Wait For Me || John "Soap" MacTavish x OC (Call Of Duty)

41. Too heavy to carry

"Flash drive acquired." Captain Price growled, shattering the radio silence that had descended. Even the gunfire had ceased a few minutes earlier. 

The acrid scent of gunpowder hung heavy in the air, reaching as far as where the doctor still stood, waiting. 

Her nails dug into her palms and her gaze, blurred by the dim light, was fixed on the abandoned tunnel entrance.

The Captain hesitated for a long, drawn-out moment, then a grunt of frustration filled the still air: "Whatever was on it uploaded into the station's train network."

"Trojan horse." Laswell hazarded, catching her breath. She said no more, and perhaps there was no need. 

Yael's skin was gooseflesh.

"Konni has control of the trains." Sergeant Garrick snorted through his teeth. His measured tone couldn't quite mask Soap's inappropriate Scottish accent a few steps away.

Suddenly, the damp, faded walls echoed back to her, first faintly, then more urgently, the muffled thud of about twenty pairs of boots. 

Their dry, irregular beat reverberated mercilessly within her chest, overlapping unpleasantly with the furious rhythm of the doctor's heart.

The Task Force emerged first into the cold flicker of the neon lights, in what seemed like a handful of instants. Their faces, sooty and drawn, hardened by the fury of the guerrilla warfare, reached her in less than a breath.

The smell of blood and death that clung to them wafted over her face with the force of a slap.

"Williams!" the Captain called with a curt nod, and Yael obeyed without even thinking, stepping back a few paces to the enormous military vehicle they had arrived in just over half an hour ago.

This time it was Gaz who took the wheel, while the Captain opened the passenger door with ungraceful urgency.

It seemed to her a curious intimacy, comradely and scandalously private, the way Johnny grabbed her to pull her into the back of the car. His fingers, protected by thick black gloves, tightened firmly around her wrist, almost to her forearm.

He pulled her towards him gently, with a nod of his head, while a faint smile stretched barely across his pale lips. The old scar on his chin twitched imperceptibly.

Yael couldn't utter a word, the roar of the starting engine swallowing the muffled thud of her heart pounding in her ears.

She let herself be hoisted onto the seat without effort, right next to the Sergeant, her eyes tracing the familiar profile of the disciplined Mohican crest, his temples freshly shaved, his neck broad, his shoulders wide, and she wondered why her heart was sinking like that.

"There's more, John... Face recognition found this..." Kate hazarded, without concealing an ounce of her own worry.

The Captain opened the laptop with a sharp snap, and while the car plunged back into urban traffic at breakneck speed, the screen instantly displayed the classified information sent by Laswell.

"They boarded ten minutes ago."

The Eurotunnel surveillance cameras had intercepted a suspicious face among the passengers waiting on the platform.

Yael's stomach tightened in a vice. The software compared the shadowed, imprecise features to a mugshot, but there would have been no need.

"Makarov..." the Lieutenant growled, his tense breath condensing between the threads of his balaclava. 

Beside her, Johnny's imposing figure stiffened.

"On a train full of civilians." Gaz barked from the driver's seat, and suddenly the vehicle seemed to accelerate.