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“Shoot her,” Mason said to Deke as they spotted Kam Perkins at the end of the hallway. Mason would have done it himself if he hadn’t been in the midst of swapping out the magazine in his gun.
“She’s unarmed,” growled Deke.
“I don’t care. Kill her.”
When Deke hesitated and by the time Mason slammed the clip with fresh bullets back into his gun and brought it to bear on the woman who had helped to perpetrate so much horror on so many others, she’d had a chance to flee. Damn it! He’d had the evil bitch in sight just as he’d run out of ammunition. He might have missed that opportunity, but Mason had vowed that he would not leave Iceland until he knew for certain that Perkins had taken her last breath.
With no time to regret what had happened, Mason followed Deke down the tunnel, the adrenaline making his heart thump and his senses hyper-alert. With the exception of missing the opportunity to kill Perkins, the op had gone smoothly. The sub had docked in the dead of the night, allowing the small strike team to land and make their way to the tunnel leading them into the complex. The sub had pulled away from the dock and then silently submerged beneath the waves until there was nothing left to indicate the still waters of the NLGP harbor had ever been breached.
“Deke, good to see you,” Brie said to them as they made their way inside. “Let me bring you up to date. Colby’s had people in place here at NLGP for years. We sent them to get NLGP’s people that live here on the property to safety. The plan is to leave monitors in place, but to leave the building standing. Eddie’s been working through those who lived off campus to move them out. All that we’ve got left in the building are those on the security team, which Terry ensured were all loyal to the Resistance…”
“How did you do that in such a short amount of time?” asked Mason.
Brie grinned, the bright white of her feral smile showing in the darkness. “Wasn’t hard. We showed copies of some of the info Emery managed to smuggle out to the guys on the security team. That brought them on board tout suite, and they persuaded the other employees that what we were doing was the right thing. I don’t know if you know, but Emery was very popular with the entire security team. Something about fresh coffee and pastries.”
Mason chuckled and said to Deke, who looked perplexed, “Emery had a Keurig she kept in her office. She welcomed anyone, especially the security team, to feel free to use it. And on Monday mornings, she brought in pastries from the best bakery in town.”
Deke shook his head. “You never know what’s going to make an op go more smoothly than you’d hoped.”
Brie nodded. “With Terry’s help we were able to pretty much get anyone worth saving out. I want to make a final sweep just to make sure. Terry is going to bring down a couple of guys to go with each of your smaller teams. That way you’ll know who the bad guys are.”
“Didn’t you arrange for them to wear black cowboy hats?” quipped Mason. “I find it so much easier when they do that.”
“Nah,” rejoined Brie. “Cowboy hats look so out-of-place in Reykjavik.”
“If you two are done,” said Deke in a low tone, “can we get this party started?”
The cave lion was not known for his sense of humor.
They’d done almost everything they’d come to do—those employees not actively involved in the atrocities perpetrated by NLGP had been moved to safety and were being given back their lives. The team had only encountered minimal resistance to their invasion. The rest of the team were now planting explosive devices in specific spots to ensure that everything within the walls of the NLGP complex—including their information systems as well as any and all evidence of what had been done there—would be destroyed.
It had been the first domino to fall in the final destruction of NLGP. There would be more battles to follow, but it was a damn fine start.
In the space of a moment, Kam Perkins and the two remaining men still loyal to her had time to turn and flee and they did so.
Deke put his hand on Mason’s shoulder. “They’ve got nowhere to run. Brie has been combing and mapping these tunnels for weeks. Where they’re heading no longer has an exit. Don’t worry, we’ll get her.”
“I want her dead,” said Mason, quietly. “Emery made me promise to see that she paid for what she’s done—not so much for what she did to me, but for what she did to so many others. Colby told me what they’d done was so far beyond his worst nightmares. How could he let Brie stay here?”
“You don’t know Brie, do you? Trust me, it isn’t a question of what Colby will allow, it’s more what he can keep Brie from doing. Did you know she’s the leader of the Shadow Sisters? The females in her line have served as alphas of the wayward band of females since their inception thousands of years ago. Legend has it that they were inspired by the dragon queens during the Age of Dragons and the creation of the Phantom Fire.”
“And you would know that. You were there pulling their chariots, weren’t you?” teased Mason.
“Asshole,” replied Deke as he tapped the comm unit in his ear. “We’re in pursuit of Perkins and the last of her goons.”
“Abort,” came Colby’s harsh command from Alaska over the comm system. “There is no escape for them down that passageway. The explosives are planted and are on timing pieces. Deke, get your people out of there.” Colby’s voice betrayed his tension and exhaustion. “I repeat. Abort. All Resistance personnel retreat to the rendezvous point. Eddie and Brie’s team report their part of Operation Killjoy has been accomplished with no loss of life on our part and only minimal injuries.”
Mason felt some satisfaction in knowing that so far loss of life had been confined just to the members of the Shadow League and those to whom they gave orders and from whom they extracted allegiance. Mason struggled with the idea of not finishing Perkins off himself. He had to admit he would have liked seeing the life drain from her eyes as she crumpled to the ground knowing he was the one who had taken it from her.
As if he could hear Mason’s thoughts, Colby continued. “We have cameras in place to ensure we see the final end to NLGP. You’ll be able to see her die.”
He turned with Deke and began to run back to the rendezvous point. “It’s like he knows what I’m thinking,” said Mason.
“That’s because I do,” cackled Colby over the comm system. “Now, get a move on.”
They could hear intermittent gunfire as they ran. Apparently, Colby’s assertion that it was all over but the shouting was correct in that the sound of shooting merely sprinkled the air and didn’t fill the tunnels as it had when the battle had been at its zenith. As they rounded the last corner that would lead them back out into the soft gray light of dawn, explosions—or more precisely implosions—began to sound and the earth shook beneath their feet.
