He had to fight for her life and for his.
He stood there, head down like a bull, ignoring the pain in his jaw. The cooling sweat on his body chilled him, but he’d stopped pumping out sweat like an animal. He looked at his hands. They were steady, as they’d always been.
His head was clear.
Chloe was not going to die. Not while he had a breath in his body.
“Where are the coordinates?” he asked sharply.
Harry slumped in relief. “Thank God you’re back. I need you, Mike. I can’t do this alone.”
Their eyes met. “Nothing’s going to happen to Chloe,” Mike said, his voice steady. “We’re bringing her home. If we can nail the scumbag, then that’s icing on the cake, but bottom line? Chloe’s coming home.”
Harry was punching the keyboard. “The GPS coordinates are here.” His finger rested on a map. “Here, near the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation.”
Perfect. Near Warner Springs, where he’d undergone SERE training. Mike knew that area intimately. He’d been on the run from Marine “enemies” for two weeks. He’d sweated and bled and nearly died there.
“He chose it because there are flat stretches. He’s planning a showdown, an exchange. He chose it from a map, or someone found it for him. Because that’s a Navy special-ops training site, and he won’t be familiar with it. I am, Harry. We’re going to win this.” Mike zoomed the map out and followed the route with his finger. “It’s mostly freeway almost all the way there. The 163 to the 15 to the 78. Then we get into the hills over to where he wants us.”
“He doesn’t know I have you.” Harry’s heavy hand landed on Mike’s shoulder and he stared into Mike’s eyes. He’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes. “We’re going to get my sister back.”
Mike briefly squeezed Harry’s hand, then went to the gun locker.
“Fucking A, we are.”
Chapter 20
“Coming up,” Harry said quietly. He was driving the company’s Transit van, which looked ordinary, even shabby, from the outside, the paint a little rusted in spots, dirty and caked with mud. It was equipped with enough horsepower to get them to the moon, had enough armor to stop anything but an RPG, and had as much communications gear as any combat platoon.
Mike moved around in the back of the van, steady and sure. The panic of earlier was gone, replaced by a deep calm.
A unarmed Predator B was circling overhead at 20,000 feet, completely invisible. Mike had no idea how many Pentagon arms Aaron had to twist to get it up there, and he didn’t give a shit. All he cared about was that he was watching the combat area on his monitor and was able to zoom in and out.
Fact: two men were waiting in a Ford Taurus at a point almost two clicks from the texted GPS coordinates. Fact: Chloe was nowhere to be seen.
The terrain was easy to read for a sniper. Flat and featureless. They’d chosen it so they could be certain there would be no ambushes, but they couldn’t know that Aaron and the SD SWAT team were deployed ten clicks away. Not near enough to save Chloe, but near enough to ensure that no matter what, the Russians weren’t getting away.
Saving Chloe was Mike’s job. And he had the right tool for it. On instinct, he’d chosen a Barrett MRAD with .338 Lapua rounds. It could shoot the balls off a fly and keep it alive, singing soprano.
It was a SEAL weapon of choice. Though SEALs weren’t anywhere near as good as Force Recon Marines, as he often reminded Sam, they had damned good armorers. If the Barrett was good enough for the SEALs, it was good enough for Mike.
He’d spent the past hour going over possible scenarios in his head. He was ready.
“Braking,” Harry said, and brought the van to a slewing halt. Right on the coordinates, Mike saw on the monitor.
His cell phone buzzed. A text, from Aaron.
Remember no kill shots.
The dust had barely settled around the Transit when Chloe’s cell phone rang on the front seat. The Russian had called twice along the way to make sure they were coming.
The driver got out, holding a pair of binoculars in one hand, a cell phone with the other, a rifle slung across his back. He brought the cell phone to his ear.
Harry put the call on speakerphone.
“So. You are alone, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Turn the vehicle around so the back is toward me, and open the doors.”
Mike scrambled. The van had a fake panel behind the driver and passenger seats. His shoulders were too broad for a comfortable fit, but he managed it. They had powerful Sunagor binocs in the van. The lenses had a special nonreflective coating. A narrow opening showed him the scene two thousand yards away. The tan car, the blond man holding binoculars, rifle slung against his back. A man in the passenger seat. No sign of Chloe.
“Show me my sister first,” Harry said.
The Russian, Nikitin, jerked his head. The man in the passenger seat got out and opened the back door of the car and started tugging.
Mike kept his breathing even, his mind calm. But somewhere deep inside him, hatred burned.
The second Russian pulled Chloe out so hard she fell headfirst into the dust. Mike watched as the Russian yanked her up with a powerful jerk. Chloe’s mouth opened in a cry of pain he couldn’t hear but he could see.
Mike moved the binoculars a fraction and took a good, long look at the man’s face. It was seared into his mind.
“Mike?” Harry said quietly, barely moving his lips. He held his hand over the microphone. “Sitrep.”
They both had a comms unit, almost undetectable.
Mike spoke into the mike. “Chloe looks basically unharmed. A little slow, maybe. I think they drugged her.”
“Satisfied?” The Russian’s voice came over the speakerphone. “Get that vehicle moving.”
Without a word, Harry put the Transit in gear, turned it around so the back faced the Russians. He got out and opened the doors. Mike knew the Russian was seeing an essentially empty van through his binoculars. All their gear was stowed along the walls. The floor was bare.
They were in a shitload of trouble if the Russian insisted on leaving the Transit like this. Mike needed room to set up.
Harry closed the back doors and hurried back to the driver’s seat. He positioned the van so that the long side was facing the Russians.
“What are you doing?” Nikitin roared.
“Oh. Just putting the van back in place.” Harry stepped outside and walked forward, forestalling any objections. Mike couldn’t hear the Russian any longer, just Harry.
“What do I do now?” Harry asked. He listened, placed the cell phone in its holster on his belt and started unbuttoning his shirt.
The Russian had asked to show he was unarmed. Harry took his shirt off, held his hands up and turned around. When he’d made a complete circle, he pulled up his pants legs, one at a time, to show he didn’t have a backup weapon in an ankle holster.
He did, however, have a Glock 17 in a holster inside his waistband in the small of his back. They’d chosen the weapon together. Any long-range shooting would have to be Mike’s lookout. Harry couldn’t hide a rifle. Harry put his shirt back on, but left it unbuttoned.
“Okay,” Harry said into the cell, and started walking forward slowly. The second Russian put a gun to Chloe’s head and started walking forward, too.
Nikitin pulled his rifle with a couple of feet of scope to his shoulder. It was an SVD, the Dragunov. It was a good rifle. But Mike’s was better. And however good a shot that fuckhead was, Mike was a better one. The Russian could be the best fucking shot in the world and Mike would still be better.
He could feel the cool deadly calm of the sniper coming over him. His heartbeat slowed down, his breathing, too, both becoming so regular they could be used as metronomes. He was cool, in control. Nothing could bother him. He had no thoughts, only the mission.
A tiny, tiny beat pulsed when he saw through the binoculars Chloe stumbling along, trails of dust following her feet, a gun at her head. A s
purt of heat pulsed through his system until he reined it in.
Cool. Calm.
They’d strategized a number of scenarios and this was one. Nikitin was counting on his rifle trained on Chloe to keep Harry in line. Even if Harry managed to attack the Russian holding a gun to Chloe’s head, Nikitin could shoot Chloe.
They would have a tiny window of opportunity and Mike started getting ready for it.
He pulled back the sunroof slowly. It was a special sunroof that allowed for operations out of the top of the vehicle. The Russian wouldn’t be able to see that the entire top was now free and open to the sky.
The calculations began, complex and intricate and so familiar he fell into the numbers because the numbers would save him. Because being fast wasn’t going to be enough.
The numbers were running in his head. Wind—none. Heat—87 degrees. Humidity—low. Distance 1,782 meters. He calculated for bullet drop.
Harry was now fifty meters from the gunman and Chloe. Mike could see her face better now. She was terrified but seemed more aware, her head was up, she was focused on Harry.
Forty meters.
The Russian looked behind him and moved Chloe slightly to the left so that she was exactly in the line of sight for Harry. Mike couldn’t get a shot at Nikitin without shooting Chloe. Harry used to have a hand signal for Chloe when she was little. A special signal that meant—Get out of Rod’s way. He’d reminded her of it just a few evenings ago. She’d completely forgotten.
Harry was going to use that signal and Chloe was going to have to understand it, even through a drug haze.
Fuck.
Thirty meters.
Mike was watching through his scope now, a Schmidt & Bender 5-25x56 PMII with P4F Reticle, rated to 2,000 meters.
The Russian was saying something to Harry, who pulled the thumb drive out of his pocket and held it up.
Twenty meters.
Harry casually let his hand drop to his side.
Mike put a crate under the sunroof and stood on it, keeping his head below the roofline. He would have only fractions of a second to pop up.
The Boyd Loop. Observe. Orient. Decide.
Fifteen meters.
Harry’s hand curled to one side and back as if scooping sand at the beach.
Chloe dropped like a stone.
The Russian had been holding on to her and was pulled out of alignment by Chloe’s fall.
It was all Harry needed. His hand continued its movement and he pulled his Glock out and shot the Russian in the head, a neat round hole that turned into a pink mist haloing his head from the back.
Chloe was down. Mike had the shot.
Act.
In one smooth move, as if he’d rehearsed it a thousand times, Mike popped up, shouldered his rifle, sighted and squeezed the trigger, putting five thousand pounds of kinetic energy into Nikitin’s head.
It exploded.
Mike remembered Aaron’s injunction. No kill shots.
“Oops,” he said, and threw the rifle down.
In a second he was running full tilt on the hard-packed sand, running as fast as he’d ever run in his life, running for his life, because there she was, picking herself up off the sand.
His life.
All that cool, calm control was gone, vanished. Poof! He was sweating and shaking, unable to take a deep breath from the tight bands that bound his chest.
He ran straight to Chloe and managed to skid to a stop before crashing into her, the sand kicking up in front of his boots.
“Chloe!” He managed to get the word out before his throat locked down.
Harry was looking down at the dead Russian at his feet. He hauled off and kicked him, a vicious slam of his boot that would have done real damage if the fucker hadn’t already been dead.
“Chloe?” Mike tried again, his voice scratchy and raw, as if someone had rubbed it with sand.
She stood, slowly, smiled at him and held out her arms.
He snatched her up, trying not to crush her against him, trying not to pull her right into him, past his skin, straight to his heart, where she belonged.
His own heart was jackhammering, the sound so loud he couldn’t even hear what she was saying, his whole body pulsing with the beat of his heart.
“Eh?”
Chloe laughed and pointed up at the helicopter flaring above them, FBI stenciled in white on the side.
Sand blew around them in hot, choking swirls.
“Cavalry arrived,” Harry shouted, thumb angled up. “We’ll spend hours at the station house.”
“No,” Mike shouted back. “Chloe and I are going to get married first. Right away.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Don’t you think you should ask her first, smart-ass?” he shouted.
Mike turned to Chloe.
It would have been nice to lift her hair with his hand and whisper a gentle marriage proposal in her pretty ear, but her hair was being whipped into a froth by the rotors and she wouldn’t hear a whisper.
“Chloe Mason,” he screamed, “will you marry me?” Nail it down, he thought. “Right now?”
She laughed and kissed him. “Yes!” she screamed back.
Epilogue
Three years later
Sam Reston’s apartment
They weren’t expected. Mike and Chloe arrived around lunchtime two days early.
They both felt they had to rush back home with the news.
The two families were having lunch together, as they often did on Saturday. Merry, sharp as usual, was the first to see them. Or rather Chloe. When Chloe was around, Mike barely existed.
With a squeal, Merry ran into Chloe’s arms, followed by Gracie, her sister Emma, and Laura, born the day Chloe almost died.
The four girls jumped around Chloe in a jumble of words and excitement, jostling for attention. Mike stepped sharply to one side, getting out of the way.
Nicole and Ellen were great. Sam and Harry were really lucky guys.
But Chloe was the catch and Mike had caught her. She couldn’t cook and she wasn’t any great whiz with money, but the kids loved her and that was more important than anything. Aunt Chloe was central to their lives. She was always there for them, and Nicole and Ellen knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if they had to work and there was a sick girl, Chloe would be there and would love them and care for them like a mother.
It was the best gift of all.
Merry was jumping up and down, trying to see behind Chloe’s back. “Aunt Chloe, Aunt Chloe, did you bring us presents?”
“Pwesents!” Laura echoed, clapping her hands. It was a ridiculous question, of course. Chloe was absolutely incapable of going somewhere without buying presents for the girls. Let alone go to London, which they’d been doing on a regular basis for the past two years. She could just as easily have sprouted wings and flown as come back empty-handed.
Every time Chloe hoped she could hand out the presents in an orderly fashion and every time fate laughed cruelly. The sounds of ripping paper and cries of joy started up behind them. Merry, Laura, Gracie and Emma were hopping up and down, in girl heaven.
Nicole got up from the table, smiling, followed by Ellen. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. We were going to organize a little welcome home party for you, but you’re early! So come on in, we were just about ready to sit down to lunch. Manuela made us a fabulous pot roast.”
Ellen touched Chloe’s hand. “How is Sister Mary Michael? And the girls?”
Mike helped Chloe take off her jacket, wondering how they could miss it. And yet there they were, Nicole and Ellen, two piranhas when it came to sniffing out news, totally clueless.
“Sister Mary Michael is fine. She sends her love. Ludmilla won first prize in an international piano competition. Everyone’s really excited about that. And the girls were all really happy with their presents. I’ve got thank-you notes in my bag.”
Nicole and Ellen beamed. Putting together packages for the girls in London for Mike and Chloe to take over had becom
e a big deal. A big, happy deal. They’d spent days trolling the shops for just the right things, and judging from the excited, happy faces, they got it right.
The ship had been stopped and boarded as soon as it crossed over into American waters. The huge scandal over the pedophile ring that was smashed made headlines for six months and the ripple effects were still felt.
Mike, Sam and Harry had followed each case with grim focus, rejoicing in each prison sentence.
In the meantime, no one knew what to do with the girls. The records of their existence had been destroyed. Some of the girls couldn’t even name the town where they lived. All they knew was the orphanage, and they had been expunged from the records.
So Chloe called in Wonder Woman. Or at least that’s how it felt at the time. Sister Mary Michael of Chloe’s boarding school. A tiny woman, 100 pounds dripping wet, in a nun’s habit, and she carried the authority of a general. Through negotiations that wouldn’t have been out of place in a merger between Microsoft and General Motors, she managed to acquire custodianship over the young girls and ferry them back to London, where they were all growing into young, beautiful and happy young women.
Chloe always said she’d inherited way too much money, so she set up a $20 million trust fund for the girls, to help with the expenses at the Sacred Heart and for their university education.
Chloe and Mike visited often, and lately their trips to London had increased, but it wasn’t just to see the girls.
There was a new, very efficient fertility clinic in Knightsbridge and they’d hit the jackpot.
“I have some news,” Chloe said softly, and everyone stopped and looked at her. She was glowing, her eyes that golden color that still drove him crazy with desire. She reached out for his hand. “Mike and I have something to say. We, ah, we’ve been going to London a lot these past six months, and I know you’ve been wondering why. We’ve been going to a center that specializes in a new IVF technique.”
Sam and Harry looked blank. Nicole and Ellen drew in a sharp breath.