Retaliation Read online

  Sky Ghosts: Retaliation

  by Alexandra Engellmann

  Sky Ghosts: Retaliation

  (Book 3 of the Sky Ghosts series)

  Copyright © 2020 by Alexandra Engellmann

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and events are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means—including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published by Alexandra Engellmann

  http://www.engellmann.com/

  Cover artwork and design by Alexandra Engellmann

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  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  About the author

  Acknowledgements

  To C. B.

  You were my shining star; you always will be.

  Prologue

  “What are you doing here?”

  The man’s hairy fingers grasped her jacket, lifting her from the chair. He reeked of cigarettes and rotten teeth, and she held her breath, afraid she might pass out from the smell alone.

  “I wasn’t doing anything,” she hissed, using what little air she had in her lungs. “I was just looking for a place to sleep, I told you. Let me go!”

  The big man shook her once before letting her flop back down onto the chair. She watched him pace in front of her as she restored her breathing. Behind him, two men were carrying crates out of the dim warehouse, acting as if she wasn’t there or maybe used to scenes like this one.

  She swallowed hard and shifted on the shaky chair when another goon joined her captor. “Still not talking?” he asked, chewing on a toothpick.

  “Either she’s workin’ for someone, or she’s really bad at pickin’ places for sleep. She ain’t a beggar either,” the first man drawled. He reached out and pulled at one of the straps on her stylish leather jacket, making her flinch.

  “I ran away from home,” she snapped. “I’m not a beggar.”

  The men exchanged suspicious looks.

  “That’s a second guest today. Something tellin’ me the boss should know about this,” the first man said. He stepped closer and gripped her chin with his dirty fingers. “That’s one ugly beak ya have. No surprise ya stick it where it don’t belong.”

  She glowered at him but remained silent.

  The other man came up to her with a chuckle. His hand closed on the back of her jacket like a claw, and he yanked her forward. “I’m telling you, she’s one of Garcia’s snoops. She’ll change her mind after a couple days in a cell,” he said as he dragged her deeper into the warehouse. She stumbled and shoved at him, and he shook her with an angry look. “Use those feet, girl, or I’ll drag you down there by your hair!”

  Reluctantly, she walked by his side as he headed to a low door in the far corner. He shoved her through, into a long, dark corridor.

  She whirled, pummeling at his chest with her fists.

  “Where are you taking me? Let me go, please, I want to go home!” Her shouted words echoed off the bare walls.

  “Quiet! You’re not going anywhere till our boss takes a look at you tomorrow. We’ll see what he has to say.”

  His hand shot forward, hitting her shoulder with so much force that she lost her footing and flew a few feet before falling down with a scream. Tears sprang to her eyes, and a sob escaped her mouth as she breathed in shallow, quick gasps.

  Before she could get up, the man was already dragging her forward, and then he picked her up unceremoniously and kicked open another door. Behind it was a big, dark room with bare walls and only two small, dirty windows. And there were cells, three on each side, barred with thick iron rods.

  She started to struggle again, but the man quickly opened one of them and pushed her inside, then snapped the lock shut. Eyes wide with terror, she threw herself at the bars. “Please! Let me out! I didn’t do anything!”

  A manic grin spread across the man’s face. In a flash, his palm slammed into her fingers gripping the bars.

  Her wordless cry of pain pierced the air.

  “Be quiet. If I have to come back here, you won’t like it,” he threatened, then looked at the cell next to hers. “Hey!” he shouted, making the man inside bolt upright from his sleeping position. “No sleeping!” He spat and stalked out of the room.

  She let herself slump to the floor, her face wet from tears. A couple of minutes passed, and there was no sound from the other captives or from behind the door, so she wiped her eyes and peered around.

  There were four of them, two on each side of the room.

  The man to her left, the one who’d been woken by the guard, lay curled up on his side. He looked middle-aged, gray speckled through his dark hair. He must have been dressed formally in a suit when they captured him, but the jacket was bundled up under his head now, and his white shirt was splattered with blood. He had a black eye, and his strained pose gave away his injuries, probably cracked ribs. This is bad, she thought, swallowing down her tears.

  She wiped away the last of them and scanned the cells on the opposite side.

  The one across from her was occupied by a shirtless black boy, who hadn’t even stirred at all the commotion and was sleeping with his back to her. The cell in the corner was the darkest, and all she could see was a glowing, Cheshire Cat smile—Marco.

  Pain grinned at him and rolled her shoulders, getting up.

  “And the Oscar goes to…” he whispered, not moving from his spot on the floor.

  She smiled and smoothed down the intricate braid that made her hair look three times shorter than it really was. Her face must have been smeared nice and black with mascara and eyeliner that she had applied generously earlier. The most important bit—the fake nose—hadn’t been damaged in the beating, to her relief.

  “That thing’s even uglier in the dark,” Mar
co said.

  “Shut up.” She grinned. “It’s not like I can sprout hair from my face, like some people.”

  Marco reached up and pulled at the month’s worth of beard proudly. He’d had to let his hair grow, too, to cover the tattoo and swallow up the mohawk so he could take more undercover jobs, and he’d bitched and moaned about it for weeks. She, on the contrary, had always been proud of her disguises, the collection of fake noses, contact lenses, and makeup, and her sister’s hairdressing skills.

  She grabbed the bars overhead to do a couple of pull-ups. Even though her leather pants and jacket had kept her warm, she didn’t care for the stiffness that came with sitting still for hours. They had to wait until late night for everyone aside from the guards to leave the place, and it was more than enough time for her bruises to heal.

  A loud gasp startled her, and her eyes darted to the man in the suit. He must have moved in his sleep and disturbed some of his injuries, and now was rocking back and forth, hugging his knees to his chest.

  The sight pained her, but she couldn’t tell him he would be out soon. He had spent three days here, and no one could predict his reaction to the news. It wasn’t worth endangering the operation.

  They couldn’t hear a thing when everyone left the warehouse and locked the doors, but they knew about it because a guard came in with a small portable TV. It was a different man, tall and athletic. A handgun protruded from his belt, probably to intimidate them and prevent any attempts at getting out. The TV filled the room with chatter, and the guard sprawled in an old armchair in a corner.

  Nice, she thought, now he won’t get up for hours.

  She gave Marco a signal to switch to plan B, or the guard could just spend the whole night in the chair.

  Marco nodded, the motion barely visible in the dark, and got up to his feet. As he moved to the front of his cell, she took a hairpin out of her braid and stepped closer to the door.

  Marco started coughing, first quietly, the sound muffled against his hand; then more loudly, until it sounded like he was suffocating, breathing in short, rasping gasps. His hands closed on the iron bars and rattled them with a dying man’s desperation.

  The guard jumped to his feet with a curse and hurried across the room. “Shut up! I can’t hear a thing!” he yelled, halting a few steps from Marco’s cell.

  Marco doubled over in another fit, then straightened up and pointed at his neck, leaning forward with big eyes.

  The guard grimaced but finally took those last two steps closer.

  Marco’s hand shot out, grabbing the man’s collar. The guard’s head slammed into the bars, once, twice, just as Pain won the battle with the padlock and got out of her cell. The man tore free from Marco’s grasp, and Pain’s foot slammed into his head, knocking him out at last.

  “Can’t do anything without my help,” she said with a wry smile.

  Marco gave her the finger, and waved her off when she offered him the guard’s keys.

  She paused, listening. The warehouse was quiet, and no one was running to check what was going on. But behind her, someone was gasping for air, as if trying to say something.

  “H-help…”

  She spun, her eyes locking in on the man.

  They had scared him, and now he was trying to call for help, eyes wide with fear. Only, his dry throat wouldn’t let him speak, and all she heard was pained hissing.

  Marco was out of his cell, but she held up a hand, telling him to wait while she approached the man carefully with her hands raised in front of her.

  “Mr. O’Conner, we’re here to take you home. Please, keep quiet. We’re not ready to go yet,” she whispered. “We’re not going to hurt you. In about ten minutes we’ll take you to your wife.” She fumbled with the keys, trying one after another, until she found the right one.

  The boy who had been sleeping in the cell next to Marco’s was watching them silently with big eyes. She tossed the keys to Marco and turned back to O’Conner, opening the door to his cell.

  “What’s her name?” he rasped, making her pause.

  “Who?”

  “My wife, what’s her name?”

  A test, Pain realized. “Rebecca. She hired us to help you. But you have to stay here for a few more minutes and be quiet, all right? We’ll move you to the corner cell. You think you can move?”

  The man nodded. She reached into her inside pocket for a small flask and a painkiller.

  “Here, it’ll help the pain. Don’t worry if you feel sleepy. We’ll take you straight to the chopper.” She slipped the pill into his mouth and gave him some water.

  He got up with her help and walked to Marco’s cell, which was the farthest from the door and the safest place to be in case the second guard started shooting. The boy was already there, lying unconscious on his side. Marco’s skill of putting people to sleep, not always violently, was a thing of beauty.

  “Just stay in the cell. He won’t even see you’re still here,” she told O’Conner.

  Marco stood by the door, looking strangely old with all the hair and even bigger than usual in his large, nondescript parka. The fallen guard stirred at his feet.

  “You ready?” she asked, glancing at their client. His eyes were already closed, and she knew the pill would keep him asleep at least for a half-hour.

  “Always. Call him in.”

  She nodded and took her position behind the door as Marco grabbed the unconscious guard and rose into the air, hiding out of sight.

  A deep breath, and she yelled at the top of her voice, “He-e-e-elp! Somebody help me!”

  Not even a minute went by when the door swung open.

  Pain drew her foot up, kicking the guard in the back. He sprawled on the floor before he could grab his gun, a heavy AK-47.

  She grasped his hair, and her fist slammed into his head, knocking him out.

  It took the other guard a couple of minutes to realize that it was suspiciously quiet, and to run after his partner.

  He burst through the door, only to topple to the ground when Pain’s foot connected with his jaw. Gunfire shattered the silence, bullets ricocheting off iron exactly where O’Conner had been a few minutes ago.

  Before she could lunge at him, all went quiet. He was knocked out, after all. Twitchy trigger finger.

  At last, all three unconscious guards were piled up in the corner, and Marco carried their client out of the cell. She followed him with the boy—he couldn’t be more than ten, and she barely felt his weight, with the adrenaline burning in her veins.

  “It’s your lucky day, kid,” she murmured, catching Marco’s smile with the corner of her eye.

  In a minute, they were out of the dank room, corridor, and warehouse, breathing in the chill air and squishing the thin layer of snow under their boots. In ten more minutes, they were saying their goodbyes to the O’Conner couple and the boy, who had come around and blinked at them with an expression of utter amazement, wrapped in a blanket and strapped to his seat in the helicopter. Rebecca had insisted on taking care of him.

  They reported to Skull, who was the field coordinator for the night, and stood on the rooftop for a minute, silently restoring order in their thoughts.

  “Feel like going for a walk?” Pain asked at last, shivering in the freezing wind.

  “Yes.” Marco sounded relieved. “I don’t feel like going home yet.”

  She smiled, and darted upward, crossing the river to Brooklyn.

  They landed a few blocks away from the road that went around their building. The wind was softer here, and it had stopped snowing, making the walk more pleasant than she’d expected. That, and her shield.

  Marco broke the comfortable silence between them. “Is it just me, or do all jobs seem the same lately?”

  Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “This one was different.”

  “Why, because we didn’t have to sweat our asses off in Colombia or Kandahar?”

  “Well, yeah. It was simple. Like there was nothing that could go wrong.” br />
  “Exactly. They all feel like nothing can go wrong. And I feel like I’m sixty. Like I’m losing the edge.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Come on, you know what I mean. Don’t you feel like if there’s no risk, we’re not using our full potential?”

  “The client’s safety is what’s important, not our potential, Marco.”

  “I know.” He waved her off. “I’m sure you know what I mean, too. Since we got rid of Eugene, it’s… It’s been the most boring four months of my life, I swear.”

  She smiled at his unhappy tone. “There’ll be plenty of other—” A distant scream made her pause. Her head whipped up. “You hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Someone fighting.” Another muffled scream. “Come on!” She grabbed his sleeve and darted into one of the dark alleys.

  The street looked deserted when they came out on the other side, but she knew where to look, because another scream guided her even as she ran. A shadow moved in a dark corner at the end of the street, and she took off into the air with Marco close on her heels.

  Tires screeched, and Marco flew past her into another dark alley as she halted and kneeled by a fallen man on the ground. He was wearing their gear.

  “Be careful!” she shouted to Marco, turning the man face up. “Are you all right?”

  The air lodged in her throat when she saw Chris, blood oozing from a wound in his head and soaking through his curly blond hair. Bruises marred his left cheekbone, and his pulse was weak when she brought her fingers to his neck.

  “Shit,” she hissed, yanking off her mask so she could use it to stanch the bleeding.

  The moment she pressed it to his head, his eyes flew open and his hand grabbed her wrist, making her jump.

  “They…” He groaned, swallowing hard.

  “It’s okay. Don’t speak. You’re gonna be okay.” She tapped her earpiece to ask Skull to open the infirmary window, but Chris squeezed her arm so hard, she forgot about it for a second.

  “They’re going to kill us,” he whispered, his terrified gaze freezing the blood in her veins. “They’re going to kill us all.”