Showing his deadly skills, Pierce stabbed the first man to come around the corner right in the neck and slashed backward. With his other hand, he lifted his weapon and fired at the dying man’s stunned companion. The bright burst popped him in the temple and put him down instantly.
Aghast and horrified by the violence, Dizzy could hardly breathe. Shocked into silence, she watched Pierce rifle through the pockets of the two men in search of useful intelligence. He slipped a few things into his own pockets before gesturing ahead. “Get us out of here, Hopper.”
She dragged her wide-eyed gaze from the bloody carnage and nodded. “Yeah. Um…okay. This way.”
Swallowing hard, Dizzy touched his arm. “Pierce, you’re bleeding. We need to do something about your wounds.”
He shook his head. “They’ll keep. These seven probably weren’t alone. We’ve got to get out of these tunnels.” He touched his bleeding side. “A couple of grazes will be the least of my worries if I don’t get you back to Venom and General Thorn in one piece.”
“Hey! Come on!” Hopper sounded as though she wanted to get the hell out of there and Dizzy didn’t blame her. This was way more than she had bargained for when she had offered to help.
They raced along the tunnels for another ten minutes or so before finally reaching an access shaft. The busted-out lights overhead plunged them into darkness but Hopper still had the battery-operated lantern with her. It barely illuminated the dark space. Dizzy tried not to think about what sorts of creepy, crawly things might be hiding around the ladder in the grungy tube.
Hopper climbed out on the surface first and tugged Dizzy up after her. Pierce had just cleared his head when all hell broke loose.
A man rushed from the shadows and snatched Hopper. Another one grabbed Dizzy’s arms and dragged her clear of the shaft. She screamed as a third man kicked Pierce in the back of the head, instantly knocking him unconscious.
“Pierce!” There was nothing to catch his slack body and he dropped down the ladder shaft, knocking into the rungs before hitting the concrete floor with a sickening thud. Was the fall survivable? She prayed so.
A black hood covered her head and someone taped her wrists together. From the spitting-mad sounds coming from Hopper, she figured her friend had just endured the same thing. A cruel hand gripped the back of her neck and propelled her forward.
Dizzy had no choice but to walk. If she didn’t, these men wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet between her eyes or Hopper’s. She figured they had a reason for keeping them both alive. Sooner or later Venom would find her—and she intended to be alive when that happened.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jaw tense, Venom slowly crept along the pitch-black tunnels. The team followed slow-moving robotic balls that mapped the tunnels in real time and relayed the information to their headsets and combat glasses.
The hand-drawn maps and information Dizzy’s friend had provided had proven invaluable so far. Though the advantage remained with the Splinter crew that had taken over this tunnel section, the SRU team outmatched them when it came to training and firepower.
“I’m picking up a G42 trail.” Cipher’s voice dinged Venom’s ear via the bud firmly planted there.
“Do we have a leak?” Raze continued moving forward despite the danger.
“Yes. The levels are extremely low and within the safety limits but let’s try not to stick around any longer than necessary.”
“Copy that,” Raze muttered.
“At least we know we’re in the right place,” Fierce hissed.
“We should expect a heavily armed presence,” Venom added. “Let’s keep it tight. Weapons hot.”
Following the path they had memorized, they took two left turns and a right. At the end of the hall, they would take one more left to reach the last door that allowed for easy access to the Splinter-controlled section.
“Skyhawk 97 to SRU Alpha.”
“SRU Alpha,” Raze answered the call from the pilots of the stealth ship that had brought them to the surface and served as the command center for the mission.
“The debris field has cleared substantially. Satellite coms are back in action. Support teams are in place. Hazardous material crew is on standby to retrieve rods when secured.”
“Copy.”
When they reached the end of the hall, they hugged the wall so Cipher could perform recon on the door down to the left. He scanned with his penetrating and heat-seeking radar to create a better picture of what they faced.
Venom eyed the real-time feed on his glasses. Eleven men, most of them sitting around in chairs, seemed to be guarding the ceiling-high stack of fuel rods. The cases containing the rods showed up white-hot on Cipher’s scan.
In another corner, a huddled body lit up the scan. Judging by the size, it was a man but his arms looked forced behind his back and his legs looked tightly bound.
“Looks like we have a prisoner,” Cipher said. “He’s breathing but not moving.”
“Is it Terror?” Hope filled Raze’s voice.
“I can’t tell.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Venom interjected. As the tactical operations man, it was his decision to make. “Scenario one remains in play. Threat, when we breach, you cover the prisoner. Cipher, stick with the fuel rods. Fierce, Raze, you’re with me. Threat, get that door ready to blow.”
“On it,” Threat said and hurried forward with his bag of explosive tricks.
While Threat applied discs for controlled mini-bursts to the door’s frame, Venom ran the various scenarios in his head. These dynamic situations could quickly spiral out of control. They trained for every possibility, running the same exercises twenty different ways. Whatever happened once that door was blown, Venom knew that the team would respond appropriately and efficiently.
“Charges primed,” Threat said as he hurried back to rejoin the team against the wall. “Execute in five, four—”
“Hold! Raze, damn it! Hold!” Torment’s breathless voice suddenly echoed in their ears.
“Holding!” Raze hissed. “SRU Alpha to Cherry 2, you better have a damn good reason for stopping us.”
“Pierce is down.” Torment sounded as if he were running. “Bad guys have Dizzy and the friend. I’m on foot pursuit but they’re headed your way. We’re underground. I’m closing on your position.”
Venom’s heart stammered. He leaned against the wall for support as Torment’s words registered in the most awful way. They had Dizzy. His sweet, precious, beautiful Dizzy.
“Ven?” Raze addressed him roughly. “Shake it off. She’s no different than any other hostage.”
But she was. She meant the world to him.
Gulping down the fear and panic clogging his throat, Venom got a handle on his emotions. He cleared his mind and focused on the task at hand. The only way Dizzy was getting out of that room alive was if the team did everything right. He refused to be the weak link that put her life at risk.
“I’m good, boss.”
“They’re entering a door,” Torment apprised them of the movements of Dizzy and her captors.
“They’re here,” Cipher whispered. The scanning device he’d attached to the wall allowed them to see the door opening and a stream of new people entering the room. The two smaller heat signatures trapped between three men were obviously Dizzy and her friend Hopper.
Closing his eyes, Venom pushed all thoughts of Dizzy as his wife out of his mind. She was a hostage. She was like the dozens of nameless, faceless hostages he had rescued in his career with the SRU. This was a mission like any other mission.
“Threat,” he said calmly. “Prepare to execute to breach.”
“Execute in five, four, three…”
For Venom, the next sixty seconds blew by as if in hyperspeed. The controlled explosions ripped a hole in the hall and caused the door to fall forward. Before the dust and smoke had even cleared, Raze fired two concussive grenades into the room. Venom and Fierce were through the door first but Raze, Cipher and Threat were hot on their heels.
“On the ground!”
“Get down!”
“Hands in the air!”
“Put down your weapons!”
“On the ground!”
Disoriented by the explosion and concussive grenades, six of the men dropped to their bellies and raised their hands high overhead. Only four were dumb enough to lift their weapons and take aim at the team. Venom, Fierce and Raze neutralized them with precision shots.
One man, the dumbest of them all, grabbed Dizzy. The sight of her hooded head and dirty, ripped dress infuriated Venom. The bastard using her as a shield whipped a hunting knife from a sheath at his waist and started to lift it toward Dizzy’s throat. Venom reacted on instinct, squeezing his trigger and popping off a perfectly placed burst that ended the threat.
Splattered with blood, Dizzy fell forward onto her knees and flattened onto her belly before covering her hooded head with her bound arms. Though the urge to rush to her aid was strong, he muscled it down and finished securing the men who had surrendered first. Being shot in the back wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
Once the scene was safe, he raced to Dizzy and crouched down in front of her. She flinched when he gently grasped her upper arms and hauled her into a kneeling position. Grimacing at the blood spray on her shoulder and arm, he was strangely glad for the hood that had protected her face and hair. It would be easier for her to deal with the aftermath of being taken hostage without the gore.