He saw a door leading to the basement and blew open the lock with his gun.
“I’m going down, Cal! Cover me in case they come back.”
“Got it.”
Kicking the door open he made his way down the steps until he saw the asset. She was sitting in the center of the room with a bag over her head. He moved forward until he noticed others in the darkened space, and then he opened fire on them. They fired back. The exchange was short and he heard a cry in the darkness and something hit the cold tiled floor. He had hit one of them, but now Caleb piled in behind him and added more manpower, firing at them as they sprinted through another door into the dusk.
“Is she still alive?” Caleb asked.
Mason prayed she was, and ran toward her.
With Milo struggling to keep up, Zara saw Brick climbing out of a window and heading for the roof. She gave chase, slipped through the window and sprinted along the rooftiles in pursuit of him. It wasn’t her first rooftop chase, and she was once again taken back to Lincoln Heights and the Choker. She had given chase to the serial killer, running with everything she had to keep up with the much larger man. He had vaulted over a low wall and approached what looked like the edge of the roof. She saw him jump over it again and from her perspective it looked like he had leaped off the roof and into the ether.
When she got there she realized he had leaped down to a lower roof and was now sprinting toward an empty rooftop swimming pool full of junk and surrounded by broken sun loungers. She guessed it had been pretty classy many years ago but since the crackheads moved in the pool had been turned into a giant landfill and was full of bottles, cans, old furniture and thousands of needles.
She had seen worse.
That was partly why she had tossed that life away and become a bhikkhuni.
Now Brick stood on the roof’s edge and faced her, his chest heaving up and down with the effort of the chase. “You’re good,” he said.
Zara slipped her hand into her pocket and slid her fingers through her faithful knuckle duster. “And you’re finished.”
He started laughing. “Who’s going to finish me?”
“Me.”
“You? You and whose army, sweetheart?”
Zara charged forward and smashed the knuckle duster into the left side of his jaw. She heard the sound of bones breaking as his head rocked backward. Brick looked genuinely shocked and tried to move back but the wall stopped him in his tracks. Zara brought up her other hand, also armed with a knuckle duster but this time he was smart to her tricks and grabbed the hand. He squeezed it until she thought every bone in her hand was going to break. “Jesus…”
“Looks like sweetheart has a weak link,” he said, laughing.
“We all do, right?” she said.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Let me prove you wrong,” she said, and brought her knee up into his balls. She drove her kneebone up into him as hard as she could and got the result she needed.
He howled in pain and released her hand. “Fucking bitch!” he growled, and delivered a meaty back-handed slap to her face.
It caught her off-guard and she tumbled backward and fell over onto the roof.
He padded over to her and snatched up a length of metal piping out of the detritus around him. “I’ll teach you a lesson that you won’t forget in a hurry.”
She kept her nerve and waited until he was nearly over her, and then spun around in a circle and leaped to her feet ready for another round.
She heard gunshots and looked over her shoulder to see Milo firing on Brick.
The Huntsman dropped the piping, blew her a kiss and winked. “Another time, sweetheart.” He fled like a panther, leaping off the wall and smashing down on the roof of the adjacent building. He was gone.
“Brick’s out of here,” she said into her palm mic. “I repeat, Brick’s out of the building. We’re all clear up here.”
She screamed, turned and kicked the metal piping so hard it flew over the wall and spun out of sight over the rear garden.
Mason breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Eva Starling turn in her chair. He’d just heard Zara reporting that Brick had fled, so that meant all the Spiders were gone, but at least the asset was alive. That was always the primary goal of an extraction and rescue squad like the Raiders.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
He rushed forward and took the bag off. She had been crying, and mascara was streaking down her cheeks. A slight bruising under her right eye and a split lip also told him someone had gotten physical with her as well, but they were questions for later.
“Who are you?” she said, her voice hoarse and desperate.
“My name’s Mason,” he said. “Jed Mason, and I’m here to rescue you.”
“Thank God!” she said. “I thought you were those weirdos again.”
“Do you know where Linus went?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Sorry, no… and what the hell happened to your face?”
“Long story,” Mason said.
As he spoke, Caleb snatched up a strange golden object from the floor. It was heavy, and covered in jewels. “This must be what they dropped when you hit one of the bastards.”
Mason had no time to look. “You’re coming with us. You’re safe now.”
“Wait a minute — you’re not American.”
Mason hacked at the cable ties binding her hands together and strapping her to the back of the chair. “An astute observation,” he said. “I’m working with Americans.”
“Are you SAS?”
“No. Let’s just get out of here and then we’ll talk.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, and he saw hope flicker into her blue eyes for the first time since he’d removed the bag. “Whatever gets me away from these crazies faster!”
Holding her tightly by the hand, Jed Mason told her to keep her head down, and then he led her back to freedom.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mason stood with his hands in his pockets and studied the Frankfurt skyline. He was standing in a room on the top floor of another safe house across the city and this time, it was their safe house, arranged by Ezra Haven. The man himself was in the next room talking with Eva who was undergoing a full examination by the medic, an American named Mat Wills. Wills believed she was showing symptoms of PTSD after the kidnap and assault and had whisked her away the moment he saw her almost as fast as Ezra had taken the strange jewel-encrusted object away.
Caleb and Zara walked over with coffees and sat down opposite him at the little table.
“I told you we could trust him,” Caleb said.
“What?” Mason said, knocked from his daydream.
“I said I told you we could trust Ezra. We go way back.”
Mason gave another weary sigh. “The mission’s not over yet.”
“I think he’s kinda cute,” Zara said. “That whole Special Agent Dale Cooper thing going on and all.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Since when do we judge if we trust someone based on what they look like?”
She shrugged. “Just sayin’.”
When Ezra entered the room, Mason’s mind was still buzzing, but he worked hard to look cool and collected. Turning to the American, he said, “On the jet from Turkey, you told us that these Spiders were working for someone else. I want to know who, and now.”
Ezra gave a brief nod. “All right everyone, gather around.
“How’s Dr Starling?” Virgil asked.
“Dr Starling is still with Mat Wills next door. He thinks maybe she’s been drugged.”
“Drugged?” said Ella.
“I asked about who controls the Spiders,” Mason said, louder this time and the frustration rising in his voice.