by Jordan Dane
“Now you’re talkin’ my language, Archer. Nothing like a little B and E to get the heart pumpin’.”
“It’ll be risky. We can’t use our flashlights until we get past the troopers. Hell, we could get whacked by friendly fire if Frank mistakes us for armed trespassers.” He kept his voice low. “Frank’s gonna be pissed.”
“You said the words ‘we’ and ‘us,’ Archer. I heard them distinctly.” She grinned. “Even your subconscious knows you’re not leavin’ me behind. Embrace the concept.”
She heard his sigh and saw his shoulders slump, a tantalizing silhouette she’d come to recognize.
“No matter what happens, we’re stickin’ together,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Archer. In fact, I like the sound of that.”
She followed Payton through the opening in the gate, careful where she stepped so she wouldn’t fall in the dark and break her neck. She felt the weight of the pendant Alexa had given her, hanging around her neck, and recalled her words.
Press down on the stone only in case of an emergency. It’ll send out a beacon…and the alliance will contact me.
Jess realized how futile her backup plan had become in this remote place, but decided to err on the side of caution for once in her life. She reached under her shirt, pulled out the necklace, and pushed down on the gem. The stone clicked and held in place. If the bling alert worked, Alexa’s alliance would put out the word on her emergency, and eventually she’d get a call from the woman herself, if her social calendar had an opening.
Of course, if she and Payton ran into Globe Harvest here on St. Lawrence Island, it would be too late, but there was always a bright side. At least Alexa would know where to find their bodies.
As Payton had warned, none of this was going to be easy, but they’d come too far to give up now. She wanted this as much for herself as she did for Nikki. Never giving up on this case had fueled an inner strength, and she felt empowered by the newfound sense of control.
They’d make one last push to find Nikki, and Jess prayed it would be enough.
In night vision gear, Alexa moved with her primary entry team down a short slope, holding her H&K MP5/10 submachine gun fitted with a suppressor. She kept her eyes alert for any suspicious activity as she shuffled in bent knee stance with weapon raised, making her way toward the breach point.
In her bag of tricks, she carried flash-bangs, stingers, and tear gas grenades to create a diversion as her team launched their initial assault. Others would follow behind her men, a planned attack. The perimeter had already been contained, and Garrett had responsibility for the sniper unit. She trusted these men to cover her backside.
Without being detected, she and her men converged at the entry point. As expected, the place was in shambles and looked deserted. Hard to imagine Globe Harvest operated in this dump, but thermal imagers confirmed the presence of warm bodies, and they had picked the optimal entry point to maintain the element of surprise. Shock and awe was the name of the game, their objective to overwhelm the hostage takers inside with their firepower and quick assault, giving them no time to react.
Her team waited for her order. She took a deep breath, but nothing would stop the sensation she had come to accept. She felt the rush of adrenaline assault the inside of her ears, and her heart pounded into her throat, part of the deadly game. If all went well, their siege would be over in a matter of minutes, hopefully without loss of life.
At least, she prayed that would be the case. Rock steady on the outside, she gave the hand signal, and all hell cut loose in her world.
“Sir, we have a breach.”
Petrovin heard the man’s voice from across the security control room. He shut his eyes and clenched his jaw until he could continue.
“That helicopter from earlier, is it them?” he asked.
Just before he’d taken the girl to the operating room, he’d gotten word that an aircraft was circling the perimeter of the compound. This happened from time to time, mostly government types collecting soil samples. With the notoriety of the radar station and the PCB contamination, it had been a perfect deterrent for curious eyes. He had hoped that the intruders would have moved on by now. But apparently they had stopped for a closer inspection.
“Yes, sir, I think so,” the man replied. Stas shook his head, amazed at the man’s ineptitude, but his man redeemed himself when he clarified, “With our surveillance, I spotted two Alaska troopers, but there’s a man and a woman who’ve gotten inside the outer compound. There could be others, but we’ve got to counter, sir. What are your orders?”
Stas imagined firing a submachine gun into the fools who dared to mess with him. In his head, yet not entirely absent of personal experience, he heard the meaty thud of the bullets and imagined bloody carnage at his feet. But he knew what Anton Bukolov would want, and he’d reluctantly comply.
In a line, Alexa’s team moved through shadowy corridors in a stack formation, using her free hand on the shoulder of the man in front as a guide. Her other hand gripped her weapon, always prepared to use it. Her team cleared one room at a time, prepared to deal with resistance as they went.
“Go, go, go.”
One of her men blasted down another closed door with a battering ram. Night vision gear painted the interior in eerie shades of green as she tossed in a flash-bang, then diverted her eyes so the blast wouldn’t blind her.
BOOM!
She knew from experience that a blinding white light would sear the dark. And a glowing ball of fire would radiate like a shock wave in all directions, followed by a billowing stench. Even now, the blast resonated into the corridor where she stood ready to move in.
The fierce image would leave its imprint on the eyes of anyone inside the room. The white light would hang suspended in darkness then splinter into spangles, blurring the vision of anyone looking directly at it. In a daze, those affected would have minimal hearing, registering only muffled sounds.
Her team had only seconds to gain advantage.
She had entered the room in a rush through the smoke, leaving tail-end Charlie to provide cover outside the door. As soon as her team broke through the threshold of the door, they split apart to avoid becoming easy targets. Each carved out their piece of the pie—their responsibility—breaking down the room into sectors, with trust in the team a necessity of the job.
She heard screams of men through the haze and caught movement in the far corner of the room, a ghostly image in night vision green. But she had her assignment.
“Clear right!” she yelled. Her section of the room was clear of targets, but she moved to her next position, tightening the circle.
Other members of her team weren’t so lucky. A short spurt of bullets erupted, and even through her com set she heard the muffled yet chilling sound of bullets pounding flesh. A body dropped to the floor and the shrill scream of a girl reminded her why they’d come. The hostage shrank into the corner, too afraid to move.
“Clear left,” her man called out instinctively, following protocol.
Their circle tightened toward the center of the room, her team carving a wedge between the freed hostages and their captors. Fast and brutal, they neutralized the room with deadly intent. More gunfire. More men died. Hostages scrambled to get away. Her team sorted through the chaos and took control. In minutes it would be over.
She heard a man pleading for his life in Russian. For a second she hoped it was Petrovin, but she knew better. Stanislav Petrovin would not go down easy. And the man would never beg for his life.
“Clear center.” The last all clear sign came.
It was over.
They’d taken care of the last room, the stronghold where these men had made their final stand with the hostages. The smell of blood played second fiddle to another stench. A man had cleared his bowels as he died. She recognized the odor.
Even through the ringing in her ears, she heard the low moans of the wounded and dying. Walking through the smoke and carnage,
her team flexicuffed everyone in the room, even the hostages, the wounded, and the dead got their hands tied until things were sorted out and everyone was questioned.
By the time Garrett found her, she saw the relief in his eyes that she’d made it through the operation. He rushed to her, careful not to reveal too much to his men. But the look in his eyes said it all.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
God, she loved the sound of his voice.
“Yeah. Did we lose anyone?” She ventured a touch of his sleeve.
“No, thank God. A couple of injuries, but they’ll live. It was a good op, Alexa.”
She fought a smile, unsure what part God would have chosen to play, but she gave Garrett the benefit of the doubt that he had a direct line to a higher power. When he looked beyond her, searching through the murky haze of the room, Garrett smiled uncharacteristically, a strange sight in a room colored by bloodshed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
“What?” She turned and shifted her gaze to where he looked. “What’s so funny?”
“I had intel of Petrovin being here, but that’s Anton Bukolov himself. The guy behind Globe Harvest.”
Garrett pointed to the old Russian who had pleaded for his life. When she’d seen the old man on his knees, she wondered if he was a victim. Now her sympathies for the old guy drifted away with the smoke. Bukolov would pay for what he’d done to all the innocent lives they’d never know about.
“Before you leave, thanks for sticking with this,” Garrett told her.” We never could have pulled this off without you. The Sentinels are pleased.”
She didn’t exactly count it as a blessing to be on the radar of the Sentinels—a far-reaching global organization that had confederates in every country, allowing Garrett’s alliance to operate in secrecy—but something he’d said stuck in her mind.
“What were you talking about…I’m leaving for somewhere?”
“Your bounty hunter is about to put her foot in it. She sent up a flare. Tanya tracked her to St. Lawrence Island. When she couldn’t get ahold of you, she made sure I got the message. If you hurry, you can keep her breathing for another day.”
Jessica knew not to contact her unless it was an emergency. And knowing the bounty hunter, she’d be in the thick of a firefight before she’d admit she needed help. After all, she had first met Jessica in the midst of a thermite explosion.
What are you up to now, Beckett?
Once she heard about St. Lawrence Island, it only took a moment for her to connect the dots to the coordinate they’d dismissed in the Bering Sea. Somehow Jessica must have figured out the erroneous location was a hair off. Damn it! The island could have been part of their assault plan had they thought more out of the box and not played it safe.
With her current location outside Providenija, Russia, Alexa did a quick calculation in her head on how long it would take to fly to St. Lawrence Island, but Garrett interrupted her.
“Take your team and the AW139. I customized it so it’s got speed and enhanced range, a bird tailored for our kind of ops. Tanya will feed you the exact coordinates when you get airborne. I’ll clean up here, but stay in touch. If you need backup, call me.”
Garrett didn’t look surprised by Tanya’s message to her, or surprised that she’d been tracking Beckett. As she rushed from the room, grabbing her team and making quick arrangements for the next order of business, she yelled back to him.
“You knew, didn’t you?” She narrowed her eyes. “You could have picked any of the coordinates to assign me, but you picked here. You knew I was tracking Jessica. With us being so close to St. Lawrence, we might have a chance to help her.”
“If you persist in believing I’m all powerful and have a magic crystal ball, then go ahead.” He shrugged.
“I don’t know anything about your crystal ball, but if I had to guess, I’d say you had a pair…of brass ones.”
Despite the grim setting, some of the men chuckled. But Garrett only shook his head and said, “Your bounty hunter—she’s an interesting woman.”
Alexa raised an eyebrow and said, “Yes, she is.”
Jealousy was an ugly affliction. Even now she’d been struck by it when Garrett gave his personal insight on Beckett. But as she raced for the helicopter, with her team following, she prayed she’d be in time to help the headstrong bounty hunter.
Jealousy be damned.
Northeast Cape
St. Lawrence Island
His men awaited his order. Petrovin shifted his gaze from face to face, thinking over his position on the breach in his security perimeter. Although he didn’t know the extent of the problem and would have handled the situation differently, he knew what Bukolov would want.
And Stas didn’t want a repeat of Chicago. He’d blown apart the evidence, but not before a handful of cops turned into a multitude that he’d narrowly escaped. And similar to that situation, there might only be a few intruders outside now, but more might come. No, he wouldn’t toy with them today.
He simply wasn’t in the mood.
“Immediate evacuation. And this time, no hostages,” he told his man. “I will handle the detonation myself. We leave in twenty minutes and I wait for no one.”
Every man in the control room stared at him.
“You know what to do,” he prompted. “Make sure they are all locked in their cells, except for the girl in the operating room. She will get my personal attention.”
He was done talking. For the sake of drama, he hit the silent alarm, a button on the console in front of him. Immediately, beacons of red rotated through the room and his men rushed to their duties, an all too familiar sight for him these days. Before he left the security room, he would set up for the detonation of the facility, an act he would control.
But first he placed a call to the operating room. One matter remained unsettled.
“We have no time for precision, Doctor,” he said. “Harvest what you can from the girl now, and leave the rest. I will be there shortly.”
Calmly, he walked out of the security station toward the operating room. In controlled chaos, his men scrambled down the halls, securing prisoners and making their way to freedom—an escape tunnel where the helicopters would be fueled and ready.
He would soon join them for their final farewell of this hellhole, but not before he had the girl’s heart and other sundry parts in a box. This would be one delivery he’d make personally.
CHAPTER 30
Northeast Cape
St. Lawrence Island
Tanya Spencer had provided Alexa the coordinates where she believed Jessica Beckett had last signaled. The woman hadn’t tracked her cell phone this time, but used the beacon signal off the necklace Alexa had given her for emergency use only. A more reliable means.
While they were en route, Tanya had also given Alexa a quick yet thorough summary of what to expect once she got to the island. But once she arrived, Alexa had a hard time believing her eyes. What would Jessica be doing on this remote island? And why would the bounty hunter send up a high-tech distress signal here?
Searchlights from the helicopter strafed the ground around the old Air Force radar site, giving her perspective on the scene. Bright white swept the ground and the rubble below, washing everything out. The place was a pit, looking more like a war-torn village. From what she could tell, this part of the island didn’t have much of a population. Yet according to Tanya, this was the place.
Eventually, Alexa saw something to clue her in that she’d arrived at the correct coordinates. Several red flares burned on the ground near a collapsed cyclone fence. And a man in a trooper uniform came out of a dilapidated building and was waving his arms to flag them down.
Speaking into her headset, she gave an order to her pilot, “Set down near that gate.” And to the man next to her, she said, “We’re going in to lend assistance to the local law and get a quick assessment of the situation, but once we hit the ground, I want you to head out again and do a peri
meter search.”
“Anything in particular you’re looking for, Marlowe?”
“Yeah, a stash of helicopters on the ground or a locale to hide them.” She briefly explained what had happened in Chicago and how the Russian got away. “I want a tracking device on any aircraft you find. I don’t want any of these bastards getting away from me a second time.”
“You got it.”
Before they landed and talked to the trooper, she made another judgment call. She wasn’t in the mood for flack.
“Now that we’re back in the good old USA, break out your FBI credentials. And I’ll do all the talking. I’m not in the mood for a delay from the locals.”
Alexa switched colors with the ease of a chameleon, and without flinching, so did her men.
As he walked down the corridor, Petrovin steeled himself for what he would see when he entered the operating room. Although organ harvesting was a means to an end for his superior Bukolov, he himself did not care for the whole distasteful mess. And despite the fact that he resented the privileged life of this blond American girl—his own life had not been so agreeable—she still stood out in his mind as someone with backbone. And he had to admit to having an inkling of respect for her.
But duty meant everything to him. Without it, he had nothing.
When he shoved open the operating room door, he looked for the carcass of the girl and expected to be repulsed by it. He hoped that seeing her dead might end the peculiar admiration he had for her. The defiant girl would fade from his recollections, replaced by images of the dead one. And corpses had always been easily dismissed from his mind, more a matter of convenience.
But instead of seeing the girl, he found the room in complete disarray and one of his men unconscious on the floor with blood pooling near his head. The girl was nowhere to be found. When he looked up, the doctor rushed to him, his face red with agitation.
