Page 97 of Nightfire

“Fuck that!” Harry got right up into his face. “You’re not going to get all panicky on me now, Mike. My sister’s in the hands of a monster. I almost lost her to one once and I’m not going to lose her now. Come back you son of a bitch and help me, here! If you don’t pull your head out your ass, we’re going to lose her!”

He straightened, fingering his jaw, breath heaving in and out of his lungs. Harry still packed a punch.

Harry was terrified. But the thing was, if Chloe died, Harry would be devastated. He’d mourn forever. But his life would go on. He had a wife and a child and his family would remain.

If something happened to Chloe…Mike’s mind skittered away from the thought, but he hung on to it grimly. He needed to understand this. If something happened to Chloe, if she died, Mike had nothing. It was as if he’d lived his life in a dank, dark cave and Chloe had opened the cave door and shown him a beautiful world of light. With Chloe gone, that door would shut forever. He’d never have another shot at it because it was only Chloe who could open that door for him.

He had to fight for her life and for his.

He stood there, head down like a bull, ignoring the pain in his jaw. The cooling sweat on his body chilled him, but he’d stopped pumping out sweat like an animal. He looked at his hands. They were steady, as they’d always been.

His head was clear.

Chloe was not going to die. Not while he had a breath in his body.

“Where are the coordinates?” he asked sharply.

Harry slumped in relief. “Thank God you’re back. I need you, Mike. I can’t do this alone.”

Their eyes met. “Nothing’s going to happen to Chloe,” Mike said, his voice steady. “We’re bringing her home. If we can nail the scumbag, then that’s icing on the cake, but bottom line? Chloe’s coming home.”

Harry was punching the keyboard. “The GPS coordinates are…here.” His finger rested on a map. “Here, near the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation.”

Perfect. Near Warner Springs, where he’d undergone SERE training. Mike knew that area intimately. He’d been on the run from Marine ‘enemies’ for two weeks. He’d sweated and bled and nearly died there.

“He chose it because there are flat stretches. He’s planning a showdown, an exchange. He chose it from a map, or someone found it for him. Because that’s a Navy special-ops training site, and he won’t be familiar with it. I am, Harry. We’re going to win this.” Mike zoomed the map out and followed the route with his finger. “It’s mostly freeway almost all the way there. The 163 to the 15 to the 78. Then we get into the hills over to where he wants us.”

“He doesn’t know I have you.” Harry’s heavy hand landed on Mike’s shoulder and he stared into Mike’s eyes. He’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes. “We’re going to get my sister back.”

Mike briefly squeezed Harry’s hand, then went to the gun locker.

“Fucking A, we are.”

TWENTY

“Coming up,” Harry said quietly. He was driving the company’s Transit van which looked ordinary, even shabby, from the outside, the paint a little rusted in spots, dirty and caked with mud. It was equipped with enough horsepower to get them to the moon, had enough armor to stop anything but an RPG and had as much communications gear as any combat platoon.

Mike moved, calm and sure. The panic of earlier was gone, replaced by a deep calm.

An unarmed RQ-21 Blackjack drone was circling overhead at 20,000 feet, completely invisible. Mike had no idea how many Pentagon arms Aaron had to twist to get it up there, and he didn’t give a shit. All he cared about was that he was watching the combat area on his monitor and was able to zoom in and out.

Fact: two men were waiting in a Ford Taurus at a point almost two clicks from the texted GPS coordinates. Fact: Chloe was nowhere to be seen.

The terrain was easy to read for a sniper. Flat and featureless. They’d chosen it so they could be certain there would be no ambushes, but they couldn’t know that Aaron and the SD SWAT team were deployed ten clicks away. Not near enough to save Chloe, but near enough to ensure that, no matter what, the Russians weren’t getting away.

Saving Chloe was Mike’s job. And he had the right tool for it. On instinct, he’d chosen a Barrett MRAD with .338 Lapua rounds. It could shoot the balls off a fly and keep it alive, singing soprano.

It was a SEAL weapon of choice. Though SEALs weren’t anywhere near as good as Force Recon Marines, as he often reminded Sam, they had damned good armorers. The Barrett was good enough for the SEALs, it was good enough for Mike.

He’d spent the past hour going over possible scenarios in his head. He was ready.

“Braking,” Harry said and brought the van to a slewing halt. Right on the coordinates, Mike saw on the monitor.

His cellphone buzzed. A text, from Aaron.

Remember no kill shots

The dust had barely settled around the Transit when Chloe’s cellphone rang on the front seat. The Russian had called twice along the way to make sure they were coming.