10. Demin
DEMIN
"Match my steps," I murmur, not turning my head. "When I crouch, you crouch. When I stop, you're a statue."
"I've got it." Isabela's voice has a thread in it that wasn't there on the plane.
She's terrified and I'm not surprised. I should've made her stay on the fucking plane, or at the very least in the SUV.
This is no place for someone shaking like a leaf.
I knew she couldn't handle this and I went against my better judgment to let her.
I'm foolish, swayed by my hormones and my conflicting desire for her.
Mishka comes up on my right with his rifle slung, lifting two fingers toward the dark.
"Mikhail's holding the east wall," he says. "He says the roof men rotate every twenty. We've got maybe twelve minutes before the next pair walks the south corner."
"Then we don't waste them." I key the radio once. "Teams—Bart, take four and go for the lab. Mishka is with me for the old man. Mikhail, hold the wall and keep that gate from closing behind us. Nobody fires until I do. Once I do, you don't stop."
A run of clicks answers me as Bart peels off into the darkness with his four, swallowed by it inside of three steps. The rest of us drift the other way along the wall toward the gap Mikhail's already cut in the fence.
I've been playing this out in my head on repeat for three and a half hours. The minute the landing gear hit the tarmac, my heart started pumping adrenaline, and I have enough of it coursing through my body right now to fuel a small army. More than normal.
But normally, I don't have a woman behind me to protect. It's a strange sensation, but I feel this powerful obligation to walk her out of here alive. Why, I could never tell you, but I do.
Isabela's hand finds the back of my jacket and grips it.
"Stay on me," I tell her quietly. "Whatever you see, you keep your eyes on my back and your feet moving. You don't stop for anything."
"What if you stop?" she whispers harshly. I can hear the fear in her voice. She can’t even speak without her tone quavering.
"Then there's a reason, and you trust it." I check the angle of the wall, the spacing of the men ahead. "You can hate me on the plane home. Right now, I'm the only thing between you and a bad night. Eyes on my back."
She doesn't answer, but I feel her grip tighten as we reach the fence. Mikhail's crouched against the cinderblock with two of his men. He's nothing more than a black shape with white eyes, and he tips his chin at the courtyard beyond.
"Two on the door," he breathes. "Quiet so far."
"Keep it that way as long as you can." I bring my rifle up. "Go."
The first part is fast and almost silent. So smooth, I almost think we're going to get away with it. His men cross the open ground in a crouch while the two Solanos at the door are still looking the other way. Then somewhere above us a voice calls out in Spanish, and the silence breaks all at once.
After that, it's noise.
There's no other way to describe what a place sounds like when war breaks out.
Gunfire stacks on gunfire until it's one long, tearing roar.
Shouting in two languages erupts, boots slamming concrete, glass somewhere shattering and raining down.
Muzzle flashes strobe the courtyard white and then black, white and then black, and I weave through it with my hand locked backward around Isabela's wrist, pulling her in my wake.
"Down," I bark and shove her behind a planter as something chews the wall where her head was. "Stay."
"Demin—"
"Stay."
I lean out, find the mark, and the rifle does its work, dropping a body to a heap on the gravel.
Mishka crouches at my flank doing the same, the two of us cutting a lane toward the long building at the back.
If I look at their faces, they become human and I risk being consumed with guilt.
But when my focus is on the mission, they become nothing more than shapes in the darkness.
Behind me, Isabela's voice climbs over the din. "They're everywhere, there's too many—"
"They're not everywhere. They're just loud." I drop back a step, putting myself between her and the open courtyard, my hand finding her shoulder. "Look at me. Breathe. We move on three."
Her wide, frightened eyes lock onto mine and she nods a small jerk of her chin. For a split second, she clings to me, and an overwhelming urge to rush her out of here hits. It's a stabbing pain in my chest, like I've been hit with a round, but I force it down.
Fucking hell, this is a bad idea. "Three," I say, and we dart away from cover. Isabela remains so close I could trip over her feet, which is a good thing, but she's slowing us down.
"Move," I shout over my shoulder, and she picks up the space, never letting go of my vest.
When we make the doorway, Mishka swings in first and clears it, and then we're inside the housing unit, and the roar drops to a muffled thunder behind the walls.
A bare hallway stretches out ahead of us with one bulb swinging slowly and plaster dusting down from the ceiling with every impact outside.
"Which door," I demand, jerking her forward. She tries to get past me, but I catch her arm.
"Last one," she says, now panicked more than afraid. They could have men in that room, though, and running ahead would get her killed.
"Behind me," I growl, pushing her back, but she slams a fist into my vest, as if that's going to do anything.
"He needs me. He's probably terrified. Let me go to him!" The nurturing quality of this woman as she reads the situation is astounding, enough to make her push past her own fear, but she has no clue the danger.
"Get the fuck behind me and stay there," I order her, grabbing a handful of that thick, dark hair. I'm not losing her, just like I'd put my life on the line for any of my men. We don't do jobs unless we're certain we can come out unscathed, and she's not trained for this.
Isabela glares but falls back, and we zip down the hall, Mishka covering our six. The last door is locked, but I don't bother with the handle. Two kicks and the frame splinters, slamming the door inward against the wall.
The room is small and dark, and a thin shape jerks upright on a cot in the corner, hands flying up.
"?No, no, por favor!" He's frantic, just as she said he'd be, and I can't find her, despite my groping.
"Papa." Isabela is past me before I can stop her this time, dropping to her knees at the cot. "Papa, soy yo. Isabela."
The old man goes still but I hear him weeping.
In the bad light, I can see what Solano's done to him.
Isabela's bruises were painful to look at.
This man looks like the walking dead. He's cut to hell and bruises are layered upon bruises, yellow green and dark purple all mixed as if he's been beaten daily for months.
"Isabela," he whimpers. "No. No, you're not here. They told me you were—"
"I'm here." She takes his face in both hands. "I'm right here, and we're leaving, all three of us, right now."
"Leaving." He shakes his head, crumpling back down toward the cot. "There's no leaving. There's no—Mija, you don't understand what they—"
"Octavio." I step into the light so he can see me, and his eyes go wide with terror. "We don't have time to fuck around. Vámonos."
The old man is shaking like a leaf now, going paler by the second as Isabela wraps an arm around his torso and tries getting him to his feet.
He seems stubborn, like he's resisting her, but part of me knows he's in real bad shape.
We may need someone to carry him, and there are no extra hands.
With this much fighting, he may not make it.
"Why," he whispers. "Why would you—what do you want from me?"
"We’ll talk about that when we're on the plane," I tell him. "Right now, there are men dying in that courtyard to give us a way out. Get up."
"Papa, please." Isabela's voice is different than I've ever heard.
She's almost in tears, pleading with him to come.
"I know you're tired and you're giving up, but I need you.
You have to get up. You have to come with us, Papa.
" It's almost physically painful to think of how much she must be feeling.
When I think of my own father, I feel a jolt of sympathy, but we don't have time for weakness.
"Boss!" Mishka shouts, and I know our time is running out.
For a second he doesn't move, and I think we're going to have to carry him. But his hand closes around hers. "Okay," he breathes. "Okay, Mija. Okay."
"Up," I say. "Stay between us. Mishka, lead."
We move back down the hall in a tight knot, the old man wedged between his daughter and me, and Mishka hits the door.
The courtyard outside has thinned, the worst of it pushed toward the lab end where Bart's team is working, but I’m not stupid enough to think we'll get away easily.
They know exactly why we're here now, and Solano is never going to lie down and surrender.
We're halfway across the open ground toward the gap in the fence when the second wave hits us.
It comes from the south side, the corner Mikhail warned me about, a fresh group of them pouring out of a building we'd written off as empty.
The noise swells again, doubled, and rounds start snapping past us close enough to feel.
"Go, go, go!" I shove Octavio forward into Mishka's hands. "Take him. To the fence. Now."
Mishka doesn't argue. He gets a fist in the old man's collar and drags him into a run as two more of my men fold in around them, and they make for the gap in a low scramble. I'm turning to grab Isabela, but she's not there. The entire way in, she was grabbing me, and now she's gone.
My eyes search frantically in the darkness, and I find her in a half-second, ten feet back down on the ground where she's gone sprawling over something in the darkness. She's scrambling to get her feet under her as rounds kick up dirt around her, and my heart stops.