Rainbow Six: Bloodlines

"TRUE DARK" - Chapter 4

FEBRUARY 21, 2018
GIBRALTAR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

     Gold Team - Ela, Zofia, Dokkaebi, and Vigil - loaded their gear into the black SUV that their agency had rented for them upon arrival.

     Ela jumped into the driver's seat and started the engine. Vigil, still outside, knocked on the driver's side window and motioned for the woman to roll it down.

     "What?" Ela asked as the glass slid down, allowing a breeze into the car.

     "Let me drive."

     Ela frowned. "No, Hwa."

     "Please?"

     "No?" Ela stared defiantly at the man and rolled the window back up, slowly extending a middle finger as she did. Chul Kyung Hwa chuckled and grudgingly rounded the SUV to hop in the backseat.

     Taina "Caveira" Pereira was nearby, on the phone with Director Six.

     "I don't like this," Dokkaebi mumbled, fiddling with the controls on her ballistic-armored laptop. "Black Ops are never good. Ever."

     Zofia turned from the passenger seat. "Agreed. But it's a job, and we'll do it like any other."

     "Hunting our own people won't be a job like any other."

     "How will we find them?" asked Hwa.

     "Taina said she had a trick up her sleeve," replied Zofia. "Something Six told her about. I don't know what it is."

     "Ryad always calls Taina La Cazadora," Grace remarked, still staring at her laptop. "Means 'The Huntress.' High compliment, coming from him."

     Zofia grinned. "Ironic."

     Hwa leaned his forehead against the window, watching the sea nearby. "Pereira creeps me out."

     Grace shrugged. "I like her. No bullshit. Straight to the point."

     "Agreed, but there's something else there."

     Ela kept her agreement with Hwa silent. She watched her companions in the rear view mirror. What Vigil said was true; there was something else there in Taina. Ela sensed it with ease. She could see it in the woman's eyes. She could feel it even though Pereira hid it: there was a darkness in her that went deeper than the skin.

     Ela knew this because Caveira, in some ways, reminded her of herself.

     As if on cue, Taina lowered her phone and made her way back to the SUV. "We'll meet the others at the hotel," she announced, sliding into the front passenger seat.

     Zofia held her father's pocket watch in her hand. Her eyes did not leave it. "Six having the others head back home to debrief?"

     "After we ask them a few questions." Taina gazed out the window. "Let's go. We'll go to the hotel, catch up with the others, and go from there. I want to hear from them exactly what the hell happened."

*               *               *

     A short drive took Gold Team to Marina Bay Gibraltar, a hotel near the airport on the west coast of the country. The beautiful Bay of Gibraltar filled the horizon, a seemingly endless blue that dutifully watched from beyond closed windows. For over an hour, the Rainbow operators caught up over quick simple meals and a case of beer, which had been insisted on vehemently by Thermite.

     Everyone was crammed into the small hotel room: Ash, IQ, Thermite, Ying, Doc, Rook, and Glaz filled in Caveira and her team on the Hotel Ceuta incident. They formed a large circle around the hotel room - some sat on the couches, on the floor, at three stools near a bar at the kitchen.