Chapter 23
KONSTANTIN
The freezing, salty wind off the North End coast bites at my face, but I don't feel a thing.
Through the green thermal optics of my night-vision goggles, the abandoned Moretti oil refinery is a rusted graveyard. We're crouched in the tall, dead grass outside the fence.
To my left, Ivan is a shadow with his suppressed rifle raised and perfectly still. Behind us, fifty of my best men are fanned out in total silence, melting right into the dark.
A mile down the dirt access road, my armored command vehicle sits idling in the dark behind a thick grove of dead pine trees.
Inside it is my entire world, guarded by ten of my absolute best shooters, led by Yuri.
Leaving her in that truck was the hardest thing I've ever done, but my mind is ruthlessly focused now. The King is at war.
Through the scope, I watch two Italian guards standing near the chain-link gates. They're smoking cigarettes with their assault rifles hanging lazily from their slings, thinking they're completely unseen.
"Watchtowers are locked," Ivan whispers through the comms in my ear. "Snipers have the angles."
"Take them," I order.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
Three muffled cracks echo in the freezing air from the hills behind us. The two guards at the gate drop to the dirt alongside the sniper in the western watchtower.
"Move," I command.
We erupt from the grass. There's no more creeping around.
Two of my breaching specialists sprint forward, slapping bricks of C-4 to the rusted hinges of the main gates and the concrete pillars holding them up.
We stack against the barricades, pressing our backs to the cold stone and bracing ourselves.
"Going loud in three... two... one."
The explosion is deafening. The iron gates blow off their tracks, twisting into jagged shrapnel and flying fifty feet into the compound in a blinding flash of orange fire. The shockwave rattles the teeth in my skull and kicks up a haze of concrete dust.
The Italians' illusion of safety shatters instantly. Sirens begin to wail across the refinery. Floodlights snap on and sweep the cracked asphalt, but the wolves are already inside the cage.
"Push!" I yell, dropping my night-vision goggles and bringing my rifle to my shoulder.
We flood the main courtyard, our boots pounding the asphalt. But the Italians are dug in, and they don't roll over. The second we cross the threshold, the courtyard turns into an absolute battleground.
Automatic gunfire rips through the night from the rusted catwalks and industrial silos above us. A machine gun opens up from a reinforced bunker on our right, spitting a stream of tracer rounds that chew through the concrete right at our feet.
"Contact right! Suppressing fire!" Ivan yells over the chaos.
A young soldier next to me takes a heavy-caliber round directly to the throat. His blood sprays across my tactical vest as he collapses, dead before he even hits the ground.
Two more of my men are cut down instantly, their armor shattering under the sheer volume of the Italian crossfire.
"Spread out! Get off the X!" I scream, diving behind a rusted fuel tank as bullets spark and ping violently off the metal inches from my head.
The smell of gunpowder, diesel fuel, and fresh blood fills the ocean air. It's absolute chaos. I lean out from cover, letting the red dot of my sight find the muzzle flash on the catwalk above.
I squeeze the trigger.
The Italian soldier flips over the railing and falls thirty feet, crashing into a stack of steel pipes.
"We're pinned down by that heavy gun!" Ivan shouts into the comms. He reloads his rifle behind a concrete pillar while chunks of stone are blasted away by the machine gun. "We lost six men! The courtyard is a kill zone!"
"Ivan, take Alpha Team and spray a wall of fire on that bunker!" I order, letting my training override the adrenaline. "Bravo Team, on me! We're flanking through the pipes!"
"Copy! Lighting them up!" Ivan yells. He steps out and fires his rifle from the shoulder, ordering a dozen men to pour thousands of rounds directly into the bunker to keep the Italian gunner’s head down.
Under the cover of Ivan’s deafening fire, I lead eight men into the maze of industrial pipes lining the courtyard. It's dark, tight, and choking with the smell of sulfur. Steam hisses loudly from bullet holes in the pressurized valves around us.
We move like ghosts through the steel maze to flank the bunker. But as we round a boiler, we run right into a four-man Italian patrol rushing to back up the gunner.
We're too close for rifles.
The rifle drops to hang from its sling as the combat knife clears my chest rig in one smooth motion.
The monster my father built takes over.
The first Italian barely reacts before the six-inch blade drives up beneath his tactical vest and straight into his ribs. A wet gasp escapes him, blood bubbling over his lips.
The knife tears free. I pivot, seize the barrel of the second man’s shotgun, and wrench it downward so the blast punches harmlessly into the dirt. A heavy boot slams into his knee, snapping the joint backward with a sickening crack, and the blade sinks deep into his neck.
My men kill the other two in brutal hand-to-hand combat. I pull my blade free and wipe the hot blood on my tactical pants, my hands left bruised and bleeding. My chest heaves with exertion. But I can’t stop.
We push up the metal grate stairs to the bunker, taking the heavy machine gunner completely by surprise. I don't give him time to turn the massive weapon around. I draw my pistol and put a bullet through the side of his head.
The heavy gun goes silent.
"Gun is down!" I call out into the comms. "Push the processing floor! Break them!"
With the gun down, my men surge forward into the processing plant that separates the courtyard from the control room.
But the Italians are fighting like cornered rats. Just as we breach the processing floor, a rocket screams down from a high catwalk.
"Incoming! Get down!" I yell.
The rocket slams into a chemical holding tank on the left side of the warehouse.
The explosion is catastrophic. A fireball rolls across the ceiling, raining burning chemicals and shrapnel down over us.
The shockwave hurls me into a steel beam, the impact ripping the air from my lungs. A high, piercing ring floods my ears. On the left flank, roaring flames cut off half my strike team, swallowing three of my men whole.
“Push through the fire!” The order tears from my throat as blood is wiped from my eyes. Blind shots are fired into the thick black smoke, tracking the muzzle flashes of Italian shooters.
The fight turns savage. Room by room. Pipe by pipe. Smoke and the metallic stench of blood clog the air, each breath a struggle. We’re bleeding out, and my magazines are running dangerously low.
“Boss.” Ivan’s voice cracks through the comms, sharp and frantic, cutting through gunfire. “Boss, the perimeter team isn’t answering.”
Everything goes still behind the concrete barricade.
My blood turns to ice.
“Repeat.”
"I'm calling the command truck," Ivan says, his voice tight. "Yuri and the perimeter guards aren't answering. I've got nothing but dead air."
No.
A wave of panic claws its way up my throat. I left ten of my best shooters guarding that truck. If they aren't answering, it means they were ambushed. It means the Italians flanked us.
It means they have Helena.
The cold tactician is gone. The desperate husband takes over.
"Covering fire!" I yell, stepping right out from behind the barricade. I don't care about the bullets flying past my head or the burning shrapnel. I raise my rifle and hold the trigger down, emptying the rest of my magazine in one long sweep that shreds the rest of the Italians on the floor.
"Konstantin, wait!" Ivan yells, but I'm already sprinting.
I drop the empty rifle and draw my pistol, moving as fast as I can through the burning warehouse. I leave a trail of bodies behind me, shooting anything that moves in the thick smoke.
I burst through the double doors at the end of the plant and step into the shadows of the radio antennas. At the base of the tower sits the reinforced concrete bunker. The control room.
My lungs are burning, and my tactical vest is torn up from shrapnel, but I don't stop.
Ivan catches up to me as I reach the steel doors. He doesn't hesitate. He kicks the latch and shatters the lock. We flood into the room with our weapons raised, ready to kill everyone inside to get to my wife.
"Nobody moves!" I yell, sweeping the room with my pistol.
I stop cold. The control room is full of glowing server racks and monitors, but there aren't any Italian hackers at the console.
Sitting in the chair, his hands flying across the keyboard of my stolen tablet, is Arthur Blackwood, battered and sweating.
Standing behind him, with a gun pressed to the back of his head, is Don Moretti.
"Ah, the Russian," Moretti sneers. He doesn't lower his gun. "You found me, but you're too late, Konstantin. The firewalls are broken. Arthur's hitting the final keys to bypass your security and download the decryption keys."
"Step away from the console, Moretti," I say. "You've got nowhere to run. My men killed everyone on your perimeter. It's over."
"Is it?" Moretti smiles. It's a sick expression that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He taps his earpiece. "Bring her in."
My heart stops.
A side door at the back of the room kicks open. Two guys drag a struggling figure into the bright light and haul her straight to the console.
It’sHelena. Her lip is bleeding, and her eyes are wide with terror.
They force her to her knees right beside her father's chair. Moretti shifts his aim and presses the barrel of his gun to her temple.
"Your men on the perimeter were very good," Moretti mocks. He watches the color drain from my face. "But they weren't expecting my men to use the underground tunnels to flank the road. I told you, Konstantin. I always take what I want."