The bracket comes free with a final twist. I hold it against my palm, corroded and sharp at one end where the rust has eaten through the protective coating. I position the sharpest edge against the nylon cord binding my right wrist and start sawing. The angle is awkward, and I nick my own skin twice, but the cord frays with each pass.
I work in silence, pausing whenever footsteps pass outside the door. The guard walks by twice. The second time, he stops, and I freeze with the bracket pressed flat against my wrist, hiddenunder the remaining cord. He moves on, and I take a moment to breathe before I start sawing again.
Finally, the cord splits. I pull my right hand free, and the rush of blood returning to my fingers is painful enough to make me clench my teeth. I leave the cord dangling from my left wrist so it looks intact from the doorway, and I slide the bracket into my palm where I can grip it without being seen.
I flex my free hand. Feeling comes back in stinging waves, and within a minute, I can make a fist. I adjust my position against the wall so I look the same as when Eric left, with my wrists behind my back, head bowed and looking defeated.
I’m not defeated. I’m ready. I’ve been surviving unpredictable men my entire life, and Eric is about to learn he isn’t the most dangerous person in this room.
24
ADRIAN
The convoy moves south on US-1 at eighty miles an hour. I’m in the passenger seat of the lead SUV with Viktor driving, and three vehicles follow in close formation behind us. There are twelve men, eight weapons, and forty-five minutes between me and the woman carrying my children.
I open the scrambled comms channel. Every vehicle can hear me, and every man in the convoy is listening. “The target is a marine storage facility in the Upper Keys. It’s a single building with perimeter fencing, private access road, and dock access on the south side. Karpov has held the lease through a shell company for four years, and utilities were reconnected three weeks ago. The property is defended, and they’re expecting us or they should be.”
I pull up Grigor’s satellite imagery on the tablet mounted to the dash. The building is a rectangular concrete structure, approximately eight thousand square feet, with a loading dock on the west side and a smaller personnel entrance on theeast. The access road approaches from the north, which means anyone watching for threats will be focused in that direction.
“We’re not using the road, so we’ll ditch the SUVs at the coordinates you should all be receiving shortly.” I drop the pin and send it to the group while visually tracing the approach on the screen, drawing a green line with my mind. “Viktor arranged two boats through his port contacts.” I glance at him to confirm the call he just made was successful, and he nods, not taking his attention from the road for more than a second. “Team One takes the south dock approach. Team Two circles to the east entrance by land after the boats are in position. We hit both sides simultaneously.”
“Rules of engagement?” Arseny’s voice comes through the comms from the third vehicle.
“Anyone armed who isn’t Aurora gets put down without warnings or negotiations. Karpov’s men chose their side, and they’ll answer for it.” I pause. “Eric Hayes is the exception. He’s the primary threat to Aurora because he’s armed and personally invested. If he has Aurora when you find him, don’t escalate. Hold position and call me. I’ll handle Eric.”
Viktor glances at me but says nothing. He understands. Eric with a weapon and Aurora as a hostage is the scenario that scares me more than anything Karpov’s guards can do. Professionals calculate risk and surrender when the math stops working. Eric is past calculation. He’s operating on obsession, and obsession doesn’t surrender. It detonates.
“Grigor, what do you have on the perimeter?”
“There are two heat signatures on the north fence line, consistent with posted sentries, and three more inside thebuilding on the ground floor. I also see two additional signatures on what appears to be the second level or a mezzanine.” Grigor’s voice is steady through the speaker. “Sensors read one signature in a smaller space on the east side of the building, isolated from the others. That could be Aurora.”
One signature isolated in a room by herself, or with someone standing close enough that the thermal imaging reads them as one shape. I push the second possibility out of my head because dwelling on it will make me reckless, and recklessness gets people killed. If I die, she probably will too, and I refuse to accept that.
“Vehicle spacing.” I check the mirror. “Tighten up. We exit US-1 at the marina turnoff in twenty minutes, and the boats will be waiting at the dock. We’ll stop and leave the SUVs at the indicated coordinates to walk the last half-mile to the dock. No lights and no giving away our position. At the boats, Team One boards immediately while Team Two continues by road to the east staging point, where the second boat will be waiting for the incursion from that direction. Maintain radio silence after we split.”
The convoy adjusts. The SUVs close the gaps between them until we’re moving as a single unit. I look at the ultrasound printout I’d been carrying in my jacket pocket since the appointment and moved to my tactical vest when changing. The two blurry shapes on thermal paper remind me what’s at stake. I fold it back into my vest pocket and check my weapon for the third time.
The boats arewhere Viktor said they’d be, in two separate locations as planned. The first one is a center-console fishingboat with shallow drafts that can approach the dock without running aground. The six of us comprising Team One boards in under two minutes. Team Two continues to walk for another quarter-mile. They disappear from view, but they’ll find a second identical boat where indicated to carry Maxim and the other five men.
Team One approaches from the south with engines cut to idle speed. The dock extends thirty feet from the building’s south wall, and the water is calm enough that our approach barely registers above the ambient wave noise. The sun is down, and the dock lights are off, which means either they’re conserving power, trying to hide their presence, or they’re relying on sentries instead of illumination. Either way, the darkness works for us.
Maxim’s boat appears along the eastern perimeter but only because I’m looking for it. His team will neutralize the fence-line sentries and hold the east entrance until we breach from the south. The timing has to be close. If we enter too early, Maxim’s team is still outside and Karpov’s men can retreat east. If we enter too late, the sentries on the fence line will radio an alert before Maxim reaches them.
Viktor ties off the lead boat, and we step onto the dock in single file. The wood is old and warped but holds our weight without groaning. I draw my weapon and move toward the building. There’s a service door at the base of the dock ramp, rusted and padlocked from the outside, which means this entrance isn’t guarded because they don’t expect a water approach.
Arseny handles the padlock with bolt cutters. The chain drops to the concrete with a sound I absorb without flinching, and I push the open door with my left hand, weapon up in my right. The interior is dark, lit only by emergency strips along thebaseboards and the faint glow from deeper inside the building where someone has set up operational lighting.
My comms piece clicks twice. That’s Maxim’s signal. Both sentries are down, and the east entrance is secured. The next communique will be when they decide it’s safe to enter that side. We have maybe ninety seconds before someone inside notices the sentries aren’t checking in.
We advance through the first corridor in formation. The air smells like salt water, diesel, and old concrete, which is how every marine building in the Keys smells. I lead because I need to be the first person Aurora sees when we find her, and because nobody in this building wants to find her more than I do.
The first guard is at the junction of two corridors. He’s facing north, watching the access road approach through a window, and he doesn’t hear us until Arseny is already behind him. Arseny takes him down with a chokehold, silent, and Viktor zip-ties his wrists while I move past.
The second guard is at the entrance to a larger room, in what looks like a former equipment bay. He spots us and reaches for his weapon. I fire twice before he clears the holster. The suppressor reduces the shots to hard coughs that echo off the concrete walls, and he drops. The sound carries.
“Move fast.” I signal Team One forward.
We clear the equipment bay in fifteen seconds. It’s empty except for folding tables, communication equipment, and what looks like a portable operations setup. Laptops and maps are spread across the tables.
