Serving the Bad Boy: War Hawks MC

by Carmen Faye

  “Well, the outside, as far as I saw, was an old brick building. The red masonry had started to fade. It was also borderline waterfront property,” I said, thinking as best as I could. “It wasn’t terribly far from Columbus Park because that’s where my old boss took me when he picked me up. The drive didn’t take very long.”

  “And you are sure this is where they are holding Tarek?” the man who stood at the head of the table asked as he lowered himself back to his seat.

  He looked concerned and perplexed. He looked like a student working a math problem that didn’t add up or balance.

  “As I was leaving, I saw him being taken in the same back door that I had been brought in shortly before,” I replied. “He appeared to have been handled worse than I was, and I took a lick or two.”

  “We are sorry to hear that Ms. Beckwith, and we will pay for any injury or damages you and young Mr. Poole have encountered during this ordeal. You will also be compensated for your time lost from work and for your cooperation and silence.”

  “I don’t seek any sort of payment, thank you,” I replied, somewhat curtly. “All I seek is Tarek. It wouldn’t be right for me to leave matters alone until I knew that I had done all I could to keep him safe; he would do the same for me.”

  “You really expect nothing in return for all you have been through and your efforts to save the life of a man you have only known a few days?” another woman at the conference table asked.

  . She looked a little older than the handful of other women present and most of the men in the room.

  “I don’t think anything should be expected for doing what’s right,” I replied confidently. A little more softly, I added, “Besides, the Underground and Ali aren’t the only ones who care about Tarek.”

  The woman looked at me silently as the rest of the room looked at her. She sipped a glass of water that was in front of her, before addressing the matter further.

  “From what Ms. Beckwith has said,” the woman continued. “I believe we can trust her information. Furthermore, she has Catarina and Mr. Poole to vouch for her. I put forth the motion that all available resources and securities be placed at her disposal for twelve hours while we remain on lockdown here. She and Catarina will lead the rescue of Tarek Poole, and security is to capture Perry Hamilton, dead or alive, to be brought before this council.”

  “I can’t lead a rescue,” I interjected.

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence, Mrs. Hartland,” Catarina said, stepping to my side again quickly.

  “Well, is the motion seconded?” asked the man at the head of the conference table, looking around the room.

  The man nearest Mrs. Hartland spoke, “I second the motion. It sounds like the old building that Perry Hamilton was forced to shut down after research and testing violations is still a viable facility. That alone is worth investigating the matter further.”

  “I would assume we are all in agreement,” said the man at the head of the table again, this time to nods all around. “Motion is passed. Ladies, you have our full support.”

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Catarina said, with a small curtsey and nod.

  I imitated the gesture and said, “Yes, thank you all.”

  “Don’t thank us, just bring us back that bastard and get Tarek to safety,” Mrs. Hartland said firmly. “Ali’s sole purpose for being is his brother. His greatest work has been inspired by Tarek.”

  “We won’t let him or any of you down,” Catarina said.

  She turned and made her way out of the room. I followed quickly but had a hard time keeping pace as she made her way through the facility and back to the entrance.

  When she opened the door and stepped into the sunlight, I was nearly blinded by it reflecting off numerous motorcycles, helmets, SUVS, and chrome spoilers, hubcaps, and trimmings.

  “Ladies, your rebel army awaits,” said the larger man who had been monitoring the door each of my visits. “You give the orders; these men are at your command. All the one percent riders and company security for the Underground have come together and are under your direction.”

  ***

  Tarek

  “You say these things like I should be insulted,” I said, standing straight as I could. “I was a boy and acted impulsively. I’ve paid my dues and grown a lot since then.”

  “Oh, really?” Hamilton asked. “Then why didn’t you leave? Somehow, you shirked my guards and instead of escaping, you are here having a losing battle of wits with me. You probably still want to try to kick my ass, maybe even kill me.”

  “I want to do a lot of things to you, and I came back here relishing the thought of going through with most of them,” I admitted, stepping toward him. “I am still debating as we speak, but I know death is too good for you.”

  “Death is too good for me?” He laughed heartily. “Don’t you sound so noble and white knight-like. You aren’t the good guy here. You’re no hero. You’re a man whose got daddy issues and an older brother to give you a fake job, allowance, and buy your way out of trouble. You could have just as easily been one of the drones that worked for me. I would have paid you better.”

  He matched my step smugly and straightened himself to his tallest as well. I easily had nearly half a foot on him, but he was broad and solidly built for a man of his age. The saw still buzzed in my hand, and he had not released what remained of the bag and documents.

  “Who I was yesterday is not who I am today. Who I am today isn’t who I hope to be tomorrow. Even at my worst, I was never someone who would have been able to fall in line with you,” I replied, making a sudden swing of the saw.

  Hamilton assumed I was going to strike him with it and reflexively covered his face and torso with the bag and his genitals with a hand. Instead, I lodged the tool into the fire alarm on the wall near us. As the sprinklers came on doors began to open. He lowered the bag and opened his mouth to curse me, but I closed it just as quickly, putting my fist to his jaw.

  He used the bag to swing back at me, but I threw my shoulder into his strike making him stumble backward.

  “You should know that the game always goes to the team with home field advantage,” he said, running into a nearby supply room that had been revealed after a hidden door appeared in the wall.

  “If you can’t win anywhere you play, you aren’t good enough,” I replied, entering the room behind him.

  There was no one else in the hall, but I could hear the sounds of movement, screams, and gunfire from other parts of the building.

  “Watch where you step,” he yelled as he threw various bits of glassware at my feet – test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, graduated cylinders. “I’d hate for something to accidentally cut you!”

  He laughed hysterically as I jumped back against the wall. He began throwing random needles at me; some empty and others with colorful injections at the ready. He cackled as I backed out the door. He continued to smash random bottles and pour other fluids over the equipment in the room.

  He had snapped. There was no way I could even try to venture back into the room, not even if I wanted to help him.

  Then I started hearing banging noises come from the room. Hamilton was laughing louder, and it sounded like he was smashing all the equipment in the room.

  “Oh, shit,” he said suddenly. “Electrical fire. Fire!”

  Just as the words left his mouth, I heard a large boom. I felt myself slam into the wall and a bursting pulsing sensation ran through my chest. My ears rang and my eyes burned. A second orange explosion went off. This one lacked the barrier of the door and wall fragments that had been blown away in the first blast, making my skin feel singed and sparking small fires where the blast made contact with other flammables.

  “Hamilton!” I called.

  There was no response.

  “Hamilton!” I called again, louder this time.

  I knew there was no way he could have survived, but I had to at least try. I knocked off bits of brick and medical paraphernalia that had s
truck me during the blast. My arms and legs seemed fine, but my chest felt like I had bruised more than a few ribs.

  As I looked past the rubble of the broken wall, I realized that the room was a larger bomb waiting to go off. The vibrations of the blasts had shaken many chemicals from the shelves in the room. More than likely, all of the chemicals were hazardous and flammable.

  I began to run from the area, but my eyes still stung and my legs were somewhat sore. Worst of all, the pain in my ribs and chest was worsening. I couldn’t see well enough with the smoke to be certain I was going in the right direction. The ringing in my ears, fortunately, had died down enough that I believed I could follow the sounds of people exiting the building from the other halls to guide me.

  As I rounded a corner, I heard a boom as if a building was being brought down and felt the ground shake beneath me. I felt heat coming from my back, and everything went black as I was surrounded by smoke.

  I began coughing, choking, gagging on the air, or lack thereof. My chest burned as if I had swallowed the fire that was now consuming the building. I felt as if the fire had reached me and I was burning from the inside out, from my lungs to my skin.

  I tried to remember all the things they teach you about fire safety in grade school, but I felt like I wasn’t thinking fast enough for the moment for once. I tried to breathe slowly and keep my head. That reminded me to get low to the ground where the air would be the freshest. It was also the clearest. After rubbing my eyes a few times, I could sort of make out a path to crawl. My chest pains made every scoot more difficult than the last, but soon enough I reached the open bookshelf. Like the other doors, its trigger released with the fire alarm and sprinkler system.

  The integrity of the building had been compromised from having a blast of such size strike so low. Being in the lobby and waiting area I felt as if I were at the center with everything collapsing around me. The damage so far had rubble scattered, but the building was old and not in the best of care. It continued to crumble around me despite the worst blast being over.

  Or so I thought.

  There must have been similar supply closets on floors throughout the building or some sort of self-destruct-like failsafe because I began to hear the now all too familiar boom of successive explosions. I imagined more chemicals had been shaken from their shelves, spilling and reacting. Perhaps hidden bombs to hide Hamilton’s secrets. Maybe that was his purpose in those last moments.

  There wasn’t time to figure it out right now; the building was collapsing around me. Everyone else was out of the building. I could hear voices outside, but there were other sounds too. It reminded me of the rumble of thunder. With bits of wall and ceiling still falling around me, I couldn’t look well enough to see what things were like outside. I shielded my head and eyes. Then I ran forward into the light.

  Chapter 23

  Annie

  “This is the place,” I said, as the car slowed to a stop. “This is definitely the place. When I was picked up and allowed to leave, we exited through the front. We passed the back alley as we left; that’s where Tarek and I were each brought in.”

  “You heard her,” said Catarina. “It doesn’t look heavily protected. Send in a few men, but have everyone else target the building.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the men who had escorted us.

  They exited the car and began motioning to the fleet of motorcycles and SUVs that were with us. Then with the men who rode with us, the others positioned themselves to storm the building, if need be.

  After a few moments, the men who had ridden with Catarina and I returned with a man in a lab coat.

  “There is no sign of Tarek in the building,” one of them said.

  “So who is this?” Catarina asked.

  “My name is Carl, ma’am. I’m a researcher here,” the man said in a somewhat squeaky voice.

  “And why have you been brought to us, Carl?”

  “Because I have helped the doctor once or twice at a privately funded facility. If I take you there, I want protection from whatever is going on. I always knew this place would end up on somebody’s radar,” he bartered. “Are you guys with the government or something?”

  “Or something,” I replied. “Get in.”

  One of our guards moved to sit in the front with the driver, allowing Carl to sit with Catarina and me. In between giving us directions to what he called L'Hôpital de la Mort, he told us about the procedures he had been invited there to observe or assist. His conscience seemed to have been eating at him for some time because he divulged even the littlest wrongs he had committed in the name of the company.

  “We are going to be on this road for a bit. It’s going to feel like we are in the middle of nowhere. Then we’ll see what looks to be a rundown hospital or mental facility among the trees. It will be a little grown over, and we will probably smell it in the air before we reach it,” he said, shrinking back in his seat a little.

  “What exactly is your role in Hamilton’s company? Why haven’t you come forward before?” I asked, beginning to wonder if this was yet another trap.

  “I’m a lead researcher, but Mr. Hamilton has come to me for assistance when his own work has led him to a road block. There have been projects that I have been working on that would have reasonable success, but questionable side effects. I would want to tweak and do another round of testing, but he would always want to be the first to the market, whatever the costs,” Carl replied, looking out the window. “I got into this business to make a difference, so naturally, I was excited when such a large company offered me a job. I never left because with all the things you hear about the industry, I just assumed this was how it would be no matter what company I was with. There was very little evidence otherwise.”

  “The Underground may have become too lax in their efforts in recent years. More and more men like Perry Hamilton have gained control in the industry,” Catarina said.

  “Well, maybe things are changing,” I replied encouragingly. “Shutting down and exposing a man like Perry Hamilton would be a good first step. It would send a message.”

  “It looks like someone may have done that for us,” Catarina replied, looking past me out the window. “There is smoke. There doesn’t seem to be much out here that would be on fire, and I would bet this isn’t coincidence.”

  “Tarek!” I called as I turned in my seat to see the black clouds rising into the air. “Faster!”

  Our driver radioed someone. Then our entire caravan became a resounding sound of squalling tires and roaring motorcycle engines. We were whipped back into our seats as we suddenly picked up speed along the bumpy, winding road. As we drew closer to the smoke, the air began to smell putrid of a festering sickness and burning death. Catarina and I were gagging.

  “You can try to hold your breath, but the only thing that really works is to take a few shallow breaths and let yourself adjust. The smell isn’t going anywhere,” Carl suggested, breathing through his mouth in short bursts as he spoke.

  Catarina breathed into the shoulder of her blouse. I had grabbed mine front and center to do the same. Out the window, I could see some of the cyclists raising bandanas from around their necks to cover their mouths or lowering the facemasks on their helmets, for the few that wore them.

  Moments later we were all coming to a stop. I looked past Catarina, out the opposite window, and saw a long driveway and walkway on the other side of a tall wrought iron gate that was blocking us. Just as Carl had described. The smell was coming from a building that looked like a hospital run by a madman.

  Parts of the building were on fire, and the façade was rapidly crumbling. Wounded and malnutrioned vitamin d deficient looking people were running in all directions, some rattling the gate that had stopped us.

  “Let us out!” a woman who looked like she had been received antiquated electric shock treatments screamed, attempting to force her way between the bars. “Don’t let them take me back inside, please open the gate!”

  She c
ried louder and continued to squeeze her body between the posts until she became stuck. Some of the men who looked more like corporate security rushed to her. A few more began trying to encourage other patients to step away from the center of the gate where it was chained. They wanted to shoot through, but the people seemed so devoid of trust and human contact that they didn’t understand. They continued to crowd forward.

  A large explosion sent much of one side of the building smattering and collapsing, startling the crowd to surge forward once more, this time breaking the chain holding the gate. They began running wildly in all directions as the security teams and bikers tried to catch them. The medical units that had been among our escorts radioed for more assistance and began doing all they could to stop people and offer treatment, but many of the people seemed too paranoid to trust anyone.

  “Tarek!” I called, hoping he was in a better condition than all that I saw around me. “Tarek, are you here? Can you hear me?”