Chapter 7
He looked back up into my eyes.
“But I just watched you make it.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. I looked down at the heavy mechanical brace sitting in the open hard case on the ground.
“I can’t,” I choked out, taking a step back. “The brace… it’s a prototype. It’s unstable. The battery life is terrible. It causes excruciating pain. I just tested it. I don’t know if it will hold up in a combat environment.”
“It has to,” Hayes said, his voice hardening into a command. “Because if you don’t take this shot, that little girl is going to die.”
He tossed the satellite photo onto the hood of the Humvee, right next to where the two thousand dollars used to be.
“A transport plane is waiting on the tarmac at Nellis Air Force Base,” Hayes said, turning back toward his black SUV. “You have exactly two hours to pack your rifle and that brace.”
He opened the door of his vehicle, pausing for a brief second before getting in.
“Don’t be late, Jocelyn,” he said over his shoulder. “Or the blood is on your hands.”
The heavy door slammed shut. The engine purred to life, and the black SUV glided away across the desert, leaving a trail of fine white dust in its wake.
I stood there in the howling wind, my right arm shaking violently, staring at the satellite photo on the hood of the truck.
The ghost of Amira’s crying echoed in my mind, louder than ever.
I closed my eyes.
I was going back to war.
The inside of the C-17 Globemaster was a cavern of deafening noise and freezing metal.
There were no passenger seats. No flight attendants. Just exposed wiring, hydraulic lines, and the relentless, bone-rattling roar of four massive turbofan engines pushing us across the Atlantic at six hundred miles per hour.
I sat strapped into a red nylon jump seat along the fuselage, staring at the aluminum floorboards.
My right arm was heavily wrapped in a thick thermal sleeve, concealing the crude, titanium-and-carbon-fiber exoskeleton beneath. Even with the power off, the brace felt incredibly heavy.
Without the micro-hydraulics engaged, my hand rested on my thigh, violently trembling. The vibration was constant, an ugly, erratic twitch that sent sharp spikes of hot, electrical pain shooting up my forearm and into my elbow.
I clamped my left hand down over my right wrist, squeezing hard, trying to physically crush the tremors into submission. It didn’t work. It never worked.
Director Hayes sat directly across from me.
He had traded his tailored suit for black tactical gear, though he wore no rank or unit insignia. He was staring at a ruggedized tablet, his face illuminated by the harsh blue glow of the screen.
He hadn’t spoken a word since we left Nevada.
Beside him sat a young man in full winter combat kit. He looked to be in his late twenties, lean and hard, with eyes that constantly scanned the empty cargo bay like he was expecting an ambush at thirty thousand feet.
His name tape just said “CROSS.”
Hayes had introduced him briefly on the tarmac. Cross was CIA Special Activities Center. Paramilitary. He was my designated spotter.
And it was painfully obvious that he didn’t want to be here.
Cross had watched me struggle to carry my own weapon case up the loading ramp. He had seen my hand shaking uncontrollably when I tried to buckle my harness. He hadn’t said anything, but his silence was loud enough. He thought Hayes had lost his mind bringing a broken, medically retired sniper on a zero-fail hostage rescue.
I couldn’t exactly blame him. I thought Hayes was out of his mind, too.
Hayes tapped the screen of his tablet and unbuckled his harness. He stood up, fighting the aggressive sway of the aircraft, and walked over to me.
He handed me the tablet.
“Study the layout,” Hayes yelled over the deafening roar of the engines.
I let go of my trembling right wrist and took the tablet with my left hand.
The screen displayed high-resolution, infrared drone footage of a massive structure built into the side of a jagged, snow-covered mountain.
It didn’t look like a compound. It looked like a medieval fortress updated for the modern age of warfare. Thick concrete walls, watchtowers equipped with heavy machine guns, and layers of razor wire surrounded the perimeter.
“The Carpathian Mountains,” Hayes shouted, pointing at the screen. “Elevation is roughly eight thousand feet. The temperature on the ground is currently negative ten degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chills dropping it to negative thirty.”
I stared at the screen, my heart sinking.
Cold was my worst enemy. The nerve damage in my arm reacted violently to low temperatures. The cold caused the damaged nerve endings to contract and misfire, multiplying the pain and the intensity of the tremors tenfold.
