Chapter Seventeen
Ghost
I came to with a throbbing head, bleeding stab wound, and no Safiya.
Lying on the fucking ground, I grabbed my burner and brought up my satellites as I noted the time.
The feeds loaded, and I cursed out loud. " Fuck ."
Six minutes ago. A goddamn helo exfil less than half a klick from here.
I was losing time, fast, but I'd also done my homework over the past eight years. I knew every bunker, safe house, compound, and shithole that fucking terrorist hid out in. I also had every location, US and global, under surveillance. If they were airborne in a helo, not only did I know exactly which location was within range, I could see them heading there.
Pressing a hand over the knife wound, ignoring the pain, I rolled to sit up, then assessed.
Not fatal. Yet.
Pushing to my feet, I cursed again—at the pain and my own goddamn stupidity—then I was moving.
Needing to get back to the SUV and get in the air STAT, I ran it down. I knew why Safiya had been taken, same as I knew why the fuck I wasn't dead. My HVT wanted her to get to me. If she was alive, he knew I'd come after her, and by now, he'd want to get his hands on me.
Because that was the intel I'd leaked two days ago.
Me.
The first picture.
It'd taken eight goddamn years, but I'd set it up perfectly. Infiltrating every one of his trafficking rings, using every skill at my disposal—recon, counterintelligence, cyberstalking, cyberattacks, intercepting funds transfers, satellite surveillance—and lastly myself.
I'd walked into every goddamn one of his trafficking rings and purchased a woman. Using a different identity each time, scrubbing my digital footprint from his video surveillance afterwards, I'd made sure there was no cross contamination. None of his henchmen knew the same man had been to all eighteen locations—until I'd started a drip feed two days ago of purposely leaked intel from the cell phone of a dissident already in the HVT's ranks.
The plan was a continuous campaign of slowly leaked intel over the course of a week, which'd initially been enough time to get my women relocated. Then the final leak, already programmed to hit the HVT's and every one of his henchman's cell phones five days from now, was images of me at all of his locations, implicating every goddamn person who worked for him.
He wouldn't know who'd betrayed him, and he'd aim for me.
Or he'd go underground.
Either way, my strike teams were in place, we knew all his locations, his entire organization was going down, and the HVT was already a dead man—after I got Safiya out. But if they were taking her to the heavily fortified location I was banking on, I couldn't go in solo. Which meant I needed backup and more hands on deck. Getting Safiya was now priority one. Immediately evac-ing all the other women priority two, but I couldn't be in seventeen locations at once.
Double-timing it through the forest, calculating my two different plans for backup and reinforcement on those relocations, I was racing against a crucial time clock as I made it back to the SUV.
Grabbing a shirt from my go bag, I pressed it over my wound as I got behind the wheel, then backed out of the wooded area.
Five minutes later, still fucking bleeding, I was speeding across the county toward a private airstrip I'd scouted half a dozen times. Fifteen more minutes, another glance at my sat feeds, and I was parked south of the main hangar, reviewing my options. Zeroing in an old-as-shit Cessna that'd be less likely to be reported stolen anytime soon, I got out of the SUV and broke into the hangar.
Armed with a half-empty fuel can and a shirt I'd ripped into a few shreds, I'd grabbed my ammo and firepower out of the SUV before rigging it with the gas and material.
Jogging over to the Cessna, I did a quick walk-around.
She looked flightworthy.
I checked my sat feeds again.
The helo hadn't landed yet at the location I was banking on, but the property's exterior lights were all lit up like they were expecting company.
I'd be faster than the helo in the Cessna, but I still wouldn't beat them there.
I didn't need to.
I just needed those fuckers to wait for me.
Heading back to the SUV, I lit the rags and shut the door. I was back at the Cessna, breaking in before the interior of the SUV was in flames, and I was doing the math.
Distance to my first stop, time needed to enlist help, airtime to get to the helo's location—it was going to be tight.
My whole fucking strategy was going to be tight.
While they had Safiya.
Getting in the pilot's seat, grabbing my burner, I started up the old Cessna, then dialed a number I hadn't called in years.
Helios answered on the fifth ring. "I thought you were dead."
No such luck for him. "Gear up." Running through prechecks one-handed as blood soaked through my shirt, I spotted a toolbox behind the front seats and grabbed it.
"Why?"
Opening the rusted metal box that wasn't in any better condition than the shit plane, I scored a roll of duct tape. "Mission."
"Fuck you and your missions. The last one you dragged me into, which you lied about, was because Feralyn had been kidnapped by a fucking sociopath."
He wasn't wrong, but I didn't have time for this. I also wasn't about to tell him that my half sister, his stepsister, had been taken before I'd tapped out on my own and called him in for backup as a last resort because I knew, same as me, he'd either get her back or die trying.
"Different mission." Same fucking target, though, because I hadn't been able to cut off the head of the snake eight years ago. But we'd gotten Feralyn out, eliminated the trafficking cell that'd taken her, and I'd gotten the intel on another woman's location—because that fucking bogus mission the CIA profiler had designed to test me for her Black Ops bullshit hadn't only dropped me into a firestorm. It'd leaked my identity and entire background. By the time I'd made it back stateside—without using military or Agency resources—and was holding a gun to that fucking profiler's head, my half sister and the Turkish sheepherder girl who'd given me crucial exfil intel had both been taken.
Helios didn't budge. "Like I said, fuck off. I don't give a damn what you said then or what you have to say now. We both know Feralyn was kidnapped by those traffickers because of your bullshit with SOG. You and your mission can fuck off."
He didn't have proof or the real intel on that mission, and I'd never give it to him, but Helios had been Delta Force, and we'd served at the same time. He knew the major players. He knew how every Tier One operative who'd gotten within a hundred miles of the Taliban or ISIS had a target on their backs. He also never let shit go. Not that I blamed him in this instance, but he wasn't thinking bigger picture—then or now. This was larger than human traffickers, exponentially larger. "You'll want in on this one."
"No, I won't."
I said the one word that would get his ass moving. "Baccalaureate."
There was a two-second pause. "Fifteen years and not one fucking person in JSOC's been able to get a lock on that ISIS asshole, but you're telling me you know his location?"
I'd never not known it. The only differences now were I'd eliminated some of his personal security—the son of a bitch never used his own soldiers for his close-proximity details, he'd always hired former military, usually by blackmailing them—they were heading toward a location I'd scouted, and my strike teams were in place. Eight goddamn years of planning had come to a head.
But first I was getting my number one out.
Then I was going to kill the son of a bitch behind every one of those trafficking rings, the fucking terrorist responsible for taking Safiya and Feralyn.
I answered Helios's question. "I have a location."
" Fuck ." He drew the curse out.
I didn't give him time to think. "Miami Beach." I gave Helios the address. "Be there in two hours. We'll need wings." I hung up, ripped a piece of duct tape from the roll and stretched it over my stab wound.
Then I taxied the old Cessna toward the cracked runway and lined her up.
I was wheels up when the SUV exploded.