I bristle.
“Is that what you said when Pearce took me? Is that how you justified leaving me to rot in a cage?”
“You made your choice,” he says, completely unrattled by my fury. “And against my advice, no less. Did you really expect me to sacrifice people from this base to extradite you from a mess of your own making?”
“Extradite? No. I’d have settled for a bullet through the head, most nights. Believe me, it would have been a mercy.”
“And yet, here you stand.”
“And yet, here I stand,” I agree, making my voice even. “And if you want me to keep standing here – between you and Pearce – then I would be grateful if you would tell me what you’re doing to find my friend.”
“I really don’t have time for this,” he says, casting a glance at his watch like he has some place better to be. “Why don’t you speak to Alistair?”
I’m clearly not going to get the answers I want, so I take his advice and head off in search of his right-hand man. I eventually run him to ground in his office, pouring over some blueprints and looking like he’d rather be anyplace else. That’s Alistair, alright. I raise a hand and tap lightly on his open door, hovering on the threshold. I’m not sure how welcome I am here, anymore. A lot has happened since I last saw him; most of it bad. He looks up from his work, and as soon as he sees me, his face breaks into a wide smile, banishing my concerns.
“Anna!” He rises from his desk and comes round to greet me. “I heard you were back. It’s damned good to see you.”
He looks me up and down, and some of the smile slips from his face.
“It was bad, huh?”
“Worse.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m back now.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I couldn’t persuade Ephraim to let us get involved.”
“It’s not your fault. Besides, all’s well that ends well, right?” I force a smile, and quickly change the subject. “I need your help.”
“Anything I can do, you know that.”
“I need to know about Iain.”
Alistair sits heavily on the edge of his desk and exhales loudly.
“Ephraim told you about that, huh?”
“More or less.” With less being the more accurate of the two. “What’s going on, Alistair?”
“I wish I knew. He missed his last check-in. At first, we assumed he was just unable to make contact, but after a few days we started to wonder if he’d defected.” He must spot the incredulous look I’m sure is on my face, because he quickly adds, “His loyalty was always to you, Anna, not Ephraim.”
I nod, because that much I can believe. When I first met him – properly, not the time he tried to arrest me for shoplifting, or when he was running a one-man stakeout on me – we thought the Ishmaelians might have played some part in Scott’s abduction. In my mind they still aren’t fully absolved – complacent is almost as bad as complicit.
“Okay, so you figured he’d walked. What then?”
“We headed round to his flat. Not like that,” he adds quickly, either in response to the look on my face or my reputation – deserved – as a master of jumping to conclusions. I bite my tongue and wait for him to continue.
“Anyone ever tell you that you have a suspicious mind?”
“Sure. Right before Pearce tried to lock me up. The first time.”
“We wanted to find out what was going on. If he wanted to leave, we wanted to know why, and yes, we needed to know that he wasn’t going to compromise the location of this base.”
“Which he clearly hasn’t.”
“Which he clearly hasn’t,” Alistair agrees. “But he wasn’t there. The place was pretty empty, but none of us had been there before, so that might have been normal. With all the moving around in the last year, most of us have learned to travel light.”
I duck my head, because most of the moves were my fault – though if we hadn’t found them first, Pearce would have captured them by now, so there’s that.
“His wardrobe though – it was practically empty. Looked to me like he’d left in a hurry, like he didn’t want to stick around and answer our questions about leaving.”
“So that’s it? Seriously, after everything he’s done?”
“Anna, I love you like a sister, but would you please shut the hell up and let me finish?”
“Sorry.”
“So, we wanted to know who he was running from. We know AbGen tried to silence him when he saw your first shift, and we figured maybe he just didn’t trust us. Maybe he thought we’d do the same. We wouldn’t,” he says, making eye contact for added emphasis and I hide a smile, nodding for him to continue.
“We didn’t want to cause a panic, so we kept it quiet. Some of us thought he went looking for you.”
“Please tell me he didn’t.” Because that would put him right in Pearce’s crosshairs.
“Unlikely – Scott and the others left a few days before – and don’t think Ephraim isn’t still pissed off about that, by the way – and odds are they’d have crossed paths.”
That makes sense. If he’d had a solid enough lead to take off looking for me, it would have led him right to Scott.
“It’s more likely he wanted out and went to ground. We’ve got contacts out looking for him to let him know he doesn’t need to hide, but so far they’ve turned up nothing. He hasn’t been back to any of his former haunts, and he was on indefinite leave from the force.”
“Service,” I correct absentmindedly. Iain was a cop by day; working for the police service as he’d endlessly corrected me. Alistair nods.
“He doesn’t want to be found. And honestly, we’ve had bigger concerns than letting him know that the Ishmaeliam retirement package isn’t a bullet.”
“He loved that job. It doesn’t make sense.”
“You’d be surprised what people will do when they’re afraid.”
“And he loved being a part of this, too.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. We’ll keep looking, of course we will, but we have limited resources and no specialists in tracking people down. And, apparently, we’re going to war.”
I nod. I might not want to admit it, but he’s right. His hands are tied. Mine, on the other hand, are not. It’s just a shame I don’t have the slightest clue where to begin.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You’re dead, you’re dead, and you’re dead.”
I stare at the woman and two men, with the red paint slashed across their legs and torsos, courtesy of the tripwire Nathan planted this morning. I look round at the rest of the group, nine ragged rebels with dirt on their hands and faces, and rips in their clothing. The ‘survivors’ from my group of twenty who started this training exercise.
“And that explosion just tipped the enemy off to your location. You’ve got less than two minutes before they’re swarming the area.”
The nine of them glance quickly amongst themselves and scurry through the woods, leaving their ‘dead’ comrades behind.
“You’re enjoying this just a little too much,” Scott observes, as we watch them go.
“Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in months.”
“You know Nate was bragging that he’d take out your entire troop before the end of the exercise, right?”
“I did not.” I chew my lip. “That changes things. Let’s go save our troops.”
I glance at the three paint-covered Ishmaelians as an afterthought.
“Head back to the base, we’ll debrief after the exercise.”
I glance at the trip wire and smirk as an idea hits me.
“I know we’re supposed to be purely defensive, but what say you we slow him down a little?”
“I love it when you play dirty, Ms Mason.” He draws a paint canister from his pocket.
“You sly old dog.”
I pluck it from his hand and quickly rig it to the wire, then purse my lips, squinting critically at my work.
“He’s not g
oing to fall for it.”
One of the recruits looks between us.
“Maybe I’m not quite dead yet,” he suggests, gesturing his only mildly paint-saturated clothing. “Maybe I’m just fatally wounded.”
“Dead man’s switch,” Scott says with approval. “I like it.”
I conceal the canister in the foliage, pass the end of the thin wire to the rebel and shoot him a wink.
“Make us proud, soldier.”
Me and Scott cut through the trees and catch up to our renaming troops in no time, largely thanks to Scott’s tracker talent, but in no small part due to the trampled foliage they’d left in their wake. I suppress a groan.
“Might as well have left Nathan a map.”
One of the guys at the back of the group finally glances back over his shoulder, presumably having heard my voice.
“Where’s your rear guard?” I ask the group. “If I’d been one of Nathan’s men, half of you would have been dead by now.”
A couple of them hang their heads, the rest look dejected. This isn’t going to cut it. I run my eyes over them. Their ages range from barely eighteen to mid-thirties, some extremely fit, others carrying a couple of extra pounds. They’re all muddy, most of them have rips in their clothing, a few of them have cuts and bruises from fighting their way through the foliage. They look about ready to let Nathan take them out, if it means heading back to the base for an early shower and some food.
“Alright, gather round.”
They cluster in around us, and I drop into a crouch in the hopes of making ourselves a little less visible to any of Nathan’s passing soldiers. The group follow suit half-heartedly.
“You’re tired, and you’re hurting. I get it. But they’ve got another two hours to hunt us down and defend the base. They can afford to pick us off one by one. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you don’t think you can last two hours. Nathan doesn’t think you can.”
I glance at the faces watching me, and see indignation register on some of them.
“He chose his team, and he didn’t choose you, because he thought you were weak. Was he right?”
A couple of heads shake.
“Damned straight he wasn’t. They might have superior numbers, but they’re underestimating us. They think we’re going to keep blundering around these woods while they pick us off. We could do that – maybe some of you will even survive. We’re not going to do that.”
They share some looks of confusion, but at least they’re all paying attention now.
“There’s no prize for coming second. We’re getting into that base.”
One of the women, a blonde with dirt smeared across her face, raises a hand.
“But won’t it be guarded?”
I nod.
“It will. But these woods surround the base on three sides, he can’t guard all of it at once, and he won’t be expecting us to try an assault. Most of his team will be out here looking for us. And we’re going to make sure of it.”
I hold my hand out.
“Give me your map.”
She pulls the crumpled sheet from her pack and passes it to me. I pluck a pen from my pocket as I smooth it out, pulling the lid off with my teeth. I quickly draw three circles on the map – one a few hundred metres from our location, a second a kilometre from that, and a third near the base. I mark the second one as a rendezvous site, then chuck the pen back into my pack. The others crane their necks to get a look.
“Isn’t it risky to have our destination written down?” one of them ventures. “You know, in case the enemy find it?”
I shoot him a smile. I like that he’s thinking along those lines: it means Scott’s combat protocol lessons haven’t gone completely to waste.
“Normally, yes. But in this case, we want them to find it.”
“A decoy. Nice,” Scott says with an appreciative smile. My heart stutters for a moment, then I get myself back on track.
“When we head off, we’ll leave this behind for them to find.”
“Do you think they’ll fall for it?” The Ishmaelian looks doubtful: he definitely has an aptitude for tactics. I file that away for later.
“It doesn’t matter. Even if they think it’s planted, they can’t risk it being a double bluff. He’ll have to send people to each marker to check it out. He won’t send anyone alone, so we can expect at least six of his people to be out of our way. Double that, if we’re lucky. Right, time to get going. Try to move the way Scott does. Let’s not make it too easy for them.”
Scott takes point, placing each foot with exaggerated care as he creeps through the woods, making it easy for our inexperienced troop to mimic him. I take up rear guard behind, because I’m not going to be happy if Nathan’s team sneak up on us before we have chance to put my plan into action. Take out my entire troop, indeed. We’ll see about that.
We double back on ourselves, steering well clear of the area we left our tripwire for Nathan. Hopefully he’s one or two men down by now and following us with a little more caution. There’s nothing like a casualty or two to slow someone down.
The team are starting to tire by the time we make it within half a mile of the base. No surprise: it’s not easy moving stealthily, and none of the Ishmaelians are as fit as they could be. But they’re rebels, and they’re nothing if not determined. They’re used to being the underdogs. Grit and tenacity count for a lot.
Scott holds up a clenched fist and we all come to a halt. The pair of us drop into a crouch, and our troops belatedly follow suit. I stealth walk up to the front so I can see what Scott sees, scan the trees in front of us, and pick out a lone figure in the distance. I raise my index figure to Scott and offer him a questioning look. Seems weird that there’d only be one of them out here. Scott shakes his head, then nods to one of the trees. That’s when I see the figure camped out in the branches. Smart.
We pull back.
“Can’t take them both out,” Scott says under his breath. “Not without one of them sending a warning.”
I agree. We need to move round them. I pull out my map, and carefully mark their position on it. We start to move away. And that’s when one of our team catches his foot in a root and hits the deck. Hard. It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. So much for not being seen. There’s no way the guards didn’t hear that.
I tap four of our team on the shoulder, and gesture off to our left. I tap another four, and gesture to the right.
“Find cover, keep your heads down. If we get captured, camp out in the woods until the route’s clear, then infiltrate that damned base.”
The last guy, the one who’s currently hauling his butt out of the dirt, gives me a sheepish look as the others melt away.
“You get the short straw.” I point back the way we came. “Run that way. Loudly.”
The trooper takes off like someone lit a fire under him, pounding through the dense foliage and leaving a trail that would have made an elephant proud. I duck behind a tree and wait. I mean, technically we’re only supposed to be observing, but we’re in a tight spot. What’s a girl to do?
Nathan’s two guards come out a few moments later.
“You’re sure you heard something? I don’t see anything.”
The second one elbows him and nods at the trail our runner left.
“Looks like there’s just one of them. Come on.”
They break into a jog, paying attention to nothing but the trail. See, there they go, underestimating us again. I wait until they draw level with my position, then jump out and tackle one of the men to the floor. From the other side of the track I hear another thud as Scott takes down the other one. They’re armed with paintball guns and I drop an elbow into my guy’s back to discourage him from going for it. I clamp a hand over his mouth to muffle his gasp, and wrap my other around his neck, squeezing just hard enough that he knows he’s finished.
“Yield!” he says behind my hand. I release my grip and snatch up his gun.
“On your stomach, hands behind your head.�
�
He complies, interlocking his fingers. I plant a foot on his back to keep him there, then spin round ready to help Scott, only to see him watching me with a smile, a paint-splattered man at his feet.
“Are you checking out my ass?”
“Always,” he said with a grin.
“Perv.”
He chuckles, and bends over to frisk his guy. I enjoy the view for a moment before deciding that’s probably a good idea. My guy has an earpiece which I relieve him of, and slip into my own ear. This ought to make steering clear of patrols a little easier. I toe him in the ribs.
“How many other guards are round here?” I ask. He doesn’t answer so I prod him more firmly. “Come on, now, don’t make me tell everyone how easy it was for a girl to get the drop on you.”
“Nearest outpost is half a mile north,” he grunts into the dirt. “Are you going to let me up now?”
“Sorry,” I say, and fire two quick shots between his shoulder blades. “No prisoners.”
We leave the pair of paint-splattered Ishmaelians to make their own way back to the base, and fall back to gather the rest of our troops. We find eight of them. I gather the them round. We don’t have long – Nathan will realise his guys are missing soon, and then he’s going to pull every guard back onto a close perimeter around the base. If he does that, we’ll never make it through.
“Where’s Blackwell?” I ask the group and get a handful of blank stares for my trouble. The runner must still be… well, running. “Anyone?”
“Here,” a voice wheezes, pushing through some foliage, and looking like he’s run a half marathon. I nod a greeting, but we don’t have time to wait around for him to get his breath back.
“We’ve got you this close,” I tell the group. “You’re on your own now. Go back or push ahead – it’s your choice.”
No point in totally ruining the exercise; besides, I can always step in again if they get themselves into hot water. They look vaguely terrified and glance around like they’re waiting for someone to come and tell them what to do.
“I’d suggest choosing a leader,” I tell them. “And I’d suggest doing it quickly, because if you’re not off this spot in ninety seconds, I’m going to shoot one of you.”
Unleashed (TalentBorn Book 4) Page 17
