by Dana Fraser
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONCE THE ENTIRE building was checked for intruders, Thomas was ordered to the top floor to help Gentry set up his observation points. Sparks went with them, but spent his time looking out over the city with his field glasses.
Thomas bullshitted with the sniper as he listened to the man’s instructions. Every few sentences, he slipped in a harebrained hypothesis about the building’s location and purpose until Sparks got tired of listening.
“Damn, Alzheimers,” Sparks growled, putting his binoculars away. “You’d lose a game of Risk with a two-year old.”
Gentry snorted and repeated the nickname Sparks had just bestowed upon Thomas.
Thomas stopped what he was doing, his face layered with indignation. “Don’t tell me I’m that far off in what they want us to do once the building’s all tied up. We’re just south of the bridges and the train tracks over the river.”
“Don’t forget the pedestrian bridge, Alzheimers,” Sparks sniped as he rolled his eyes. “Look, the bridges are held already with tanks and two gunboats.”
Thomas’s brows jumped at the mention of gunboats. It made sense—a hell of a lot of sense. But he hadn’t thought about any water patrols. And he would need to cross the Ohio River at least once to get home. The longer he had to travel south of the river, the more miles he’d have to add to his trip.
He snorted, pushing the worry down, and pointed an accusatory finger at Sparks. “So, you’re telling me you got no idea what the hell we’re doing all this work for.”
He turned away, dismissing his team leader. He pushed one of the desks up to a window, his chin tucked belligerently against his chest.
Thomas had a small inkling of why the building’s location was important. They were near two large open areas—the horse tracks and the stadium. Those would make good staging points for larger troop movements.
His voice going all whiney, Sparks came up and jabbed a finger in the direction of the stadium’s parking lot. “Choppers will land there.”
He jabbed his finger at the stadium next. “Sheep pen.”
Then the horse track. “More staging over there. But first we get our shit together here so we can bring in three more teams—and more snipers.”
Sparks pointed to three tall buildings in the distance that, together with their own building, would box in the stadium and horse tracks.
“That’s called strategy, Alzheimers. Let me know when you figure out how to spell it,” he sniped. “Then maybe I can teach you a little about how it works.”
Thomas tucked his chin a little tighter and kept on working, his expression guarded until he was sent from the room half an hour later to relieve Reverend Jay from guarding the rear door.
HE SPENT NEARLY four hours at the back entrance fighting off boredom by visualizing his plans. Reverend Jay had no sooner been relieved of duty than he’d left the building, up to no good judging by the smile that had scarred his otherwise bland face.
Thomas knew that Reverend Jay was the second man with the security code. Thomas didn’t need Jay or Sparks to divulge the numbers. Both doors shared the same code and Thomas had adjusted his patch just enough both times to see what Sparks had punched into the keypads.
If he was wrong on the numbers, he could live without the contents in the basement. But, damn, he wanted one of the motorcycles and was drooling over the chance to swap out Patch’s M16 with one of the rifles with the grenade launcher mounted on it.
And he wanted grenades, lots and lots of grenades.
Hearing movement on the other side of the door he was guarding, Thomas brought his rifle up and assumed a defensive position behind the heavy metal water cooler in the hall. He expected it to be Reverend Jay, but the man had gone out alone and could have gotten his crazy ass caught.
Starting to sweat, his grip on the M16 tightened as Thomas heard someone punching in the code. At the tenth digit, something slammed against the door.
Thomas backed further down the hall. When he reached the intersection, he signaled Slauson, who was guarding the elevator. He came over, his back against the wall in a position opposite Thomas and his rifle held vertically, his left hand wrapped around the stock and the other hand with a finger on the trigger.
The small beeps of the final six numbers being entered on the keypad crept down the hall.
Reverend Jay, Slauson mouthed with a question in his gaze.
Thomas shrugged as the door was pulled open.
“In you go, Muzzie,” Jay growled.
Thomas peeked around the corner, the barrel of his M16 leading the way. Reverend Jay was pulling the door shut. In front of him, sprawled on the cheap linoleum floor, was a young male. He bled from a cut over his left eye and from a busted lip. Dark curly hair, thick brows, and medium brown skin with an olive tint suggested he had either Mediterranean ancestry or was, as the Reverend Jay had accused by calling him “Muzzie,” Middle Eastern.
More than anything, Thomas saw a frightened kid close to his son’s age.
“Where’d you catch him?” Thomas asked, walking toward Reverend Jay.
“In the stalls at the horse track,” the man answered. “There with a girl, his sister maybe. Found her first, then this shit attacked me. Should have shot them both.”
Thomas looked Reverend Jay over. He had been focused on the kid, but now he could see how the hair along the left side of Jay’s skull was matted with blood.
“You should have that looked at,” Thomas said.
“Already spoke to the man upstairs, that’s all the looking after I need.”
Thomas looked at Slauson. They both knew Jay wasn’t talking about Sparks or any other team member on the floors above them.
Responding with an eye roll, Slauson returned to his post.
“You’re right,” Thomas said, keeping his eye on the kid as he walked back to his earlier position by the rear entrance. “You don’t have to worry about it healing up or getting infected.”
He glanced at his watch. His four hour shift on guard duty was ending. Two guards would remain on the first floor. Sparks and the sniper would remain on the top floor but likely be close to bunking down for the night. The other three team members, including Reverend Jay, would be off duty until two of them had to relieve the door guards. They would rotate like that through morning.
Thomas rolled his lips as he looked at the kid. “You taking him up to Sparks?”
“Sparks aint got the stomach for getting information out of Muzzies,” Jay said, so much venom filling his tone that he had to spit some of it out, the wad landing on the kid’s neck.
“You should shove him in the basement,” Thomas suggested. “No one will hear a thing through that door and there’s no windows for him to get out of if he breaks loose. Support columns are good for handcuffing him, too. No squirming around those.”
Thomas bobbed his head a few times as if parsing his own advice. “Yep, that’s what I’d do.”
Reverend Jay rubbed at his chin, a day’s worth of bristle making it sound like he was sanding wood.
“At least while you’re working him over,” Thomas added. “You can always cuff him to the stairs after that. Place him high up on the railing and let him hang by the arms until they pop out of the socket.”
“There’s no after,” Jay warned, hate heating his gaze and cheeks.
Thomas nodded as the elevator bell rang. A few seconds later, Dix rounded the corner to relieve him from duty.
“Let me help you, Jay,” Thomas offered, bending down and grabbing the kid.
As he hoisted him up, the boy began to struggle. Thomas spun, pushing him hard against the wall and wrapping a hand around his throat.
“You know how many of your brothers I’ve killed?” Thomas asked, his voice as cold as a winter crypt.
The kid stopped resisting, but the fight didn’t leave his eyes. He just hid it by looking down.
Good, Thomas thought, his hand shifting to grip the
boy by the back of the neck. The young man would need all the fight he had in him to survive the night and the days ahead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THOMAS STOOD with a firm grip on the kid as Reverend Jay punched in the numbers that would open the door to the basement. He either didn’t care that Thomas could see or he was too damned tired to think about it. He had been up as long as any of the other men, plus he’d gone out hunting and been injured in the process.
Telling Jay he wouldn’t have to worry about his wound had been heartfelt. Thomas had merely omitted the part about how he intended to kill the man before the cut could fester or a clot could reach Jay’s already demented brain.
He was smiling when the man glanced at him right before pulling the door open.
“Let’s put him in the back,” Thomas suggested. “I think I spotted a few things in that section we could get creative with.”
The kid trembled beneath his touch, but Thomas couldn’t let that affect him. He needed Reverend Jay at ease, needed the man focused on torture so he could slip the Maxim 9 from his pocket and quietly kill him. He also needed the kid tied up first so he wouldn’t run screaming and screw up everything.
“Creative?” Jay asked, pulling the heavy steel door shut and waiting for its lock to engage before following after Thomas.
“There’s a weight bench that inclines,” Thomas started. He hadn’t actually seen it, but Sparks had mentioned it while Thomas was helping up on the top floor.
“Haven’t waterboarded anyone in a long time,” Thomas went on. “And we can strap a couple twenty-five pound weights on his chest while we do it.”
The kid’s knees started to give. Thomas grabbed him by the belt, giving him a wedgie as he kept the boy upright and propelled him forward.
“I’ll cuff him to a column and then we can look around.”
Folding to the ground, the boy started praying, all doubt as to his religion or ethnicity erased as the words came out in Arabic. Thomas gritted his teeth and kept on moving, dragging the boy then strong arming him into place before slapping on a pair of handcuffs.
As the cuffs clicked into place, he prayed just as fervently as the boy.
If things didn’t go exactly as planned, he could be condemning the kid to a slow, painful death, locked in a basement with nothing to drink, sitting in his own waste as the final seconds ticked away.
Reverend Jay joined them by the column, a dreamy cast to his gray gaze. “You’ve done this before…”
“Got a real taste for God’s work in Desert Storm,” Thomas answered. “He probably knows where the girl went and where others are hiding. Maybe we can get us an imam.”
The boy gasped at Thomas’s words but then a sudden determination settled over his young face. Thomas stared hard, trying to figure out what was happening—why the kid had gone from being half a second away from pissing himself to…
Thomas swung his arm, backhanding the kid with a vicious blow. As soon as the hit landed, he pulled a glove insert from his pocket and stuffed it in the kid’s mouth.
“Little bastard was going to chew his tongue off!”
Heart pounding in his chest, Thomas looked up at Reverend Jay. The man had pulled away at the sudden display of violence, but now he crept forward. He wrapped a hand around Thomas’s shoulder and gave an approving squeeze.
“Let’s find those weights, shall we?”
“Sure thing, Reverend,” Thomas answered, getting on his feet.
He made a quiet show of unslinging his rifle and finding someplace to lay it that was a safe distance for the boy. Then he moved away from the weapon. It only took a few seconds for Jay to follow his example, ridding himself of seven plus pounds of metal and plastic that had a way of slamming and jabbing at flesh when its owner was trying to get anything done.
With Jay down to just his hands and the knife strapped to his hip as weapons, Thomas moved over to the weight bench with a faint smile. He picked up one of the twenty-five pound weights, humming to himself a tune Reverend Jay was sure to know.
Grabbing a matching weight, Jay joined in, proving himself to be a middling baritone.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword…”
Thomas put the weight down in the open space between the aisle then moved aside for Jay to do the same. Belting out the next line, the man bent down, both hands wrapped around the weight.
When Jay’s entire body was committed to the motion, Thomas pulled the Maxim 9 from this pocket and put one in the back of his head.
Reverend Jay pitched forward, death already glazing his gray eyes as he hit the floor.
The boy went wild. Thomas hurried over to him, stuffing the gun in his pocket then cupping the kid’s head with a firm grip so he wouldn’t crack open his skull against the concrete column.
“La taqlaq!” he urged, coaxing the boy not to worry. His Arabic was rusty, hadn’t been all that great to begin with but he tried another phrase. “Sa arje’o halan. La taqlaq!”
That wasn’t exactly accurate, poor language skills or not. Thomas would not be “right back.” He had six more men to kill without dying in the process.
“Allah yusallmak,” Thomas said in one last attempt to get the kid to calm down.
He took the glove insert out of the boy’s mouth.
Wet brown eyes looked up at him.
Thomas repeated the phrase, his thumb brushing softly at the kid’s cheek. The boy nodded with understanding and Thomas got up. He couldn’t leave Reverend Jay out in the open. He stripped the man’s field jacket off and wrapped it around the remains of his head then dragged the body into the shadows of a distant corner. He grabbed one of the tarps draping the bikes and placed it over the blood and bits of brain left on the concrete. He put the weights on top of the tarp and grabbed one of the gallon jugs of water.
The boy, squirming against his cuffs, tried to talk to Thomas as he worked. Thomas kept shushing him, staging the scene to look like he and Jay had just stepped out for a moment before resuming their torture plans.
Finished, Thomas returned to the kid.
“Sa arje’o halan,” he offered again, and then, “Allah yusallmak,” before grabbing his rifle and leaving.
May God be with us both.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THOMAS SHUT the heavy steel door and paused to gather his thoughts. The only other person with the security code to the basement was Sparks. But Sparks was holed up with Gentry on the first floor. Thomas wanted to pick off as many men one at a time as he could before taking on multiples. He also had to wait to take out Slauson and Dix, the guards on the first floor, because their absence would raise an immediate alarm.
He went in search of Gilbert and Knowles, the two who were most likely sleeping. All of the team except for Sparks and Gentry had placed their packs in one of two rooms on the second floor. Thomas, Dix and Knowles had put their gear in the room nearest the stairwell.
Thomas went to that room first. Knowles wouldn’t challenge his entrance, reducing the risk of alerting Gilbert. He entered the room quietly anyway, his rifle left in the stairwell to avoid waking Knowles with it knocking around.
Adrenaline coursed through Thomas, but his body didn’t shake as he took a seat on the edge of the air mattress he had inflated when he dropped his pack in the room.
On the mattress next to his, Knowles didn’t stir. A whistle rhythmically blew every other second.
Thomas closed his eyes for a few heartbeats and breathed with the man. Reverend Jay was a sadistic bastard, mental and an enemy. His death had been necessary. So was Knowles’ death. Every man he had killed to get this close to home had deserved their death.
His only lament was that there were so many others that circumstance had forced him to leave alive.
Opening his eyes, Thomas lifted the Maxim 9 and angled the pistol so that the bullet would fatally wound the sleeping man without popping the air m
attress upon which he slept. Thomas hesitated on pulling the trigger, the shadows adding uncertainty to his aim.
The whistling stopped. With his gaze adjusted to the dark, Thomas could see the flutter of Knowles’ eyes, but the man was just waking up. The room would be pitch black to him for a few seconds despite the glow of the hall lights coming in under the door.
Knowles lifted up, his hand patting around for his rifle. Perhaps he had instinctively sensed the danger.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Just me,” Thomas answered, silently easing the man’s rifle out of reach and standing.
“Billy?” Knowles questioned. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Thomas answered, then pulled the trigger. “And no.”
The force of the bullet at close range knocked Knowles over. Thomas reached out, catching him before he fell off the mattress. There was no resistance. The body was limp. Bits of brain and blood clung to the wall.
Not leaving anything to chance, Thomas shoved the pistol back into the depths of his pocket and unsheathed the hunting knife he had taken off an earlier kill after leaving Reynolds’ shack. He plunged the blade between the base of Knowles’s skull and his first vertebrae then eased the body onto its side on the mattress and pulled the blanket up to cover Knowles’ face. There was little he could do about the blood on the wall without taking too much time, so he did nothing. If either of the guards abandoned their post early or Sparks came down, Thomas’ only hope was that they didn’t turn on the light or try to wake the dead man.
Thomas wiped the blade on the blanket and re-sheathed it.
Drawing a deep breath, he went hunting for Gilbert.
THOMAS’S third victim of the night died with his hand down his pants masturbating to porn stored on a cell phone. Gilbert started swearing the instant the door opened. Thomas already knew what the man was up to, the groans audible from the other side of the door.
Standing at the room’s threshold, he aimed and fired then entered and shut the door behind him. With the same thoroughness he had exhibited with Knowles, he made certain Gilbert was dead then camouflaged the violent act.