London Calling

by Veronica Forand

  “I’m more than willing to take a bullet for the team. I owe my former team even more than that.”

  It wasn’t like Macknight had a choice, but until he knew Jack’s strengths and limitations, he wasn’t prepared to let him inside his inner circle. “I need to know you have our backs no matter what.”

  Derek waved his wine around, trying to take control of their inquisition. “He’s going with you. Discuss his qualifications on the plane. A car is downstairs to take you to the airport. Five minutes.”

  So much for a rest.

  Macknight went into his bedroom, dumped his dirty clothes in his hamper to deal with later, and grabbed some clean jeans, a suit, and his toiletries.

  Four minutes later, everyone was packed and ready to move.

  The plane was a Learjet 45XR. Fast as hell and incredibly comfortable. Jack joined them inside. He sat in the same seat Lucy had always taken. Macknight threw his backpack into an overhead compartment and tried to ignore the hole burning through his opinion of his new teammate. Jack hadn’t killed Lucy, some prick from the Kremlin had, but continuing life without her sucked.

  He became even more turned around when two of the service’s stylists boarded the plane. Hank and Ricky never flew with them anywhere. They usually helped the team transform into new identities at HQ.

  The second the flight took to the air, Hank stood up and grabbed a suitcase. “Gentlemen. We have only a few hours.” He pulled out a large electric razor and pointed to a chair he’d covered in a white sheet. “My orders are for Macknight and Owen to receive new haircuts.”

  “It cost me two hundred quid to get my hair this shade.” Owen rubbed his hand over the short hair. “I’m filing for reimbursement.”

  “You do that,” Hank said with a grin.

  Macknight tried not to think about the razor Hank pulled out of his suitcase, but the thought of a total transformation was as welcome as a root canal, although come to think of it, a root canal would be shorter in duration and not destroy his looks.

  His hair had just grown out to his preferred length. Shorter meant undercover, in a job that didn’t go for anything over the collar. Was he becoming a Russian prison guard?

  Derek called in over the speakerphone, because to travel outside of the U.K. would require balls, something he lacked. “From our sources, Edward Ross has been arrested as a Russian traitor and placed in the Black Crow prison. We need insiders.”

  “No one gets out of that place without a hearse,” Owen said.

  “Maybe, maybe not. We found a potential source. One of the head guards. He enjoys fancy cars and quality vodka. The kind only big money provides.”

  “So we pay money and Ross is released?”

  “No,” Derek squawked over the speaker. “He’s only offering us the ability to visit. We didn’t mention Ross to him. If the guard exposed our connection to Ross, he could be removed to another facility, and we’d lose our access to him.”

  Every muscle in Owen’s face strained. “Seriously? That’s the best you could arrange? Visiting Ross in a prison cell?”

  “Not quite. You and Macknight are going in as prisoners.”

  Macknight paused. “Say that again.”

  “It’s the only way to confirm he’s alive, find out if he spilled the names of the assets in the Kremlin, and then eliminate him as a risk. The place is so big that we need both of you inside to cover more ground. Whoever finds him first needs to get into a fight with him and break his neck. That should shut him down.”

  “I’d rather blow the place up than risk my life in that prison.” Owen voiced Macknight’s thoughts.

  A simple foray into the most notorious prison in the world? Derek had just signed Macknight’s death certificate. “If I murder someone on the inside, I’m not getting out alive.”

  “We’ll get you both out in a reasonable time frame. I promise.” Easy for him to say. He wasn’t leaving London, and his hair was staying in the same pretty boy haircut as before.

  “No offense, but a promise from you isn’t exactly gold,” Owen’s usual lighthearted banter was spoken through clenched teeth.

  “Not true. I’m leading this with Lord Hanson’s full support. You have all the resources you need to do the job and return here in a week or two.”

  Macknight rubbed his forehead and set his drink on the table. One minute in paradise at Windfield, and now headed into hell.

  There’d be no backup once they were inside. What if this was a ploy to get more of them captured? One slip of the tongue to anyone about their connection to MI6, and the guards or inmates would slit their throats.

  Hank pointed at Owen’s head. “You need all the blond hair gone. The scarring on the ear is a nice touch. Then Ricky’s giving you several sets of tattoos.”

  Owen’s eyes blazed at the command. “Sod off. I’ll grow the hair back, but tattoos would screw me in future stakeouts. No one’s touching my skin.”

  It was true. The team prided themselves in being unrecognizable, and permanent ink limited the roles they played. Although Owen preferred the rebel look, he’d also acted as a bookish nob once while infiltrating an accounting firm that laundered money for a terrorist group out of Afghanistan. No ink was a rule they lived by.

  Ricky pulled out a box with needles and ink. The edge of Owen’s lips curled into a snarl. If Ricky stepped too close to him, Owen might throw him out of the plane. Literally.

  “It’s fine.” Ricky tried to act calm but took a few steps back from Owen. “We’ve developed a type of ink that disintegrates with a laser.”

  “Yeah. It’s called tattoo removal, and it leaves a mark. And you will have your bloody throat slit if I have even a wee freckle left on my arm.”

  “This is different. No mark. I promise.” Ricky’s voice fell a bit with Owen’s threat.

  Macknight wasn’t going to fight Hank or Ricky. If he was going undercover, he had to fit within the prison walls, or he’d be killed just stepping inside. At least the hair and tattoos would give him a convincing cover. In the long run, it didn’t matter if he could take the tattoos off. If he killed Ross, he was on a suicide mission.

  He took off his shirt. “Something with claws, preferably.”

  Ricky started up the machine. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  As they transformed into convicts, Owen continued to drink and change subjects away from the death trap they were headed toward. “Imagine being raised by Edward Ross. Emma has a better skill set than half the operational officers in the field right now.”

  “True. She’s top-notch—unless she’s hidden away at Windfield too long. Grace will feed her all of my favorites. She’ll be a stone heavier when she leaves.” Macknight tried to act as casually as he could with Ricky stabbing him with needles.

  Owen flinched when Hank took another section of his hair down to the skin. “When we’re out of here, I’m headed to Windfield for a month to sleep in a real bed and eat. Grace has your cooking beat with her steak pies.”

  “I’ll be there with you.” Jack strolled back to the bedroom/hair salon. “Her blueberry muffins keep me coming back even when I don’t have a reason to visit Windfield.”

  Jack’s admission that he’d been to Windfield in the past boosted Macknight’s confidence in him. No one stepped foot in the safe house without the highest security clearance. Not that it guaranteed anything in this business, but it was better than having someone with less impressive experience join the team.

  They arrived in Orenburg five hours later. Macknight and Owen slept in one room while Jack took over the other to set up monitoring. Macknight didn’t sleep much. Walking into a prison in enemy territory was not on his bucket list. Thoughts of his imminent arrest caused a nasty headache and all kinds of stomach pains. Arrests often involved not only handcuffs but a dressing down from the welcoming committee. He could already feel the bruises they’d inflict.

  He turned over in his bed and called out to Owen. “There’s something off about this whole setup. Why
place an operative with useful information in prison? Ross could easily die in such a place. They wouldn’t risk losing him and the information he carries to a prison-yard fight.”

  “The million-dollar question.” Owen stretched his arms over his head. “I’ve been thinking about it. Haven’t found an answer yet.”

  “Keep thinking. I don’t want to walk into a trap.” Macknight rolled over and tried to sleep.

  “Agreed.”

  The moment their reddened backs and arms calmed to a believable skin tone and the tattoos didn’t seem newly inked—in about a week according to Ricky—they’d be headed into the prison, one placed in one section, the other somewhere else. With luck, Ross could be taken down and they would be out of there in a few days.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Macknight and Owen’s intake processing involved a few punches to the gut, fingerprinting, and an uncomfortably thorough body search.

  Their inside contact, Ilyas Yudina, the guard from the Black Crow, welcomed them to prison. He separated them into two different sections of the prison. The guard was more than happy to help them visit a friend for a shit ton of money, but they avoided telling him who they were there to contact in order to keep themselves and Ross safer.

  Macknight’s first stop was solitary, a room with a two-inch-wide slit in the door for food and communication. The moldy smell and a layer of dust kept him struggling for fresh air. After what felt like hours, two guards covered his head with a brown canvas sack. The Black Crow was known for keeping their prisoners blind to the adjacent rooms and hallways around them. It didn’t stop Macknight from counting steps and trying to make somewhat accurate ninety degree turns when able.

  They escorted him down a hall echoing with expletives, catcalling, and banging on the bars. They freed him of his hood, pushed him into his new cell, and locked the metal frame door behind him. His new roommate, a large son of a bitch with all the markings of a Bratva murderer, snarled at Macknight’s arrival.

  “These are my beds,” the dickhead told him in Russian. “You can sleep on the floor.”

  “Not possible,” Macknight responded. “Bad back.”

  Part of his roommate’s lip curled up in an ugly smile. He stepped closer. Macknight braced himself for a fight. Someone was going down. It wouldn’t be him. The dickhead punched into his chest. The wind slammed out of him, but he remained standing. Not flinching. Ready for another strike.

  “Tough guy, eh?” Dickhead threw a punch toward Macknight’s face.

  He blocked the punch, moving it wide, and then caught the bastard’s chin with an uppercut from his free hand. Still manipulating Dickhead’s left arm, Macknight punched him in the throat, then flipped him to the ground and nailed the guy’s kidney with his heel.

  Before the dickhead could catch his breath, Macknight pointed to the top bunk. “That’s mine. Don’t screw with me, or I’m taking the other bed, too.”

  He climbed up to his new bed and tried to calm his breathing.

  For the next twelve hours, he remained awake and alert and prayed for Owen’s safety. One of them had to get to Ross so they could leave this hellhole as soon as possible. Whoever located him first and terminated him wouldn’t stand a chance of getting out. Macknight hoped he’d be the sacrifice, not Owen.

  He was led to the exercise yard the next morning. From what a few of the men in the cell next to him had told him, there was a new prisoner, Alexei Popov, who had taken over the yard after only three days in the prison. The possibility that it was Ross was high.

  Someone pointed to the new guy. Sure enough, Ross was holding court in the corner of the cage, a tighter area than a normal prison yard. He had a split lip, but the rest of him looked solid. The last time Macknight had seen him, he was in a tailored Armani suit wearing a TAG Heuer on his wrist.

  If Ross held information the Russians wanted, why wasn’t he locked up in solitary to protect the information he carried? From the look of the old man, he’d been battered but was nowhere near broken.

  Macknight approached carefully. If Ross called him out as a British operative, he’d receive a bullet in his head from a guard.

  “You look like shit,” Macknight said to him in Russian, never breaking his cover.

  “Beaten, never broken.” Ross remained stone-faced. The result of a lifetime spent hiding. Faded black-and-blue markings circled one of his eyes and decorated one of his cheeks. He’d probably had a welcome to his cell similar to the one Macknight had, but he was a lot older and wouldn’t recover as fast. “I’ve been given a few minutes a day to fight for my life in the yard.”

  “How can they keep you safe?”

  “The tall guard over in the corner.” Ross motioned with his head to a middle-ranking guard watching everything about their conversation. “He’s assigned to keep me from dying. They’re weakening my body, but not my resolve.”

  They weren’t waiting to torture him. The torture had already begun. In a few weeks, if they couldn’t bring in Emma to finish the job, he’d be weak enough to break without her. But if they found Emma, his spirit could be broken in one hellish night while his daughter suffered unimaginable injury. The thought fired up Macknight’s protective instincts. Ross had to die so Emma could live.

  The tall guard, observing their conversation with interest, tapped his fingers on the barrel of his rifle. Seeing Ross under these conditions chipped away at Macknight’s theory that he’d been the one to rat out their location in Belarus. If he was working with the Russians, wouldn’t they have put him up in a hotel with four women and a lot of champagne? Unless they had no further use for him. Then they might leave him here to rot. No, that didn’t make sense. Murder was a cheaper and easier way to keep him silenced.

  Macknight needed more of a confirmation. He got into Ross’s face and spoke through clenched teeth, a lifeline within a threat. “We have your girl.”

  A muscle at the back of Ross’s jaw twitched, enough to let Macknight know Emma was his weakness. If anyone harmed her, Ross would rip them apart limb by limb, or hand over the names of dozens of spies to keep her safe.

  Emma wore that same intensity when thrust into ugly situations.

  “Where is she?” Ross asked, his stature weakened for a moment.

  “Safe.”

  He nodded, but his lips remained closed, his face tensed in a manner that many lifers had perfected behind bars.

  “We’re trying to get you out, but it may take a little time.”

  “As long as she’s protected.” Ross’s concern for her was not making Macknight’s next task easier.

  Killing him would solve so many problems. The spies would be safe in Russia and able to send out information to MI6 for years to come. Emma would also be safe. MI6 wouldn’t need to protect her anymore. She could return to her old life.

  The guard stared at them, watching their interaction with more interest than a few minutes ago.

  It had to be now. In a contest between Emma and Ross, Emma won. Macknight pushed Ross in the chest, a warning to up the heat and keep their covers intact.

  Ross stepped nose to nose. “Don’t screw with me.”

  “Bring it.” One twist of his neck and Ross would be history. Macknight slammed him in the face with a fist that sent Ross twisting to the ground. As he fell, his shirt shifted and showed off something that struck Macknight harder than an uppercut. A tattoo of a cat on his front shoulder, faded a bit from time and clearly Russian, the kind a thief would get in a prison like this one. Was Ross Russian, acting British?

  Every rational thought in Macknight’s head scrambled into a million questions.

  Before Macknight could pull him aside for answers, Ross hit him with a solid punch to his jaw. Macknight’s head snapped back, and he almost lost his footing. The sky and the concrete below his feet twisted in his vision and merged as a dark-gray fog. Macknight punched Ross’s plexus, but solid muscle blocked any impact. Before he could swing again, Ross hit his throat. It sent him to the floor, gasping for
breath. He remained on the ground, unable to stand. Cheering erupted around them, and several guards stood close by, watching but not stepping in.

  Macknight leaped to his feet. He could end this now. With a quick feint to the left, he swung his right arm around Ross’s neck before it was blocked.

  Before he could finish the maneuver, Ross twisted out of his grip, slammed his heel onto Macknight’s toes, and punched him in the cheek. Blood spewed from Macknight’s mouth as he fell to the ground.

  Ross stepped back, panting and glaring. “Don’t underestimate me, son. I’d rather take my chances with a life sentence than be the scapegoat for the service.”

  If Ross had been in a Russian prison before, his connections into Russia extended much deeper than they’d thought. And his reason for being in here was more complicated.

  A bell rang. The guards moved in, forcing everyone apart. They had twenty seconds to move into a holding area. Each of the twenty who had been in the exercise pen was assigned a guard to take them back to their cells. The hood was over Macknight’s head again, and Ross disappeared. Son of a bitch.

  He counted steps and turns when moving back to his cell. The next morning he’d try again without hesitation.

  For the entire night, his roommate decided to kick his mattress, constantly. The prick wanted a fight, but Macknight wasn’t in such a generous mood. He ignored Dickhead until morning, pretending he was dealing with a toddler in a temper tantrum. If he hadn’t, he probably would have strangled him and let the rats scampering around the area eat his testicles for breakfast.

  A guard came into his cell in the quietest part of the night and hooded him again.

  Fourteen steps from his prison door and turn right. Twenty-eight steps, less echo, less noise from the prisoners. Turn left. A large door unlocked then locked behind him. Thirty-two steps. Turn left. Ten steps. The concrete floor felt different. Softer, like wood. The more accurate he was, the better he could create a part of the prison layout, with Owen adding some parts, too.

  They loaded him into a van. He couldn’t hear anyone next to him. Was Owen with him? He couldn’t call out to him, so he remained silent. There was no indication there was any other prisoner with him.