“Look, you know everything I do at this point except that Conrad, Hancock’s second, said the night before the exchange was to take place, Hancock called the whole thing off. Came up with the idea of staging the exchange but ambushing Maksimov and executing him on the spot. He didn’t give a fuck about Maksimov’s connections, what he could lead Interpol, the CIA and God only knows who else to. All he wanted was Maksimov taken out and for Maksimov to never get his hands on Honor.”
“Obviously things didn’t go as planned or you wouldn’t be calling me,” Resnick said grimly.
“Hancock lost one of his men. Several are injured. Hancock is touch and go. I don’t even know if he’s alive at this point. But his second called and asked for our help. They want Honor out of Maksimov’s hands, and they don’t care how it’s done. He’s a sadistic son of a bitch and every hour she’s with him will be hell.”
“I’ll send Kyle Phillips’s team and two others. You’re going to need all the manpower you can get. I assume you have every available man on your end.”
Sam didn’t dignify that with a response.
“I’ll send you the coordinates and I need your men wheels up in half an hour tops. And Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Two things. We’re operating blind here, so I need every single piece of intel you have on Maksimov. I don’t give a fuck how classified it is. I need it and I need it yesterday if we’re going to save her and take the Russian down.”
“Done. The other?”
“Honor Cambridge did die in that attack. You can not leak that she lived. Not yet. If we manage to get to her in time to save her life and get her back home to her family, then it can quietly be revealed that she was rescued by a joint special forces operation.”
Resnick snorted. “As if that kind of information will ever be low key or quiet. It will be a media circus.”
CHAPTER 35
THE rural, rundown cabin in Bumfuck, West Virginia, where Titan had taken refuge smelled of blood and death. Resnick had complained that no wonder no one had been able to find Maksimov when he was meeting people in such a backwoods place.
Rio led the way inside, because he was known to Titan. Although that hadn’t saved him from an overeager trigger finger one of the last times Titan and Rio had butted heads.
Conrad met Rio at the door, pain in his eyes. “Mojo,” he choked out.
Rio closed his eyes a moment. He’d liked Mojo. Quiet but tormented like so many others in the ranks of Titan. But Mojo was loyal to his bones, and his death hit Rio harder than he would have imagined after so long.
He’d given that life up. A life forever in the shadows, always skating the thin edge between right and wrong. Sometimes, wrong was right. And sometimes right sucked. But now, seeing the men who used to follow him as they now followed Hancock brought back many of the things he’d tried to forget.
“I’m sorry,” Rio said, allowing the sorrow he felt to creep into his voice. “He was a good man.” He glanced toward the floor, where Conrad had been working on his team leader. “Hancock?”
Conrad walked back to where Maren was already looking Hancock over. Conrad had given him pain medication but not enough to suppress his respirations too much because there was no way to know the extent of the damage to his lungs. A CNS depressant could be lethal to weakened lungs and too-shallow respirations.
Maren bent over Hancock, and he turned dull eyes on her that briefly lit with recognition. And relief.
“Maren. Thank God. Need you.” He licked dry lips. “They have her. Didn’t save her like I did you. Have to,” he said painfully.
“Hancock,” she said with mock severity, her hand on her hip. “What have I told you about playing with guns?”