Twenty-Seven #2
Ice was moving too, angling uphill from the west, but Justin had the shorter line.
Gunfire followed him up the ridge.
Orlov and the remaining convoy security were no longer trying to hold the road. They were buying seconds. Seconds were all a retrieval team needed.
Anya fired once from above. One collector spun backward and tumbled into the brush. The second kept coming.
Irina was somewhere close now, invisible again, shaping the lane, forcing Anya’s angles to collapse.
Justin heard the warning in the silence—a hum beneath the chaos, the sense that everything was about to snap.
This was it. The real move.
He crested the ridge just as the second collector hit Anya’s position.
She dropped the rifle and turned into the grab before the man’s hands could close around her shoulders. Fast. Brutal. Efficient. Her elbow drove under his chin. Her knee took his centerline. The restraint pack across his back shifted as he stumbled, but he didn’t go down.
He was trained. Good enough to survive the first mistake. Not good enough to survive the second.
Justin put two rounds into the man’s chest from ten feet away.
The collector folded backward into the snow.
Anya bent for the rifle— And Irina came out of the storm.
No warning. No sound.
Just sudden movement at Anya’s six, one gloved hand snapping for her wrist while the other drove a compact injector toward the exposed side of her neck.
Justin moved on instinct. He slammed into Anya from the side. The three of them crashed into the snow and rock together.
Anya hit first and rolled.
Justin took the impact across his shoulder and ribs, twisted—came up against her instead of away.
For one disorienting second, his world narrowed to breath and heat and the violent reality that she was alive under his hands.
Her fingers locked onto his jacket. Not for balance.
For him.
Their faces were inches apart. Snow melting against skin, breath sharp and uneven between them.
“You’re hit?” she demanded.
“Not yet.”
The answer was automatic. Useless.
Her grip tightened once, hard enough to feel through layers. Not fear. Something closer to fury that he was here, that he had chosen to be here, that he would do it again.
His hand came up without permission, bracing at the back of her neck—not pulling her closer, not pushing her away. Holding. Grounding.
Then the moment snapped.
A hot concussive punch just under the shoulder blade, enough to spin him sideways and drive the breath clean out of him.
For one suspended second, there was no pain. Only awareness. Hit. Then pain arrived all at once. Bright. Sharp. Furious.
Anya’s voice cut through it. “Justin!”
“I’m up!” He wasn’t. Not fully. But he got the rifle back into line anyway as Irina disengaged with infuriating speed, already moving downhill, already abandoning the failed grab for the cleaner objective of survival.
Anya rose in the same heartbeat, blood on her sleeve from the fall, eyes gone winter-flat. She fired once.
The round tore through Irina’s coat high along the ribs and drove the woman into a stumble, but not enough. Never enough.
Orlov appeared below the ridge, one arm raised in a sharp signal. Withdrawal. The hunters broke contact instantly. Like a machine releasing tension.
The remaining convoy men fell back into the tunnel’s shadow. The rear escort vehicle reversed through the storm. Irina vanished into the tree line, wounded but moving. Orlov gave one last controlled burst toward the ridge to pin Charlie Team in place while the retrieval team abandoned the road.
And then they were gone. Just like that.
The whole attack collapsed back into snow and darkness, the mountain echoing with the awful, endless blare of the dead civilian’s truck horn—a sound that felt like a wound no storm could bury.
Justin tried to stand and nearly blacked out.
Anya was there before the second wave of pain hit. Her hands were on him. Checking. Searching. Then stopping. Just for a second. As if confirming he was still there. Still hers to fight beside. “Stay still.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.” The word came out raw and clipped and far too close to panic for either of them to acknowledge.
Ice hit the ridgeline seconds later with Frosty behind him.
One look at Justin and Ice’s expression went flat. “That’s bad.”
“Super helpful,” Justin muttered through clenched teeth.
Frosty dropped beside them and started tearing open a field kit.
Below, Gucci’s voice came over comms, tight with fury. “They’re exfiling through the tunnel! I can’t get a clean—”
“Do not chase,” Justin snapped. The effort of saying it hurt more than the bullet.
No one moved. Then Ice nodded once. “Copy.”
Good.
Because that was how men died in mountains like this. Chasing hunters into terrain they did not control.
Frosty cut Justin’s jacket open and assessed the wound with clinical speed. “Through-and-through.”
Good enough.
Justin exhaled once, slowly. “Civilian?”
Ice’s jaw tightened. “Gone.”
Anya didn’t look away from Justin’s face.
He wished she would. Because what he saw in her expression made the bullet feel secondary. Not fear. Rage. At herself. At the trap. At him for getting hit. Probably all three.
The horn from the truck below finally died, leaving the mountain in a terrible silence broken only by the wind and Charlie Team’s breathing.
Justin forced himself upright with Ice’s help. Pain flared, slicing his senses razor-sharp, the world narrowing to breathe, balance, and stubborn will. He stayed on his feet anyway.
Anya rose with him. Her rifle hung forgotten at her side for the first time since he’d met her. “They wanted me in the transport,” she said quietly.
No one answered.
“They never planned to fight this to the finish.”
Ice adjusted the field dressing against Justin’s shoulder.
“No. They just wanted to prove they could touch you.”
Anya’s eyes shifted toward the tunnel mouth, now half-swallowed in snow and distance. “They did more than that.”
Justin followed her gaze.
The dead civilian in the truck below. The failed grab. The blood on the snow. The retrieval team escaped intact enough to try again.
Yes. They had.
He straightened slowly and hissed once as Frosty secured the final wrap.
Then he looked back at her. “That was their first mistake.”
Anya met his eyes.
There were a dozen things in that look. Fury. Focus. Guilt. Something hotter and more dangerous beneath all of it. Then she nodded once. Sharp. Cold. Decisive.
“Then next time,” she said, voice low enough that only he and Ice could hear, “we don’t let them leave.”
The storm answered for no one.