Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Ten minutes isn’t—” Dan said, but the call had been cut. “Jesus!”

  “That’s okay,” Izzy told him, tried to reassure him. “You did okay. Well, maybe not okay, but we both knew it was a long shot and … We can do this in ten minutes.”

  “Maybe we can set up a conference call,” Dan said. “You know, with Neesha?”

  “I’m betting Jake wouldn’t recognize her voice,” Izzy said as he started toward the building.

  Dan followed. “But that’s great. That means we can call back in, like seven minutes, and I say that I have her, and you pretend to be a frightened little girl.”

  Izzy looked back at him with an odd mix of sympathy and disgust in his eyes. “And if he wants a picture? You gonna put me in a dress with a little pink bow in my hair?”

  Dan was grabbing wildly at solutions and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “We pretend we lose connection and then we get Neesha to send me a picture, which I send to him.”

  “What if he wants a picture of her dead body?” Izzy said.

  “We fake it.”

  “She’s alone in that apartment,” Izzy pointed out. “Even if you could get her to take out the ketchup and squeeze it onto herself, how’s she going take the picture of herself lying there, dead?”

  “So … we talk her into letting the FBI in there,” Dan said, but even as the words left his lips, he knew that would never happen. Not in the next ten minutes.

  “We’re doing this the simple way, bro,” Izzy told him, not unkindly. “We’re going in there and we’re getting them out.”

  Armed only with kitchen knives, except okay, there were four men outside that building who were in possession of a variety of weaponry. It wouldn’t take much to make a transfer of all that firepower into the two SEALs’ hands.

  The plan was a relatively simple one that they’d already established. Izzy would take out the security cameras and the guards in the front. Dan would dispatch the other two, and they’d meet up on the roof and play it by ear from there.

  Except …

  “I’m giving you an order to use deadly force,” Dan said to Izzy as they moved closer to the structure.

  Izzy looked at him like he’d gone mad. “Who died and made you admiral?” he asked.

  “If one of us is going to burn for this,” Dan said, “I want it to be me.”

  Izzy made a raspberry sound. “You’re the career Navy man,” he pointed out. “Dude, look at you—you have master chief written all over you. If you really think there needs to be an order, I’ll give the order. These assholes just threatened to kill someone we love. They are dead fucking serious, and we are, too. If you have a problem eliminating those guards in a permanent fashion, you tell me now—”

  “No,” Dan said. “I just didn’t want …” He stopped. Started over. “You’re an asset to the Teams, and I’m planning on getting out anyway.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Dude, you’re suffering from marriage madness. You don’t know what the hell you’re saying, because you’re too busy trying to find words that rhyme with love so you can write Jennilyn a freaking sonnet. Above, okay? It’s moon above, stars above, either work equally well. Problem solved, move on.”

  Dan shook his head. “That’s not—”

  “Zip it, Chatty Cathy, it’s go time,” Izzy said, shooting Dan the hand signal for ready along with shut the fuck up.

  They were just going to make it before the sun burst, in its full glory, over the mountains to the east.

  Except there was something … a light in the sky, coming from the west, shimmering slightly as it moved toward them …

  Izzy saw it, too.

  A light—and a noise. Getting bigger and louder and …

  “What the fuck?” Izzy said exactly what Dan was thinking. He turned to look at him, shouting over the deafening roar. “Okay, bro, change of plans …”

  Eden took a deep breath, about to pound on the door and scream, Help! We need help in here, when a sound started, distant at first, then louder and louder, a high-pitched whine accompanied by a low rumbling.

  Ben and Jenni were both looking at her, confusion on their faces. And she knew that she was looking back at them the same way.

  It was Jenn who identified it first. “It’s a plane,” she said, and even though Eden couldn’t hear her over the rattle and roar, she could read her lips. “A jet—it’s landing on the airstrip outside.”

  And Eden’s first thought was that it was Izzy, even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be. She had to close her eyes for a moment, because she was filled with such a rush of hope and longing at the idea that, in just a few short moments, she’d be safe in his arms.

  But then she realized that if it wasn’t Izzy on that plane—and it wasn’t, it couldn’t be—then it was someone, or a lot of someones, who worked for or with Jake. Two against seven was dangerous enough odds. This plane was definitely adding to that number by at least one, and quite possibly doubling or even tripling it. Shoot, big enough planes could carry hundreds of men.

  And Eden knew that Izzy and her brother were SEALs, and that they were good at taking care of themselves, good at what they did. But they weren’t invincible.

  Still, she also knew no matter how many additional men came in on that plane to provide backup for Jake, that Izzy and Dan weren’t going to let that stop or even slow them. In fact, it was likely that they’d use the incoming plane as a diversion.

  And she found herself waiting, heart in her throat, listening for the sounds of gunshots or shouting—sounds that would let her know the battle had begun.

  Izzy had done everything but kiss Dan good-bye.

  “Okay, bro, change of plans.” After that initial what the fuck, Izzy’d taken the landing jet in stride. And they needed a change in plan because they both realized that their new priority one was to make sure that Jenn, Eden, and Ben did not get on that aircraft.

  “Go around back,” Izzy said, “take out those two guards, ammo up, and get inside through one of the air vents—think you can do that, Gimpy McBaby-Man?”

  Dan laughed as he said, “Fuck you!”

  “I’ll take that as a Yes, Mommy. Once you’re inside, locate the women and Ben. Stay put if you think it’s safe; if not, get them out of that northeast room, but I want you to avoid the front of the building. Do you hear me? Stay back from the airfield.”

  Dan nodded, because he knew what was coming.

  Izzy said it anyway. “Because I’m gonna disable the plane, and if I have to, I’ll make it go boom.”

  “How the hell are you going to …?” The words were out of Dan’s mouth even though he knew the answer.

  “I’ll improvise.” Izzy held out his hand to Dan, and what started as a handshake turned into a tight hug. “Fuck you, asshole. I hate you and your ass face. Keep Eden safe for me,” he said, and it was the closest the irreverent SEAL would ever come to a should I not return type appeal.

  “Make sure you improvise an escape while you’re at it,” Dan said, past an inexplicable lump in his throat.

  Izzy pushed Dan away. “Go.”

  Dan went.

  Whoever was in charge of security here was a total fool.

  As Izzy watched, the two guards in the front of the building went to meet the plane with another two men, who came out of the building with a portable set of metal stairs, after pulling up one of the garagelike bay doors and leaving the damn thing wide freaking open.

  He wanted to call Dan on Eden’s cell phone and say, Come on back, bro, lookie here, you can sneak right in. Thing is, Dan needed the firepower he was going to borrow from the guards around back—except, oh, sweet! The guard who was built like a linebacker actually set his AK-47 down, leaning it against the side of the building so he could help move the stairs.

  Izzy helped himself to the weapon donation and ducked inside—and nearly ran into the guy with the hat he’d seen visiting Greg’s house with s
kinhead Jake. The guy’s gun went up in a classic gangbanger sideways hold, and Izzy opened both hands in a gesture that said Whoa, Nellie, even though he was still holding tight to the linebacker’s weapon.

  “Who the hell are you?” the guy asked.

  Jesus, what was Hat Guy’s name?

  “Nathan,” Izzy said, pulling it out of his ass. “Damn, you scared the shit out of me, man. I just came in from the plane. I’m looking for Jake …?”

  The fact that he used their names worked like a charm, and Nathan lowered his weapon just enough for Izzy to hit him in the face with the butt of that AK-47—no, wait, it was an AK-74 with a slightly smaller-caliber bullet, but the same grand Kalashnikov design.

  Nathan went down, his lights out, and Izzy dragged him back behind a conveniently parked A&B Storage truck, relieving him of his various weapons—that very nice Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol that he’d held like a dipshit, and a backup SIG Sauer with the same caliber; okay, so maybe he wasn’t a total dipshit. Maybe he just liked the drama of an unconventional handgrip. Maybe he found that holding his handgun like that got him laid.

  Although, truly? What it had gotten him this morning was laid out.

  Nathan was carrying magazines for his weapons in his pockets, as well as a set of keys—one of them bearing the symbol for a Ford, and no doubt belonging to the van that was parked outside, near a fucking Volvo.

  Hi, my name is Bob, and I’m a security guard for an organization that sells children as sex slaves, and yeah. I drive a Volvo because I’m into auto safety.

  Right.

  Nathan also was carrying a set of plastic restraints—no doubt because they had cargo that needed to be restrained, aka Eden, Jennilyn, and Ben, due to be shipped out on that plane. Izzy hummed a few bars of “Bohemian Rhapsody”—Mama, just killed a man—as he opened the back of the truck and used one of the pieces of plastic to restrain Nathan, hands behind his back, to one of the anchors on the floor that was inside of the truck, rather than breaking the motherfucker’s neck the way he kinda sorta wanted to.

  But in the aftermath—at least the aftermath Izzy was envisioning—it was good to have one of the bad guys still be capable of communication. And someone relatively far up the chain of command was particularly likely to start communicating effectively; i.e., confessing to all of his evil boss’s sins, when faced with life in prison or worse.

  So Izzy yanked off the guy’s sneaker, stripped off his smelly-ass sock and jammed it into his mouth, then gave him one more tap on the head to make sure he stayed unconscious, before closing and securing the truck door with another of those handy plastic restraints.

  Outside on the runway, the sun had risen, and the metal stairs were in place as the plane’s door popped opened. And as the two guards stood there along with two of the men from inside, like neatly lined-up little ducks in a shooting range, Izzy knew he’d never have a better opportunity to take all of them out.

  And whether they drove a Volvo or not, they did willingly work for an organization that sold children—internationally—as sex slaves.

  So Izzy did what he had to, knowing as he did it that all hell would break loose at the sound of that AK-74, but that the dirty dozen that they’d started with—if Danny’d done his job, and if he knew Danny and he did, Danny had done it quickly and efficiently—would drop down to a far more manageable five.

  Not counting, of course, the potential army that awaited him in that plane.

  The climb up to the air vent on the north side of the warehouse was a bitch and a half.

  But Dan did it, because he had to.

  Because he could not fail.

  Because he’d trained and trained and trained for this. For getting the job done despite the pain.

  So he made it up and he made it inside, and he swung himself onto a series of catwalks that crisscrossed the ceiling, up near a set of big, slow-moving fans.

  Jesus, it was hot in here, but there was no time to rest or congratulate himself for making it this far. Gimpy McBaby-Man, he was not.

  Infrared images had put the three hostages—his potentially pregnant wife, his brother, and his sister—in a small room in the northeast corner of the building. He found it easily. The entire back of the building was partitioned into a row of rooms, with lower ceilings covered by rolls of insulation, probably because those rooms were air-conditioned and the rest of this place sure as hell wasn’t.

  As Dan made his way over in that direction, he could see the tops of the walls that segmented the rooms, and he saw there was a long hallway that connected them all.

  It was then that he heard it—the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

  And five men burst out of the single door in that long wall that separated the warehouse from the back rooms.

  One of them—a man with a shaved head—stopped a second and snapped out an order as the remaining three ran for the airfield. “Go to the prisoners and get one of them.”

  The man who’d been given the order hesitated. “Which one?”

  “I don’t give a shit! Just do it! Now!”

  They were too far away, and outside of the range of the weapons that Dan had acquired from the obviously inexperienced guards—which was a shame, because if he had more than this stupid lightweight room broom or these small-caliber pistols, he could’ve taken them all out when they’d come through the door.

  And as the skinhead followed the other men toward the open warehouse bay and the brilliant morning light, and as that last man ran back toward the partition door, Dan ran, too, heading for that northeast corner of the building.

  There was no ladder down. He was going to have to jump, counting on the ceiling’s tile-and-metal framework and that insulation to break his fall.

  Dan swung himself over the edge of the catwalk and let himself drop.

  Eden and Ben were both talking at once.

  “It’s Izzy!”

  “It’s Danny! It’s got to be!”

  They both started yelling. “Hey! We’re in here! We’re back here!”

  Jenn, too, had heard what undeniably sounded like gunfire. She’d heard shouting, too, but none of the voices belonged to Dan, and that worried her.

  But then she heard the sound of footsteps running down the hall.

  “Here comes the guard,” she said. “It sounds like only one …”

  Ben and Eden both moved into place.

  The door opened with a crash, and the guard—the man Jenn thought of as Nathan’s brother—was standing there, waving a gun at them, shouting, “Get back from the door!”

  They couldn’t get close enough to stick him with the glucagon. At least not yet. But maybe if he ordered them out of there …

  “Down on your knees, hands on your heads,” he shouted. “You! The big girl! Get over here!”

  He was talking to Jenn—she was larger than Eden—and she was going to have a chance to do it.

  It was then that the ceiling exploded and Jenn threw herself down on top of Ben, who was still pretending to be unconscious, only to find that Eden had done the very same thing.

  But it wasn’t an explosion, it was an entrance. The ceiling tiles had shattered from the force of a man plunging through them, bringing insulation and pieces of the metal framework with him, and God, it was not just any man, it was …

  “Danny!”

  The jet was one of those personal-sized baby jets that richie-riches or celebrities with pilot licenses used, to flit from L.A. to Palm Springs.

  Izzy charged up the stairs and hit the door to the plane with his shoulder before the frightened-looking man standing there could swing it all the way shut.

  The guy was a flight attendant, or maybe the copilot—either way he was unarmed—and Izzy pushed his way past him into the cabin, which was wonderfully empty, thank you, baby Jesus, for that lovely surprise.

  It had been stripped of seats—all except for the very front row on both sides of the aisle—to make room for the kind of sturdy cages that could be used to transport
dangerous animals.

  Or human beings.

  And shit, he was wrong about the cabin being empty.

  There was one little girl locked in the cage in the back. She poked her head up to look at Izzy with brown eyes that were wide with alarm, but then ducked back down, as if trying to hide.

  Behind the cages—there had to be a half dozen of them—was what looked like a bar setup.

  Just in case the slave traders wanted a gin and tonic midflight.

  Izzy tossed the flight attendant into the plush leather of that single row of seats after the guy went unconscious due to his head connecting solidly with Izzy’s elbow. He was definitely a flight attendant, because the copilot was up with the pilot in the cockpit, both of them fumbling for weapons as they gazed at Izzy with alarm through the open cockpit door—which had a pre-9/11 design, seeing as how it swung open into the cabin so they couldn’t kick it shut.

  If the cages and that little girl hadn’t been there, Izzy might’ve tried a Freeze! or a Hands where I can see ’em!

  But that child made it so clear that these assholes knew exactly what they were doing. They’d chosen to dance with the devil.

  So Izzy sent them to hell.

  Dan hit the ground hard amid the rubble and dust from the ceiling, but he rolled, and as he rolled, he brought up his weapon and he fired, and the man in the doorway fell.

  “Is Ben badly hurt?” were the first words out of his mouth as he reached for Jenn’s hand, to pull her up to her feet.

  She was shaking, she couldn’t help herself—that man was dead—and she wanted to throw herself into Dan’s arms, but she knew there was no time. She settled for looking hard into his eyes—that fall had hurt him, but he’d never admit it—as Ben answered for himself. “I’m fine. I was just pretending—”

  “Good,” Dan cut him off, even as he squeezed Jenn’s hand and released her to help Ben up, because there was no time for even the briefest of kisses.

  “Is Izzy here?” Eden asked.

  “He’s out there,” Dan said, crouching next to the dead guard as if he were no more than an unpleasant pile of trash, and taking what looked like a rifle and a smaller handgun off the man’s body.