Extraction Read online

  She seemed truly aware of her surroundings for the first time since Cooper laid eyes on her, and she froze, her body stiffening in fear. Her mouth open, vomit trailing from her chin, she tried to scream.

  "Ma'am, it's okay—my name is Cooper Braaten…” he said around a gasp of pain. “…I'm here to take you home."

  Mikhailovich laughed. He pushed his pistol into the side of Kyrsten’s head, making her cry out in pain. "Don't listen to this fool, Mrs. Marquadt. All I have to do is stand here for a few more minutes and he’ll bleed to death in front of you. Your noble rescuer. Look over there, you see my house? Eh?” he said, forcing her head to turn toward the inferno down the road. Mikhailovich jerked his chin at Cooper. “This piece of shit did that, and he’s going to pay for that.” He glanced down at his wounded shoulder. “And this suit—this is silk, you ignorant fuck!”

  Kyrsten regained a little of her composure as she watched the flames engulf the house where she'd been held prisoner. She spat blood and vomit on the ground at Mikhailovich’s feet.

  "Too bad you weren't inside when he started the fire,” she muttered.

  Cooper grinned. Well played, madam.

  Mikhailovich squeezed her arm—marks appeared on the white skin through Cooper’s augmented night vision. Kyrsten screamed out in pain, but when she tried to shift her elbow into Mikhailovich’s gut, he pushed the barrel of his pistol against her temple again and she froze.

  "There's a good girl…" Mikhailovich purred, looked behind him his shoulders. He took a shaky step back, wincing in pain. “You will soon learn to take orders…”

  Cooper's eyes dropped to Mikhailovich’s feet and saw one of his trouser legs dark with blood. "Looks like you might bleed to death too, Mikey…that’d be a fine end to this shitty situation, wouldn't it? Both of us bleed out, leaving her alone in the middle of Russia?"

  Mikhailovich laughed. "Middle of Russia? Take me for a fool, do you? The Ukrainian border is just on the other side of that ridge, through the trees,” he said, jerking his chin toward the forest. “All I have to do is reach it. All you have to do is die." He shoved Kyrsten forward a half step, more to catch his own balance than to aggravate her. "And she will die too if you make any sudden moves, cowboy."

  "I wish you'd stop calling me that," Cooper muttered. “Mikey.”

  “Fuck you!” the mobster exploded, cords standing taut on his neck, spittle flying from his mouth.

  "Help me…" Kyrsten muttered, as she was dragged another step off the road toward the dark embrace of the woods. "Don't leave me…please…”

  Mikhailovich visibly calmed himself and took a long breath. "He doesn't have much of a choice, my lovely,” he said in a smooth voice, as if he hadn’t just screamed at Cooper. “If he tries to move, I put a bullet in your head, use you for a shield, then finish him off."

  "That's not going to happen, ma'am,” Cooper called out, trying to sound calm. His heart was racing and he could feel his energy sapping. “I may have failed to rescue your husband, but I'm not leaving you behind."

  "Oh that's right!" Mikhailovich laughed. "Your file said you would have a thing about rescuing the fair damsel in distress," the gangster said with a sneer.

  Cooper frowned. File? What file? "I don't know what you're talking about, but you need to stop right there."

  Mikhailovich took a quick glance over Kyrsten’s shoulder. "Or what?" His head disappeared from view before Cooper could take a shot. "You going to get up and bleed on me? We both know you won’t shoot her to get to me, and there's no way she's going to escape without getting killed. True, I might die, but I guarantee you she will."

  “Please…” Kyrsten breathed, here eyes wild.

  Cooper blinked, flicking the blood from his eyes with his useless hand. Half sitting up as he was, the pain in his right shoulder was excruciating. A dull white throb danced at the edge of his vision, threatening to blind him. The wound in his leg must've been worse than he’d thought.

  "Oh…there it is," Mikhailovich whispered in Kyrsten’s ear. "You see that look on his face, sweetling? He's already starting to bleed out. Look how his gun wavers. See how slow he blinks? Another minute and he'll be flat on his back, sleeping like the dead." Mikhailovich laughed. "Like the dead! Sometimes I crack myself up," he laughed again, the sound maniacal in Cooper’s ears.

  Cooper looked at Kyrsten's eyes, the whites sharp against the green tint of her skin in his augmented night vision.

  Night vision! Fuck me…

  "Thermal," Cooper sub-vocalized. His vision went to static for a split second, then the world shifted into oranges, yellows, whites, and several shades of gray and blue.

  Before him, the cracked glasses outlined Kyrsten’s body, illuminated with the heat of fear that radiated from her torso and head. Behind her, Mikhailovich’s signature moved back and forth, legs constantly shifting to take the weight off his injured right foot.

  In visible light, Cooper couldn’t see past her torn evening dress. But with the thermal camera operating on his AR glasses, he saw right through Kyrsten’s clothing and had a clear shot at Mikhailovich’s legs.

  Cooper smirked. He dropped his aim between her legs and heard her sudden intake of breath. “Say goodnight, asshole.”

  "Wait—no!" Kyrsten called out, one hand outstretched to stop him.

  Cooper pulled the trigger once and watched a spray of color—hot blood—erupt from the side of Mikhailovich’s wounded knee as he shifted it between Kyrsten’s legs.

  Crying out in pain, the Russian crime boss immediately dropped and his gun went off. Kristin collapsed against the car. Cooper didn't have time to check and see if she was okay—he adjusted his aim and placed a round right through Mikhailovich’s open mouth. The top of the bratva boss’s head exploded in a rainbow of colors on his thermal scope.

  Cooper got one look at Kyrsten, struggling to stand on one broken heel, and watched her collapse to the ground. She dry heaved, then screamed, her fingers white as they clawed into the loose gravel driveway. Cooper blinked and lowered his head to lay flat on his back, resting his pistol across his chest as he stared up at the night sky through bare trees.

  “Visual,” he muttered. The garish heat signatures vanished and his glasses cleared. He stared up at the bits of sky visible through swaying branches. The helicopter had vanished.

  "You could've killed me!" Kyrsten shrieked.

  Cooper grimaced. "You're welcome." He closed his eyes. The sound of the helicopter descending somewhere off to his right thrummed through his body, making his ribs vibrate. He hoped that was Beslan. If not, his day was about to get a lot worse.

  Unable to take that chance, Cooper took a deep breath and rolled on his left side. Kyrsten staggered over to him, and despite laying about him with every insult that seemed to come to her, she helped him sit up, and rummaged through his gear to find his emergency first aid kit.

  By the time Cooper stopped the bleeding on his thigh, he had switched his glasses back to night vision and spotted a familiar shape loping through the underbrush off the road to the right.

  "About time you showed up," he called out.

  "I did not want to ruin the good times you are having!" Beslan replied, his teeth flashing white in the darkness. He turned and helped Kyrsten to her feet. "At your service, madam. Come, let's get you out of here," he said, as suave and cultured as ever. He looked at Cooper up and down. "You've looked better."

  Cooper took the offered hand and felt himself hauled to his feet. "Fuck you."

  34

  Patient Hunter

  Near the Russia/Belarus Border

  Southwest of Smolensk

  Darius stared through his enhanced binoculars. The high-end, military grade device was only available to a few specific countries around the world, or someone with as many Council connections as he had.

  "What the hell are you doing down there…?" he mumbled.

  "Is that him? The Chechen?" asked Darius's driver in accented English.

  Unlike most o
f Jayne's operatives, Darius didn't bother learning the local language when he went on a mission. He found brute force to be a universal language. But in this case he made an exception. One of the Council’s local operatives was serving as his interpreter and guide while he was in Moscow. The man now sat in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

  He’d perched the black Land Rover on a grassy knoll somewhat west of Mikhailovich’s estate. Across the wide valley, and over the deep forest, Darius had a clear view of the Chechen’s Hind, waiting patiently on the edge of the treeline. Sitting there on the ground, its rotors lazily spinning and idle, the massive helicopter made an easy target, ripe for the plucking.

  Darius frowned—he’d never liked easy. Easy implied something wasn't worthwhile. A man with the Chechen’s reputation — even though he was a sworn enemy of the Council and had taken out several of Darius's personal friends—deserved more than a missile launched out of the dark. That was the equivalent of stabbing someone in the back who didn't even know you were there.

  A cheap shot.

  Darius didn't take cheap shots. "That's him…" he muttered.

  The driver didn't respond. He threw open his door and moved to the rear hatch. Darius sighed, listening to the sound of his assistant fumbling with the locked cases in the back.

  “Don't bother…he'll be airborne and out of range before we get it set up and locked on."

  "You don't know that! We must take the shot!" snapped the driver, as he ripped open the case to one of the two shoulder-fired, compact antiaircraft missiles stored in the SUV.

  Darius shook his head and put the binoculars back to his eyes. He zoomed in, switching to thermal and watched as several heat signatures made their way to the helicopter.

  Was it possible? Had Braaten survived the explosion at Mikhailovich’s estate? Darius had watched the final confrontation between Braaten and Mikhailovich—and his driver—from the hilltop and was about to send a message off to Jayne that Braaten had been killed by Mikhailovich when all the gunfire started and Braaten and the bratva boss both fell to the ground. He had no idea who the hell was shot or injured down there, but he knew the last thing he needed was to send a few missiles into the situation and destroy any evidence that was there.

  No, the only thing for it is to head down on foot and see the situation myself.

  "Are you going to help me or not?" asked the driver.

  "Put that away, we’re going on foot."

  "What?" demanded the driver, his head poking around the side of the Land Rover. “You're crazy! We can end this right here, right now! Help me get this thing set up…"

  Cooper cried out in pain as Beslan half dragged, half carried him to the waiting Hind. He saw the landing lights through the trees and even his explosion-dampened hearing picked up the sound of the rotors chopping through the air as they spun at idle.

  Despite the pain in his side and the dizziness threatening to steal away his consciousness through blood loss, Cooper grinned. Next to the Chechen, the svelte form of the ambassador's wife limped along on one broken heel in her torn, bloodied evening dress.

  She was alive, and would survive. The mission wasn't a total loss.

  Cooper grunted as his trailing foot hit a rock.

  "Pussy," Beslan grunted, the smile clear in his voice.

  Cooper clenched his jaw to bite back his response. They emerged from the treeline and hobbled the hundred feet to the waiting helicopter, hunched over. Kyrsten ripped off her remained shoe and tossed it aside, then ran doubled over through the flying grass and twigs. Both her hands went up to the swirling mass of hair that whipped around her head, kicked up by the idling helicopter’s downdraft.

  Cooper could tell as they approached the side door that Beslan was yelling instructions to Kyrsten, but his damaged hearing was completely overloaded by the noise of the rotors. He blinked, and though his vision swam drunkenly, he spotted Kyrsten's concerned face as she climbed aboard and reached down to take his arm.

  Beslan remained on the ground, and between the two of them, they pushed, pulled, and shoved Cooper onto the deck. His vision swam around his head as if he'd been on a three-day bender. His stomach had finally had enough—Cooper turned and retched all over the floor, his body spasming with the effort.

  Before he could quite get the nausea under control, a new sensation was added to the mix, as the helicopter lifted off the ground. His stomach felt ready to drop through his spine onto the deck.

  In the distance, he heard the faint wine of the turbine engines change pitch, then his body rolled forward as the aircraft pitched nose down and gained altitude and speed at an alarming rate for such a flying pig of a helicopter.

  Cooper’s good hand slapped around him at the cold metal plating of the floor and walls as he tried to keep himself from slipping right out the still open hatch. A soft hand grabbed his shoulder and held on. He blinked and looked up, struggling to focus his vision as Kyrsten leaned over him, her hair dangling down like a cascading waterfall surrounding her face as she tried to offer comforting words and a worried smile.

  "Don't worry about me! Strap in!" Cooper yelled. Kyrsten shook her head and said something back.

  In frustration, Cooper grabbed her hand in his own blood-slick fist, and pushed her back. "You don't understand…Beslan—" he said, trying to warn her of his Chechen friend’s piloting abilities. His stomach flew up into his throat, cutting off his warning as Beslan, banked the helicopter on a dime and just about launched Cooper out the side of the aircraft.

  “Someone’s trying to lock onto us with a missile! Hang on back there!” Beslan called over his shoulder from the cockpit.

  “Grab onto something!” Cooper yelled to a wide-eyed Kyrsten.

  He slipped his good arm through the closest seat strap and wrapped the web material around his forearm. He had just enough time to keep himself from falling out the hatch as Beslan banked hard to starboard, then switched to port.

  Looking down between his dangling legs, Cooper saw the ground spin by in a lazy arc between his bloody, dusty boots. In the distance he heard Kyrsten scream and felt her hands grab his own.

  Jesus Christ…not like this…

  Darius frowned at the scene through his enhanced binoculars as the helicopter lifted off. It rose straight up, then pitched nose forward, abruptly jerking and weaving as it gained altitude and spiraled out over the forested valley below.

  What the hell are you doing?

  A loud, insistent beeping drew Darius’ attention back to the open rear hatch and his local assistant. "Fuck—you idiot!" he called, out limping to the rear of the Land Rover where his hapless driver had inadvertently activated the heat seeker controller for one of the mini-Stingers. Its on-board AI was attempting to track the strongest heat signature around, but had been switched to active mode, sending out radio signals in all directions.

  Darius slapped the disengage button and shoved the driver out of the way. He peered around the corner of the SUV and saw the helicopter level off. "You fool!" Darius said, slamming the hatch.

  "You're letting them get away!" complained the driver.

  Darius swung a backhanded fist and caught the driver on the side of the head. He followed it up with a knee to the stomach and brought the man to the ground. “Don’t fuck up my mission," he growled, bending low to put his face next to the driver, too busy sucking wind to reply. "You activated the goddamn guidance on the missile launcher, which alerted the Chechen! Now he knows we're here and he’ll be that much harder to bring down!”

  As Darius watched the Hind speed away to the west, keeping low and barely clearing the treetops, he couldn't help but smile. The chase was on. Despite his driver’s screwup, the situation was actually improving. True, the Chechen now knew he was being hunted…but that made for an honorable killing.

  “I…I’m…sorry…” gasped the driver, barely on his knees.

  Darius smiled. "It’s fine. Get your ass in the car—we've got a helicopt
er to catch.”

  By the time Cooper dragged himself away from the open hatch and managed, with Kyrsten’s help, to slam the door and seal themselves inside the Russian helicopter, Beslan had leveled off and decided not to eject his passengers. Cooper struggled into a seat next to Kyrsten and let his head fall back against the ratty, Soviet-era headrest. He found a set of intercom headphones dangling near the hatch and pointed at one on the opposite side for Kyrsten. He put on his own, then closed his eyes and sighed.

  "The fuck are you trying to do?" Cooper asked in Russian.

  "So, you are still alive? This is good…" Beslan's voice came from the cockpit, sounding like it was being transmitted through a tube.

  "Is this thing on? Can anyone hear me?" Kyrsten asked.

  "Yes! I am hearing you fine,” Beslan replied in English. “Please being patient a moment, the stewardess is soon being along with in-flight beverage and refreshments.”

  Despite the pain and nausea threatening to send Cooper into the blissful void, Cooper laughed. "Don't know if you've noticed…” he said in English for Kyrsten’s sake. “But I might could need a doctor…and probably some blood…"

  "I am noticing, my friend…” Beslan said, seriously. “You are bleeding all over my clothes…asshole.”

  "I don't know who you are,” Kyrsten said, “but thank you for rescuing us…"

  "Allow me to introduce myself," Beslan began.

  Cooper, well aware of Beslan's womanizing ways and flair for the dramatic, closed his eyes. "Cut the bullshit…" he grunted, as the helicopter hit a spot of turbulence and they bounced. "Hospital…airbase…anything American…"