Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

Asher's head smacked back as Radovic punched him. Pain spiked down his cheekbone, in his neck.

So laughing hadn't been the appropriate response when Radovic had asked if the funds transfer would be enough, and Yixing had snorted and said, "Two hundred and fifty is perfect for you," in English. Then added, "èr bǎi w?," quietly.

Radovic clearly didn't know what that meant, but Yunho did, and he'd had laughed at him, sending Radovic into a murderous rage. It was bad enough that he was Istomin's lackey, but now the genius kid had taken over as his favourite.

Radovic was pissed, first at Yixing, and then at Yunho laughing at him. The way he strode over with his jaw clenched and his fist cocked, Asher was sure Yunho was about to cop it. But he didn't punch Yunho. He walked past him and punched Asher right in the fucking face.

Radovic glowered at Yunho. "Every time you say something without being spoken to, your friend here gets hurt. Are we clear? "

Sure, Radovic couldn't touch Yixing, no matter how much he might have pissed him off, but he could punch the fuck out of Asher.

Asher's face hurt, his nose, his cheek, his lip, his brain ached, but he could take a whole lot more than that. Hell, Radovic had done worse than this to Asher when Asher was just eight years old. Asher snorted at him and nodded toward Yixing. "You're still second favourite, I see." Asher glanced over to Larynx who stood beside Istomin and Yixing. "Or are you third? Like when we were kids. You weren't good enough then, either."

Radovic spun to glare at Asher, murder and fire in his eyes. He pulled his knife out, and without a word, still glaring at Asher, he stabbed the knife into Yunho's thigh.

Yunho screamed through gritted teeth, the sound etched forever in Asher's mind. "Untie me and make it a fair fight," Asher spat at him.

Radovic pulled his knife out, red beading at the tip. "Speak without being spoken to again, and he gets hurt. Got it?"

"What do you want us for?" Asher said. He nodded to the monitors where data and numbers were still scrolling on the screens. "You got what you wanted."

It was Istomin who came over then. He smiled at Asher. "Oh, Mr Garin, we haven't begun with you yet. I'm afraid your pain hasn't even started yet."

Asher sneered at him.

Istomin's expression was thoughtful. "Do you remember, about six years ago, you took out Sergey Volkov when he was in Belarus. He was a diplomat for the Kremlin. You shot him in the head." Istomin mimicked a gun with his hand. "You must have been, what? Eight hundred and fifty metres away? "

It was closer to a thousand, but Asher didn't say that.

Istomin sighed dramatically. "Well, he was in a business deal with two Croat and Bosnian senators and a very dear Russian friend of mine, and they lost a great deal of money. A lot of money, Asher." He shook his head. "So I made a deal with him—his money back, and you on a silver platter. And believe me, you won't like what he plans to do with you."

"And what do you get?" Asher asked.

Istomin grinned like a ghoul. "I get two very well-situated men in the senate."

Asher couldn't believe it. He was fucking sick. "For your political agenda, to push the new cold war."

He laughed. "It's not a political agenda, you fool. It's a financial one."

Asher was stunned. "What?"

"I don't give a fuck about the politics of it," he replied. "Do you know how lucrative civil unrest and war is? With this"—he waved his hand at the monitors—"stock markets, weapon deals, and the Balkans in turmoil, with a shove from my Russia, do you know how many billions that will make me?"

Asher wanted to scream at him, to strangle him, punch the shit out of him. He wanted to vomit. "Do you know how many people will die? Do you know how many children end up in orphanages or sold to sick fucking animals?" Asher was almost vibrating off his chair, white hot anger burning in his veins. "The casualties of fucking war that no one talks about? Fuck you," Asher spat. "The ZBK factions, those pathetic wannabe soldiers," Asher said, disbelieving, but the pieces were clicking together. "You're using them to start a war for money?"

Istomin smiled imperiously. "Shall we discuss what you and your pathetic friend here have done for money? How many people have you killed? How many people have died indirectly because of you? How many orphans did you create? And you think you can lecture me about ethics?"

Yunho snorted out a raspy laugh. His side was bleeding badly, red staining the side of his shirt from where they'd stabbed his lung. "Every person we killed deserved it. War mongers, arms dealers, drug cartels, human traffickers, pieces of shit like you?—"

Radovic's fist came down so hard on the side of Yunho's head, the sound of the crack was sickening. He slumped as far as his restraints would allow, his head lolling forward.

Unconscious, red drool stringing from his mouth.

Radovic grabbed Asher by the face, his fingers clawing, squeezing painfully. "Please let me hurt him," he gritted out.

Istomin tsked. "I promised him to my friend largely uninjured. Shame."

Radovic growled. "I want to watch what they do to him."

Istomin sighed. "I'm sure they'll allow it."

Yixing mumbled something and began clicking on a keyboard furiously.

"What is it?" Istomin asked.

"Something's not right," Yixing said, not even looking up.

Istomin went to him, Radovic giving Asher a hard shove before he followed.

"What do you mean something's not right?" Istomin barked.

Yixing was still typing furiously, shaking his head. " It's... wrong. Something is wrong. It's not appearing. The routing... the money's transferring but... but not to us."

A moment of deafening silence.

Istomin stammered, then he roared. "What do you mean not to us? Where is it going?"

"I don't know!" Yixing cried, his keyboard clicking frantically. Then he stopped and looked back over to Yunho, stark realisation on his young face.

Yunho had done something to fuck them over, Asher was sure of it. God, they were gonna kill him for sure now. But if that was the last thing Yunho did before he died...

Hell, Yunho probably did it to make sure it was the last thing he ever did before he died.

Asher had to admit, despite the physical pain and the anguish knowing it meant certain death, it was kinda funny.

And he laughed.

A man appeared at the captain's side, his hand to his earpiece. "Sir, we have the location."

The location to what?

Harry's heart kicked up, anticipation and dread dulling the pain riddling his body. "Location? For Asher?"

The captain's grey eyes went to Harry's before he spoke to his man. "Two minutes. Both teams."

"I'm going with you," Harry said to the captain.

"You're not going anywhere," the medic said, "but to a hospital."

Harry batted away the oxygen mask the medic was still trying to put on him. He snarled at him, the pain in his loose tooth and jaw barely registering as he spoke through clenched teeth. "I don't need a fucking hospital. I need to find Asher."

"You have a punctured lung, a stab wound, and from the way you're carrying that arm, I'd say your shoulder?—"

Harry didn't know whether this fucker was brave or stupid. "So give me a fucking shot in it," he roared. "I don't give a fuck what you do, but I am on that helicopter in two minutes."

He shot the captain a wild look, daring any motherfucker to argue. He didn't care if he sounded crazy. In that moment, Harry felt like a cornered bear, ready to maul anyone who tried to stop him.

Captain held his gaze before conceding with a sigh. "Fine. But you follow my orders. You do anything stupid, I will shoot you myself."

Before Harry could say anything, the medic jabbed Harry in the shoulder. "What the fuck?" Harry said, looking down at the needle.

"Hold still," the medic said. "Christ. I swear the bigger they are, the bigger the baby. Quit your whining. You wanted a shot. It's just to dull the pain a bit." Then he rolled his eyes. "You're welcome, by the way. For saving your life."

Harry stared at him.

He was at least a foot shorter than Harry, half his width, and twice the attitude. He grumbled something about ungrateful assholes as he packed up his medic pack and walked away.

"The fucking audacity of that guy," Harry said, rubbing his shoulder.

Captain snorted. "He's... feisty." Then he nodded to the chopper. "Come on. "

Harry followed him onto the chopper, sighing with unforgiving impatience when he realised he was sitting next to the medic. Out of the seven men he had to sit with, it had to be him.

The medic smirked at him.

Harry was too damned old for this.

And why were the team across from him all sixteen years old?

Okay, maybe not sixteen. But Christ almighty, did they have to all be so young?

They were you twenty years ago, Harry.

Harry grumbled at himself as he put on the helmet and buckled in, ignoring the way the men opposite him were staring at him, at his chest, at his legs.

Harry looked down at himself to see what they were looking at. He was covered in blood. Mostly from incisions and shallow stab wounds, dark red circles staining the cut fabric marking each one. His side, under his arm, was particularly red, the dark blood stain leaking down to his pants. He'd thought it was his ribs—lord knows they hurt—but he could see the slice through his shirt now.

"Still wanna cauterise it?" the medic asked.

Harry glared at him. "Yes. Give me a knife and a lighter." The fucker laughed, so Harry turned to the captain. "Can I hurt him?"

Captain grinned. "Absolutely fucking not."

The team across from him all smiled. Harry hated these helmets with mics and audio.

He slumped back in his seat, exhaustion trying to settle in, take over. It hurt to breathe; his breaths were a lot shorter, and his lung hurt, and his ribs. His kidneys hurt too. His jaw, his teeth, his eye, his cheek... Hell, his whole body hurt .

But he needed to focus. He was going to get Asher, and he needed to be single-minded. He could push the pain back, for now.

He'd sleep for a week, once Asher was safe.

He needed intel.

He turned back to the captain. "Where are we headed?"

"There's an old military base over the Croatian border."

"How do you know he's there?"

"Location key was activated."

Harry resisted sighing, barely. This was like pulling teeth. He had neither the patience nor the time for this bullshit. There was a very good reason why he'd worked alone for a decade.

"You called yourself the Milvus Division," Harry said. He couldn't believe that.

Milvus. The Milvus Division?

That had been what the Australian government had referred to him as. The Milvus files. And now there was a whole division?

"What the fuck?" Harry asked. "Milvus?"

Captain gave a nod. "You were the first, kind of. The beta test."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Captain almost smiled as he raised one hand in a pacifying manner. "The Parrish case exposed a bunch of overseas operatives. Not just Australian. Classified documents revealed MI6, CIA, India's IB, and France's DSGE's solo agents."

Harry looked again at the men across from him. So damn young.

Jesus Christ .

"Kites," Harry said flatly. "Like me."

Captain nodded. "A lot of agents like you." He shrugged. "So, to protect them, the governments aligned a program. To bring them under one umbrella."

Harry shook his head. "Not to protect the agents. The governments did it to protect themselves."

"Of course. Can't dispute that. Not anymore," Captain said, and one of the guys across from him shrugged.

Harry still couldn't get his mind around it. "So these kites , from all different countries, can now work together?"

Captain gave a hard nod.

Harry shook his head. "Like an elite SAS team. And who gives the orders? Who has control of you? Because I can tell you right now, that kind of power is not good. No good will ever come of it."

"There's a special counsel," Captain said. "No one country can make a call."

Harry still couldn't believe what he was hearing and the fact that Captain was divulging this information so freely. He didn't like any of it.

"Why did you come?" Harry asked. "How did you know where we were?"

"A beacon in the Jeep," he said, nodding to the vehicle. "The tablet."

Asher must have activated it when he slipped it under the seat.

So they could find them.

"And Lucas? Where was he taken?"

Captain paused until Harry's eyes met his, and then he sighed. "A decision on the hospital where Agent Edwards will be taken to will be made en route. Likely London."

Agent Edwards.

So he really was MI6 .

Harry was almost relieved to have it confirmed. At least now he knew. He wondered if Yunho knew. If Yunho was in on it.

It'd kill Asher.

If he wasn't dead already.

The captain stilled for a second, then said, "ETA eight minutes."

Before Harry could ask, Captain added, "Underground bunker, same as before. Number of men on the ground, unknown. Three truck convoys were let through the border. Military and police have been asked to stand down. Russian politician Istomin is believed to be on site and is to be taken in alive."

"I'll need a weapon," Harry said.

Captain's reply was blunt. "Negative."

Right then. Hands and boots it was.

"You can wait with Medic until we give the all-clear," Captain added.

Harry snorted.

Not a fucking chance.