The compound that had been semi-affectionately referred to as Burton’s Folly for the last half decade or so spread out below us like a scale model map of a Rhineland Castle. Stone walls averaging about nine feet surrounded the back of the structure, and the only real entry point was the front gate.
Out of the back of the compound rose an antenna of steel and wire, red and green lights blinking on its surface like a perverse Christmas tree. It looked out of place back there, and was clearly the source of the jamming transmission that was shutting down the cellphones, radio, and television broadcasts in the Rock.
“Looks like someplace Cobra Commander would set up shop,” Frank breathed in my ear.
He was right. It was almost classically evil to the point of near ridiculousness.
I pulled out the thermal imaging scope and put it to my eye. Like magic, the world shifted from the blues and grays of the moonlit night to the sterile, flat oranges, yellows, reds, and greens of heat detection. Below, near-shapeless blobs of heat patterns shuffled back and forth across the compound, tracing out the routes Vanessa had described when she took over my arm and began to draw our map. I counted about two dozen combatants on the high end of things.
It was uncanny how accurate she was. Turns out years of practice at breaking into places had made her a special force’s dream come true when it came to intel gathering.
I checked out the top of the tower Vanessa had described, where this Mr. Finney had been keeping her and Jessica caged up like princesses in a bad Grimm faerie tale. I only saw one blob of heat, though, and my gut told me that signature didn’t belong to my mate.
My spirit sinking a little at not immediately spotting her, I dropped the scope from my eye and passed it over to Richard. “What do you think?”
He pressed the scope to his eye and swept it over the compound just like I had. He blended in with the darkness perfectly, his black and green camouflage makeup making him practically disappear against the backdrop of pines and rocks.
“I think that tower’s missing a person.”
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. “That’s what I think, too.”
“Yours or mine up there?”
As soon as he asked the question, I somehow knew the answer. It was Jessica at the top lying on that bed, not my Vanessa. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. And something told me he knew the answer, too.
“Yours,” I said, licking my lips. The taste of oil and pigment filled my mouth as the camouflage covering my own lips came off on my tongue. “Definitely yours.”
“Just gonna take a little longer to find her, then.”
Behind us, the other three guys were crouched down, their rifles propped on a knee as they scanned the compound with naked eyes.
“Alright,” I said, turning back to my men. I huddled low as I looked around the circle at each of them and spoke quietly. “We know the plan. Jones, Wayne, you know the drill on the front. You make some noise, punch through the wall. Light that place up like Chinese New Years and draw them off the back of the house.”
Jake patted the heavy machine gun that was lying across his body. Ammunition draped over his chest like a 1980s action star off to start a small war—which I guess we all were at this point.
“Murdoch, O’Dwyer, you’re with me. We give them ten minutes to get into position. We hop the wall, head inside once they move into action. Once we’re in there, we only have a few minutes to find our targets and get them out. Any more than that, and we leave Wayne and Murdoch open to being overrun.”
Both men nodded in unison. We’d done this kind of mission before. Sure, we hadn’t been going up against people with silver bullets in their guns, but none of them had been milk runs, either.
“Alright,” I said, glancing down at my watch. “Ten minutes. Go.”
Without a word, Wayne and Murdoch disappeared into the underbrush. Even moving on two feet, they were like ghosts as they fluidly sped through the forest surrounding us. After just thirty feet, they disappeared even to my trained eyes, blending with the greens and blacks of the Colorado nighttime. Moments after that, I could hardly hear them.
Minutes passed as we waited, giving them time to get into position and set up their little surprises for the Jaeger-Tech people. Our plan was to move down to the wall two minutes after they left.
We hardly breathed, the tension building in us like steam inside a pressure cooker. Our eyes darted over the landscape.
“T-minus two minutes,” Richard whispered.
I swallowed hard, sweat trickling down my back despite the cool air and slight breeze. My body was already priming itself, my heart racing, my blood pressure rising. This was going to be intense. This was going to be the most important mission I’d ever run, and my subconscious knew it. It was getting me ready for what lay ahead.
“T-minus one minute.”
Right now, they should be nearing the waypoint. Matthew Jones would be unloading his gear and beginning to ready it. Between the two men, he had the most experience with explosives, since he’d had to use them for demolition of downed aircrafts as a Pararescue jumper. If the territory they were in was defacto controlled by enemy forces, there was no way they could just leave crashed vehicles in one piece for break down and study. And nothing says “no peeking” like a block of C4 the size of a brick.
“Thirty seconds.”
There’d be ignition pins in the C4 now, and Jacob Wayne would have his heavy machine gun propped up over a fallen log, or poking out from behind the thick trunk of a tree. A former heavy gunner, he could set up and break down one of those in less than a minute flat, and he was almost surgical with one at the range he’d be shooting from. Any of the Jaeger-Tech men stupid enough to step through the gap Jones was about to put in the wall wasn’t going to last very long.
“Go,” Richard whispered.
We moved with me on point. We kept our bodies low and silhouettes minimized. We threaded our way through the trees in a line, no more than three feet separating each man from the one behind him. Our rifles were lowered, but gripped loosely in such a way that we could instantly bring the stock up against our shoulder.
I held up a tightly closed fist as we neared the tree line, signaling Richard and Frank to halt behind me. This close to the perimeter, we had to maintain strict noise control and light control. No reflections, no broken branches, no whispering.
I dropped to a knee and surveyed the area. Up ahead, through the needles that were so low they brushed the ground, the stonework wall loomed ahead of us. I flipped my wrist and brought up my watch. Six minutes. Six minutes were all we had. Each second that ticked by seemed to last an hour, and the moments in between each of them seemed like an infinite chasm as time stretched and stretched until it was so tight that it might all just snap if you looked at it wrong.
Lowering my rifle, I brought up the thermal imaging scope again and scanned the area. No sense in not checking. We’d come this far, why ruin things by getting sloppy?
At first glance, the patrols seemed normal. The giant was out in the carriage house, where I preferred him to be. Men were moving in their regular rotation, clearly on high alert, but orderly and predictable.
Then I saw it. I swore so quietly to myself I might as well have just been mouthing the words.
An SUV was coming up the drive, its heat signature localized around the front hood and throughout the exhaust system. Inside the cab, though, were five people. Two in front—one driving and one shotgun. Three in the rear. One of them large and bulky, the other two smaller and petite. Years of experience viewing areas with this kind of system had taught me a few things. One of those things was that the two slighter forms in the rear were likely bound with their hands behind their backs.
Captives.
Two more fucking captives.
My heart stopped. Who could they be? Mary? Rebecca? Had they struck at the Elk while we gone? If so, how did we not hear her howls?
The SUV drew up in the courtyard area just inside the gates. The doors opened and I heard a high-pitched cry that struck my heart. I knew exactly who it was.
“You fucking assholes! Wait till I tell my boss about this shit!”
Oh no.
Had they not made it out of town in time before Jaeger-Tech shut off the roads? Or had they been caught some other way?
I returned the scope to my eye and got a bead on them.
“Lacy!” Gen screamed, her orange and red form trying to tackle one of the men who’d grabbed hold of her granddaughter. “You bastard, you hurt her and I’ll have your balls!”
Two other men came up behind the grandmother and grabbed hold of her.
I took the scope from my eye and handed it back over my shoulder to Murdoch. He took it wordlessly, jerking it out of my hand. With just the abruptness of his movement, I knew he, too, had heard them. The soft sound of his breathing intensified as he took in the scene.
There was a soft rustle of fabric as he passed the scope back to Frank.
I heard nothing from him as he lifted it, just a soft grunt of displeasure. The scope went back to Richard and he passed it back into my hand. I put it back to my face.
The huddle of forms, with Gen and Lacy at the center, slowly made their way from the central courtyard to the little freestanding garage off on the side, rather than the main building.
Great. Now we had four hostages, split up, and only three men going inside the walls. What would we do? I couldn’t leave Gen and Lacy behind. No way in hell was that happening. I’d go down in a blaze of glory or offer to exchange myself before that happened.
It was too late to call off the op. If I tried, Matthew and Jake were going to be left with their asses hanging out and were liable to get them shot off.
What to do?
What else could I do?
We were going in. And we were bringing all four of them out.