Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(96)

So long. Did his friends even remember him now?

“What the hell?”

He heard the guard. There were two of them. It seemed like more, but now that he forced his eyes to open, he could plainly see only two men were in the room.

And he wasn’t naked anymore. He was dressed in some sort of scrubs. When had that happened?

“Shit. Is he coming out of it? Doc said the drugs wouldn’t wear off until the Chinese had him.”

The words started to penetrate. Also, gunfire. Yeah, that was in play, too. There was the rapid blast of a gun firing through the building.

Drugs. He’d been given drugs. Something psychotropic.

His hands were bound in front of him, locked in a set of cuffs. He wasn’t where he thought he was. In the building, yes. He recognized the walls around him, but he wasn’t hanging off that hook.

How much time had passed? His senses deceived him. It had been the drugs.

“Come on, *. You’ve got a plane to catch. Bill, let’s take him out the back. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it. I’m not going out into the courtyard as long as there’s gunfire going on.” The second guard hauled Ten up.

He swayed on his feet. Someone had blown the main door. There was only one party who would blow that door.

Focus. Use the tools he had. That was what he had to do. He would concentrate on the pain later, but for now he pushed it aside. There was no ache in his shoulders, no burning along every inch of his skin. There was no weakness in his muscles from what felt like days of electrical torture.

Now there was only adrenaline coursing through his system, and he meant to ride that wave.

Hands. They were in front of him. Idiots.

“Let’s go,” the guard said as that gunfire got closer.

Ten brought his hands up, catching the f*cker in the chin and sending him back on his ass. Ten propelled up from where he sat and found the world spinning. It made him nauseous, but he forced himself to move. He needed to find the keys, needed to get out and figure out where his team was, and he suddenly found himself in the middle of a war zone.

His vision was out of whack. He got clear sight of concrete and industrial walls before it went fuzzy again.

“Hey,” a deep voice growled and there was a volley of cursing. “I’m going to need backup here. All hell’s broken loose and our prize isn’t as sleepy as promised. Get the doc down here now.”

The doc. Not his sweet doc. Not Faith. The other one. The evil one. He hated that woman. She was the one with the drugs. The pain he could handle. That feeling of endlessness was another thing altogether.

He had to make his legs work. The muscle in his right thigh seized and he hit the concrete with a thud.

A hand found the back of his neck and started hauling him up. There was nothing he could do. His leg was twitching uncontrollably. His spine started to bow.

A loud crack sounded through the room and he fell back to the floor.

“I got you,” a familiar voice said. “Can you stand?”

For a second he thought Big Tag was here. Saving him again. It took a moment to realize the man hauling his ass up this time wasn’t quite as big as Ian, though he was proving just as stubborn.

“Theo, what are you doing here?”

“Saving you, boss. Des, clear a path for me. Tell Nick and Brody we’re going to have to carry Ten out of here. I don’t think his legs are working right now. Also, tell them we have incoming. We should expect to have to fight our way out.”

Ten caught sight of the lovely Brit. She was wearing all black and looking perfectly competent as she raised her SIG Sauer and started moving back through the complex toward the stairs and the door that would lead them outside.

“Let’s go. We’ve got a small army of MSS agents on the way in. Apparently they love you in Beijing.” Theo wrapped Ten’s arm around his broad shoulders. “Can you manage this?”

He could shuffle along now that the spasm had subsided. It would be back. “Leave me. Get the f*ck out of here, Taggart. We don’t have enough men and not a single one of you is wearing body armor.”

They hadn’t brought any along. It was supposed to be a quick get in, get out operation.

Theo gave him a reckless smile. “Body armor’s for wimps. I’ve got two cars waiting. We’ll make it.”

God, he wished his head would stop spinning. He needed to think. He needed to know the odds. MSS was here to pick him up. They wouldn’t have sent a single man or even two or three. They would send a contingent, and they wouldn’t want to let him go without a fight. McDonald had a small army of guards here himself.

If they could have done it quietly, it could have been done. If they had more men, it could have been done.

“Theo, get your people out of here this instant.” The words felt dumb on his tongue. He was sending away his only way out, but he couldn’t live with the consequences. He wasn’t about to trade his life for any of theirs. “That’s an order.”

Theo moved forward, dragging him along. “I can’t obey that order, sir. You’re incapacitated and incapable of making proper decisions. You can fire me later, but I’m saving you tonight.”

A little flare of panic seemed to wake his system up. His legs started moving, stumbling along at a brisker pace. “No. This is going to go south and it’s going to go quickly. Dump me. Let MSS take me. Big Tag can find me later. Get our people off this island. Goddamn it, Theo, get Faith out of here.”