guard walked a loop around the beach house and-if his timing held true-he would return to the patio within three minutes.
Nina held a silenced nine millimeter pistol, knelt alongside an Adirondack chair, and covered Gordon as he used a screw driver to bypass the rudimentary latch securing the door.
Knox succeeded in undoing the lock and the two slipped inside. Nina softly slid the glass door closed behind them then followed Knox across the kitchen.
The kitchen opened to the living room where a television screen flickered a frozen image reading 'end of broadcast day'. An armed man snored on the couch.
The square-shaped living room not only linked to the kitchen, but also linked to two short halls on opposite sides.
Nina held her gun with both hands and pointed the barrel at the sleeping guard's head, prepared to pull the trigger if he stirred. She nodded to Gordon who took advantage of her cover and traversed the living room toward the hall leading off to the southwest. When he arrived there, he leveled his Desert Eagle at the slumbering sentry's noggin' and motioned Nina to join him, which she did.
Knox peered around the corner. He saw an empty chair outside of a closed bedroom door. With Nina watching his back (and watching the sleeping guard), Gordon turned the unlocked knob. He opened the door slowly and stepped into the pitch black master bedroom.
He first noticed bars on the windows that had not been there last summer when he had been Trevor's guest for a Fourth of July celebration. Gordon realized those bars kept Ashley and her family inside.
Before he stepped toward the bed, his survival instincts kicked in and he pivoted about. Someone lunged at him from behind the door brandishing a vase or something.
Gordon grabbed the weapon before it could strike. Despite the darkness, he saw that it was Ashley who attacked him but her frazzled hair and seemingly crazed disposition caused him to second guess his eyes. This was not the sophisticated, classy woman he left behind at the estate before disappearing. 'Ashley, it's me,' he whispered. 'Gordon?' Nina peeked inside the room and said, 'We got to move.' 'We're taking you and JB out of here,' Gordon explained. 'No time for your things.' Before Gordon finished his explanation he realized something to be terrible wrong. 'What?' 'They took him. My son…they took him away.'
This served as yet another twist on Gordon's perspective of the situation. Who would take her son? Why? What purpose would it serve? Yet he had no time to find those answers.
'Okay, let's go then,' he simplified.
'My father…he's in the other room, get him, too.'
Ashley grabbed a pile of clothes from a cedar trunk. Gordon led the trio along the hall to the sleeping guard in the living room. He next hustled Ashley to the kitchen area. Nina waited until they were clear and then crossed behind the quiet guard on the couch toward the far hall.
Before she turned the corner there, a hard chop from strong hands came down on her wrist, knocking free her pistol. The short, gray-haired man named Tucker stepped out from his ambush position and reached for the pistol tucked in his shoulder harness.
In a flash, she twisted his wrist and sent the automatic to the carpet.
The guard on the couch stirred.
Tucker did not hesitate. He smacked Nina in the cheek with a left jab then used a front snap kick to send her backwards stumbling over an easy chair near the sofa. As she leapt to her feet, she saw Tucker retrieving his gun and the stunned-but-now-awake guard on the sofa coming to his senses.
She abandoned the mission and bolted for the kitchen. A pistol round whizzed by her shoulder and exploded plaster from a wall above an oil painting of a lighthouse. More rounds pursued as she joined Gordon and Ashley as they scrambled across the patio toward the beach.
Knox needed no explanation. He hurried Ashley with one hand and leveled his gun toward the open sliding door with the other firing several cannon-like blasts toward the two guards, forcing them away from the kitchen for the moment.
A small flashing light announced the approach of Eagle One from its holding pattern out over the Atlantic. It zoomed toward the shoreline fast.
Ashley stumbled on the sand but managed to hold on to the pile of clothes that would replace the shorts and t-shirt she had worn to bed. In response, Gordon reached to steady her pace, dropping his guard for an instant.
Three I.S. agents raced to the patio with weapons drawn. Before they could fire, Benjamin Trump tackled Tucker from behind, yelling some obscenity or another. The surprise hit bought the escaping trio a crucial two seconds; time enough for the transport to swivel about and hover two feet above the beach blowing sand and concentrating its blinding spotlights on the agents at the house. The side door slid open and there stood Odin the Norwegian Elkhound barking encouragement.
Nina jumped into the ship and took Ashley's hand to help her onboard.
Back at the house, Benjamin Trump suffered a solid punch on the chin, sending him unconscious but the former proprietor of the fourth largest fence company in Luzerne County had bought his daughter just enough time: if Tucker had fired his gun a moment sooner he would have hit his intended target, Ashley Trump. Instead, that bullet slammed into the lower back of Gordon Knox as he jumped into the passenger compartment of Eagle One. He grunted. Everything below his waist went numb. His upper arm strength managed to clutch the ship. 'Gordon!' Ashley called as she saw an expression of bewilderment paint over his face. She frantically reached for his belt and, with Nina's help, they hauled him inside.
More bullets ricocheted off the ship but Nina closed the door, eliminating any threat from small arms. As she did, the ship banked and flew away from the beach into the rainy night.
Ashley lay on the floor of the compartment with Gordon's head on her lap. Nina broke out a first aid kit and examined the wound. Blood gushed from the small of his back.
Nina understood battlefield first aid and put that knowledge to work in slowing the bleeding with pad after pad of gauze and direct pressure. But she could not discern the seriousness of the injury.
He did not cry out but the contortions on his face suggested great pain. Nina injected him with morphine from the medical kit. Before Gordon drifted into unconsciousness he told them, 'I can't feel my legs.'
Ashley cradled his head and whispered, 'I knew you'd come.' He once seemed so scary but was now revealed to be, like her, a fragile human being. 'Thank you.'
Blood seeped from the bandages, no amount of field triage would suffice. He would need serious medical treatment soon. No exit wound meant the bullet remained inside.
Nina raced through a mental checklist of options as she pulled a blanket from a cabinet and helped Ashley wrap it around Gordon to stave off shock. He needed medical attention, but unlike her Dark Wolves companions Nina knew she could not simply drop him off at a hospital and expect nothing worse than internment. No, Internal Security-once they knew his location-would kill him. Nina turned her attention to Ashley. 'You said they took your son. What do you mean?' 'That bastard Brad Gannon and a Witiko ship took Jorgie away yesterday.'
That explained Ashley's condition. The woman looked a far cry from the dignified first lady of The Empire. She had not slept or probably even ate in the time since her boy vanished.
A buzz on the intercom grabbed Nina's attention.
'We got a problem!'
She responded to Hauser's call by opening the interior bulkhead and joining him in the cockpit, leaving Ashley holding Gordon on the floor between two rows of seats.
Despite her background as a helicopter pilot, Nina had never learned to fly an Eagle. Nonetheless, the ship fascinated her. The roomy cockpit with redundant controls for pilot and co-pilot, the virtual reality goggles that created the illusion of actually being the ship…everything about the craft intrigued her.
She sat in the co-pilot's chair and asked, 'What's the problem?'
Hauser, the pilot, told her, 'The Chrysaor. She's coming down from the north. We can out run her but…' 'Where are we?' Cape May now, heading south. We'll be over water in a minute. But I think…oh shit.' Tones burst from the console. A flashing light warned of calamity. Hauser translated, 'We've got incoming. Three. Damn it, heat lock and radar lock. Shit!'
Nina felt the transport accelerate. She saw an expression of grim determination on the pilot's face. The new thrust-from Eagle One's modified boosters-pushed her into the chair.
