Chapter 12 - The Kidnapping at Midnight
Before Dante could cross the room to take me in his arms, the island’s primary perimeter alarm shrieked with deafening intensity.
WARNING: HEAVY AIR AND MARITIME INTRUSION DETECTED.
The lights flickered and died as an electromagnetic pulse wave washed over the island, plunging the timber lodge into emergency battery-powered red light.
"They bypassed the outer radar grid," Dante snarled, drawing his weapon. "Volkov brought his main force."
The sound of twin helicopter rotors thundered directly above the roof of the lodge, accompanied by the violent chatter of heavy machine-gun fire shredding the upper timber deck.
"Marco!" Dante roared into his tactical radio. "Get Matteo to the submarine escape pod beneath the boathouse! Now!"
Marco burst into the kitchen, wearing full combat gear, holding Matteo securely in a bulletproof baby carrier strapped to his chest.
"Go with them, Elina!" Dante commanded, his eyes burning with frantic urgency as he handed me a loaded semi-automatic handgun. "The sub will take you beneath the ice shelf to the mainland coast guard station. I will hold the choke point at the front courtyard."
"I am not leaving you!" I cried, grabbing his arm.
"You have to protect our son!" Dante yelled, grabbing my face and kissing me with savage, desperate intensity. "I love you, Elina! Now GO!"
He shoved me toward Marco, then spun around, charging out the front doors into the hail of gunfire, his weapons blazing with righteous fury.
Marco, Matteo, and I sprinted down the underground stone tunnel leading toward the boathouse. The ground above us shook with massive explosions as Dante’s loyal soldiers engaged the Russian strike force in a desperate stand.
We reached the boathouse docks where a sleek, black mini-submersible was moored in the icy water.
Just as Marco began punching the launch sequence into the dock terminal, the reinforced steel doors behind us blew inward in a massive fireball.
The blast threw Marco violently against the concrete pillar, knocking him unconscious, while Matteo and I were thrown across the metal grating.
Through the thick black smoke stepped a monster of a man.
He was nearly six-foot-six, built like an iron tank, with cold blue eyes, a shaved head, and a jagged scar running across his throat.
Nikolai Volkov.
Behind him stood eight heavily armed Russian mercenaries.
"Well, well," Nikolai chuckled, his voice sounding like grinding stones as he stepped over Marco’s unconscious body. "The ghost of Isabella returns to play hero."
Matteo was crying hysterically beneath me. I scrambled to my feet, raising the handgun Dante had given me with both trembling hands, aiming it directly at Nikolai's chest.
"Take one more step, and I'll blow your brains across these docks!" I screamed.
Nikolai smirked, raising his hand to signal his men to hold fire. "Feisty little bird. But empty threats won't save you."
Before I could pull the trigger, a flash-bang grenade bounced across the metal grating at my feet.
A blinding flash of white light and an ear-splitting bang shattered my senses. My vision vanished, my ears rang with excruciating pain, and the gun was kicked violently from my grip.
Strong, iron hands grabbed me by the hair, dragging me backward, while another mercenary ripped Matteo from the floor.
"No! MATTEO!" I shrieked into the darkness, fighting, kicking, and biting with everything I had.
May you like
"Put the woman and the brat in the transport chopper," Nikolai ordered coldly. "If Dante Moretti wants to see his family alive again, he will come to the Port of Chicago and surrender his entire empire on his knees."
A heavy rifle butt struck the side of my temple, and the world dissolved into blackness.
