Chapter 7
Triton
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THE WOMAN WAS IN SHOCK—I could see it in her eyes and face. Her pupils were wide and dilated, her skin pale, her shoulders jumping with rapid breaths. More than that, she was just staring at me, and I could tell she hadn’t understood a word I’d said.
What in the world was she doing here? A lone woman in an isolated building on the unpopulated side of a disputed island. Was she Russian? She was certainly not Japanese. Maybe that was why she didn’t understand what I was saying.
I took a moment to look around the building—it was a single room, with cots on one side, a small, portable stove on one wall, some cabinets, and the table she’d hidden under. Papers that looked like reports and charts littered the top along with equipment—it looked like the equipment I’d glanced near the bodies of the other scientists. Test tubes rested in containers, each filled with what looked like brackish water, while empty ones lay scattered across the tabletop and on the floor.
It looked like some kind of lab.
The question was whether this lab belonged to the men I’d been fighting or someone else. And what kind of lab was it? Something to help the terrorists dig up and destroy the cables, or something else that had nothing to do with the soldiers who now lay dead? It certainly looked like the men in black had been attacking the building, but maybe they’d been defending it and their work inside from my team. And when that looked like it wasn’t working, they were going to destroy the evidence and the woman working on it.
Intelligence hadn’t been able to ascertain the whereabouts of the terrorist organization’s headquarters—was this it? But I saw no cache of weapons, no tools for digging up the cables, and certainly not enough space to house and feed all those soldiers.
Besides, this was so out in the open, intelligence would have to have a complete lack of brains to have missed it.
From outside, a spray of gunfire echoed off the metal walls, and the woman flinched, drawing back from me towards the table.
“We have to get out of here.”
She blinked, her gaze and expression showing that she still hadn’t heard me, blood oozing down the side of her face. It was a nasty cut, but I didn’t think it was dangerous—only bleeding heavily, as did most head wounds.
I hesitated for a moment more, wondering if I should even take her with me. If she was Russian, that could present several issues, not the least of which was a security breach. But if she had been working with the terrorists, either by her own choice or under duress, it was an opportunity to learn more.
And if I left her here, I had no doubt she would end up dead. The terrorist hadn’t been trying to kill the laptop whose pieces lay scattered across the floor. For whatever reason, they wanted her dead, too, and I had no doubt they would come back to kill her.
I tightened my hold on her wrist and dragged her towards the door but stopped us both just beside it. The gunfire had stopped, but I couldn’t see the results very well. Who was dead, and who was alive? Who and what was waiting for me out in the light?
The door swung in slightly, creaking on its single hinge, and I caught sight of bodies on the ground. But it was a poor angle, and I couldn’t see anything else.
“Stay here,” I said, spreading what fingers I could around the butt of my gun as a hand signal in case she didn’t understand what I was saying. And if she was still too in shock to listen and got hurt? Well, nothing I could do about that.
With my gun in my hand, my other still wrapped around her wrist, I eased myself around the frame as it swung outwards again in a breeze. I heard the report of a gun a second before the bullet hit the door, exploding even more of the metal into tiny shards. I felt the jerk of the woman trying to pull away from me in panic, but I only held on tighter as I leaned out at an angle, gun aimed in the direction from which I’d heard the shots.
Three reports, and I heard the thump and crunch of a body hitting the ground.
I waited to hear more, either guns going off or footsteps or shouts, but everything was suddenly quiet, and my ears rang in the silence left behind by the cessation of the gunfire. A breeze came through the windows, and the door swung in once more with a low squeal.
Easing around the side again brought no new gunfire nor the sound of advance. I tightened my hold on the woman’s wrist and pulled her with me.
“Run,” I said, and we did.
We shot down the path from the building, darting through the field of dead terrorists and my teammates. I would remember their faces and their names, my fallen comrades. I would come back for them and make sure they got home when there was time for grieving, time to understand what had happened and what had gone wrong. But that was later—for now, we had to get out from the open. Our position was too exposed, and I didn’t know how many enemies there were still alive or whether they had backup coming.
I felt the woman stumble on the uneven ground, but she seemed to regain her feet before I could stop and turn around to steady her. But my own steps faltered as I realized who was lying in the dirt just beyond the tree line. The track of blood told me Carter had dragged himself from the rock he had been hiding behind to the trees where he wouldn’t be seen. Now, he lay half-propped against a tree trunk.
As I stopped and stood over him, Carter looked up at me, eyes wide, his throat working to move words and breath past the blood bubbling into his mouth. A dark discoloration spread beneath his tactical vest, the tree trunk and dirt beneath his back stained red.
Letting go of the woman’s hand, I knelt on one knee, my hand moving to the tactical vest.
“Can you make it?”
Carter’s throat worked again, but no sound came instead. Instead, he shook his head.
I grit my teeth and set my jaw. “I’ll carry you if I have to. I’m not going to leave a man behind.”