With a sigh, I kiss her again. “Sleep,leannan, a ghràidh,sweetheart, my love.”
Dougal…
The train starts up and I check the AI program that will mimic the engineer’s voice for the check-in. How could those arrogant pricks not have the slightest suspicion, even though they’re barricaded in their last safe place?
Stepanov’s compound is huge, with fifteen-foot steel reinforced walls. There’s a closed port that’s impossible to approach via the waterway without instantly givin’ away our position. But those stupid dug licking pishwere so confident about their slave trains that loading up the cars with C4 was the easiest thing.
There’s a desire in me to call Stepanov, and tell him his arse is about to blow sky high and takin’ his men and legacy with him. It feels anticlimactic after the years we’ve put into destroying this bastard. I thought my brothers would be with me…
Turning to the men and women who joined us on this mission, I raise the detonator like a toast. Checking my watch, I count it down.
“Three… two…”
“The train is in the compound,” Hamish reports gleefully.
“Tongue ma fart-box, ya fuckin’ walloper!” I shout.
And press the button on the detonator.
Cameron…
I don’t know how long it’s been, but when I look up, all three of my brothers are crowded into the doorway and if I had been in a laughing mood, I’d be howlin’ right now. They look fecking ridiculous, all trying to squeeze through first.
“At least you washed all the blood off,” I murmur.
“How is she?” Lachlan is trying to whisper, which for him is just under a shout.
“Stable,” I say gratefully, running my hands through my hair. “And pregnant. Eight weeks or so, the doc thinks.”
“Well done, brother!” Cormac grips my shoulder with a grin. “Good news all around today, then.”
“Tell me everything,” I whisper eagerly.
“I wanna know who the feck determined just how much C4 we were gonna need,” Dougal hisses. “Look at my face!”
Cormac and Lachlan are nearly choking, trying to keep from laughing and disturbing my wife’s rest.
Dougal looks rough. The force of the blast knocked trees flat, and disintegrated structures and roads for one and a half kilometers around the compound. Even though our team was over three kilometers away, one side of his face was a wee bit crispy.
“We flew over the compound,” Lachlan says gleefully, “and there’s nothin’ standing. Not one brick attached to another. The train and vehicles in the compound are chunks of twisted metal. Shite, I wish we could have seen Stepnov’s expression!”
“What matters here is that it’s done,” Cormac says soberly.
“Tell me Natalia and Sven are dead,” I say.
“You’ll enjoy this. They were all tucked up snug in the compound with the others. We got some mighty clear images of them both,” he grins.
“Miss Kevin? What happened there?” Dougal asks. When I poached her from our parents, he was furious that he didn’t think of it first, the idiot. I think he’s a bit sweet on her.
“That woman is amazing,” Cormac says, shaking his head, “they took them both because they knew Miss Kevin would raise the alarm if Morana went missing. When they put yer wife on the train in Moscow, they shot Miss Kevin, they got her shoulder instead of her heart. Thank the Lord for a shite aim.”
“Aye,” they all nod fervently.
“When she regained consciousness, she dragged herself out of the worst slum in Moscow - still handcuffed - and convinced the first person she found to let her use their cell phone. And hear this; she knew all our numbers. By heart.”
“Mighty good luck that you and Lachlan were still in Moscow,” Dougal says in relief.
“She’s patched up in one of our safe houses,” Cormac continues, “she’ll fly home in the morning.”
