Palm Beach International Airport
The pilot gave me thePrepare for landingalert, so I punched in Meg’s number and let it ring. Nothing. Fucking cell phones on planes. I hung up and tried again.Shit.
Oliver pulled his phone and dialed Teagan:Nothing.Rudy:Voicemail.Si:Same.I was getting worried. Nobody was answering. What the fuck? There was no one else to call. How could all their phones be out of range or turned off when they knew we would be calling?
I dialed Si again. He answered on the third ring.
“Si? What’s going on?”
“They took her, Nat—they’ve got Meg.” Si sounded punch-drunk, slurring his words. “They shot me and they took Meg.” He was on the verge of tears, almost hyperventilating.
Fucking Russians. I knew it was those fuckers.
“Si, calm down, man,” I said slowly but firmly. “It’s okay. Take a breath. Just tell me where you’re shot and how much you’re bleeding.” I looked at Oliver and shook my head.
“Not bleeding. I was tranked.”
CHAPTER 87
“Come on, man—we’re in a hurry!” I yelled at the pilot, knowing that every second we weren’t attacking, they were inflicting more pain on Meg. I couldn’t let my mind go there. All I knew was that people were going to die violently in the very near future. Oliver and I were out of our seats and standing at the galley door.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I have to hold here ’til this other plane gets around us. He’s almost done.”
A minute later we were parked at the base ops and sprinting to the parking lot. I told Oliver to find us a ride while I ducked into the shadows to call the rest of the team. Stu answered on the first ring and I gave him the shitty news about Meg’s abduction.We have a THUNDER mission,I told him,and I need your team to meet us on the target.The plan was as simple as we could make it on the fly, I explained: no intel, almost no situational awareness—nothing at all but guesswork.
I could feel his anger rising. “Fuck, Nat—we’re still about fifteen minutes out.”
“That’s okay, Stu. We just got here. Oliver is getting us a ride—we’ll be on the north side of the gate along the road. Si is staying put at his place in case Jimmy and Rudy show up. You and JP will go with Oliver. Wolf will be with me, and we will launch as soon as you get here. We are all cleared hot. Want to keep it as quiet as we can, but understand that I need someone alive.”
“Roger that, Nat. We will leave one.” He hung up just as Oliver rolled up to my position in our new assault vehicle.
“Nice ride,” I said, as I closed the door to the 4Runner.
“It was either this or the Bentley.”
“I’d have gone with the Bentley, but that’s just me.” I screwed the suppressor on my Sig as Oliver put the SUV in gear.
“Hey, man,” he fired back, “have you ever seen desperadoes in a $350,000 car? I haven’t. We’re fucking desperadoes, and this is what we are driving to do our desperado shit.”
Oliver was as calm and casual going to a gunfight as he would be heading to a Waffle House for midnight chow. It helped. We’d done this a thousand times, but never in either of our careers had we planned a rescue mission for one of our own. And of course it being Meg was a kick in the nuts.
Oliver must have sensed my emotion, because he told me to cool it.
Yes, Sensei.
We reviewed the plan. Wolf and I would breach the Egorovs’ door and flow into the first floor. Oliver and his team would pass through and clear the upstairs. We’d meet in the garage. Too easy—but we’d have to pray we had enough ammo to get it all done.
CHAPTER 88
Rowan Anderson’s apartment
Washington, DC
Rowan Anderson parked Elise Courville’s Peugeot in the handicapped spot in the lot at her apartment building. Between the diplomatic plates and her USSS credentialed parking pass on the dashboard, no eager-beaver DC cop was going to mess with her tonight.
She was almost sucked into a delightful fantasy of her future life in Morocco—enjoying her money under an assumed name as well as the non-extradition status offered to expats in the kingdom—when she saw the mark. One wavy red line between theMand theLon the west side of the mailbox was the signal that he’d called a meeting.
Wearing a Glock on her hip loaded with seventeen Black Talon rounds would give her the confidence she needed to walk alone through DC’s Oak Hill Cemetery at that hour. She hidthe explosives under her bed and put a fresh magazine in the Glock.
