Chapter 47
CHAPTER 47
DAMIEN
T he plan was fucked.
Every aspect, literally blown to shreds. The buildings our lads were supposed to be sniping from were just hollowed-out shells with hardly any cover. Every road leading into the city center was buried under piles of rubble. And it was going to be real fucking hard to meet Alexi in the middle of the Ha’penny Bridge when most of the Ha’penny Bridge was at the bottom of the fucking Liffey.
We’d gotten there early to take our positions without being seen, but there’d been no point. The place was a goddamn ghost town. No cars could get through. No buildings were inhabitable. There was no mobile network or electricity. The occasional drone flew overhead, which we were able to avoid, but other than that, the only sounds in the city were the soft clanking of metal debris floating in the river and the occasional crash as another chunk of bricks fell off a building.
Even the birds had abandoned Dublin.
“Nothin’.” Jack shook her head as she reattached a CB radio to her shoulder.
Jack and I had ducked into Merchant’s Arch to wait for noon. It was a narrow stone tunnel across from the Ha’penny Bridge with decent coverage and good visibility of the meeting point.
If the meeting point still existed.
Jack had been on the radio all morning, hoping to get in touch with some active-duty Irish soldiers who might be willing to go rogue and help us out or at least provide us with some intel about Alexi’s whereabouts in the city, but the channels were all dead.
There was no more fighting. No more bombing. No more Dublin. Jack and her team had considered themselves to be patriots—Ireland’s last line of defense—but looking around, there was nothing left to defend. We were too late. And Alexi wasn’t fucking coming anyway.
Slapping a hand on my shoulder, Jack squinted into the sun-drenched wasteland outside. “Looks like it’s just us, pretty boy.”
I nodded slowly. I’d expected the worst, but what I hadn’t expected was … nothing.
“He’s not comin’,” I muttered, and as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that was the real reason why my stomach was knots and my heart was in my throat. Not because I was afraid Alexi would come, but because I was afraid that he wouldn’t. I was afraid that I was so insignificant to him that my abduction wasn’t worth leaving his precious Kremlin over.
“Ahh, cheer up.” Jack gave my shoulder a shake. “He’ll be here. Ya matter more than ya think, Lenin .”
Then, she stared out at the blue sky over the battered city and took a deep breath. “Beautiful day to kill a cunt.”
A small light flashed three times from the exposed third story of the building across the river from us. Oscar was giving the signal that it was twelve o’clock. Everyone was in position.
Jack grinned. “Showtime, VP.”
Shielding my eyes from the sun, I walked across Aston Quay and up the steps to what was left of the Ha’penny Bridge. It felt like I was walking the plank. The end of the bridge was jagged and scorched, and below it, just beneath the surface of the water, were the pointed white arches that I was supposed to be standing under.
Glancing at the buildings across the river where Oscar, Wheezy, and Paul were stationed, I exhaled heavily. I knew they were in hiding, but part of me had hoped to catch a glimpse of one of them. To see some sign that I wasn’t completely alone.
That sign came in the form of a scream.
A scream that had been burned into my brain over the last two weeks.
Clover.
My heart thundered as I spun around, my senses reaching out in all directions. I scanned every building, every burned-out car, looking for movement, a flash of auburn hair, but it wasn’t until she screamed again that I zeroed in on her location. Almost a block away, up Aston Quay, a Russian soldier was marching over the piles of rubble in the street, dragging a woman with a bag over her head by the arm.
And sticking out the bottom of that bag was a curtain of dark red hair.
“Clo!” I shouted, bounding down the steps and taking off after them.
“Damien, wait!” Jack hissed from the tunnel, trying not to blow her cover, but I was already gone.
Bricks and plaster flew behind me as I charged up Aston Quay.
Clover’s thrashing slowed them down, allowing me to gain on them, and the sounds of her struggle only pushed me to run faster.
Crossing O’Connell Street, she was finally able to get her footing and pulled away from the fucker completely before being tackled to the ground.
“Clo!” I shouted again, a hill of debris crumbling out from under my feet as I fought to get over to her.
“Damien!” Jack called from behind me. “Come back, goddamn it!”
When I finally crested the hill and glanced up, Clover’s kicking, screaming body was draped over her captor’s shoulder as he disappeared into the building on the corner through a broken glass door.
“Fuck!”
The O’Connell Bridge House was easily two or three times taller than the other buildings in that area, and it was still perfectly intact. It could take hours to find her in there.
If they didn’t find me first.
No.
I would find her. As long as I could hear her, I could find her. And I could hear her panicked squeals and grunts of frustration loud and fucking clear as I pulled the knife from my boot and charged in through a hole in the shattered glass.
The moment my feet hit the tiled floor of the lobby, two pairs of arms grabbed both of mine, jerking them behind my back as an unseen foot kicked the back of my knees, sending me to the floor. I managed to hold on to my knife, but it didn’t matter. I was completely immobilized and surrounded by at least twenty Russian soldiers as I stared up at the motherfucker who’d dared to put his hands on my girl. The bastard was grinning from ear to ear as he held the back of Clo’s thighs with one hand and a small black device with the other.
“Put her down,” I snarled in Russian. “That is an order from your vice president!”
The arsehole complied, but he did it with a smirk that made my blood run cold.
Spinning her around, he then yanked the bag off her head.
And her long auburn hair came off with it.
A terrified brunette teenager cowered before me as he pressed a button on the device in his hand, filling the room with the sound of Clo’s whimpers and screams. Then, it was filled with the laughter of every man in that room.
Drone footage. That was the only explanation. Clo had had multiple run-ins with the drones in Howth. They must have extracted the audio of her voice and used it to lure me into their hive.
Jack had been right. It was a—
Jack!
Fuck!
I turned and looked over my shoulder just in time to see Jack’s sweat-drenched face as she lifted the Russian machine gun to her shoulder and took aim. Throwing myself forward, I managed to duck just before a hail of bullets sprayed into the building, tearing into a quarter of the soldiers in the room before a sickening click sounded behind me.
No.
The bullets stopped.
Then started again … in reverse.
By the time I turned to look, Jack was already on the ground, and Paul was running across the O’Connell Bridge toward her. Throwing his gun into the Liffey, he sprinted the rest of the way with his hands in the air, but before he could get to her, three quick pops from a soldier behind me took him out as well. He fell face down in the middle of the intersection, just a few meters away from Jack.
As they hauled me to my feet and dragged me deeper into their hive, I felt every ounce of humanity drain from my body.
I understood now why the villagers had feared Kellen.
Called him the Devil, said he’d killed his own father.
Because he was.
And he had.
And he was about to do it again.