by Kenny Soward
Another fifteen minutes passed before Ivan made it to the top, and the entire team was assembled. They stripped off their climbing gear quietly, checked their weapons, and slunk from beneath the deck to level ground. It was Yi, Ivan, and Chen, with Elsa leading them.
Yi couldn’t see it, but he could hear a stream running down the cliff’s face to his right, terminating in a waterfall. Looking left, Yi saw the cabin nestled up against the edge of the cliff. One window was boarded up, and Yi assumed it must have blown in during the recent storms.
They approached the edge of a clearing, moving past a line of trees when something clattered to Yi’s right. The entire troupe turned their weapons in that direction only to see a paddle of wood slapping a tangle of tin cans strung up between two closely-placed trees. While it wasn’t a terribly loud sound, it made Yi’s body tense, and he glared at Elsa.
She looked back at the group apologetically and then down at her feet. Yi saw a piece of slack black string resting on the soldier’s boot.
“Watch out for traps,” Yi hissed, although in the dim light he wasn’t sure how any one of them could have seen the colored string. Inside, he told himself they needed to be especially careful and not take these people lightly. The element of surprise had been lost weeks ago, and anyone up here on the mountain would have had plenty of time to prepare.
Yi gestured toward the cabin. “You three move to the front, and I will enter through the back.”
The soldiers nodded, and the group split up as they moved in. Yi was still in the cover of the woods, though he instantly noticed a camera on the awning above the front porch. “Camera, Ivan. Take it out.”
“I see it.” Ivan moved quickly across the final thirty yards of the house. He stepped onto the porch, reached up, and crushed the camera in his hand.
Moving swiftly, Yi sprinted along the edge of the woods until he came to the side of the house. He wanted to take advantage of any distraction the other three soldiers might have just made. If there were people in the cabin and they’d noticed the three soldiers in the front, they might not expect someone to enter through the back door. Especially when reaching it would require Yi jumping a good seven feet from solid ground over to the rail. One misstep and he might find himself tumbling down the woodsy incline right off the side of the cliff.
Without hesitation, he lunged, wrapping his arms over the rail as his feet landed softly on the porch lip. He slid over the rail and brought his rifle up. Peering through the back-door glass, he didn’t see anyone in the open kitchen and living room area, so he put his hand on the door and pushed it open.
The door was locked, so Yi slammed his shoulder against it with a brief lunge that splintered the flimsy frame. Yi stepped inside to a quiet house and waited.
“I’m in,” he whispered. “Hold positions.”
The place was neatly kept. No dirty dishes on the table or sink. Pillows and blankets folded and placed tidily on the couch cushions. Yi slid to the laundry room and peeked inside. There were piles of freshly folded clothes stacked on a clothes hamper, and the room smelled of detergent and fabric softener. He stepped back, cross-stepped to his right, and peeked into the master bedroom. It was much the same as everything else, although the bed was unmade.
He backed out of that room and trod lightly across the living room to the front door. There were towels on the floor on the left side of the doorway covered in dirt and shoe marks. However, there were no shoes or boots in sight. He unlocked the door and pulled it open gently to let the others in.
“Check upstairs,” Yi whispered. “And don’t kill anyone unless they strike at you first. We need them alive.”
Ivan and Chen nodded and went quietly upstairs to check the bedrooms, though Katrya’s soldier, Elsa, looked the other way and pretended to check a room off to the side. Yi gave a dry grin and wondered if Katrya thought he was so stupid as to not notice her obvious tactics. Maybe Elsa would try to kill Yi when she found a good opportunity. Or maybe she was just keeping tabs on him.
Yi turned and strode through the living room, eyes searching everywhere for the Box. He passed in front of the mantel beneath a big screen TV and looked around. The smell of coffee and a recently cooked meal lingered in the room, pleasant to his nose. He turned back to the mantle, and his eyes roamed over the pictures placed there amongst several candles.
The pictures were of a family of four. A mother, father, older son, and a little girl. They were sometimes surrounded by what appeared to be extended family members, but those four were always at the center. He looked at a picture of the family sitting at a park, grinning at the camera as if they were the happiest people alive. The father, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a neatly shaved face, held his daughter in his arms, half-flipping her as she giggled madly.
Yi pressed his thumb against the face of the woman, rubbing it before he lifted his thumb away. She had the same brown hair as the woman in the lodge video, and even the same stout build. Was she the woman who had killed Alina and Jiao? Was she the one who had wounded Ivan?
Footsteps came down the stairs, and Yi glanced over to see Ivan and Chen coming down while Elsa watched the road through the front window.
Ivan shook his head when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “No one upstairs, Yi.”
“Ivan, come here,” Yi said, this time not bothering to lower his voice. “You mentioned the woman from the lodge video looked familiar. You said you may have run into her in the town of Maryville.”
“When I was pretending to be a policeman,” Ivan smirked in his deep baritone. “I pulled her over, and she shot me. Why?”
“Is this her?”
Yi stepped aside as Ivan approached the mantel, towering over Yi as the giant leaned down and peered hard at the picture. Little light remained in the cabin, and Yi thought he might have to use his flashlight to help Ivan see, but the big man quickly stood straight and looked down at Yi with a grin on his face.
“That is most definitely the woman who shot me.” The Russian’s cruel eyes turned up to the ceiling in thought before falling to Yi again. “It is, as the Americans say, a small world.”
“Yes, Ivan. It is a small world, indeed.”
Chapter 6
Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 6:52 a.m., Tuesday
Sara’s dreams were a blend of moans and cries, blood-soaked rags, and red, sticky fingers. People moved all around her, jostling her as they went by, though she remained focused on her grotesque task. Sara’s hands stitched sutures into an endless supply of broken flesh. On and on it went, leaving her feeling desperate and hopeless inside. Whenever she tied off a suture to complete a stitch job, another oozing laceration would appear before her. So, she simply threaded the needle and kept right on stitching, like a battlefield seamstress with her pride bathed in blood.
A needle-like pain pinched her in the neck, waking her up. She slapped her hand on the painful spot and lifted her head from the kitchen table, blinking at the early morning light.
Sara heard soft shuffling and low moans coming from the living room area, and she realized she was still at Natasha’s cabin. They’d cared for a dozen wounded men and women all night long, until Sara’s body could take no more. The last thing she remembered was giving a man pain medication before she poured herself a cup of coffee and tried to have a break.
She’d fallen asleep before taking a single sip.
Standing on wobbly legs, Sara stretched her arms above her head and waited until the pain in her neck faded to something more tolerable. Then she stepped around the kitchen breakfast bar and had a look around. The wounded appeared to be resting, and two of the Good Folk were walking around and keeping an eye on them. One of the “nurses” turned to Sara and gave her the thumbs-up sign, so she nodded and went to look for Zoe.
She found the girl upstairs with Kayla, snuggled in on of the spare beds. She started to shake Zoe awake when she hesitated at the sound of Kayla’s faint snoring. For all she knew, this was the most sleep the girl had gott
en in days. At the same time, she wanted to take Zoe back to the top of the mountain and get her into her own bed.
She gave Zoe a little shake and helped the girl get untangled from beneath the covers. Zoe murmured sleepily as Sara lifted her in her arms and started to leave the room. She turned back to see Kayla roll over before falling back into a deep and restful slumber.
Zoe came more awake as Sara set her down in the hallway. The little girl rubbed her eyes and blinked at her mother. “Can’t I stay with Kayla, Mom?”
“No, honey. I want to go back to the cabin, get cleaned up, and get some rest. We’ll be more comfortable up there, believe me.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Outside, the world was quiet. The wind half-heartedly pushed at them as Sara led Zoe to the Subaru and opened the passenger door for her. She looked up. The storm’s power had mostly petered out. Clouds moved lazily across the sky, a welcome change from the battering they’d taken over the past month.
The front door opened behind them, and Sara turned to see Tex step on the front porch with his hand held up. “You mind if I hitch a ride? I’d like to pick up some of my things and bring them down to one of the extra cabins.”
“You can hitch a ride.” Sara was surprised that she didn’t have to shout to be heard for once. “But you don’t have to leave our cabin.”
The man shook his head. “I’ve taken advantage of your hospitality long enough, and I fully intend to give your master bedroom back to you.”
Sara produced a half smile. “Hop on in, then.”
Tex came down the stairs and got in the Subaru’s back seat. Sara handed her rifle to him and got behind the wheel. After starting the car, Sara got the heat going and sat back with a sigh. “Can you believe we made it through last night?”
“Or this entire month.” Tex chuckled and shook his head. “I used to complain about getting up every day with creaky joints. But I’ve done more physical activity this past month than I have in years. Got shot, even. Yet, here I sit, alive.” Tex held his hands out. “Joint pain seems a bit trivial in comparison.”
“It’s amazing what you can do when life forces you to do it, right?”
Tex nodded. “It certainly changes your perspective.”
Sara started the car, put it in gear, and drove up the winding road to the top of the mountain. She decided to drive over the bridge and pull into the yard, since the grass had started to dry up. The wood creaked and groaned beneath the car’s weight.
Once parked, Sara took her rifle from Tex, shouldered it, and went around the car to join them on the other side. They started toward the front porch steps when Tex suddenly turned away from the cabin and looked up at the sky in a nonchalant manner.
“Sara, stop,” Tex hissed low, and the dangerous note in his tone caused Sara to turn and look at him in question.
“What is it, Tex?” Sara matched his hushed tone as her senses came to life. Her eyes moved casually across the yard, though she resisted the urge to swing her rifle into a firing position.
“Something isn’t right.” He rubbed his forehead, eyes moving back toward the cabin. “You left something in your car.”
“I did?” Sara asked with a raised brow before she realized Tex was trying to get them back into the Subaru. “Oh, I did.”
Sara turned and moved back to the driver’s side door and started to open it, then she remembered Zoe. Looking around, the girl wasn’t there. Then, with a rising sense of panic in her gut, Sara glanced up to see her daughter approaching the front steps of the cabin.
The little girl hadn’t stopped when Sara stopped. She’d kept walking toward the steps, half-asleep and likely thinking of her warm bed. She put her small foot on the first step and started to go up.
“Zoe?” Sara’s voice rose with a tinge of panic.
The little girl didn’t stop immediately and had made it halfway up the stairs when a huge figure appeared in the doorway and advanced with surprising speed to snatch the little girl up. Sara’s eyes registered the black combat suit wrapped around the man’s impossibly huge shoulders.
Zoe cried out and twisted, but the giant held her tightly against his chest. It looked like he could crush her with a simple squeeze of his muscled arms.
A growl tore from Sara’s throat, and she swung her weapon up in one smooth motion to line the gun’s sights up with the big man’s head. However, he quickly lifted Zoe so Sara didn’t have a clean shot.
“Not a good idea,” the man said in a thick, foreign accent that rang familiar in Sara’s ears.
Sara lowered her weapon. She’d heard his voice before. She’d looked into his cold gray eyes. Her jaw dropped when she realized it was the fake police officer they’d run into in Maryville. The one who’d pulled her over and seemed all wrong. The one who’d tried to strangle her. The one she’d shot.
“You,” Sara said, venom dripping from her words as she moved her rifle barrel to the side but kept her arms tense in case the man gave her a sliver of opportunity. “Let her go. Tex?”
Tex had drawn his pistol and pointed it at the man, too, though he shifted the barrel when he saw Zoe was in the way. “I don’t have a shot, Sara.”
The man holding Zoe grinned down at her, eyes like a jackal’s beneath a slick, black helmet. He stepped aside to reveal a much shorter Asian man. He wore the same kind of tactical combat helmet as the brute who held Zoe.
Sara trained her weapon on the shorter man’s chest, and her finger covered the trigger.
“Don’t do that,” he said, stepping to the edge of the porch, his own rifle slung low at his side. “Or your daughter will pay a heavy price. Also, I have two other guns trained on you from opposite sides of the yard.”
Sara’s eyes darted to the left and right. She couldn’t see anyone out there, but she had no reason to doubt the man. Based on their combat attire, they were from the lodge, and Sara had a good idea what they wanted. She lowered her weapon but kept her finger on the trigger.
“This was too easy, Yi,” the big man said as Zoe kicked and fought in his grasp. He jerked the girl hard. “Settle down, little one. Be a good girl and we won’t have to kill you.”
Zoe went limp in the big man’s hands, her frightened, tear-filled eyes lifting to her mother. Sara’s heart twisted in her chest, and all she wanted to do was run up the stairs and smash the man in the face before ripping her daughter from his arms.
“As I tried to tell Katrya,” Yi said. “Victory requires patience.” His eyes never left Sara as he took two steps down. “Are you ready to talk?”
Sara didn’t know who this Katrya was, nor did she care. “What are you doing in my cabin? What do you want?”
“It is very simple.” The man made a conciliatory gesture with his hands, but his eyes were as hard and dark as charcoal. “The Box. We want the Box.”
Chapter 7
Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 7:34 a.m., Tuesday
“What Box?” Sara asked.
“It is a computer, about the size of a small briefcase. I know you have it, because I watched you take it from the lodge after killing Alina and Jiao.”
“I knew I should have checked for home surveillance footage,” Sara said, lips pressed tight as she chastised herself.
“It is not something you would think of.” Yi shrugged. “You are not professional soldiers like us. So, where is it?”
“I’ll tell you where it is,” Sara conceded. “But you have to let my daughter go. You have to let her go right now.”
The man called Yi descended the stairs and came within five yards of Sara. Then she heard the crunch of soggy twigs and looked around to see another black-clad soldier approaching from their shed in a stalking posture with a rifle trained on her. The last soldier was likely coming up from behind.
“Your weapons.” Yi’s tone was calm and collected.
“My daughter,” Sara hissed in reply.
Yi’s expression was completely flat, though something violent ticked in his eyes. This man was a kil
ler. Of that, Sara had no doubt.
“You are not in a position to bargain,” he said. “If you do not turn over your weapons and tell us where the Box is, we’ll kill the old man and whoever else we find on this mountain. The last one to die will be your daughter. And you will watch.”
Zoe kicked out in a sudden burst of motion, nearly breaking free from her captor’s grasp. The brute lifted the little girl and gave her a hard shake. Her head snapped back and then lolled to the side as she began bawling. Sara nearly came out of her skin. She was so enraged that her hands were shaking where they lay on her weapon, although if she acted rashly, she could get them all killed.
Taking a deep breath to regain her composure, Sara leveled her gaze at Yi. “What guarantee do I have that you won’t murder us as soon as you have the Box?”
“You have my word.”
Sara scoffed. “That, coming from a terrorist crawler.”
Yi took a step forward, nodding as if he understood Sara’s concern. “What is your name?”
“Sara,” she said through tight lips.
“Sara.” Yi raised a finger as if to emphasize his point. “You have my word as a Warrior of the Dragon. If you willingly lay down your arms and turn over the Box to us right now, everyone on the mountain will live, and we will go peacefully away.”
“He takes his oaths very seriously.” The big Russian holding Zoe shrugged. “Also, we are not concerned with regular citizens any longer. We have the bigger fish to fry, as you Americans say.”
Sara shifted her eyes back to Yi, still uncertain whether she could trust the man or not.
“You simply have no choice, Sara,” Yi said, almost apologetically. “Say yes, and let us continue to work toward a mutually desirable outcome.”
Sara stared at the man. While her lips didn’t move, she spoke heatedly and hatefully inside her head. She assured Yi and the big bastard named Ivan that they would both die if anything happened to her daughter. Unexpected emotion welled up from Sara’s gut and filled her chest, threatening to make her sob. She caught the emotion in her throat and swallowed it down before she showed any sign of weakness.
