Into the Storm, page 10
Her mom now lived in Tacoma and refused to visit Audrey in Port Angeles. Needless to say, they weren’t close. Not telling her mother about the baby hadn’t been a hardship.
Her father was a different story. He’d left Forks as well, but for a different reason. His arthritis couldn’t take the heavy coastal rain anymore. He’d retired to Arizona eight years ago. They exchanged regular emails, but distance had eroded their relationship. He would be excited to learn he was going to be a grandpa at long last, but he wouldn’t have a big role in the baby’s life.
What if she died out here without ever having told anyone about the baby? What if Xavier survived and learned the truth only then? He would realize from the timing, from her medical records, that not only had she known, but that the child was his.
She got up from the couch and went to the drawer where she’d seen pens and other supplies. She found a blank notepad in the drawer and returned to the couch. She’d write Xavier a note in case something happened to her before she could tell him. He needed to hear it from her, one way or another.
The wind was far worse than the rain, and the rain was a damn nightmare. Xavier tucked down in the thick shrubs, not to escape the wind, but to listen. The howl of the storm cut through his clothes and covered other sounds. A moment ago, he’d heard a grunt—the sound of someone who’d tripped and couldn’t suppress making a noise.
One thing SEAL training had taught him over the years was patience. He could outwait any non-SEAL in these woods. Minutes passed. He waited and listened. A tango had made a noise. It was only a matter of time before they gave themselves away again.
It had been thirty-six minutes since he left Audrey in the cabin. In that time, he’d covered a scant quarter mile. The price of stealth without night vision goggles was a slow pace. He wouldn’t let fear for Audrey’s safety rush his actions.
Damn. Dr. Audrey Kendrick. Thirty-six minutes later, in the middle of a raging storm, while listening for what he assumed was a mercenary in the woods, and he could still taste her on his lips.
He hadn’t planned or intended to seduce her the night they met. He’d found her simply irresistible.
Wicked smart. An outdoor enthusiast. Fascinating. So very enticing. But they were so different. He’d graduated high school and joined the Navy a week later. He’d passed BUD/S at the age of twenty-one and developed the ego of an elite special operator, but that same ego faltered when it came to higher education.
Even when he’d been at the top of his game, he would have figured a woman with a PhD was out of his league. And when they’d met, he was far from the top of his game. That had been made clear when his girlfriend of two years had dumped him while he was in the hospital. She hadn’t even waited until he was awake. She’d shown up after he finally was flown back from Germany, where he’d had his first surgery. She’d taken one look at his sleeping, bandaged self and turned around and left.
Apparently, the only thing he’d had going for him was his active-duty SEAL status. Without that, there was no point in sticking around. Not when continuing the relationship meant taking care of him after each round of surgery.
He’d met Audrey in a situation where he couldn’t use his status as a SEAL to impress her. He’d just…been himself. Well, except for the part where he couldn’t talk about himself, because any word out of his mouth, about his life, would tip her off that he was military, so he’d kept the focus on her and liked everything he learned. Given his evasions to her questions, there’d been no way she would have responded to him if Jae hadn’t been there to vouch for him.
But Jae had been there, and she’d responded. She’d wanted him even when he had no special forces or even military credentials. She’d wanted the low-calorie, no frosting version of Xavier, and it had been a heady feeling, this idea that he didn’t need to be an active-duty SEAL to appeal to a woman who had a PhD from Cal.
And then she’d shot down his permit, and his world imploded.
Getting the training approved was a national security imperative, but that could hardly be revealed in the application. Even though it fit the technical parameters, they couldn’t slip it through operations—which weren’t subject to environmental review—without putting the eventual mission at serious risk.
When the rejection came, in desperation he’d floated to his superiors the idea of going around the park archaeologist, suggesting that they could lean on her boss to sign the FONSI and override her objections if he presented evidence the park archaeologist was biased against the applicant.
He hadn’t really expected them to bite, but his supervisors had jumped on the idea, not even flinching when he offered the argument he eventually presented to the park superintendent and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The Navy didn’t know or care if he’d really banged the archaeologist. They just wanted the permit. All was fair in war. Love had nothing to do with it.
But still, he’d hesitated. How could he do that to her? Then there’d been the chemical weapon attack in Prague. A dozen people hospitalized, two dead. According to intel, they had precious little time.
February was approaching fast, and it looked increasingly likely the attack would happen.
The team needed to prepare. Run every scenario possible to determine the best strategy. If the mission failed, many, many deaths would follow.
Still, he’d hated himself for using their night together against her.
Now, here he was, in the frigid rainy forest, and his actions in December could well make Audrey the next victim in an invisible war.
He’d created this mess, and in so doing, he’d endangered a woman he maybe could have fallen in love with. A woman he certainly had feelings for.
Seeing that man come at her with a knife had triggered something feral inside him. It rose again now.
Focus.
Rain pattered on the branches of the tall cedar at his back. The wind rustled the same branches, dumping water on his head. Normal sounds. It was nearing twenty-one hundred hours. Still early, but the deep dark of the woods with wind and pummeling rain made it feel much later.
Had the SEALs managed to breach the lodge, or were they hiding in these same woods, still unaware this was no longer a training exercise?
A branch snapped behind him to the right. A soft noise, but he’d been waiting for it. Counting on it. Another step, another snapped branch, followed by a muffled curse.
Definitely not a SEAL. Even if the team still believed this was an exercise, they wouldn’t make casual noises. Part of this training was practicing silence in the woods. It was sort of the whole point.
And then there was the fact that the guy cursed in Russian. Xavier would bet anything these tangos were mercenaries, and now he had a clue to where they were from.
Was this guy a sentry guarding a perimeter, or a scout looking for Audrey and him?
Had the guy on the ledge somehow survived?
Three minutes passed. Another sound. The guy was uncomfortable, shifting positions. Impatient.
Finally, he took several steps. Quiet, but Xavier could see his dark shape. He passed in front of Xavier, and he lunged, tackling the man and shoving his face into the moss-covered ground. The guy turned his head to keep from being suffocated in the saturated soil, and Xavier shined his light to get a glimpse of the man’s profile.
He’d never seen the guy before. The tango bucked upward, trying to dislodge Xavier. He freed a hand that held a pistol. Xavier knocked the weapon aside as it fired. No silencer this time. The crack of the bullet was deafening even in the pounding rain.
If there were SEALs or tangos in the vicinity, they would hear it and know what it meant.
Xavier caught the man’s wrist before he could take aim again and slammed it into a rock. The handgun dropped from his fingers. It was a wrestling match from there as they rolled downslope in the muck.
The mercenary was heavier, but not stronger. Until he punched Xavier in the shoulder.
Pain exploded.
Fuck.
The blow had dislocated his left arm, rendering the limb useless.
He punched with his right. Even as his mind wanted to blank out with the pain, he held on. If he died, Audrey would surely be taken. Tortured. Raped. Killed.
He didn’t want to imagine what she would face.
He punched again and kicked with his two very good legs. He managed to roll until he had the man pinned, then used his good arm to position the bad one around the guy’s neck. With a quick jerk of his right arm, his left twisted the man’s neck, and it was all over with a snap of vertebrae.
He paused for just a moment, breathing heavily as his shoulder throbbed with a shock of agony. He needed to pop the ball back in the socket, but the pain was too much to attempt the maneuver right then.
Focus on the dead guy.
He searched the merc’s pockets, finding a spare magazine for the handgun. Over one shoulder, he wore a short-barreled assault rifle with folding stock, and over the other, he wore a bandolier with a half dozen magazines tucked into the strap. The rifle—an AKS-74U—was fitted with a suppressor.
He claimed the assault rifle, slinging it and the bandolier over his bad shoulder, then took the helmet with attached NVGs from the man’s head and swapped it for his own. He clipped his old helmet to his pack. Audrey could wear it.
With the NVGs, he searched upslope where the fight began and spotted the Glock in the mud. He added it to his growing arsenal, then adjusted the goggles to the proper fit. They weren’t as good as the US military-grade ones he’d lost earlier, but they were high quality. These guys were well funded, that was for sure.
Who did they work for?
They could be terrorists, but everything about this had the feel of a paid operation. Right down to the staging of their supplies months in advance. Terrorists couldn’t afford to take chances that far ahead of an attack.
The rifle was troubling. Rare and Russian, it could be an important clue as to who these guys worked for. But after Osama bin Laden had been photographed with the same model, they’d been in high demand by several terrorist groups, so it could also be a red herring to make them think they were dealing with extremists and not mercenaries.
Done searching, he kicked the body, shoving it farther downslope, toward a rare spot of open ground. Maybe one of the SEALs would find it. The dead man would tell them this was no pretend war game.
Ready to go, he took a deep breath and attempted to pop his shoulder back into the socket. Pain exploded, and he wobbled on his feet. He couldn’t black out now. Not here. The guy might not have been alone in this section of woods, and the gunshot would be a beacon for his comrades.
He set out, not going back the way he’d come nor heading in the direction he wanted to go. Misdirection was key here. Protecting Audrey’s location was his first priority.
His shoulder throbbed, making him dizzy with the pain. He couldn’t head to the signal jammer. He’d return to Audrey and give her a real gun to protect herself. And hopefully, she could pop his joint back into place while he passed out.
Chapter Nine
Audrey paced the cabin. She’d managed to choke down a can of cold pork and beans with canned pears for dessert. Adrenaline had faded, and now the chill air sapped her energy. Add to that pregnancy-exhaustion hormones and she was yawning in a perpetual loop. Forty-five minutes ago, she couldn’t imagine sleeping, but now, she had no idea how she would manage to stay awake until Xavier returned.
So she paced, talking to the baby, or maybe she was muttering because she was falling apart. She wasn’t quite sure. But really, after the night she’d had so far, a mental breakdown was fully justified.
She reached the front window and pivoted on her heel, turning too fast. Dizziness swamped her. She swayed on her feet.
It was unlike her to lose her balance so easily, but nothing was normal tonight. She fixed her gaze on a thick log beam. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
Rain pounded on the roof and wind rattled the shutters. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself. She’d keep walking to generate heat and stay awake. But no more fast turns. She placed her hand on her belly. “Your daddy is coming back for us,” she whispered. “He’s going to turn off the signal jammer and call for help. An hour, maybe two, and helicopters will swoop in. We’ll be rescued.”
But could helicopters fly in this storm?
Probably not.
When hikers were trapped in the mountains due to weather, search and rescue was often grounded until the storm abated. Black Hawks might be better equipped to fly at night and in a storm, but the basic physics of flight in bad weather remained the same. And this storm was a nasty one. The lake and lodge were nestled in the western foothills of Mt. Olympus. There were no taller peaks between the lodge and the Pacific Ocean to redirect or disperse the storm.
This was Mother Nature in all her Pacific Northwest January wrath.
The back door rattled, and she jolted, then twirled to face the door, again moving too fast, but this time keeping her feet. Was Xavier back already?
She took a few silent steps toward the door.
It rattled again. The knob turned, but the dead bolt prevented it from opening.
She froze, fear pulling the blood from her head and sending it straight to her belly. Someone was out there, and it wasn’t Xavier. He would have knocked, using the pattern he’d chosen.
Could it be one of the SEALs checking out the cabin or seeking shelter? Would a SEAL have hiked this far, or was this out of bounds for the training? Of course, if they knew it wasn’t a training anymore, nothing was out of bounds.
Her gut said this wasn’t an ally, this was someone searching for her and Xavier. The SEALs in these woods didn’t even know she was here, and weren’t they supposed to be trying to breach the lodge?
She was going to vomit. Or faint. Maybe both.
She couldn’t make a noise. If whoever was outside that door knew she was in here alone, armed only with a paint gun, they’d hack through the shutters and break a window. Entering the cabin would be easy.
They’d opened Jeb’s throat with an axe.
She took a silent step backward and grabbed her coat from where she’d draped it over the cold woodstove and donned it, then she snatched her backpack from the floor. She’d exit through the door to the deck that overlooked the lake.
A thunk sounded from the deck, then that door’s knob rattled at the same time the back door shook.
Icy terror slid down her spine.
There were two men, blocking both exits.
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she faced fear unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She could—probably would—die here. Tonight. By axe, knife, or gun.
Axe…
She turned to the woodbox next to the woodstove. The box was built into the wall of the log structure, so one could split wood outside, toss it in the box, and then from inside the cabin, grab logs to fill the woodstove.
There could be a hatchet in the box along with other tools, another weapon to add to her arsenal. But even more important, inside the cabin, the box looked small—not large enough for a person, but she might fit, and, even better, she might be able to slip out of the cabin via the box.
She gingerly lifted the lid, wincing when the hinges squeaked, but the storm had probably covered the sound. The front of the box was a third-full of wood, leaving a tight space for her to slip through.
A soft pop came from the direction of the back door. Were they shooting the dead bolt? Xavier had said their guns might have suppressors.
She scrambled into the box, wiggling backward into the narrow space, having no idea if she’d fit or if wood filled the back of the box and she was trapping herself. She’d just managed to fold herself into a ball and close the lid when she heard a door slam against the wall. If the outside hatch was locked, she was cornered, but her only choice was to hide or flee, and this box had the potential for both.
There was an unintelligible shout, followed by words in a foreign language. Her heart was beating so rapidly, she found it hard to concentrate, hard to breathe. It was a moment before the sounds registered: two men, speaking Russian.
She probed backward with her foot, feeling logs to her side, but nothing behind her. She scooted deeper into her hiding place, but she bumped into a log and it shifted, making a slight noise. The log landed on her leg, balanced, but ready to topple. She couldn’t move without making another, even bigger sound.
One of the men said something sharply. She guessed he was near the kitchen table. Probably ten feet from the box.
The second man replied, and then the first spoke again, this time in heavily accented English, “Dear Xavier, if something happens to me, I want you to know…”
No! He was reading her letter. She’d forgotten it was on the table.
She would bang her head against the box wall if it wouldn’t make a sound that would get her killed. But maybe it didn’t matter. From the blankets strewn about and her damp clothes in the bedroom, they’d have figured out that she’d been there anyway.
While the men were distracted with the note, she reached back and silently shifted the log from her calf and set it in the space between her knees. She scooted farther back and discovered the exterior part of the box was empty, the wood having been piled at the front. She sat up in the larger area and probed the exterior lid, hoping, praying for an escape.
It lifted. Hope surged. Then the latch caught.
One centimeter. That was as wide as it would open. Just enough to slip a finger through the gap.
She was trapped.
Chapter Ten
Chris zoomed in the magnification on his NVGs. The tires on the SUV were flat, and those were definitely bullet holes piercing the gas tank. Rivera and Cohen had gone all out to make this exercise look and feel real. This didn’t look like a beater SUV given to the Navy to use as a prop. It looked like it was maybe two or three years old. No big dents indicating it had been in any sort of wreck.
