With Piotr and most of the top echelon dead, the Ilyin Bratva would either wither away or become embroiled in a bloody civil war for leadership.
Both were acceptable outcomes.
The military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz would have approved of Raphael’s strategy. He always structured campaigns to result in two alternate winning outcomes, rather than in a victory or a defeat.
Gunshots still peppered the air.
More light bulbs exploded, raining fine slivers of sparkling glass onto the men and bullets in the warehouse. Darkness overtook the right side of the warehouse when no bulbs were left burning, and the left side dimmed.
Four bullets remained in Raphael’s gun.
He leaned around the edge of the van and shot three times, bang-bang-bang.
Heads ducked from the quick barrage coming their way.
Raphael took advantage in the lull of return fire to run, crouched, for the warehouse’s half-open bay doors.
More bullets chewed through the air over his head.
A man’s voice yelled “Stop!” directly from his right, a too-familiar voice so much like his own.
Raphael looked as he ran.
Valerian Mirabaud, his father, stood to the side of the bay doors under no cover and was pointing a handgun at him.
Light from an outside streetlight shone on his silver hair and craggy face. He stood proudly with his legs braced apart and both hands wrapped around the gun, a learned stance. Raphael almost faltered with surprise.
But, of course, Valerian Mirabaud had done his time conscripted into the Swiss army as a young man, too.
Raphael’s arm rose, bringing his gun to bear on his father.
“Stop now!” Valerian roared. His face twisted in a rictus of anger, a sneer and a scream combined. His knuckles whitened as he engaged the trigger of the gun he held.
Raphael felt like a grip seized his hand and pressed his finger on the trigger. It felt like a reflex or an instinct, or maybe the demon that had lived in his heart all along.
Raphael was a much better marksman than his father.
His bullet found Valerian’s heart, while Valerian’s bullet sang over Raphael’s shoulder.
With another few pumps of his legs, Raphael was through the doors and into the darkness. Men’s footsteps stomped behind him as they ran for a truck parked to the right of the doors.
Raphael swung up into the back. Others did, too.
When he pulled the trigger on his gun, it clicked instead of firing. He yelled over the scream in his ears, “I’m out!”
Someone pressed a magazine loaded with bullets into his hand, and he swapped the loaded magazine for the empty one in the Beretta. The light rectangle clattered on the metal floor of the truck. He racked a round into the chamber and leveled the gun’s sights at the men streaming out of the warehouse, chasing them.
More shooting erupted around him, aimed back at the warehouse.
Their pursuers dove to the ground but continued to shoot at the truck from their prone positions.
The truck lurched, jumping for the road. Gravel flew from its tires and joined the bullets flying through the night. Raphael grabbed the cold tailgate and held on while he shot back with one hand.
The bratva men flattened themselves on the ground.
Raphael watched, but no more shots rang out. He eased himself farther back into the bed of the pickup truck. Three other men sat in the truckbed and hung onto the sides as they sped through the freezing night.
He shouted, “Elands, I’m glad to see you guys.”
Magnus Jensen thumbed the safety on his gun and leaned back against the side of the truck. He tugged an earplug from one of his ears. “Likewise. You bleeding?”
Raphael half-heard him over the ringing in his ears and half-read his lips. He shouted back, “I don’t think so. Do we have everybody? Any casualties?”
Magnus touched his other ear and glanced around the truck. Snowflakes whipped by their heads as they drove. “Seems like everyone’s reported in as safe.”
Two other Rogue Security operators, Aaron Savoie and Eirik Vang, also pinched hearing protection out of their ears and grinned at him.
Raphael was kind of surprised that Magnus had brought Aaron to the gunfight. There was always a chance Aaron wouldn’t retreat when the objective was met, not when there were people left standing who could take a bullet. Aaron had probably been shooting the fifty-caliber sniper rifle Raphael had heard booming over his head, farther back from the chaos and fray of the firefight.
Raphael poked at his ears, trying to somehow restore his blasted hearing, and asked Magnus, “Where did you take the girls?”
“Police station,” Magnus said. A streetlight flashed over his pale skin and ice-blue eyes.
Raphael shook his head. “The Geneva captain is dirty.”
“That’s why we took them to Zurich. I know the captain there, and she’s clean.”
He sighed. “Good. Did you hand off that thumb drive I passed to you at the Port of Rotterdam?”
“Yes, also to Zurich. They’re beginning an investigation. I’ll need an explanation for this, Raphael.”
His bitter emphasis shamed Raphael. “You deserve one, but it’ll have to be over drinks, later. My principal was taken. Time to get her back.”
Magnus stroked his gun. “Was that really a Russian syndicate?”
“The Ilyin Bratva. With any luck, they’ll be too weak to keep their power, and they’ll kill each other trying to take control or other bratvas will wipe them out while they’re weak.”
Magnus nodded, and Raphael thought the man even smiled a little. He had kept his word. Rogue Security had, indeed, been fighting bad guys.
Magnus grunted, “Good.”
“How many people do we have here?”
“Fifteen,” Magnus said.
Raphael frowned as the truck went over a bump, and his ass lifted an inch in the icy air. He grabbed the side again, though his hand was beginning to go numb from the December air rushing by as the pickup sped through the icy night. “Not enough.”
Magnus lifted one eyebrow. Fifteen Rogue Security operators should have been sufficient for most operations, short of toppling a small country’s government.
Which was exactly the plan.
“We need to strategize,” Raphael said. “And then I’m going to America. There’s someone I need to talk to.”
Rae and Wulf at the Hospital
Raphael Mirabaud
Carl von Clausewitz
and the Duke of Brunswick.
Raphael glanced at his phone as he ran between the widening glass doors and into the brightly lit hospital.
Outside, the three-quarter moon shone through the cool, night air that felt almost warm after weeks of alpine winter. The desert plants cast needled shadows from the parking lot lamps.
Raphael blinked at the brilliant neon lights inside, clearing dazzled tears from his dry eyes.
The text on his phone from Eian Summerhays read, OB wing, recovery suite 638. Will clear the way.
Planting Eian inside Wulfram von Hannover’s private security force had been an excellent idea, even if he hadn’t figured out who Pierre’s turncoat was.
Raphael jogged down the hall, watching for signage to the OB wing and wishing he’d had time for a shower or to sleep in a bed, any bed.
After the Rogues had rescued him from the warehouse in Geneva, they’d staged an assault on the Mirabaud estate that had involved walking up to the front doors and pointing guns at anyone inside, even the housekeepers. Raphael regretted terrorizing them, but no one got hurt. They’d retrieved his passport, documentation, and official papers he’d had there, including his will.
His mother wasn’t in the house. He’d checked his parents’ room and her usual haunts. It was odd that she wasn’t there in the middle of the night.
Very odd.
He wasn’t sure what he would have said if he had found her, but he wished he knew she was all right.
/> He stopped that line of thought. His current mission was to retrieve Flicka. Anything about his father or his family would have to wait.
Getting the other Rogue Security guys’ passports had involved merely a brief stop at their hotel.
He’d sent Magnus Jensen ahead to Monaco to infiltrate the palace and watch over Flicka until he could return to rescue her.
Aiden Grier was still in place in Monaco, watching Pierre.
Flying to the US had been tricky. Purchasing tickets on a commercial flight on no notice and traveling with weaponry would have raised red flags, to put it very mildly, so Raphael Mirabaud had commandeered the Geneva Trust jet with all the arrogant authority of an heir who wanted to fly somewhere right now. With the Rogues standing behind him, burly arms crossed and still fuming with the comforting aroma of burning gunpowder, the GT flight crew had decided to file the flight plan and go for a ride.
Damn, Raphael wished that Rogue Security could afford a private plane. For long-haul missions, they’d been booking rental jets, but sometimes getting reservations could be a problem. During Wulf’s wedding in Montreux, Flicka had told Raphael when the wedding was scheduled before the other guests had been notified. The first thing he’d done was to call their admin to book jets. Within a few hours, every available rental plane in the world had been reserved by people who couldn’t be seen arriving at a royal wedding in a car.
Raphael’s ruse to secure Geneva Trust’s plane worked brilliantly, and they touched down in the southwestern US nineteen hours after Rogue Security had rescued him from the warehouse in Geneva. Filing the flight paperwork had taken a few hours, as had refueling and taking on supplies in New Jersey.
Somehow, with one phone call from somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, Aaron Savoie had procured yet more fantastic hummus, fresh bread, roasted chicken, and other dishes delivered to the airport to meet the plane, enough to feed the eight hungry, adrenaline-exhausted men on board with leftovers for snacking. Aaron’s hummus delivery was a joke among the Rogue operators, right up until it was the most delicious thing the starving people had ever eaten, which was surprisingly often. While Aaron might have a darkness lingering behind his eyes that no one wanted to discuss, his ability to summon hummus was a holy gift.
During the flights, they’d bandaged scrapes and scratches, as they called their minor gunshot wounds, with the plane’s rudimentary first aid kit. Eirik Vang had been a doctor in some previous incarnation, so he checked everyone and declared the mission a success from a no-loss standpoint, his pale blue eyes missing nothing as he methodically moved from one minor scrape to a gunpowder-burned hand to a line on Aaron’s side where a bullet had scraped off some skin as it flew by.
Eirik checked Raphael’s ringing ears and shrugged. His eardrums weren’t broken, and little could have been done if they had been. His ears still rang from the blasting gunshots, audible even over the scream of the jet’s engines.
After food, medical attention, and planning, they’d slept. Raphael had claimed the couch through the fact that he’d secured the airplane, even though his long legs hung over the end. He’d ended up lying sideways, sleeping with his feet on the floor. The guys in the recliners had fared better. The two operators on the carpeting probably got the best sleep of all, judging by their snoring that even Raphael could hear over the jet’s engines. He took it as a sign that his ears were healing.
He still wore the suit he’d been wearing the day before, when he’d gone from the bank to the warehouse for the shipment of girls.
After they’d touched down, cars had been waiting for them behind the private terminal. They’d rearmed themselves from the plane’s hold and driven in a caravan to the hospital, where now the company of them thundered down the tile hallway, looking for Wulfram von Hannover.
The obstetrics wing occupied the sixth floor, as Eian Summerhays had texted, and a suite was situated at the end of a long hallway. Bright flowers sprawled on the walls, a reminder that the OB wing was one of the few happy places in a hospital.
As they approached, men guarding the corridor straightened and reached inside their jackets, but Eian had already started talking them down and backing them off.
Some of the bodyguards recognized Raphael as their old friend and boss Dieter Schwarz. They stood down and moved aside. He watched, but all of the men reacted as he would have expected. Raphael only marginally believed that Pierre Grimaldi had turned someone inside von Hannover’s security team, a few bodyguards that had become a paramilitary force dubbed the Welfenlegion, but he wanted to be sure.
Risk is quantified as the likelihood of the outcome multiplied by the severity of the outcome. Even though it was unlikely that Pierre had a spy inside the Welfenlegion, the fact that the spy might murder both Wulf and Rae meant that the risk was still too high to take a chance.
Friedhelm Vonlanthen’s dark eyes missed nothing as he scanned Raphael and the rest of the Rogues, and he remained alert even after he recognized Dieter, like he should.
Julien Bodilsen, a holdover and old friend from their days in the Swiss army’s ARD-10 commando unit, snapped the safety back on his gun and holstered it, looking relieved. Julien had always been hesitant on the trigger, assessing the situation with serious eyes, which now made him an excellent bodyguard when most situations were due to inept civilians, not terrorist attacks.
Luca Wyss laughed when he realized who was racing down the corridor at them and strode forward, holding out his hand.
Good. Raphael would have hated for the turncoat to be one of his old ARD-10 buddies like Luca Wyss, Friedhelm Vonlanthen, or Julien Bodilsen.
Matthias Williams flicked his boxy jacket over his weapon and leaned against the wall, watching for other attacks and abnormalities.
Williams hadn’t been in ARD-10, but Raphael had known him for years.
Sometimes, it just seemed impossible that Pierre Grimaldi had bribed or threatened anyone in the Welfenlegion into supplying information on Wulf von Hannover and his family, and the thought that Pierre could order one of them to harm Wulf or the others seemed patently insane.
Maybe Pierre had been lying.
But Raphael couldn’t take that risk.
Eian Summerhays, the northern Irishman with hair the color of pale ale and eyes like bright Irish skies, stood at the front of the Welfenlegion contingent. “Mr. Schwarz, good to see you again.”
Eian was undercover, pretending to be just another new hire for the Welfenlegion. They had to maintain the pretense because they hadn’t ferreted out Pierre’s mole yet.
Raphael shook Luca’s hand and nodded to Eian. “Summerhays, right? I need to see von Hannover immediately.”
Eian nodded. “They’re receiving few guests, but I’m sure you qualify.”
Raphael felt like he was wearing Dieter Schwarz’s face sometimes.
He shook his head and opened the door to stick his head in, inhaling to say something kind and calming, though he couldn’t figure out what that would be.
Inside, a group of people surrounded Wulfram von Hannover and his wife, Rae Stone-von Hannover. He recognized most of them because he’d performed background checks on Rae’s friends and their significant others when she and Wulf had begun dating, or whatever they called those first few weeks of their whirlwind relationship.
Lizzy and Theo Valencia stood beside Rae’s bed, laughing with glee. Theo looked smug, which was odd, but not the kind of odd that made Raphael suspicious.
Georgie Johnson also stood beside Rae’s hospital bed. She was also Flicka’s friend from years before, he’d found out, but she wasn’t connected to the Grimaldi at all. Georgie’s giggling grin and watery eyes almost made Raphael laugh. Georgie wasn’t the gooey type, more like the dark-humor-and-sarcasm type.
A bundle of blankets lay in Rae’s arms, and Rae’s wan smile and damp, curling hair made her look exhausted and absolutely beautiful. Raphael pulled in a breath, just a little nostalgic for the night Alina was born.
Beside the bed, Wulfr
am von Hannover stood ramrod straight, practically at attention, except that he was leaning slightly over his wife like a huge, blond alpha wolf defending his mate and cub. From that posture, Raphael was surprised that Wulfram wasn’t actually snarling and growling at the others to back off. The other people in the room didn’t seem to realize how perilously close they were to Wulfram tearing out their throats with his bare hands.
Just as Raphael was about to speak, he recognized the last person in the little crowd around Rae’s bed.
A tall man with long, blond hair bound back in a ponytail had the dark eyes and glamorous good looks of the Grimaldi family. A large ruby swung on a fine chain from his earring.
Raphael almost dropped his jaw, shocked, that Alexandre Grimaldi, a known murderer and Pierre Grimaldi’s first cousin, was standing right there, looming over von Hannover’s wife and newborn baby. Raphael’s hand hovered near his holster under his left arm, angled for a cross-draw.
Pierre Grimaldi didn’t need a spy in Wulf’s organization, not with his cousin standing in the room with them, a cousin who was perhaps dependent on Pierre Grimaldi for his fortune and probably loyal to the Grimaldi family.
Wulfram looked up from where he was splayed over Rae and the child, and he glared at Raphael. “Why didn’t you call? It’s been months.”
Raphael said, “I need to talk to you.”
Wulf glanced down at his wife, who told him, “Go. Go!”
Wulfram walked toward Raphael, leaving his wife and child alone with Alexandre Grimaldi. “Did you find her?”
Raphael glanced back to Rae. “I need to talk to him first. Then I’ll brief you.” He ducked his head out and told Eian Summerhays, “Get in that room, and under no circumstances is Alexandre Grimaldi to be alone with von Hannover or his wife and kid. He’s a threat, an immediate, high-level threat. Get between him and the principal targets and don’t take your hand off your weapon.”
“Grimaldi?” Eian asked, confusion creasing his eyes.
“The blond guy who isn’t Wulfram von Hannover. Why did you let him near her?”
Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5) Page 6
