Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(34)

She made it out the door, but that was it. No more buying time for anybody, for any reason. Her sanity was shattering.

She would use what time she had left to search the utility closet for something toxic to drink, or else run out screaming into the night and let them shoot her in the back. She would do any crazy, desperate thing before going into that room again.

That resolve firm in her mind, she hurtled towards the kitchen—and tripped over something big and dark sprawled across the corridor. Splat, she landed facedown and hard, in a puddle of—

Blood. Lots of blood. Her head lifted, slowly. She squinted into the kitchen, tried to focus her nearsighted eyes.

She abruptly wished that she hadn’t.

Chapter

10

B ecca’s timing sucked. Why was he not surprised?

Nick lowered Yevgeni’s twitching body to the ground and wedged as much of it as he could into the vid cam’s blind spot. Damn. Five more seconds, and he’d have been able to intercept her in the corridor.

Still, he was cool—back in the ice cave. The more blood he spilled, the deeper he went. It was always that way.

Don’t scream, he told her with his eyes. He’d left Anatoli in one of the vid cam’s other calibrated blind spots, but anyone watching the monitor would have noticed her tripping over an unseen obstacle. Luckily, the arterial gout had aimed itself down. Walls spray-painted with blood tended to catch the eye. He wiped his knife hastily on the guy’s shirt.

Becca looked, appalled, at the blood she’d slalomed in on, at her crimson hands, at the wet red knife in his fist. Her pupils dilated. Her mouth sagged. Time to beat hell out of there, Nick thought, before she sucked enough air into her lungs to start the screaming meltdown he could sense coming.

He yanked her to her feet, staying low, and dragged her over the pile of dead meat formerly known as Anatoli. She was slippery, but blood got tacky soon enough. Like glue.

Back through the corridor, onto the side deck where she’d lost her lunch. She made a high-pitched noise when he dragged her over the third corpse, shoved into the shadow of a conveniently overgrown tree.

Three down out of seven. Pavel was bodyguarding Zhoglo in the dining room, Mikhail was guarding the boat, Kristoff manned the vid monitors. One more was unaccounted for, probably on his way back from the dock. In a very few seconds, Kristoff would notice that he had lost visual contact. He would try to raise the other guys on the comm gear. He would fail. And Nick and Becca would be toast.

To her credit, Becca was quick and light on her feet. She made a lot of noise gasping for breath, but she wasn’t screaming.

He came to a stop at the blind curve on the wooden walkway, steadied Becca and strained with every sensory organ for information about what was around that bend in the dusk-shrouded forest. The vibration that had alerted him resolved into actual noise. The frantic speed of the guy’s thudding bootsteps told him they’d been made. No point in not using his piece then.

The tall blond guy came barreling round the corner, talking softly into his comm. There was just time for his eyes to widen before thhhtp, the bullet from Nick’s silenced SIG 229 drilled him in the forehead. The guy’s head snapped back and he ran on out from under himself, thudded heavily down and slid, half-on, half-off the boardwalk.

Easy. He dragged her past the corpse. Four down in less than five minutes. Not bad, for toast. Becca was starting to stumble, legs shaking beneath her. Going into shock, probably. The joke would be on him.

It was a miracle they’d gotten this far. He’d worked out the formula for this opportunity in his head. Several separate windows of opportunity had to line up perfectly long enough for him to jump through them and bring Becca with him.

He couldn’t take out seven armed guards at once. It had to be when Zhoglo and his new associate were distracted by their dinner and Becca’s tits. Guarding them would occupy Pavel. It had to be at the change of the boat guard, so that one man would be patrolling the front approach, not two. It had to be in careful sequence—front deck, corridor, kitchen—and done in dead silence, no gasps, shrieks, grunts or gunshots. It had to happen in quick succession. And finally, Becca had to appear at the right moment, keep her mouth shut and her shit together. Which she had. So far.

At this point, it broke down to running fast and hoping hard. Hoping the Vor’s manpower was reduced enough so that he would cut his losses and let them go for now. Hoping that he wouldn’t want his men to race after them with the boat, leaving him stranded and vulnerable on the island. Lots of hopes. Hope was a bitch. Nick mistrusted it bitterly. It set a guy up for disappointment every time.

He jerked her to a stop. She stumbled onto her knees. He leaped off the walkway, and plunged into the foliage, dragging her behind him. She made noise as the thorns and rocks tore up her bare feet.

Tough shit. Feet healed. Dead didn’t.

He pushed on, shoving through branches, abandoning stealth. It was all about speed now. And he had speed hidden down there in the water, if they could get to it before they got drilled.

He’d thought long and hard about providing himself with this bolthole, as if the implied lack of total commitment could jinx him. It had. He should have managed himself like the commanders of armies in ancient times had managed their soldiers. Lighting fires behind the troops. No retreat possible.

His last chance to find out Sveti’s fate was gone. He’d have given up everything he had, every last drop of his own heart’s blood, for that.