Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters and giving them some guns (again).
Unbeta'd, unedited.
My watch reads ten past two when I flip down my NVGs.
Instantly, the dark room comes alive in a wash of green-on-green.
"Well, this feels better," Rosalie says, grinning like the Cheshire Cat as she snaps a matte-black Sig into her thigh holster and drops a brand new, wicked-looking tactical knife into a sheath on the opposite leg. With a quick zip of her jacket, she pulls her balaclava down and flicks on her own set of optics. "God, so much better."
Already by the window, I flash her a row of blacked-out teeth. "Ready, dorogaya?"
"Fuck you, Swan." Her grin stretches even wider. "Now, move it, or I'll move you."
Shaking my head, I slip out of the window onto the foot-wide shelf below the sill. As soon as my soles hit stone, I slide to the right, just enough for Rosalie to climb out and silently close the window behind her.
Tonight's trek to the western corner is a much easier one without the wind and freezing rain. It's quieter and darker, too. A thin, waxing moon hangs overhead, along with a spray of twinkling stars. Down in the compound, only a handful of windows continue to glow. Even those are dim, and when I scan the smattering of old stone buildings, I don't see a hint of movement inside.
I clock a solitary guard propped up against the distant wall on the ground. From the lolling angle of his head, I'd bet my paycheck he's snoring like a chainsaw. There's another pair parked all the way across the yard. Those are the ones we need to watch. A familiar furry shape sits between them, and that black and tan face-eater has far, far better senses than its handlers.
Low and silent, we creep like shadows along the shelf. Quickly ducking under the rows of darkened windows as we pass, we hit our target corner in no time. Without hesitating, I shoot Rosalie a final pointed look over my shoulder and repeat my descent from the other night.
Grabbing the wrist-thick iron gutter, I swing out and plant my feet at a hard rappel angle. With a few quick, efficient moves, I walk my way down the corner, leveraging the friction of the stone against the rubber of my shoes. As soon as I hit the ground, I roll into the shadows of the nearby line of hedges. Before I can jump back up to cover, Rosalie's boots thump quietly behind me.
"Damn it, you're fast," I mutter, peeking over as she crouches down beside me.
"Fuck, yes, I am," she whispers back. She gives my bicep a hard thump. "You also have stumpy legs."
"Bitch."
She snickers, muffling the sound in her elbow, but then shrugs and says, as serious as death itself, "You say that like it's an insult."
I give her a hateful huff. "Why are we friends again?"
"Like attracts like, dorogaya."
Fuck, I asked for that.
Following my path from nights ago, we drop low and slowly thread our way through the labyrinth of tall evergreen hedges and expertly sculpted trees. It's a winding, circuitous route, but the lines of bushy hedges provide more than ample cover, from both the ground and above. More importantly, we avoid all those annoying little cameras and motion sensors.
Halfway between the main house and the towering compound wall, I pick up a growly canine bark in the distance. A round of pissed-off curses in Russian answers, carrying on the breeze.
"What'd they say?" Rosalie whispers, right as I throw up a fist.
We immediately sink to the ground in unison and tuck tight against the prickling branches. I flash Rosalie a hand signal. With a quick nod, she crawls to the southern edge of the bushes while I take the northern end. She hits her target before me, peers around the hedge, and then signals me a lightning-fast reply.
Shit.
Rather than risking another Andrey, especially here inside the compound walls, I whip out my phone and tap a message to Whitlock.
Need a little assistance. Throw Fido a bone or something
Like always, Whitlock's reply comes back so fast I wonder if that poor guy's glued to his screens, 24/7. Sure, he knows what we're up to tonight, but still. He's going to need a vacation after all this. Hell, we all are.
TheTravelingCowboy: Give me a direction
We're moving south. Need you to draw them back north toward the stables. Keep Fido away from the winery
TheTravelingCowboy: Got it. Angry bees coming your way. ETA 6 and 0
I have no clue what Whitlock's talking about, but I trust that whatever he's sending will do the job. I motion Rosalie over, relay the message, and for the next sixty seconds, we hunker down against the row of hedges, silent and still.
When my watch reads sixty, slowly, careful not to make a sound, I belly crawl around and stare through the branches at our back. With the augmented optics, the pair of camo'd guards, along with their ninety-pound ball of fur and teeth, pop as clear as day. In no hurry at all, they're still gradually ambling their way toward us. They stop fifty yards away – thankfully downwind – and the blond on the right strikes a cheap cigarette, while the other – the same dark-haired Oleg from the other night – takes a long pull from a banged-up metal flask.
I don't blame you, dude.
Guard duty blows.
Sucking in a shallow breath of air through my nose, I watch that dog's ears twitch back and forth. Like the well-trained creature it is, it scans its surroundings in a constant, attentive circuit, even as its handlers slack off.
Abruptly, Fido jerks around to face north. Muzzle angled toward the sky, its ears lay back. A low, angry growl rumbles in its chest, gaining in volume until it turns into a wet, snappy snarl. Its head whips left, then right, chasing something I can neither see nor hear. Without warning, the animal yanks on its lead so hard the guard attached to it nearly loses his footing.
"Tupaya sobaka!" the guard yells. Throwing his cigarette to the ground, he scrambles to subdue the animal as it drags him like a sled. "Kakogo khuya ty tvorish'?"
Rosalie looks over at me, but all I can do is shrug. That is, until I finally, finally catch the barest hint of the telltale, high-pitched buzz of a drone coming from somewhere high above the compound. No way I can see the thing, but now that I know what I'm hearing, I follow the barely-there sound as it swoops through the air, drawing the attention and ire of a very large, very angry Malinois.
The guards probably can't hear a thing over the dog's growls and snaps, and my lips curve as I tap out a final message to Whitlock.
Perfect
BigLove89: You expected less?
My gloved palm claps over my mouth. When Rosalie gives me a questioning glance, I flip my phone in her lap. She takes one look at the screen and cranes her neck toward the sky with a soft, annoyed sigh. She types out a long response that I can't see, waits for McCarty to come back, and then sends him one final reply.
When she throws the phone back, I quickly scan their exchange, and all I can do is shake my head at their never-ending bullshit.
"Ready?" I mouth, watching the dog as it continues to snarl and tug its handler and partner away. The solitary guy over by the wall still leans against the stone, and now I'm sure he's fast asleep. Or he's just had a few too many pulls from Oleg's flask.
Either way, we move as soon as the guards hit the hundred-yard mark. And this time, we move fast.
Darting from cover to cover to cover, we zig-zag along the last line of hedges until we hit the open yard. Recalling Masen's late-night path, we stick to the perimeter, right on that edge where the shadows from the compound wall meet the grass and where we're all but invisible.
My back hits ancient, hand-cut stone and mortar maybe a minute later. Plastered against the wall, we immediately slink around the front-right corner and race along the foundation, finally ducking underneath the untamed boughs of an old olive tree. Near the rear of the building, right where it backs up against the compound wall, Rosalie taps me on the wrist and then points to an old, single-pane window maybe five feet off the ground.
That'll do.
I nod once and then play look-out while she pulls her tactical knife and crams it down into the seam above the sill, using the heavy-gauge steel as a wedge to pop the frame. The old, dried-out wood around the bottom locks snaps like kindling. The sash lets out a quiet creak of protest, but nothing loud enough to carry, and by the time I make it over, Rosalie's already managed enough clearance for us to crawl through.
I roll my eyes when she offers me a boost. "Screw you, Hale."
"What?" she whispers, way too innocent. She grins like crazy when I stick out my tongue.
Slapping my palms down, I grab the sill and with a short jump, shove up and muscle my way over the frame, sliding through and hitting the tile floor a second later. Of course, being the long-legged goddess she is, Rosalie just kicks her knee up and slithers her way through.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," I say, scanning the small, square room for any hint of electronics or surveillance. It takes me less than a second to determine that the room is clean. Hell, I don't even see an electrical outlet, and directly above, where a light fixture once hung, I see nothing but an empty socket and rusted chain. "Stumpy legs."
Rosalie bumps me on the shoulder. "I didn't say a word."
With a quick adjustment to the tubes on my goggles, my eyes lap around the room and catalogue its contents. Lined with wall-to-wall shelves filled with empty bottles and banged-up boxes dating back a decade or more, the best I can tell, we've found an old storage room of some kind. Crumbled plaster and debris litter the corners, and a thick layer of gray-white dust coats the boxes and shelves. No one's been here for months, if not longer.
"You were thinking it," I reply, glancing over to find my partner in crime still beaming like an idiot. "You know, I think you like this."
"No shit." Her shoulders shake with silent laughter. "This is the most fun I've had since we started this shitshow of an assignment."
"You're insane." I bump her back before I edge toward the door, listening for any sign we're not alone.
"No," she says as she eases the window closed. "I'm a Marine."
Now, it's my turn to grin, and it takes some real effort not to laugh out loud. "Same fucking thing."
"Yeah, but you have to admit this is way better than having Aronov's tongue down your throat."
All right, she's got me there.
Instead of just stating the obvious, I pop my fist up and listen again. Satisfied by the answering silence, I tentatively grip the knob and give it a slow, careful turn. When the door swings open, whining ever so slightly on its hinges, we sneak out into the stygian darkness of a wide, all-brick hallway running the length of the building.
"Which way?" I ask, as softly as I can manage now that we're out in the open.
Rosalie dips her head toward the long hall. "That way. Pretty sure this'll run into the main entrance at the front. There's a set of stairs we can take before we get there."
"You thinking down first?"
"Who knows, but that's where we need to start," Rosalie says as her shoulders rise and fall, deceptively loose. Like me, she's coiled to strike, and when she looks over, I spy the same stone-faced bearing and comportment of the Marine Raider I met years ago in the hills of the Korangal Valley. "If I'm holding hostages and don't want anyone hearing what I'm doing to them, there's no better insulator than rocks and dirt." Her lips mash together. "Fucking Taliban taught us that. You know that as well as I do."
Yes, I certainly do, but my stomach still gives an involuntary flip.
But I don't reply. I don't need to. No, I just glare at green-on-green everything and pull my Glock with a clipped dip of my chin. In a well-choreographed move we've both done thousands of times, weapons in the lead, we split to cover each side of the hall and start to make our way to the front.
We hit the first camera at the intersection of an adjacent corridor. The tiny red light of a motion detector blinks right below the lens. It's a good system, a high-end job with night vision and maybe infrared, but even from where I'm positioned, I can tell the angle's narrow, designed for the random, unsuspecting burglar coming from the front, not someone who knows what they're looking at.
Hugging tight to the wall, I drop into a low squat and slowly duckwalk under the lens, all the while watching that little blinking light. When neither its pattern nor rhythm changes, Rosalie follows tight on my heels, and as soon as we're out of range, we jump back up and continue past a dozen or so rooms. Unlike our forgotten little storage room in the back, these show signs of recent life.
Halfway down the hall, we pass by the two-story production room that runs through the center of the building. A sophisticated crusher and press sit by the roll-up door at the back. Banks of stainless-steel fermenters and clarifiers stand along the walls. In the middle, empty oak barrels stack high, along with an array of equipment I can't name. It's clearly a professional set-up and more than likely well past the scale needed for Aronov's vineyard. But that man doesn't do anything halfway, and I have no doubt whatsoever that I'm staring at a fortune's worth of machinery.
The high-tech bottling room occupies the space next door, followed by a massive, undeniably elegant tasting room. Unlike the cozier private rooms below, this one borders on a full-scale ballroom, easily fitting a couple of hundred guests. I glimpse the enormous crystal chandeliers suspended from the rough-cut rafters as we pass by. Linen-covered tables dot the pristine, stone floor, and on the walls hang priceless old tapestries and rustic, Tuscan-tiled mosaics.
"Here," Rosalie whispers, motioning to a wide, heavy oak door with an antique bronze knob.
"You sure?" I ask, peering down the hall to the front, where I can just make out the outline of the grand double door entry. "We didn't come down this way the other day."
Rosalie smirks at me. "This one's for staff."
My brows lift as much as my NVGs allow. "How do you know this?"
"Pfft." Even though I can't see them, I'm one-hundred percent sure Rosalie's rolling her eyes at me. "While you've been busy playing kissy-face with Masen, I made friends with Maria."
"You're kidding," I say, recalling all too well the hateful scowl Aronov's aging staff member shot me just this morning at breakfast. "That woman hates me."
"Not my fault. Eat more bacon." Rosalie chuffs out a whisper of a laugh but then turns serious. "You know, she's not exactly a big fan of Aronov either."
Signaling Rosalie to cover, I slowly approach the door. "Oh, yeah?"
"Nope." As I go to open it, Rosalie's laser line slashes left, then right, shining bright, neon green through my optics. "She didn't say anything specific, but it was pretty obvious."
"Shit." I scowl. "Now, I have to like her."
Hearing nothing more than the quiet pad of our own shoes against the tile, I ease open the heavy door. This one swings freely and silently on its well-oiled hinges, and as soon as we see it's clear, we slip inside.
Unlike the imposing main staircase with its finely polished limestone and fanciful wrought iron detailing, this one's an old, old spiraling access that looks like it's been cut straight out of the bedrock and drills deep into the belly of the winery. No more than five feet in width, the stone slabs are so old that I can feel the uneven wear from centuries of foot traffic. When I lean around the center column for the first turn, pitch-black stares back at me.
"How far you think this goes?" I whisper as we gradually descend to the first subterranean level, where Aronov's barrel storage and private tasting rooms reside.
"Don't know," Rosalie answers as she simultaneously adjusts the intensity of her goggles as the tiny bit of available light shrinks even more. "Probably down to the same set of caverns the main house sits on. So… at least two, probably three."
Slinking around the next curve, I nod. "You saw the pool?"
"Fuck, yes." Rosalie damned near spits it out. "Pisses me off to no end that that motherfucker owns something like that."
"Tell me about it."
A few seconds later, we hit the landing for the first level, and it's dark enough that I have to flip on the small tactical light attached to my barrel. An arched, all-stone corridor leads off to the left. Another leads right. Thick, rounded oak doors terminate each of the passageways. If I had to bet, I'd say the first feeds the private tasting room where we had our wine and caviar. No clue on the second.
"Keep going down?" I whisper, motioning to each of the corridors and then to the next set of curving stairs.
"Yeah, let's see where this shit goes. We'll clear this one on the way back up."
As soon as we round the first turn to the second level, the staircase begins to narrow. The texture of the rock walls roughens, just like the cavern underneath the castle and the massive foundation blocks sitting like islands in the middle of Aronov's pool.
As soon as we enter the second turn, however, I still.
"Do you hear that?" I mouth as quietly as I can manage.
Rosalie shakes her head.
Holding my hand up, I signal her to freeze. We don't move for a solid thirty seconds, and my lungs seal tight as I stretch my senses as far out as I can go, searching for any hint of anomaly. My heart, beating slow and steady, sounds like a kettle drum in the silence. Even the blood rushing in my ears sings too loud.
Nothing.
Nothing but darkness and silence.
Except… right when I go to take a breath, I finally pick up a faint, high-pitched, electronic beep.
It pings again.
And again.
And again.
And now that my brain and ears are working together, it's all I can hear.
I flash Rosalie a quick hand signal. I kill my tac light as she flicks off her laser line. In perfect synchrony, we start our descent once more, only this time we don't dare say a word, and we creep down the remaining steps in utter darkness, moving as stealthily and silently as possible.
We skip the second level and head straight down to the third, following that barely-there beep. That tiny sound increases in volume with each step while maintaining that same slow, steady rhythm. The stairwell continues to narrow, and the steps become even more eroded. It reminds me less and less of the cavern beneath the castle. Tight, claustrophobic, and just a little creepy, it's more like the ancient tunnels underneath Rome or the catacombs in Milos. Either way, I'm pretty sure that whatever was here originally predates Aronov's castle by a long shot.
But Rosalie guessed it right. The stairwell ends on the third level, and as soon as we hit the bottom landing, our path is clear. A single passageway leads off to the right, curving thirty yards in. My optics register a sliver of glowing light coming from around the bend.
Like up on the surface, we fan out on either side of the corridor in unison. Weapons in the lead, ever so slowly, we follow the curving passage. With each second, that dim light brightens, and the pinging grows ever louder. By the time we take the bend, while it's still dark, I can flip my NVGs up and navigate by plain sight.
Another twenty yards in, the passageway takes a sharp left, and pale white light streams out from the corner. I drop down to one knee, and with the careful movement borne of years of combat and having my ass shot at, I slowly follow my barrel around the stone.
No one. Nothing.
Nothing except for a fifteen-foot-wide wall of solid glass.
And… a dimly lit room equipped with all the conveniences of a modern hospital.
"Holy fuck," Rosalie mutters as we approach, all the while scanning for cameras or motion detection.
Outside the wall, it's clear, but two seconds of study tells me there's no way we're getting inside without triggering an alarm. A small LCD panel and fingerprint scanner sit by a sliding door. Within the room, I spy a triplet of cameras. We stop ten feet away, and for a second, all I can do is stare.
Rosalie curses again. "Is that him?"
On the other side of the glass, a thin, emaciated man with a familiar shock of pale blond hair lays on an all-white hospital bed. Even this far away, I pick out the plum-black bruises littering his skin. A half-dozen tubes and lines stretch from his body to various IVs, bags, and machines.
Asleep, unconscious, or in a coma, I don't know, but, yes, that's him, and Carlisle Cullen's in very bad shape, so bad he'd be impossible to move without a medical team.
My gaze runs down Carlisle's left arm and catches on the red-stained bandage wrapped around his hand. The crimson splotches are bright and wet – fresh – and I don't have to guess which finger's gone. It's the one sporting the same plain gold band that matches the one always on Platt's.
Fuck.
That's why Masen was so worked up this afternoon. On top of worrying about me, sending Platt that kind of message probably killed him inside.
But all those little tells of his and all those little slips suddenly make sense. That's why Masen's still here and why he's playing along.
I'd bet my paycheck – no, a year's paycheck – he never betrayed Cullen at all. No, something happened. And now Masen can't just leave with someone in this kind of condition, and if the CIA is compromised like we think it is, he's been in a fucking precarious position for quite some time now.
"I can't afford to die just yet."
That's what he said to me just this morning, and as I replay all our little conversations, I'm pretty sure that man's planning to take them all down, and he's been planning it all along.
I glance over to Rosalie and grin.
Because I think we can help with that.
.
.
.
Notes:
Russian (transliterated):
Dorogaya: recall, this is Aronov's term of endearment for Bella, meaning darling
Tupaya sobaka: Stupid dog
Kakogo khuya ty tvorish': What the fuck are you doing
Glossary:
Korangal Valley: also spelled Korengal. Nicknamed "Valley of Death" by American forces. Korangal Valley is a valley located in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan. During the War in Afghanistan, there were numerous engagements between US Army Special Forces and Rangers and USMC infantry battalions and Taliban fighters. By early 2019, the valley was captured by Islamic State - Khorasan Province affiliated groups after numerous clashes with Taliban groups.
NVGs: night vision goggles; which are optoelectronic devices that allow images to be produced in levels of light approaching total darkness. They work by amplifying available visible light and converting near-infrared light to visible. Images are typically processed as monochromatic green because green is often considered the most comfortable for the human eye over long periods in the dark.