Cherish and Protect

by Lori Ryan

  Noise outside the door warned her that someone was coming and she stepped back, even at the same time as she realized how useless the gesture was. There was no place for her to go. No way to hide or get away.

  The men who entered wore tan pants and lose white shirts that made Presley think they were dressed for a tropical climate. When they spoke in heavy accents, she had the strange sensation that maybe she’d been taken to a foreign country, but that couldn’t be, could it? She shook her head. She hadn’t been in the helicopter long enough to make it out of the country. Even going to Mexico would have taken longer than they’d been in the air. At least, she thought. In truth, she had no idea how fast a helicopter could travel.

  The sensation of being lost and not having any idea where she was or how much time had passed was dizzying.

  “Come, Silva waits for you,” one of the men said as they took hold of her arms.

  Presley froze, fear making her whole body run cold. She dug in her heels, resisting their pull as her mind reeled. It couldn’t be Silva. The man responsible for torturing James all those years? He couldn’t be here. Couldn’t know about her.

  Panic clawed at her throat as bile flooded it. This couldn’t be happening.

  “No,” she said, wrenching her arms and trying to flee.

  The man who’d spoken, dropped her arm, but raised his hand and struck her hard with the back of his hand. She felt the pain of the blow and tasted blood, crying out. Then, they were pulling her again, taking her out of the room. She expected to be in some hidden underground bunker without windows or exits, but she wasn’t.

  Presley was in large warehouse. She turned and looked over her shoulder, realizing the room she’d been locked in had been a free-standing structure built into the corner of the room. They dragged her from the warehouse only to enter another one, set close by. In a corner of the large space, a small table sat in front of a dark-haired man with a scar down one side of his face.

  His smile as she approached was wicked and he stood to greet her as though she were meeting him in a five-star restaurant on a date.

  “Ms. Royale, I am Rodrigo Silva, it is such a pleasure to meet you.”

  She wondered if he was going to offer his hand for her to shake and the thought made her realize just how much she’d split from the reality of the situation.

  “Sit.” It was a command. Silva sat in a chair at the table and pointed to a chair on the other side.

  It was then she realized he was eating a meal. He didn’t speak as he ate. The sight of the food made Presley’s stomach cramp, like it wanted to make sure she didn’t try to put any food in there right now. Her body was probably in emergency mode, not wanting to deal with the normalcy of processing food or water.

  Silva pushed his plate to one side and leaned back in his chair, one hand on his stomach. “We will wait. Your James will come and this will all be finished soon.” He spoke in an almost offhand way, as though telling himself more than he was telling her.

  “Yes, this will be finished soon.”

  36

  James pulled the car over outside of Alexandria. He had lied to Gray. They weren’t four hours out. They’d only been two. He pulled over into a Walmart parking lot and looked at Hunt.

  “I’m okay with you sitting this out. You don’t need to do this.”

  Hunt gave him a hard look. “Like hell I’m letting you walk into this alone.”

  James hesitated. “We should call General Cutter.”

  Hunt nodded. “When we get to Presley, we’ll give him a call. Let him know. But we don’t wait for backup.”

  “Agreed.”

  They walked into the store side-by-side. James had his gun but he needed more than that right now. He needed to transform back into The Illusion if he was going to have any chance of saving Presley.

  They made their way to the clothing section. James already had a pair of cargo pants on, but his white t-shirt had to go. The pants were dark navy, so they would do, but he grabbed a long sleeved dark green shirt. He also grabbed a long-sleeved tan shirt and a pair of khaki cargoes, in case it turned out dressing lighter would help him blend in more. How you needed to dress always depended on your background. Hunt chose similar items.

  They made their way to the hunting section next, testing the weight of various blades. James chose two Bowie knives and a skinning blade with a sheath that would attach around his ankle. A rifle scope and a trip to the ammo section for incendiary bullets, and to the camping section for lighter fluid, and he was good to go.

  When they got back to the car, they had no choice but to wait for the call from Gray, telling them where to go. James closed his eyes and played the images from his memories again, sifting through them. The crates, the boots, the voice, “What the fuck?”

  The voice was the same. He was sure of it. Gray and Silva had both been in the warehouse the day his squad had been ambushed. There had been gunfire then, muffling the voices that followed, but the surprise in those voices was unmistakable.

  Again, he played it all. The boots. The guns, the sounds of the crates being stacked. Crate after crate of weapons. The writing on the sides of the crates.

  James’s eyes shot open. They were U.S. military markings on the outsides of the crates.

  Hunt was looking at him. “You remember more?” Hunt and Lars had been outside the building when all the shit had gone down. They were there to confirm that Peña was there so he could be taken out in a drone strike. It should have been an in-and-out mission.

  James nodded. “Peña was there, but so were Silva and Gray. Both of them seemed surprised when we hit the building. Gray didn’t know we were coming. And there were crates of U.S. guns and ammo.”

  “You think Gray was selling weapons to Silva?”

  “Silva, or Peña.” James paused. “Maybe both. I think Silva and Peña cooperated when it was beneficial to them both, but I saw their men invade and attack each other, too. I’ve always thought Silva had something to do with Peña being killed by his cousin.”

  Hunt had the same hard look James probably had then. Knowing someone in their military was sending weapons over there for profit was the ultimate betrayal. If those weapons weren’t used there on the ground against their own men, they might easily end up in other areas where the U.S. had men and women fighting. The chances those weapons would be used to kill U.S. military members was high. That, or innocent people who lived in terror in that region.

  James sat up as his phone rang. “Yeah?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was different this time, at least he thought it was. He couldn’t be sure of much anymore, but he didn’t think it was Gray.

  The man rattled off an address and hung up. That was it.

  James plugged the information into the car’s GPS and looked at the route mapped out for him.

  The place was outside Alexandria, but James didn’t recognize the location. He pulled up Google maps and plugged in the address then switched to Google Earth view and saw that he was headed toward warehouses. Open spaces around the warehouses made it hard to slip in and out unnoticed. He would be in open space, making it more than easy for anyone to pick him off as he approached. He had his work cut out for him.

  37

  Madman didn’t even begin to describe the man sitting across from Presley. Silva had spent the last hour telling her about his country, his love for its beauty and its people. She knew he tortured and killed indiscriminately. But he seemed to see himself as a hero in all of this.

  She still didn’t understand what he was doing here in the United States. Why would he have come after James here? She suddenly pictured him as this weird little cartoon character like the guy in that moose cartoon with the Russian woman. She had no idea what the name of the cartoon was or why it flashed into her mind, but she thought of Silva now, with a little cartoon version of his pot belly and the slim mustache that seemed almost drawn across his upper lip. And he was boarding a cartoon plane to hunt down his nemesis, th
e American who wouldn’t die no matter what he did to him.

  A laugh bubbled up and escaped before she could control it and then she was laughing and there wasn’t any stopping it. Her captor eyed her with interest as she waved her hand in front of her face. Heaven help her if he thought she was laughing at him. She couldn’t stop herself, though.

  God, what was wrong with her? She should be trying to figure out how to get away from this man, not laughing at him. But it was really, hopeless, wasn’t it? How in the world did she think she could get herself out of this?

  The look on Silva’s face was shifting from curiosity to annoyance, and seemed to be well on the way to anger when a car pulled into the warehouse. Since the men posted at the entrance of the structure did nothing to stop it, she guessed Silva knew who was coming.

  He stood. “You will excuse me Ms. Royale.”

  He shouted something in his native language and one of the men in tan and white came to stand with Presley.

  Silva went to the car and she watched as a man in a U.S. military uniform stepped out and looked to where she sat.

  Silva opened his arms wide. “You got me all the way here and this is how you treat me? You have me waiting like your dog in a warehouse?”

  The other man wasn’t the least bit cowed. He was in Silva’s face as he answered, almost pushing the man back with how much he invaded his body space. “If you had ended this all years back like I told you to, we wouldn’t be in this position. I’m not going to handle this one for you, Silva. I’ve got your little ghost or whatever the hell you call him coming here, but you need to handle this.”

  Presley heard the man who’d been sent to guard her whisper a name and she knew it. The Illusion. James was coming, and if the tone of her guard’s voice was anything to go by, that fact had the man on edge.

  “If you had done your job to begin with, none of this would have happened. You were the big man, you said.” Silva was taunting the man from the military now. He was shoving right back into the man’s space. “You told me you knew everything the U.S. military did in the area, that you could warn me anytime they would be there. Maybe you lied to me? Maybe you set up the attack that day?”

  The men fought, arguing over which one of them needed to take care of the loose ends they’d created. The military guy seemed to think Silva should have killed James years before instead of letting Peña keep him. Silva said he would still have James if the guy had kept up his side of the bargain.

  Presley took advantage of the moment to see if her guard was watching her. He wasn’t. His eyes were on the door to the warehouse, as though he thought someone might come crashing through any minute, guns blazing. She remembered Laura telling her that James had been called The Illusion during the time he escaped from Silva and was feeding information back out to the government and trying to bring Silva down.

  The name had come to be because he targeted Silva’s men, often taking down ten or more men before any of them realized there was a threat in their midst. From the way the man watched the door, she would guess he expected The Illusion to come calling tonight, and he wasn’t looking forward to the visit.

  Presley slid the fork off Silva’s discarded dinner plate and slid it up the sleeve of her sweater. Then she pushed his napkin over his plate hoping Silva wouldn’t notice the utensil missing. If there was a knife on the table, she’d have taken advantage of that, but there was not.

  Maybe he didn’t think she had it in her to stab him in the eye with a fork, but if she got her chance, she would do just that without any hesitation. She knew damned well there was no way he would just let her go when James showed up. Whatever the man had planned, he didn’t intend for her or James to walk out of here alive.

  38

  James looked through the scope he’d bought, watching for movement. They’d left Lulu in the car, and he hoped like hell he could keep his head in the game without his service dog by his side. It made him glad he’d brought Hunt. It was a damned good thing Hunt hadn’t been involved or James would be here without anyone to back him up. Not that the two of them together against who knew how many well-armed men was the best setup, but James had faced worse odds. The sun would be going down soon. He needed to see what he was dealing with before that happened, then wait for cover of darkness to move.

  He’d waited once before for darkness to come and had found Catalina dead as a result. Still, he needed it if he was going to survive this. So far, he’d seen one man on the two back corners of the warehouse and at least four men in the opening at the front. He would bet there were more inside.

  “Only one man working the perimeter,” he said to Hunt, who lay beside him. Still, they had to move quickly. He would bet the men were in radio contact and once he took one man out, they would figure out he was there pretty quickly.

  Not to mention, they expected him to walk in any minute and try to exchange himself for Presley. What would happen if he didn’t arrive soon?

  James glanced at the sky, which was only beginning to darken. There was still time before the night would truly fall.

  He went back to his car and pulled out the khaki pants he’d bought at the store. He pulled off the dark t-shirt and dark pants he’d put on and swapped them out for the khakis and the white t-shirt he’d worn earlier in the day. The men were all wearing tan pants and white shirts.

  It was a uniform James knew well. He looked at Hunt, who wore dark pants and a dark shirt. “Silva’s men wore these khaki pants and white shirts on his compound in South America.” Hunt’s eyes went wide at the news. James didn’t know how, but somehow, his nightmare had followed him home.

  Silva had made a mistake. When James had been on Silva’s turf, he’d been injured or half-starved and weak. James was stronger now. Silva wouldn’t walk out of this alive.

  “If I’m dressed like them, I might be able to get close enough to take them out quietly. You hang back and pick off anyone you can get to. I’m going to need you to distract them when I go in the front door.”

  Hunt cursed, but didn’t argue. There was no way around this. Hunt had called and left a message for General Cutter at the Pentagon on the way there, but they had no idea when the man would get the message, or if he’d take it seriously.

  James couldn’t wait any longer. The perimeter patrolman was on the side of the warehouse. If James had approached him out front or at the back, he would have been exposed. Hunt headed around to work his way to the back of the building while James crept silently toward the man on the perimeter, waiting until he turned away before moving forward. He’d drawn the Bowie knife before he began moving and it came up now, sure and steady in his hand, the point facing backward toward his elbow. It might be a new knife, but the sensation was an old one. The soft gurgle as the man’s throat filled with blood was one he’d heard before. It was one he hadn’t thought he’d have to hear again.

  He’d been wrong.

  James dropped the man in the dry brush on the outer edge of the airfield, then took the man’s weapons, tucking the handgun into his waistband and slinging the semiautomatic assault rifle over his shoulder. There wasn’t much more he could do to hide the body. He dropped to the ground and belly crawled, moving slowly away from the area. He would need to back away, then circle to the back and approach again.

  The time ticked by as he moved into position. He used the cover of a nearby warehouse to come up close to the position of one of the men at the back, then tossed a rock to draw the man out. It was easy to get people to move where you wanted them to. They wanted to investigate. The man took a few steps in the right direction and James stepped out from the shadows and took him down, using the Bowie again, his appreciation for its swift action as strong as ever.

  The only downside to using the Bowie was the blood it spilled on the man’s clothes. If he’d taken him without all that, James could have used the man’s shirt to better match the uniforms of the guards.

  It was no matter. The t-shirt was close enough to the button-down
shirts the men wore to fool them.

  Hunt moved forward and took the other man out in much the same way, then they collected their weapons and met up at the back of the building. James looked to Hunt, then to a metal drum that sat by the back steps of the loading dock. Probably, it was used to put out cigarettes.

  He strapped one of the weapons he’d taken to his back and tossed the others into the barrel. Hunt took the duffel bag he’d packed off his back and brought out the lighter fluid. Hunt loaded the incendiary bullets into the gun he’d taken from the man he’d knocked out.

  James looked at him now, his only backup. “Wait until you see me go in. Give me a twenty-count after that, then light it up.”

  It wouldn’t make a big explosion, but the incendiary bullets would light the lighter fluid and the heat would make the other bullets go off like loud fireworks as their shells expanded and blew apart. It was all the distraction he’d need.

  He slipped the long-sleeved shirt over his white top, helping him to blend into the dark a little bit, then backed away again, putting some space between himself and the warehouse as he moved around to the front of the building.

  He raised the LR300 he’d taken from one of the men and looked through the scope to the front of the warehouse. It was dark, but Silva’s men were stupid. They stood framed in the open doorway with the light of the warehouse behind them, their silhouettes giving him a perfect shot.

  He raised it to his target and took down the first man with a single shot. The others were so startled, they turned and stared at the spot where the man had been in an almost comical way. James shot the man on the other side, the one furthest away from his first shot. The two in the center spun to look at the newly felled man.

  Two more men appeared from inside the warehouse and James could hear shouts and calls. The crackle from the radio of the perimeter man sounded behind him, from where James had left his body lying. James took out two more of the men with a fully automatic burst as the others ran back inside the warehouse for cover.