Cataclysm: V Plague Book 18 Page 9

  “Negative,” she said a minute later. “Street’s narrow and there’re trees. There’s open space in a park, about six blocks away.”

  “Fuck that,” I growled. “Put me on the roof.”

  “This ain’t a little bird, sir.”

  Martinez was referring to a much smaller helicopter used by Special Forces for rapid insertions. It’s light, fast and maneuverable as hell. Operators will ride outside the cabin on benches fastened to the struts and with the right pilot, four men can be dropped on target in only a matter of seconds.

  “Can you do it or not?”

  “Of course I can, but you sure that’s best? They’ll hear us coming well before we’re on target.”

  “Best you can, Captain. Just get me on that goddamn roof!”

  “You’re the boss. Okay, hold on tight.”

  A second later, the helo’s deck dropped away so suddenly I momentarily hung in the air. Then gravity caught up and slammed me down as we dove for the ground. I had a death grip on a safety line and was glad to see Rachel was securely belted in and had wrapped a spare line around Dog’s chest.

  “I’m going,” I shouted to her as I pointed out the door.

  She gave me a look, shaking her head and shouting something back, but I couldn’t understand the words over the roar of the helicopter and the noise cancelling headphones. I held up a hand, telling her to stay put, then turned back to the open door when we leveled out.

  Martinez poured on the speed and we streaked along so close to the roofs of houses and tops of trees that I swear I could hear a constant swoosh from our passing. I caught glimpses of startled faces looking up, then Martinez’s voice came over the intercom.

  “Get ready! Slowing now!”

  She performed the helicopter equivalent of slamming on the brakes in a fast-moving car. I was thrown against the forward bulkhead, pinned there for a moment as the Sea Hawk flared to kill more speed, then the nose came down and we were hovering a foot above a roof.

  “GO, GO, GO!” Martinez was screaming, but I was already out the door and dropping.

  My boots hit the shingled incline and I intentionally fell back onto my ass, going into a slide for the edge. Adrenaline surged as I skidded toward the drop and I felt the rage begin to build, hardening my muscles in anticipation of battle.

  A second later I flew off the roof into open air and dropped like a stone. Torqueing my body so I fell feet first, I came down hard on an overgrown lawn, sticking the landing like an Olympic gymnast. Spinning, I charged around the corner and headed for a sliding glass door that let out onto a postage stamp-sized patio.

  I didn’t slow. The beast inside was roaring, demanding blood, and there was an enemy right on the other side of that glass. I blasted through as if it wasn’t there, ignoring several minor cuts that I knew would heal within a couple of days.

  The blonde girl stood in the middle of the room, eyes wide with surprise, but I think it was my entrance, not my presence. She didn’t appear frightened or make any effort to escape. My rifle was up and I had the sights steady on her face.

  “Mavis!” I shouted. “Mavis!”

  “She’s not here,” the girl said.

  Two long strides carried me across the room and I clamped onto her throat with my left hand, lifting until her feet dangled above the floor. Driving forward, I slammed her against the wall with enough force to crack the drywall. Now there was fear in her eyes, and I shoved my face to within an inch of hers.

  “Where is she?” I growled, squeezing her neck.

  “Kill me and you’ll never find her,” she croaked.

  “You’ll beg for death before I’m done, BITCH! Tell me where she is or die! Decide now!”

  “She’s already gone. They were waiting to take her when I pulled up.”

  “Where’d they take her?” I roared in the girl’s face and punched a hole through the wall immediately next to her head. “Where are they?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the deal. You for the girl.”

  I stared into her eyes for a moment, then released her and stepped back. Her legs buckled when her feet hit the floor and she would have crumpled all the way down if I hadn’t grabbed a fist full of hair and hauled her back to her feet.

  “Where’s the exchange?”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” she said, trying to pry my hand free.

  Tears of pain were in her eyes, but I didn’t slacken my grip on her hair. Instead I slapped her across the face hard enough to cause her eyes to lose focus for a few beats.

  “WHERE GODDAMN IT?”

  She suddenly struck. Slashed at my eyes with her nails and brought up a knee with enough force to make me a eunuch. I turned my head in time to avoid that attack, and almost turned my hip in time to block the knee. My thigh absorbed some of the blow, but she still managed to connect, just not as hard as planned. I was aware of the pain, but it did nothing more than make me grunt.

  I slapped the girl again, harder this time, then dragged her by her hair to a ratty sofa and threw her on it. Stepping back, I let the rifle hang and drew a pistol, aiming at her face.

  “Move and I’ll start blowing off chunks of your body.”

  With my free hand, I brought out my phone and dialed Jessica.

  “You get her, sir?”

  “There was someone here waiting. They took her. Did you see the other car?”

  “What? No, sir. There wasn’t. I would have seen it!”

  “Double check, Chief.”

  “Hold on, sir.”

  I listened to her clicking away on her keyboard, keeping the pistol steady on the girl.

  “Look,” the girl said as she dabbed at a bloody split lip. “I don’t know where she is. I’m supposed to take you to them. Once they have you, they’ll let her go.”

  “Where you supposed to take me?”

  She looked at me a beat before shaking her head. I couldn’t tell if she was a trained agent or just a true believer. She sure as hell wasn’t doing it for the money or she would have cracked already.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m here,” I said into the phone.

  “No other vehicle. But it is possible she could have been taken out the back to a neighboring house. The camera angle doesn’t let me see.”

  “Any cars leave the neighbors at the right time?”

  I saw something flicker in the girl’s eyes when I asked the question. I was on to something.

  “Already looked. Nothing on camera. Guess they knew to stay in the blind spots. I’m pulling sat imagery now, but we don’t focus on our own residential areas. It may not help.”

  “Call me back,” I said, ending the call and putting the phone away.

  There was the sound of a racing engine and tires squealing from the front and I stepped sideways to see through a partially open set of blinds. Rachel and Dog jumped out of a car and ran to the front door. I released the deadbolt and stood back as they came in.

  “Mavis?”

  I shook my head and Rachel turned to look at the blonde on the sofa.

  “Where’d you get the car?”

  “I said please.” Rachel tapped the pistol on her hip without looking away from the girl. “Where is she?”

  “They want to trade. Me for her. Blondie was about to tell me where she’s supposed to take me for the exchange.”

  “Well?” Rachel asked, glaring at the girl.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said, shaking her head. “They’ll kill me.”

  Rachel stared at her a few moments then snatched a large ashtray off the side table and hit her across the face with it. Butts and ashes flew as the glass exploded, opening a long gash on the side of the girl’s face. She gasped in pain, hand flying to the freely bleeding cut.

  “They might kill you, bitch, but I’ll make you wish you’d never been born,” Rachel said, punching the girl in the face so hard I heard her nose break.

  18

  “Sat imager
y is no help. Sorry, sir. I don’t have a clue where to start looking.”

  “It’s the Russians, Chief,” I said into the phone. “Maybe bounty hunters, maybe not. The kidnapper was supposed to get me to turn myself over, then they’d release Mavis.”

  “You believe them?” she asked after a long pause.

  “No. They’ll kill her once they’ve got me. But I know where she was supposed to take me. Going there now. Can you get some eyes on it? Also, get Captain Martinez in the air. Broad orbit around the location. Tell her don’t risk spooking them.”

  “What are you planning, sir?”

  “Going to get my daughter. I’ll call you once we’re on the road.”

  Ending the call, I stepped back in through the shattered patio door. Rachel was at the kitchen sink, washing blood off her hands.

  “Jessica’s going to get eyes on target. Martinez will be in the air.”

  Rachel nodded, turned the water off and dried her hands on a paper towel. Her knuckles were red and swollen but she ignored what had to be a lot of pain from the beating she’d delivered.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  I’m no stranger to violence. Far from it. I’ve had it done to me and I’ve done plenty to others, for a variety of reasons. But until slightly more than a year and a half ago, violence was something Rachel saw on the news or in movies. Especially the up close and personal kind that is sometimes necessary to extract information from a reluctant source. I guess that’s why her actions had so surprised me.

  “I’m okay,” she said, looking into my eyes. “In fact, I’m good. This is all on her. She fucked with the wrong woman’s family today.”

  I’m sure there was something to be said to that, but I didn’t know what it was. I completely agreed with her. Now I just had to get used to the idea that I wasn’t the only one in the family that would stop at nothing if one of us was in danger.

  “Time to send the text?” Rachel asked.

  I picked up the girl’s phone and selected one of two numbers from the directory. Entering a cryptic message, I took a breath and sent it. It was always possible she’d been lying to us and I’d just alerted the Russians that the jig was up. But I didn’t think so. When Rachel had been working her over, all she was thinking about was making it stop.

  “Let’s go,” I said, grabbing up blondie’s keys.

  “What about her?” Rachel asked, tilting her head at the living room. “We don’t need her making any calls once we’re gone. Even if we take her phone, she could make it to a neighbor.”

  I nodded my head in acknowledgement that she was right.

  “Stay here.”

  Moving around the corner, I drew my pistol as I approached the beaten and bloody girl on the sofa. She saw me coming, though how anything was visible through her swollen eyes, I don’t know. She tried to raise a hand in defense but was too weak. I grabbed a throw pillow, pressed it over her face, shoved the weapon’s muzzle against it and pulled the trigger.

  The shot was loud in the house, but I knew it had been muted enough to not be heard outside the walls. Turning, I met Rachel’s eyes. She hadn’t stayed in the kitchen. Without a word, she turned and led the way to the garage.

  We got into the dead girl’s car, putting Dog in the back seat. I was surprised the cops weren’t already on us over the vehicle Rachel had stolen to make it from the park but wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth. And I sure wasn’t going to push our luck by driving it, so we took the one that wasn’t currently being searched for by the police.

  “You know where we’re going?” Rachel asked.

  I shook my head and dialed the phone again. Jessica answered on the first ring.

  “How do I get there, Chief?”

  “Directions coming to your phone now, sir. And imagery just came online. I’ve got security cams and that’s it.”

  “Why? What is it? All we know is to go to the third floor at the address.”

  “You’re not going to like this. It’s the Kahala Mall parking garage. Going to be a lot of people around and all they’ve got is a few shitty cameras. All they cover are the elevators and stairwell entrances.”

  “And Martinez won’t be able to see shit from the air.”

  “Got an idea, sir.” I hadn’t realized that Jessica had joined Martinez via the Sea Hawk’s radio into the call. “They know what you and Rachel look like. They don’t know me. Give me time to land this baby and I’ll go in first. Do a little recon. Plus, you’ll have some backup.”

  “Or we call the police.”

  I looked at Rachel in surprise, unsure if what she’d done to the girl was starting to affect her.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But this is the kind of thing they do, and they’re better equipped to do it.”

  “What exactly will they do? Whoever is there waiting for me isn’t committing a crime that the cops can see. But, suppose they are, and arrests are made. Then what? They sit in an interrogation room and refuse to talk? The people who have Mavis will pretty quickly figure out they’ve been compromised and they’ll cut their losses and try something else.”

  Rachel was nodding agreement before I finished speaking.

  “Captain, let’s go with your idea. How long’s it going to take you?”

  “A mile to the southeast is a pretty wide beach,” Jessica said. “Plenty of room to land, and far enough away they won’t think anything about it even if they do hear it.”

  “Send me coordinates,” Martinez said. “Sir, I’ll call when I’m on site.”

  I broke the connection and spent a moment bringing up the driving directions Jessica had provided.

  “You think she’s still alive?” Rachel asked quietly as I started the dead girl’s car.

  “I can’t think anything else.”

  I backed out of the garage, steered around the stolen car Rachel had arrived in and headed the direction the phone told me to go. My foot was heavy on the gas and after a couple of blocks Rachel placed her hand on my arm.

  “Easy. Speeding will save maybe a minute or two but drawing the police’s attention again will be bad.”

  I hesitated for a second. Every fiber of my being was screaming for speed. To make it to the location and get my hands on someone who could tell me where to find Mavis. But Rachel was right, so I backed off and began meticulously obeying stop signs and the speed limit.

  We drove in silence, working our way out of the neighborhood and toward the H1 Freeway. My mind raced, faster than the car was moving, and it was a struggle to not press my foot to the floor. Battle was imminent and the desire to join with my enemies nearly overwhelmed me.

  “How’d they know?”

  Rachel’s question took a few seconds to register in my adrenaline-soaked brain, then another for me to formulate a response that wasn’t a battle cry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did they know? How did they know where to find Mavis? How did they know the perfect thing to say that would get her to come willingly? For that matter, how did they even know you were back in Hawaii? We arrived in a stealth jet in the middle of the night. No announcement. No news coverage. And how’d they find us at the beach house?”

  I thought about her questions and they were like cold water dousing the burning flame of madness inside me.

  “Someone sold us out,” I finally said. “There’s no other explanation.”

  Rachel and I traded a concerned glance.

  “I thought you and the Admiral got all the traitors.”

  I shrugged.

  “The ones we knew about. There’s obviously another.”

  “But who? You haven’t exactly been a public figure since we got back.”

  “No,” I said with a sigh. “But I’ve been seen in public. The hospital in town where the Admiral was. We went shopping for those contact lenses. Our wedding. Lots of people saw us. All it would take is for someone to casually mention me to the wrong person and word would make it to the Russians.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe.”

  I glanced over but she was staring through the windshield in thought.

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t fit,” she said, shaking her head. “Sure, they could have found out about you being here, but how the hell would they know about Mavis? Know what to say to her and know that you’d do anything to get her back?”

  I thought about that and couldn’t poke any holes in it. All of this only made sense if there was someone close to me that was feeding information to the enemy.

  “You should call the Admiral. Let him know our suspicions.”

  “That’s all they are.”

  “Yes and no. Suspicions, yes, but they’re based on facts that can’t be ignored.”

  I finally nodded and dialed Jessica. She wasn’t able to track the Admiral down but was able to connect me to Captain West. I quickly outlined our theory as I drove in the heavy traffic on the southbound H1.

  “Any thoughts who it might be?” he asked when I was finished speaking.

  “None,” I said.

  He was quiet for a long time and I let him think.

  “I’ll check some things and call you back, Colonel. Good luck at the parking garage.”

  The connection dropped and I sighed in frustration.

  “Okay, I said. This doesn’t change what we have to do.”

  19

  “Almost there,” Martinez said over the phone.

  Rachel and I were still a couple of miles from the exit the phone’s mapping app had told me to take.

  “Don’t engage,” I said. “Just spot the bastards for me. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Copy.”

  “They’re expecting the girl. A blonde,” Rachel suddenly said.

  “Then they’re going to be surprised.”

  “Not what I’m talking about. If they don’t see her, bringing you to them, they’re going to know something’s off. Why don’t we give them what they’re expecting to see?”

  I looked at her, frowning in confusion.