by Ari McKay
The man chuckled. “Ah, but it is in your best interest to do so, fully and completely. We don’t have any real desire to kill you, but we also cannot sell you. You’re far too dangerous, and we know your associates are coming after you even as we speak. But we are also patient, and have ways to… compel you. Unpleasant ways. Your friends will not find you before we could do something very, very bad, so your cooperation is only to your benefit. Besides, all we desire is a name. One little name, and we will leave you here and let your associates know where to find you. Alive, even.”
“The carrot and the stick,” Finn said, nodding as if in approval. “A classic opening gambit. But hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“We are reasonable men,” the interrogator replied, and Finn heard him as he shifted closer. From the height of his voice, he was sitting across from Finn, and he leaned closer. “Since you fully appreciate the stakes, let’s get to the question. A man from your organization recently caused a great deal of trouble for my employers. He would have recently returned from Pakistan, and he speaks the language. Tall, dark haired, bearded, and very muscular. That is all we know about him, but I suspect you can tell me at once who this man is.”
Fuck.
Joe. They wanted Joe.
Finn would go through the hell of being tortured for anyone at Hercules Security. They were his family, and he’d do just about anything to protect them. But he’d die before he ever gave up Joe.
“You think tall, dark, and muscular narrows it down any?” Finn let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Have you seen the guys who work at my organization?”
The man sighed. “Which is precisely why we had to risk taking you. You understand the difficulty of our position, I’m sure. We could risk kidnapping one of you and get the name, or we could blow up the entire Hercules Security facility and simply hope we got the right man. This is a… personal issue for my employer, however. He doesn’t want to kill many of you and chance the guilty party getting away. He wants this one man in particular. I’m certain you know who it is, since there can’t be many of you who just returned from my country. But if you prefer, we will blow up your company and kill a number of your companions. We would still have you, of course, and maybe afterward you could verify that we got the right man. It is your decision.”
“Yeah, because blowing up a building in the heart of a major metropolitan area won’t bring any unwanted attention down on your organization,” Finn said, almost insulted by the empty threat. The least they could do was make their threats plausible. “Possibly on an international level. But sure, indulge me. Are you going to use internal or external methods? The building’s pretty big, so one bazooka isn’t going to cut it if you’re going the external route. You’d need some heavy firepower from multiple sources if you want to take down the whole building. Planting explosives inside the building would be even trickier. I mean, security is in the name.”
This time the man laughed. “You Americans. So smug. So righteous. And you never learn. Bazooka, you say? How quaint an idea! But no….” The man leaned in again, and this time his voice was filled with soft menace. “We have a small, private jet at the Raleigh-Durham airport. The pilot will take off with the jet loaded with fuel, and other, shall we say, hazardous cargo. The pilot will radio that he has mechanical troubles and bail out of the plane, which will just happen to crash into your headquarters. Crude, perhaps, but effective—and it will appear to be a tragic accident.”
“Sure, sure, because our West Coast branch would never think to use all of their resources to investigate and make sure it really was just an accident. Uh-huh.” Finn nodded, forcing himself to sound casual. He was probably pushing the limits of this guy’s tolerance, and once that happened, other elements would be introduced into their little chat. Finn knew he couldn’t delay being tortured forever, but with every minute that passed, the team was that much closer to getting him out. “I’m sorry, I just can’t see any way this isn’t going to end badly for you, either in the long or short term.”
“Ah, I see the problem. You are laboring under the mistaken assumption that we care what your people, your company, or even your government could do to us. We do not. Our business is risky, we lose groups all the time. There are always new ones to take their place. It is simply the way things work in our world. If your coworker had simply destroyed a cell of our organization, we would not care. The weak should be culled from the herd. But this time, your people made a critical error. Your coworker killed my employer’s son—his only son, just eighteen years old. This has nothing to do with logic, I’m afraid. Payback is irrelevant. My employer desires this man, and he will stop at nothing to get him. He has left the issue of collateral damage at my discretion, however, and I am a man who abhors waste. So the price of this information, you see, is in your hands. While you still have hands, at least.”
Joe was in deep shit. If it was personal, this guy’s claim about going after Joe carried a lot more weight, which gave Finn even more incentive to resist whatever they subjected him to. He’d rather die himself than turn Joe over to some sadistic asshole out for revenge.
“I’m sorry about your employer’s son, but I can’t help you, buddy,” Finn said, shrugging as much as his bonds would allow. “You can threaten to blow up buildings and remove body parts all you want, but that’s not going to dig up information I don’t have. Operational security is a thing in our business. The only missions I know about are my own, and I wasn’t in Pakistan.”
The man gave another sigh. “I would say your loyalty is admirable, but really it is nothing but foolishness. You may practice ‘operational security’, but I know well that men talk. They brag. And I have no doubt you know exactly of whom I am speaking. I will ask you nicely just one more time. The name.”
Shit. This was it. The talking was over, and the hurting would begin. But whatever pain Finn endured would be nothing compared to what they inflicted on Joe if they got their hands on him.
“I don’t know.” Those three words were the only thing Finn intended to say from here on out.
“Such an unfortunate decision, but if that is the one you’ve chosen to make, so be it.” There were a few moments of quiet, though Finn heard slight movements. Then the door to the room opened. “Our guest has refused our hospitality. Therefore, it is time to begin. I would tell you this won’t hurt, but I would be lying. Such a pity, Mr. Finnegan. I just hope that your coworker is worth the pain.”
He is. Finn closed his eyes and focused inward as he braced himself for whatever lay ahead.
14
Drew stood out of the way and watched silently while Joe stockpiled an increasingly larger selection of weaponry and equipment to take on their extraction mission. He thought the C-4 and antiaircraft missile were verging on overkill, but he didn’t say anything. Joe seemed to need them along with everything else, maybe to reassure himself that he had every tool he could possibly need to free Finn from his captors.
On one level, Drew understood. He was scared shitless about what Finn was going through at this very moment, about the condition they’d find him in, about whether they’d find him before it was too late, about whether they’d be able to find him at all.
On another level, however, the word “obsessive” was starting to pop up in Drew’s mind more often, and he didn’t think concern about Finn was the only factor behind Joe’s behavior. But at least Joe’s fury was cold, focused, and calculated, so Drew wasn’t worried about him falling apart during the mission. After the mission ended… well, that was a different story. Maybe he didn’t know Joe well enough to make such assessments, but he’d seen similar behavior in men under his command at Lawson & Greer, and he thought he knew the signs of someone on the verge of cracking well enough.
If Joe trusted him—if Joe even liked him a little—Drew might have said something, might have suggested getting some professional help for whatever was eating him alive, but Joe neither trusted nor liked him. Drew figured Joe would interp
ret anything he said along those lines as an attack or an attempt at sabotaging him.
Drew had no desire to undermine Joe on a professional or personal level. On the contrary, he wished he knew how to bridge the gulf yawning between them, and not just for Finn’s sake. Had they met under different circumstances, he thought they could have been friends, maybe more.
“Just about done?” he asked, watching as Joe stacked several boxes of ammo on the plain metal table set up in the middle of the Hercules Security weapons vault, which would have put any bank vault to shame in terms of both size and security.
Joe paused, looking over his stockpile with a critical eye. “Almost,” he said and then reached for a tranquilizer gun and a clip of darts. “That should do it. Now we just have to head south and hope Pixel picks up something that will give us a location.”
It had become readily apparent that Finn’s captors must have figured he was tagged with GPS locators, since they hadn’t had so much as a blip out of them. Either they were being jammed, or they had been removed and destroyed. Either way, it was bad news when it came to getting a fix on Finn.
“I’m sure he will,” Drew said, to reassure himself as much as Joe. Pixel seemed like the kind of brilliant tech expert Drew had seen in movies. In fact, he’d heard Pixel was even scouting with drones, and he hoped the tech had as much success in overcoming the obstacles as his fictional counterparts did. Unfortunately, real life was usually more difficult. “Want some help loading this stuff up?”
Joe glanced over at him, his expression unreadable—at least it was to Drew. Joe had a hell of a poker face. “All right. I also recommend you get some body armor. There are plate carriers and such in the locker over there, if you haven’t had a custom set made yet.”
“I’ve got my set from Lawson & Greer. I’ll pick it up before we leave.”
Needing body armor was a clue that Joe wasn’t ruling out the possibility of a fire fight. He might be hoping for one, given his state of mind.
“All right.” Joe picked up several of the gun cases. “I had Lexy sign out an executive protection SUV for me. It’s got armor, run flat tires, and a reinforced front. We can plow through a house if necessary.”
“Good to know.” Drew picked up as much of the equipment as he could carry and followed Joe out. “I take it this is a no-holds-barred mission?”
Joe smiled grimly. “I want at least one of them alive, if we can arrange it. Personally, I have no stomach for torture, but D-Day….”
Drew had worked with the infamous merc on enough missions that Joe didn’t need to elaborate. D-Day was a tough, ruthless son-of-a-bitch whose personal line in the sand was carved out several feet away from most people’s. If Joe intended to turn over their captive to Daryl for interrogation, Drew almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.
Almost.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Drew said. “Anything else I should know before going in?”
Joe stopped at the entrance to the company’s garage and turned to look at Drew. “Finn comes out alive. That’s all that matters. Anyone and anything that gets in my way is history. And if I have to play Horatius at the bridge for you to get Finn out, I’ll do it.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Drew said, regarding Joe somberly. This wasn’t the first time Joe had mentioned being willing to die for Finn, and while he admired the sentiment and the intensity of emotion behind it, he also had to wonder if Joe was developing a death wish. “I plan to do my best to make sure we all get out alive.”
Joe simply shrugged and hit the powered opener for the door. He headed toward one side of the huge garage, which was filled with vans, limousines, sedans, motorcycles, and even a couple of boats on trailers. They passed most of the smaller vehicles. Joe stopped beside a massive, old-school Hummer that could probably have taken on a freight train and held its own. “Here’s our ride. I would have gotten us a Bradley, but apparently D-Day took both of them to South America.”
Drew shook his head, amused despite the seriousness of the situation. Of course Daryl would take military-grade fighting vehicles that were maybe one step below a tank to protect his husband.
“Sometimes I’m not sure if ‘go big or go home’ was inspired by D-Day or if he heard it once and adopted it as his life’s motto.”
“It could go either way,” Joe acknowledged, something that wasn’t quite a smile curving his lips. It was barely there, but it was still the least grim he’d looked since the minute Finn was taken. Probably having a plan of action and getting into a mission mindset was helping to settle him somewhat, which was good. True professionals in any area functioned better when they had a task and purpose. It was true even if their purpose was killing.
They loaded their cargo into the Hummer, but before they headed back inside for more, Drew stopped Joe with a hand on his shoulder.
“Look, Morrissey… Joe,” he said, watching Joe’s face intently. “I get you have no reason to trust me, but I’m telling you anyway. I’ve got your back. I’m on team Burn It To The Ground And Salt The Earth when it comes to getting Finn back, so however you want to do this, I’m with you. No questions asked.”
Joe went very, very still beneath Drew’s hand, but Drew could feel the tension in Joe’s muscles, the instinctive coiling as though Joe were expecting an attack and was prepared to strike back without thought. There was a flash of something on Joe’s face, there and gone so quickly Drew couldn’t be sure what he was seeing, before Joe’s expression settled once again into the nonexpression Drew usually got. “For Finn’s sake, I’ll accept that. Now let’s finish loading and get on the road.”
“You got it.” Drew nodded as he withdrew his hand, satisfied with the response.
This was as close to a truce as he was going to get with Joe. For now, it was enough.
15
Christ, Finn… where are you?
The words repeated over and over in Joe’s head as he steered the big SUV southward along Wake County back roads. They were on the way to check out the fifth potential site Pixel had found in the last two hours, but Joe was starting to wonder if his instincts had been wrong about where the kidnappers would have taken Finn. They’d gambled everything on this one shot, yet even with Pixel and Thunder flying a half dozen drones in aircover looking for potential places, even with Tailor scanning the police bands listening for something to indicate suspicious activity, nothing had panned out. It was as though the kidnappers had actually managed to disappear into thin air, leaving no clues as to where they’d gone or what they’d done with Finn.
The repetition was annoying, but at least it was better than the litany that had been playing at the beginning of their hunt. That one had been, My fault, my fucking fault, and it had been a lot more difficult to bear. Yet as time passed and the other’s hopes for finding Finn started to fade, Joe refused to give up. He would keep at it until they found Finn, no matter what. Finn had to be alive—the alternative was simply unacceptable.
“Hey, Morrissey… there’s a report that just came in of suspicious activity at a house on Lake Wheeler off View Water Drive in an area called Lakewood Farms. A neighbor was out in their boat and noticed a man in the woods behind a house that was closed up for the season.”
Joe’s heart leapt, and he clenched his fists on the steering wheel. “Got it, Tailor. Pixel?”
“On it,” Chris replied, his voice tense with concentration. “I have one drone ten minutes out of that area. I’ll keep it over the lake, so it doesn’t look like I’m looking.”
“Good.” Joe glanced over at Drew. “Can you contact the police for Wake County? Give them your Hercules Security ID number. Let them know we are investigating.”
“On it.” Drew grabbed the cell phone assigned to their vehicle and made the call.
While Drew focused on the authorities, Joe punched up the address on the GPS as Tailor read it out. They were almost fifteen minutes away from the spot in question, which Joe was determined to get down to ten. He wanted t
o be there when the drone made its pass; if it was the kidnappers and they spotted the drone, Joe didn’t want them to have any kind of a head start.
Fortunately the summer season for tourists had ended and those who came for the fall leaves hadn’t yet started, so traffic was light. This section of Wake County had some very affluent homes, since it was far enough from Raleigh to avoid city taxes while close enough for commuting into the capitol.
Drew returned the phone to its place and glanced over at Joe. “What’s the plan when we get there?”
Joe considered. Something about this appeared far more promising that their other leads. “We can give Pixel’s drone a few minutes to scan. He’ll get photos, and maybe he can sync one up with one of the suspects from the surveillance video from the conference. If he does, we go in hot. If he doesn’t… we go in, but with at least one set of nonlethal loads. There’s probable cause for a crime, at least trespassing, but I don’t want to kill anyone who isn’t one of our targets, if it can be helped.”
“Solid,” Drew said with a brief nod, and he sat up straighter as he peered out the window as if premission adrenaline was making him restless.
“Our best bet for a live capture might be a guard, if that’s who was spotted on the outside,” Joe said, hoping to distract Drew from any thoughts that could impact the mission. “How are your take-down skills? Had much experience with silent infiltration?”
“It’s not my strong suit,” Drew said. “I can try, but you don’t want me taking the lead.”
“Okay.” Joe considered for a moment. “Let’s plan on this. I’ll locate and take out the first guard I see. You back me up. Then we’ll head for the house. Let’s go for silenced loads. If someone with Finn hears shots, they might have orders to kill him.”
“Good thought.” Drew breathed in deep and released the breath slowly as if to ground himself. “We got this.”
“Right.” Joe nodded, more to himself than Drew. “There’s a public boat dock, it looks like, about half a mile away. Let’s park there, just in case they have lookouts up at the road. There’s no way to mistake this thing for anything other than bad news coming to call.”