He swore again and tore his shirt off, pulling it over his head with one hand. The bullet holes from when he was a child were prominent on his chest, but along with them were dozens of other scars. He had them and he’d earned every single one. He wasn’t pretty nor, by any means, handsome. He was scary and he knew it. He had cultivated that stillness, that coldness he’d been born with in order to survive. Enhancement had grown all traits, good or bad, and that coldness had spread, obliterating most of the good he had left. The things he wanted from a woman weren’t for the likes of a woman like Zara.
He was restless, edgy, moody. He needed to be sharp for this mission. Joe had called it. It was a suicide mission. Precision jumping onto the roof of a high rise with heavy gear? Avoiding water towers when the target was already so small? He knew he would go no matter what, even if the others changed their minds. He pulled the laptop to him, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He was one of those men becoming obsessed with Zara Hightower and he didn’t even know why.
3
T
he Louisiana swamp had a magic all its own. Gino knew not everyone would find it that way, but for men like the GhostWalkers, it was the perfect refuge. There was a beauty to the land, a rhythm that got under a man’s skin and soothed him when he was a predator and needed space and a hunting ground. There was that same wild that called to him, a place to fish and hunt and an opportunity to live off the land if necessary.
Gino liked the humidity and heat and the fierce weather changes. He spent time learning the canals and waterways as well as his way around the various islands and large tracts of swamp. He liked to be alone, and the swamp provided him with ample opportunity. He liked the people even though he didn’t interact much with them. Most were good people, eking out a living, working hard to provide for their families. They worked hard and played just as hard.
He found himself cursing the heat and humidity that he liked so well as they built the exact replica of the jump site, thanks to Bellisia’s intel, up on top of Trap’s home. Trap had a huge cement warehouse he’d turned into a home. The roof was flat, a good place to put up the series of water towers and mark where all five would have to land when they jumped. The build went up fast in spite of the light rain that did nothing to relieve the heat.
The rain brought the fresh smell of the swamp, the perfumed flowers mixed with rotting vegetation. Shirts off, they worked fast to get the site ready so they had as much time as possible to practice the jumps. Just looking at the marks they would have to hit—all five of them—made Gino’s heart sink. He’d done many dicey missions, but this one was going to be bad. He wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
“Zeke,” Rubin said, after walking the length of the rooftop they’d mapped out with the water towers now sitting right in the way of their landing. Just that one name. A protest. An exhale. Saying that name said it all. Rubin stood on the edge of the roof they’d cut more than in half and then made it even smaller by adding the banks of large water towers. He stood for a long time, mathematically calculating their odds.
Gino knew the odds weren’t good. He’d already made those calculations and he hadn’t added the additional complication of it being a night jump.
“Boss, how the hell are we supposed to make this jump with all that gear? Power paragliders aren’t small and just with us it’s already a tight fit.”
Zeke shrugged. “It will be just like doing a tandem with a person strapped to you, only smaller.”
They all exchanged long, silent looks. Mordichai shook his head, swore under his breath, walked to the edge and spit. It was his older brother leading the suicide mission. “You’re going to need a couple of us there to collect the fuckin’ bodies, Zeke.” He meant it as a joke, but it was too close to the truth so no one laughed.
Zeke shot him a look that told him to shut the hell up.
“Is there a possibility of doing this with less men?” Gino asked. “Even dropping one, we might fit better up on the roof. Leave Draden or Diego behind. Draden is the biggest, takes up the most room.” He didn’t want to examine his reasoning for pushing to leave Draden behind. It shouldn’t matter who stayed, but somehow it did.
Zeke took his time thinking it over and then shook his head. “We’ll practice the jumps on the ground until we all hit our marks and then we’ll start jumping on the roof without the equipment first. We have today to get this right, and we will because it’s necessary.”
Gino nodded. Zeke was the boss and his word was law under the circumstances. If he said they needed everyone, then they did. Cheng wasn’t a normal businessman upset because he’d caught an industrial spy he would hand over to the authorities. He was a notorious criminal willing to torture and kill perceived enemies, let alone someone he caught working against him.
Gino had taken the time to read everything Joe had on the man. He seemed to be unraveling, or he was just that paranoid. He was known to shoot lab techs for messing up. He lined up workers, picked a few he claimed were working against him and they disappeared, presumably to be tortured and then killed. He locked down his office building periodically for weeks at a time, refusing to allow the workers to go home.
He had cameras in private apartments, spying on his workers at all times. His private security forces were drawn from ex-military, men who knew what they were doing and didn’t mind bullying or roughing up innocent civilians. He paid well. He seemed to the outside world to run a model business with day care and living quarters for his people. It was known to those around the world who knew his true character, that those children lived under a threat and their parents were his most loyal employees.
“This is sketchy at best, boss,” Draden pointed out.
“Joe said it was going to be a suicide mission. If you’ve got a better plan, I’d fuckin’ love to hear it.”
They looked at one another again. No one was going to back out. They had to get the woman out one way or another. She’d shut down the sale of their program, preventing terrorists from getting their hands on Whitney’s work or from having any intelligence on the GhostWalkers. Even Cheng would have begun experiments to have better soldiers guarding him. Or maybe he’d sell his soldiers. He was capable of selling human beings. If the information they had on him was correct, he did it often with the sons and daughters of the hapless employees he thought had double-crossed him.
Zeke sighed. “We’ll figure it out on the ground,” he repeated. “We’ll practice it all day and then do a couple of night jumps to get it right. We have to start traveling tomorrow to make that deadline of meeting up with the workers going to Shanghai.”
The rain ceased, which made wielding hammers easier. The rest of the unit not going continued to set up a site inside the building that was a mock-up of the floor Bellisia had seen. She knew nothing about the inside of the rooms, but the floor was basically the same as the lower floors. The positioning of elevators determined the layout of the floors, so that was easy. It was impossible to tell where all the guards would be, but she’d seen enough of the floors to know where the standard placement was.
The heat and humidity added to frayed tempers as the day wore on. They practiced their spots on the rooftop, making the dry run over and over. The first jump, without equipment, was a disaster. Trap had a landing field not far from his home with a large hangar that housed several aircraft including a smaller plane that would be similar to the one they had to use. Malichai piloted. All of them could fly a plane or helicopter if necessary, but Malichai had particular talents and Zeke didn’t want to worry about anything but the jump.