A look at her father’s closed eyes made her heart pound. Adrenaline flooded her system—a little late to the party, but she’d make use of the energy rush.
The passenger was nowhere to be seen.
Scrabbling to the rear of the small craft, she called out to her father again. “Dad, are you all right? Open your eyes if you can hear me!”
When she glanced out of the opening and spotted footprints in the snow, her heart picked up pace. The man had lived. Ron Smith had attempted to hijack their plane and almost stole their lives too. What measures would he go to in order to shut them up? She didn’t want to think about it.
She placed her shaking hands on her father and found him freezing to the touch. How long had they laid here, unconscious? Looking outside didn’t offer any clues—the storm system was fast approaching.
“Dad. Oh God. Dad?” She felt for his pulse and found it immediately. Relief washed through her, but things could go south fast. She had to work quick before he froze to death out here.
She needed to access the supplies. In some bush planes, the cargo was kept in a bay beneath the plane. Luckily, her father kept some supplies in the tail. The water they filled up on at the lake, along with blankets, an ax…and ammo for the weapon he carried on his hip.
He could have pulled it on Ron Smith at any time, but in trying to make peace and negotiate, he’d waited until it was too late.
After fumbling her way to the tail, she laid her hands on the plastic box equipped with their supplies. She grabbed the blanket, the ax and a couple weapon clips. If she couldn’t find the flares, she’d use her father’s gun to shoot into the sky and hope somebody heard or saw.
Fat chance, her brain told her before she finished the thought.
She crawled to her father and placed the blanket over him, tucking the edges under his heavy body to trap in as much warmth as possible. The cold permeated her as well, and she stuck her gloved fingers in her armpits for a minute to gain warmth. Trembling with terror for her father, she glanced outside. If Ron Smith lurked out there, he could come back and finish the job of killing them.
She almost wanted to laugh at the thought that he was nowhere near his first landing point let alone the one thirty miles away. By her account, they were in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization. The remote area of Skwenta looked like New York City compared to this. In fact, Alaskans called it No Man’s Land.
At least Ron Smith will die.
We’ll probably all die.
She needed to send up a mayday. She checked on her dad again, and finding him out cold, she scooted to the front of the plane to see if the radio worked.
As soon as she fiddled with the controls and heard the resulting static of the radio, tears burned in her eyes for the first time. Thank God. They could be rescued and her father get medical attention. Ron Smith could be hunted down and made to pay for his crimes, but right now all she could think about was getting her father to a hospital before the storm hit in full force.
“This is Hutton Husky. Mayday, mayday. This is Hutton Husky. We are on the ground. Repeat, we are on the ground and request rescue. Mayday.”
“So this is Snowfuck, Alaska.” Penn looked around at the barely there blip of a town. If he told Nash about his base, he’d never live it down. It wasn’t a base so much as a glorified storage shed. It better be filled with ammo and supplies or he’d be pissed.
Shouldering his bag, he crossed the parking lot from the SUV he rented after the emergency landing in the field. Two other trucks were parked out front, and he knew he was the last of the team to arrive.
His plans of grabbing dinner and bonding were out, unless they picked up canned goods from the local general store and fixed it themselves in the galley. The most he could hope for was an MRE ration.
As soon as he opened the metal door and ducked inside, five men snapped to attention.
Penn met each man’s eyes and finally nodded. “I’m Penn Sullivan. You can call me Captain or Penn. But don’t call me Sully—that’s my brother’s name.”
They nodded, heads bobbing in time as if they coordinated it.
As he crossed the big open space to them, he was met with nervous glances but one guy standing on the end outright grinned at him.
Penn stopped in front of the broad-shouldered man tall enough to look him in the eyes. “What the hell are you smilin’ at?” he drawled.
“Heard you had a rough landing, Captain,” he was met with the same Texas drawl bred into him.
“You’re Hepburn.”
“River Hepburn from Athens, Texas, sir.” He went into full military mode, heels together and salute sharp at his brow. “They call me Hep, sir.”
“At ease. We don’t need those niceties in Xtreme Ops, Hep. You respect me, I’ll give it right back. And yes, there was an issue with my flight.”
Down the line, a few more mouths tipped up into smiles in response to his nonchalant answer. He opened his mouth to continue greeting his teammates and stopped at the sound of his phone buzzing. He paused to pull it to his ear.
“Sullivan.”
“You damn well better have arrived, Sullivan, because we need your team in the air in ten.”
“Colonel Reinsel?”
“Yes, goddammit, it isn’t Santa Claus. I need you to rally. I have a chopper on standby five minutes away from you at the Army airfield. There’s a bush plane down, claiming a hijacking by a man who fits the description of Segei Yahontov.”
“The man working for the Russian mafia.”
“Only the biggest, most dangerous organized crime ring in the world, Sullivan. Yahontov has been on the FBI’s most wanted list for contract killings and drug trafficking since 2010. He’s surfaced now and then, but we can never pin him down. We think he was meeting a drop shipment of drugs. According to the pilot’s account, the man we believe to be Yahontov asked them to change course, fly him thirty miles west. There was a struggle with the man, and the plane went down just outside of a place locals call No Man’s Land.”
“Sounds like a vacation. I’ll light a fire under my team now. Thank you, Colonel. I’ll be in touch.”
“All intel will be sent to you straight away.”
“On it, sir.” He ended the call and stared at his men, five strangers he didn’t know shit about besides what he read in their files. “Guess we’ll do our meet and greet in the air. Our first mission is here. Suit up, men.”
They had all of minutes to check out their base and supplies. Then laden with gear and headed to the chopper which landed outside the base, they ran through what was rapidly becoming thick snowfall. With heads down, they one by one ducked under the blades and jumped into the chopper. As soon as they were all strapped in, Penn addressed them.
“I wanted time to do some bonding shit, but who needs that? We’re Xtreme Ops, and we won’t be doing anything the conventional way, including our first mission. There’s a bush plane down, hijacked by a man they believe to be Segei Yahontov. He’s escaped on foot and we don’t know if he’s dead or alive. In a few more minutes, if not already, his tracks will be covered by fresh snow. We’re going to find this guy and bring him in dead or alive.”
“What about the plane?” the burly man named Lipton asked. He sported more than a few tattoos, Penn had seen before he donned the thick jacket needed to endure the Alaskan elements, and one tattoo on his neck peeked from the collar of his coat, a clear Navy anchor.