I Dream of Danger (31 page)

These were the same fuckers who had tortured his
commanding officer and three of the best teammates in the world. Jon had to stop
for a second to breathe his rage back out. Rage did no one any good. Just when
he thought he had himself under control, though, a vision of Elle’s friend
Sophie flashed in his head.

She didn’t look like Catherine or Elle, but she had
their look—smart, gentle, guileless. Someone who worked for the good of
humanity. And beautiful, on top of that. The world didn’t grow too many women
like that and now she was hunted, too.

She, too, could end up like Lucius—a tormented
animal, a lab rat hounded to death.

Goddamn.

He waited another second to get himself back under
control. That was a surprise. Jon had plenty of self-control. He knew exactly
what kind of face he presented to the world. Relaxed, cool, hip. Mac and
Nick—now, they looked like warriors. Cold and tough and fearsome. Not Jon. He
cultivated that loose, friendly look. Those who didn’t know him probably thought
he mellowed out on drugs. They couldn’t know how much he hated drugs. And they
couldn’t know he was a soldier who had killed many times.

Jon kept himself detached, doing what he knew had
to be done, but more like a pest controller stamping out cockroaches than a man
on a crusade.

He didn’t feel cool or detached when he thought of
Sophie Daniels in the hands of the men who’d tortured his commanding officer and
his teammates, though. He felt white hot rage, so powerful it distorted his
senses.
Fuck this,
he thought.
Get yourself under control
. He wasn’t doing anyone any good
wallowing in his emotions, imagining even now Elle’s pretty friend strapped down
to a table, being cut, being hurt . . .

Shit
.

In Ghost Ops they’d been taught to control their
autonomous system. They were shooters and could slow their own heart rate down
to take the shot. He crouched for another full minute, eyes closed, slowing down
his breathing, taking down his heartbeat, resolutely not thinking of pretty
Sophie Daniels being hurt.

So he could go after the fuckers who’d taken her
and rip their hearts out.

Okay.

His eyes popped open and he moved forward like a
laser beam focused on the mission.

The neighborhood was a quiet one of apartment
buildings. He ghosted from bush to tree to car, certain that no one saw him and
certain that he wasn’t showing up on any surveillance video. When he had Elle’s
small house in sight he stopped and tapped on his handheld. This was his own
invention—the electronic equivalent of radar to detect any hidden detonators or
trip wires around the house. It had a radius of 500 meters and when the monitor
remained blank, he moved forward.

He could be fast now. He got past the front door
security and climbed the stairs to the second floor. In a moment, he’d picked
Elle’s pathetic lock and was inside her apartment.

It had been trashed, just as Catherine’s house had
been trashed. It had been done systematically, almost scientifically. Everything
breakable had been broken, everything soft had been slashed, everything
electronic had been smashed.

Well, she wasn’t coming back here. That door was
closed forever. She was with Nick and Nick was part of Haven on Mount Blue. Jon
snapped a few photos for Elle, sent them to the war room, then moved into the
bathroom. Sure enough, there it was, on the sink. The sensor that had been in
Elle’s arm. The goons who’d trashed her house had simply left it there. It
wasn’t going to take them to Elle, it wasn’t going to take them anywhere but her
empty bathroom.

He picked it up with tweezers Catherine had given
him and studied it, wincing when he saw blood and bits of flesh clinging to the
tendrils underneath the chip. That must have hurt like a bitch to pull out.

The chip itself was tiny, a hard composite shell
presenting no visible opening. It was a radio transmitter, sure, but presumably
it had to have a facility for a physical data dump. He brought the chip close to
his goggles, tapped the side, turning them into powerful microscopes and,
Ah!
There it was. The tiniest of portals and,
Yes!
He had the fuckers.

He had the thinnest fiber-optic thread in existence
and with the help of the tweezers he fit it into the portal and started
downloading. The data started appearing immediately on his monitor. First
physical data going back three months covering every aspect of Elle’s body and
then, at the end, a code connecting this tracking sensor with every other. Ten
other sensors, for the ten other poor sons of bitches who were in the hands of
monsters, including Sophie. Six codes were inert, which probably meant the poor
fuckers were dead.

He overlay the data for the four live codes onto a
GPS map and stared at the screen for a full minute, breathing in and breathing
out. When he was sure he had his voice under control, he tapped his comms unit
and spoke.

“I know where they are.”

Chapter 13

San Francisco

A
t five
A.M.,
still three hours from daybreak, the helo landed silently on the rooftop of the Arka building, forty stories up. Though it had stopped snowing and the sky had cleared, Nick was sure no one saw them. The only way they could have been detected was if someone on Market Street was looking up at the night sky and saw the stars eclipse for a second. And even then, it could be a passing cloud. A
fast
-passing cloud.

Jon had flown back to Mount Blue to pick them up and fly them to San Francisco. He’d hovered for just a moment over a rental unit in Cow Hollow and Mac had rappelled down. Mac was now on his way in a big dark van they had stashed there and would park around the corner of the front entrance of the tall, slender white building housing Arka, because they had hopes of finding the live bodies of Elle’s friends somewhere inside that building.

They had no eyes into the building, none. Jon had failed to break into the building’s security, a first. The only thing they had was the building’s schematics, on record in City Hall.

So the building on Battery Street was impregnable in terms of intel. All they could do was break in and hope for the best.

Not the smartest infiltration plan they’d ever come up with. But it was the only one they had.

Elle had put herself under. She said she’d be waiting for them at Arka and that she would contact him telepathically. When she said that, Mac and Catherine hadn’t blinked. If Elle couldn’t establish contact, he and Jon were fully prepared to find the prisoners and fight their way out however they could. Mac would join them if necessary.

It wasn’t a suicide mission. It wasn’t. Nick kept telling himself that.

He glanced over at Jon. This was exactly the kind of mission that would appeal to his sense of the absurd and he expected to find a half-smile on Jon’s face. It wasn’t there. What was there was grim purpose and that surprised him.

Nick hated going in blind. They all did. The less intel you had, the greater the fuckup potential, in a situation where fuckup was a synonym for messy death. Though Jon had managed to get the schematics of the building, it was missing whole floors, which was illegal. Every blueprint lodged with the city’s Building Inspection Service had to be complete as to architecture and infrastructure, but somehow Arka had greased some palms and various floors were blank. It wasn’t even clear if they had electricity. And the building stopped at the ground floor, which both Catherine and Elle said made no sense. So there were subterranean floors too.

How many?

Who the fuck knew?

Nick’s jaw was so tight his temples hurt and he realized how much it sucked to go into battle when you had someone you love waiting for you back home. Ghost Ops made a hell of a lot of sense. They’d been screened, carefully chosen, so that no one had anyone waiting back home for them. Not a woman, not a child, not a dog, not even a fucking goldfish—and Nick got that, got it deep in his bones.

Because wanting to come back, wanting fiercely to hold on to whoever was waiting for you after the op, was the surest way to take your mind off the op. And taking your mind off the op was like taking a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.

Fuck.

Operational readiness was a physical attribute, sure. Train, shoot, train some more, shoot some more—until it was all automatic and you reacted faster than you could think.

But you had to think. You had to plan out your moves in constantly evolving situations that were never, ever, ever like the pre-op briefing. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Shit happens, and when it does you adapt.

You had to be wholly one with the op in your head. No thinking of anything else. Forget the fact that he’d left a white-faced Elle behind, doing her damnedest—as Catherine was doing with Mac—to be upbeat and brave. Terrified he wasn’t going to come back.

And the shitty thing was—he was terrified too.

Well, fuck again.

A warrior couldn’t have thoughts like that messing with his head. He had to be down with the mission, and ready to die.

Nick wasn’t ready to die. Not even close. He wanted to live with Elle for the rest of his life. In Haven, on Mount Blue. Soon they would become completely self-sufficient and they could just turn their backs on the broken world and live in happy isolation. Living the rest of his life with Elle— Oh, man. Waking up next to her, eating with her, sleeping with her.

Fucking her.

The thought jolted him. First, because it shot a crude rush of heat through his system; and second, because for the first time in his life he realized he’d been making love to Elle, not fucking her and . . .

Oh, shit. This was it. He wanted that for the rest of his life.

He wanted her. He needed her.

Nick. . .

“The rooftop door is open.” Jon’s flat voice broke his pity party and suddenly Nick was back, focused and ready to get the job done.

He checked the rooftop carefully, dialing down the aperture of the NVG. There was some light coming from the aircraft warning light atop a pole that jutted fifty feet in the air above their heads, and it blinded him.

Nick. . .

The field was green, flat. He reconned in quarters—a quarter of the field of vision, blink, another quarter . . .

There it was. The rooftop door. Open, just as Jon had said.

He looked over and their eyes met.
That’s not good
. They might as well have spoken the words aloud.

Nick. Something’s wrong.

Nick jerked as he realized Elle had been trying to contact him. She’d done it! Elle had said she’d try to go under when they landed on the roof of the Arka building.

Nick. . .

For a second Nick forgot that they were on the top of a building with serious security trying to rescue four people who were God knows where and in God knows what condition. What did it matter? Elle was here with him.

And now he felt her completely, like a gentle hand petting him, a steady warmth in his head.

“I’ve got Elle,” he told Jon.

Jon’s mouth tightened. “Yeah? What’s she say?”

“That something’s wrong.”

Jon’s response, almost scripted, should have been,
No shit, Sherlock
. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He just tightened his mouth again.

In a moment they were both in a crouch, weapon in hand, moving toward the open door from two different directions. It if was a trap, maybe one of them could survive.

Elle followed him in his head, utterly quiescent, instinctively understanding that he couldn’t deal with distractions.

They reached the door. It was open only an inch and behind the door it was dark. Jon flattened himself on the right side, weapon shouldered. Nick waited a moment, trying to hear what was on the other side.

No one there,
a faint voice whispered in his head.

Well, if this was going to work, he was going to have to trust her.

He kicked open the door, jumping over the high barrier designed to keep heavy rain from seeping into the stairwell, landing lightly on a landing, weapon up, completely ready to face the enemy—

Who wasn’t there.

Nobody in the stairwell.
Elle sounded uncertain. Puzzled.

Nick peered over the banister at the endless flights leading downward. There were faint emergency lights on the landings, but they were no help. The bottom was down there somewhere but invisible.

Arka headquarters covered all the floors from the twenty-second floor to the ground floor.

Nick jerked his weapon and they fell into a rhythm, Nick treading lightly on the edges of the steps, covering the field of fire below them, Jon moving down backward, covering the field of fire behind them. Both weapons up, fingers on the trigger button. They could switch from stunner to bullets in a fraction of a second.

Go on.

On the twenty-second floor, the door to the floor was ajar. Up until now all the doors had been closed, a keypad on the wall next to the door. Nick took point again and slowly opened the door with the muzzle of his weapon.

Jesus!
A man was lying on the floor, a pool of blood around his head. A clerical worker, dressed in a white shirt and black slacks. He was lying on his side, one arm at an unnatural angle.

His throat was torn out. Something—someone?—had taken a huge chunk out of his throat and he’d bled out.

He’s dead
.

Nick nodded at Elle in his head. Yeah. No need to reach down with two fingers over the carotid to check.

His eyes met Jon’s.

Nick! Behind you!
Elle’s voice screamed in his head and he turned just as something came at him, a beast making terrifying animal noises, a creature with blood smeared over its face, hands up and reaching for him. It made a wild leap and it—

Fell to the ground in a lifeless heap, half its head shot away. Nick had opted for good old-fashioned bullets.

“Jesus!” Jon’s voice came out a harsh whisper. They’d both taken a knee, ready to deal with other crazies who might be coming, but there was no one. Nick focused on the man who’d attacked him and rose slowly. He hadn’t noticed many details—too busy killing the fucker—but now he walked over to the carcass. The . . . man was covered in blood and had—
Jesus.
Nick bent over. Did he have a human ear in his mouth? While attacking, the man had seemed all teeth and claws, but disregarding the blood and the human ear between his teeth, he looked like an executive. An out-of-shape executive who probably took a golf cart around the course twice a month just before a hearty lunch at the club.

He was chubby. His once white, now red shirt strained at the buttons around his belly. He was balding. His suit was good quality and his shoes were shined—and he’d come at Nick like a maddened grizzly bear.

Nick. . .

Yeah, honey
? He thought it abstractedly, trying to puzzle out the two men, two members in good standing of the office drone class, one maimed, the other . . . maimer? Nick nudged the first man’s head with his toe, turning his head this way and that. The ear in the other man’s mouth wasn’t his. It was someone else’s.

So this thing, whatever it was, wasn’t limited to these two.

Nick, get in the elevator and go down to the second sublevel. Now.
Elle’s voice was more than a whisper now, and there was urgency in it.

He turned to Jon. “Elle says to take the elevator down to the second sublevel. Now.”

Nick didn’t know Jon that well. When the shit had rained down on them in the Cambridge Lab—belonging to the same company that was raining shit on them right this minute—he’d been on his second Ghost Ops mission. You go into battle a lot with someone and come out the other end alive, a bond is forged. After only two missions and the third one gone to shit . . . well, Jon could easily question the order.

Jon didn’t hesitate.

They both ran for the elevator and Nick punched in –2. The lights flickered, cut out, came back on.

“The fuck?” Jon said.

Nick shook his head. He had no idea.

Hurry,
came Elle’s whisper in his head.

A click, then Mac’s voice. “In position.”

Nick tapped his ear. “Roger that.” He flipped to Haven. “Catherine. How’s she doing?”

Elle’s spirit was here in a way Nick couldn’t explain but knew was true. Her body, however, back in Haven, was in a sort of coma. Though Nick knew, rationally, that she was safe and in Catherine’s hands, the irrational part of him wasn’t happy with the situation. Whatever part of Elle was here couldn’t be shot and killed, but there was something going on that scared him down to the marrow of his bones. There was evil here. He’d been in lots of places where the forces of darkness operated. Where hatred and greed and lust for power were powerful motivators and he could deal with that. All warriors faced the worst of human nature and fought it. That’s why they were warriors.

But there was something about what was happening here that scared the shit out of him and he wanted Elle far, far away instead of here. In spirit rather than in body, but still.

Catherine’s calm gentle voice came on. Jon didn’t react and Nick realized that she’d switched on just his channel. “Elle’s fine. Vital signs are stable. I’m at her side and won’t leave until she wakes up or until you guys get back.”

Muscles loosened in his body. Catherine would stay by Elle’s side.

Don’t worry about me.
The tone in his head was stern.
Pay attention. You’re going to have to act fast.
There was silence for a second in his head, and just as the elevator reached the second subbasement level with a ping, Elle reappeared.
Two . . . things. Right outside the door!

Just before the door swooshed open, Nick tapped Jon’s shoulder and crouched. Jon followed his lead and dropped. “Two. All eyes,” he whispered and then the doors were open and they both moved forward, Nick right, Jon left and—

Oh God!

It was a massacre.

Dead bodies everywhere in the corridor, everyone in white lab coats stained with blood. Rivers of it. Some had been torn apart, not by knives but by what looked like bare hands.

The coppery smell of blood mixed with the tang of urine and the unmistakable stench of feces—the smells of violent death.

The linoleum floor was slick with blood, the white walls were stained with it, there was even spatter on the ceiling.

Nick!

Two . . . things came barreling around the corner, blood-spattered, mouths open, hands up into claws. They came as fast and as aggressively as any soldier, only these weren’t soldiers. Nick and Jon hesitated because these were clearly civilians. Or had been civilians.

A man and a woman in once-white lab coats, now stiff with blood. The woman was young, Asian, pretty. Or had been pretty. Now her face was contorted with inchoate rage as she sprinted screaming down the corridor, leaving the man behind. The man was thin, his lab coat flapping around his thighs, just as blood-stained, just as altered. He was balding with a comb-over hanging down over his eyes which bounced as he lurched down the corridor.