72 Hours (7 page)

“And two,” Gallagher continued. “What we have here is a scared-shitless little boy. And even if the mission is flawless, it’s going to be terrifying for him, and he’ll fight us, Alex. He doesn’t know us, and we’ll be just more bad guys with guns. If he breaks and runs, then we’re freakin’ chasing him while they’re shooting at us, and it all goes to hell.”

Grace nodded. She knew where he was going with this, and even Alex had stopped scowling quite so fiercely.

Gallagher shrugged. “We bring Grace and we have total control of the kid. He sees his mom and he’ll be like duct tape on her, man.”

Alex was staring at her, and Grace forced herself to look him straight in the eye. “You
never
doubted me in the field before, Alex.”

“You’ve been out of the loop a while.”

“I’ve kept up with my physical conditioning and put in time at the range while Danny was in school. And it’s still there. I can feel it, just like I did when Rustikov was in my kitchen. Am I at the top of my game? No. It’s been years since I’ve been in the field. But I’m still good and, like Gallagher said, I can control Danny.”

Alex watched her. “Okay. You’re in. Now let’s map this out and get Danny back.”

Chapter Five

Grace bounced gently on the balls of her feet, clenching and unclenching her fists at her side. In brand-new khaki cargo pants and a tight-fitting, long-sleeved black T-shirt, with her favorite Nike crosstrainers on her feet, she was ready. To use a phrase from her youth, she was pumped.

And the waiting sucked. They were at rest on the far side of a neighboring island, waiting for the go signal. Carmen was monitoring and feeding Gallagher live satellite feed, and some of the finest agents in the world were now on standby, waiting for her eight-year-old son to have to take a leak.

The outhouse was a modern blue plastic job, and they’d watched the footage closely. When he went in, the indicator moved, showing he’d locked the door. Then the two guys guarding him would relax, wander away and share a smoke. That lock would hopefully buy them the few precious seconds they needed.

She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders, keeping her muscles warm and limber for the mission ahead. And yet again she visualized Gallagher’s plan, walking mentally through the steps necessary to safely remove their extraction target.

And that’s what Danny was now. An extraction target. His picture was folded up in one of her pockets and the image of his scared eyes was seared across her heart. He was her baby, but now he was her mission.

She felt the adrenaline building and closed her eyes, welcoming the flow through her bloodstream. It had always been her drug of choice and for years she’d been a junkie. Waiting for the juice, riding the high. Coming down, usually on the waves of a shattering orgasm as Alex took her against the wall or a door or whatever hard surface was handy in an adrenaline-fueled frenzy.

But London had been her epiphany, motherhood her recovery program. Every day she denied herself that hit and buried the Grace she’d been just a little deeper inside.

When another mom made noises about volunteering with the drug prevention program, Grace didn’t tell her she’d once shot a Columbian drug lord between the eyes from a distance the woman probably couldn’t even see. She let Danny hang
Mission: Impossible
posters in his room and pretend to be Tom Cruise without ever letting on she could have kicked that Ethan character’s ass.

She’d hung up her action-adventure gun belt and strapped on an apron. It didn’t quite fit—in fact it chafed like hell—but it had seemed like the right outfit for the job.

Now Grace let the rush come. It was better than chocolate. Better than a good sneeze. It was like the moments before an orgasm, when the brain and the body are screaming
come on and let’s do this
!

She felt Alex’s gaze on her and turned, giving him a little smile and a saucy wink, just like she always had.

“I’ve missed you, babe.”

Not enough to come after me
, she thought, but she simply put out her fist. He touched his to hers—part of their pre-mission ritual—and said, “Ready to ride this river?”

“Yippe-ki-yea.”

Alex gave her a crooked smile and went back to his own rituals, which always included humming the Stones, much to her annoyance.

Nostalgia stung her for a second. Their pattern had been set after their first mission together. She had been untried in the field and he hadn’t wanted to take her, but the job had called for a female sidekick and she’d been the only one available.

When the job was over and her natural instincts and excellent reflexes had saved his ass, he’d told her she’d do to ride the river with. It was a phrase straight from his favorite movie genre—old westerns—and she had responded with a favorite movie quote of her own. It stuck.

With her blood already pumping and her skin tingling from the rush, Grace couldn’t help but wonder just how true to form this job would run. Would Alex seek her out when it was time to come down? She hadn’t been a nun for the last eight years, but it had been a long time. Way too long.

And nobody had ever rocked her world as completely as Alex Rossi had. As good as they were in the field together, their best work had always taken place in the bedroom. Or wherever else they happened to be.

He was watching her again now, and she wondered if he was remembering their incredible stress-busting sex as well, or if he was still questioning her ability to see this through.

She opened her mouth to ask him, but Gallagher beat her to the microphone. “Showtime.”

They were in the air within seconds, skimming along almost silently, just over the water. Grace did a final check of her gear—gun, harness, D-ring and rope—then stepped out onto the skid while Alex did the same on the other side.

Training. Planning. Balance. Above all, timing. The adrenaline settled into a steady beat through her veins, like bass reverberating through a cheaply-constructed apartment building. The Aussies knew how to do it right—face first, meeting the enemy head on with guns blazing.

There was a constant, low chatter on the headset as Gallagher and Carmen monitored the live feed. The angle was vital—they had to keep the toilet out of the line of fire. The hope was that if the orders to take Rossi alive were overridden by the survival instinct, they’d shoot high, aiming for the helicopter which wouldn’t be there but a few seconds.

Mere moments later, the visualization was over and the real thing began. Gallagher brought them in low and fast.

“Go!”

Grace stepped off the skid into the air, heard shouts and the short, controlled bursts of Alex’s gun while she counted off.
One-one thousand…two-one thousand…three.

She lifted the hand controlling the rope, catching it in the D-ring and jerking to a stop.
One-one thousand
. Through the corner of her eye she saw Danny emerge from the outhouse, looking up.

Two-one thousand
. She released, free-falling to the ground.

“Clear!” Alex shouted.

“
Mommy!
”

She hit the dirt running. The rope slid free of the D-ring and she swung her assault rifle back on its strap and scooped up her son. His arms and legs curled around her and she was moving again.

“Go five!” Alex said into her headpiece.

She pivoted to her five o’clock without breaking stride. There were more shouts…more shots. Too many.
Shit.
She was off-balance with Danny’s weight straining her shoulders, but she pushed forward.

“Building, two…go!”

She corrected to two o’clock and saw the door. “Hold on really tight, baby!”

As Danny strangled her, she reached down for the gun with her right hand and brought it up over their heads. She hit the door hard, pivoting her body as she sailed through and spraying the room with bullets. Splinters bit into her back as she slid with her body curled up around Danny’s, still firing. Two men dropped.

The door slammed behind Alex and he dropped to the floor next to them. “You do know how to make an entrance, sweetheart.”

Grace barely heard him. She peeled Danny away from her and checked him for injuries, hardly noticing the tears spilling over both of their cheeks. He was dirty and had a couple of scratches, but nothing a shower, some hydrogen peroxide and a couple of Band-aids wouldn’t cure.

“That was so
cool
!” he said, squirming under her kisses.

Her chest was still heaving and her muscles still screaming and there was no way in hell she could have heard him correctly. “Cool?”

“He said you could do stuff like that, but I didn’t believe him. I mean, you’re like just a
mom
. So I told him there was no way.”

Grace looked over at Alex where he’d gone to watch through the windows as their foes tried to come up with a plan. He raised an eyebrow at her, clearly sharing her thoughts.

“Who said that, honey?” she asked Danny.

“Ricky. He said he was an old friend of yours and that you all used to do stuff like this all the time. And that nobody was going to hurt me and I might get to see it before I go home.”

Ricardo Escobar
. She took a deep breath before answering him. Whatever the dead asshole walking had told her son, it was helping to keep his trauma to a minimum and she didn’t want to blow it. But knowing the man had talked to her son—breathed the same air—had her aching to kill the bastard.

“He’s not really a friend of mine, honey. He’s a bad man and he took you, and we came to get you back.”

A spray of bullets tore up the flimsy wood over their heads and Grace threw herself over Danny. She shielded him with her body as they crawled toward the back of the room, where piles of wood and junk would offer him more protection.

He was shaking now, and his eyes told her he’d finally realized this wasn’t as cool as he’d first thought it was. “I want to go home, Mommy.”

“I know, baby. You curl up here and I’m going to go talk to Alex and see if he’s got a plan yet, okay?”

He nodded and Grace made her way back to the front of the room, staying low. “How’s it look?”

“Gallagher says they’re moving toward us, but they’re concentrating on the rear of the building. The boats are back there, so they must think we’ll make a break for them. But he found a place he can put the bird down. The longer we sit here the higher the chance of the helo getting taken out or reinforcements arriving. But it’s risky…”

Grace was quiet. While Gallagher zoned out to plan his or the team’s moves, Alex talked himself through the process. He always had, and her ability to hold silent and trust his judgment had been one of the reasons they’d worked so well together.

“The helo’s just through that grove and over the knoll,” he continued. “You run for it on foot while I lay down cover fire. Blow away anything that moves—just get Danny to that helo and Gallagher will take care of the rest.”

Icy fingers of fear strangled Grace’s heart. “Oh God…”

She couldn’t decipher his look through the veil of tears suddenly blurring her vision. “I can’t do it, Alex.”

“What the…now isn’t the time to go soft on me.”

“Soft, you—” Grace stopped and took a deep breath. God willing, she could yell obscenities at him later. “The helo’s almost a quarter mile from here, at a dead run. He’s too heavy for me. I barely made it here. And he’s never been a fast runner.”

He was silent while she paused to swallow…to breathe. “I’ll have to holster my gun. You’re strong enough to carry him and fire. There
have
been shots from that direction. We have radio contact now, but if Gallagher goes down, you can fly Danny out of here. I can’t. And you may be the guy to go through the door with, but I’m a better shot.”

“Grace…shit.”

Grace pressed the balls of her hands to her eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears. She had to be calm for Danny. If he struggled…

“You’re his mother. You need to leave with him,” Alex said. “I can’t tell him his mother took bullets for him. Don’t ask me to do that, Grace. Anything but that.”

The pleading note in his voice twisted her heart, but there was no other way. “I’d rather he live with the father he doesn’t know than die with the mother he does. Take him out of here, Alex. Please.”

He considered her words silently before nodding, and relief and terror blew Grace’s mind apart for a moment. She crawled back to the tiny space where Danny huddled in the shadows.

His face was ghostly white, and his eyes liquid with fear. She pulled him into her lap, knowing he would feel her tremble, but unable to stop herself from holding him.

She whispered against his hair. “You have to go with Alex, baby. You’re going to fly on a helicopter to a safe place, okay?”

“No, Mommy.” He buried his wet face against her breast, and she squeezed him.

“I’ll see you in a little while, baby. I…I promise.”

He lifted his head, blinking away his tears. “Pinky swear?”

Grace thought she would choke to death on the tears she fought back, but she linked pinkies with her son. “Pinky swear.”

“Okay.”