Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
JUST OUTSIDE NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
“Getting to her won’t be easy, not when she’s expecting an attack. But a few days with that woman is all I need to know she won’t go down without a fight.” Nick pointed to the screen with the aerial display from one of the drones Carter’s men had set up over Sydney’s location, offering a view of the swamp and wetlands down below.
Gray accidentally bumped into Savanna as he leaned in closer to the screen inside the 18-wheeler moving truck they’d rented and turned into a command center, where the men were prepping to infiltrate the property for what would now be a rescue mission. “That’s a lot of heat signatures scattered all over the place.”
“They’re searching for her,” Savanna whispered, taking a step back to look at Griffin, who was dressed in camouflage gear and face paint. Carter had everything they’d needed on the jet for any type of situation from the looks of it, thank God. And Griffin looked every bit a Delta operator at that moment. Intimidating. Deadly.
“Sydney chose this location on purpose. The Cajun cottage is practically invisible until you’re right in front of it. Mother Earth has pretty much reclaimed the outside of it. And the houseboat on the water with a light on inside is the diversion. Only way to get to the cottage is by water, and then through acres of forest,” Nick continued to explain.
“But they found her somehow. Well, they found her location,” Jack said while strapping on his vest, catching Savanna’s eyes for a brief moment. “I assume they used Archer technology to do it like they did to find Griffin’s father’s cabin.”
“Does that mean this mole sent Joe and his team, or even another Archer team, to assassinate the owner’s daughter?” It was a hard pill for Savanna to swallow. That veterans would commit murder for the right price.
“My guess is he hired a group of mercenaries to go after her. Criminals,” Carter answered, slipping on a chest plate beneath his vest of ammo.
“No way is Joe one of those men out there gunning for Sydney,” Griffin said without hesitation. “He let us walk away, and he gave us the Elysium clue.” Griffin was as protective of Marcus’s teammate as she had been of Nick. Hopefully, they’d come out two for two in the end.
“Our insider won’t risk assigning a team of men from his own company to kill Sydney. I have to believe that,” Gray added in agreement with Griffin.
“Does that mean you shoot to kill tonight?” Savanna placed a hand to her throat, the idea making her uncomfortable.
“Would you rather we shoot them with rubber bullets?” Carter asked, his focus on loading his weapon with a full magazine, but she saw a hint of a grin on the man.
“These men are hunting Sydney to finish the job Stefanos’s men failed to do. They have a kill order,” Gray said solemnly. “We cut down anyone standing in our way of getting to her.”
“If we can even find her,” Nick said.
“Wait . . . you’re going?” Savanna asked. “You’re not in the best condition, even though your eye does look a little better.”
“He has to. He knows the best route to get to the cottage and where she might be hiding,” Carter was quick to respond.
“I’ve had some time to recover. I’ll be okay.” Nick’s voice was still hoarse, so Savanna wasn’t quite sure he was telling the truth, but he seemed determined to not only save Sydney but to keep proving himself worthy to Marcus, even though he wasn’t there to see it.
And that had her heart swelling.
Carter’s team had managed to acquire a flat-bottomed swamp boat for moving across the water to reach their location, which wasn’t ideal with ten tangos on the ground moving about in search of Sydney. There had been twelve. Two tangos stopped moving not too long ago, and Nick had suggested it was Sydney’s doing. Nick mentioned she was handy with a bow, and she’d been practicing during their days together.
“What about the alligators and snakes out there?” Savanna hated to raise that point, but it had to be another reason why Sydney chose that location. The more obstacles to get to her, the better.
“That’s why we’re not swimming in,” Oliver said as he walked up the ramp they had positioned to get in and out of the back end of the truck. And Jesse and Beckett followed him in.
Jesse had asked Beckett to meet them when Carter’s plane landed in Louisiana. They’d be keeping Savanna company while the rest of the team went looking for Sydney. Beckett also had a direct line ready to call the FBI when the time came to take down the man who’d sent these thugs after her.
“I’m surprised Sydney stayed here after you didn’t return,” Jack pointed out once Jesse and Beckett had joined them in the moving truck.
“Nowhere else to go, and she’s stubborn,” Nick commented while accepting a plated vest from Griffin. Bulletproof vests didn’t always save lives. Marcus had been wearing one. “Sydney wanted to complete her mission. Confirm her suspicions as to the identity of the traitor.”
When her attention swept back to Griffin, her stomach dropped. The man was about to put himself in danger again, just as he’d been doing since he was eighteen. He’d survived for over twenty years, but . . .
No. No what-ifs, damn it.
“I need some air.” Savanna bypassed everyone inside and made a quick escape out the back end of the truck and down the ramp. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but the gloomy evening sky held an ominous feel to it that had her rubbing chills from her arms.
“We’ll have cameras on our chests, similar to police body cams.” Savanna turned at Griffin’s words to see he’d snuck up behind her. “You’ll have a view of what’s happening. Not the best view because of the hour, but we’ll be using them so Jesse and Beckett can keep tabs on us and provide intel if needed over the radio.”
He was barely recognizable in his military-type getup. And her what-if brain started working double time again. “Marcus didn’t bring you into my life just to have you join him,” she sputtered, then blinked a few times at the realization Griffin had heard those thoughts because she’d spoken them.
“You really think he sent me to you?” Griffin stepped forward and reached for her arm, holding her in place as if she might be carried off in the soft October breeze coasting through the air.
“I do.” She reached for his face, paint meeting her palm. “So,” she whispered, doing her best to fight through the fear, “go be the hero you are. Go rescue the girl.”
Jesse walked Savanna through every step of the mission as soon as Griffin and his teammates rolled out forty minutes ago. It had taken longer than she’d liked for them to glide across the water in the swamp boat, but they hadn’t been detected. And by the time they reached their designated landing spot, there were only nine tangos. Which meant Sydney had taken out another man on her own.
“Sydney really is a badass,” she said while collapsing into the folding chair next to Jesse. He and Beckett had three laptop screens showing various camera views of Griffin and the others. She could see everything in real time, but it was growing more difficult to see their movements now that the sun had set.
They were also being monitored by tracking devices so Jesse and Beckett could also feed the men each other’s coordinates when they split up, which was happening now.
It was hard for her to sit on this side of the cameras. It reminded her of watching from inside the panic room at the cabin when Joe and his teammates were pummeling Griffin.
“Which one is Griffin? And Nick?” she nervously asked Jesse. He reached for her hand and gave a squeeze before pointing to the one screen where their tracker beacons lit up with little green dots.
“That dot is Griffin. He’s number three. And that’s Nick. Number six.” Jesse looked behind him to where Beckett stood. “You handling this okay?”
Savanna followed Jesse’s gaze to peer at the sheriff. A.J. had said this was out of Beckett’s wheelhouse, but he’d once been part of the LAPD, so it was possible that he’d participated in operations of this kind back then.
“Just—”
“Nervous?” Jesse finished for Beckett before setting his eyes on the screen.
“Just surprised you seem to be so good at all of this. You were a Ranger. I wasn’t aware you did this kind of stuff in the Army,” Beckett said instead, but yeah, the man had to be nervous. There was more than one life hanging in the balance. It wasn’t just Sydney out there but Griffin, Nick, and the others.
“Man of many skills.” Jesse winked at Beckett before returning his focus to the screens, inching closer to the table against the one wall.
“It still amazes me Carter did all of this so fast.” Savanna spied Beckett open his palms to the air before switching her attention back to the one laptop with the little green dots moving.
She spotted who she was fairly certain was Griffin from the camera mounted to Gray’s chest on the second laptop. And Nick appeared to be close to the two of them. Carter, Jack, and Oliver had gone the opposite way. Three and three.
“Maybe you’d care to enlighten us sometime about that odd gap in time between when you left the Army and came home,” Beckett said as if needing to fill the silence as they tracked the team’s movements.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Jesse said before reaching for the radio. “Midas, you have a possible tango on approach at your ten o’clock. Hundred paces out. Could be Archer or an enemy. Be careful.”
Savanna was more concerned Sydney would accidentally shoot them, but that was another reason they’d suggested bringing Nick with them. He hadn’t worn face paint, so he’d be more recognizable to her as a friendly.
“Midas is . . .?” she asked him.
“Griffin’s call sign,” Jesse answered before sending another message when Carter and his men closed in on another possible target, and he issued the team the warning.
“This is Midas. Tango down. Not Archer,” Griffin came over the line.
Down to eight.
“This is Ace,” someone that sounded like Jack said. “Target down.”
Seven.
“I think I have Archer’s position. Digitally sending the coordinates to you now,” Jesse said a moment later, noting that another tango had been taken out, but not by anyone on their team, which meant it was Sydney’s handiwork.
“Roger that,” a few of the guys answered at the same time.
“This is Midas. I’ll move to that location,” Griffin said, and she assumed he’d handle Sydney since he had Nick with him.
“This is going well, right?” Savanna asked a moment later, then closed her eyes, worried she might have jinxed the operation. After everything had gone so smoothly in Rome, would they be so lucky again tonight?
“It’s okay. Everything will be fine.” Beckett lightly gripped her shoulder from behind, and she reached back and patted his hand in thanks while opening her eyes.
“Be advised,” Jesse began in a rush a moment later, which had Savanna’s heart racing. “If she’s still in that general area, you should be closing in on her soon, but you have company. Two tangos collapsing on your position from your three and nine o’clock.”
Despite the cypress trees cutting in and out of the picture, the camera on Gray’s chest gave her a view of Griffin and Nick stealthily advancing ahead of him. Griffin appeared to have night-vision goggles on as well as he moved with his rifle positioned in front of him.
“Roger that,” Gray responded a moment later, just as the sound of gunfire popped over the radio.
“It’s Nick, don’t shoot,” he called out, but then more shots were fired, and Savanna couldn’t see exactly what was going on.
It was a blur and rush of movements.
The two “enemy” dots on the screen were still active, and they were heading toward the three green lights—the good guys.
Shit. Savanna jumped from her seat, her heart battling to break free as adrenaline surged through her.
No one was talking. No one was telling them what was going on, and she could barely see.
“Fuck. Get down,” someone yelled . . . and that someone was Griffin.
Jesse stood when more gunshots burst over the radio, and then two enemy lights stopped moving.
But . . . number three stopped too.
“What’s going on? What happened?” She bent forward and leaned closer to the screen to try and see through Gray’s camera lens.
“I think . . . I think Griffin just took a fucking bullet for Nick,” Jesse exclaimed, and that’s when Savanna saw Gray standing over Griffin as he lay still on the ground. “Not the throat, damn it,” he added, destroying her hope the vest had stopped the bullet.
“No, no,” she cried, reliving the moment Marcus was killed right before her eyes, and now . . .
Disbelief became like a vise around her throat, strangling her breath. And tears streamed down her face as she clutched her chest and stumbled back, but Beckett caught her before she fell and blacked out.