They had grabbed a ride on one of the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, the USS Ronald O’Rourke, currently doing joint maritime and air training in the Adriatic Sea. The training mission was the second repeat performance of an ongoing integration of US Air Force Europe and US 6th Fleet, the goal to refine joint air defense procedures to better defend Navy ships.
Riding the ship down to the target area was an experience. The crew offered the team berthing, but they declined, preferring to get what little sleep they could back in the hangar area where their gear was. They did splurge and eat in the chief’s mess, another stunning experience. The captain took care of them.
Saint disembarked the moment the RHIB hit the beach. Immediately, they came under fire and they all hit the deck, working to neutralize the gunmen and get through them to find Aella, 2-Stroke, and Chry. He was worried about Aella. They hadn’t heard from her in thirty minutes. The tracker had gone offline. He feared the worst.
Crawling, he used his night vision goggles to locate the muzzle flashes and take down the shooter. Milo “Professor” Prescott had joined them on this op, and he was next to Saint.
“Time to move,” Professor said as they got into a crouch, and all eight of them began moving in from the beach toward the rundown structures.
They were assaulting blind after not getting Aella’s intel about where they were keeping 2-Stroke and Chry as expected. They were going on instinct and nothing solid, except for the last location Aella’s beacon had pulsed from.
“LT, Jugs has her scent,” Mad Max said, a grin in his voice. “He’s chomping at the bit.”
“Let him go. Damn, I love that dog,” Fast Lane said.
Now they at least had a direction in this huge compound. They could be here a week searching all these buildings without a definite direction.
They moved through the eerie quiet punctuated by the whizzing or plinking of bullets until they took cover and eliminated the threat. Every building was empty and abandoned. The earlier feeling of pushing through a ghost town was even stronger. They were moving at a fair clip but maintaining a watch on their flanks. It was cold, but the chill wasn’t just from that. Vehicles were abandoned along the road. Structures stood open and mute. It was like they were jogging through one of those last-man-on-earth science fiction movies.
They approached an old building that housed many cells, crumbling silently beneath some trees, vegetation clinging to its lower regions, dry, thorny, sparse.
The doors were barred—new boards. Hemingway stepped up, driving home that their breacher was absent, making it feel discordant and wrong. As Hemingway prepared to breach the boards and door, Professor and Saint moved to the windows with their new panes of glass. Saint pulled a flash-bang from his vest, a stun grenade thrown inside a building to distract occupants and give the SEALs the advantage of the first shot as they entered.
After they had found cover, Hemingway counted off: “Three…two…one…” Hemingway detonated the breaching charge and the door blew, shaking the whole building, sending chunks and splinters of wood and debris everywhere.
Fast Lane shouted, “Go, go, go!” Saint barely needed his LT’s order. Breaching was now automatic after so many years of training. He was through the door covering his sector while his teammates piled through and fanned out, covering all points. No one was there, but Jugs still clearly had the scent. They blasted through the structure. Dirt and weeds filled the building, swallowing tools and machine parts, furniture and bedding. Paint peeled from pockmarked walls. Dark bars corroded, broken, and cracked. Moonlight punched through collapsed ceilings. Girders, bent and brown with rust, like old titans, were barely able to hold the decay at bay.
Everywhere there was rubble, on every rotten floorboard and piled in every corner. Jugs didn’t hesitate. He forged ahead unaware and uncaring about the devastation. His only mission was to follow his nose to the woman they had asked him to seek.
They broke out the back of the building. There was a road that led up a hill to a clearing, and on the road was a tightly packed contingent of people, including Darko, Zasha, 2-Stroke, Chry, and Aella. She was alive! The half a dozen men stopped while the rest of them, the prisoners being prodded as they slowed, continued toward the clearing. The guards took up a defensive line, spraying gunfire at the SEALs as they breached the hill. Saint dropped to one knee, returning fire. His team cut through their line.
Saint heard the chopper before he could see it. Everyone picked up their pace without any orders from their LT. Running full out, he and his team crested the hill only to see that 2-Stroke, Chry, the crime lord, and Zasha had already boarded. Aella resisted as a man carried her, her chest against his back. Her hair flew wildly as she threw her head back into the man’s chin, making his steps falter. For a brief moment, she swung around ready to run to Saint, but the man recovered and grabbed her. Saint locked onto her gaze. Then the guard heaved her in through the open chopper door like a ragdoll.
Christ, that woman was a fighter. He loved that about her.
His heart sank. They were too far away to stop the chopper as it took off, flying low and disappearing over the rocky side of a short cliff.
He felt the weight of their failure, his heart sinking, the bitterness of getting here just barely in time spreading in a numb climb through him.
“What a major cluster fuck!” Fast Lane yelled, losing his cool. Saint turned to see blood on his LT’s arm. He stood there for a moment realizing that he needed to take care of the wound, but his body seemed rooted and as dead as this godforsaken place.
The chopper pulled away so violently that everyone was jostled around inside. Then it evened out and 2-Stroke was shoved into the seat next to Aella. She was groggy, stunned, and she sprawled across him. The guard roughly pulled her up and bound her hands, righting her. He wiped at the blood on his mouth, then backhanded her across the face. Zasha still had a hold of Chry in the seat across from him.
The door was still open, the black of a night sky filled with an array of white stars, their captors breathing hard, recovering from the sprint away from the building to escape the inevitable capture by his SEAL teammates. He was elated, adrenaline pumping through his system. His brothers were magnificent, and he couldn’t be prouder of them. The sight of them bolstered him.
Then he saw the way Darko was eyeing Aella. He knew the man’s depravity and his ego. Aella would not survive whatever he had planned for her. In a split-second decision, he pushed off his seat, and with all the strength he could muster, he hit her hard enough with his shoulder to send her out of the chopper and plunging to the sea below. The chopper was low enough that she would have a chance of survival. Her only chance.
As he got close to the open door, he could see Saint standing on the edge of the cliff, then the chopper swung back around.
Someone grabbed him as he lurched to his feet, planning on sending Chry out.
He struggled until he felt the hard barrel of a pistol against his temple, satisfied that at least one person wouldn’t suffer because of him. A second later the electrical charge of a Taser lit him up like firecrackers. He hit the deck, his head slamming hard. His darkness was punctuated with brilliant color before there was nothing.
Saint saw the body fall, his heart climbing to his throat when he realized it was Aella. He pulled off his weapon, his helmet and tac vest. Without any hesitation, he arched off the cliff in a swan dive, heading down, down to the turbulent ocean below. When he cut through the surface, he went deep, but immediately righted himself and started swimming until he broke the churning swells. He started resolutely for the spot he’d seen Aella hit after her harrowing free-fall.