Maru gauged the distance between them. His left hand slipped into a pocket and grabbed the steel ball crimped around the bottom of the garrote. His right hand hung loose. He took a step forward and positioned himself within an arms’ length. With his free hand, he pointed across the street.
“You see that rooftop over there?”
Both men turned. “What about it?” Locke asked.
Horton was standing on Maru’s right side. Locke was leaning away, eyes narrowed against the gloom.
“It’s the last thing you’ll ever see.”
Horton’s head snapped around just in time for Maru’s massive fist to connect with a sickening crunch. The man’s feet left the ground before he crashed into the ankle-deep snow. Locke, being the quicker of the two, was reaching for a weapon.
He never made it.
The garrote was already out, Maru’s left hand shaking it loose. His right hand grabbed the loop and slung it over Locke’s head while his left arm tugged viciously. Locke was pulled off his feet, hands instinctively reaching for the string cutting off his airway. Maru caught him, spun him around, and forced him face-down onto the ground. He kept a tight grip on the garrote with one hand, pushed Locke’s head down with the other, and crushed the center of his back with a knee. In ten seconds, Locke ceased struggling. Maru counted another two full minutes in his head. He had strangled a lot of people in his life, and he knew from experience it was not a quick process. In the movies, people caught in chokeholds died in seconds. But in real life, the brain could survive up to five minutes without oxygen. Two, however, was generally enough to get the job done.
Once he was sure Locke was not getting back up, he took off one glove and undid the metal clasp on the garrote. After loosening it, he rewound it carefully and returned it to his pocket. As he did so, he heard a soft groan behind him. Maru glanced down both sides of the alley and saw no one. Locke was lying still, not breathing. Just to be sure, Maru put a knee on the back of his neck, wrapped his hands around Locke’s forehead, and with a single, powerful motion, snapped his neck. Then he stood up and walked over to Horton.
“Sorry it had to be this way,” Maru said as he stood over the marauder. “We’ve never been mates, exactly, but you’re not the worst of them.”
Then he raised a booted foot, aimed his heel at Horton’s throat, and stomped.
Back out on the street, he looked in the direction of the warehouse. He could leave now, he knew. It would be an hour or more before the men began to question his absence, and longer than that before they called it in. Plenty of time to raid a cache of supplies and make his way out of the city. But something made him hesitate.
The monsters were still there. If the order came down, and Maru was not there to intercept it, the creatures would be released. To his surprise, he found he did not want that to happen. He wanted to destroy the damn things and kill anyone who tried to stop him. But that was not possible. He was good, but not good enough to overcome all the men at the warehouse.
Unless…
A plan began to form. Maru thought it over, nodded to himself, and headed back the way he had come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Eric
BSC Headquarters
I paid a visit to Allison and the little guy.
She was worried and wanted me to leave off and let Gabe handle things. I told her we had talked about this already, I was tired of explaining myself, and she could either respect my decision or not. She told me it was not that fucking simple. I said good talk, Allison, and left.
Now, standing in the freezing gloom on an outdoor patio on the third floor, I felt shitty about the whole thing. As usual, I had let my temper get the best of me and said something I did not mean. Pretty soon, I was going to pay the price for it.
Story of my life.
“Something bothering you?” Great Hawk asked.
I was standing at the edge of the railing, peering toward the lights of the Garden District. “Yes.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Great Hawk nodded. “Sure. Why should today be any different?”
I turned to say something sharp in reply, but he was already walking away.
Congratulations, smart guy. Alienating friends and family alike. Doing great.
At the end of the patio, the glass doors opened, and Caleb Hicks walked through. I stepped away from the railing and walked toward him. I was expecting Caleb to be alone, as were the others, so when four more people walked through the door, there was a general shared feeling of surprise and moderate alarm. As if by instinct, the six of us not affiliated with Homeland Security closed ranks and stood facing Hicks and his quartet of newcomers. Gabe, as was his habit, was front and center.
“This your team?” he asked.
Hicks turned and held a hand toward the one on my far left. She was a tall woman with close cropped hair and a tattoo of a skull with wings on the side of her head. “This is Hahn. That’s Chopra, Downs, and Muir.”
I studied each face in turn. Chopra was young, maybe late twenties, and I was guessing of Indian heritage. Downs was a big ugly white guy with a shaved head. When I got to Muir, I stared for a moment. He looked familiar. Remarkably familiar. His hair was long and tied back, face dominated by a trimmed beard, and there was a nasty scar running from just above his eyebrow all the way to his hairline. My mind traveled backwards for a few seconds, and then I had it. I snapped my fingers and pointed.
“I know you,” I said.
Muir looked at me and sighed. It was a very specific kind of sigh. Like saying, here we go again.
“You’re Alexander Muir.”
Cole looked at me in confusion. “You two know each other?”
“No. Not personally. Come on, weren’t any of you guys fight fans before the Outbreak?”
“I was,” Holland said, and studied Muir. “I’ll be damned, it is you. Small fuckin’ world.”
“Yes, I’m Alexander Muir. Former professional fighter, number one contender in the middleweight division, used to be sort of famous. Now I’m just a guy, same as everybody else. Can we move past it? Does anybody need to gush about how they used to be a big fan back in the day?”
I was about to do exactly that but checked myself. If Muir was like everyone else, he probably did not like to talk about life before the Outbreak. Not to mention the fact he was now obviously working with Homeland and had come here to discuss a dangerous mission of national importance. I cleared my throat and stuck my hands in my coat pockets.
“Sorry. I’m just surprised to see you after all these years. Didn’t mean any offense.”
“Same here,” Holland said, looking contrite for once in his life.
The hardness left Muir’s eyes. “Sure. No offense taken.”
Hicks let the silence hang a few seconds before he spoke. “Gabe, you want to go over the plan again? I think it’s best if my people hear it from you.”
“Sounds good,” Gabe said. “But let’s go find a conference room first. It’s freezing out here.”
Caleb looked relieved. “Fine by me.”
We all followed Hicks and company inside. Gabe pointed to the right down the hallway, stopped at a door, unlocked it, and held it open while everyone went inside. When the door shut, I took off my jacket and hung it from a hook on the wall. The warm, central heated air was delicious after the biting cold and merciless wind on the patio. Gabe went to a table in the corner and put some coffee on before sitting down. While everyone got settled, the aroma from the coffee machine began to permeate the room. For most of us, it was no big deal. That was Gabe for you, always generous. But Hicks’s four guests sat up straight and took notice.
“Is that real coffee?” Hahn said. She had the shining eyes and strained expression of a junkie itching for a relapse.
“It is.”
Chopra spoke for the first time. The accent was American, not Indian. “Where on earth did you get it?”
“Merchant fre
ighter out of California picked it up in Colombia.”
“Colombia? There are survivors there?”
“Evidently.”
Chopra got a strange look on his face and went silent. I was curious what he was thinking but did not dare ask. I did not know him well enough, and he probably would not have answered anyway.
“I’ll take a cup of that before we get started,” Hicks said.
“Probably best if we all do,” Gabe replied, rubbing at his face. His eyes were red around the edges. “This shit ain’t as easy as it used to be.”
“Amen,” I said.
Gabe passed around the coffee pot. Everyone but Muir poured themselves a cup. We sat and drank and felt the caffeine doing its good work. No one spoke, but it was a comfortable kind of silence, like everyone understood there was an important task at hand, and we all needed to clear our heads and rest a little before getting into it. Or maybe I was projecting. Either way, it was nice to just sit and drink coffee and not have to talk to anyone for a little while. But, as all good things do, it soon came to an end.
“How much have you briefed them on?” Gabe asked, setting his cup aside.
“Just the outline. You guys are taking the warehouse, we’re taking the tavern. We’ll have sat-phones for communication. You’ll have a secure line to Stan Kaminsky to pass along any intel on where the Grays are. Did I miss anything?”
“That’s the bones of it, but I want to emphasize two more things. One, we cannot get caught. Not by SRT, not by the cops, not by anyone. This mission is strictly off the books. Which is to say, illegal. Any kind of body count is going to attract the attention of CSPD. We can’t have that. Second, if you get a chance to capture one of these SRT assholes, do it, but do it quietly. Again, we can’t have any attention. Once we know where the grays are, we pass the intel along to the FBI and let them do their thing. This is not a search and destroy mission.”
“Understood,” Hicks said, nodding. “Any questions about that?”
The people on his team shook their heads and said nothing.
“Good,” Gabe said, and stood up. As before, he walked over to the chalkboard, grabbed a little white stick, and began drawing. “Here’s how we’re going to play it…”
*****
“What do you think of Hick’s team?”
I shrugged as I walked out of the conference room and started down the hallway. “Hard to say. Downs and Hahn are clearly ex-military. Chopra has a tech geek kind of vibe to him, but he looks capable enough. As for Muir…I don’t know. What the hell is a cage fighter doing working for Homeland Security?”
Gabe shook his head. “I have no idea. Maybe he decided to change careers.”
“Obviously.”
“I’d be interested to hear his story.”
“Me too.”
A few seconds passed before Gabe spoke again.
“Did you get a chance to talk to Allison?”
“I did.”
“How’d it go?”
“Not well.”
We walked a few more steps down the hallway. “She wants you out of the game.”
“Yep.”
“But that’s not what you want.”
“Nope.”
He stopped. I took a couple more steps before turning to him. “What?”
“Why not? I mean it. You have a kid at home and another one on the way. You’re stupid rich. You have a small army of private security working for you. Why are you still going out in the field?”
“Why do you, Gabe? You have a wife and kid too.”
“I’m a Blackthorn. It’s my job, and my wife understands that. As for my kid, she’s not going to be a kid much longer. She’s only living with me because she wants to. She was doing fine before we met, and she’ll be fine when she decides to leave. Your kids, on the other hand, are going to need you for a long time to come. They deserve to have their dad around.”
I looked at the floor and said nothing. Gabe stepped closer and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Listen, Eric. Take it from someone who grew up without his father. You don’t want that for your kids.”
“Duly noted.” I turned and continued down the hall. Gabe sighed irritably and followed.
“When do we move out?” I asked.
“I need to call Stan and get things rolling on his end, then I’m going to grab a few hours’ sleep. We’ll reconvene at 0200.”
“Works for me. I’m headed back to the hotel. I’ll be back in time for the briefing.”
“You should go see Allison. Try to smooth things over.”
“Why, so she can yell at me again? No thanks. I need to keep my head clear.”
We reached the end of the hallway and I started down the stairs.
“Want me to check on her?”
I stopped but did not turn around. “Only if you tell me what she says.”
“No promises.”
I stared straight ahead a few seconds. There was a heavy feeling in my chest and a light constriction in my throat. I used to feel the same way as a kid when I would get so frustrated about something I wanted to cry. Back in those days, when my temper reared up and made me do things I regretted later, I used to go and talk to my mother. She always knew what to say to calm me down, to vent the tension out of my spinning brain and bring me back to the calm place at the center of my mind. But my mother had been dead a long time now, and as the years passed, I found myself getting worse and worse at taking advice. It was not a quality about myself I admired.
“Fair enough. Give little Gabe a hug for me.”
“Will do.”
The air outside the compound was cold. The night was dense and close and oppressive and the moon was not yet visible overhead. I flagged a carriage, paid for a ride to the Western Estates, and once inside the room, took off my boots and laid down on the bed.
The streetlights outside the window reflected a warm amber radiance off the clean white snow that had fallen earlier in the day. I stared at it and thought about my life, about all the tragedy and triumph and hard work that had all led me to where I was today. I thought about the Free Legion, and the weeks spent in darkness starving and digging and listening to the pained moans of the other slaves as they slowly died of exhaustion and malnutrition. I thought about the man I killed with my bare hands to escape that subterranean hell, and the horror I had felt watching the pool of blood expand under his head. I thought about the second time I had gotten shot, and the weeks of itching, throbbing, maddening pain that had ensued, and how Allison had comforted me by talking to me and playing little games with me and doing everything she could to keep my mind off the pain. The clinic where she worked had painkillers, but they only prescribed them when absolutely necessary. My wound had been painful, but not worthy of the blessing of opiates, so Allison had taken on the role of caregiver and comforter and distractor in chief. It had been annoying at first, but I soon found myself dreading the hours when she would not be there, when I would be alone with the burning pain in my leg and the frustration of not being able to move around much.
I learned a valuable lesson then. I learned that in the darkest times, when I am at my lowest, the greatest comfort I have is the people who care about me. I learned that without someone to be there for you when you are sick or hurt or just fucking fed up with life, finding meaning in the drudgery that passes one day into the next is almost impossible. Thinking back, if I’d had to endure that wound without Allison there to keep me distracted, the suffering might have driven me to another tenure of extended binge drinking.
Now, looking ahead to the danger that waited for me across town, I wondered if I would have to endure it again. Just the thought of it made the scar on my leg ache. I sat up in bed and massaged it and watched people walk by on the street below.
Allison was right. I could not keep doing things this way. If I did, my wife was going to leave me. Maybe not for a while, maybe not even for a few years, but sooner or later, she would say enough is enough and cut her losses
. At the same time, I wondered how I could give her what she wanted without losing a part of myself I was loathe to give up.
“Maybe you can’t,” I said into the silence. “Maybe you just have to learn to live with it.”
Exhaustion slowly took hold, making my eyes heavy. I needed rest. It was going to be a busy night. Before I could drift off, I got out of bed and set an alarm, making sure to put it across the room so I would be forced to get out of bed to address it. Then I laid down and was out before I could pull the blanket over me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eric
Old Industrial District, Outskirts of Bricktown
“All stations, report,” Gabe said over the radio.
Great Hawk answered first. “Three tangos on the roof. One more patrolling the upper level on the east side. No activity outside the building.”
“Same as before,” Holland said next. “Confirm three tangos on the roof. One patrolling on the south upper level, and one on the west. No visual on lower level.”
“Copy,” Gabriel said. “I got zero on the north side, upper level. No visual on lower level. That gives us three on the roof, three patrolling the upper level, and an unknown number on the warehouse floor. Echo Lead, how copy?”
“Lima Charlie,” I said. “Standing by. Hicks just called in. His team is in position in Southtown. Eyes on and waiting.”
“Delta?”
“All present and accounted for,” Cole said. “Standing by.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Alpha, these guys look like they’re about to drop,” Holland said. “God only knows how long they’ve been awake. Their guard is down. Might be a good time to get eyes inside that building. There’s some broken windows on the east side I could get through.”
A pause. “Think you can get in there without being seen?”
“Done this kind of thing a thousand times, chief.”
Another pause. “Alright. Approach from the east so Hawk can provide overwatch.”
Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End Page 22