Chapter 24 - Shadows over the Black Mountain
The approach was silent and merciless.
The two perimeter guards stationed outside the rusted ventilation shaft never heard their deaths coming. Adrien materialized from the pine shadows like a specter, his combat blade sliding beneath the helmet rim of the first guard, severing the brain stem in a single, fluid thrust.
Before the second guard could raise his Kalashnikov, Elena appeared at Adrien’s flank. The suppressed crack of her Walther spat twice. Two 9mm rounds punched through the man’s throat and eye socket. He collapsed into the fresh powder without a groan, his blood steaming in the freezing air.
Adrien glanced at Elena, an eyebrow faintly raised.
"Don't look surprised," she breathed, reloading the chamber. "You had me trained by the best assassins in Sicily for three years. Did you think I was just playing tennis?"
"I’m not surprised, cara," Adrien murmured, a wicked, lethal smirk gracing his lips. "I’m in love."
They breached the maintenance grate with a hydraulic silent-spreader. One by one, the strike team slipped into the subterranean ventilation labyrinth.
The air inside was warm, stale, and smelled heavily of diesel fuel, damp concrete, and unwashed men. Far below, the muffled thump of heavy machinery echoed through the pipes.
Adrien led the point, his night-vision goggles rendering the abandoned Soviet complex in shades of eerie green. They moved through narrow service catwalks, bypassing the main blast doors which were wired with C4 fail-safes.
"We have activity in the lower communications room," Keller warned over Adrien’s encrypted earpiece. "Three hostiles monitoring the security grid. If they hit the primary alarm, the entire mountain goes into lockdown and the blast doors seal with six feet of reinforced steel. You won't get through."
"Elena, take the rear flank," Adrien whispered, signaling two of his men to stack up on the left side of the metal hatchway.
Elena nodded, her senses heightened to a razor’s edge. She felt no fatigue, no lingering ache from childbirth, no fear. The primal instinct to retrieve her offspring had flooded her body with so much adrenaline that her heart beat with the rhythmic precision of a metronome.
Adrien kicked the door open.
Flashbangs detonated in blinding, deafening flashes inside the comms room. Adrien and his men poured through, suppressed fire spitting in rapid, three-round bursts. The three technicians were eliminated before their hands could reach the crimson alarm klaxons.
Elena swept the room, securing the blind corners. On the main surveillance console, sixteen black-and-white monitors displayed different angles of the mountain fortress.
Elena’s breath caught in her throat.
On Camera 4—labeled *Observation Suite B*—a woman sat in an ornate velvet armchair in a room lined with Persian rugs. Vanessa Cole. She wore a pristine cream-colored cashmere coat, sipping champagne from a crystal flute.
And on the table beside her, resting in a portable travel bassinet, was a tiny bundle wrapped in pink fleece.
Aurelia.
Elena slammed her hands against the glass monitor, her heart breaking and igniting at the exact same second. "There," she choked out. "She’s there!"
Adrien stepped beside her, his face turning to pure granite as he looked at the woman who had dared touch his child. He leaned into the mic on the console, patching directly into the room's intercom system.
"Vanessa," Adrien’s voice echoed through the speakers in the observation suite.
On the screen, Vanessa froze, the champagne glass pausing inches from her crimson lips. Slowly, a serpentine smile spread across her face. She looked directly into the ceiling-mounted camera.
May you like
"Adrien," Vanessa purred smoothly. "You made excellent time. Thirty-eight hours to spare. But you shouldn't have brought your little stray dog with you. A mother shouldn't have to watch her baby die."
***
