Surrendering To Her Sergeant (47 page)

Stock unplugged the unit from the case
and walked it over to a “work station” in the set. Unlike the other
workspaces, there was no keyboard at the spot. The director hit a
button that made the surface slide back, revealing a docking
station beneath. Once he parked the tablet in the dock, two things
happened. A map of the country, with major cities detailed, flashed
onto the large screen overhead. On the pad itself, a handprint
identification cue appeared.

“Well, well, well,” the president
murmured.

“Nice, eh?” Stock
concurred.

“Shit,” Ethan
muttered.
Shit, shit,
shit
. The gut that had helped steer his
team out of harm’s way on countless occasions, that growled at him
when situations were wonky, let out a full roar now. His logic
backed up the warning, beating at his brain so hard that it
vibrated down to the base of his throat.

If all of these consoles weren’t
props…

If Lor and Stock had managed to
recreate the nuclear football in tablet form…

Holy
fuck
.

Stock pulled the pad back out, making
both screens go black again before telling Nichols, “You’ll have
visuals tonight during the show. Some of them might not sync up but
don’t worry; we can fix them to look right in
post-production.”

“I’ll bet you will,” Ethan spat under
his breath.

“Right now we need you to practice
handling all of this as if you really know it. Get comfortable with
the feel of things and—”

“Nobody’s getting comfortable with
anything, Stock!”

Dan Colton’s voice, coming
from overhead, was a Godlike bellow through the cavernous building.
But if the command was the Almighty, the outbreak of
chicks
and
chooks
, a chamber-loading
party from on high, was the most angelic sound Ethan had ever
heard. His chest swelled with emotion and a shit-eating grin danced
on his lips.
The wild boys of the First
SFG are awake, dickwads. And they’ve come to play. Hard.

“Put the tablet on the
table—slowly—then raise your hands and step away from the
president.” Colton still used the God voice.

“What the hell?” Nichols charged as
three of his men ran toward him. On the way, they grabbed Bella and
flung her back. Now off-balance in her heels, she shrieked and
tumbled to her knees but was able to skitter into the shadows along
with crew members who’d found safe corners.

Ethan breathed deep to calm his heart
rate and refocus his attention. As much as he ached to join the
agents, he held back. Unarmed and untrained in their protocol, he’d
be dead weight, perhaps literally. As much as it sucked ass, he
could do more good where he stood, with his hands up. “Mr.
President, let them get you out of here. Now!”

“I’m afraid I can’t let that
happen.”

Every God voice needed a Satanic
sneer. It just blew chunks when the voice had an asshole monster
attached to it. The King of Hell made his entrance now, emerging
from the shadows in the form of Ephraim Lor. He moved with such
sleek grace, Ethan wondered if any of the guys even saw him yet.
Since there wasn’t a single step from above, he assumed he was the
only one with a clear visual of the bastard, dressed completely in
black—including the custom CZ pistol in his hand.

“Down, down, down!” Ethan yelled,
hitting the floor himself.

Not fast enough.
Fuck!

Three shots exploded. Three bodies
thudded to the floor.

“What the fuck?” The stunned mutter
belonged to Charlie, who’d smacked the deck a few feet
away.

“Stay down,” Ethan told
him.

“Dear God.” The stunned mutter came
from Nichols.

Lor cocked his pistol again. “My
apologies, sir. I am sure they were good men.” He paused and drew
in a deep, long breath. “If anyone moves again, the next bullet I
shoot shall be through the president’s skull. I presume that is
clear to everyone?”

Nichols took a breath too, but his
shook with fury. “Who the hell are you and what do you
want?”

Lor tsked himself. “Where
have my manners fled? My name is Ephraim Lor, Mr. President. You
probably know me better as Enzo Lemare. I’ve produced this show for
two years and helmed several more before that.” He spread out his
free hand. “In short, I have had plenty of opportunity to walk the
gilded sidewalks of this country, to drive its golden roads, to
consort with its most pampered few—who over the years have
certainly become the
few
.” The man’s stance stiffened. “It
is time to, how do you all say it here, ‘level the playing field’
once more. It is time, Mr. President, for America to start over.
When the people of this country watch six of its states decimated
at the hand of their own leader, with the cities of his strongest
opponents targeted, it will not be long before the rest of the land
falls into chaos.”

Ethan was glad he was
already on the floor. His senses became a bread pudding of stunned.
When he, Colton, and Franz were talking last night, looking for a
deeper commonality to the dots on the map, politics had never
entered the discussion—nor, he bet, any of their minds.
“God
damn
,” he
uttered.

Nichols gave a more eloquent reaction.
“Are you insane?”

“Sometimes burning the forest is the
only way to save it, my friend.”

Lor finished that with a
sad smile as five of his soldiers appeared and locked onto Nichols
from behind. Ethan spat a dozen
fucks
beneath his breath as the
assholes forced Nichols to kneel in front of the missile launch
station. It would’ve been more but Ethan and Charlie were grabbed,
too. Four of the mercenaries hauled them up, twisted them around,
and slammed them facedown onto the table. The left side of Ethan’s
face erupted in pain though it didn’t prevent him from picking out
a new cry that erupted amidst the frightened voices in the shadows.
Ava.

Shit
!

While his chest cramped from the
thought of her near any of this chaos, his head reconciled the
sense of it. His headstrong little hellfire had likely been the one
who’d guided Franz and the guys in here. She had the passkeys,
codes, and layout knowledge they’d needed to get to the building
then infiltrate it from above. That didn’t mean Ethan had to
approve one goddamn bit of the decision. That didn’t mean he wasn’t
hoping that the subtle movements from the catwalks would morph into
his teammates descending on fast ropes any second. But as long as
Lor’s gun was parked on the president’s face, they were as trapped
as he was.

He prayed like hell that Kellan was
somewhere up there. And that he had some decent sniper firepower in
his hands.

“Can we warm up the set a little
more?” Lor shouted. “Seems a little dim for our purposes. And
Cameron my friend, after you get the tablet locked back into the
console and reconnected to Vandenberg, I believe we’ll need to fire
up that camera. Or do you think we should try for two angles for
this?”

Ethan listened to the director stroll
over to Lor. “Sure; what the hell? I own these guys for a minimum
eight-hour call today. Not that there’ll be much for them to spend
the money on around here later.”

Breathe. Focus. The second
one of these asswads lets up on the pressure, you have to get free
and haul ass to the president.

Nichols was proving his own
backbone—and capacity for steely defiance. “Thought this thing
looked a little too sophisticated for a prop,” he
seethed.

“You are not a stupid man,” Lor
countered. “Everyone, even your political opponents, knows that. It
is why nobody will give a flinch of doubt when watching the footage
of you ‘taking over’ our rehearsal to enact your scheme. It was why
we activated five cells at once upon learning you’d be coming to
this area for a visit. We worked together to manipulate the show’s
scripts toward this plot finale, to get the necessary communication
going with your office, and to build the station that would
interface with the tablet.”

Nichols’s voice thickened with
bewilderment. “So you’ve had the tablet complete for a
while?”

Lor chuckled. “With our resources,
that was the easy part. For the harder pieces, such as the
plausibility and GPS locations of all the targets, as well as
selling off the tablet to an advantageous buyer when we’re done,
required some third-party partners and a great deal of patience.”
He released a pleased hum. “Today, I can confirm that patience has
its rewards. Yes, my friend?”

Stock’s grunt officially outted him as
the bastard’s accomplice. “Right on. Sure. Whatever you
say.”

“Stock?” Nichols’s
amazement saturated his voice. “
You’re
drinking this Kool-Aid,
too?”

“Pfft.” The director stressed it with
a sharp chortle. “Hell, no. I’m just a selfish sonofabitch who
negotiated the business behind all this. I’m going to have fun
watching the show from my secure condo in Bora Bora. I’ll drop you
a postcard if you want.”

There was a significant
pause from Nichols—but not a dormant one. Ethan felt the furnace of
the man’s rage from where he stood, roiling hotter by the second.
“So Lor my
friend
,
you despise the excessive ways of our people, yet have used that
for every inch of your gain, even now. To paraphrase my teenager, I
call bullshit on your hairy, hypocritical ass.”

A sickening
whomp
filled the air.
Nichols’s stiff groan followed. As disgusted as Ethan was that Lor
had pistol-whipped his president, the sound was a goddamn sonata to
his ears. For a few precious seconds, that separated the
president’s face from the muzzle of that pistol.

A few seconds was all Franz and the
guys needed.

Sure enough, a throng of heavy ropes
were unfurled from the catwalks. As his teammates skimmed down them
faster than tree monkeys on crack, Ethan opened the gates on his
dammed-up adrenaline, letting it fire both his elbows back. His
guards, distracted by the shouts, gunfire, and disorder, were easy
to wrench from now. He was able to incapacitate the first with a
knee to the gut but as he grabbed for the guy’s rifle, he was beat
down with the butt of another gun. As he went down, he was
reassured to see Charlie getting away safely. The guy had pulled a
slick cold-cock on one of his guards, then paralyzed the second
into shock by kissing him.

Ethan lifted his head far enough off
the floor to shake the equilibrium back into it. As long as he
could see, he was still good to crawl. A lot of damage could be
done on an effective crawl. He already had a direction. Rhett,
Tait, and two members of Nichols’s detail were struggling to hold
their own against half a dozen of Lor’s burliest men, with a
seventh running to join the goons.

But the seventh soldier had…something
of a handicap.

In the form of an auburn-haired wild
woman latched to his back, firing what sounded like gutter-grade
Spanish as she tried to scratch his eyes out.

“Shit!” Screw the equilibrium. He
pushed to his feet, ran straight for Ava, and hauled her off the
guy’s back—

In the second before he was thrown to
the floor, too. With Ava on his right side, Tait on his left, and
the black hole of a rifle muzzle staring at him from straight
ahead.

Just as a savage howl erupted from the
president.

Ethan locked his fingers into Ava’s
and squeezed hard as she gasped. The horror in her eruption
reflected what everyone felt while watching Lor, assisted by his
soldiers, flatten the president’s palm to the handprint recognition
pad. After five seconds, the large screen over the console fired to
life.

Loading Target Coordinates
— Launch Sequence verification in 00:5:00.

As Nichols roared again, Lor pushed
away with a triumphant smile. “Hope you got all of that, Stock. I
don’t think the president wants to reshoot.”

Stock shrugged. “We can fix what we
need to in editing.”

“Perfect. And thank you, Mr.
President, for your cooperation. It was a bit rough in the
beginning, but since this is only the phase of redirecting the
missiles at new targets, you’ll get a chance to give us your better
side in five minutes.”

Ethan couldn’t see clearly to Nichols
due to the guards still hovering over him. The president remained
on his knees, probably held there by the bastards. That made
everyone’s new directive pretty fucking clear. He eyed Franz,
Colton, and the others, confirming his conclusion in each of their
faces.

Get to the president. Get him as far
away from that launcher as possible in the time they had left. Four
minutes, thirty seconds.

If lives had to be given in the
process, so be it.

Franzen gave a subtle but affirming
nod. Ethan knew what it meant. He’d dip it again three times. On
the third, they’d all move as one and pray like fuck for the
element of surprise on these dickwads.