“Any sign of K and Sam?” Mark tried to sound professional.
“Not yet, but I’m looking. Only one other prisoner that I can see—and he looks male.”
Mark sighed and motioned for Isis to follow him. “Okay, we’re going in.”
* * *
K DECIDED TO MAKE a dash for a truck or some kind of vehicle. One of them had to leave sometime to go for a coffee run or supplies. K and Sam would try to hide inside a truck, and maybe, just maybe, escape.
Cracking the door open just enough to look out, she jerked back when she saw a guard standing a few feet away. Beyond him, she could see open grass, dirt, and a big truck.
She turned to Sam. “Okay, honey, you do like we talked about. We’re going to play hide and seek. We’re hiding from the bad, bad men. You follow Mommy and be very quiet, okay?”
Sam nodded as if she understood this was more than a simple game.
Gun in one hand, K grabbed Sam’s hand with the other and pulled her along as they dashed for a bush behind the guard.
“Stop or I shoot. Stop!”
K froze as a guard, who must have been standing behind the small pump house, shone a flashlight on them. Before she could even think, a half dozen guards were pointing guns at them. She dropped her weapon and wrapped her arms around Sam.
But a guard grabbed her by the shoulders as another ripped Sam from her grasp.
“Mommy!” Sam screamed. ”Don’t let them take me.”
K fought the men, clawing her way toward Sam, until a rifle butt was slammed into her head, followed by blackness.
CHAPTER 27
THE COLD WATER JOLTED K awake. She looked around “Sam? Where are you, baby? Sam, come to Mommy! Where is my daughter? Sam!” She yelled and cried as she fought to get the attention of someone—anyone.
K struggled but found that she was strapped to a chair. Two guards looked at her and one spit out the side of his mouth.
“Shut up. You’re lucky we keep you alive after you killed Gustavo.” A short, middle-aged man with a scruffy black-and-silver speckled beard, he glared at K from beneath thick eyebrows, his dark eyes filled with hate. “You think you’re so smart. You will die here. I will see to that.” He slapped K, knocking her back in her chair.
A rust taste filled her mouth. Her front tooth felt loose, but all she could think about was Sam. She shook her head as he pulled her upright again. “You come with us to see the boss. You behave, or your child will pay. You hear?” The man’s accent sounded childish to K, but she suppressed her smile. What she really wanted to do was mock him and use words on him that her mother would have scolded her about—and yet, her mother would have used even worse on the man herself.
They cut her duct-tape-bound wrists free and pulled her to her feet. Half dragging her to a cell directly across from the one she was in, they opened a door that led to a stairway. The basement was even more frightening than the rest of the building.
The lights overhead flickered, and the smell of sweat and blood filled the room. She would have never known the place had a basement. The doorway leading to it was in the back of one of the cells.
The stairs were carved from the earth itself, and in some places these had broken off. K stumbled and the two guards held her firm as to not drop her.
She could see the end of the staircase up ahead. It looked like it was all excavated by hand. Wooden beams stretched across the top and sides, making the room look like a mineshaft. The cave-like room was stacked to the beams with wooden boxes and crates full of explosives and guns—which K deduced by the printed lettering on the side of them. They led her to a rough-hewn door on the right and knocked.
She waited, and they waited. The guard to her left shifted his feet as if he was the one being marched to his death instead of her. Who was this guy they were so afraid of?
“Come in.” The male voice sounded English or Scottish. She couldn’t tell at first, but in the end she decided that it was English. The guards shoved her into the small room and shut the door.
Behind a desk made of stacked pallets sat. The laptop in front of him seemed out of place in the dirt-walled, dimly lit room, the glow of the screen illuminated his face, giving him an eerie look.
“Where is Sam? Where is my daughter?” K’s legs were shaking.
“You have a problem, Mrs. Appleton. Your husband is a thorn in my side, and for that you must suffer.” He glared at K, his dark eyes glowing. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tripp Maddock. You may call me Geoff.”
* * *
KIRK HELD HIS BREATH as a heavyset man came down the hall toward him. He pulled out a cigarette and casually lit it. The cell door beside him opened and a short man with hairy eyebrows stepped out, shutting the door behind him.
Kirk eyed the door, thinking it must lead somewhere else, maybe to an exit.
The two looked at him as he sat on a counter that held two computers. A large window looked out into the main lobby and the guard station. Kirk grunted and puffed a cloud of smoke.
“You not hot in that thing?” the tall guard asked. “I only wear it if I have to.”
The two didn’t wait for a response and moved on, as if his opinion didn’t matter in the least. Thank God the guard he’d killed was at the bottom of the food chain. He blended in better in that kind of uniform. Though the office door led into the lobby, every foyer exit was covered by a pair of guards. He had to find another way out.
The two guards he’d just encountered were standing in the main lobby, their backs to him. He stepped into the hall and walked toward the cell door he’d seen the short, scruffy guard come out of.
It was a carbon copy of all of the other doors that lined the hallway. But when he turned the handle, it opened, and he saw that this cell was different. He looked down the rough-cut stairway.
He checked his newly acquired gun then crept down the long, dimly lit stairway. When he reached the bottom, he scanned the room for guards then hid behind one of the crates. He heard voices from the other side of the door in the corner. A woman, maybe, and someone else—a man.
He crawled closer to the door and scrunched behind another stack of crates. It was a man, a man with a familiar English accent. Geoff?
His mind raced through the events of the past few weeks. The chance meeting in the desert, the ever-so-helpful gentleman, the private jet, the ever-ready credit card. He’d been played.
Jaw clamped to control his rage, he leaned over to lift the lid of a crate. Even in the dim lighting, he could see it was filled with detonators and C-4. He grabbed several blocks of C-4 and shoved some detonators in his pocket. He put one brick down on the floor next to where he sat and set the timer.
Twenty minutes—that should give him enough time to get the woman and child of here. If not, then I‘ll be going out with a bang, as they say.
* * *
ISIS AND MARK STEPPED over the guard dogs he’d shot and made their way around the back of the building. Three dogs lay dead after Mark shot them in the head. He was in no mood to play fetch.
The south end of the building featured a loading dock lined with roll-up doors. Grateful the grounds had obviously been abandoned long ago and natural undergrowth allowed to take its land back, Isis and Mark zigzagged from bush to bush toward the building.
Under an overhang next to some cargo doors, two guards sat at a makeshift table playing cards and drinking vodka straight out of the bottle. Mark held out his hand to halt Isis. She crouched behind a pile of pallets and extracted two blades from her boot. She lifted her arm to fling the first, then the second knife, before the first reached its target. The moment the first blade burrowed into the neck of a lanky man, blood gurgled from his mouth and he fell face-first into the stack of poker chips in front of him. The second guard’s eyes widened, but before he could scream, the second blade caught him in his open mouth, slicing into the back of his neck.
They crept up to the two bodies, pulled them upright and shoved sticks in their jackets to ke
ep them in a sitting position.
Isis retrieved her knives, wiped them clean on the shirt of one of the dead men and pulled her ball cap low over her forehead. Mark looked down at the man who held a full house. And he thought it was his lucky day. Grabbing a radio from the table, he shoved it in his pocket.
“I think we have a basement,” Jamison said in their earpiece. “Weston just went into a room and disappeared. The blueprints don’t show a basement, so that’s my best guess.”
“Where is it?”
“Southwest of you and down the hall. I’ll send it on your com-stats.”
Mark opened up his watch cover and looked at the map readout. A red dot on the blue background indicated where Jamison thought the basement was and a map of their current location.
“Okay. We’re on our way in.”
Mark took out a pair of sunglasses and slipped them on his head. Capable of imaging thermal, X-ray or night vision, the glasses also enabled the user to peer through wood and most metals. He looked over at Isis, who had her glasses on already.
The doorway looked clear, and in a swift, silent, fluid motion, they were inside. The place immediately went dark as Big B cut the main power. They could hear the pound of boots and the chatter of excited voices.
Mark and Isis hunched down and advanced through the building unnoticed in the dark. Though guards and gunmen ran past them, the two hugged the wall and made their way through the main level unhindered.
Holding cells with open wood-and-metal doors lined the walls. Reaching the only closed door, Mark looked inside but couldn’t distinguish whether or not he was seeing a prisoner in the green-and-red glow that moved and shimmered like heat off a hot roadway.
He whispered. “Jamison, can you see in this cell?”
“No, too much in the way. You’re on your own.”
He signaled for Isis to cover him. She gave a thumbs-up and they rushed into the room.
A startled guard jumped up and grabbed his gun. Mark shot him with his air pistol, hearing a popping sound as the guard’s heart turned into mush. The man fell to the ground, twitched and was still.
A child’s scream echoed between the cell walls.
Mark rushed to the corner of the cell, where his daughter crouched like a beaten puppy. He took off his glasses and reached out his arms. “It’s okay, baby. It’s Daddy. I’m here. It’s okay.” She stared at him for a moment, then ran to him and fell against him, sobbing into his chest.
“I’m here, baby. Everything’s okay.” He fought to hold himself together as his little girl shook in his arms. He hugged her tight, and whispered in her ear. “We’re going home, but first I have to find Mommy. This nice lady will take you to a safe place. Okay?”
Mark handed her to Isis, who took off down the hallway the same way they had come in. He heard her whisper into his earpiece, “We got Samantha, and I’m coming out.”
“We’ll take care of Sam.” Big B’s deep voice boomed in his ear. “Now go find your wife, Appleton, while I create a little diversion.”
An explosion rocked the building. The radio in Mark’s hand erupted with Russian curses.
He headed for the cell with the stairway but stopped when the shouts ceased and his vision was obliterated. After a moment of darkness, he saw a man holding a gun against K’s head. He yelled for the man to put the gun down, then fired and hit the man in the hand, sending the gun flying. Instantly, the man pulled out a knife with his other hand and stuck it into the side of K’s neck.
She fell to the floor. Mark screamed as he shot the attacker in the head, shattering his eye socket. He looked at K. She was lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Holding his head in his hands, he tried to focus. These visions had come to him before, but now it came at him like a dream he couldn’t control. He straightened and saw he was standing in the cell where Sam had been held. His blackout was over, but his head felt like it was in a vise. He stood up, put on his glasses, and turned the mode to thermal.
He had to find K. The vision would be his wife’s future, if he did not step in now to change it. Looking at his watch map, he could see that the door to the basement was down the next hallway, parallel to where he now stood.
“Sam’s out and safe, Mark.”
Mark whispered, “Thank God.”
“You go on ahead,” Isis said, her voice calm. “I’m going to secure the general.”
A second explosion shook the building.
Mark rounded the corner and dashed toward the stairwell but was jumped by someone large and heavy as he passed an empty room. He hit the ground, a sharp pain slicing through his shoulder as his rifle slid down the hallway, rattling through some kind of debris.
He rolled over just in time to see a big boot coming at him. He grabbed it and twisted, at the same time kicking his assailant’s other leg out from under him. The man dropped with a noisy crash onto the rubble-studded floor but jumped to his feet with unbelievable speed.
Mark jumped up to hit the man square in the jaw, which did not seem to faze him. With a swift second blow, he hit him in the throat with everything he had and felt the big man’s windpipe crush. The giant man fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
Mark pulled his forty-five and fired point-blank at the big man’s head. As he holstered the gun, he heard a woman scream.
* * *
“YOU SEE, K—MAY I call you K?” Geoff chuckled to himself. “I have a feeling you have no idea who your husband is or what he does.”
K did not respond.
“He had to be the hero. Had to put his nose where it didn’t belong. Now he must pay.”
“You’re crazy. My husband didn’t do anything to you.”
Geoff jumped to his feet. “He killed my brothers. My only three brothers are dead because of him!” With a quick swing of his hand, he smacked K across the room. “He killed my only family, and now I will kill his!”
The lights flickered and faded. She could hear yelling and gun shots from the floors above them and tried to crawl to the doorway, but Geoff grabbed her and dragged her toward him, his breath heavy on her neck. She hit at him with her hands, but it only made him laugh.
“You know,” Geoff whispered, “Your dear little Samantha will scream and cry when I carve her up, but before she dies, I’ll tell her Mommy is dead.”
K screamed and kicked up with her knee as hard as she could. She could tell by the way he grunted that she’d hit her target.
His grip loosened. Pushing with all her strength, she freed herself from his grip and scrambled for the door. Everything was dark. She could only see shadows and a little light from the top of the stairs. She screamed and tried to squirm away when she felt a hand grab hers.
“It’s me, the cop.” He wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders and pulled her behind a crate. “Stay here, no matter what.”
Before she could speak, he was gone. She could hear yelling and cursing and grunting as her rescuer struggled with her attacker. There was the sound of a fist hitting flesh, then a single gunshot reverberated out in the dark and the struggle stopped.
K held her breath. Her body shook, and she hoped and prayed the cop had fired the shot, not Geoff. God, please help me. I don’t want to die. Please!
“Get up, you fat cow! ” Geoff had found her hiding place. He loomed in the dark like a hate-filled devil.
A gunshot sounded a few yards up the stairs. She screamed and felt her hair being pulled almost out of her head as Geoff dragged her back into his office. He yanked her to her feet just as the lights came back on.
“Put the gun down, Tripp!”
Mark? It can’t be. He came for me. He came for me!
Geoff pointed the gun at Mark and squeezed the trigger. But his hand flew back in a sudden jerking motion when Mark’s bullet ravaged through his palm, removing two fingers. The gun flipped through the air and landed on the floor. The roar that filled the underground room pulsated through her chest as she watched Geoff grasp his injured hand, a ho
rrified look on his face.
A second shot rang out, hitting Geoff in the shoulder. As he stumbled backward, K dropped to her knees just as a third bullet pierced her attacker between the eyes. His head caved in like a bashed watermelon, and exploded into a mess of hair and bone. He landed on the cop’s body, which was lying on the floor, facedown in a pool of blood.
K sobbed as Mark rushed to her side. He knelt beside her, rocking her in his arms, kissing her on the back of her neck, whispering in her ear, “I’m here. Everything is okay, sweetheart. I’m here.”
* * *
MARK’S EARPIECE SOUNDED AS Jamison asked if everything was okay. “Yes, K is secure. We’re on our way out.”
“Any news on Detective Weston?”
“He’s dead,” Mark said.
“Copy that. Get out of there and report back to the drop-off point. We’ve got your back.”
“On my way.”
“Sam! We’ve got to—” K jerked from Mark’s grip and tried to get up.
“Sam’s safe.” He helped her up and held her close, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her neck.
She laughed through her tears. “What took you so long?”
“Traffic.”
Gripping her hand, he led her through the smoke-filled building and out the back door. Just as they cleared the hill above the parking lot, an explosion behind them made both of them jump. They turned to see the entire building erupting in a fiery mass of concrete and metal.
When they arrived at the van, Isis informed them that General Karjanski had escaped in a helicopter hidden in the woods south of the building. But no one seemed to care.
Teary-eyed, they all watched Mark and his family hug each other. Sam climbed in Big B’s lap. “Did you help save me?”
“You bet I did, sweetie, but your dad did most of the work.”
She reached around his huge neck and hugged him hard. She slid down his shin to sit on his big boot. “Do you know how to play horsey?”
Big B laughed and wiped tears from his cheek. “I sure do.”
Sweet Dreams Page 26
