Page 66 of Croatia Collateral

Giva held her breath. “Did it stop?” she whispered.

“It says the program is discontinued.” Dax glanced up at Fearghas, who leaned against the doorframe, his face pale.

Fearghas spoke into his radio, “Dmytro, do you have eyes on Shanghai? Anything?” Silence stretched tightly through the room as everyone waited.

“Bloody hell.” Fearghas closed his eyes and slumped. When he opened his eyes again, he said. “Nothing changed. Shanghai is still lit up like a beautiful fucking circus.”

Giva cheered with the rest of the team and flung her arms around Dax’s neck.

A grin spread across Fearghas’s face as he slid down the wall. “Oh, and Hank’s inbound in a helicopter with Interpol. Could one of you see if they’ll give me a ride to the nearest medical center?”

The team from Yellowstone secured the Russian and the German. Gavin helped make Fearghas comfortable and applied pressure to his wound.

The thumping sound of rotor blades echoed through the building as a helicopter lowered to the resort’s helipad.

Atkins left the building to meet with the landing party and help them find their way back to the alternate command center.

Dax held onto the laptop. Before the screen shut down again, he found the system settings and added his fingerprint to allow him to access the device without needing to use the dead man’s finger.

He didn’t want to hand it over to Interpol until Dmytro could access the programs, locate the satellites and find a way to disable or destroy their EMP capabilities. Dax trusted the Brotherhood Protectors above all others to ensure the world's safety by ensuring the programs and the devices weren’t passed into the wrong hands.

With one arm around Giva and the computer tucked under the other, he whispered, “Feel like going for a bike ride?”

She stared up into his eyes, then down at the laptop under his arm. Her gaze returned to his, and she nodded. “I’ll drive.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Dax responded.

As they left the room, Dax turned toward the stairwell.

Giva touched his arm and shook her head. She turned in the opposite direction and led him to the spiral staircase. They descended to the bottom on the ghostly risers and exited through the once-grand entrance of a former five-star hotel.

As they climbed the hillside to where they’d parked the motorcycles, Dax glanced back to see the group disembarking from the helicopter.

The sooner they got the laptop to Dmytro, the better. Interpol would want it to conduct their own investigation into the activities of the Nexus Collective, now down to two members, who would tell all to avoid spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Giva mounted one of the motorcycles and started the engine.

Dax slid onto the back, wrapped one arm around her middle and held on tightly to the laptop as they climbed the twisting, overgrown drive up to the main highway.

Giva turned toward the bright lights of Dubrovnik and drove back to the hotel at a reasonable pace.

Dmytro met them in the lobby and rode up the elevator with them to the floor where he’d set up their own operations center.

Dax and Giva followed him inside.

Dmytro opened the laptop.

Dax touched the fingerprint scanner. The screen blinked to life, displaying the frozen countdown clock with one second remaining.

Dmytro raised an eyebrow. “Cut it close, did you?”

“Too close,” Giva said.

“Do you think you can disable the EMP satellites?” Dax asked.

Dmytro drew in a deep breath and let it out. “We’re going to do our best. I have the other two Brotherhood Protectors’ highly skilled tech support personnel on standby. We hope that, between the three of us, we can make certain no one tries to take control of those devices.”

Dax and Giva stayed until the rest of the team arrived.

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