by Michael Todd
“What kind of problem?” Savage asked and crossed immediately to where the man watched everything on a laptop.
“The serious kind,” Anja said. “Show them the footage I sent you, Terry.”
Savage narrowed his eyes as he watched Banks come down to the lobby, take a moment to chat with the same security guard who had greeted them, and then headed out to where his car waited. He stopped halfway to the door of his car and looked up when a van came into view. The man looked terrified at first, but no weapons were brandished. The new arrivals talked to him calmly for a few seconds before he followed them quietly to the car.
“Do you notice something strange about that video?” the hacker asked.
“Yeah,” Savage replied. “The security guard didn’t give Banks the car keys. He was in on the kidnapping.”
“Well, yes, that too,” she said. “But that doesn’t look exactly like a kidnapping, right? There is no sign of a struggle. The men turn their backs on him, and he followed them into the van.”
“So it’s not a kidnapping,” Terry said and looked at his teammates. “A rescue?”
“Shit.” Savage smacked the desktop with his palm. “Can we track the van?”
“Already done,” Anja said. “But I’m afraid that’s the good news.”
“This is one of those good news-bad news situations, isn’t it?” Sam grumbled.
“Yep.” Anja brought more footage up on Terry’s laptop of the same van going through an industrial area—the docks, maybe—until it turned into a secure location with high fences and a horde of security staff. Banks was led from the vehicle and followed as willingly as he had before. The group strode across to what looked like the entrance to an underground bunker.
“I’m looking into the specs of that place now,” Anja continued. “That place is an old cold war bunker. New York is littered with them, apparently, but that one has been repurposed into a safe house of sorts, with the emphasis on safe. It’s a fortress, physically and digitally. All the security functions are kept off the grid, of course, including water and electricity. I could crack them, but…”
“Let me guess,” Savage said as her voice trailed off. “We’ll need to get inside. Like that Pegasus lab way back when.”
“Exactly.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get inside?” Terry asked, genuinely nonplussed. “These specs…that place is locked up tighter than—”
“Please say a nun’s pussy,” Sam said and stared at the ceiling with a small grin.
The sniper merely shook his head and dragged in a deep breath. “Innuendos aside, how will we get in there?”
“I have a couple of ideas about that,” Savage said thoughtfully. “But I think we need to spend a little time evaluating the surface security first.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The little hide they’d put together definitely wasn’t a great place. Savage sighed, shook his head, and sat beside Terry with a grimace. It was drafty and cold, thanks to the time of year and time of day, but complaining about it would simply earn him shit from all three of them. Terry, Anja, and Sam would lay into him for getting soft.
The real problem, of course, was that he actually thought he might be.
He placed the paper cup of coffee carefully near where Terry stared through a pair of binoculars. They had found a small crane that currently wasn’t in use, probably due to the fact that it was late on a Friday on Thanksgiving weekend This afforded them an overwatch position over the bunker where their target had been taken.
“Do we know for certain that Banks hasn’t already left the country?” he asked. The sniper sipped his coffee calmly without looking away from the binoculars.
“Well, Anja studied the camera feeds in the area, and it doesn’t look like he’s left the premises,” Terry responded as the hacker appeared to be too busy to do so. “There aren’t any secondary access points in the plans, either the original or improvements, although I suppose it’s possible they simply added them without applying for any permits. Either way, the heavy security is still in place, which indicates that someone’s still down there. Or something that needs lots of protecting.”
“Yeah.” Savage cracked his back and sipped his warm coffee. For once, he’d asked for a little of half and half and sugar to be added. He needed something to make him feel better about the boredom. “It seems our chances of pinning Banks down inside are looking better and better.”
The other man finally turned his attention away from the bunker to look at him. “Are you sure you want to do this, man? We can simply wait for him out here. He needs to leave eventually. He’ll be at his most vulnerable in transit anyway, so we can wait until he’s being transported again and that’ll be that.”
“We don’t have the advantage of time.” The operative shook his head decisively. “We delayed his contract on my family but eventually, someone will be capable or stupid enough to make another attempt. I can’t risk that. We need to take care of Banks here and now—or as soon as possible, anyway.”
“Why doesn’t Anja take the ad down?” Terry resumed his surveillance.
“They’ll simply put it up again. If we take eliminate Banks, we won’t need to constantly take the ads down only for someone to post them again.”
“I guess that’s true. So you’re dead set on doing this, then?”
“I am,” Savage answered with a small smile. His mind was made up. While he wasn’t suicidal, he needed to take some risks at this point. He was the one with skin in the game, as it were, and he wouldn’t simply sit around and wait while his family was in danger.
“And there’s the change of the guard.” The sniper gestured for him to look at the target location as two SUVs pulled up outside. They greeted the five men who were stationed outside but headed down in the elevator that went into the bunker. About three minutes later, the elevator returned with another group of ten men, who climbed into the SUVs and drove away.
“What time do the men up top change?” Savage asked.
“Every eight hours, so about three hours from now.” Terry frowned in thought. “They stagger the changes to make them more effective at the job or something like that.”
“That’ll probably be the best time,” he muttered and made a mental note of the times. “The guys who are newer on the job will be easier to evade, I think.”
“Well, if you’re dead set on it, there’s no way we’ll let you do it sober,” the other man said. He looked away from his binoculars and started to pack the hide up.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You want me to go in there drunk?”
“Of course not.” Terry chuckled. “We want to get you sloshed today, get you un-hungover tomorrow, and then we’ll make the run.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He narrowed his eyes.
“It’s adorable that you think you have any say in it, boss man.” His companion grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, Sam’s already starting the shots for us. And she said there might be some visitors joining us later in the evening too, although she didn’t give me any specifics.”
Savage shrugged. He didn’t like the idea of getting sloshed right before a difficult mission, but it wasn’t like it was his first time doing it.
Under any other circumstances, Banks didn’t think he would mind spending excessive amounts of time there. Bunkers were usually portrayed as dull, dark places where people hid in fear, but he was… Well, he was hiding and afraid, but the structure wasn’t dull or dark. Very little sunlight made its way inside but there was plenty of light and nicely paneled walls and elegant furniture. It was like someone had designed the place to be their own little hideaway if the time came to retreat from the world as a whole.
His wanderings through the facility had revealed a fully stocked kitchen, a gym, a small swimming pool, and tanning beds, as well as three different bedrooms—all suites with enough space to put most apartments in New York to shame. Hell, his client could make a fortune b
y renting this place out. He knew people who would quite literally kill to have this much space available right in the middle of Manhattan. Well, maybe not right in the middle, but still.
The bunker also contained fully stocked bars, which he had taken the liberty of using. He’d had a long nap for almost a full day, but after that, lacking anything else to do, he decided to attack the stock of gin they had on hand. The whiskey was good, but gin had always been his poison of choice. He’d become far less picky once he realized Savage was coming after him, though.
There was an Internet connection, run through about fifty VPNs to keep Savage’s computer expert off his scent, but the men who ran security for him had told him it was still a risk. He had taken that warning seriously. Even with this many people to keep him safe, there was still a very real trace of fear in the back of his mind. He was in danger as long as he remained in the same place.
Banks closed his eyes, leaned back in his seat, and took a sip of his gin and tonic. It was the soft kind of drink he had grown accustomed to. Others tended to think it was the drink people ordered when they didn’t know what they wanted. He would have disagreed.
But now wasn’t the time to think about trivialities.
His phone buzzed. He had been told there would be no signal down there, so he was understandably confused when he retrieved the device and confirmed that there was a call coming over the line. Weird. He pressed the accept call button and his eyes widened with surprise when an image accompanied the voice. He’d seen the client before—only once when she’d met him for coffee. She still had that luscious, long black hair, but it was tied up in a braid this time, and she wore glasses too. The area around her was dark, which made him wonder if she was in a time zone where it was night, or if she was merely in a dark room. Either was an option, he assumed. She wasn’t the kind of woman to share much, which left his mind occupied with trying to work out any detail he could.
“Mason,” she said, greeting him familiarly by his first name. “How’s the new place? Up to your standards, I hope?”
“More than up to them, thanks,” Banks replied cautiously. He had been told when he’d met in the flesh that it would be the last time he ever saw her, which made him curious as to why she called him on a video call.
“Well, it’s one of the best safe houses money can buy,” she replied and leaned forward into the screen. “It’s only fair that it should provide a few creature comforts.”
He smiled. “I still feel like I’m a sitting duck here. As secure as it is, Savage is still out there, gunning for me. It can’t be long before he finds me here, right?”
She chuckled. “I’ll be honest with you, Mason, that is half the reason why I have you there. Savage has shown himself to be rather resourceful, and I don’t doubt that his arrogance will lead him to try to get his hands on you himself. He will most likely fail in the attempt, and that loose end will be effectively tied. I do want my people—and you, if you like—to make it a very slow, painful death and record every moment. I’d like to use it as a lesson for all those who might annoy me the way he has. Of course, if he decides to wait or can’t find you, I’ll have all the papers necessary to get you out of the country in a couple of days and you’ll be in the clear. I still have a need for you to work for me out here, Mason.”
The lawyer nodded. “I…appreciate that.”
“Try to stay alive, and I’ll be in touch.” She cut the connection before he could respond.
He didn’t appreciate the woman trying to be sweet. She had manipulated him and tried to soften the blow. The reality, though, was that he was being used as bait to bring Savage in. While he could understand that he wasn’t as important to her cause as eliminating the operative, it still sent a chill down his spine to know it. He’d had his suspicions before, of course, but to have them confirmed so blatantly was enough to stir all his fears back to life.
It was all good, though, he thought sarcastically as he raised his glass to his lips and took a nice, long sip. He would simply drink himself into a blackout and test his liver’s ability to process the poison until it was time to leave. Or be attacked by Savage, whichever came first.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Savage and Terry arrived at the Irish bar where Sam told them to meet her, and by the looks of it, only the woman herself was there with no unannounced visitors to join them. Terry hadn’t been joking when he said she would start on the shots for them. She had also ordered what looked like nachos and cheesy fries for the table too, which she had already dug into by the time they arrived.
“Hey, you’re here,” she shouted, a little loudly and with a slight slur. “You’re all fucking late, so I had to start without you.”
“Well, this is a charming little place.” Savage looked around. It seemed too small to have a kitchen in the back, but New York had a way of teaching people to be efficient in the use of space. Still, it wasn’t anywhere near as big as most other establishments he’d been in. Of the fifteen or so tables, about half were full, although more people trickled in as the hour grew later. Most had the look of regulars who were there almost every night. The room was dark. A couple of TVs above the bar showed sports channels Savage didn’t think he had time to catch up on. He had been out of the loop when it came to sports and simply saved all the games on his TV at home, so when he eventually had the time to get back to it, he could.
Not just yet, though.
“So, is everything in place?” Sam asked. Her gaze encompassed them both as she started to pass the first round of shots.
“We have a plan to work with, yeah,” Savage said with a grin as he took the first shot of Irish Whiskey and his companions followed suit.
“It’s a crazy fucking masterpiece of a plan,” she said and actually shivered as the burning liquid moved down her throat. “And that’s the highest compliment I can pay, so you’d better be all impressed and shit.”
He looked at Terry, who bristled visibly at the profanities she used. Thankfully, the man had spent a fair amount time around her over the past few months, so he had begun to build up a tolerance to her foul mouth.
Kudos for him, he thought as he downed another shot and scowled. Sam pushed the plates of nachos and fries over to him.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, a working dad and all that. I assumed your tolerance is all the way down since you don’t drink that much,” she replied cheekily.
“I’ll kick you in the shins,” he retorted, but he decided to go with the starchy foods anyway. She was wrong about his tolerance, but he didn’t want to actually try to get drunk. He wanted to drink and celebrate. Libations were important before a big fight.
He grabbed a couple of the fries and shoved the nachos over to Terry, who chuckled.
“Unlike the two of you, my tolerance for alcohol is actually rather low,” the sniper said. He chewed on a couple of the nachos while Sam called the bartender over. The man took the empty glasses, set up another group, and poured until they were full.
“Leave the bottle,” Sam said. “And bring another round of beers. It’ll be a long night.”
“My kind of night,” Savage said with a grin. He pushed a couple of the shot glasses to Sam and Terry and took another for himself. It would definitely be a long night. His gaze drifted to scan the bar as they all did despite the relaxed occasion. It was in their blood to constantly assess their surroundings and learn the exits no matter how drunk they were.
His gaze wandered a little. The shots had begun to affect him but he was able to refocus when the bartender brought their beers to the table and jolted him back to reality. He glanced at the bar again and the stools around it. More precisely, the brunette in a criminally short skirt who had just perched on one of the seats. He craned his neck slightly to try to get a view of the rest of her.
“I think we lost Savage,” Sam pointed out as she looked at Terry, who dug into the starches to help his body process the liquor he had consumed.
“Well,
we were bound to eventually,” he replied, leaned back in his seat, and stretched. “I suppose I was hoping we would get to hang out for a while longer, at least until we were all equally drunk.”
Savage turned to his group. “I’m not lost. Promise. Merely…appreciating the view from over here.”
“I think we should make a drinking game of it,” Sam said with a firm nod and took a sip of her beer. “You know, something like…drink when Savage’s eyes start to wander, long sip when he loses track of the conversation, and we all take a shot when he decides he’ll get our refills at the bar?”
“That sounds about right.” Terry chuckled.
“Yeah, you two are playing it off like an old married couple.” He raised his glass in a mock toast and took a big sip to taste the beer they’d ordered for him. It wasn’t the best he’d ever drunk, but it was ice-cold, which made up for that.
“Ugh, for the last time, we’re not fucking sleeping together,” Sam protested.
“Like I said, an old married couple.” He grinned and ducked when the woman tossed a handful of chips at him.
The bartender sent them a couple of dirty glances, which was really all he could spare as the place had filled up. Still, they took the hint and the two men quickly cleaned up Sam’s mess.
Savage did notice that the brunette he’d noticed before sighed and looked around the room, a classic indicator that she was looking for someone to come along and buy her a drink. The chances were good that she simply wanted a way to kill time until her date, boyfriend, or group of friends showed up, but at this point, he really didn’t care. His inhibitions were lowered by the sudden intake of alcohol, and dammit, he would take advantage of that.