Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  “That’s helpful to clarify right now,” Martell said, from beside her in the passenger seat.

  “I thought it was a definite, too,” Francie said.

  “So where the fuck are we?” Ian asked. “Because if we can now confirm that these kids are not in the consulate, which it sure as shit looks as if they aren’t, we can completely revamp our plan—except, fuck! Phoebe is now in a car with two men who are armed and dangerous.”

  “You’re on Thompson Avenue,” Deb said. Her voice changed, and Francine knew she was asking Yashi, “Why is that familiar?”

  Yashi’s voice answered. “Thompson Ave’s in the database. They’re at the K-stani ambassador’s girlfriend’s house.”

  “So now we find out that the Kazbekistani ambassador’s girlfriend’s house,” Ian repeated, and Francine knew from his tone that his head was about to explode, “is where these kids have been held for all this time. Not the don’t-touch consulate. Instead, they’ve been in a civilian’s private home. Which, with a warrant that would not have been hard to obtain, could have been raided by the FBI and local police, without any threat of international incident.”

  Deb sounded stressed. “Ian, I’m so sorry, I can only tell you what I was told,” she said. “The intelligence was—”

  “Save it,” Ian said shortly, “for later. Okay. We’re here. I am going to walk very slowly to that garage, while Aaron backs the truck down the driveway. Can someone please verify, with one hundred percent certainty this time, that the crate contains, at the very least, something that’s alive?”

  “Already verified through FLIR-cameras,” Yashi’s voice came through. “Two human-child-equivalent heat sources are inside, two adults are outside—in addition to Ian, Aaron, and Hamori, who’s getting out of his car.”

  “All right.” From the sound of Ian’s voice, Francine knew that he’d made his decision. “Let’s move forward—but new plan, kids. I’m taking the cargo all the way to the yacht.”

  Ian’s original plan had been to drive the truck straight to the FBI headquarters.

  “I am not going to take chances with Phoebe’s life,” Ian continued, “so Deb, make sure the FBI is ready for our arrival there. Francie, keep me updated. I want reports with your location every thirty seconds, understand?”

  “Read you loud and clear,” Francine responded.

  * * *

  Ian was pissed.

  He’d believed the intel that he’d been given, and that was his mistake. This entire sting was based on the information that those children were in the consulate, which could not be easily accessed.

  Unlike the ambassador’s girlfriend’s house, which he could have entered with an entire SEAL team backing him up, weapons blazing, as they kicked down the freaking door.

  Ian now approached the crate and its two stone-faced guards as Aaron—using his superior driving skills—backed the truck down the driveway, beep, beep, beep.

  As Ian got closer to the garage, he stopped and just stood there, because Jesus. The crate was rigged with what looked like a complex, high-tech booby trap.

  That was not good. That was extremely not good.

  Aaron, meanwhile, stopped the truck with a squeal and gasp of the air brakes, and jumped down from the cab, coming around to open the back with a rattle of metal. He pulled out the tailgate ramp with another metallic groan and a crash.

  “I’m Ian Dunn,” Ian said, but the guards didn’t seem to care—maybe they’d already IDed him from his picture. Or maybe it was because Hamori was now there, nodding his approval.

  Nodding, and making sure that Ian saw what he was carrying—a handheld trigger mechanism, or maybe it was a dead-man switch. Either way it was obviously connected to the small mountain of C4 that was artistically arranged on that booby-trapped crate.

  “Make sure you don’t lose me during the trip to the dock,” Hamori said in his K-stani accent.

  Together, the two other men, Ian, and Aaron loaded the crate into the truck, careful to keep it upright and steady.

  Ian pushed it to the side and strapped it in as Aaron shoved the ramp back and closed one of the doors, slamming the other and locking it after Ian jumped out.

  The guards were already gone, the garage door descending, and Hamori was heading back to his car after his little show-and-tell. This time he waited for the truck to go first—he was going to follow them south to the dock.

  As Ian got in behind the wheel and started the truck with a roar, Aaron was wide-eyed. “Holy fuck. Can I say holy fuck?”

  “Houston,” Ian said, “we have a problem.”

  * * *

  “It’s not technically a dead-man switch,” Yashi announced from the surveillance van that was following Hamori, who was following Ian and Aaron in the truck as they all drove merrily through the outskirts of Miami. “There’s some sort of electronic signal being sent from this mechanism to the bomb that’s attached to the crate—I think it’s some kind of verification code that prevents the bomb’s timer from automatically activating. The signal is being sent every … Yup, it’s every sixty seconds.”

  “That’s not good,” Martell said.

  There was a bomb. Attached to the crate. That held those kidnapped kids. That was in the back of the truck that Ian was driving.

  And according to Yashi, Vanderzee’s dude Hamori had to input a code into some little handheld device, once every minute, to keep said bomb from starting its countdown sequence and exploding. Like Yashi said, it wasn’t a dead-man switch, per se, but it was certainly related, in that should Hamori choke to death on his BBQ hot wings, or have an unexpected aneurism, or get struck by lightning in a freak storm and therefore fail to enter the code … Boom.

  Big boom, apparently. At least according to Ian’s description of the bomb, which included the word massive.

  And since Dunn was a former SEAL and therefore an expert in blowing shit up, Martell was inclined to believe him.

  He listened to the now-extra-frantic chatter over the radio as he hung on with both hands while Francine pushed his little POS as fast as it could go. They were shaking and rattling and wheezing, all in order to keep up with Phoebe and Vanderzee and the man Ian had aptly nicknamed Hitler Junior.

  Both cars—if you could call Martell’s a car—were in the left lane of the highway, heading south. It was particularly harrowing since the road was under construction and there was no shoulder. Instead, scarred concrete barriers loomed to their left, separating them from the traffic that rushed past, heading back to Miami.

  They were still about fifteen miles from the exit for the dock—info Francine religiously passed along to Ian.

  “We’re going to need a bomb squad at the dock,” Ian was saying, his voice crisp, cool, and in command. “But I think our best bet is to continue the charade. Let’s load this damn thing onto the yacht, welcome Vanderzee on board, buy ourselves at least a little time. Maybe once we’re at sea, he’ll disengage the booby trap to—I don’t know—feed the kids?”

  From the van, Deb must’ve said something then, but the signal gave a burp of static and Martell couldn’t quite make out what she said.

  But he did hear Ian’s response: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Francine said, “Repeat please. We missed that.”

  Yashi spoke up. “Deb just got a call from up the FBI chain of command. Way up. This mission is being commandeered by what we believe is another agency entirely. Maybe CIA, maybe Agency, we don’t know for sure. But Ian’s been given an order to slow the truck down.”

  * * *

  “This is not the deal I made,” Ian said as instead of slowing down, he sped up. “This is my op. I’m in command.”

  But even as he said those words, he knew they were meaningless if one of the more covert and secretive agencies was reaching in, past both Ian and the FBI, to take over the mission.

  Jesus, they were on a long, flat, empty stretch of road surrounded by orange groves on one side and jungle on the other. It was textbook per
fect for an ambush.

  Back in the surveillance van, Deb was on the phone with whoever’d ordered her to tell Ian to slow the truck down.

  “Hell, yes, I’m concerned,” she was saying. “I want to know exactly what you’re planning. I’ve got a civilian member of this team who is currently in a position of grave danger. I insist that you back the hell off and let this mission continue according to our plan!”

  “Eee.” Francine’s voice came into Ian’s ear. “Shel switched me over to a private signal. You’re the only one who can hear me. He thinks you should ask Yashi directly to tell you the next time he picks up Hamori’s access code transmission to that bomb. He thinks if the Agency’s taking over, they’re monitoring that signal, too. He thinks they’re going to take Hamori out, via sniper, immediately after he sends the next signal. Shel also thinks you should slow down, or else they just might shoot you, too.”

  Yashi was speaking almost simultaneously, saying the exact same thing. “Ian, I think you need to take this order to slow down very seriously. The next access code transmission will be coming in, in three, two, one …”

  Ian hit the brakes.

  * * *

  Aaron heard the gunshots from a sniper rifle at the same time that the truck’s air brakes noisily kicked in.

  He could see the dark car behind them suddenly swerve, driverless, plowing down into the swampy ditch that ran parallel to the road, and flipping and tumbling out of control.

  Ian meanwhile was wrestling the truck to a full stop—as from around them black SUVs pulled onto the road. There was even a chopper, big and dangerous-looking, appearing suddenly overhead, coming out from hiding behind the brush.

  Ian was shouting, “Go, go, go,” as he hauled Aaron with him out of the rig’s cab.

  Commandos had already blown open the truck’s back lock, swarming into the trailer—Aaron saw only glimpses as Ian pulled him away. They ran, full out, back toward the surveillance van, which was backing up, engine whining as it worked to put distance between itself and the truck.

  And the bomb.

  The team of commandos had shields that were already up and in place to protect them from the blast.

  As Aaron looked back, he caught a glimpse of heavily armored men in black carrying a child—limply dangling little legs—and all he could think was Holy fuck. The sheer cojones that it had to take, to run toward a bomb that was set to blow in sixty seconds or less …

  He knew he should have been counting seconds, but he wasn’t. He relied on Ian to know exactly when to dive for cover in that ditch.

  And Ian did.

  Ian tackled him, covering him, protecting him as he always did, as the bomb went off with a roar.

  * * *

  Phoebe and Georg Vanderzee were talking movies as Hitler Junior drove them south on the highway, toward the dock.

  Phoebe had discovered, back during a college trip to Europe, that most people, regardless of where they came from, had watched at least a few Hollywood films. She’d also learned that there were few males over the age of eleven, who’d spent even just a short amount of time in the West, who hadn’t seen Star Wars.

  And nearly every one of them had an opinion both about the ewoks and Jar Jar Binks.

  Georg Vanderzee, in fact, had quite a bit to say. But he broke off midsentence, looking at his phone.

  Phoebe couldn’t see his face—he was looking down—but when he spoke to the driver, it was in another language, and his voice sounded guttural.

  The driver responded, and Vanderzee answered sharply.

  Phoebe sat forward. “Is everything all right?”

  But the driver turned suddenly—hard—to the left, with a squeal of tires, and Phoebe was thrown back into her seat, as the car slipped—barely—through an almost nonexistent opening in the concrete construction dividers.

  She let out a squeak as the tail of the car noisily scraped the concrete, and then gave a full inadvertent scream as they blasted across two lanes of oncoming traffic, horns blaring. The driver somehow kept them from flipping, using the far shoulder of the highway to regain their equilibrium before merging into the lanes of cars heading north. Back into the city.

  Something was wrong. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

  Phoebe resisted the urge to dig into her pocket for her headset cell phone, because there was really no one to call. Who could get here, to help her, in a moving car on the highway?

  Not even Ian could do that.

  And maybe if the Dutchman forgot that she was carrying a phone, Sheldon or Yashi could use it to trace her.

  Or her body.

  She played it as innocent. “Did you forget something back at the house, Georg?” She intentionally used his given name. “I do that all the time.…”

  But Vanderzee unfastened his seat belt, and when turned toward her, his face was hard and his eyes were lit with anger.

  And he was holding a gun.

  He raised it, but instead of aiming and firing, he used it as a cudgel. Phoebe held up her arm to try to protect her head, but she couldn’t.

  And when he hit her again, the world went black.

  * * *

  Ian rolled off his brother to watch the flames and smoke roiling up into the brilliant blue of the sky.

  Phoebe was dead. Or if she wasn’t yet, she would be soon. Vanderzee would make sure of that.

  He could see Aaron from the corner of his eye—his brother was shouting something. The blast had temporarily taken out Ian’s hearing, and sure enough, when he put his hand to the side of his face, there was blood dripping out of his ear.

  Aaron was trying to get him to stand—as if there was a reason to hurry now. He pointed and gestured and soundlessly talked, and Ian obediently turned and looked. And there was the van.

  Deb and Yashi had gotten out. Deb was talking—her body language that of pure fury—to one of the men in the black body armor. Yashi was coming toward them at a run, and he helped Aaron with Ian—as if he’d merely been injured instead of killed.

  If Phoebe was dead, then Ian was dead, too. God, he didn’t want to live without her.…

  As his ears buzzed and roared, as his hearing began to return, he heard snippets.

  Yashi: “… get him into the van.”

  Aaron: “I think he … hit his head. Or … impact of the blast. Either way … out of it.”

  Slowly, he was improving, and when Deb came over, grimly earnest, to tell Ian, “This wasn’t me. This wasn’t the FBI. This was Covert Ops, taking things into their own hands,” he heard it all.

  Aaron: “They couldn’t wait? Forty fucking minutes for us to get to the dock?”

  Deb: “I tried. I did. I’m so sorry.”

  Yashi: “The kids are safe. Both of ’em. Although I suspect that’s just a bonus outcome for these guys.”

  As Ian looked up, he realized they’d gotten him into the van. And somehow Deb had been given permission for them to leave the scene. She was already behind the wheel, pulling away—back toward …

  Miami.

  Ian knew what that meant. Vanderzee surely had some sort of alert system in place. He had to know already that the bomb had been detonated. And so he was no longer heading for the dock.

  Phoebe was dead. Or she would be soon.

  No way was the Dutchman going to let her live.

  The only question that remained was, Would he kill her fast or slow?

  And just like that, Ian sat up. The fog and the buzzing and the blur shifted and the world came back into pure, sharp focus.

  Motherfucker was going to kill her slowly. He knew it. He knew it.

  And that meant Phoebe wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  Ian popped his ears—Jesus, he could hear his eardrum buzzing and flapping—as he asked, “Francine?” He couldn’t get his headset to work—or maybe it was just that one particular ear that was problematic, so he took it off and turned it around. Tried it with his other ear.

  Still, while he did that, he could see from Yashi�
�s eyes that he was going to hate whatever it was that Francine was going to tell him.

  Aaron summed it up. “They lost ’em.”

  Ian clarified. “The car with Phoebe.” The news just kept getting worse.

  “Yeah, the Dutchman pulled a youie, in one of those breaks between concrete dividers. You know, those places they set up when there’s construction on the highway, so that police cars and emergency vehicles can turn around?”

  Ian knew.

  “France,” he said.

  “I am so fucking sorry,” she told him over the headset. “He made the turn so fast, we couldn’t follow, and then we were stuck on the highway until the next exit—”

  “Apologize later,” Ian said. “Have you turned around yet?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re now heading north. And I hope you don’t hate this, but I called Berto. For backup. He lives relatively close to the K-stani consulate—”

  “Which is where Vanderzee would take her,” Ian finished for her. Of course. That would put them back into the dreaded FBI-can’t-kick-down-the-doors scenario.

  “That’s where we’re heading now,” Deb chimed in.

  Yashi added, “We’ve tracked the GPS signal from Phoebe’s headset. It cut out several miles after Vanderzee’s car pulled the youie—as if he suddenly realized she had it on her, found it, and killed it. Threw it out the window or whatever. As far as we can theorize, the consulate appears to be where they’re heading.”

  “Deb’s been calling in favors,” Aaron told him, “making sure that the FBI surveillance positioned around the K-stani consulate stays live and operational.”

  Ian’s team had done everything he would’ve done.

  “Okay,” he told them. It was too early for him to say good job. “We’re going to have to stop Vanderzee before he gets into the consulate. Once he’s inside …”

  They were back to toothless and helpless.

  Francine’s voice came over Ian’s headset. “Berto just called Martell. Besides himself, he’s got six men in four cars searching for Vanderzee’s vehicle. They have a description of the make and model, plus the plates, and we got a ding. Not far from the consulate. Berto’s heading over there now himself.”