“Thayer.” Kemp’s voice was labored.
“Flying pretty high these days, I hear,” Mason said. His voice was soft. Bianca suspected he didn’t want Marin to overhear. “Apparently killing women and children does wonders for the career.”
“How are you alive? Twenty-two years ago, I damned well blew off your head.”
“You screwed up. See, I got word that somebody was coming for me. I thought they might try to take me out on that long, lonely drive from the airport, so I picked up a hitchhiker, let him drive, rode ducked low in the passenger’s seat. We get close to the house, I see flames shooting up everywhere. I tell him to punch it, he does. We get to the house. He jumps out the driver’s-side door, I roll out the passenger’s side. He gets his head blown off. I don’t.” As he looked down at Kemp, his eyes were blocks of blue ice. “Your bad.”
“You should have done your job.”
“You kidnapped my family. My little girl. You knew I’d come.”
“I did. I wanted you to come. I put the word out through all our old sources. I made it so easy for you to find us, I practically painted a Day-Glo path to this place.”
It was obvious to Bianca that Kemp thought he was done for. His defiance in the face of his growing distress told the tale. He was pale and sweating, and shaking in long tremors. Enough blood had leaked out from under her hand to turn the shoulder of his shirt shiny red.
“We need to go,” Bianca said. A glance at Marin and Margery told her that they were ready. They’d clearly been allowed to grab some outdoor gear before they were taken from their home. Both wore coats and in Marin’s case a fuzzy blue scarf that her mother had wrapped around her head.
“Yeah, we do,” Mason agreed.
Bianca looked down at Kemp. He was too big. She wasn’t going to be able to physically haul him to his feet. “You, stand up.”
Kemp said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“He’ll slow us down too much. We’re better off without him.” Mason glanced at Bianca. “He can hold the damned pen himself.” Grabbing Kemp’s hand, he brought it up to the pen and pressed it around Bianca’s fingers. “Now let go,” he told Bianca.
She did, slowly and carefully. Kemp slumped forward, but his hand stayed tight around the pen.
That was a relief. She flexed her hand, moved over to the cot and wiped the blood off on a blanket.
When she looked around, Mason stood by the door, which he’d opened a crack so that he could peek out. He summoned his wife and daughter with a jerk of his head. Bianca joined him, too, skirting around the hunched and panting Kemp.
Mason passed her his machine pistol. It was, Bianca saw at a glance, a Glock Model 18.
“You take point,” he said.
CHAPTER 26
It’s all fun and games until the Glocks come out.
That was Bianca’s thought as she moved rapidly along the hallway, sweeping the pistol from side to side in front of her in a series of defensive arcs. Warned to silence, Marin and Margery scuttled behind her, sandwiched in by Mason, who was performing the same exercise as Bianca only toward the rear.
Mason had taken a moment longer to exit the room they’d left behind than he should have. Bianca suspected that he’d spent that moment ending Kemp’s life.
She didn’t know. She would never ask. Instead she concentrated all her energy on doing what she could to get the four of them out of there.
Reaching the top of the stairwell, Bianca swiveled, aiming downward, clearing the steps visually before starting to descend.
The building was quiet. Too quiet. Not a sound to be heard.
No one upstairs. No one on the stairs. No one in the downstairs hall or by the east-facing outside door, where Bianca took a second to stomp her feet into boots and pull on a coat. Gloves were in the pocket. She pulled those on, too.
It was that pause that gave Bianca time to identify what was really bothering her.
“Wait,” she said as Mason reached for the knob on the outside door. Solid metal, built to stop a tank. No way to see beyond it. “Groton never came upstairs.”
“Groton?” Mason paused in the act of turning the knob. It was obvious he knew that name.
“He’s here. Kemp spoke to him over the intercom, asked him to come upstairs. Groton never showed.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed.
“They know you’re here. They know we’re leaving. They’re waiting outside.” Bianca arrived at the only conclusion that made sense.
Mason’s head dipped once in agreement. His hand fell away from the knob.
“What do you mean, they’re waiting? What do we do?” Holding her daughter protectively close, Margery looked at Mason with open fear.
“It’s going to be all right. You two are going to be all right,” he told her. Wrapping an arm around her, he turned her and a now-sobbing Marin into his body for an embrace while he looked at Bianca over Margery’s head. “It’s me they’re primarily after. I’m going to go first, create a diversion, get them coming after me. You take these two due east. There’s an outbuilding about a hundred yards out. Beyond that is a stand of pines, and beyond that is a flat area where the chopper’s due to land. Altogether, the distance is about three hundred and sixty yards.”
Bianca nodded.
“No.” Margery clutched his coat, looked up at him. “They’ll kill you.”
“They’ll kill you, Daddy.” Marin’s eyes welled with tears.
“Trust me, I’m hard to kill. Go with Bianca.” Mason kissed Marin, kissed Margery and stepped away from them. He looked at Bianca. “Take care of them.”
She nodded. “You know I will.”
He turned and let himself out the door.
“No,” Margery moaned.
A burst of sustained gunfire from outside caused Marin to burst into tears.
Game on.
“Be quiet now,” Bianca said to Marin. “It doesn’t help to cry.” Then, to Margery, “Hang on to her. When I open the door, run as fast as you can toward that outbuilding he was talking about. Take shelter behind it. I’ll cover you.”
The gunfire intensified. From where they stood, it sounded like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Bianca reached for the knob, met Margery’s fear-filled eyes.
“Go.” Bianca pulled the door open, jumping out in front of the others into the blast of cold air as they spilled down the stairs and into the snow. The outbuilding was just where Mason had said it would be, a long, low pole barn hunkered close to the ground. She pointed toward it and they ran, leaping clumsily through the foot-deep snow. She stayed with them, positioning herself between them and the bursts of intense gunfire that rolled loud as thunder toward the front of the building, covering them with wide arcing movements of the Glock without firing a shot because she didn’t want to draw attention until she had to, visually sweeping their surroundings as she ran because there was always the chance they might encounter a nasty surprise.
It was late afternoon, she could tell by the light, not quite twilight but close, and she could see the yellow flare from the muzzles of multiple weapons firing together.
From the direction of the gunfire, her father—Mason—must be heading in the exact opposite direction, due west.
It was classic misdirection. Playing hare to the hounds.
They reached the outbuilding without Bianca having to fire a shot.
“Good job. We can do this,” she said to Margery and Marin as the three of them pressed up against the ice-encrusted wall of the outbuilding. It was, she saw as she peered carefully around it, a storage unit for snowmobiles, snowblowers and the like. The doors were open, and the thought of taking shelter inside was tempting.
The wind was cold, and there was no chopper in sight.
“Do you think they�
�ve killed him?” Margery asked in a high-pitched voice.
Bianca shook her head. “Hear the gunfire? As long as they’re still shooting, he’s fine.”
“There he is. Daddy.” Marin pointed back the way they had come. Bianca looked and saw a small dark figure running across the bottom of a slope maybe two hundred yards in front of the house. As she watched, he leaped nimbly over a snow-crusted mound, which he then proceeded to take shelter behind.
Chunks of snow blowing up around him told her how close the bullets were to finding their mark.
The sight set her teeth on edge. He wasn’t her father, no blood relationship there. But feelings, she was discovering, weren’t so easy to reassign.
“They shot him! They shot him!” Marin’s voice took on a hysterical edge.
“Shh.” Bianca and Margery hissed at the same time. Clapping her hand over the child’s mouth and pulling her in tight against her side—if all that firepower got turned on them, they were toast—Bianca saw that Mason had, indeed, been hit. He was rolling on the ground in obvious pain, his hand clapped to his side as the snow beneath him turned dark.
“Oh, no,” Margery moaned.
The bullets around Mason kept coming. He managed to return fire, edging onto his side and scooting up closer to the mound, his hand still pressed to the wound.
To Bianca, it was obvious he wasn’t going to last long. As soon as the bad guys realized that he was wounded to the point of being unable to run, they would surround him and take him out.
She made a decision. Or rather, there was no decision to make.
“I need you to take your daughter and get to those trees,” she said to Margery, pointing to the jagged line of tall pines slanting off down a slope about a hundred yards away. “Hide. Wait for the chopper. If it comes before I get back, get on it. Fly away.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go get him,” Bianca said, and Margery nodded.
“Save my daddy.” Marin looked up at Bianca, her eyes huge.
Bianca nodded.
Margery grabbed Marin’s hand and said, “Come on, baby, let’s go.”
Bianca didn’t see them dart across the snow-covered field. She was already inside the outbuilding.
The nearest snowmobile had been ridden recently. No ice on the skis, traces of mud and grit on the running boards.
Hopping on, Bianca started it up and zoomed out of the building. The thing flew over the snow, bouncing over the moguls, sliding on patches of ice. Wind hit her in the face, smelling of snow, freezing her cheeks.
She reached the top of the slope, got a visual on Mason.
Guns were still going off like popcorn. That was a good sign. The noise of it might also help cover the roar of the snowmobile.
Yeah, no. Apparently not.
Ping ping ping ping.
She wasn’t halfway down the slope when the bullets started slamming into the chassis.
Yowzers. She zigged. She zagged. She lay low over the handlebars. She juiced the throttle.
And she broke out the Glock 18 and started firing back.
Submachine-gun-style.
I am supersoldier, hear me roar.
Mason saw her coming and staggered to his feet, taking care to stay low against the snow-crusted mound he’d taken shelter behind. Yellow flashes from the trees to the left and from the top of the hill in front of the building told her the location of the enemy. There were a lot of them. Firing serious weapons.
She pulled up beside him in a fantail of snow.
“Get on,” she cried.
No need. He was already hitching himself aboard. One arm slid tight around her waist. His weight was heavy against her back.
That told her how badly he was hit. That terrified her.
“Hang tight.”
She took off, barreling back the way she had come. With his added weight, she needed both hands to steer. Mason picked up the slack, firing his weapon in intermittent bursts that nevertheless had the desired effect: it kept the pursuers back. Zigging and zagging for all she was worth, Bianca shot past the outbuilding just in time to watch a small red helicopter settle into the snow near the pines. The distinctive whomp whomp of the blades filled the air.
Margery and Marin were already running hand in hand toward it.
The snowmobile skidded to a stop a few feet away. Mason slid off, had to grab on to the seat to steady himself. Bianca slid off, too, to help him. He was bleeding badly, she saw, from a wound somewhere around his right hip. Blood had already soaked through the lower part of his coat. She slipped an arm around his waist. He draped an arm over her shoulders.
“Hurry,” the pilot yelled.
They made it to the chopper. Marin and Margery were already on board.
“Shit.” The pilot looked past them as Mason sank into the front passenger’s seat. Bianca glanced around in the direction the pilot was looking and caught her breath.
What looked like an army of pursuers advanced on them, weapons at the ready.
They were already at the far side of the outbuilding. For the moment they were holding fire.
“Mason Thayer, stay where you are,” one of men in the lead yelled. “Surrender, and you won’t be harmed.”
Yeah, right. Liar, liar, camo pants on fire.
“They’ll take us down,” the pilot said.
“Go,” Bianca told him and stepped back from the chopper. “I’ll cover you.”
Mason looked toward her. He had a hand pressed to his wound. His face was white and strained.
“Bianca—”
“You need to get them out of here. I got this,” she told him.
His lips compressed. She saw acceptance in his eyes.
She made a gesture to the pilot, telling him to take off.
“Here.” Mason reached down to pull something out of the foot well. He tossed it to her. It was a backpack, she saw as she caught it. “That’s a SiuSiu Special, an E29.”
Bianca nodded her understanding, grabbed it, pulled it on. The chopper was already starting to lift off when Mason threw her his MP5.
“Give ’em hell,” he said.
She nodded, pivoted and jumped back on the snowmobile as the chopper peeled away into the sky.
The approaching army had just started to fire at the departing bird when she juiced the throttle, rocketed toward them and sprayed them with machine-gun fire.
They scattered. Machine gun rattling, she broke through the line. As she blasted past the outbuilding and down the slope, a quick glance over her shoulder told her that the chopper was safely away.
Minutes later she had a pack of snowmobiles in hot pursuit.
The snow-covered mountain was steep, craggy and dotted with outcroppings of black rock that perched like ravens in the snow. At the base of it, presumably, was the village Kemp had spoken of. But the day was growing dark, in the gloaming as the Scots called it, and Bianca increasingly doubted that she would make it safely down. She schussed to avoid crevasses, hung tight down sixty-degree chutes, skidded over patches of ice.
With a pack of—she counted—eight snowmobiles on her tail. She couldn’t seem to lose them no matter how hard she tried.
Her biggest problem was, she was out of ammo.
Or at least that was what she decided when she careened down a slope, slid around a car-size rock—and found herself flying toward the edge of a cliff.
Skidding sideways, she managed to stop with feet to spare. All that separated her from disaster in the form of a black-walled fissure roughly the size of the Grand Canyon was a steep, icy slide about twenty feet long that fed right into it.
The pursuing snowmobiles surrounded her in a semicircle almost as soon as she stopped.
She didn’t even bother trying to fake the
m out by pointing a weapon at them.
She was trapped, she knew it, and going down in a blaze of glory wasn’t really her style.
They were wearing helmets. Her face was—she was surprised to discover—frozen. She hadn’t noticed until now.
One of them got off his snowmobile and pulled off his helmet. He was an old man: tall, lean, gray hair.
“I’m Alex Groton,” he introduced himself. “You must be Beth.”
Bianca’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t reply.
“Unfortunate about Kemp,” Groton continued. “I’m going to assume you didn’t have anything to do with that.”
So Kemp was dead. Well, she had expected it.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“You.”
That answer was surprising enough that Bianca regarded him with wary interest.
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to come and work for us.”
“Thanks, but no.”
“It wasn’t really a request.”
“The answer’s still no.”
“Let me put this another way. Either you come to work for us, or—” He picked up the rifle that hung from his shoulder and pointed it at her. “I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out.”
“You’ll kill me,” Bianca said flatly.
“It doesn’t have to come to that.” The corners of Groton’s eyes tightened impatiently. “You belong to us. We made you. Believe me, you really have no idea what you are.”
Just like that, her decision was made.
“I know who I am,” she said.
And she gunned the throttle, pointed her machine down the slope and flew off the icy lip into the crevasse.
A rifle blasted. The bullet passed so close to her ear she could hear it sing.
Behind her she heard someone shout, “No!” followed by the bang of another gun.
Kick A** Heroines Box Set: The UltimatumFatal AffairAfter the DarkBulletproof SEAL (The Guardian) Page 30
