were already down, he saw, their bodies spread out on the ground in front of the building, but there were bullets coming from the doorway and the windows of the building. Other soldiers were in there carrying on the fight. And it didn’t seem to matter to them that their comrades were down.

  Honestly, they were more organized than he’d thought they could be. This must be the brass
of the joint, he thought—the ones who’d actually managed to retain some of their training. That didn’t mean he respected them any more than the others. They’d still followed Green’s crazy plans. And they were still trying to kill Garrett and his team.

  The problem was, his team was going to be running out of bullets sooner rather than later. They didn’t have any extra clips, and they were short on guns as it was, with only the four. They were going to be outmanned within moments—and then they’d be in trouble.

  That was when he saw the turret at the front gate of the place. Turret, he thought. That would be for defending the base against intruders. Which meant it would have a machine gun. A machine gun with plenty of bullets.

  He looked to his left, saw Alice ducked down behind a half wall, and whistled at her. When she looked up, he tossed her his gun, then pointed to his own chest, and then to the turret.

  She gave him a look that said she thought he was completely bonkers—and then gave him a grin and mimed shooting back at the building.

  Perfect. She’d give him cover while he got to the turret, and now she had two guns to do it with.

  The run was terrifying. It was at least five hundred yards to the turret, and even with the increased food intake over the last two weeks, Garrett was undernourished and in terrible shape. The run through the base had winded him—along with the fight with Green—and he was huffing and puffing when he started the dash for the next stop. Dirt kicked up all around him as shots missed, and his back felt horribly exposed. Alice might be laying down cover, but she was only one woman, and it felt like there were at least fifty soldiers actively shooting at him.

  Then he was there, and he threw open the door and took the stairs two at a time until he got to the top floor. He found a machine gun there, just as he’d hoped, and went skidding toward it, his eyes already running over the thread of bullets leading up to it. It was old-fashioned and wouldn’t have done much good against a true army, but he wasn’t fighting a true army. He was fighting a small group of ragtag soldiers.