Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (23 page)

There was a hint of a snap to the voice, as though the man it belonged to didn’t appreciate the scolding. Which was too bloody bad and justification for terminating his contract.

“By what?”

“Some kind of experimental aircraft.”

“The hell you say? You lost your helicopter and most of your men and didn’t find that news worth reporting?”

This time he didn’t bother to relax his fingers when they started to cramp. The pain gave him something to concentrate on, something to combat the urge to throw his coffee cup across the room and watch it shatter.

“I’m reporting in now. And FYI, these SEALs are hooked up,” his facilitator said, his accent thickening. “Much more than you indicated.”

Really? Really? The bloody fuckhole was blaming him?

In an effort to calm himself, he stared out the rain-beaded window of the penthouse’s breakfast nook. Central Park, in all its sprawling, wild glory, sparkled like a glistening emerald beneath the misting rain.

For once, the view failed to soothe him.

It was too bad there was so much time and distance between him and the man on the other end of the line. The bastard had talked himself into a painfully slow execution. His family as well.

“No excuses. I don’t care how you do it. Just get it done.” Eric cut the call, knowing the man wouldn’t be calling back.

“Problems, darling?” Esme asked, looking up from the business section of the
New York Times.

With the rage still trying to break free, he focused on the beautiful woman who shared his table, his bed, his life, and his vision of a new world order. Her normally sleek cap of blond hair was slightly rumpled, her blue eyes soft and languid: a slight flush still rode the crest of her cheekbones. She looked like a woman who’d just climbed out of bed after a night of thorough loving—which she had. His hands unclenched as that unquenchable hunger she never failed to unleash in him stirred. Beneath the silk nightshirt obscuring her slender figure, she wore nothing but warm soft skin. His fingers tingled, itching to slide the shirt up and explore every inch of that sleek body
. . .
again.

But regrettably, duty beckoned.

Crossing to her, he leaned over to place a gentle kiss on her upturned swollen lips and then picked up her teacup.

“Looks like we’re in the market for another freelancer,” he said as he set her cup in the marble sink. “Perhaps it’s time to contact Coulson’s man. At least Coulson’s tactics produce results.”

“They escaped? Again?” She cocked her head slightly, her hair fluttering around her ears.

“For now. But the signal’s still broadcasting. We’ll track them down.” He frowned, staring down at the brilliant diamond pattern etched into the teacup’s glass as unease brewed in his mind.

They were dealing with an unknown variable. And in his experience, unknown variables tended to prove disastrous. “It would appear that our SEALs are better connected than we realized. They have access to reinforcements, at least one experimental aircraft, and some major artillery.”

“Could the reinforcements be coming from Coronado?” Esme asked, reaching across the table to stroke his hand. He caught it and carried it to his lips.

“Possibly, but doubtful. Most of their buddies are out on deployment.” He’d made sure of it. “Besides, they couldn’t acquisition an experimental helicopter from the navy.” He shook his head and frowned. “Or the kind of firepower it took to shoot down team B.” He turned to stare out the breakfast window again as more of those uneasy chills peppered his spine.

His instincts were usually dead-on, and at the moment, they were clamoring that those damn SEALs had hooked up with someone with major resources and the ability to do serious damage.

If he wanted to survive the oncoming storm he sensed looming on the horizon, he needed to find out whom they’d climbed into bed with, and take immediate steps to neutralize the whole damn lot of them.

Chapter Fifteen

M
AC SETTLED AGAINST
the padded wall vibrating against his back. The average military-grade chopper could travel 150 knots an hour, and six hundred kilometers on a tank of fuel. They’d been in the air for five hours now, which meant this bad boy shuttling them to Christ-knew-where was far superior to any military bird he knew of. He estimated it was going faster than 150 knots an hour too. A hell of a lot faster—which made it one pretty sweet ride.

He smoothed his palm down the sleek, almost metallic sheen of the wall beside him. The surface didn’t feel like metal, or fabric, or anything he’d encountered before. He’d bet his pension on this craft being experimental.

Assuming you still have a pension.

He sighed, envy rising. What he wouldn’t give to have one of these babies sitting on the tarmac at Coronado.

Whomever Wolf and his team worked for, they were well funded.

Impressively funded, impressively connected too—experimental aircraft weren’t handed off to every Tom, Dick, or Harry. Nor were mysterious compounds with intricate tunnel systems, which included elevators in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Elevators, for Christ’s sake. Mac shook his head.

And oh, the surprises hadn’t stopped there. When they’d stepped out of the elevator, they’d found themselves on the top of one of the bluffs surrounding camp. And two of these bad boys had been waiting to bug them out. He glanced around the blinking ruddy interior. A Blackhawk cost a cool thirty million plus some good-sized change. Considering the fuel capacity and speed on this baby, it had to run more. A lot more.

And Wolf had two of them.

The first had easily taken all the passengers, along with Wolf’s crew. The second was likely a guard dog. On hand for counterattack and intercepting enemy fire. Not that there was anything currently in use that could keep up with this baby. Or at least in current public or military use.

Somebody was obviously engineering this new aircraft. Christ knew who else they’d sold them to.

This bird was a working one, though. Used for combat. It was set up for insertions, with benches along the back and side, and a matted open interior to carry extra men and equipment. The straps at arm’s length along the wall were a dead giveaway that this chopper had seen some action. You needed something to grab hold of to stabilize yourself when the pilot banked hard to the right or left.

At the moment, rather than ferrying a team into battle, the chopper was full of sleeping civilians. Amy Chastain had taken the back bench. She was sitting in the middle, her head tilted back against the wall, with a child curled on either side using her thighs as pillows. Someone had handed out blankets, and periodically she’d stir, check on her sons, and drag the blankets back up to their necks. Not that her ministrations did much good; within seconds the vibrations traveling through the walls and floor rattled the cloth back down the slope of their shoulders. But he had to hand it to her. At least she tried to tend to her kids—she tried over and over again. She was determined to keep her kids warm and safe.

Something softened in his chest, went disgustingly gooey.

Scowling, he dragged his gaze away and scanned the rest of the refugees. Because that’s what they were now, fucking refugees. Estranged from their government and country. The country that he’d given the best years of his life to.

He nipped that line of thought in the bud, since all it did was lead to heartburn.

At the moment, Marion and Kait were sound asleep—Marion curled on the side bench and Kait on the floor beside it, her cheek pillowed on Cos’s shoulder. He, along with the rest of the men, sat along the walls, either dozing or stoically waiting with eyes closed and bodies relaxed.

Oddly, the atmosphere inside the bird was eerily familiar. It had the same sense of exhausted relief and anticipation that accompanied an evac after a mission. The relief that you’d made it through one more mission alive, relatively unscathed. The anticipation of returning to base, sleeping in your own bed, eating something that wasn’t out of a tube or a pouch.

Not that they were returning to his base, or that he’d be sleeping in his own bed.

And that was the whole fucking problem, wasn’t it? He had no Goddamn clue where they were headed. The tension inside him tightened a notch. It would be nice if he could see out a damn window and pinpoint what direction they were headed: east, west? Were they over water? Land? Mountains?

But like all working birds, this one’s windows were reserved for the cockpit. From his current position, all he could see was the dense black of night out the windows in front.

Wolf was sitting across from him, his back against the wall, head back, eyes closed. He looked like he was getting a nice nap in. Mac rolled onto his knees and crawled across the matted floor. Once he was close enough, he kicked the warrior’s huge boots and settled next to him. The big bastard didn’t open his eyes, but Mac caught the sudden tension in previously loose muscles, indicating consciousness.

“Near as I can figure it, we’re closing in on five and a half hours in flight. I won’t ask what kind of speed and fuel capacity this bird has.” Mostly because he knew the annoying bastard wouldn’t satisfy his curiosity. Mac wouldn’t if their positions were reversed.

“Wise of you,” Wolf murmured without opening his eyes.

Asshole. Mac’s mouth quirked.

“You could at least fill us in on where we’re headed.”

“I could
. . .
” Wolf agreed, his voice trailing off.

Mac grunted in irritation. He considered kicking the asshole again. It wouldn’t loosen the guy’s tongue, but it would give Mac some satisfaction. “How much longer?”

Christ, I sound like one of Amy’s kids.

“As long as it takes.”

Which could mean anything from a minute to a fucking week. Knowing he wouldn’t get anything more from the bastard, Mac settled back against the wall to wait.

It turned out that Wolf’s “as long as it takes” boiled down to ten minutes. Suddenly the chopper’s speed subsided. After a few seconds it slowed even further and banked to the right, straightened out, and dropped.

Wolf’s men stirred and stretched. Mac could hear the pilot talking into his comm, but the words were garbled by engine vibrations and the beat of the rotor. He stretched up against the wall, trying to get a glimpse out the cockpit windows. But all he could see was a ring of mountain peaks breaking through the milky glow of dawn. Without any reference points, those peaks were impossible to identify.

There wasn’t much sense in standing and losing his balance if the bird suddenly banked, not when his boots would be hitting the ground soon enough anyway. He’d wait until the ground was stable beneath his feet before launching a recon and identifying where the hell they’d been taken.

As the bird settled on the ground, he expected Wolf’s men to rise in anticipation of departing the cramped interior. But nobody moved. The rotor slowed, slowed even more. Still no movement from anyone in the bird. The engine died, and blades went still.

But nobody moved a fucking muscle.

What the hell?

Cosky shifted, shook Kait awake, and started to rise to his feet, only to slowly settle back with a puzzled frown as Jude turned his head and said something to him.

As his lieutenant’s gaze searched out his own, Mac could read the same questions in those flat gray eyes. Where the hell had they taken them and what the fuck were they waiting for?

Wolf suddenly rolled his head toward Mac and opened his eyes. “We aren’t there yet,” he said, as though he’d read Mac’s mind.

Okay
. . .

“We’re refueling?” he asked. It was the only thing that made sense, but he didn’t hear any people or machinery outside.

“Not exactly,” Wolf murmured, facing forward again and closing his eyes.

Oh, for Christ’s sake. The asshole was just fucking with him now.

Suddenly an intense whining hum came from outside. The bird started to drop. The sensation was unmistakable. They were sinking. He stretched again and looked out the cockpit window. Sure enough, he couldn’t see the mountain peaks anymore, just a wall of green trees in the distance. Frowning, he pressed his palm against the wall, but the vibrations from the engine were gone. So was the roar from the rotor. The chopper wasn’t descending under its own power. Shifting slightly so he could see out the cockpit windows without craning his neck, he watched the bank of trees give way to pitch black.

That blackness obscuring the windows wasn’t coming from night, more like a glossy wall. They were sinking into a tunnel or shaft or something similar, and from the hum beneath them and the sensation of moving, they were obviously still descending. It was like being in another elevator.

The drop down seemed to take forever, a minute at least. Maybe two. And then a clang sounded. With a jolt, the bird stopped moving. More clanging from outside, along with the roar of laboring equipment and the shout of voices.

The men camped out along the walls came alive. One of them unlocked the sliding door and forced it open. Mac winced as bright light flooded the dark interior of the craft, temporarily blinding him. By the time his eyes adjusted, Wolf’s men were lined up and disembarking. All he could make out between the huge bodies bristling with weapons and equipment was the dull gray of concrete.

He waited until the last of Wolf’s men hopped off the chopper before rising to his feet and following them to the door. Before disembarking, he took a moment to survey his new surroundings.

He’d been right about the concrete. Apparently Wolf had flown them to a garage. At least that’s what the facility looked like—a giant, cavernous, domed, underground parking facility
. . .
for aircraft. Slowly he dropped down to the concrete floor and stepped aside so Cosky could disembark.

The place was huge—absolutely immense. It needed to be, considering the size and volume of the aircraft it housed. Not just helicopters either. Hell no—there were plenty of planes too. He spotted a C-12F Huron light transport/evac plane as well as a Raytheon for surveillance. And Jesus Christ, that looked like a motherfucking Grizzly 11 airbus in the far corner.

Whomever the hell Wolf worked for, they were armed to the teeth.

Vaguely aware that Cosky had hopped out beside him and then stopped to stare, Mac took a couple of steps forward. As far as he could tell, there didn’t appear to be any hangar doors to this place, so how the hell did they transport the planes to the runway?

The memory of that mechanical hum flashed through his mind, along with the accompanying sense of sinking. They’d obviously landed the helicopter onto some kind of lift, and then the lift had retracted, lowering the craft underground. It would be easy enough to employ the same technology on the planes. They must have a runway nearby; from there they could taxi the planes onto their lifts. He looked up to find the ceiling was intact. A door must swing into place once the machine was lowered.

Jesus Christ, the engineering behind this facility was astounding.

Cosky let out a long, low, appreciative whistle. “I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

A kid with bright orange hair and a thunderstorm of freckles bustled over to them. His stained overalls were at least two sizes too big for his thin frame and marked him as a grease monkey.

But what he lacked in size, he made up for in attitude. “Hey, Commander, good to see you didn’t blow this one up too.
Beniinookee
is threatening to deduct the last one from your paycheck.”

At first Mac thought the kid was talking to him, but it quickly became apparent the guy was focused on Wolf.

So the big bastard was a commander too, but from what branch of military? Or was he even with the military?

It was past time to get some of his questions answered. And he’d start with the simplest, but most crucial one.

“Where the hell are we?” he demanded, the question directed at the orange-haired kid since Wolf had proved annoyingly vague in the helicopter.

The grease monkey turned to him with lifted eyebrows and something close to a smirk. “Mackenzie, isn’t it?” But he immediately turned back to Wolf. “You know a pool started on whether you’d actually bring them back against direct orders, but the pool was dropped after a day or so because nobody would take the odds against it.”

Which didn’t tell Mac a fucking thing—other than the people here had too damn much time on their hands.

“Where”—Mac asked again with cold deliberation, far too aware that Amy and her kids had stepped up next to him—“are we?”

The orange-haired kid smiled at Amy, and Mac went rigid. There was far too much male appreciation in the grease monkey’s eyes—he had half a mind to pound that masculine interest out of the little punk.

“It isn’t so much where you are, as what you’re in.” The kid smiled conspiratorially at Amy, and it was all Mac could do to not flatten him right then and there.

His internal explosive reaction sent up warning flares. All this fucking proximity to the woman had escalated the intensity of his hunger—and apparently his possessiveness as well. Time to take a long, permanent step back. Reconfigure. Avoid the woman as much as humanly possible.

“Okay
. . .
”Amy said slowly, apparently deciding to play along. “What are we in?”

But Wolf was the one to answer. “Shadow Mountain.”