He squeezed her arm and urged her back down beside him. “I know.”
“I simply laid low for a month. Recovering. When I felt strong enough, I went to see my mother. Because I didn’t know if I was still a target, I took a lot of precautions.”
“The disguises.”
“Yeah. The disguises. The fake IDs. One thing you can always count on in a place like Winter Haven is vacant staff positions. I checked and they needed a nurse’s aid. I applied for the job, started immediately, and managed to keep close to Mom and hide at the same time.”
“Does she…does she know you?”
“Sometimes. Rarely,” Amy confessed. “She has brief, unexpected moments of lucidity. Those are the special times.”
Rain lightly peppered the roof of the barn as they lay there, her thinking her thoughts, Dallas absorbed in his.
“I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,” she whispered, pressing her face against his chest and absorbing the heat and the scent and the strength of him.
“I thought we’d gotten past that.”
Maybe he had, but she hadn’t. If anything happened to him—she shivered just thinking about it. She touched her fingers to his chest, felt the beat, beat, beat of his heart beneath her palm. He was strong. He was capable. He was the reason she’d gotten this far.
“What if he’s not there?” It was the question that had been haunting her since the beginning. What if, after all of this, her grandfather wasn’t there?
“He’s there.”
She lifted her head. Met his eyes in the dim light as her heart pumped several hard beats.
“Jones’ man inside confirmed it a few minutes ago. Your grandfather, his second-in-command, Erich Alder, and a witch doctor by the name of Henry Fleischer. They’re all inside the compound.”
Amy eased her head back down on his shoulder as relief twisted into satisfaction, satisfaction into edgy anticipation. It was actually going to happen. She was going to confront her grandfather. Her heart pounded weighty and hard and irregular with the prospect of being this close.
“I’ve seen what hate can do to a person,” Dallas said after a long moment. He turned his head, pressed his lips against her hair. “You’ve got reason for a huge hate. No denying that. But I’ve seen the need for revenge take over. Watched it change people.”
She was changed. She’d been changed by so many events. “The need for revenge didn’t change me,” she said, hoping he would understand. “What he had done to me on Jolo—that changed me. What he did to my mother—the torture, the abuse—that changed me. He took everything from her. She never had a chance for a normal life. He’s a monster, Dallas. A madman who has victimized God only knows how many others. Ruined their lives. And for what?
“What should happen to a monster like that?” she continued into a silence of night sounds and beating hearts. “He needs to pay. And who but me can make him? The U.S. government can’t touch him. Not down here. He would never pay at all if we weren’t here to make it happen.”
More silence. More deep, heavy breaths in the dark. “It doesn’t have to be you,” he said, making it clear that he was offering to handle it for her. To take the blood off her hands and place it on his.
Love for him expanded to deeper, richer levels. “Thank you. Thank you for that. But it does have to be me. And he needs to know it’s me. He needs to understand that he didn’t win. That right wins out over wrong, that good trumps evil every time.”
Dallas wrapped his other arm around her. Drew her close. Accepted.
“Sleep now,” he whispered. “Just for an hour. You need to sleep.”
Yeah. She needed to sleep. What lay ahead for her would take every ounce of strength she possessed.
2:15 a.m. Dallas shrugged into an assault vest, zipped it up and methodically filled the ammo pouches. He glanced at Amy, standing beside him. Awake and clear eyed. Silent, deep in thought, as she, too, geared up.
Jesus. He’d never get used to seeing her like this. Like a mini Amazon warrior, out to save the world. Or at least this little corner of it.
And he’d never get used to the crazy wild beat of his heart when he thought about anything happening to her. A hundred times in the past two days he’d wanted to reason with her, make her see the logic of staying out of the thick of things. A hundred times, he’d backed off. And it ended up that she was the one to make him see the light.
She was right. She was entitled. And unless her life hung in the balance and he had to intervene, she would be the one to see this through.
So there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to keep her safe short of tying her up and locking her away somewhere. And he wouldn’t do that to her. As she’d pointed out, this was her fight. Her call. He just wished to hell…well, there wasn’t any room for wishes.
Rain plinked on the tin roof of the barn. Soft and steady. Almost calming. No fitting prelude to the chaos and battle to come.
He had to quit thinking about Amy and the way she made him want to reevaluate his feelings about commitment in general and relationships specifically. About why, exactly, he’d had tunnel vision most of his life about the need for a neat and tidy marriage to a neat and tidy woman—no baggage, no boogie men, no demons of her own to compete with the demons who rode roughshod over him.
“You actually expect me to shoot that thing?”
Jenna’s voice jarred Dallas out of his thoughts. She and Jones were sniping at each other again. Huge surprise.
“What I expect,” Jones said, his patience as thin as snakeskin, “is that you know how to fire it if you end up in a position where you need to protect yourself.”
“I thought you were going to do that.”
“Just pay attention, damn it!”
And so it went.
Dallas tuned them out. The rain had settled in, steady, but light. That was good. The moonless night would provide cover. The rain would already be creating havoc with the sensored wire surrounding the compound’s inner perimeter.
“Do we have a plan?” Amy asked, breaking her silence.
Dallas nodded. “As soon as the rest of Jones’ boys get here, we’ll go over it.”
No sooner had he mentioned Jones’s men than they heard a vehicle pull up outside.
Silence dropped like a blanket. Jones walked to the door, his M-14 at his shoulder. Dallas backed him up on the other side of the door.
“Y’all havin’ a barn dance in there?”
Dallas recognized the voice.
He lowered his rifle. Jones opened the door.
In came cowboy Johnny Duane Reed and his handler, Sam Lang, both of them loaded down with full ALICE packs.
“Howdy, ladies.” Reed’s grin was as obnoxious as his drawl when he spotted Amy and Jenna. “Nice seein’ you again, ma’am,” he said with a nod toward Amy.
“Ms. McKenna,” he added with another nod as he shrugged out of his pack and settled it on the floor of the barn with a grunt.
“Do I know you?” Jenna asked, her brows pinched.
“No, ma’am, but your reputation proceeds you.” Then he winked.
Jesus, Dallas thought, but couldn’t quite suppress a grin. The cowboy never quit. He was annoying as hell—yet there was something about him that Dallas couldn’t help but like. Maybe it was the way he flaunted all that cowboy swagger in Jones’ face because he knew it pissed Jones off. Had to respect a man who was willing to give Jones grief. Took guts. And a sense of humor, especially since Jones scored zero in the humor department.
The fact that Reed was here, however, told Dallas something else about the man. Jones trusted him to do the job. And that said more than anything else.
Same went for Lang. Dallas pegged him for about his own age—thirty-five. Maybe a few more. The lines on his face spoke of experience. The way he carried himself spoke of confidence, and the way he handled Reed, reining him in just before he hung himself, spoke of intellect.
Lang broke the tension by formally introducing himself and Reed to
Dallas, Amy and Jenna.
“How’d they get here so fast?” Amy wanted to know.
“Call it the ‘writing on the wall’ factor,” Jones said. “I sent them ahead last night just in case.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Lang off-loaded his own pack, ready to get down to business.
Dallas said nothing. He waited for Jones to brief the new arrivals on the assault plan they’d devised.
But Jones deferred to Dallas. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” Dallas said, falling easily into the familiar role of team leader. “Basics first. Just to review. They’re the bad guys, we’re the good guys, and the end result is we’re going to blow this hellhole to smithereens.
“Two issues. One: We’ve got innocent noncombatants on site,” he explained. “We need to avoid collateral damage to the bunker that serves as cells and set those people free. Two: Many of these individuals are in various stages of programming. Some won’t know up from down. Some may be hostile. So we’ll need to keep them under tight supervision until we can evacuate them. I’ll get to that later.”
Dallas walked to the hood of the Suburban where he and Jones had spread the map, diagrams and photos.
“Here’s our infiltration point.” He pointed to the north side of the compound. “We’ll drive there then proceed on foot and stage from here,” he added, identifying an area where the sensored wire fence appeared to be overrun with brush.
“Once here, we’ll make any on sight adjustments to the plan, double-check our gear, go over things one final time, and check radios.” Most of this he explained for Amy and Jenna’s benefit as Jones and his men were no doubt veterans of any type and number of land assaults.
“Our biggest threat will be the security team guarding the compound—which should, for the most part, be asleep.”
Jones filled in Lang and Reed—who, as Dallas had suspected, were all business now—regarding the numbers and the weaponry they’d encounter once they breached the compound.
“So,” Dallas continued with a nod, “We’ll catch ’em with their pants down and take out their barracks first.”
“Got just the ticket.” Reed and walked to his pack. He unzipped and dug around, emptying the contents on the barn floor. Dallas saw extra batteries for NVGs, a GPS, radios, flares, rope, and wire cutters along with boxes of ammo and extra magazines.
Finally, Reed did some rattling around and came up with an assembled M-60 belt-fed machine gun—not so affectionately referred to as a “pig.” The M-60 wasn’t exactly what Dallas was hoping to see, but it would do. It had a reputation for jamming, but conversely, it could dump quite a few rounds downrange if they needed distance, and it was generally accurate as hell. In the right hands—and he strongly suspected Reed had the right hands—it would be the key to making this work.
“Your cue,” Dallas said to Reed, “will be when you hear the pop of the M-14. That’ll be Jones taking out the two guards who will be making rounds on the perimeter. Since we’re talking about a total search and destroy, and the bad guys don’t have reinforcements on site, don’t worry about noise. The biggest challenge will be to not reveal we’re there until after we have hit them very hard, taking out as many as we can in that first blow.”
“Can do,” Reed said.
“Lang—you’re with Reed on the barracks assault. Toss in some satchel charges and grenades, then stand back while he cleans up on anything else that’s still moving.”
Lang nodded.
“Jones and I will back you up and keep an eye on the armory. Here.” Dallas pointed to a building directly beside the barracks. “Once the barracks are secure, we take the armory, then for all practical purposes, we’ll control the compound. We’ll blow it on our way out. When the ordinance starts cooking off, I don’t want to be within a mile of the place.
“In the meantime, Jones will peel off, take out the guard towers, and we’ll all keep an eye out for any stragglers who escaped the initial bang.
“We good so far?” he asked, scanning the intent faces around him.
Dallas could tell that Amy wanted to say something, but to her credit, she kept her mouth shut. She merely nodded when she met his eyes.
“Okay, next we clear the barracks where the majority of the victims will be under guard.”
“How many hostages?” Lang asked.
“Close as we can figure, fifteen to twenty.”
“They’ll be held in one of two underground bunkers.” Dallas located them on the aerial photos. “The one to the east is the laboratory. We figure some of the victims will be held there in various stages of programming. The bunker to the west is the holding cell—most will be there, sleeping.
“Jones’ man inside—” He stopped, glanced at Jones for help.
“Raul.”
“Raul,” Dallas repeated, “arranged to pulled barracks duty tonight. There are three other guards assigned to the prisoners. Raul will be guarding the door.”
“He’ll have a chemlight tucked in his bandana so you can ID him from the bad guys in the dark through your NVGs,” Jones added. “It’d be nice if you didn’t shoot him.”
“Could I shoot you instead?”
All eyes turned to Jenna, whose gaze was locked on Jones.
“Joke, fellas,” she said, then rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. A bad joke.”
“Raul will make certain the barracks doors are unlocked,” Dallas went on before Jones and Jenna could start in on each other again. “Reed and Lang will relieve us at the armory and watch for stragglers, so Jones and I will lead this stage. When Raul hears us outside, he’ll toss some flashbangs to disorient the other guards and we’ll go in and take them out.
“Here’s where you come in.” He glanced at Jenna. “Raul and Jones are going to need your help to keep the victims secured and again to help with transpo when the chopper arrives.”
“Chopper?” Jenna stood at attention. “Where in the hell are you getting a chopper?”
Jones gave her a look.
“Okay. Fine,” Jenna grumbled, reacting to his glare. “That’s strictly need to know. Got it.”
“It’s a decent plan,” Lang said, nodding, mulling it over, looking for holes.
“It would be better if we had more forces. But it’ll fly if we hit them hard and fast,” Dallas pointed out. “If it all goes down as projected, we’re talking less than a five-minute time frame to secure.”
“So, what are the big boomers for?” Reed asked.
Reed was referring to the blocks of C-4, blasting caps and detonators Jones had asked them to bring.
“This place is going to cease to exist once we get everyone out. Lang, I understand that’s your specialty.”
Sam Lang briefly studied the aerial photos. “I’ll set charges here, here and here,” he said pointing to the armory, the lab facilities and the main house slash office building. “Ought to do the trick.”
“How much time are we going to have once you set them?” Jones asked.
“How much time do you want? I brought plenty of time fuses.”
“Give us five minutes to clear once I give you the go.”
Lang nodded.
“Does that do it then?” Reed was on his knees now, gathering hundred round lengths of ammo belts for the M-60.
“For your part,” Dallas said. “As soon as the hostages are secured, Amy and I will move on to the main house. We’ll deal with the brass in there.”
The men exchanged looks but didn’t say anything.
“Stay in close radio contact,” Jones added. “We’ll rally back at the staging point, count heads and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Questions?” Dallas assessed each face, liking what he saw. “Okay, then. Let’s do this. Jenna—you’re with Jones all the way.” He shouldered his M-4. “Amy, you’re with me.”
“Some guys get all the luck,” Reed said with that slow, sly grin and headed for the back of the Suburban.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They packed the ordina
nce, weapons and commo equipment into the back of the Suburban then passed out bottled water.
Dallas caught Amy’s arm just as she was about to slip into the backseat with Jenna.
She looked up at him. True blue eyes. Wholesome face dusted with freckles. A crescent scar on her temple. Tragic. Strong. Beautiful.
He’d thought he’d known what he was going to say to her. Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay with me. But what came out instead was, “If anything happens to you—”
She cut him off with the press of her lips to his. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered against his mouth, then pulled away.
He dragged her back against him, kissed her with a desperation that scared the hell out of him. They were both breathless when he let her go.
“You damn well better be.” He gave her one last hard look then got in the Suburban and let her go.
Erich hung up the phone, lay back on his pillow. Contemplated the news he’d just received.
Jenna McMillan had been rescued. His men had apparently been ambushed. Worthless bastards couldn’t even defend themselves.
He’d expected they’d try something like this. That’s why he’d sent someone from security to check on the camp. Yes. He’d expected it. Just not this soon.
How had they gotten here so fast? Found her so fast?
And how the hell many men did it take to find Amy Walker, for God’s sake? They should have located her long before she and her guard dog found the reporter.
So what did that mean?
It meant exactly what he had suspected.
He threw back the covers. Walked to the window.
It meant they had inside help. Someone who knew the region. Someone with the method and the means to pull off a rescue right under his nose.
Gabriel Jones. The Archangel lived. And he had his hand in this.
Erich felt his face flush red with rage, his skin crawl as sweat broke out over his body.
Jones was like a goddamn cat burning his way through his nine allotted lives. He was supposed to be dead. He should be dead. Right along with his lover, Angelina.
The satisfaction of knowing that he had played a part in destroying the one person the Archangel loved, however, was overshadowed with the certainty that Jones lived. And that he was the one who had led Amy Walker to El Bolson. Presumably he would lead her here. To the MC6 compound.
Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06] Page 18
