by Elle Kennedy
Kirill approached the chair in a slow gait. “I must say, I’m rather impressed with your resistance. It shows a real strength of character.”
The man held up a black cloth.
“I assume you know what this is for.”
Ethan didn’t answer.
Kirill glanced at the guard. “Cut him loose.”
The second man, a short, muscular blond, set down the bucket on the stone floor. Then he extracted a pair of wire cutters from his pocket and walked forward.
Ethan released a hoarse grunt when the man twisted his bleeding wrists in order to cut the barbed wire. It was one of the rare noises he’d made during this ordeal, and it brought a smile to Kirill’s lips.
“Get him on the ground.”
The guard tackled the wire binding his ankles and hefted him out of the chair. Ethan didn’t struggle. Had no energy for it. Shit, he was in worse shape than he’d thought.
Being vertical for one brief second made his head spin, and then suddenly he was horizontal. His back on the cold floor, with Kirill’s hulking frame looming over him.
“Who are you?” he asked in a bored tone.
Silence.
“Who are you working for?”
Silence.
“Why did you kill Victor Grechko?”
Silence.
Kirill shrugged. “Cover his face.”
The guard knelt down and lowered the coarse material to Ethan’s face. Instantly, his vision was nothing but a sea of black.
He drew in a deep breath, knowing exactly what was coming. He hadn’t experienced waterboarding firsthand, but he knew men who had, and their advice had always been “Don’t panic.” They’d told him that the sensation of drowning and the lack of air would not lead to death, so there was no reason to fight it. The purpose of water boarding wasn’t to kill you, but to make you think you were on the brink of death.
As he lay there in the dark, moisture began hitting the cloth in a steady stream, soaking the material, until the feeling of complete suffocation was achieved. Unable to breathe through his mouth or nose, Ethan forced himself to clear his mind, to stay calm. He could typically hold his breath for a few minutes, but thanks to the cloth shielding his face, he hadn’t been able to draw enough air into his lungs. Within thirty seconds, his lungs started to burn, his body quivering from the lack of oxygen.
And then suddenly, mercifully, the cloth was gone and he could breathe again. He sucked in a gulp of air, a second one, a third one.
“Who are you working for? Why did you go after Grechko’s targets?”
He was just taking his fourth breath when the cloth was lowered again. The gush of water returned, his air flow yet again stolen from him.
On and on it went. For minutes. Hours. Days.
Don’t panic was becoming difficult advice to follow. He couldn’t breathe. He was being suffocated. He was fucking dying.
Each time the panic arose, he summoned the image of Juliet’s face. Her smile. Her eyes. Her mouth.
Each time he was allowed to breathe, he thought of Juliet’s strength. Her bravery. Her laughter.
By the time Kirill announced in an irritated voice that it was time for a break, Ethan had come to a conclusion. A very strange conclusion to reach when you were being waterboarded.
He loved Juliet Mason.
He fucking loved her.
Kirill and the guard stalked out of the room. They left Ethan on the floor, obviously confident that he was in no condition to move.
Which he wasn’t. All he could do was lie there and stare up at the ugly gray ceiling. Black dots marred his vision, making it hard to picture Juliet’s face.
She would come for him.
Christ, he knew she would come for him, and he desperately wished he could tell her to stay away. Because everything being done to him at the moment? He couldn’t imagine Juliet ever being able to endure it.
No, that wasn’t true. She could endure it. She was strong enough to handle anything Orlov threw at her.
But Ethan refused to let that happen. He would die before letting anyone hurt and torture the woman he loved.
Stay away, Jules.
He wondered if telepathy was actually possible.
He wondered if he’d ever find a way out of this god-awful hellhole.
He must have passed out, because the next thing he knew, that rank liquid—what the fuck was that?—splashed his face, filled his nostrils, and caused his eyelids to fly open. He blinked, disoriented, and then his spirits plummeted as Kirill’s smirking face came into focus.
“Me again,” the man said softly. He held up the cloth and wagged it over Ethan’s face. “Ready for round two?”
Chapter 22
It was another unbearably cold night. Snow fell from the ink black sky in thick flakes, stopping only to allow the clouds to release ice-cold raindrops before resuming to turn the earth white once more. Juliet couldn’t wait to get off this damn continent. She was tired of the chill in the air, tired of the snow, tired of the bleak landscape. But she barely noticed the cold tonight. No, because it was assuredly nothing compared to what Ethan was going through.
She forced herself not to imagine all the horrible scenarios as she straddled her second tree branch in two days. The rest of the team was already in position, posted in various areas on the perimeter of the enormous barn in the center of the snowy field. If it were up to her, they’d be storming the goddamn place. Scratch that—they would have stormed it hours ago.
But neither Morgan nor Noelle, who’d flown in earlier with D, had allowed it. Juliet had heeded their command only because she understood the risks of going in blind. If they went in unprepared, that would spell danger not only for them, but also for Ethan. And so she’d waited all day for various sources to check in, for a plan of action to be formulated.
Paige hadn’t been able to get her hands on the blueprints for this particular bunker, but she’d managed to find the layout for an old Soviet facility that was similar in size and usage. They knew to expect long stretches of hallways inside, and an endless amount of storage and communication rooms.
Mironov had never been inside the Crow’s Nest, as it was apparently called, so the number of guards they’d find inside was still undetermined. But since it wasn’t an official government facility, Juliet and the others had concluded that it probably wouldn’t be too heavily guarded.
Their biggest obstacle were the cameras mounted on all sides of the barn, as well as the ones they’d most certainly find inside the bunker, but Juliet was currently attempting to handle that. During her recon, she’d determined that the security cameras were analog wireless—closed-circuit devices that relied on a receiver in order to receive and transmit a signal, which made her job a hell of a lot easier. With the proper equipment she could disrupt the signal, and fortunately, a former thief like her never left the house without her portable signal jammer.
But she needed to get as high up as she could in order to detect a signal, hence her latest tree climb. Sitting astride the branch, she fiddled with the controls of the handheld device and bit her lip as she attempted to find the right frequency that would override the security receiver. While other jamming devices used random tones or pulses to cause interference, her unit used no sound at all, which meant that to anyone monitoring the wireless receiver, everything would seem normal and operational.
“How’s it going up there?” Morgan’s voice barked in her ear.
She glanced at the display, which showed that the unit was still searching for a signal.
“Give me a sec,” she murmured. “I’ve almost got it.”
A second ended up being all it took. Satisfaction rippled through her as she pinpointed the correct frequency and locked it in.
“We’re good to go,” she announced. “As of now, the cameras are out of commission. I’m s
witching on the cell-phone jammer too.”
“You sure it won’t interfere with our comm?”
She was shimmying down the tree even as she responded to Kane’s question. “It won’t. We’re on a different frequency. But I’m using a small unit, so it’s only going to disrupt the frequency from the user’s phone to the base tower—it won’t directly interfere with the tower itself. So if one of the tangos gets out of my range, their phone will start working again. We need to move fast.”
“Copy that,” Morgan replied. “Aussie, set off those fireworks.”
The line went quiet for a few seconds before Sullivan finally replied. “Fireworks show commencing in three, two, one.”
Juliet’s feet landed on the frozen ground just as he finished the count. With the two jammers clipped onto her belt, she didn’t feel as limber as usual, but now that she’d locked in the signal, it was necessary to keep the devices on her at all times if they wanted to neutralize the cameras.
A second after Sullivan spoke, the silence was broken by a cracking sound, similar to that of a flare gun going off, only much louder. From the corner of her left eye, Juliet discerned a faint cloud of blue-gray smoke rising from the trees, but she wasn’t worried about Sullivan giving away his position; he wouldn’t be there for long anyway.
The warhead launched from Sullivan’s RPG sailed in a straight path and connected with the shed ten feet away from the barn. The small structure instantly burst into flames, the explosion rocking the ground beneath Juliet’s feet.
Even before Morgan’s voice snapped “Move” inside her ear, she was running through the trees. She reached the edge of the open field just as the barn doors flew open and a pair of parka-clad men burst outside.
Two sharp blasts—the report of Luke’s rifle as he systematically took out Orlov’s men—sliced the air. When three more streamed out of the barn, they went down just as fast. Juliet had to admit, she was damn impressed with the Cajun’s shooting. Luke, Liam, and Noelle were their designated snipers, situated on each side of the barn, but it looked like Luke was the one having all the fun.
“That last one was a damn nice shot,” Liam told his teammate. “You got him right in the left eye.”
“All thanks to Inga,” Luke answered smugly, referring to the sniper rifle he’d shown Juliet earlier in the day. The guy hadn’t stopped gushing about the damn rifle, but Juliet couldn’t deny that he definitely knew how to use that thing.
As the men chattered in her ear, she sprinted across the dark yard, nearly slamming into D when she reached the barn. The big mercenary wore a look of deadly concentration, armed with a silenced HK pistol and an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Sullivan appeared from the trees seconds later with that same lethal expression.
Morgan and Kane were already in the barn when the trio stalked inside. Their guns were pointed at the floor, trained on the open steel doors that revealed a set of concrete steps leading down to the bunker.
Surrounded by the four big men, Juliet felt tiny in comparison, and she had to wonder if this was what it was like for Abby when she went on missions with these dudes.
At the thought of Abby, she experienced a pang of guilt that the redhead had drawn the short straw and was therefore assigned to bodyguard duty back at the safe house. Juliet knew her friend hated being left out of the action, but she also knew that if anyone could keep Stacie safe, it was Abby Sinclair.
“We stick to the plan,” Morgan ordered. “Kane, you stay aboveground, shoot any motherfucker who climbs these stairs. Aussie, you and I search the bottom of the T, D takes the east arm, Juliet gets the west. Got it?”
They all nodded. Juliet didn’t need any clarification—Paige’s intel had revealed that the smaller storage bunkers were most often T-shaped, with the bottom of the T containing the command centers and weapons lockers, while the two arms featured smaller storage areas and living quarters.
As everyone around her checked their ammo and clicked magazines into place, her gaze strayed to the three vehicles on the other side of the unheated space. Two Humvees and a black town car. It was the latter that captured her attention—they’d seen the car enter more than an hour ago. Nobody had been able to make out the passengers, but Juliet knew with every fiber of her being that Orlov had been inside that car.
He was here. In the bunker. Torturing Ethan.
And she was going to kill the son of a bitch.
It was hard to predict what they would find down below. Although Juliet had effectively cut off Orlov’s communication, he and his men had surely heard the shed explosion. The team had needed a diversion tactic to lure the guards into opening the barn doors, but because of it, they’d officially lost the element of surprise.
And so Juliet wasn’t at all shocked when the four of them scurried down the long flight of stairs and found themselves splat in the middle of a gunfight.
Instantly, she dove into a nearby hallway and took cover, aiming her Beretta at the doorway. When an enraged male skidded around the corner with an AK in his hands, she didn’t hesitate to put a bullet in his chest, then a second one in his head for good measure.
The deafening sound of gunfire reverberated in the bunker and bounced off the cinder-block walls. The facility was well lit, making it easy to identify their targets, and within minutes the corridors grew quiet.
With adrenaline still pumping through her veins, Juliet reunited with the guys in the main hallway, which was littered with nearly a dozen bodies. Puddles of blood spread on the stone floor, trickling toward her feet. She swept her gaze over the fallen soldiers and didn’t recognize a single one. No Orlov. No Ethan. Relief and frustration lodged inside her, but she forced herself to dwell only on the former. If Ethan wasn’t lying on the floor, then that meant he might still be alive somewhere.
“Search the facility,” Morgan ordered.
They split up, Morgan and Sullivan ducking into opposite rooms in the hall, Juliet and D racing toward the end of it. The second they reached the intersecting corridor, a bullet nearly took Juliet’s head off. Heat streaked past her earlobe as the slug collided into the concrete wall, taking a chunk out of it.
A gunshot boomed, and the man who’d almost killed her fell to the floor with a loud thud.
She glanced over at D, who was lowering his pistol. “Thanks.”
“No prob,” he said gruffly.
The two of them promptly went their separate ways.
Juliet’s heart raced as she ducked into the first open doorway in the hall. She found herself in a small room full of dusty metal tables with Morse code machines piled atop them. The next room was empty save for two metal racks with broken shelves.
Each room featured rotary telephones mounted to the walls, but she had no clue whether they were operational. Industrial lightbulbs allowed her to see every last detail of the creaky old bunker—including the strategically placed explosives on the walls and ceilings.
Crap. The place was swimming with C4.
She checked room after room, her frustration growing as she found each one deserted. Goddamn it. Where the hell was Ethan?
As she hurried down the hallway, the wires running along the ceiling were an ominous reminder that the bunker was rigged to blow. She only hoped that whoever was responsible for making everything go kaboom was dead—or, at the very least, waiting to trigger the explosion until he was safely out of the blast radius.
The silence was suddenly broken by muffled thuds. No, footsteps. Her ears perked, gun snapping up as she tried to pinpoint where they’d come from.
She heard them again, and her eyes narrowed. Someone was close. No more than ten feet away.
She crept forward, moving toward the next door. Gripping her Beretta, she flattened herself against the cement wall and waited. Her heartbeat remained steady, her breathing soundless and even.
She could hear movement. The rustle of cl
othing. The soft hiss of someone breathing.
The door of the room she stood beside was ajar. She inched closer, caught a flash of motion, the blur of a man’s arm, the screen of a cell phone.
For a moment she wondered if it might be Ethan, but when a quiet Russian expletive met her ears, all hope of that died. It wasn’t Ethan’s voice.
She heard clicking noises now, followed by another curse that made her realize the man was trying to use his phone with no success.
Hiding a smile, she glanced at the black device on her belt. Looked like her jammer was doing its job.
But the smile faded fast, especially when Morgan’s voice echoed in her ear.
“Main stretch is clear. Rookie’s not here.”
She couldn’t answer without alerting her prey to her presence, so she stayed silent, all the while battling a jolt of disappointment. Damn it, where was he? Had they been wrong about this place? Had Orlov taken Ethan somewhere else?
She reminded herself that D hadn’t checked in yet. There was still a chance that they’d find Ethan. Safe and sound.
Or dead.
The bleak notion made her hand shake.
If Ethan was dead, she was going to go bat-shit crazy on Dmitry Orlov. Everything she’d done to the Siberian Wolf would be child’s play compared to what she’d do to Orlov. The man had already taken her brother from her, but if he took Ethan too? There would be no stopping her from ripping that monster’s head right off his vile body.
Her spine went ramrod straight as she heard footsteps nearing the door. Her quarry was making his move.
She tightened her grip on her weapon. Time to make hers.
Fueled by a rush of adrenaline, she charged at the door and kicked it open with so much force it slammed into her target and knocked him right off his feet.
She was a nanosecond from pulling the trigger when recognition struck her like a bolt of lightning.
Well, goddamn.
Speak of the devil.
Chapter 23
D encountered trouble literally three seconds after he and Juliet split up. In an instant, he went from running on two feet to lying flat on his back as a barrel-chested man in green fatigues tackled him with the skill of an NFL linebacker.