Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (37 page)

Kurt watched the camera closest to
them for a few seconds, then turned to Hanna. “See how the thing rotates from
side to side?” She nodded. “When it points away from us, toward the right, move
out and get under it. Then when it rotates to the left, move quickly to the
right. They have a specific range of vision, so stop where I do, then we’ll
move on to the next one the same way. We can use some of those crates as
cover.”

Kurt went first, and Hanna stayed
close on his heels. Keeping their eyes on the cameras, they moved down the
corridor slowly and cautiously. They passed under three cameras undetected,
their timing flawless, and then had to stop for an unexpected surprise.

Near the end of the dimly lit
corridor, there was a guard station of some sort, built into the wall, adjacent
to the elevator. Apparently, Nick hadn’t come quite this far last night because
he hadn’t mentioned it. Kurt had Hanna hide behind a tall stack of wooden
crates, then Kurt moved out and eased along the tunnel wall until he reached
the big plate glass window that fronted the guard station. With his back
pressed to the wall, in a squat, he did a quick peek inside the room, then just
as covertly returned to Hanna.

“There’s a bank of security screens
inside and a single guard monitoring them,” he whispered to her. “I’ll have to
disable the guard before we can get in the elevator. You stay here, behind
these crates and out of range of that camera.” He nodded to the one he meant.
“I’ll come get you when it’s clear.”

After he left, Hanna tried desperately
to listen to what was happening, but she heard nothing. A few moments later,
Kurt came back to her. They waited for the surveillance camera overhead to turn
left, then proceeded right, away from it. There were no cameras in front of the
elevator, nor were there any in the little security room— only an unconscious Asian
man.

“Is he dead?” Hanna wanted to know as
she stared at the prone body on the cement floor.

“No, just tranquilized for several
hours.” Kurt pointed to a tiny needle-like object sticking out of the man’s
neck.

Hanna looked up from the man and saw a
row of television monitors lining the back wall of the room. There were a dozen
of them. They displayed various places, indoors and outdoors, on the compound.
A series of images cycled through them, and at this hour of night, there was no
activity on any of the screens, except one.

To her horror, she saw Nick and Lance,
in a cell-like room, with three men. The brothers were on their knees, with
their hands tied behind their backs. One of their captors walked up to Nick and
rammed the butt of his rifle into his stomach. A moment later, he raised it and
slammed it down across Nick’s upper back.

Hanna made an inarticulate sound of dismay.
Hearing it, Kurt spun around. He was just in time to see the same guard ram a
fist into Nick’s face, then turn to Lance and punch him in the gut with the
rifle butt when Lance made a protest against the beating his brother was
getting. There was no sound attached to the images, but Hanna could tell the
guard with the rifle was shouting questions at Nick. Kurt confirmed her
thoughts.

“They’re probably trying to get Nick
to tell him who he brought with him.”

“How would they know he brought
anyone?”

“The communicator.”

Hanna looked more closely and saw that
another guard behind the brothers held Nick’s headset in his hands. A third
guard stood by Nick’s confiscated weapons.

Even though the image was black and
white, Nick appeared to have blood coming from his mouth, nose, and ear, and
Lance was bent over, in pain, his blonde head hanging nearly to the floor, his
hair matted with something, probably blood. Tears filled Hanna’s eyes. Fear
laced her voice as she turned to Kurt, who was standing behind her.

“We’ve got to get back there and help
them!”

The room Nick and Lance were in looked
like one of the basement rooms in the cottage she and Kurt had come through. It
appeared that the three guesthouses were all built to resemble one another, so they
probably had the same floor plans. Since Nick had gone into the guesthouse
closest to the main house, they could assume he and Lance were in the basement.

Staring at the image on the screen
before him, Kurt rubbed the back of his neck, the way Nick did when he was
pondering something.

“So what are we going to do?” Hanna
demanded.

“Wait.”

“Wait?! Chen won’t wait to kill them,
now that they’re together! He was only waiting for Nick to show up, so he could
kill Lance in front of him, in retribution for the death of his brother.”

“I know, but we need to secure that
boat before we go back to help them. We need a way to get off the rock. They
may have already alerted the guards on the dock. I need to get down there
before they call in anymore.”

“They could be dead by then!”

Kurt gave her shoulder a reassuring
pat. “Nick will stall them to give us time.”

She looked disgusted with that logic.
“How do you stall someone intent on killing you, especially with your hands
tied behind your back?”

“Hanna, let me go down and secure our
escape as quickly as possible, then I’ll go back to get Lance and Nick.
Meanwhile, stay here in this room. If you hear anyone coming, get into the
elevator and beep an SOS on your radio. Wait inside the elevator, jamming the
doors, until I tell you to open them.”

She whirled to fully face him. “All
that’s for my safety. To hell with that! Let’s go back for Nick and Lance, then
go to the dock for a boat.”

“Nick doesn’t want you involved in any
dangerous situations. He told me to keep you safe, even if I have to lock you
in a closet.” He looked around and couldn’t find one of those. Apparently the
elevator was the best he could come up with.

She smirked. “I will not be safe at
Nick’s expense.”

“Want me to tie you up?”

She threw both arms up in
exasperation. “All right, then, go! Get the damn boat and hurry back so we can
get Lance and Nick out of there.”

“So I can get Lance and Nick out of
there.”

“Okay. Okay. Just hurry!”

Kurt turned to the elevator, then
glanced back over his shoulder. “Watch those monitors for anyone coming.”

“Okay,” she said, shooing him on.
“Go!”

“Nick will give us time. He’ll be
okay, Doctor.” He gave her a thumbs up signal, then hurried to the elevator and
got in, to descend to the dock below.

Hanna checked her watch, then turned
back to the monitor. The arrival of Li Chen and another man made Hanna’s blood
chill. Chen walked up to Nick, grabbed him by his hair to yank his head up,
then snarled something at him. Hanna gasped when Chen pulled a handgun out of
his shoulder holster and positioned it squarely between Nick’s eyes. For one
awful, heart stopping second, Hanna thought Chen would pull the trigger. But he
didn’t. He just laughed, then whirled around to deliver a vicious side kick
that slammed into Nick’s jaw. It sent him sprawling onto his side on the floor.
Chen said something to the man who had delivered the initial beating, then left
with two of the four guards.

Hanna thought they would leave Lance
and Nick alone after that, but they yanked them to their feet and pushed them
backwards, where there were two steel rings attached to the wall by lengths of
chain. Each brother was then handcuffed to a ring. Lance was able to stand, but
Nick, who looked partially unconscious, dropped to his knees. One guard yanked
him upright and the other raised a fist to hit him in the head, but Lance was
able to deflect the blow by kicking out at him. As a result, Lance received
another vicious blow. After that, the two remaining guards withdrew from the
room.

With tears swimming in her eyes, Hanna
was torn between doing what Kurt had told her and going to help Nick and his
brother. She checked her watch several times. It seemed like it was taking Kurt
forever to finish his business at the dock. Of course, he could be in trouble
or have his hands full with the guards down there. Damn, there didn’t seem to
be a monitor for the dock!

After several minutes of agonizing, Hanna
couldn’t take it anymore. Either Chen was going to come back at any minute to
shoot Nick and Lance, or his henchmen were going to beat them to death just for
the fun of it. And damn it, it simply wasn’t possible for her to watch that
kind of violence committed against the man she loved, without doing something
to stop it!

She looked around the little room and
saw a weapon that looked like the assault rifle Nick and Kurt carried leaning
up against the wall in a corner. It must have belonged to the unconscious
guard. She picked it up. It was equipped with a laser sight and a suppressor,
and there was a strap on it. She slung the rifle over one shoulder, then
withdrew a couple of chaff grenades from her quilted vest coat pocket. She
didn’t have the time or patience to carefully elude the damn cameras again!

She was still wearing her night vision
goggles over her ski cap. Nick had warned her not to use them if she threw a
chaff grenade, or she would be temporarily blinded by the bright metallic
particles. But she decided she might still need them, so she kept them on.

Before she stepped out of the security
room, she flipped the corridor lights off, then peeked around the corner to
look back down the long tunnel. She threw one of her chaff grenades, then waited
for it to discharge. The tiny metallic particles that exploded into the air and
floated all over immediately disrupted all the electronic signals from the
cameras. They rotated back and forth crazily. Hanna ran like mad down the
center of the corridor, staying clear of the shadowy shapes along the wall
where crates had been stacked, watching the cameras as she went. She wasn’t
sure how long the particles would disrupt them, so when the metallic flakes
started to settle, she threw another grenade.

Praying that she was correct about
Nick and Lance’s location, she ran to the door next to the one where she and
Kurt had come through earlier. It was closed. The tunnel was still dark, though
not so dark it made it impossible to see. Calming her breathing and her nerves,
she lifted the rifle off her shoulder, checked to make sure the safety was off,
then slowly opened the door a little bit to peer carefully inside.

Good lord! She wasn’t a soldier. She
had no idea what she was doing. Her only strength lay in the element of
surprise. If she could just scare the guards into unlocking Nick’s chains, she
could let him do the rest. She said a little prayer, then silently eased the
door open a little further.

CHAPTER
26

TO HANNA’S IMMENSE RELIEF, the
anteroom on the other side of the door was empty. Still she crept in
cautiously. There were two small rooms off the one that she was standing in.
The doors were closed to both. Overhead there was one bare light bulb that
dimly illuminated the room. Wooden crates were stacked high against the stone
walls, casting creepy dark shadows.

There was a switch on the wall, but
she wasn’t sure if it was only for this room. If it turned the lights off in
the other rooms, the guards would know she was coming. Hanna chose a lone crate
to climb up onto. It gave her the height she needed to unscrew the single bulb.
Once the room was cast into darkness, she pulled her night vision goggles down
over her glasses and carefully climbed off the crate. Now the room was cast in
a weird green light that disorientated her for a few seconds. Once her eyes
adjusted, she crept to one of the closed doors and listened for a bit. She
heard muffled voices on the other side. It sounded like Nick and Lance talking.
But where were the guards? The last time she had seen them, they had been
leaving.

She went to the second closed door and
listened. Inside, she heard men speaking in Chinese, laughing occasionally. The
clank of utensils against plates told her the guards were taking a meal break.
That meant Lance and Nick might be alone, which was good and bad. She could
enter their little room without interference, but she needed the guard with the
keys to release them.

She still had the element of surprise.
Should she execute it now or wait until the guards returned to the room Nick
and Lance were in? She finally decided they probably wouldn’t have any need to
go back until Chen returned. She might be able to get Nick released before
then, so he could deal with Chen. She certainly wouldn’t be any match for the
martial arts skills she’d seen the drug lord use on Nick.

Having finally figured out a plan of
sorts, she kicked hard at a tall stack of crates. Luckily they all toppled
easily, making a loud crashing noise in the process. The two guards came
bursting out of the room. Hanna had the advantage of sight, while they stumbled
around, bumping into the crates, falling over one in the darkness. Well
positioned, Hanna shouted at them to halt and drop the handguns they carried.
When one moved toward the sound of her voice, she poked him sharply in the
chest with the point of her rifle and repeated her order to drop their weapons.
This time they both did so without further hesitation.

With the stock of the rifle braced
snugly against her shoulder and her finger on the trigger, she told the guards
to open the door to the second room and to step inside. Behind them, she saw
Lance and Nick, their backs braced against the cinder-block wall, their arms
chained above their heads. As soon as Hanna entered, their attention snapped to
her. Since the room was lit, she yanked off her night vision goggles with one
hand, while keeping her rifle trained precisely on the men in front of her.

“Which one of you has the keys?” she
demanded in the same altered, husky voice she’d been using on them. From the
moment she’d spoken, she been praying they wouldn’t be able to tell she was a
woman. When they didn’t immediately respond, she shoved her rifle into the back
of one of the men.

“Keys! Now!” To her utter
astonishment, her voice actually sounded threatening, revealing none of the
trembling fright she was feeling. She brought the barrel of her rifle up to the
back of the man’s head. “I’ll kill you and get them myself.” Thankfully, he
took her seriously, immediately pulling a set of keys from his pocket.

“Ha....” It finally dawned on Lance
who she was, but Nick silenced his brother with a kick to keep him from giving
Hanna’s gender away. She took a quick peek at both brothers. Their faces were
cut and bruised, their lips swollen and split. Nick’s paint-smeared face was
bloodier than Lance’s, and one eye was nearly swollen shut. Beneath the blood,
his expression was grim, set in taut lines of absolute concentration on her and
the guards. Only his eyes showed his alarm.

“Now, unlock them!” she growled. As
the first guard did her bidding, she shifted the barrel of her assault rifle to
the second guard.

Keeping her eyes trained on both men,
she stood her ground resolutely until Nick was unchained. Hanna expected him to
drop to the ground from his injuries. Instead, he rushed to her and took the
rifle from her. She relinquished it with a sigh of trembling relief.

“Good gawdalmighty, Hanna!” He spared
her only a brief glance before he swung her behind him and focused his full
attention on the guards.

Meanwhile, the guard with the keys
unchained Lance, who rose more slowly than Nick, clutching the region around
his ribs with a forearm. His face was drawn with pain, and pale as a sheet.
Hanna started over to him, but Nick’s arm shot out and slammed into her
stomach, stopping her.

“Chain them to the wall, and check
them for weapons,” he ordered his brother. Again Hanna went to help. Lance
moved like he was really hurting. Again Nick pushed her back. “Stay behind me, damn
it!”

When both guards were relieved of a
couple of hidden knives, then chained to the wall, Nick went to the door to
look into the anteroom. Hanna hurried over to Lance. She slid an arm around his
waist to help him catch his breath. He turned to her and pulled her stocking
cap off. He looked absolutely awestruck to see her. Out of the corner of her
eye, she saw the guards’ eyes widen with surprise. Feeling elated with her
success, she winked at them, then turned back to Lance and hugged him.

“I’m so glad to see you! We’ve been so
worried about you.” Cautiously, she touched the lower side of his chest, her
touch knowledgeable and gentle. “Is it your ribs?”

He winced and nodded. “Shit, Hanna,
what the hell are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he growled,
then coughed, which nearly doubled him in half.

“Well, I am! You could at least thank
me for saving you both another beating.” Her eyes swept from Lance to his
brother.

Still posted near the door, Nick
glared at her, scowling furiously over his shoulder. “Where the hell is Kurt?”

“At the dock, getting us a boat.” She
walked over to him, pulling her stocking cap back onto her head as she went.
“Let me take a look at you.”

“I can’t believe you brought her with
you— into this mess!” Lance hissed from behind them. “Holy shit! Can she even
use that gun she was holding?”

“Does it matter? I got you freed
before Chen came back to kill you!” Reaching up with the end of her sweater
sleeve, Hanna wiped some of the blood off Nick’s badly lacerated face. Besides
the cut on his lower lip, there was a long open gash on his right cheekbone,
and another one across his right eyelid. Blood oozed steadily from both
injuries, painting one side of his face red. While trying to stem the flow of
blood with the stretched end of her sweater sleeve, she placed her other hand
on his uninjured cheek to hold his head still and look into his stormy gray
eyes. He was still furious with her.

“There’s a room with security monitors
across from the elevator. I saw the beating you and Lance were getting. Kurt
told me to stay put until he took out the guards at the dock and got us a boat,
but I couldn’t let them hurt you anymore. I was afraid Chen would come back and
kill both of you.”

The hard look in his eyes softened as
he covered the hand that lingered on his cheek. “You took half a lifetime off
me coming in here with those guards at gunpoint.”

“I had to.”

He leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“I know.”

Lance walked up to them. “Don’t you
have any Marines you could have brought with you?” he demanded, angry with his
older brother. “Chen and his gang are a nasty bunch of bastards. Hanna
shouldn’t be here!”

“Well, shit, she is! Now let’s just
get the hell out of here before the bastard returns.”

The signal on his transmitter started
to blink. Nick walked over to where his headset and radio lay on the floor.
After clipping the radio to his belt once again, he put the earphones and
microphone back on. He listened for a few moments.

“Looks like Kurt secured the dock and
got us a boat. I told him to meet us in the tunnel and that you were with us,”
he said to Hanna. “He wasn’t too happy.” She winced.

His weapons— his knife, 9 mm handgun,
sniper rifle, assault rifle, and grenades were in a far corner in a little
pile. He retrieved them, rearmed himself, then gave his brother the assault
rifle Hanna had brought.

“I’ll take the sniper rifle,” she
volunteered.

“No!” The immediate response came from
both Lance and Nick simultaneously.

“Geez! Fine! Some gratitude!” she
huffed.

Walking over to the two guards chained
to the wall, Nick lifted his sniper rifle and slammed the stock into the man’s
jaw, knocking him unconscious. Then he repeated the action on the other guard.

When he turned to the door, Hanna was
watching him wide-eyed. “I can’t have them yelling out our position,” he
explained, then cursed in chagrin. In twenty years, he’d never explained combat
actions to anyone, but a superior officer. He strode to the partially opened
door and looked through. “Let’s go! It’s clear.”

At the doorway to the tunnel, Nick
stopped to listen, then eased it open. After slowly scanning the corridor, he
motioned Hanna and Lance to move ahead of him.

The second Hanna stepped through the
doorway, she swung around and tried to step back. “The lights! They shouldn’t
be on!”

Before she could retreat, she was
grabbed from behind and pulled aside. Lance stepped out to snatch her back and
was stopped at the end of a rifle. Nick lifted his assault rifle, and from the
shadows of the anteroom, leveled it on the group of men on the other side.

Li Chen stepped out from behind them,
then reached out and smoothly caught Hanna around the waist. “Come join us,
Colonel Kelly. Hands and gun in the air.”

Nick had been watching everyone’s
back, concerned with a surprise rear attack, not one from a corridor he had
just visually cleared. He wondered where the bastards had come from, then saw
the stack of four big crates farther down the corridor and figured they’d been
hiding behind them.

When he stepped into the hallway,
hands raised, his rifle held above his head, he was immediately relieved of all
of his weapons, knife, grenades, and Glock included. One of the guards stepped
around him to retrieve the sniper rifle he had leaned against the wall. His gut
clenched at the sight of the Li Chen holding Hanna in front of him. One arm was
locked across her chest in an angle from shoulder to armpit, and the other held
a big 9 mm to her temple.

“Well,” Chen mused, his lean face
sculpted in a half-smile. ”What do I have here? Obviously,
another
rescue
party I wasn’t expecting.” Lowering his gun from Hanna’s temple to her side, he
moved to look into her face. “Feels a little different.” His hand slid out from
under her arm and moved to one breast to mold its shape. Laughing, he yanked
her stocking cap off. Blonde hair spilled out and caught the weak light in
shining disarray. Chen regarded Nick with a contemptuous sneer. “Is she your
backup, Colonel? Is this who was on the other end of your communicator? A mere
woman?” Yanking her by the arm to face him, he swept her figure in a slow
assessment. “Are you a soldier? A DEA agent?”

“I’m a doctor,” she answered him
defiantly, refusing to be intimidated. Her gaze insolently swept the tattoo of
the multi-colored snake that ran up his right arm, beginning on the back of his
hand and disappearing under the short sleeve of his black knit shirt. On the
way back down, her eyes dropped to the ruby and diamond ring on his finger. It
twinkled like an evil eye.

“Well, these two aren’t going to need
a doctor.” He waved toward Lance and Nick, chuckling. “They’re going to need a
mortician.”

Hanna wasn’t amused. Despite his
impeccable grooming, his eyes were cold and hard, and his grin was malevolent.
“Men who worked for you and Yancy Masters, smuggling your heroin, killed my
brother six weeks ago,” she informed him acidly. “He was the
provincial
policeman
you referred to in one of your phone conversations with Yancy.
His name was Deputy Sheriff Dylan Wallace. He left behind a wife and a new baby
daughter. He was my only brother.”

“Ahh.... Revenge, then.” Chen nodded. “That
I understand. The Colonel killed my brother several years ago. He was also my
only brother.”

Hanna narrowed her eyes at him. “No,
you don’t understand,” she argued fearlessly. “I didn’t come for revenge. Dylan
wouldn’t have wanted that. Unlike you and your brother, he was a law abiding
man. He didn’t deserve to die. I came for justice, and…,” she added, looking
towards Lance, “…to bring a friend home to his ten-year-old son.”

Surprise and a hint of admiration
flickered in his cruel, black eyes. “I may not kill you, woman. I may keep you.
Are you a good doctor? Could I use you?”

“Sure,” she laughed. “Let me operate
on you. I guarantee you won’t make it past the first cut.”