Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (35 page)

Anatole grinned. He raised his gun and fired twice. The bullets left the suppressor silently and struck the rock with sharp pings. It skipped noisily across the ground.

Conrad looked to Stevens. The agent flicked his thumb up. They heard the squeak of wheels as the guard shifted in his chair. Boots thudded to the ground. A shadow blocked the light coming through the door.

Conrad tensed as the guard took several steps outside, a rifle clasped in his grip. Anatole came up behind the man, clamped a hand over his mouth, and struck the back of his head with the butt of his pistol. The guard went down soundlessly, his gun falling at his feet.

Anatole hefted the unconscious figure up under the shoulders while Laura grabbed the man’s legs. They hauled him away and melted into the night. Conrad and Stevens raced past the open door to the other side of the building.

Shuffling footsteps rose from the direction of the inner fence. The second guard had reached the security hut.

‘Hey, one of the lights broke,’ he started to say in French as he came around the corner. He stopped in the open doorway. ‘Khaled?’ he said in a puzzled voice.

The jingling music of an ad break on the TV was the only response he received in the lull that followed. Conrad waited tensely in the shadows a few feet away.

‘The bastard. He must have gone for a piss,’ the guard finally muttered under his breath. He twisted on his heels and walked a few feet toward the fence. A scratching noise sounded as he struck a match and lit another cigarette.

He had barely inhaled when Conrad rose from the darkness and closed his forearm in a vice-like grip around his throat. The guard choked, his cigarette falling to the sand. A strangled gurgle left his lips. The fingers of his right hand dug into Conrad’s skin as he reached blindly for the rifle slung across his chest.

Conrad kneed him sharply in the small of his back, yanked the firearm out of his reach, and released the chokehold. He struck the base of the man’s neck sharply with the edge of his hand. The guard crumpled with a low grunt.

Conrad and Stevens restrained the man’s wrists and ankles with nylon straps before carrying him some eighty feet to where the other guard lay, bound in the darkness behind one of the trailers. Anatole had taped the first man’s eyes and mouth shut. They did the same with the second guard and divested them of their radios before returning to the security hut.

Conrad found what he was looking for on a clipboard hanging on the wall. It was a manifest of the staff accommodation. His heart slammed rapidly against his ribs as he ran a finger down the first page. He flicked it over. His hand stilled halfway along the second sheet. Relief flooded him.

‘Hagen’s in trailer 21,’ he told the others.

Laura checked one of the guards’ radios, communicated the bandwidth to Avery, and disabled the devices. The Marines would now be able to keep track of the enemy’s movements while outside the facility.

They exited the hut and headed swiftly back to the living quarters. Laura lobbed the radios under a mobile home just as they entered the network of passages that separated the cabins and trailers. Small plaques gleamed on the corner rear walls of the lodgings, denoting their numbers. They swerved into the corridor between the first two lines of mobile homes and paused in the lee of a caravan.

‘Hmm,’ murmured Anatole. ‘I anticipate a problem.’

Conrad frowned as he studied the courtyard fifteen feet ahead. It was bathed in the glow of six security lights. According to his calculations, Hagen’s living quarters were directly across the brightly lit space, facing onto the square.

Conrad increased the magnification on his night vision device and scanned the line of dark structures. His gaze stopped on a lime-green mobile home. ‘Third one from the north,’ he murmured.

They considered their approach. They could either cut across the courtyard or go around it to the north or south, steering clear of the lights. The path to the north would put them directly in the line of sight of the security station in the middle of the compound.

They went south and crossed the shadowy strip of land between the fence and the living quarters at a dead run, their boots drumming the sand with a faint patter. They turned the corner into the corridor between the first and second rows of trailer houses on the east side and skidded to the ground almost immediately.

Someone was leaning out of the window of a trailer some twenty feet ahead. The orange glow of a cigarette flared in the gloom and cast an eldritch light across the man’s face as he sucked on the stick. They waited breathlessly in the darkness. Conrad glanced at the face of his watch. It was 05:53. He gritted his teeth. They had less than forty minutes left to find Hagen and his family, and get them out.

A faint clatter sounded in the night. The man had tossed the cigarette butt to the ground and was closing the window. They were on their feet a heartbeat later.

Hagen’s mobile home soon came into view. Lights from the security station in the middle of the compound glowed some five hundred feet to the northeast.

They staggered to a halt with their backs against the trailer. Conrad studied the rear wall. Four dark windows faced their way. There was no way of opening them from the outside without alarming the people inside the trailer and alerting the sleepers in the adjacent caravans. They would have to go in through the front door.

‘Anatole, eyes to the north,’ Conrad instructed. ‘Laura, you’ve got the courtyard. Stevens, come with me.’

Anatole faded into the darkness toward the first two trailers. Laura darted down the passage south of the mobile home, while Conrad and Stevens crept alongside the north. They stopped at the corner and scrutinized the brightly lit square fronting the mobile home.

‘Clear on my end,’ said Laura over the headset.

‘Same here,’ murmured Anatole. ‘The chickens are in the coop.’ The immortal’s breath suddenly hitched over the comm line.

Conrad froze. ‘What is it?’ he hissed into his throat mike.

‘Those bastards are having pizza!’ Anatole replied in an affronted tone. ‘I can see them through the scope!’

Conrad bit back a curse and heard Laura mutter something unsavory. He signaled to Stevens. They darted around to the trailer steps.

It took ten seconds to pick the lock on the door. The immortal was aware of how terribly exposed they were throughout that time. All they needed was for someone to look out of a window or step outside a caravan and their presence would be detected.

The door opened with the faintest of squeaks. They darted across the threshold and closed it behind them. Conrad flicked down the night vision device. The mobile home’s interior became visible in his left eye.

They were faced with a sparsely decorated, open lounge and a kitchen diner. A corridor to the right led toward the rest of the trailer.

Conrad scanned the front room. His gaze landed on an object atop a side table next to the couch. He crossed the floor and picked up the discarded badge. A grim smile of satisfaction dawned on his lips as he studied the photograph on the ID.

‘His daughter was right after all,’ said Stevens in a low voice behind the immortal. ‘They’re still alive.’

They had found Svein Hagen.

Chapter Twenty-Six

C
onrad turned and headed toward the narrow hallway leading to the rear of the trailer. He walked past a closet and reached an unlocked door. An empty twin bedroom lay beyond. He frowned, glanced into the bathroom, and stepped to the last door. He tried the handle; it turned easily in his grip. He entered the room, Stevens on his heels.

A man lay asleep under a thin cotton sheet on the bed taking up most of the floor space. He was alone. Conrad scowled. He had assumed that the scientist’s wife and daughter would be inside the mobile home with him. He stood still for a moment before gesturing to Stevens. The agent crossed the room and closed the drapes on the rear window.

Conrad walked to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. He placed his hand an inch above the sleeping man’s mouth, leaned toward him, and flicked up his night vision device. He reached over and switched on the lamp on the table next to the bed.

‘Mr. Hagen?’ he said in a low voice.

The man’s eyes snapped open. Pupils dilated in the blue expanse before constricting in the light. Conrad clamped his fingers over the man’s mouth just as he started to scream and struggle.

‘It’s alright!’ the immortal said hastily. ‘Dawn sent us! We’re with the US government!’

Svein Hagen froze.

‘I’m going to take my hand away,’ Conrad warned after a second.

Hagen nodded wildly. The immortal uncovered the man’s mouth.

The professor sat up, his gaze swinging between the silent agent and the immortal. ‘Who are—? How did—? I don’t understand!’ he stammered.

‘We don’t have a lot of time,’ Conrad said urgently.

Hagen glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was six in the morning.

‘We’re on the trail of a group of people who are behind the assassination of the Russian premier and the attempts on the lives of several other prominent heads of state, including the US president,’ Conrad continued.

Hagen paled. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘It’s started.’

Conrad stared at the scientist and swallowed the questions rising in his throat. There would be time for that later, if they made it out of there in one piece.

‘We found evidence of your work concerning a powerful new explosive on the database of a company in Paris,’ he added. ‘A Professor Itaka from Case Western pointed us in your direction.’

‘Aki?’ Hagen whispered in a dazed tone.

‘I don’t have time to go into details; suffice it to say that I spoke to your daughter, Dawn, and she explained her suspicions concerning your accident in Hawaii,’ said Conrad. ‘She got your email.’

Tears glistened in Hagen’s eyes. ‘How is—?’

Conrad suddenly raised a hand in warning, cutting off the professor; Anatole’s voice had just come over the headset.

‘There’s a guard coming this way from the central post,’ warned the immortal.

‘I’ve got movement here as well,’ whispered Laura. ‘Someone just stepped out of a building in the courtyard.’

‘From the chatter on the radio, it looks like an early change of shift,’ said Moore. ‘The rest of them will swap places at sunrise,’ he cautioned.

Alarm tore through Conrad. ‘Your wife and daughter, Bridget, where are they?’ he asked Hagen hurriedly.

‘They’re being held in one of the outbuildings next to the admin office!’ said the professor. He had climbed out of the bed and was changing hastily into jeans and a T-shirt. ‘The others are there as well!’

Conrad went still. He exchanged a startled glance with Stevens.

‘What others?’ the immortal asked slowly.

Hagen explained. Twenty seconds later, Conrad swore.

‘What’s wrong?’ Laura hissed over the headset.

‘It looks like we have a more complex situation on our hands than previously anticipated,’ Conrad replied bitterly. ‘Avery, I think we’re gonna need that back up. We have Svein Hagen, but there are four more hostages to rescue.’

‘Four?’ said the platoon commander sharply.

‘Yes. Hagen’s wife and daughter, a Professor Alison Williams, and a Dr. Ed Henderson. The last two were also kidnapped by these guys and are being forced to work for them.’ Conrad glanced at the disheveled professor. ‘I’ll have Stevens bring Hagen to you. Laura, Anatole, and I will proceed to Zone Three. The other hostages are locked up in a building there.’

‘I’m not leaving without my wife and daughter!’ Hagen blurted, blue eyes blazing with a stubborn light.

Lines creased Conrad’s brow. ‘We haven’t got time to argue, professor,’ he said coldly. ‘Besides, you’ll only slow us down and place this entire operation in jeopardy.’

Hagen’s hands curled into fists. He opened his mouth to retort. His protest died on his lips when Conrad froze.

‘Shit!’ Avery exclaimed in the immortal’s ear. ‘Something’s up! There are a whole bunch of guards heading to the empty coop you guys cleared earlier! They know we’re here!’

Conrad’s stomach twisted. ‘How?’

‘It looks like they might have gotten a tip-off, Greene,’ said Moore grimly over the headset. ‘We can’t track their chatter anymore. They just changed their communication channel.’

Conrad scowled.
The mole!
He didn’t have time to dwell on the matter further. They had to get Hagen out of there. ‘Let’s go!’ he snapped to Stevens.

They herded Hagen to the far wall of the trailer.

‘Laura, Anatole, we’re coming out the back!’ Conrad barked into the throat mike.

Stevens opened the window and climbed over the sill. He landed lightly on his feet and helped Hagen down to the ground. Conrad joined the two men. Laura and Anatole crowded around them, weapons covering the dark passage. A faint light in the sky to the east signaled the imminent arrival of dawn. They had run out of time.

Conrad turned to the professor. ‘Tell me exactly where they are!’ he ordered in a low voice.

Hagen gave them the location of the prisoners, his voice stiff with fear but measured.

Conrad looked at Stevens. ‘Think you can handle this?’ he asked the agent.

A fierce smile stretched Stevens’s lips. ‘It’ll be a walk in the park.’

‘Please, save them,’ Hagen whispered. He stared beseechingly at Conrad, his face ashen. ‘They mean everything to me.’

Conrad hesitated. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Laura tapped Stevens lightly on the shoulder. ‘Be safe, Harry. Your wife will kill me if I let anything happen to you.’

Stevens grinned. He faded into the darkness, the professor in tow. Conrad turned and headed east with the two immortals.

‘He reminds me of William,’ he said.

Laura glanced at him. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘But he’s not William.’

They had barely traveled two hundred feet from the living quarters when sudden shouts and the sharp cracks of automatic gunfire rose south of the compound. Conrad glanced over his shoulder. Lights were coming on in the trailers behind them. An alarm sounded from the direction of the production plant, the shrill sound tearing through the night.

‘Avery?’ Conrad hissed anxiously into his throat mike, boots pounding the ground as he sprinted toward the shadowy buildings in the distance.

‘It’s all right!’ said the platoon commander. ‘They spotted our two escaping friendlies. We’re laying down cover fire!’

Relief rushed through the immortal at her words. His reprieve was to be short-lived.

‘We’ve got company!’ Laura barked to his right.

‘Same here!’ warned Anatole from the left.

Conrad glanced at the figures converging on them from the station to the southeast. In the opposite direction, the headlights of a Jeep cut through what remained of the night as the sentries from the main security post raced toward them. He made a swift calculation. From their numbers, it seemed all the guards inside the compound had been rallied to the cause.

‘Anatole, you’re rearguard!’ Conrad shouted.

‘Gotcha!’ responded the immortal. He fell behind.

Conrad and Laura continued their desperate dash in the dark.

‘This reminds me of the good old days!’ she said, her breaths coming fast but steady.