13
1029 Words
SIX
NAZ
I’m headed for the front door, but Connor catches up with me before I’m even halfway down the hallway.
“Hold on!” He reaches out and grasps my shoulder. “Nasir, wait a minute. We need to make a plan!”
I shrug off his hand, but stop long enough to look at him when I answer. “The plan is I’m gonna get Eva. Boom. There’s the f*****g plan.”
He holds up both hands in a surrendering gesture. “We’re on the same side here.”
He’s right. We are on the same side. And I’m being all sorts of twitchy and unreasonable, but I can’t get rid of the image of that big tattooed motherfucker putting his hands around Eva’s slender throat.
I’m gonna tear his heart out of his chest and eat it while it’s still beating.
I drag my hands through my hair, then lace my fingers behind my neck and stand there breathing hard through my nostrils and trying to ignore the shooting pains in my leg. And the band of steel swiftly tightening around my chest. And the horrible feeling that I might already be too late.
My sweet, soft, beautiful girl could be badly hurt.
Or worse.
“Listen. If we go in all shock and awe, balls to the wall, whoever’s got her might panic. Panic isn’t gonna be good for her, if you know what I’m saying.”
Good for her health, he means. Good for her future in the land of the living.
“Copy that,” I say gruffly. “f**k!”
He steps closer and drops his voice. “I know, brother. Believe me, I know. I’ve been exactly where you are. When Tabby was in harm’s way, I thought I’d lose my ever-lovin’ mind. Just breathe for a minute, and let’s think. Haste equals mistakes.”
I blow out a hard breath, nodding. “Okay. This is me thinking.” I pause. “I’m gonna go get Eva.”
Connor props his hands on his hips. I can tell he’s trying not to roll his eyes. “Yeah, we’ve already established that. The question is how?”
“Submarine. Parachute. Helicopter. Teleportation. Pick one, I’ll make it happen.”
He waves me off like I’m being ridiculous. “We could get the feds involved, have them waiting at wherever Tabby discovers the Silver Shadow’s final destination is.”
“The feds?” I repeat, incredulous. “You wanna guarantee this thing gets f****d six ways to Sunday?”
He thinks for a moment. “You have a point.”
“I know I do! Here’s another one: we’re the specialists in extraction!”
“Yep,” he says, his voice even. “But you’re operating at about fifty percent capacity right now, and I’m responsible for the lives of everyone in this building. Dimitri could have another strike team waiting for us as soon as we roll out the front gate.”
“He could’ve already hit us if he wanted to. He could’ve gotten to us in the hospital, if it was really us he was after. But it wasn’t us he was after, it was Eva. And she knew it, so that’s why she left. To save all our asses. And if you’re right and it isn’t one of his guys or her guys who has her on that ship, it can only be bad news for her. So the longer we wait the worse it gets. So . . .” I make an impatient motion with my hand. “Let’s get this goddamn ball rolling.”
Tabby pops her head out of the war room door and shouts down the hall. “Boys!”
Connor turns around. We both look at her, waiting.
“Before anybody goes anywhere, you might want to check this out.” She disappears, leaving us no choice but to hustle back the way we came.
We find her in the same spot she was in when we left, sitting at the console. Only now she isn’t tapping on the keyboard, she’s simply staring up at the big screen.
The big screen showing nothing but ocean—vast, blue, and alarmingly empty.
“What happened? Where’d the Silver Shadow go?” says Connor.
“Oh, it’s still there,” replies Tabby. “We just can’t see it.”
The way she says it gives me a very bad feeling. “Meaning what?”
She swivels around in her chair. “Meaning the CYGNSS-6 satellite we had eyes on went out of range. We’re going to be looking at the North Atlantic until the sat hits the west coast of Africa.”
“s**t!”
“Indeed.”
“Is there another satellite you can hack into?”
“Sure, the Landsat 8.”
I examine her expression, knowing whatever she’s about to say won’t be good. “You might as well just tell me and get it over with.”
“Well . . . unfortunately the Landsat 8 won’t be in range for a little while.”
Saliva pools in the back of my mouth. I might be about to vomit. “When you say a little while . . .”
“I mean six hours.”
My mind makes some swift calculations about approximate horsepower of the average luxury yacht and how many knots it might travel per hour. I repeat slowly, “Six hours.”
Sounding apologetic, Tabby says, “It makes sense, really. The Northern Atlantic’s enormous and there’s basically nothing out there, so there aren’t nearly as many satellites on that rotation as there are over the continents.”
“Ship that size under full power could eat up a lotta ocean in six hours,” says Connor.
Tabby nods. “And if they change headings—”
“It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” I finish, my voice faint.
“That’s not the worst part.”
I groan and scrub my hands over my face.
“Sorry, but you did say to tell you.”
“What is it?” prompts Connor.
- Writer
