Breaking the Rules

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “By himself?” Eden asked, her worry radiating off of her.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Oh God,” Eden breathed.

  “We counted seven of them,” Jenn told Dan. “Two outside and five in.”

  “We got an infrared head count of twelve from the FBI. Who are on their way, but it’s going to be a while before they get here,” Dan told her as he handed what looked like a small machine gun to Eden and the handgun to Ben. He offered a similar weapon to Jenn. “Baby, I know you don’t like firearms, but—”

  She didn’t, it was true, and she’d discovered she liked dead bodies even less, but she took it from him willingly. It was heavy and solid. “I’ve never even held one before.”

  “Don’t point it at anyone you aren’t willing to kill,” he told her, told all of them. “And if it comes to it, aim for the biggest body mass—you’ll have a better chance of hitting your target.”

  “I’ll show Jenn how to release the safety,” Ben volunteered.

  Dan looked at him hard. “I’m not sure I want to know how you know that, but good.”

  “Please. You need to go help Izzy,” Eden told Dan. “We’ll be all right here. If the FBI’s coming …”

  Jenn wasn’t sure she was in agreement. She herself would certainly be far more all right with Dan safely beside her, but she couldn’t be so selfish as to make him stay. “I love you,” she told him.

  And he did take the time—a fraction of a second—to kiss her. And then he was gone.

  Izzy couldn’t get the freaking cabin door to close.

  Which meant that the three-man assault team that lurked just inside the warehouse bay door could easily get inside and take him out.

  Except they weren’t exactly an assault team. They weren’t even close. They were more like three petty criminals who’d graduated to more serious crimes and hooked up with some really evil men with a ton of money and international connections. They obviously had some knowledge and experience when it came to handling firearms. But it was limited to the tune of keep your head down so it doesn’t get shot off, and point the barrel of the weapon toward the target and squeeze the trigger until said target doesn’t move anymore.

  Two of them were doing just that, their wildly inaccurate bullets bouncing off the concrete and only occasionally pinging into the fuselage of the jet—which was helping Izzy make the damn thing unsafe to fly, thanks very much, boys.

  They were clearly a little freaked by the display of death at the bottom of the portable aircraft stairs—so much so that one of them squirted.

  As Izzy watched, the guy squeezed out of the cover of the warehouse and ran not toward the plane in an heroic attempt to end the battle, but rather toward the parked van and that Volvo. He was fleeing the scene as squirters were prone to do, and Izzy saw no need to take him out, since he was removing himself from the equation.

  One of his co-workers, though, apparently had a problem with his desertion, because he leaned out of the doorway to shoot the guy square in the back.

  Izzy took the opportunity—and the clean shot—to take out the shooter, who fell, too. Which brought his magic number down from five to three.

  He had the location of one of ’em pinpointed. It was the other two he was worried about.

  He had to get the hell off this plane so he could find them and take them out.

  Danny came back—almost right away—into the room that had changed from their prison cell into their fortress for this impending siege.

  “I can’t leave you here,” he said. “There’s a cache of weapons in a room down the hall—these guys must be gunrunning, too. It’s a freaking munitions dump and Izzy was talking about blowing up that plane—”

  “What?” Eden said, not quite able to believe her ears.

  “Possibly blowing up the plane,” her brother corrected himself as he took out a cell phone—it was hers—and hit the speed dial. “I don’t know what he’s doing, not yet, but whatever it is he does, I don’t want you to be trapped back here.” He led the way out into the hall. “Stay close to me. We’re going to head over to where there’s a bunch of crates.” He looked at Eden and shook his head. “He’s not picking up.”

  She took the phone from him. “I’ll try him again.”

  “Do it when we get there,” Dan said. “Right now I need eyes open and top speed. If someone starts shooting, don’t run in a straight line. Zig and zag. Got it?”

  They all nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  Izzy used his feet and kicked the stairs away from the plane, which was another step in the right direction in terms of surviving an assault, but several steps back in terms of getting his ass off the plane and taking out the final three.

  It wasn’t until he was completely back inside and he’d shut the door—Jesus Harvey Christ on a pogo stick, so that was how it latched, wow, he was an idiot—that he realized his pants had been shaking because his carefully silenced phone was ringing.

  Of course, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the sounds of the little caged girl in the back of the plane, who was crying rather loudly at this point.

  “Hey, I’m the good guy,” Izzy told her as he took out his phone, but of course it had stopped. A missed call from Eden, who was really Dan, since Dan had Eden’s phone. But it could actually be Eden, because Dan should have found her and Jenni and Ben by now. “I don’t suppose you speak any English …?”

  If everything was going just right, Izzy’s wife, her two brothers, and his new sister-in-law should be hunkered down in that back northeast corner of the building, waiting for Izzy to take out the remaining bad guys. Which, okay, maybe he could do while safely ensconced in this plane, as if it were a great big Iron Man–type suit.

  As he called Eden’s phone back, he moved Dumb and Dumber out of the cockpit, and he could see through the windshield that good old skinhead Jake was one of the surviving baddies. He and another man—skinny with a ponytail—were having an argument right there in the shelter from the open bay door.

  It was too much to hope that Jake would eliminate another of the enemy, and sadly enough it didn’t happen—nor did Eden or Dan pick up the phone. Which freaked Izzy out just a bit, and made him redo the math in his head. Twelve tangos, not counting the three on the plane, minus two via Dan, minus the one Izzy’d put in the truck, minus four at the bottom of the stairs, minus two was … three. Which left one unaccounted for and possibly doing damage to Dan, Eden, Jenni, and Ben, which was alarming.

  He dialed Eden’s number again.

  As Izzy watched, Skinny disappeared back inside, while Jake leaned out of the doorway just a little bit to look up at the plane. As he did, he saw Izzy there in the cockpit, and he raised his weapon and let loose a blast of bullets.

  Izzy hit the deck, but the glass was apparently bulletproof, which really wasn’t that big of a surprise on a high-end toy like this, particularly one used for nefarious deeds.

  But Jake didn’t seem all that nonplussed. He smiled at Izzy, and even came out a bit farther from his cover, no doubt because he now believed that Izzy couldn’t shoot him, either. So he pointed a finger-gun at Izzy and pretend-shot him, like, bang, still with that big you are so dead smile on his fugly face.

  Izzy was just about to prove how so not dead he was when Eden picked up.

  “Izzy,” she gasped. “We need help! Danny’s been shot!”

  * * *

  Dan had zigged instead of zagged, taking up the rear as they’d run toward the shadowy crate that was closest to the back hallway door.

  He’d seen the man coming—skinny with a ponytail—heading back toward the very doorway they’d just vacated, and he’d fired his weapon, half hoping he’d hit the son of a bitch, and half hoping he’d draw the man’s fire, so he wouldn’t kill Jenni, Eden, or Ben.

  He’d gotten part of his wish.

  Right before Dan made it to cover, he felt the bullet slap him, and he went down.

  He tried to make it look in
tentional—like he was sliding into home. And he managed to bring his weapon up and fire back a long burst, so that even if the gunman knew he’d made contact, he didn’t think they were defenseless back here.

  Jenn knew, right away, that something was wrong. Particularly when Dan ordered Ben to climb up on top of the crate and unload his weapon at anything that moved.

  “I’m hit,” he then told her, as if she couldn’t tell, at this point, from the blood.

  Jesus, it was his leg—his left one this time, and it was bleeding like a bitch.

  “Tell me what to do,” Jenn said, calm and steady, as Eden got on the phone with Izzy.

  “Tourniquet,” Dan said, “something to slow the bleeding,” as Eden asked, “Izzy wants to know how bad is it?” She turned to look and answered the question herself. “It’s bad.”

  “It’s not. I’m going to be okay,” Dan told Jenn even as she said to him, “You’re going to be fine.” She was taking off her bra, right out from under her shirt—a feminine talent that had always impressed him.

  “Izzy wants to know how many of the twelve you took out,” Eden asked Dan as Jenn pulled it free and wrapped it around the top of his leg.

  “Three,” Dan told her, and she forwarded the info to the other SEAL. “Two outside, and one in.”

  “He says we’re down to two—the guy named Jake and the one who just shot you,” Eden reported.

  “That’s good news,” Dan told Jenn. He could see she didn’t quite believe it, so he told her, “I’m not leaving you.”

  “You better not, you bastard,” she said. “If you think you can just attempt to knock me up and then check out …”

  Dan laughed, but then, Jesus, it started to hurt. “Ben, you okay up there?” he called.

  “I’m good,” Ben reported. “There’s movement, back by the doorway that we came out of. I’m pretty sure I’m too far away …”

  “Hold your fire,” Dan said. “Good call. But if they come any closer …”

  “Yeah,” Eden was saying into the phone. “There’re all these crates in here. We’re behind the one that’s closest to the back of the building.”

  “Closest to the northeast corner,” Dan told her, and she relayed that info, too.

  “Izzy says to stay put,” Eden reported. “To hold on. He says he’s on his way.”

  “Hey, Danny?” Ben called from atop the crate. “The man who came out of that doorway? He’s carrying—jeez, I don’t know what that is, except … Holy crap, Eed, I think it’s that thing that they used against that demon on Buffy. The one in the mall? Where Zander had memories of being a soldier from that Halloween episode, right after Angel becomes Angelus in season two …?”

  “Oh, shit,” Eden said into the phone, to Izzy. “If Ben’s right? I think they’ve got a rocket launcher.”

  Driving a plane wasn’t as easy as it looked when sitting in coach and traversing the airport runways.

  And Izzy hadn’t been one of those flip-a-coin-to-see-if-you-join-the-Air-Force-or-the-Navy kids who loved the water but also secretly yearned to fly. He’d never particularly wanted to learn how to be a pilot, mostly because his goal had been to jump out of the plane, and you sure as hell couldn’t do that while you were sitting in the captain’s chair.

  Still, he’d always been curious about how things worked, and he knew enough to finally figure out how to make this particular vehicle move.

  And not a moment too soon.

  “Hold on back there, little girl,” he shouted as he backed that sucker up, his phone tucked up under his chin.

  “Little what?” Eden said on the other end of the satellite signal, her voice traveling up into outer space and bouncing back down to his phone, even though she was only some mere hundreds of yards away from him, in that gleaming white warehouse.

  “There’s a girl,” Izzy reported as he put that puppy back into the equivalent of drive, “maybe nine or ten, in a cage, in the cabin of this plane.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You think I’d make this shit up?” Izzy asked.

  Eden laughed, but then she stopped. “Please, please don’t die,” she said.

  “It’s two against five,” he countered.

  “But they have a rocket launcher.”

  “And I’m about to drive a jet up their ass. Ready or not, here I come.” And Izzy hit the equivalent of the gas.

  Only Irving Zanella would crash a jet plane through the side of a building. He actually aimed the nose of the thing through the bay door and just kept going, and the sheet metal shrieked and tore. He hit a truck and then another truck, and a wing was clearly damaged, too, before the plane rolled to a stop.

  Dan found himself looking up at the fans that were slowly spinning and the catwalk that he’d used when he first came in, and he was glad that nothing was directly overhead, to fall on them.

  They were far enough away to be safe.

  Except …

  “Uh-oh,” Ben said, from his perch atop the crate. “The bald guy with the rocket launcher? He’s aiming that thing at us!”

  Izzy’d missed.

  He’d hoped he’d hit Jake when he plowed into the building. He was pretty sure that that one bump he’d felt was the plane hitting the dude’s very last minion.

  But Jake had jumped clear.

  And Izzy knew he was screwed. He knew he’d failed—he’d taken too long to figure out how to get this thing to move, because now the bastard was going to blow his shit sky-high.

  Except …

  Holy crap, Jake was aiming that rocket launcher not at Izzy and the plane, but at the crate where Eden, Jenni, Dan, and Ben were hunkered down. The asshole actually took his time to do it, as he looked back at Izzy, like, You ready to watch while I kill your family before I kill you, trapped the way you are behind that bulletproof glass?

  Which gave Izzy enough time to bring that AK-74 right up to that glass, because unlike the asshole down there, he knew that bulletproof tended not to work so well when the barrel of a gun with a Kalashnikov’s power was pressed against it.

  And he squeezed the trigger, and the gun did what he’d expected it to do and blew a hole in that window, which allowed Izzy to send the next round of bullets into Jake, who had turned back to look at him, this time in astonished surprise, before he died.

  “Yeah, asshole. That’ll teach you to fuck with my family.” Izzy picked up the phone he’d dropped when he’d grabbed for his weapon. The line was still open. “Hey,” he said, still breathing hard as he watched and waited, but there was no other movement. “You still there?”

  “I’m still here,” Eden said, her voice warm and steady in his ear.

  “Ask Ben if he saw whether I got ’em both.”

  She put her hand over the bottom of the phone, and he heard muffled voices, but then she came back and said, “He said yeah. Jenn says we need a medical kit. And she needs me to get off the phone so we can find out how soon the FBI’ll be here.”

  “I’m on my way,” Izzy said as he used the last of Nathan’s restraints to lock the still-unconscious flight attendant to the nearest cage before he searched for the plane’s first-aid kit. It was in one of the overhead compartments and it was seriously lacking in anything useful like a plasma expander—that would’ve been too easy—so he punched the bulkhead right over the seats, hard enough to release the oxygen masks.

  “I’ll be back,” he told the wide-eyed and now silent little girl as he grabbed the tubing and pulled it free. “We’ll get you out of here, ASAP. But first? I gotta help a friend and go kiss the shit out of my wife.”

  “Here he comes,” Ben announced.

  And there, indeed, was Izzy, dropping lightly from the open door of the plane onto the concrete floor of the warehouse, his cell phone to his ear.

  As Eden watched, peeking around the edge of the crate, he bent down and picked up the rocket launcher, checking it—no doubt making sure it no longer was a danger.

  He also swung past one of the trucks that his p
lane had pushed over, making sure that the back door was securely closed as he ended his phone call.

  And then he was jogging toward them, with that smooth and easy gait that Eden had come to know so well.

  “FBI’s ETA is approximately seven minutes,” Jenn announced, Eden’s phone to her ear as she sat beside Danny. “They’re sending a medevac chopper.”

  “I’m doing okay,” Danny reassured her as Izzy came closer and saw Eden and smiled. “This is nothing like the last time.”

  “I’m sitting in a puddle of your blood,” Jenn pointed out as Eden stepped out from behind the crate.

  “Yeah, but it’s slowed. Look at me. I’m fine. I’m not in shock, I’m alert—”

  “You’re a terrible liar—I can tell you’re in serious pain—”

  “Well, yeah,” Dan said. “I’ve been shot. It hurts—”

  They kept talking—Danny obviously knew Jenni was reassured by his ability to have a conversation—but Eden didn’t hear any more of it as she threw herself forward and into Izzy’s arms.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she started, but he cut her off.

  “Chht!” he said, making that sound that she’d made at him just a few hours earlier, like the Dog Whisperer. “Those aren’t the three words I want to hear.”

  “I love you,” she told him.

  He did his best Han Solo. “I know.” But then he ruined it by laughing, except it didn’t really ruin it, it made it that much better, because his laughter was pure Izzy, and as he kissed her, Eden knew that he loved her, too.

  But he broke the kiss almost before it had started, carrying her with him around the side of the crate so he could take a look at Danny’s leg.

  “Gimpy McBaby-Man!” he said. “Got another boo-boo?” He held out a length of plastic tubing that he’d brought from the plane as he knelt down beside Dan. “I know we’ve got some needles, in with that insulin—Ben, you still have that bag?”

  “I do.” Ben tossed down the bag that he’d carried with him out of their prison cell and Izzy caught it.