The Code Within: A Thriller (Trent Turner Series) (44 page)

“And how’s that going for you?” she asked, using her sense of humor to cope with the fear.

The smile still hadn’t left his face. “I’m working on it,” he said. His confidence was off-putting.

“You’re just too much, Tony, aren’t you?” Eden shook her head. “I guess it’s nice to know chivalry isn’t dead after all.” She gave him an appraising look, and all she could do was laugh. “Not bad,” she said with a playful smile. “This could have been fun if we didn’t have so much company.”

Turner returned her laugh and said, “A rain check, perhaps?”

She carefully headed back into the viewing room to check on Kozlov. She had been lucky that they hadn’t selected the glass separating the rooms with security in mind, and that most of the debris had landed in the other room. The Russian was still unconscious, so she began to pull off his shoes.

Eden was both startled and confused by Turner’s sudden presence.

“Weren’t you just locked up in there?”

“Yeah, well, they don’t make restraints like they used to,” Turner joked. “What happened to him?”

Eden smiled, more with her eyes than lips.

He picked his clothes up off the floor and began to get dressed. “The name’s Trent, by the way,” he said.

“Trent?” She pursed her lips. “I liked Tony better.”

He laughed. “Then call me Tony.” His tone turned serious as the sound of automatic weapons spat out in the background. “Listen, Victoria, I’m sorry to have gotten you involved in this mess. Believe me, that wasn’t my intention. Now I need you to listen to what I say. No questions.”

The fun-loving banter was over. She was scared, and the situation gave her plenty of reason to listen.

“I mean it,” Turner said, his eyes willing her to comply. “I’ll get you out of here, but you need to do exactly what I tell you.” He motioned to the unconscious Russian. “These people play for keeps.”

She gave him a consenting nod as he picked the glass out of his bloody feet and slipped on his boots. She noticed that Turner hadn’t so much as flinched from the pain, which was strangely reassuring. He motioned for her to stand against the concrete wall, and then he dragged Kozlov over to the door.

A flurry of gunfire erupted out in the hallway as Turner searched the Bratva leader for a weapon. He was unarmed. Turner slowly worked his way to the small window in the door so he could survey the hallway before deciding on their next move. He whisked his head away from the window and appeared completely stunned by what he’d seen. Eden moved carefully, so she could see outside. The penetrating eyes that stared back at her through the window were the eyes of a killer.

THE ENEMY OF your enemy is your friend. It wasn’t the same as having reinforcements, but Jake Sanders and Rudy Pagano were masters of improvisation. They had been working together for so long they knew what the other man was thinking. The operation had evolved into hunting down an operative they knew as Trent, and his hacker accomplice Francis Millar, who was directly involved in the death of Senator Soller’s son. The senator was a man their boss wanted to keep happy. The FBI director had specified that the hacker should be taken alive, and that was the extent of the detail they had. On a personal level, they both wanted to exact revenge for the deaths of their HVT squad members. Revenge was the single motivation for staying the course considering the circumstances.

Following the incident at the theater, they knew the Russian crime family was involved. There were a lot of loose ends, and some things didn’t add up, and while that had been commonplace for the men of the HVT squad over the past decade, the message from FBI Assistant Director Ivor Hood had brought with it questions and given them cause for concern.

“What do you think?” Pagano asked Sanders as the two huddled behind overgrown bushes.

“Looks like the action’s moved inside. Let’s find a way in and check it out.”

Pagano nodded, and they carefully worked their way toward the building. The New Yorker examined the first door they came to and decided it was safe to open. He signaled to Sanders as he counted down to action. He threw open the door, and his heart rate spiked when he saw the armed soldier standing guard inside.

The sentry’s back was turned to them, so Sanders quickly moved in to snap his neck before helping him fall quietly to the ground. This clearly wasn’t his first time around the block.

“One down,” he whispered to Pagano.

The pair headed inside and quietly descended a flight of stairs that led toward the commotion. The stairwell spilled out into the middle of a long, dimly lit hallway. More shots rang out as they continued moving toward the chaos, with Sanders in the lead.

Pagano had only taken a few steps when a familiar rat-tat-tat erupted from behind. The weapon carved out a swath of chips in the cement floor and cinder blocks around them. The burst appeared to have been squeezed off as a reaction rather than a concerted action. Pagano slid into the recess of a doorway, and Sanders turned to loose off some defensive rounds as he dove behind a cement column.

The New Yorker was pinned down, and things weren’t looking good, his only consolation being the fact that they should already be dead. He had an angle to see Sanders’s position. They shared a look that acknowledged their dire straits. He watched as Sanders crouched down to sneak a quick look at the gunmen. His glance was immediately returned with a burst of automatic gunfire.

Pagano motioned for him to keep going, but the stubborn ex-soldier fired a fuck-you glance as he wiped the sweat and debris from his eyes. Then Sanders’s eyes told him something different, something much more sobering. Nothing short of divine intervention could get him out of his current situation alive.

HE WAS LOOKING at a dead man. He had to check himself to make sure he was awake, to make sure this wasn’t some crazy dream. America had been duly informed that Lieutenant Brendan Manion, US Navy SEAL, had been killed in action in Afghanistan. The fact that he was on the other side of the window was impossible, but Turner couldn’t be happier knowing that they had all been wrong. He unlatched the deadbolt and opened the door.

“Holy shit,” Turner said. The two men clasped hands and exchanged a shoulder-check hug.

He stepped aside as Manion passed him a pack loaded with gear.

“Tell me about it,” Manion replied. He motioned toward the hallway with his thumb. “Twenty-five, maybe thirty Tangos. I just took a couple out down the other hallway, so let’s move fast before they get bold and come for us. They’re slinging lead like they’re taking a Scantron test.”

There was a groan as the Russian began to regain consciousness. Turner ejected the magazine from the Sig Sauer pistol Manion had handed him, racked the slide and familiarized himself with the weapon.

He then motioned to the groaning Kozlov and said, “I think he can help us with our exit strategy.”

Manion nodded his recognition of the Bratva leader. “Nice catch,” he said, and he noticed Turner’s smile spread to his eyes.

“No doubt.” He pointed out Victoria Eden, who had hidden off to the side behind the door and said, “She took care of him for us. Victoria meet Brendan.”

“Impressive,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

The stunning beauty forced a nervous smile and shook his hand stiffly.

Turner addressed Manion. “Apparently you’re a tough man to kill,” he said, still shocked. “Good thing. It’s hard to find good help these days.”

Turner was still smiling. “Who did you bring with you?” he asked.

“It’s me, Heckler, and Throaty,” Manion confirmed.

Throaty’s real name was Chris Livingstone, a former British soldier in the Special Air Service, better known as the SAS. His mother had been a diplomat who worked at the United States embassy in London when she met his father. The highly decorated soldier had been brought into Island Industries by Addy Simpson after he retired from the service.

The SAS sergeant had worked closely with the American military on sensitive joint operations in the Middle East. His gruff voice lent itself to his nickname, Throaty, and Turner knew from experience that he was the kind of man you wanted on your team.

“There are three of you?” Eden said nervously. “That’s it?”

Turner gave her a sideways glance with his piercing blue eyes and then moved his thumb and pinky back and forth between the two of them. “Five,” he said confidently. “And we’ve also got a Poor Man watching over us.”

She returned a quizzical look mixed with annoyance.

Turner smiled. “Let’s roll.”

NERVOUS EYES DARTED around the dimly lit room as the sound of gunfire erupted outside. The captive team of Bratva hackers flinched with the deadly chorus as it grew louder.

Dimitri Sokov had locked himself in the server room. For the past several minutes, he had been working frantically to encrypt the remaining files for transit to Northern Virginia. He encountered a program error each time he had tried to run the process to secure the files, and had been unable to figure out and correct the problem.

He was used to working under pressure, but not this sort of pressure. The muted staccato of violence rose over the sound of computer fans and air-conditioning units. Something had gone horribly wrong. From the soundtrack outside, he knew he’d be lucky if he made it out of the server room, so he no longer considered giving the files to the courier for transport. He decided to change his tactic to the option of last resort when the sound of pressurized air interrupted his thoughts.

“Dimitri, we are being attacked,” a soldier barked in Russian. “Kozlov said to make sure you have everything ready.”

Sokov nodded, his eyes still glued to the computer screen. “
Da
,” he responded. It was a single word, but the panic was evident in his voice. “I am very close. Do not let anyone come through that door!”

His command was followed by the sucking sound of air as the soldier sealed the door shut behind him.

Sokov had to improvise. He connected to a server he had hacked into and created a user account for his counterpart in Virginia to use. He created a directory where he could copy the files necessary to carry out the US-based operation. He had contacted the men in Virginia, and they were on standby, waiting to hear from him.

The gunfire was getting louder as he typed in the command to securely copy the files over the Internet. He hadn’t had the time to encrypt all of them, but at least the transmission itself would be secure. As soon as the transfer finished, he pulled out his phone and made the call.

“They’re waiting for you. Get them fast, and have him delete them from the server immediately. Let me know when he’s finished.”

He rattled off the user name, password, and location of the files before ending the call. Sokov turned to a metal box that was bolted to the server-room wall. He pulled open the small metal door and flipped on the power switch inside. It was one of several like it that had been affixed to the walls. Within a minute the hacker had activated all of the triggers to blow the Semtex that was housed inside.

Sokov and Pavel Kozlov were the only two people who knew the phone number that could be called to detonate the explosives. He rushed to the door. They needed to get out fast so the deed could be done.

IT HAPPENED IN an instant. It was a potent mix of speed and aggression. The Bratva men who had them pinned down were so fixated on their positions that they didn’t even see the deadly blast of fire that spat out from behind them.

Rudy Pagano made a quick check amidst the moans of their attackers.

“Cover,” he yelled, and followed up with a dash to reach the relative safety of Jake Sanders’s location.

Sanders did a good job with peppering the already-crippled men with rounds.

“Holy shit, that was close,” Pagano said, sounding somewhat relieved, somewhat annoyed.

The two men pounded fists, and Sanders shook his head.

“Lucky bastard,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the New Yorker walk away from what seemed to be certain death. “Just how many lives do you have?”

Pagano almost smiled. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

“Looks like you’ve got a guardian angel,” Sanders said sarcastically.

Pagano exhaled. “I didn’t think angels used automatic weapons.”

Sanders laughed a silent laugh. “You’re too fuckin’ much, Pagano.”

It got quiet. They exchanged a look that acknowledged it was the quiet before the storm. Footsteps were heard converging on the enemy’s location.

“Incoming,” Pagano said in a hushed voice.

The two men met eyes before retreating in the direction from which Pagano’s saving grace had emerged.

“HALLWAY IS SECURE, over,” Throaty confirmed.

“Moving out now, over,” Trent Turner said as the four of them rushed down the hallway to his location. Brendan Manion took the lead, brandishing his Heckler & Koch MP7A1 submachine gun, a weapon that, having a low recoil with its suppressor attached to keep the barrel steady, was more deadly than it was quiet. Turner held up the rear with Pavel Kozlov in tow, the P226 he had been given pressed firmly into the Russian’s side. They didn’t know who might come at them from behind, so it was the obvious location for their human shield considering Turner’s weapon.

Turner listened intently as Manion shared what they knew about the compound. There had been no blueprints available for the building, so the only intel they had was from the hacker Dennis Zander. They knew how to get to the server room, which was all that mattered at this point in the operation. They had sketched together a plan and would stick to it as much as possible.

The four of them quickly made it to Throaty’s position and immediately pressed on. The three operatives knew the drill: keep your cool and concentrate on actions that bring you closer to your objective. A reactive force, no matter how large or small, usually ended up dead. They had taken what advantage they could from the element of surprise. Now speed and aggression would have to carry them through.

They approached a corner, and the Russian barked, “You won’t make it out of here.”