Page 174 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Then she pointed toward the wall behind me.

“More,” she said in Romanian. “There are more.”

“How many?”

She shook her head and pointed again.

“Next room. They took the sick ones there.”

I looked toward Keller. He understood from my expression before I translated.

His radio came up. “Wolf, room one says another holding room north, sick or injured women.”

Wolf answered immediately. “We’re on it. Stay where Bear cleared you.”

Keller looked at me. “Stay with medical.”

For the next several minutes I barely heard the comms. A paramedic wrapped a thermal blanket around a woman whose hands would not stop shaking. One of the German officers cut the plastic ties from an older woman’s wrists while she cried without making any sound. Another woman refused to leave the room until her friend could stand, so Bear came back long enough to lift the friend onto a stretcher without drawing attention to how little she weighed.

I checked the two photographs Keller had given me against every face I could see. Neither woman was in room one. Raven’s voice sharpened through my headset before I could move to the next face.

“Wolf, movement rear office. Three males heading north. One carrying a hard case.”

Wolf answered, “Kade?”

“Cannot confirm. Camera is side angle. Hair length matches.”

My attention moved toward the corridor before I could stop it. Keller saw.

“You stay here,” he said.

“I know.”

He turned toward the doorway when a German officer called his name. Somewhere deeper in the building, a burst of gunfire cracked through the concrete. Every woman in the room reacted. Several dropped immediately. One screamed.

The Romanian woman grabbed my sleeve hard enough to pull me sideways. I crouched with her.

“Stay down,” I said. “Stay here.”

Wolf’s voice cut through my headset.

“Contact north corridor. Two armed. Viper, left.”

Another burst followed, then a single rifle shot farther away.

Hawk.

I could not see Raven from the corridor, but I could hear how fast he was working from the way his calls stacked over the radio traffic.

“Rear lot vehicle moving. Black BMW reversing from bay three. Jackal, south lane.”

Jackal answered, “Have it.”

Wolf said, “Do not chase past the rail line.”

“Copy.”

A paramedic motioned for me to help move a woman closer to the door. I put one arm around her shoulders and guided her across the mattresses while trying not to listen for Kade’s name in every voice on the radio. We reached the corridor just as Bear opened the second cold-room door. He went quiet at the threshold. Only eight women were inside, and several of them could not stand.