Chapter 17
The outskirts of Chicago glittered like someone had dumped a bucket of diamonds over black velvet. Red brake lights on the roads and highways were gridlocked arteries. The streetlights shone in straight, even rows like ribbons of gold.
But none of it mattered.
None of it drew Hew’s gaze.
Only one point on the map below meant a goddamned thing to him, and that was the dark square sitting at the edge of it all.
No light penetrated the bottling plant or its surroundings because no one paid the electric bills. The city had written off the whole place long ago. And, seen from above, it resembled a strangely geometric black hole in a sea of twinkling stars.
Somewhere in the middle of that black hole…Sabrina.
The Roman river goddess.
Hew handled the controls without conscious thought. His left hand gripped the collective, and his right hand was on the cyclic. The pedals under his boots adjusted the tail rotor output and yaw. And every movement was fluid, precise, and automatic.
This was where he truly felt alive. High in the sky, rotors chewing through the air like steel teeth, the smell of old grease and newly burned transmission fluid mixing with the faint scent of ozone.
Except tonight, there was none of the usual exhilaration. None of the usual euphoria.
This wasn’t a joyride.
This was Sabrina’s life he flew above, and he felt every inch of the thousands of feet that separated them.
Night-vision-compatible gauges cast a dim green glow across the dash. The headset was snug over his ears. And the rain of the past few days had finally moved on, leaving the sky dark and moonless.
But it felt like a storm gathered inside him.
He didn’t remember buckling into the harness. Didn’t remember going through the pre-flight checks. Hell, he didn’t even remember making the flight to the city's west side.
I’d say the bird flew herself if I didn't know better.
What he did know was that he’d been pedal to the metal and balls to the wall since they’d pinpointed her location.
Ozzie had made good on his promise. He’d hacked a military satellite and pulled up real-time infrared. Before the team had left for the hangar, they’d seen the heat signatures inside the bottling plant, knew they were dealing with four unfriendlies, and had decided they liked their odds.
While they’d been in the air, Ozzie had relayed that three of Sabrina’s captors had taken up positions outside the old factory, one in sniping position on the roof of an adjacent building, and two of the others squirreling themselves inside dilapidated outbuildings.
“That leaves just two inside the bottling plant,” Ozzie had said over their FHSS comms.
The handy frequency-hopping spread spectrum system, utilized by intelligence agencies and contractors worldwide, jumped between multiple frequencies per second. Even if someone tried to intercept it, they’d hear only random noise unless they had the exact encryption key and hopping sequence.
“Send the infrared images to Hunter’s tablet. We need their exact locations,” Hew had directed, flying high, fast, and far from the regular commercial jets’ flight paths.
They were running dark. No navigation or anti-collision lights. No tail numbers. They’d turned off their transponder—the electronic ID that aircraft broadcasted to local air traffic control and surrounding aircraft.
All completely illegal, of course.
But for the Black Knights, it was just another day on the job.
When Hunter brought his tablet to the cockpit, Hew blinked at the infrared images on the screen, noting especially the two people left inside the old bottling plant.
It hadn’t taken his years of service to realize the seated figure, glowing orange and yellow against a background of deep blue, was Sabrina.
She’d been slumped like a marionette with her strings cut. Her head dipped forward, her hands bound behind her back, her body curved in on itself as if she was trying to disappear.
Something in him had cracked at the sight. A soundless shatter that had left him bleeding out internally.
He had been ready to rain down hellfire on that entire bottling plant and everyone who’d dared lay a hand on Sabrina. Just land the chopper in the middle of the plant’s decrepit parking lot and go in balls out and guns blazing.
Cooler heads had prevailed, however. And he’d been talked out of his plan.
He’d desperately wanted to join his teammates in storming the castle and saving the princess.
But they’d quickly reminded him in true Liam Neeson form that they each had a very particular set of skills, skills acquired over very long careers, and his were to drop them in, haul their asses out, and be ready to rain pain down on their enemies on the ground should things go pear-shaped.
“Makin’ my way to the rooftop.” Graham’s scratchy voice rasped through Hew’s headset, wrenching his mind back to the moment.
The whole team had fast-roped out of the chopper six blocks from the plant. Close enough to make hoofing it easy. Far enough away to keep the noise from the big bird's rotor wash to a minimum.
Graham’s objective was to ghost toward the sniper’s perch and take the bastard out of play one way or the other. For such a large man, the ex-SEAL was surprisingly stealthy.
“Making contact now,” Graham said lowly. Then, louder, “Hands up where I can see ’em!” A pause followed by a grim, “Don’t do it! Don’t—”
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Three shots echoed through Hew’s headset. Graham’s signature move. Two rounds to the chest. One to the head.
Hew held his breath and waited for the sound of return fire.
None came.
Graham had introduced the fucker to the Reaper before he’d even had time to aim.
Graham verified this a heartbeat later when he relayed simply, “Target one neutralized.”
No sooner had the words been transmitted than Hunter’s voice boomed over the shared connection. “Move in! Go, go, go!”
While Graham had gone for the sniper, the other four—Hunter, Britt, Sam, and Fisher—had flanked the perimeter. They’d cut through the high chain-link fence surrounding the property, quiet as church mice. And now they surged through the darkness.
Hew didn’t need to see them to know their blades were drawn and their guns were ready.
He wasn’t breathing so much and bracing, and then—
The scrabble of bodies moving quickly. Shouts over the comms. The concussive boom, boom, boom, BOOM of suppressed rounds slicing through the darkness.
“Target two neutralized,” Sam reported, sounding only slightly breathless.
“Target three neutralized,” came Hunter’s immediate follow-up.
“Moving toward the plant’s front door now,” Britt added and Hew tightened his grip on the cyclic.
“Ozzie?” He stared unseeing through the windshield. “You got eyes on that last hostile?”
Ozzie's reply was immediate. “They must’ve heard the gunfire. They’re moving toward Sabrina.” Their resident hacker watched it all play out in infrared from his post on the second floor back at BKI. “Get in there, guys, before they do something to hurt h—”
Whatever he said next was lost in the hell that exploded in Hew’s ears.
Shouts. Static. Sabrina’s name and then her scream cutting through the chaos like flares through fog. Followed by…
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Seconds beat by. Interminable ticks of the clock that had sweat sliding down his temples, had his heart shuddering inside his chest. He heard only the roar of the rotors, the rush of his own blood between his ears, and the sound of his breathing.
Which, despite his training, was too fast. Too shallow.
“I’ll blow her brains clean through the front of her skull!” The voice—shrill and far away—was picked up by the teams’ comms.
It was the woman who’d called in the ransom demand—although the device no longer distorted her voice. The same woman who’d made the call giving them the location of the drop just five short minutes ago.
Ozzie had kept her on the horn, playing the part of concerned and attentive sucker. Little had she known that the Black Knights circled high above her head and slithered around the outside of her perimeter, preparing to flip the trap she’d laid for them back onto her.
“Your team is dead,” Hunter’s voice, low and deliberate, was crystal clear through the connection. “Unless you want to join them, I suggest you lay down your weapon.”
“You must be out of your goddamned mind!” The woman’s laugh echoed hollowly. “She’s my only ticket out of here.”
Hew imagined a muzzle pressed to Sabrina’s skull. Imagined the woman slicing through Sabrina’s restraints and forcing her to stand and become a human shield.
“The only ways you're leaving this place,” Sam’s harsh snarl matched the menace burning at the center of Hew’s heart, “is with us or in a body bag.”
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for this one,” the woman snapped, and Hew imagined her pushing Sabrina in front of her as she made her way toward the door.
“Something tells me you’ll do whatever it takes to keep her six feet above ground.
And that means the two of us are walking out of here together. ”
“Target four lined up.” Graham’s voice was as cold and as hard as stone. “Gimme the go-ahead and I’ll take her down.”
“Hold,” Hunter ordered lowly. Louder, he said, “Ma’am, take a peek over your left shoulder, if you would.”
Hew didn’t need eyes on the ground to know what was playing out far below.
Sabrina’s captor was turning. He saw in his mind’s eye the moment the woman noticed the laser dot slicing through the broken window, aimed at her head.
He imagined the look on her face when she realized she was seconds away from having her gray matter atomized by a lead round traveling three thousand feet per second.
Graham had taken over the sniper’s perch. And he was one hell of a marksman.
One and a half pounds of trigger pressure was all it would take for it to be game over for the last remaining hostile.
A pause stretched and stretched and stretched until it felt like Hew’s last nerve might fray and break. Then…
“Moving to secure the final unfriendly.” Sam’s words were like a benediction. “Hunter, you and Britt help Sabrina.”
Hew sat up straighter in the dimly lit cockpit, his eyes on the black hole below as if he could see her if he squinted hard enough.
“Help Sabrina?” he barked. “Why does she need help? Is she hurt?”
No answer except for the whomp, whomp, whomp of the rotor blades cutting through the air.
“Check in!” he roared, not caring about anyone’s eardrums. “Is she okay?”
Hunter’s voice was grim. “She’s been better. But she’s alive and kicking. Headed to the exfil location now.”
“Roger that.” Hew shoved the collective forward. “Comin’ down hot.”
He dropped the chopper like a goddamn rock, nose tipping at a precarious angle as he headed for the pre-arranged spot in the crumbling parking lot outside the bottling plant, welcoming the G-forces that pushed him back into the seat.
Within minutes, his skids kissed the busted concrete, and he immediately turned his attention to the hole his teammates had cut through the high, chain-link fence.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
Come on. Come on.
And then…shadows.
At first, only dark blobs of undulating black inside the stygian darkness. Then, the amorphous shapes became familiar figures.
He was used to seeing his teammates clad in all black, balaclavas covering their faces. What he wasn’t used to was seeing Sabrina stumbling between two of them.
The moonless night didn’t reveal much. But it was enough.
He could see that she hung between Britt and Hunter like her legs barely worked. Her head bobbed loose on the stem of her neck. And was that…
Blood on her face?
Red-hot fury replaced his momentary relief at finding her in one piece. He knew exactly where to aim it.
Her.
Sam and Fisher frog-marched a woman between them. Despite her perilous position, her eyes were flinty, her expression was remorseless, and her chin was up at an arrogant angle.
Hew had never hit a woman. Had never wanted to hit a woman. But he was more than tempted to hit her. Right on that pointy, imperious chin.
As always, the Black Knights loaded into the waiting chopper in short order. Weapons were stowed. Gear was secured. Every movement was muscle memory.
But Hew only had eyes for Sabrina.
She had a cut on her cheek above a bright purple bruise. Her lush lips were cracked and split. Her hair was soaked through with sweat and matted with grime.
She’d never looked more beautiful.
Especially when her chocolate eyes met his and seemed to melt.
“You’re okay, sweetheart! We gotcha now!” He tried to yell above the turbine’s roar, but his words barely came out in a rasp.
She must’ve read his lips, though, because she nodded, her eyes welling and her chin trembling.
Hunter slapped the back of Hew’s flight helmet. “Go, go, go!” he yelled.
Hew hated to drop Sabrina’s gaze, but there was nothing for it. He whipped around and hopped the big bird back into the sky.
BKI’s Blackhawk was old. But she’d been meticulously refitted with radar-absorbent coating and sound-dampening rotor blades, giving her a low infrared signature. And she handled like a dream.
Soon they were zipping through the humid night air as the swirling black waters of Lake Michigan yawned below. Once he reached altitude, he kept one hand steady on the controls. With the other, he reached between his knees and pulled out the ridiculous, well-loved, stuffed lobstah.
Stretching his arm behind his chair, he held out the toy.
Didn’t matter to him if she saw him do it or if someone passed it to her. He just needed her to have it.
A second later, he felt a tug and released his hold. He went to pull his hand back, but something stopped him.
Sabrina…
Her fingers slipped between his, cool, trembling, and unmistakable. She didn’t let go even after half a dozen heartbeats. Neither did he.
Her touch was a tether, binding him back to the moment. Back to certainty. Back to her.
He couldn’t turn and take her in his arms like every cell inside him begged him to do. So, instead, he flew her toward safety. Flew her toward home.
And for the first time since he woke up to find her gone, he drew in a full breath.
Then, he exhaled.