19. Phae
Phae
T he cough came from behind me, a little to the right.
And it was followed by a harsh, “ Diam! ”
Although I hadn’t been in Indonesia for long, I’d quickly learned that meant “shut up.”
“We have company,” I whispered into my mic. “At least two.”
The prickles on the back of my neck turned to needles that stabbed me in the spine as I felt the visitors coming closer.
Closer.
My sixth sense hadn’t been misfiring over Marc.
No, there was something else in this forest, and suddenly, the kooks from Wild Roots weren’t our biggest problem anymore.
My gut felt as if it were being squeezed by a giant hand, and I knew, I just fucking knew , there were more hostiles in these trees.
Slowly, silently, I slid my comms unit out of my pocket and sent a two-word message: Code Shark .
Soon after our team’s inception, the members of the Choir had created our own rating system, kind of like DEFCON, but less boring.
Bear, shark, lion, crocodile, and hippo, in that order.
The most dangerous animals in the world?
Not quite—that would have been mosquito, man, freshwater snail, snake, and assassin bug.
But we’d all agreed that being trapped in a room with a snail would hardly be terrifying, so we’d switched things around.
I’d argued in favour of “snake” because being stuck in a room with a shark wouldn’t be scary either, not unless the room was filled with water, and then we’d have a bigger problem than an oversized fish.
But Dice, with her menagerie of pet snakes, had vetoed their inclusion, so “shark” it was.
Anyhow, Code Shark meant there was a problem, a big one, and I hoped someone would clue Emmy in through her earpiece because I couldn’t exactly explain right now.
Echo responded first, probably because she was never more than three feet from an array of electronic devices.
“I’m here, but I don’t have eyes. There won’t be a satellite over your location for sixty-seven minutes. Can you talk?”
Click click.
I followed up with a message:
Me
Tell Heath to get Marc and Serena out of there. Fast.
If this situation went south the way I feared it was about to, they were sitting ducks. Echo relayed my words, and down below, the bush rustled unnaturally.
Then a whisper.
“Frank’s looking out the window. I need to hold.”
Fuck.
I couldn’t talk, but I could launch the hummingbird. I slid the case out of my backpack and powered her up just as Storm came online.
“Howdy, folks. Is that the hummingbird? You want me to fly her?”
Click.
Lag didn’t matter for surveillance the way it did for targeting, and I needed to keep my wits about me and my hands free. Backup was thirty minutes away, allegedly. The bird flew off with Storm at the controls, and I settled into a crouch and focused.
The hostiles were moving past me now, two of them, slipping through the trees with a reasonable degree of stealth. They were used to this.
“Friend or foe?” I whispered.
Could they be military? The Indonesian authorities were assisting with the search—had wires gotten crossed, and they’d come to reconnoitre a property already allocated to us?
“I’ll check into that,” Priest said.
Storm began narrating. “Two hostiles at your three o’clock. I don’t have the best view through the canopy, but they look like males.”
Priest took over, the only member of the ground team who could talk freely. “Stay high; look at the bigger picture.”
In the house, Emmy kept up a stream of chatter about her Indonesian vacay and the shitty places she’d stayed. But she managed to slip in a few snippets of information.
“…are the three of you digital nomads? Influencers? Who else brings a laptop to paradise?”
So, three inside and KD made four. Plus we had Marc and Serena to worry about.
“Something like that.”
“Sweet. Maybe you could give me tips on video editing? I just started a blog.”
“We don’t do videos.”
“You don’t? Shame—they get more engagement than photos, at least, that’s what I heard. How big is this place? Four bedrooms? Five?”
“Five, but we have friends arriving first thing in the morning to take the fifth bedroom.”
Translation: don’t get any ideas about sharing.
“Man, if we have to find someplace else to stay tonight, that’ll suck balls.”
“Let’s try calling the booking company, shall we?”
Storm spoke up again. “Another pair to the right, and it looks like… Yeah, they’re surrounding the buildings. Two more at your nine o’clock, and they’re closing the distance to Marc. Heath, watch your back.”
“Weapons?” Priest asked.
“Rifles slung over their backs. Are we going to Bear? I think we should go to Bear.”
“We can neutralise these three,” Jez murmured, barely audible.
There were guns heading toward Marc.
Guns heading toward Marc .
Damn right we were escalating.
“Go to Bear.”
When it came to moving through enemy terrain, there was nobody better than Priest. He’d become a legend in Delta, then honed his skills at the CIA, including a stint in a squad whose existence would be denied by the US government until the end of time.
The Horsemen. The four founding members had done more to change the course of history than anyone would ever know.
Black, White, Red, and Pale. Priest called it another life, but beneath the hideous Hawaiian shirts and the laid-back surfer dude persona he wore as a mask, he was still Pale. Death. He’d never change.
And he’d spent years moulding the Choir in his own image.
I took off through the trees, flitting from shadow to shadow like a ghost, silent and really, really pissed off. Who were these assholes who’d shown up to ruin my life? I wanted their heads on fucking pikes.
A few thump s sounded through my earpiece. A muffled groan. Ah, that would be Emmy and Jez and their “neutralising.” The groan was followed by a shriek from KD, no doubt wondering why a man dressed as a bush was advancing with a set of lock picks.
Sin spoke. “I might know who these people are. Remember how I said the West Papua Freedom Army showed slightly too much interest in the kidnapping?”
Unfortunately, I did.
Storm said the words I couldn’t. “I figured we’d see a spate of tourist abductions over the next several years.”
“Me too, and so did Sinaga. But what if they decided to try a different approach?”
“You mean snatch Marc and Serena from Wild Roots?”
“We know they operate in the region, and they have far better connections than we do. A whisper here, a bribe there, and they could have found Marc.”
And if they got their hands on a bona fide Hollywood megastar, we wouldn’t be looking at a little subterfuge and a simple negotiation in order to get him back; we’d be facing all-out war.
“I think they’ve spotted him,” Storm said. “A pair to the east just switched direction, and I see more movement farther back in?—”
I missed the last part because the three prisoners in the house all began yelling at once.
“Who are you?”
“What the hell? Is that a gun?”
“Are you here to rob us?”
Even out of sight and in the middle of chaos, Emmy’s eye-roll came through loud and clear. “You stupid fucks are about to be in a world of trouble, and I’m not talking from us.”
“What on God’s green earth do you think you’re doing?” That sounded like Frank, the lone Brit. The other voices were American.
“You didn’t cover your tracks well enough, and now there’s an army at the gates wanting to finish what you started. Where are your guns?”
“We don’t have?—”
“You lie, you die. Where are the fucking guns?”
“I-i-in the back bedroom,” an American told her.
“Tell me you have live ammo?”
“I d-d-don’t know.”
“Heath, how are things looking down there?”
“Working on Serena’s chain now.”
Of course he’d gone to Serena first. She was his sister. I hated him for that, but I also couldn’t blame him because I’d have gone to Marc.
Hurry.
This feeling of helplessness was new, and I hated that too.
Fortunately, it didn’t last for long.
Less than a minute.
I’d known the first shots were coming, and I didn’t flinch. No, I glimpsed movement through the trees ahead of me, raised my gun, aimed, fired. The hostile slumped to the leafy ground.
“One down.”
Terrorists were like ants—kill one, and ten others appeared to take their place.
Another volley of gunfire came in response, and below in the clearing, Heath pulled a stumbling Serena into the trees as bullets kicked up the dirt at their feet.
Marc dove into the shed, still chained, now trapped, yelling at KD to stay down. She was already inside.
“Cover me,” I ordered because despite a decade of avoidance, I couldn’t leave Marc to die alone.
Or with Kamryn fucking Delacort.
I burst from the trees, emerging straight into hell as hostiles shot at me from at least three positions.
Jez and Emmy returned fire from the house, forcing the shooters to pause long enough for me to reach the shed.
To reach the only man I’d ever loved. I tumbled in headfirst, hedgehog-style, unrolling into a crouch at Marc’s feet.
Between my fetching camo paint, the stress of the situation, and the time that had passed since we last saw each other, he didn’t seem to recognise me. Okay, this was good.
KD’s fingers were bloody from clawing at the bent-over nails that held the chain in place.
“It won’t come loose,” she said, panic in her voice. “It won’t come loose!”
“Move to that pillar, both of you. Crouch, look away, and cover your heads with your arms.”
Of course, Marc had to argue.
“What? Why?”
“Do you want to lose an eye? Just do it, okay?”