Targeted (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 2) (25 page)

Every muscle in her body was rigid, her lungs feeling like they would explode as she held her breath. Had Spivey done that, or was the assault team in there? DeLuca, the other assault team leader and Travers were all stock still, the looks on their faces making her gut sink.

She started to push to her feet. Before she could stand, three more powerful explosions rocked the building with a great roar. This time she hit the ground and covered her head while the earth rolled beneath her and the pressure waves blasted her ears and body. Debris thudded the parking lot ahead of her, smaller bits raining down around her.

When the noise faded she uncovered her head. Her phone lay in the dirt where she’d dropped it. Over the ringing in her ears she could faintly hear Zoe’s frantic voice in the background asking what was going on.

Terror slammed through her at the sight that met her eyes. The walls of the bank had crumbled, big pieces of the ceiling missing. Smoke and debris filled the air, and in the gaps the explosions had opened up she could see flames already licking greedily at the interior.

She jerked her gaze to DeLuca. He was on one knee, his face was taut with concern, one hand to his ear as he spoke in a loud voice into his radio. “Alpha team, report.” He looked up at the other team leader, shook his head. The other man took off.

Jesus Christ.

Climbing to her feet, she ran to where Travers was frantically talking on his cell phone. He saw her coming, snagged her arm and tugged her, turning his body as if to shield her.

Over his shoulder she stared at the smoldering building, denial and shock slamming into her. As he started to lower his phone she grabbed his arm, hard, and shook him. She knew she should be worried about the hostages but there was only one person on her mind.

“Is Tuck in there?” she demanded, panic slamming through her.

Mouth pressed into a thin line, he met her gaze and nodded once.

Celida stumbled back a step, heart in her throat as she looked back at the smoldering ruins of the bank. Without thinking she took off toward it, her only thought was that she had to get Tuck and the others out before the fire spread.

Travers cursed and grabbed her from behind, lifting her off her feet. “You fucking stay put,” he snarled.

Celida twisted out of his grasp and whirled on him, breathing hard. “They’re trapped and the fire’s spreading. Are we gonna just stand here and watch them die?”

Travers’s expression told her he thought they were already dead. “There could be more unexploded devices—”

“He rigged all the doors and windows, which are no longer fucking standing.” She was shaking all over, nausea roiling in her gut. “I’m going in there.” Pivoting on her heel, she lunged past him.

Hard arms caught her again, twisted her to the ground where he pinned her with his weight. She screeched in outrage but he held her fast. “Goddamn it, just wait. Just
wait
,” he snapped when she shoved at his chest, and finally eased up to help her into a sitting position.

It was then she felt the way his muscles were shaking, realized he was dealing with his own adrenaline surge and didn’t want to see her hurt. “Give them a few minutes to make sure,” he said, voice tight.

Celida nodded, accepted the hand he held out and let him help her to her feet.

“You can’t help him if you’re dead. Give them a few minutes to make sure,” he said, voice raspy.

Curling her hands into fists so hard her nails dug into her palms, Celida watched helplessly as their bomb techs checked the perimeter. Agonizing minutes ticked past while her heart ached with each slam against her ribs.

Tuck. Tuck, please be okay.
She didn’t know how to cope with losing him.

One of the techs moved forward with a sniffer dog and Celida caught a flash of movement in a gap in one of the partially collapsed walls. She stepped forward, squinting through the haze of smoke. “Someone’s coming out!”

All heads turned in the direction of the bank. A woman was struggling to push her way through the debris. She ignored the bomb techs’ shouts to stay still and kept fighting to get out, her hands secured behind her back. Celida could see the shock on the woman’s dust-streaked face as she shoved her shoulder against a block of stone that had tumbled down and fell forward as it toppled over. She landed on the rubble-strewn ground outside the perimeter. Cops and agents began running toward her.

Celida took off with them. Her heart beat a frantic rhythm against her chest, her thigh muscles burning with the effort of the prolonged sprint to the ruined bank.

DeLuca and Travers caught up to her, pulled past her as they raced to help. They all drew their weapons. If there were other survivors then Spivey could still be alive in there and they weren’t taking any chances.

Thick dust and smoke coated her skin, her nostrils. She coughed, yanked the neck of her T-shirt up to act as a scarf. While DeLuca and Travers swung over a low section of rubble to enter the bank, she hauled herself up and over the first stone hurdle then raised her weapon.

Once inside they all paused to look around. Utter devastation met her gaze everywhere she looked. Flames crackled around what was left of two window frames set into the east wall and around the front doors on the south side. “Back there,” DeLuca said, waving them toward the back offices. He knew where Tuck and the others had been.

Fear jolted through her as she took in the wreckage. Those blasts had been powerful enough to practically implode the building. The odds of anyone inside surviving were low.

And yet that woman had made it out. Were other hostages still alive too?

DeLuca climbed over more debris and disappeared from view around the corner with a few other agents. Celida and Travers started after him, climbing the small mountain of stone, concrete and metal. Grit and smoke stung the back of her throat, made her eyes water. She grabbed at a block of limestone and used it as a handhold to pull herself up.

Shouts from where DeLuca had gone brought her head up. Two agents appeared at the top of the pile, a dust-covered man between them. His ears were bleeding, hands still behind his back. Another hostage.

Desperate to help with the rescue effort to locate the assault team, Celida scrambled to the top, unconcerned about the cuts and scrapes on her hands, arms and legs. Once at the top the air seemed to clear a little, the outside breeze carrying some of the dust and smoke away.

She made her way down what used to be a hallway to the back offices as fast as she could, stopped when she saw the group of agents coming at her with more hostages. She turned sideways to let them pass and then finally realized where they were coming from.

The vault.

Spivey had put them all in the vault and the force of the explosions must have cracked the door enough to allow them to get out. Had the suicide vest detonated everything? Under all this mess they wouldn’t find his remains for a long time.

The vault door stood open about a foot, the edges warped. Stone and concrete jumbled at the bottom prevented her from opening it any farther but she grabbed her flashlight from her belt and aimed it inside. More hostages were moving around, some moaning, others silent with shock.

“FBI,” she called inside. “I’m here to help you out.” And as soon as she helped the hostages to safety, she was going to help DeLuca and the others. She could hear them digging in another room past the vault, at the place where Tuck and the others had executed the breach.

Refusing to allow herself to think about them finding Tuck’s body in the rubble, she clamped down on her emotions and focused on her job. She helped two women to the exterior wall of the bank where others were waiting to shepherd them back to the secure perimeter and the ambulances. Their climb up the debris pile was made awkward by their lack of balance due to their bound hands. A quick snick of her pocketknife made short work of that. Travers stopped long enough to help an old woman get down the pile safely then hurriedly climbed back to Celida.

“I’m gonna go back and help clear the rubble to get our guys out,” he said.

Throat tight, she nodded and went back for more hostages, moving aside for another agent as he helped a man pass by. On her way back to the vault, more hostages emerged from the darkness. She recognized the security guard and was shocked that he was still alive. He was bleeding badly from his shoulder, his hands unbound, face and head obscured by that pale gray dust that covered everything.

“Over here—I’ll help you to the EMTs,” Celida called out.

He flicked her a quick look, shook his head and turned toward the back offices. “Gotta help.”

Before she could go after him, a woman stumbled out of the vault. Her nose and ears were bleeding, her eyes were dazed. She blinked at Celida like a sleepwalker. Celida took her by the arm and led her out, cut the zip tie holding her wrists prisoner at the small of her back.

As she turned around, she came face to face with a man standing in the vault doorway. Like the others he was covered in dust but he wore nothing but an undershirt and boxers. And his hands were already unbound. He held them up on either side of his head, showing he wasn’t a threat.

“I’m Mike Ippoliti, the bank’s security guard,” he blurted. “The perp’s alive, he just walked out—”

Ippoliti? She quickly scanned his features, recognized him from the photos she’d seen of him. He wasn’t even bleeding. So Spivey hadn’t shot him? He was right in front of her in nothing but an undershirt and boxers—

Shit!

Everything funneled out as realization hit Celida like a cannon blast. Her head snapped toward the ruined hallway, terror streaking through her.

Spivey had put on the security uniform.

He’s going after DeLuca and the others.

Grabbing her radio from her hip to give the others a warning, she snatched her service weapon from her belt and tore after him.

****

Ken scrambled his way up the pile of debris while the blood roared in his ears, his progress made more difficult because of the searing pain traveling from his ruined right shoulder to his fingertips. He’d wrapped up the wounds with his shirt as best he could before grabbing the security guard’s uniform but blood still dripped from his fingertips in a steady rivulet. He wiped at his face with his left hand, clearing away the sweat, smoke and coating of gray dust that stung his eyes and clogged his throat.

When he’d locked himself in the vault with the others and set the charges off he hadn’t been sure any of them would survive. The damage out here was every bit as bad as he’d expected. No way that HRT guy had survived, and hopefully a few of his teammates had died too.

Coming through the floor like that was something Ken had dismissed long ago, early in the planning stages for the operation. When he’d come around the corner and seen the guy crawling through a hole in the floor he’d been prepared to die. Whatever he’d aimed at Ken had fried the circuitry in the vest, rendering it useless. Luckily it hadn’t affected the rest of his explosives.

But now he had the chance to kill DeLuca too.

His breath shortened and his heart pounded. Urgent male voices floated back to him from the rear office where the assault team had tried to make entry. They were digging, trying to move the rubble away from the opening in the floor.

“Can anyone hear me?” DeLuca’s voice called out.

Ken’s pulse pounded. He gripped the security guard’s Beretta in his left hand and cleared the top of the rubble pile. It was chaos in here. The stolen uniform had already helped him pass by that female Fed. All he needed was another twenty seconds to get into that back room and kill DeLuca. After that he didn’t care what happened.

“Still no radio contact with them.
Fuck
,” DeLuca snarled.

Ken’s boots slid over the small mountain of broken stone and concrete. He slipped and fell, his wounded arm taking the brunt of the impact. He bit back a howl of pain and rolled to his back, using his feet to stop his descent. Agony washed through him, stealing his breath and hazing his vision.

He couldn’t stop. DeLuca was right in front of him, focused on trying to dig his men out. This was Ken’s only chance to kill him. The pistol was solid in his hand, his index finger already curling around the trigger in anticipation of taking the shots.

He had only a moment to register the sound of someone scrambling up the pile behind him before he heard the squawk of a radio and a female’s urgent voice come through.

“Spivey’s alive and headed toward you, dressed in a security uniform!”

Shit!
His heart lurched. He snapped his head back toward the vault as running footsteps sounded behind him. She was close and now DeLuca would be armed and waiting for him.

Pushing to his feet, he fought through the pain to make the last desperate rush to get down the ruined hallway. The voices ahead had quieted. The men were likely already coming for him, hemming him in between them and the female Fed behind him, and everyone outside the bank.

He reached the bottom of the pile, thudded to his knees on the broken limestone. A snarl of pain lodged in his throat, the smoke and dust in the air making it hard to breathe.

The footsteps behind him grew louder. Closer. Bits of debris began trickling down from the top of the pile where she dislodged it.

Ken got up. Took a lurching step toward the back office. So close now. Just another few seconds.

“
Freeze
! Hands in the air!”

Jaw set, Ken whirled to face his opponent. The female Fed had cleared the crest of the pile. She stood above him, feet braced apart and her service weapon aimed at his head.

“Morales, you got him?” a concerned male voice called from the manager’s office.

The men back there were moving fast now. Coming toward him. His time was nearly up.

He met the female’s cold stare, muscles coiled, ready to spring and make that last desperate rush to get DeLuca. But he’d kill the woman first if he had to.

“
Hands
!” she shouted again, taking a menacing step toward him.