Page 1 of Smoke and Shadows
1
Snow blanketedthe mountains of West Virginia. A blizzard had swept through the east coast three days ago and dropped sixteen inches of powder, but the warming trend had turned the once pristine cover into a slushy mess. The whiteness reflected brightly, not only from the ground, but also from the snow-laden limbs of skeletal trees and evergreens. For Viktor Baran, these conditions were not ideal for extraction because the concealment of a night incursion was decreased, but their target, “Black Wolf,” was running out of time.
It was by sheer luck that the human intel (HUMINT) provided by the CIA became their best lead because the Guardians’ digital network turned up shit. Who would have thought that the perpetrators would hole up in an abandoned coal mine? It certainly didn’t look abandoned now with a generator cranking loudly and disrupting the stillness of the January evening.
“We’re in position,” Derek Lockwood’s voice crackled through comms.
Viktor raised his binoculars to do final recon on the entrance of the mine and spied Derek and two otherGuardians blending with their surroundings in their white camouflage gear and light-colored assault rifles.
“Go in hot,” Viktor ordered. “In three, two…” He pressed the trigger to disable the generator, causing the equipment to falter and cut off. The mine was plunged into darkness.
Derek threw a stun grenade into the mouth of the tunnel and barrelled in after the explosion. It wasn’t long before an exchange of gunfire broke through their communications channel.
Viktor loped down the hill and slammed against the side of the open mine shaft with his assault rifle at the ready. The barrage of gunfire was intermittent now. He did a quick check before following the other men in. Using his night-vision goggles, he navigated down the ancient cavernous railroad path.
“Talk to me, Lockwood,” Viktor muttered when the shooting stopped.
“We’re clear,” Lockwood replied. “Hostiles are down. No twenty on Black Wolf.”
Viktor reached the intersection of three tunnels. At the junction was an open space where boxes of supplies were stacked against a craggy wall. An inverted wooden crate served as a table where electric shock instruments were laid out.
His mouth tightened.
A broken bottle of whiskey was on the floor along with two men bearing kill shots to the head. Blood was fast pooling around them. Viktor glanced to his right in time to see Manning nudge another body to its back and check for signs of life. The Guardian looked at Viktor and shook his head.
Damn, Lockwood went on a rampage.
“I think I found him.” Derek’s tone held a grim excitement. “I’m breaking the locks.”
“Where are you?”
“East tunnel, about thirty yards in.”
Viktor jogged down the right tunnel, leaving Manning and Nathan Stark to stand guard as well as pack up any information they could gather from the scene. He heard Derek snap a round to get into the cell where the hostiles had kept their man for three weeks.
An unusual dread gripped his consciousness with what they might find.
As he rounded the bend into the small makeshift prison, the stench hit his nostrils, and Viktor’s gut clenched, hoping that they were not too late, and if their man were alive, he was not beyond saving—physically or mentally.
Derek lit an LED lamp and set it on the ground, illuminating the lone occupant of the cell who was sitting stoically on the hard stone floor. Viktor lifted his night-vision goggles and exhaled heavily. The person they were rescuing was almost unrecognizable because he had lost close to fifteen pounds if Viktor were to guess.
His trousers were torn and filthy, and he was barefoot. Viktor suspected that the ridiculously stretched-out knit sweater their man was wearing hid evidence of torture. With his grimy, dark hair, and full beard, the man looked like a typical vagrant, but his slate blue eyes, though vacant at the moment, unmistakably belonged to one person.
Jack McCord.
“Are they all dead?” Jack’s raspy voice was so chillingly calm that Viktor raised a brow.
“I think we got them all, buddy,” Derek replied quietly as he helped his friend stand up.
“You’re not sure?”
“Jack—”
“Because I want to fucking gut every last one of them involved in killing my wife.”
Three weeksearlier
Viktor paced his office,phone to his ear, as he waited for Maia to answer her phone. Tension stiffened his spine. Something about this mission had spooked him, and that was a rare occurrence. Besides, it was just bodyguard detail forChrist’s sake, not an assault on a terrorist camp.