Chapter 8
Fox yanked off his balaclava and pushed past Pav. “Harper.”
Pav clocked the shift immediately—Fox’s voice softened, stripped of command.
Harper’s eyes went wide. “Thom?”
“Yeah.” Fox pulled her into a brief, crushing hug, his rifle swinging awkwardly over his shoulder. “It’s me.”
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, or a sob, her hands fisted in the back of his jacket. “How did…where…”
Pav switched his attention to the compound outside. Flames reached for the sky, consuming the administration building. Gunfire still broke the dark in short, brutal bursts. Black smoke dirtied the falling snow.
They didn’t have time for reunions.
“I’ll explain later. What matters now is getting you out of here.” Fox released Harper and held her at arm’s length, his gaze flicking past her to the women clustered in the barrack. “This wasn’t the plan—”
“I don’t care.” Her chin lifted, her voice hoarse. “All of us or none of us.”
Fox exhaled and shook his head. “Okay. We take them all.”
Harper’s shoulders dropped a fraction, her eyes gleaming bright as she nodded.
Fox tapped his comms. “Zak. We’re taking all the women. Twelve.”
Static, then Zak’s voice. “We don’t have transport for twelve extra people.”
Fox frowned. “Then we improvise.”
Every extra body slowed extraction. Twelve women. Hostile terrain. A storm moving in fast, visibility already degrading. This was how missions unraveled.
But Fox had made the call.
Harper turned back to the barrack, switching seamlessly into Russian. “Everyone up. Stay together.”
The women scrambled to their feet, some crying, others, their faces blank with fear.
Pav followed Harper into the barrack. “Injured?”
“Three,” Harper said without looking at him. “Mobile, but weak.”
“The weak ones stay.”
Her head snapped up. “Excuse me?”
“We can’t carry casualties through a firefight.”
“They’re not dead weight.” Her voice was glass. “They’re people. And we’re taking all of them.”
Pav held her gaze. Bruises darkened her face. She was shaking, but she didn’t flinch.
Fox stepped between them. “Pav. We take them all. Figure it out.”
Pav’s jaw locked.
Fuck.
“Get them ready to move.” Pav pivoted away from her and turned toward the door. “Zak. Give us a diversion. Fox and I are securing vehicles.” He glanced back. “Fox, on me.”
He pushed back into the chaos of the night, Fox tight on his six.
Snow was falling thicker now, fat flakes blurring in the faint moonlight, melting into the fabric of his balaclava. Heat rolled across the yard in suffocating waves from the conflagration that had once been an admin building.
The vehicles were where he’d spotted them earlier, close to the fence. Two jeeps. Old. Soviet-era but functional.
He cut across the yard in a crouch. Movement intersected his path. Two guards broke from cover, sprinting for the vehicles, rifles half-raised, panic taut in their posture.
Fox didn’t hesitate. “Two. You take left.”
“Copy.”
They split on instinct.
Pav angled wide, using the burning building as backlight and cover.
The guard saw him a second too late—shouted, swinging his rifle around.
Pav closed the distance in two strides. He knocked the barrel aside with his forearm and drove the rifle stock into the man’s temple. The guard crumpled without a sound.
To Pav’s right, Fox caught his man mid-turn, locked an arm around his throat and dragged him down behind the jeep. No gunshot. No wasted movement.
Pav yanked open the driver’s door of the first jeep. No keys. Of course. He pulled out his knife, jammed it into the ignition housing, and twisted. Wires sparked. The engine wheezed, then caught, vibrating through the frame.
Fox vaulted into the second jeep, his teeth flashing white in the red-black haze. “Like riding a bike.”
“If the bike was built in 1987,” Pav muttered.
Fox gunned the engine.
Pav tapped his throat mic. “Diversion?”
“Thirty seconds,” Zak replied. “Get back to the barrack. I’ll bring the fireworks.”
Pav swung the jeep around, tires churning snow.
“Thirty seconds, Zak,” Fox echoed. “No pressure.”
They accelerated in tandem back across the compound. The women had spilled out of the barrack. Harper moved between them—directing the stronger ones to support the injured, forming them into groups that moved as units.
She’d turned chaos into a system in under thirty seconds.
Pav’s knuckles hurt as he skidded to a halt outside the barrack. Fox pulled in beside him.
“Load up!” Fox bellowed as he exited the jeep. “Pack in. Now!”
The women surged forward. Too slow.
Pav scanned the perimeter. Guards were regrouping near the main gate—shouting, pointing, pulling themselves back together.
Ninety seconds. Maybe less.
BOOM.
The generator didn’t just catch fire—it detonated.
Flames punched thirty feet into the air. The shockwave jarred Pav’s teeth and knocked snow loose from the roofs. Every remaining light in the compound died at once.
Guards broke rank and scattered.
Fox shielded his eyes from the glare. “Zak, you beautiful bastard,”
Zak emerged, jogging through the thick smoke, grin feral. “I used all the C4.”
Women scrambled into the jeeps. Harper counted heads, redirected where necessary. Pav stayed on the perimeter, rifle up.
The guards at the gate were recovering. Three turned back toward the barrack, rifles coming up.
Pav fired—short, controlled bursts. Two went down. The third dove for cover. Return fire stitched across the barrack wall behind him, wood exploding.
“Hustle!” Zak shouted, already in one of the jeeps, the engine running.
Harper was crouched in the snow beside a woman on her hands and knees. The girl’s face was gray. Blood soaked her shirt.
Pav crossed to them. “No time. Leave her.”
“She’s been shot.” Harper spun, eyes blazing. “We take everyone. Including Sasha.”
His breath fogged between them. Past Harper’s shoulder, the girl shook so hard her teeth clicked. Blood soaked the front of her shirt.
He hissed air between his teeth, then slung his rifle and scooped the woman up. She weighed nothing—bones and terror wrapped in fabric. Fury moved through him, cold and razor-sharp. These bastards had done this.
Gunfire chattered, and a round slammed into the barrack wall close enough that the air pressure whispered against Pav’s skin. He boosted the woman into the jeep. Hands reached out—caught her, pulled her in, wrapping her in blankets.
Pav turned back for Harper.
“Fox, we have contact!” Zak yelled from the driver’s seat. “Multiple hostiles closing from the east!”
“Fucking hustle.” Fox slid into the passenger seat beside Zak.
Pav caught Harper’s arm and pulled her into motion.
“Don’t—” she snapped, stumbling.
“Contact rear!” Zak threw his jeep into reverse, spinning the rear end wide. Through the smoke a truck barreled toward them, men hanging from the windows, rifles ready. “Multiple hostiles inbound.”
“Go, go, go!” Fox hammered the door with his fist.
“In.” Pav bundled Harper into the passenger seat of the other jeep, one hand shielding her head from the frame.
She came up swinging, shoving his shoulder. “Jesus Christ—warn me!”
“I did.” He grabbed her seatbelt and secured her, close enough for her breath to hit his jaw. He vaulted into the driver’s seat, foot crushing the accelerator. The jeep’s rear fishtailed. Pav corrected without thought and aimed straight for the compound’s rear gate.
Bullets stitched across the hood from his right. Incoming fire. New angle. The windshield spider-webbed.
Harper ducked with a sharp cry, then twisted in her seat. “Heads down!” she yelled over the engine’s roar. “Everyone down! Hold on to each other.”
Pav tracked Zak through bedlam. The rear gate loomed ahead—steel, chained, designed to keep people in.
Zak didn’t slow. His jeep hit the weakest post at speed. Metal squealed. The gate tore free and exploded outward in a spray of sparks and debris. The jeep bounced once and kept going.
Pav followed. The jeep lifted. For one weightless second, there was nothing under them. Then it came down hard, suspension bottoming out, the impact driving through his spine and throwing Harper against her seatbelt.
Through.
“Split up,” Fox’s voice snapped through the comms. “Regroup at the airbase!”
Zak peeled east, taillights vanishing into the snow almost immediately.
Pav turned west. Headlights flared in his mirror. Gunfire punched through the rear panel. Women screamed.
Harper twisted around again. “Stay down!”
Pav pushed the jeep harder. The terrain ahead was ugly—gullies and skeletal birch, ground that looked flat until it wasn’t.
He’d walked it on the way in. Knew where it lied to the eye.
He cut left at the last second, aiming for a narrow gap between two rocky outcrops barely visible through the sleeting snow.
The jeep scraped through, metal grinding against stone. Behind them, the truck tried to follow. Metal shrieked, and the truck wedged tight, its sides pinned by rock.
Pav didn’t slow.
Snow thickened, cloaking the road. The storm closed in around them, white and relentless. He tightened his grip on the wheel and drove straight into it.
They weren’t safe.
But they were moving.