by Powers, AJ
“So, here’s how this game’s gonna work. I’m going to ask you a series of questions. If you answer a question truthfully, I move on to the next one. If you don’t, there’s a penalty. Answer enough questions right, and you have a shot of walking out of here,” Hagan lied. “All right, I’ll toss ya a couple of easy ones first. What is your name?”
“Jericho… Jericho Stevens.”
Hagan’s eyes remained fixed on Jericho’s, studying for the slightest sign of deception. “What is your age?”.
“Twenty-three.”
“Is the sky blue?”
“Some days.”
“Yes or no,” Hagan barked.
“Yes.”
“Is the grass purple?”
Jericho rolled his eyes. “No.”
Hagan paused for a moment, remembering the terror on Samaya’s face as she and her father fled the hospital. He took a deep breath and focused on the coward in front of him. He placed his hands behind his back again and paced around for a moment before finally speaking. “Two years ago, a group of men from Alexandria attacked a village, killing a lot of people. They abducted a sixteen-year-old girl before holding up at a hospital for the night. Were you among the men who attacked that village?”
The moment finally came for Hagan to confirm whether Aileen’s man was telling the truth, or if he had duped Hagan into carrying out a high-risk mission over a lie.
“No...” Jericho growled. “No way. I-I-I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
The trail was hot again.
Hagan nodded. “Oh. Okay,” he said with a softened toned. He feigned embarrassment, then offered a crooked smile. “Guess I got the wrong guy, then. My mistake,” he said before pulling the silenced Glock 21 from around his back.
“Wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no—what are you—”
Hagan pressed the business end of the suppressor on top of Jericho’s hand and pulled the trigger.
Jericho let out a deafening howl that overpowered the noisy pop of the .45 ACP inside the cramped studio apartment. Hagan shoved a dirty sock into the man’s mouth as he bucked violently in the chair. He nearly tipped over, but Hagan caught him before the momentum could carry him to the floor. The muffled screams continued for several minutes as the wound gushed more blood onto the splintered arm of the chair.
“I thought you caught on to how this game works, Jericho. Bad things happen if you lie to me,” Hagan said as Jericho slowly calmed down, his hand still shaking violently. “So, are you ready to tell me the truth this time? Or do you want to see what other games I have planned?”
Hagan took the sock out of the man’s mouth and he whimpered out, “Yes… I was there when we took that stupid bi—”
The man’s voice cut off as Hagan snapped the muzzle of the pistol to his crotch. “Choose your next words carefully, junior…”
Jericho swallowed hard and nodded, sweat streaming down his head. “Yes. I was there. I never saw the girl, though.”
“How’s that?” Hagan asked.
“Once they grabbed her, half the group was supposed to take her back to the hospital while me and the other guys took some shots at the villagers to try and get them to chase us instead,” Jericho said, trying his best to stifle his sobs from the leaking hole in his hand. “But they didn’t take the bait.”
“No. We didn’t.”
Jericho’s eyes bulged with the realization that the man in front of him was there that night. Taking a few shaky breaths, he calmed himself enough to continue. “By the time me and the other guys got back to the hospital, the girl was gone and most of the men were dead.” Jericho looked at Hagan with disdain. “I’m guessing you were responsible for that.”
“I had a hand in it,” Hagan said as he inspected spatters of blood on the side of the silencer, a reminder of the consequences to come if Jericho lied again. “This wasn’t just a random abduction, was it?”
Jericho shook his head. “No. They wanted that girl specifically. I never even knew her name.”
“Why did they want her?”
“I don’t know.”
Hagan raised the pistol, pressing the muzzle into the man’s knee.
“No! Please! I swear to God, I don’t know!” he cried. “Look at me, man! Look at how I live. I’m stuck in a crappy apartment in one of the worst districts of the country. I have to pay cheap hookers to give me head because I ain’t good-lookin’ or rich enough to get girls on my own. And I have to hustle low-quality drugs just to afford that. So, do you really think I’m the type of guy who gets told important stuff?” he said, swallowing hard as he stifled the whimpers in his voice. “It seemed like only a few of the dudes knew what was going on. The rest of us were hired off the streets. We were there to do what we were told, and nothing more. Most of us didn’t even know each other.”
Hagan moved the gun away from his knee, leaving a ring of blood on his skin from the suppressor. The man was telling the truth, but Hagan wasn’t ready to stop squeezing just yet. “You didn’t hear any rumors or rumblings from the others about what was going on?”
The man shrugged as best he could. “All I know is that whoever was behind it must have been connected. Several of those Civil Guard guys came with us.”
“Civil Republican Guards? Are you sure?”
“It’s not like they were in their uniforms or anything, but yeah, two of them straight up told me so. I figured they were just talking a big game, but when the attack started, I saw how they fought. They were the real deal, man. Some legit gunslingers.”
“Their names,” Hagan demanded.
“Well, there was Johannsen.”
“And where can I find Johannsen?” Hagan asked.
“Back at the hospital, where y’all killed him.”
Hagan raised the gun and brought the bottom of the handle down on Jericho’s face, connecting with his jaw and splitting his lip open. Jericho growled through the pain, trying once again to break free from his bondage, but his efforts fell short. Hagan then pressed the muzzle back onto Jericho’s knee. This time, Jericho’s cries for mercy went unheard.
POP!
“You’re gonna have to do better than that, Jericho,” Hagan yelled loudly over the screams of agony. “Give me someone I can talk to!”
“Why?” he fumed, spitting blood at his captor. “So, you can kill them like you’re gonna kill me?” his bloodshot, glassy eyes locked onto Hagan’s.
“There’s a lot of road between now and the end, my friend. How fast and smooth that trip is rests entirely on your shoulders.”
Blood and saliva spilled over Jericho’s lower lip and trickled down his bare chest as he sobbed uncontrollably. Jericho Stevens was by no means at the top of the food chain, but in his little bubble, he held some level of respect, even if it was just his rank within the drug empire. He was not used to being in such a vulnerable position, and now that he was on the receiving end of the violence, he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and cry for his mother.
“Give me a name!” Hagan yelled.
Jericho’s head sunk lower. He sighed heavily as he relented. “Farhad Khavari. He was… He was the guy who brought me on. He used to work for the cartels before he started working for the regime.”
“The Cartels? Well, this just got a lot more complicated,” Solomon chimed in over the radio, listening to every word of the interrogation.
“Where can I find him?” Hagan asked.
Jericho coughed, spraying blood all over Hagan’s shirt. “He used to live somewhere around here back before we went after the girl. But I hear he lives up in Parkland Heights, now.”
Hagan was familiar with the area. An upscale neighborhood for those doing well within the kingdom, mostly made of scientists, engineers and medical professionals, as well as the occasional officer within the Civil Republican Guard. People that weren’t exactly considered elites, but they were as close as one could get without being a high-ranking member of the regime. It wasn’t an ideal location to amb
ush a target, but Hagan had dealt with worse in the past.
Khavari being a member of the Cartels did complicate matters, though. La Raza de los Reyes didn’t just let people walk away. There had to be a reason they let him retire while he still had a pulse. So, either Khavari was still working with them unknown to the regime, or he was hiding from them, which few did successfully.
“Got a few bodies heading your way, Matt. Might wanna wrap things up,” Solomon said.
Hagan turned his attention to Jericho. The hue of his skin was fading and his eyelids were getting droopy.
“I swear, man. That’s all I know,” Jericho said.
The sound of the door buzzer filled the room, drawing Hagan’s attention to the security monitor. There were three men standing on the building’s stoop, hammering on the button incessantly. Hagan turned back to Jericho, who had a flash of new life in his eyes. He drew a deep breath and opened his mouth, but before he could scream for help, Hagan dumped a pair of 230-grain slugs into his chest. His would-be cries for help escaped as a quiet, gurgling exhale.
It was his last.
Chapter 7
Andrew Mason emptied the coffee pot into his mug and headed back over to the small, round dinner table on the far end of the kitchen. He glanced at the clock display on his tablet computer and sighed. It was 0300, and there were more than enough reports to review before he needed to grab a lukewarm shower and head to the office to do the same thing with a different view. He ran his fingers through his dark, wavy hair and stared blankly at the QLED screen. He had enough going on in life to keep two men busy and being told to drop it all so he could focus on a taskforce devoted entirely to bringing down a single terrorist certainly muddied up his already complex life. But Mason couldn’t exactly tell the Chief Defense Secretary to go pound sand. Nor, at the end of the day, did he want to. Mason’s devotion to the cause was finally starting to pay off. He was the youngest person to ever reach Lieutenant among the hoplites—Alexandria’s state security force. He scored in the top three of his class on the detective’s exam last year when he was required to take different specialized courses. He was then dropped into a team of nearly 200 men and women whose sole focus was to find and eliminate threats against the state. Mason’s razor-sharp intuition and ability to think the way the enemy did quickly helped him promote to one of the lead investigators and the element lead of one of the takedown squads. Mason’s record was impeccable, and his desire to climb the ranks motivated him to be the best. He set his sights on the Civil Republican Guard, someday, and he knew being a team player—especially with Secretary Gray—would be a key step in achieving that goal. Nevertheless, the sudden change of course thrusted upon his shoulders yesterday was both a headache for him and his family.
“You ever going to come to bed?” Kayla asked as she stepped out of the bedroom, knotting the belt of her robe across her stomach.
Her voice startled Mason, and he took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He was jumpy whenever he was overtired. Overworked. Stressed. But the sight of his loving wife quickly melted away his anxieties, and he let himself feel human again. “Did I wake you?” he asked with a frown that overpowered the smile of seeing Kayla for the first time since he’d left for work yesterday morning.
“No. Can’t sleep,” she said as she crossed the kitchen and sat down at the table next to her husband. She pulled her golden, curly locks back into a ponytail and reached to steal a sip of coffee before abandoning the idea. She didn’t need that at this hour. “I didn’t want my insomnia to wake Robyn, so I thought I’d make some tea and read on the couch for a while.”
“I wouldn’t mind the company,” Mason replied with a smile.
Being part of the hoplites came with perks that the average citizen of Alexandria was never guaranteed, such as private housing. And though the dorm was small, just 600 square feet, Mason’s wife and daughter didn’t have to share their privacy with another family. And the more Mason showed his loyalty to the regime, the more their life continued to improve. Kayla’s and his first dormitory was merely a bedroom and small sitting space—both kitchen and bathroom being communal. After his promotion last year, however, they no longer had to leave their room to take a shower or prepare a meal. However, due to the limited options of units, they lived in a one-bedroom, forcing Mason and his wife to share it with their daughter, Robyn.
After Kayla, Robyn was Mason’s everything. She was the result of a miracle pregnancy, and then she was born fourteen weeks premature. The little fighter powered through the odds and became the beautiful, strong-willed two-year-old that she was today. He loved his family dearly. Even more than the cause. It was his wife that truly gave him motivation to succeed with his efforts. It was his daughter that made him fight so hard to create a better future for them.
Kayla ran a pot of water through the coffee machine and poured the heated contents into a mug. Tendrils of steam danced from the cup as she repeatedly dunked a bag of chamomile tea inside. The water was hot. Not enough to scold, of course, but it was better than the tepid coffee machine at their last place. She breathed in the sweet aromas before enjoying a sip. She released a satisfied sigh, taking a moment to revel in one of her favorite luxuries before heading over to the bookshelf. Carefully shifting the state-approved literature out of the way, Kayla reached for an old paperback pressed up flat against the back of the bookshelf. It was a pre-war trashy romance novel that could earn Mason a writeup should it be discovered by an inspection team. He understood the risks, but it never stopped him from taking the chance. Mason was always careful to play by the rules, but from time to time he used his position to bend them a little bit. The smuggled goods he brought back to his home were never egregious like unlicensed firearms or Americana. It was usually just books to make his wife’s lonely evenings at home a little more bearable, or a bottle of unmarked wine—again, to make the nights slightly shorter for Kayla. Mason had yet to meet an officer who didn’t stash contraband of his own inside his apartment, making the lesser offenses rarely enforced among officers. In most cases, the discovering agent would, at worst, confiscate the item and never mention it again. Probably to keep for himself.
Mason looked over his tablet and stared at his wife as she lay down on the hard sofa, trying to find a way to get comfortable as she thumbed through the pages to pick up where she’d left off. Someday, you’ll have everything you ever wanted, Mason thought. He longed for his wife to have the life he could only dream about at this point. But that would take time—a long time—to achieve. But it was his desire to give Kayla everything that motivated him to get out of bed each morning.
A tri-tone alarm from his tablet pulled Mason back from the life he loved and to the life he was forced to live. The message was from Cody Winters, his element sergeant who was also brought onto the taskforce.
Mason clicked on the message and several photographs of a bloody crime scene immediately filled the screen. Mason could tell a low-level drug dealer from the slums had been executed before he even reached the attached written report. As he scanned the briefing provided by one of his peers, his phone began shaking across the table.
“This is Mason,” he answered the call, noticing the pleading look from Kayla to keep his voice down. For her sake as well as the toddler’s in the next room.
“Hey Andrew, it’s Cody. Did you get the files I sent over?”
Mason glanced at the gruesome details again before answering, “Yeah, just got them. Why are our guys even bothering to process a crime scene in the slums? And more importantly, why should any of us care about some drug dealer getting whacked in a turf war?”
“Because it doesn’t sound like this was a rival gang taking out the competition.”
“Okay?” Mason said, the pitch and tone of his voice sounding intrigued.
“A few of the unfortunate bastard’s friends were waiting for him to buzz them up when they said a man calmly walked out the front door. He even held the door open for them to walk inside, almost as i
f he wanted them to find the bodies.”
“Bodies?”
“The victim’s muscle outside the unit was popped as well.”
“All right,” Mason said, scratching at the day-old scruff on his neck. “Still waiting for that missing puzzle piece you’re obviously withholding from me. Why does this involve us, given our current task?”
“The suspect wore a hat and kept it pulled down over his eyes as he let the witnesses inside, but one of them managed to get a good enough look at the guy to give our AI a chance to generate a sketch.”
The alarm on Mason’s tablet sounded again, and he tapped on the notification badge, popping up the fairly realistic rendering the artificially intelligent artist was able to produce based on the description provided by the witnesses. The jaw line, the lips, the nose… Mason knew where this was going.
“Why would they have reported this to the hoplites? We don’t exactly get a lot of tips coming from gangbangers in the slums.”
“The reward. Once they found their buddy strapped to a chair, one of the guys put two and two together and tracked down a couple of hoplites doing a cursory patrol.”
Mason forgot that Gray had issued a reward for Typhon’s capture. Any information leading to his arrest would result in a 50,000-dollar reward. In the slums, that would feed a large family for more than two years.
“Probably made it up based on the photos we released with the reward. You know, fifty G’s will buy a lot of food. Or more likely, a lot of drugs. These idiots forget that their information has to lead to an arrest to get the money.”
“That’s what I figured, too, but then when I was checking the scan data from that morning and the night before, I found this…”
Mason’s computer dinged again. A moment later, a photo of a shadowy face filled the screen. He scrutinized the features closely, only the lower half unobscured by the shadows.