Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines)

by S A Monk

Standing side by side, pressed up against the wall, Nick and Hanna watched Kurt complete his task. While they waited, Nick reached down for Hanna’s gloved hand and squeezed it. She smiled at his blackened face, and in response, he brought her hand up to kiss her leather-covered knuckles.

  There were two more sheds beyond the armory. They used them as shelter to conceal themselves as they crept past the barracks. At the last one, they stopped again. Nick tapped his watch and whispered guard over their headsets, indicating it was time for a guard to patrol past the area. Silent and still, they waited. Eventually, the dark shadow of a solitary man passed by, between them and the fence. Satisfied that nothing was amiss, he moved on down the fence line.

  The first footbridge was ahead of them. Nick made sure the open area was clear, then signaled them to follow him. As Hanna crept across, holding onto the guardrail, she looked down into the deep fissure beneath her. She could hear the ocean waves crashing underneath, beating against the sheer walls of the narrow canyon. The deadly view paralyzed her for moment.

  “Hanna!” Nick’s commanding voice came over her headset. She hurried toward him.

  On the other side, he directed her to a low outcropping of boulders between the cliff’s edge and the warehouse. The three of them squatted behind the rocks, which barely concealed their bent forms.

  Nick turned to Kurt. “I’m going to put some C4 just under the lip of that footbridge,” he informed them, pointing to the bridge they’d just crossed. “I’ll wire it with a remote detonator. I think it would be a good idea to blow it later if we are pursued. It will limit the number of guards that they can send if they discover us.”

  “Roger that.” Kurt gave his friend the thumbs up in the dark.

  Nick returned moments later, surprising Hanna with his quick efficiency. Emerging carefully from behind the boulders, the three crept slowly to one dark corner of the Quonset hut. Still in the lead, Nick brought up his fist to bring them to a halt until a patrolling guard duo disappeared around the other side of the big metal lab. When he was sure it was clear, he circled one hand a couple of times to indicate a ‘follow me’ signal. Hanna and Kurt were in close formation behind him as they traversed the second footbridge.

  On the other side, Nick signaled for Kurt to set the remote charge this time, while he and Hanna took cover behind a stand of spruce. “Now we head for the guesthouses and the main house,” Nick informed them both over their headsets as soon as Kurt returned. “Stay low and close. Drop to the ground if I do. We’ll be out in the open, but in the shadows. Stay sharp on our six, Kurt.”

  “Gottcha.”

  The three of them carefully stayed out of the security lights illuminating Chen’s residence. There were several guards posted around the house, but Nick had planned in advance how to avoid being seen by them. Seeking cover behind rocks and shrubs, sometimes dropping to belly-crawl across the damp rough ground, sticking to the shadows, they finally reached the rear of the first guest house. Luckily, it was utterly black and dark behind the cottage.

  Still, Hanna’s stomach felt like it was fluttering with a million butterflies as she stood pressed to the wall between Nick and Kurt, waiting for one of the perimeter guards to pass by. The fence line he followed was only a few feet away. The dense, swirling fog helped to conceal their presence, but she still felt extremely vulnerable. There was no cover, other than the darkness between them and the guard. When he finally moved past, she released the breath she’d been holding.

  Nick looked at her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You did good,” he whispered. “Now I want you to go with Kurt.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “Inside the last guesthouse to get Lance. I’ll probably need to take out the guard at the front door and a couple of others inside. I want you away from that, with Kurt.” Turning from her startled wide-eyed expression, he gave the FBI agent directions. “I want you to get us a fast boat. The two of you will need to get into this guesthouse or the next one. Both were empty last night. Go to the basement. It opens to the underground tunnel. At the far end, going south, there’s an elevator that takes you down the cliff to the dock.” Nick was giving all his directions over his headset, which reduced the chance of being heard. “Be sure to watch the surveillance cameras in the tunnel. When you get to the bottom, leave Hanna in the elevator, door locked and closed. When you’ve taken the guards out at the dock and secured a boat, give me a call, but use code. Voice silent. Just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” Hanna whispered into her tiny mike.

  Nick hesitated a moment. “Just in case I get caught and they’re listening on my radio. I don’t want them to know who’s with me, or where you’re located. Once we separate, coded messages only.”

  “Shouldn’t you at least take Kurt, so you don’t run the risk of getting caught? And do I know the code you’ll be using?”

  He looked at Kurt. “Use Morse code so Hanna can signal if she needs to.” Then he turned to grin at her, a slash of white in his darkened face. “Do you still remember it?”

  They’d learned it from Sean and played around with it as kids. “I hope so.”

  He refreshed her memory on a couple of signals, like SOS and all clear. “Anything else you forget, ask Kurt.”

  She put her gloved hand on the side of his stockinged head. “I’ll stay here, out of sight, if you want to take Kurt with you. You can pick me up on the way back, after you get Lance.”

  Nick took her hand and kissed her gloved knuckles again. “I can handle Lance’s extraction alone. I want Kurt to get us a speedboat. Follow his lead. We’ll meet up at the docks as soon as I get Lance.” She nodded, reluctantly agreeing. He pulled her into his arms for a quick hard embrace. Over her head, Nick pushed his mike aside to speak privately to his ex-Recon buddy. “Take care of her, bud. Keep her out of any dangerous situations. Remember to leave her in the elevator while you disable the guards at the dock. There might be a guard posted somewhere along the tunnel. Hide her in a box or a closet if you have to.”

  Kurt nodded. “I will.”

  It was obvious Nick was worried about her. She heard it in his hushed voice, felt it in his tense body. “Plant another satchel charge on top of or under the elevator so that I can detonate it with a remote after Lance and I come down, just in case anyone decides to follow us or is hot on our heels.”

  “Copy that, Colonel. Good luck.”

  Hanna hated leaving Nick. She caught his hand and gave it a final squeeze, then turned to go with Kurt. Nick waited until they got to the back of the second cottage.

  Through the dark and fog, Hanna just barely managed to see him give them a thumbs up signal before he crept to the last cottage. She wondered anxiously if he would slit the guard’s throat with that awful looking knife he carried, or if he’d just knock the man out. It wasn’t a thought she wanted to dwell on. Just come back to me, my love, she petitioned in a silent prayer.

  Kurt tugged on her sleeve and motioned her to follow him around to the front of the second cottage. At the door, which was thankfully unguarded, she plastered herself to the wall and waited for Kurt to pick the lock. They were inside within seconds.

  The interior was vacant and dark. It was also cold enough to indicate no one had been in it for quite a while. They looked around quickly to be sure they were indeed alone, then found a narrow stairway that led down.

  At the bottom, Kurt held up a fisted hand in the “freeze” signal. She froze on the last stair step, while he inspected the two tiny basement rooms. When he was satisfied no one was in either of them, he went to a door on the back wall and opened it slowly to peek through the sliver of light he’d created. A few seconds later, he motioned Hanna to him.

  “The tunnel to the elevator,” he whispered. Then he pointed silently to a small rotating camera mounted near the ceiling, in the hallway.

  Made of cinder block, the corridor was lit by bare, low wattage bulbs that left shadows and created uneven light. Big wooden crates and odd
pieces of discarded furniture littered the hallway here and there, stacked at various heights along the walls. The corridor itself was long and straight. It was obviously a connection from the three guesthouses to the main house to the lab to the elevator. It was very likely the way they transported their containers of refined heroin from the warehouse to the freighters that anchored in the sound.

  Kurt watched the camera closest to them for a few seconds, then turned to Hanna. “See how the thing rotates from side to side?” She nodded. “When it points away from us, toward the right, move out and get under it. Then when it rotates to the left, move quickly to the right. They have a specific range of vision, so stop where I do, then we’ll move on to the next one the same way. We can use some of those crates as cover.”

  Kurt went first, and Hanna stayed close on his heels. Keeping their eyes on the cameras, they moved down the corridor slowly and cautiously. They passed under three cameras undetected, their timing flawless, and then had to stop for an unexpected surprise.

  Near the end of the dimly lit corridor, there was a guard station of some sort, built into the wall, adjacent to the elevator. Apparently, Nick hadn’t come quite this far last night because he hadn’t mentioned it. Kurt had Hanna hide behind a tall stack of wooden crates, then Kurt moved out and eased along the tunnel wall until he reached the big plate glass window that fronted the guard station. With his back pressed to the wall, in a squat, he did a quick peek inside the room, then just as covertly returned to Hanna.

  “There’s a bank of security screens inside and a single guard monitoring them,” he whispered to her. “I’ll have to disable the guard before we can get in the elevator. You stay here, behind these crates and out of range of that camera.” He nodded to the one he meant. “I’ll come get you when it’s clear.”

  After he left, Hanna tried desperately to listen to what was happening, but she heard nothing. A few moments later, Kurt came back to her. They waited for the surveillance camera overhead to turn left, then proceeded right, away from it. There were no cameras in front of the elevator, nor were there any in the little security room— only an unconscious Asian man.

  “Is he dead?” Hanna wanted to know as she stared at the prone body on the cement floor.

  “No, just tranquilized for several hours.” Kurt pointed to a tiny needle-like object sticking out of the man’s neck.

  Hanna looked up from the man and saw a row of television monitors lining the back wall of the room. There were a dozen of them. They displayed various places, indoors and outdoors, on the compound. A series of images cycled through them, and at this hour of night, there was no activity on any of the screens, except one.

  To her horror, she saw Nick and Lance, in a cell-like room, with three men. The brothers were on their knees, with their hands tied behind their backs. One of their captors walked up to Nick and rammed the butt of his rifle into his stomach. A moment later, he raised it and slammed it down across Nick’s upper back.

  Hanna made an inarticulate sound of dismay. Hearing it, Kurt spun around. He was just in time to see the same guard ram a fist into Nick’s face, then turn to Lance and punch him in the gut with the rifle butt when Lance made a protest against the beating his brother was getting. There was no sound attached to the images, but Hanna could tell the guard with the rifle was shouting questions at Nick. Kurt confirmed her thoughts.

  “They’re probably trying to get Nick to tell him who he brought with him.”

  “How would they know he brought anyone?”

  “The communicator.”

  Hanna looked more closely and saw that another guard behind the brothers held Nick’s headset in his hands. A third guard stood by Nick’s confiscated weapons.

  Even though the image was black and white, Nick appeared to have blood coming from his mouth, nose, and ear, and Lance was bent over, in pain, his blonde head hanging nearly to the floor, his hair matted with something, probably blood. Tears filled Hanna’s eyes. Fear laced her voice as she turned to Kurt, who was standing behind her.

  “We’ve got to get back there and help them!”

  The room Nick and Lance were in looked like one of the basement rooms in the cottage she and Kurt had come through. It appeared that the three guesthouses were all built to resemble one another, so they probably had the same floor plans. Since Nick had gone into the guesthouse closest to the main house, they could assume he and Lance were in the basement.

  Staring at the image on the screen before him, Kurt rubbed the back of his neck, the way Nick did when he was pondering something.

  “So what are we going to do?” Hanna demanded.

  “Wait.”

  “Wait?! Chen won’t wait to kill them, now that they’re together! He was only waiting for Nick to show up, so he could kill Lance in front of him, in retribution for the death of his brother.”

  “I know, but we need to secure that boat before we go back to help them. We need a way to get off the rock. They may have already alerted the guards on the dock. I need to get down there before they call in anymore.”

  “They could be dead by then!”

  Kurt gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. “Nick will stall them to give us time.”

  She looked disgusted with that logic. “How do you stall someone intent on killing you, especially with your hands tied behind your back?”

  “Hanna, let me go down and secure our escape as quickly as possible, then I’ll go back to get Lance and Nick. Meanwhile, stay here in this room. If you hear anyone coming, get into the elevator and beep an SOS on your radio. Wait inside the elevator, jamming the doors, until I tell you to open them.”

  She whirled to fully face him. “All that’s for my safety. To hell with that! Let’s go back for Nick and Lance, then go to the dock for a boat.”

  “Nick doesn’t want you involved in any dangerous situations. He told me to keep you safe, even if I have to lock you in a closet.” He looked around and couldn’t find one of those. Apparently the elevator was the best he could come up with.

  She smirked. “I will not be safe at Nick’s expense.”

  “Want me to tie you up?”

  She threw both arms up in exasperation. “All right, then, go! Get the damn boat and hurry back so we can get Lance and Nick out of there.”

  “So I can get Lance and Nick out of there.”

  “Okay. Okay. Just hurry!”

  Kurt turned to the elevator, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Watch those monitors for anyone coming.”

  “Okay,” she said, shooing him on. “Go!”

  “Nick will give us time. He’ll be okay, Doctor.” He gave her a thumbs up signal, then hurried to the elevator and got in, to descend to the dock below.

  Hanna checked her watch, then turned back to the monitor. The arrival of Li Chen and another man made Hanna’s blood chill. Chen walked up to Nick, grabbed him by his hair to yank his head up, then snarled something at him. Hanna gasped when Chen pulled a handgun out of his shoulder holster and positioned it squarely between Nick’s eyes. For one awful, heart stopping second, Hanna thought Chen would pull the trigger. But he didn’t. He just laughed, then whirled around to deliver a vicious side kick that slammed into Nick’s jaw. It sent him sprawling onto his side on the floor. Chen said something to the man who had delivered the initial beating, then left with two of the four guards.

  Hanna thought they would leave Lance and Nick alone after that, but they yanked them to their feet and pushed them backwards, where there were two steel rings attached to the wall by lengths of chain. Each brother was then handcuffed to a ring. Lance was able to stand, but Nick, who looked partially unconscious, dropped to his knees. One guard yanked him upright and the other raised a fist to hit him in the head, but Lance was able to deflect the blow by kicking out at him. As a result, Lance received another vicious blow. After that, the two remaining guards withdrew from the room.

  With tears swimming in her eyes, Hanna was torn between doing what Kurt had told her and going to
help Nick and his brother. She checked her watch several times. It seemed like it was taking Kurt forever to finish his business at the dock. Of course, he could be in trouble or have his hands full with the guards down there. Damn, there didn’t seem to be a monitor for the dock!

  After several minutes of agonizing, Hanna couldn’t take it anymore. Either Chen was going to come back at any minute to shoot Nick and Lance, or his henchmen were going to beat them to death just for the fun of it. And damn it, it simply wasn’t possible for her to watch that kind of violence committed against the man she loved, without doing something to stop it!

  She looked around the little room and saw a weapon that looked like the assault rifle Nick and Kurt carried leaning up against the wall in a corner. It must have belonged to the unconscious guard. She picked it up. It was equipped with a laser sight and a suppressor, and there was a strap on it. She slung the rifle over one shoulder, then withdrew a couple of chaff grenades from her quilted vest coat pocket. She didn’t have the time or patience to carefully elude the damn cameras again!

  She was still wearing her night vision goggles over her ski cap. Nick had warned her not to use them if she threw a chaff grenade, or she would be temporarily blinded by the bright metallic particles. But she decided she might still need them, so she kept them on.

  Before she stepped out of the security room, she flipped the corridor lights off, then peeked around the corner to look back down the long tunnel. She threw one of her chaff grenades, then waited for it to discharge. The tiny metallic particles that exploded into the air and floated all over immediately disrupted all the electronic signals from the cameras. They rotated back and forth crazily. Hanna ran like mad down the center of the corridor, staying clear of the shadowy shapes along the wall where crates had been stacked, watching the cameras as she went. She wasn’t sure how long the particles would disrupt them, so when the metallic flakes started to settle, she threw another grenade.

  Praying that she was correct about Nick and Lance’s location, she ran to the door next to the one where she and Kurt had come through earlier. It was closed. The tunnel was still dark, though not so dark it made it impossible to see. Calming her breathing and her nerves, she lifted the rifle off her shoulder, checked to make sure the safety was off, then slowly opened the door a little bit to peer carefully inside.