Tactical Rescue

He just looked at her. Then he ran one hand slowly over his face and looked down the road.

See, this is why you can’t possibly be my Zack, no matter how much you remind me of him. Because my Zack would be hugging me right now and reassuring me, instead of just standing there.

“Sorry, we haven’t done introductions.” She stepped forward and stretched out her hand. “My name is Rebecca Miles.”

His eyes met her gaze. She knew those eyes. Dark gray. Like flint, the moment just before it sparked a fire. His mouth opened. A phone started ringing behind her, so loudly she almost jumped. He ran past her, back up the rock pile to his jacket, and grabbed a cell phone out of the pocket. “Keats here.”

Keats? His name was Keats? Even though she’d just told herself he couldn’t possibly be her high school crush, somehow hearing a different name come out of the man’s mouth landed heavy in her stomach.

She watched as he stood on the rock, his back to her and his phone to his ear. If he’d had a phone, why hadn’t he called the police already? The conversation was quick. He hung up, picked up his jacket and walked back down the rock slide toward her. Deep frown lines cut along his brow.

“Keats, is it?” she asked.

He paused, as though he’d just been asked a very difficult question.

“I’m sorry,” she added. “I couldn’t help but hear when you answered the phone. But that’s all I heard.”

“Yes.” He pulled off his right glove and reached for her hand. A strong, firm grasp enveloped hers. “Sergeant Keats. Reconnaissance specialist. That was my CO—my commanding officer—on the phone. I apprised him of the situation. My phone battery is pretty much dead right now, and he’s going to call all this in to the police. And yes, I’d like to take you up on your offer of a ride to Timmins.” There was a searching look on his face, as if she was supposed to be reading something else between his words. “What were you doing up on that hill?”

“Searching for a falcon’s nest,” she said. “I’m a filmmaker and videographer. So, Sergeant Keats, is it safe to presume that the man who nearly blew us up is some target you’re up here chasing?”

“No.” His frown grew deeper. “I’m not on assignment. I’m on leave actually, until Thursday. I’m due back at base in two days. Just let me grab my bag off the bike and I’ll be good to go.”

“But what about the man who blew up the road? I heard arguing and gunshots—”

“He’s gone.”

Her hands slid onto her hips. “And?”

“And, he blew up the road.” Now his arms crossed over his chest. “We struggled. I disarmed him. He ran off to where he’d hidden his vehicle. I thought he’d gone. But then he returned with a new weapon. It discharged. I disarmed him again. He left. I now have two illegal Glocks in my possession, and I’d like to go put them in my bag, as I don’t much feel like leaving them here.”

It was all useful information, but hardly warm and reassuring. And didn’t tell her what she wanted to know.

“But who was he and why did he blow up the road?”

“I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more than I have.” He turned around and climbed back over the rocks toward his motorcycle.

“But are we still in danger from him?”

He paused, his feet balancing on the crushing rocks that she’d feared just moments ago would bury her alive. His eyes glanced at the sky, his head shook and his lips moved as though he was praying. Then he looked at her head-on, with a look so raw and unflinching she blinked. “I don’t honestly know if we’re in danger or not. But trust me, Rebecca, I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. And I wish I could tell you more about what’s going on. I really do.”

He grabbed a green shoulder bag and moved his bike off the road. They walked to her camper. Neither of them spoke. He’d already made it clear he wasn’t about to answer any of her questions, and random small talk had never been something she’d been good at. Eventually they reached the small break in the trees that was the unpaved, overgrown entrance to her property. It was a nice chunk of forest actually. But it was hard to reach and very overgrown. Terrible for building on. But not bad for a hideaway.

“Welcome to my home.” She waved a hand toward the vintage aluminum camper now hitched to the back of a large black pickup truck. It was the same camper she’d lived in before her mom married the General, one of the few things she’d inherited. “Not much to look at, but it has all my video equipment inside. I travel a lot, so all I really need is a place to park my life when I’m not on the road. Feel free to dump your stuff in the front seat.”

“Thank you. Can I charge my phone in your truck? My battery’s almost dead, and I promised my CO I’d call him back.”

“No problem.” She tossed him her keys. He caught them smoothly. “My minilaptop computer is plugged in there, but you can just stick it in the glove compartment. I’ve also got a portable generator running in the camper, if you’d rather.”

“Thanks. I think I’ll go with the truck. It’ll get us on the road faster.” He slid one hand into the front pocket of his jeans as if checking to make sure something was there. “Hey, this might sound like an odd request, but would it be okay if I checked something on your laptop?”

She shrugged. “Be my guest. But it’s really small and it won’t connect to the internet.”

Rebecca walked to her camper. For a moment she debated simply unhitching her truck and leaving the camper in the woods. But depending on how long things took at the police station, she might just as well spend the night at a campsite in Timmins. Small and portable, with four wheels, it might not be everyone’s idea of home. But for her, it was perfect. A narrow single bunk lay at the front end of the camper. A tiny kitchenette with a fold-down table filled the center of the space. At the back end, the second bunk had been converted into a long, makeshift desk and video-editing space.

Her eyes rose to the computer monitors at the end of the camper. She’d left them running on the generator. One was broadcasting a feed from the tiny camera mounted inside of her truck. Clipped just inside of the sun visor, she used the tiny, temperamental spy camera to film either herself or the road ahead when her project called for her to narrate something while driving. Right now, it showed the mysterious Sergeant Keats. He plugged a memory stick into her laptop computer. Then he opened his bag on the seat beside him. She crossed the camper to turn off the feed. His phone rang again. He answered.

“Hello?” he said. “Yeah. Sorry we got cut off. Yeah, I’m with her. No, I haven’t told her anything. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a clue.”

A shiver ran down her spine. She shouldn’t be eavesdropping. But he was talking about her and keeping something from her. Why should she trust him?

“Yeah, I’ve got it. I’m using her laptop to check the contents now. But it seems to be automatically downloading onto her machine.” He stuck the phone between his ear and his shoulder, picked up her laptop. “I don’t know. Something weird’s going on. I’ll call back when I’ve got something to report. But yeah, I’ve got Rebecca.” He set the laptop back down. “Don’t worry. I know what I need to do here! I’m not about to let anything get in the way of doing it. Fair enough? I’ll find out what she knows, if she knows anything, and I’ll bring her in.”

She froze.

He was talking like she was his target. No, it was worse than that. She was a Canadian citizen standing on home soil. He wasn’t the police. He didn’t have a warrant or any legal right to question her or take her anywhere. But he was talking as if she was his prisoner.

“No, Rebecca doesn’t know anything!” Zack seemed to be searching his bag for something. His voice sounded almost exasperated. “She’s completely clueless. She’s completely in the dark. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

He reached for the sun visor and tilted the rearview mirror to look behind him, bumping the tiny camera. The camera’s view shifted to the side of the passenger seat. The audio feed cut out entirely. She could barely see a thing inside the cab now and couldn’t hear another word he said.

He waved his hand through the camera’s gaze and suddenly she could see what he’d been searching for.

Her hand rose to her lips.

It was a pair of handcuffs.

* * *

Zack tucked the handcuffs into his belt and his SIG semiautomatic into his holster. Next time he ran into Seth, he’d be ready for him. The two Glocks he’d taken off Seth now lay disassembled in the bottom of his bag. He did not want to know what kind of friends Seth had been making that he managed to get ahold of not only two illegal handguns, but also an IED. Hopefully, he was just a really good thief.

Either way, frustration coursed through Zack’s shoulders. Stonewalling Rebecca like that had been almost physically painful. But she hadn’t seemed to recognize him. He’d been trying to figure out what to say when Seth had opened fire again. He’d sorted that, and then his phone had rung with a call from his own CO, Major Jeff Lyons, field commander of Zack’s special ops unit. And Jeff had opened with the line, Please tell me you’re nowhere near Rebecca Miles right now.

Zack blew out a hard breath. Yes, it was no secret that he had an old Remi base newspaper clipping inside his footlocker with a picture of Rebecca at seventeen and a story about how she’d won the martial arts trophy. Or that he sometimes got a bit of good-natured ribbing from the other guys about having a crush on General Arthur Miles’s stepdaughter whenever the General’s face was on TV. Even though he’d never personally met the man, even back when he and Rebecca were teenagers.

But he’d never imagined that as news of Seth Miles’s treason and crimes spread like wildfire through both official and unofficial channels, someone in his unit would suddenly hope that Zack hadn’t gone to try to talk to Seth’s sister. Or that his own CO would then give him a friendly call just to suggest that as Rebecca was now wanted for police questioning, it might be a good idea that Zack stay away from her.

Too late for that.

“Again, I can’t assess what was on the memory stick.” Zack looked at the laptop. “Whatever it was, it appears to have now leaped from the memory stick to the laptop, and scrubbed the memory stick clean of any trace on the way out. Now the laptop’s completely locked down and appears to be asking for a password in Cyrillic script. So one of the Slavic languages. Don’t think it’s Russian. Could be either another Eastern European or a North Asian language.”

He could think of at least four different organized crime groups his task force had tangled with in various parts of the world that used Cyrillic script in their communications. He’d personally gone into Eastern Europe a few months ago to safely extract a brilliant young woman from the clutches of one such group. And I really hope whatever this is, it’s not connected to that. Because the idea that Seth Miles could’ve just hacked around the government database, looking for something to steal, and found something significant to an active special forces operation was unthinkable.

“Bring it in. Bring Rebecca Miles in. Walk away,” Jeff said. “I’ll report up the chain of command how fortunate we are that one of our top recon guys just happened to stumble upon Seth Miles’s current location and might’ve retrieved what he stole. I’ll try to play it as such great news that hopefully it won’t come back and bite you.”

“I’m on leave,” Zack said. “It was a personal errand. I simply saw her face on the news, and decided to pop by and see how she was. I was hardly expecting to run into Seth.”

“Oh, I know. You don’t need to convince me of anything,” the major said. “This isn’t an order and we’re not officially having this conversation. But as your friend, Zack, my advice is to get as far away from this mess as possible. And fast. The last thing we want is for our whole unit to be grounded from deployment because one of our top guys is being questioned in connection to an open treason investigation. The RCMP are heading the investigation, in conjunction with the Canadian Department of National Defence, and we haven’t been called in. But I can tell you that once word got out a member of our unit had a personal relationship with Seth Miles’s sister, it raised some serious flags as to where the break in security could’ve come from. We’re already worried that we can’t seem to stem the leak of Canadian equipment ending up in the hands of Slavic organized crime. If someone from the RCMP sits down to interview Miss Miles and she so much as mentions your name it won’t look good. Not for you. Not for us. As a friend, I would hate to see this unit function without you. But you know we can’t afford to be pulled from deployment because there’s a shadow hanging over one guy.”

Okay, okay. He got all that. Even though he didn’t like it. Maybe coming to check in on Rebecca had been the wrong call. It had been twenty years since Zack’d let his heart have any say in his decision making, and it had probably been a mistake to start now. But still...

“The Rebecca I knew was a reasonable person with a good heart,” he said. “I know you’ve advised me to keep her in the dark, and I understand why. But I’m not convinced it’ll jeopardize the investigation by telling her who I am and why I’m here. Honestly, she’ll go squirrelly if I’m not straight with her.”

Rebecca’s tenacity could be pretty unrelenting. Considering how hard she’d hammered him for information on the road, he could just imagine how the truck ride to Timmins would go.

“When in doubt,” Jeff said, “imagine explaining every single call you make in the next hour, in a long, drawn-out, extremely uncomfortable tribunal on this whole Seth Miles mess, and answering the question why a solider who’s withstood intense questioning by foreign militants couldn’t withstand the badgering of a cute girl with pretty eyes.”

Zack snorted. “She’s more than cute. But point taken. We’ll be in Timmins in a little over an hour.”

Then, sometime after his next deployment, he’d write her a nice long letter, apologizing for not being straight with her, not to mention infecting her laptop with some kind of Slavic virus. Hopefully, she’d forgive him.

“And you’re convinced she’s not complicit in her brother’s crimes?” Jeff asked.

“One hundred percent.”

“Okay. I hope for your sake you’re right. Just don’t let Rebecca or that laptop out of your sight. If you see Seth, don’t engage unless you have no other option. Again, I can’t authorize you for a mission, because it’s not our investigation, and I can’t dictate what you do with your personal leave. As your friend, feel free to call me anytime. But if this escalates, I’m going to have to get involved as your commanding officer. Got it?”

“Got it.” Zack ran one hand over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for giving you an extra headache and I won’t do anything that brings the unit into disrepute.”

“You’re the only man I know who could go on leave, to the middle of nowhere in Northern Ontario, and land in the middle of a major international crisis.”

“Ha, ha,” Zack said. “Thanks for calling. I mean it.”

“Anytime. See you back at base.”

The call ended. He put the laptop back into its hard case, zipped it up and then slid it into the truck’s glove compartment, happy to see she’d had the smarts to install a combination lock on it. He shoved his bag deep under the passenger seat and then got out of the truck. The door to Rebecca’s camper was closed. He strode toward it.

He had to admit, he kind of hated how all this was unfolding. If only Rebecca had recognized him. But a woman like her had probably been approached by so many male suitors in the past twenty years that one shy guy from when she was a teenager would have been long forgotten.

Lord, help me handle this situation honorably, honestly and with a whole lot of wisdom.

He wouldn’t disclose what he couldn’t disclose. But he also wouldn’t lie. And if that led to being barraged by questions for the whole truck ride to Timmins, so be it. He knocked on the door.

“Hey, Rebecca, you about ready to go?”

No answer. He silently counted to three and then opened the door. The camper was empty. He stepped inside. A window behind the sink was open. He nearly groaned. You’ve got to be kidding me! Oh, he’d had more than a few targets try to escape his grasp during his career. A few had even managed to land a blow or two before getting restrained. But none had ever made it as far as the threshold, let alone stepping one foot out the door.

And here Rebecca had actually evaded him by climbing out a window?

Something cold and metal brushed the back of his neck.

“Don’t move,” Rebecca said. “And get your hands up.”

And now he would’ve been tempted to laugh if the situation wasn’t so serious. His hands rose, just enough to show that he’d heard her. Surely she’d know how easily someone with his training could disarm her. The only reason for him to even hesitate was to minimize the risk of her getting hurt. Not to mention that if they got into a physical altercation he’d probably have to report it, and that would hardly help her case when it came to proving her innocence in Seth’s crimes. “Rebecca, look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m not about to hurt you.”

What was she even holding? Definitely metal, but not sharp enough of an edge to be a knife. Cylindrical, but it didn’t feel like the barrel of a gun, either.

“I want to believe you.” Her body brushed up against his back. Her breath tickled his ear. The scent of her hair filled his lungs. “But you haven’t exactly been honest with me, Sergeant.”

“Okay, you’re right, I didn’t answer all of your questions earlier. I’m sorry, there are just some things I can’t tell you.” He spun around, grabbed both her wrists in one swift motion and held her hands above their heads. “Now, drop your weapon.”

Rebecca was pinned against his chest, so close that if he’d just leaned forward a couple of inches he could’ve kissed her nose. She’d donned a simple gray windbreaker since he’d seen her last. The hood was pulled up over her head and closed tight, leaving a few black wisps of hair framing her face. Rebecca buried her face deep inside his chest. Something clicked above him. He glanced up. There was a small, metal canister of high-potency bug spray in her hands. She fired, using his chest to shield her own face. Bug spray filled the air above them, burning his eyes and choking his throat. Her wrists slipped from his grasp. Then she bolted out of the camper, through the trees.

Wow. Somebody had apparently kept her skills since they’d last sparred. Not to mention adding a new skill or two. He’d never been sprayed like a bug before. He chased after her. His eyes watered. His vision blurred. “Rebecca, wait! I’m—” A fit of coughing stole the words from this throat.

Lord, help me figure out how to stop Rebecca and calm her down before someone gets hurt.

He ran after her. She didn’t even try to double back to her truck. Instead, she cut straight through the trees, as though she was trying to reach the main road. She was faster than he remembered. She’d always been lithe. But the years had added strength to her limbs.

“Rebecca! Stop!” Surely she had to know there was no point running. He was going to catch up with her. She burst out of the trees and started down the road. Then he heard a vehicle.

Oh no. No, no, no... Why is there another vehicle on this road?

“Help!” Her voice echoed through the trees. “Help! Stop!”

Tires screeched. Zack pushed his legs faster. But it was too late. A red moving van had reached the rock barrier and seemed to be turning around. Smiling stick-figure animals on the side advertised Woodland Home Movers.

“Rebecca! Wait!”

She reached the van. The back door opened. He couldn’t let her leap into a random van, no matter the cost.

He stopped chasing her, stood on the road and gasped a breath.

“Becs!” he shouted. “It’s me! Zack! Zack Biggs!”

She turned back. The hood slipped from her head. Hair fell loose around her face. “Zack? It’s actually you.”

“Yeah.” He risked taking a step toward her, as though she was a nervous animal he didn’t want to spook. Just please don’t get in that van. “My name is Zack Keats now. New name. New look. But yeah, it’s still me.”

“I thought... I mean, I kind of knew...” Her dark eyes opened wide like a camera lens struggling to bring a picture into focus. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Well, if you knew, why didn’t you just ask?” He reached his hand out toward her. “I’m sorry, forgive me. I had my reasons. Please don’t go with them.”

“Look, Zack, I—”

A scream stole the words from her lips as a burly, tattooed man reached out from the back door and yanked her backward into the van.

“Rebecca!” Zack pelted toward the van. For a second he could still see her legs kicking and prayed she’d break free. Then the van door slammed, trapping Rebecca inside.

A second heavily tattooed man leaned out of the driver’s window and fired a semiautomatic. Bullets flew past Zack’s head. Rebecca’s screams filled the air.

But neither shook Zack anywhere near as much as the two-headed black-and-red bird-of-prey tattoo on the driver’s bulging arm.

These men were members of Black Talon, a highly dangerous Eastern European organized crime syndicate.

And they’d just kidnapped Rebecca.

THREE

The hollow sound of the door slamming echoed in Rebecca’s ears. The van was picking up speed. The burly bearded thug who’d manhandled her into the vehicle pressed a gun to her temple. But it was the huge hand holding tight to her throat that filled her with such blinding pain that for a moment she couldn’t begin to find a way to fight back. He shoved her down into the cold empty back of the moving van and pinned her to the floor.

Help me, Lord. I need to escape this van before it gets to wherever they’re taking me.

She looked around. Inside the vehicle she could see two guns, two kidnappers, but nothing within her reach that she could grab as a weapon. Outside the vehicle was the muscular bulk and courage of the one guy she would’ve trusted with her life. Would he rescue her now?

She looked up at the man now holding her down. There was a crude, vaguely Eastern European tattoo on his neck, of two red-and-black eagles that almost seemed to be crawling out from under his shirt, and the word Ivan.

He yelled something to the driver, but it wasn’t in English. Then the van lurched forward. “Ivan” let go of her body but kept his weapon aimed at her face.

“You down! No move!” The order came from the driver. The same bird-of-prey tattoo was on his arm, this one with Dmitry.

Were those their first names? A family name? Or some other distinction?

Dmitry was trying to drive forward with one hand and shoot backward out the window at Zack with the other. He shouted something at Ivan in a language Rebecca couldn’t understand.

Ivan shouted back in heavily accented English. “She’s down! She’s not going to move!”

Oh, how little those men knew her.

The sound of a bullet cracked the air outside the van. Zack was returning fire. Then the back window shattered in a spray of class. She sprung to her hands and feet in a racing stance, prayer crossing her mind even as glass rained down around them. Ivan swore. The van swerved. Rebecca glanced back through the open gap in the shattered glass and saw Zack running after her, gun in hand.

His body strong. His face fierce.

I still don’t know what’s going on. But, old sparring partner, I’m glad you’ve got my back.

Zack was getting smaller and smaller in the distance, though, as the van kept driving. Ivan fired through the broken window, the explosion filling the metal vehicle like an echo chamber. Dmitry turned back and screamed at Ivan. But it was all the distraction she needed.

Rebecca leaped to her feet and charged. She grabbed the driver from behind and pressed her fingers into his eyes. Dmitry swore. The van spun wildly. Forcing the van to crash would be dangerous. But the van still hadn’t picked up that much speed, and something told her she was far safer in a collision with Zack running to her rescue than she would be going wherever these men were taking her. Ivan grabbed her hair. Dmitry stomped on the breaks. The van slammed to a stop, throwing Rebecca against the seat and tossing Ivan across the floor. Rebecca recovered first. She ran for the van’s back door, her feet crunching on broken glass. She could hear her abductors shouting behind her. She grabbed the door handle. The door flew open, wrenching the handle from her hand.