Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Okay, Abby, what’s the plan here?” I asked myself as the entrance to the outside world loomed ahead of me. Once we were in the air, I wasn’t sure what I could do. Even if I could hang on the entire time, I had no idea how long they’d be flying and well, crashing a plane didn’t seem smart.

  My knife slipped into my hand as I clambered over to where the door was. I drove it through the spot between the top of the door and the frame as hard as I could and was somewhat surprised when the blade slipped through. My heart hammered in my chest as I angled myself so I could pull open the door even though the ground below was speeding by so fast, I knew I’d be dead if I fell.

  Just as I was about to make my move, the door opened and my knife slipped out of the crack. I fell, losing my balance and tumbling toward the earth. My hands lashed out, grabbing onto the bottom of the plane’s door. My shoulders jerked in their sockets as my fall was arrested with my feet dangling just above the ground.

  Bang stood there, a strange look on his face. He had a giant magnum in one hand, but so far he wasn’t pointing it at me.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, dumbfounded. Which was a little weird because shouldn’t he have just shot me in the face? It’s what I’d have done if our situations were reversed.

  Instead of replying, I swung my body around in a feat of strength I didn’t even know I could do and threw myself into the vehicle. I crashed into Bang like a bag of wet cement, and we slid across the small plane before smacking into the other side with enough force to leave me dazed and confused.

  Things inside the cabin whipped around, being sucked outside the door as the vehicle started to slow. A fist caught me square in the jaw while I was looking at the open door, and I toppled backward toward it. My hands lashed out, catching hold of a seat and stopping me from tumbling outside as Bang leveled his gun at me and sighed.

  “Abby, you need to stop this,” he said, glaring at me hard enough to make me shiver despite my superspy skills and crazy spy suit.

  “Okay,” I said before he shot me in the face. Even though my suit protected me, the bullet whipped my head back with so much force, I must have blacked out for a second because the next thing I knew, I was laying on my back and the cabin door was closed.

  My temples throbbed painfully as Bang stared down at me with the gun pressed between my eyes. “We’re going to have a chat, and if you like, at the end, you can try and fight me. Just give me thirty seconds, alright?” he asked although he wasn’t really asking.

  “What choice do I have?” I replied as I planned on the best way to beat him into twain and take his gun.

  He smirked and stepped back out of my reach. “I can see you planning on how to take my gun away even now.” He shook his head. “Let me lay this out for you. I know you want the director’s codes. I’ll give them to you. All you have to do is help me.” His smirk widened. “Doesn’t that sound better than me flinging you out of a plane a thousand feet above the ground?”

  I watched him, not sure if he was lying or not. Either way, he had a point. I did not want to get flung out of an airplane in midflight.

  “Fair enough,” I murmured. “Speak.”

  “Look, okay. See the director’s been kidnapped from us by the Israelis. They somehow learned you wanted him. It’s why I told Raul to bring you to me. They have him in one of their remote facilities. If you want him, you’ll have to break in and take him from them.”

  “How did you lose him?” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. “It seems awfully convenient that you suddenly wouldn’t have him.”

  “We got ambushed right after you landed in Greece and contacted Morris. I know because the agency told me. We got hit with some RPGs. That’s why we tapped Raul to get you to help us, but somehow Morris missed the memo and is still operating under the original mission parameters.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, suddenly very confused. “You’re talking like everyone is on the same team.”

  “Abby, we are all on the same team.” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “I work for the agency. This was supposed to be a training operation for you before your big mission.”

  I stared at him for a long time, barely able to speak. If I understood him correctly, he was telling me this had all been a setup. That the director had never really been captured and was instead playing a game. A game that had gotten Chuck shot, people killed, and left my ailing father on death’s door. Or maybe…

  “So everything is a lie?” I asked, suddenly so angry I wanted to leap to my feet and tear off his stupid head.

  “Yes and no. But I’m not going to tell you how much. However, I will say this. Your father will die if the director doesn’t give the order back home to keep him alive. He cannot do that if he is locked in an Israeli prison. Capiche?” He let out an explosive exhalation on breath and held out his hand. “So how about we team up and go get him. What do you say? Partners?”

  Was he being serious now? After everything I’d done to try and find him, he had the nerve to tell me that not only was everything he’d done rigged, but now he’d lost the damn director? Seriously?

  I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down as I stared at his hand like it was a live snake. Was I really going to help him get the director back from the Israelis? What if this was another lie? I guess in the end it didn’t matter. I needed the director to save my father, and if Flash and Bang were willing to help me, I should probably let them.

  Against my better judgment, I reached out and shook Bang’s hand. “Okay.”

  17

  Flash gave me an angry glare, which wasn’t that odd because in the few minutes I’d known her it was the only facial expression I’d seen her make. Her eyes swept over me, taking me in as she adjusted the harness on her parachute as we circled back toward some kind of jungle compound. I wasn’t quite sure where we were exactly, but I was reasonably sure we were still in Greece though I’d never have guessed there was jungle here.

  “Ready, weak girl?” she asked in her clipped Russian accent, which again was a little weird for me. Call me strange, but I hadn’t expected a muscular black woman with buzzed blonde hair to speak to me with a Russian accent. It was like she was a caricature of a female Bond villain.

  “Why do you keep calling me weak?” I asked, checking the straps on my own parachute because of course we were going to be leaping from a perfectly good plane and dropping into the camp. Never mind the fact that would give our enemies the chance to fill us full of bullets before we even reached the ground or how this would be my second parajump in as many days.

  “Because you are stupid weak girl,” she growled, reaching back to check her rifle. It was secured against her side, but I wondered if she did it because she was making a crack at me.

  “I beat you up pretty good,” I said, smiling sweetly at her.

  “You have skills in your head you didn’t earn.” She gestured at my body. “Special body armor. Anyone would do better than you, given same circumstances.” Before I could respond, she whipped the door to the plane open, filling the cabin with the sound of raging wind.

  I took a step toward her, not sure what I was going to do when I reached her because I was suddenly worried she was right. Virtually everything special about me had come from a computer program that had been downloaded into my brain. It was the same point Chuck had spent a long time drilling into me. I may be special, but I wasn’t experienced. I had a lot to learn.

  Hell, in almost all the training exercises, I’d been taken out pretty quickly by trained agents. The only time I really succeeded was in head on confrontations that didn’t require too much thinking. Even when I’d infiltrated the Agency before, it had been mostly luck and circumstance that’d kept me from being killed.

  Here I was, standing in a plane with a trained mercenary who thought I was garbage even though I’d totally beaten her down. It was weird because knowing I could take her in a fight should have made me feel better, but it didn’t, not
really.

  I bit my lip as Flash leapt from the plane and into the abyss below. I took a couple steps forward and watched her falling into the distance as my heart raced. I wasn’t worried about this part. I knew how to do this and so many other things correctly. I was more worried she was right. Because, sadly, what I think I really wanted was for Flash to see me as someone who was worth a damn. No, that wasn’t quite true.

  What I wanted. What I really wanted was for Chuck to see me as a valuable member of the team, even if he was part of team evil. It was a little weird.

  “Don’t mind her. She’s a little testy,” Bang called from the pilot’s seat. Originally, he was going to be the one to jump down, but my practically destroying his knee had put a stop to that. Now he was piloting. “We’re about to loop around for your jump. Just remember, Abby. You can do this.” He grinned at me.

  “Why do you think that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Do you know how many recruits would be in a body bag by now? Almost all of them. Even with your tech and skills, it’s a tough world out there.” He shot me a thumbs up. “Someone must think you’re a valuable and important member of this team to even be placed in this situation.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, feeling my cheeks heat up. At least someone thought I was important, even if his sudden recognition was embarrassing.

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Now jump!”

  I jumped. Falling through the air was a weird experience because, while terrifying, it was strangely calming. That and it always seemed to take forever. I wasn’t sure what it was about freefall, but the seconds always stretched into minutes. The sensor on my HUD dinged, and I pulled the ripcord, allowing my parachute to deploy. It jerked me up in the air as Flash touched down about half a mile from our target’s base.

  From there, we’d have to tromp through the swampy jungle to reach our location. Only, as I fell to earth, I heard gunfire rip through the clearing. Flash’s body jerked on the earth below, pitching backward. I barely had time to scream before bullets came flying up at me out of the brush, missing me but perforating my parachute.

  The wind whipping through my downed parachute was the scariest sound I’d ever heart. My heart leapt into my throat as a bullet severed the cord above my head. My body jerked downward as my parachute folded awkwardly in on itself as I crashed into the treetops.

  I struck a branch so hard I was pretty sure everything inside me was broken. Still, I was a little ways from where I’d been supposed to land, and I hadn’t died, so points for that. I cut myself free with the Becker BK7 knife I’d relinquished from the plane’s armory to replace the knife I’d lost before.

  I’d barely gotten free when men in black body armor swarmed beneath me like ants. I leapt from the tree, landing atop the first one with a satisfied crunch. Bullets started flying before I could recover, pinging off my armor as I waded through them head on, like the take all comers badass I knew I was.

  In a moment, all six of them were unconscious on the ground around me. I stood there, chest heaving for breath and heard the telltale sound of motors revving to life in the distance. I sprinted toward it, barely stopping long enough to scoop up two of the machineguns the soldiers had been using.

  They were short squat things with huge magazines and stubby barrels. I burst through the clearing just as two men tossed Flash’s unmoving body into the back of a black military grade hummer.

  “Stop!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, which was really stupid because another hummer with a mounted gun of some type swiveled toward me. I barely had time to throw myself out of the way before gunfire cleaved through the space I’d been occupying a second before.

  While my armor had been pretty good about staving off explosions and bullets up until now, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to test it against whatever kind of weapon that was. Trees and brush around me fell to earth as I circled around, crawling on my belly. I could barely hear anything over the din as I tried to get myself out of its cone of death. Unfortunately, it seemed like no matter where I moved, bullets followed, cutting the surrounding forest into bits.

  “Screw it,” I muttered, emptying one of the machineguns in the direction of the fire. I wasn’t sure if it did anything because I didn’t hear cries of pain or anything, but the bullets stopped.

  I scanned the area, switching to infrared and seeing the outlines of the soldiers. “Sorry,” I whispered to myself as I lined up on the first target with my remaining machinegun. He was the one standing behind the big gun. I fired. I didn’t see the bullets hit him, but I saw his body jerk backward and slump to the ground as I aimed at the second soldier and fired.

  I was on my feet as a dozen men swarmed my location, guns firing. I emptied my weapon in their general direction and tossed it to the side as I sprinted away, hoping most of them would chase me beyond the range of the hummer-mounted gun. I’m not quite sure how far I ran, but it felt like forever.

  When I doubled back around in a wide sweep, I came upon two soldiers sweeping the area. The first one saw me as I decked him in the face as hard as I could. He slumped backward as his partner fired into my ribs at point blank range. Pain exploded through my side as I staggered backward and a warning light went off in my HUD. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it seemed bad.

  I didn’t waste time. Instead, I reached out and tore his weapon from his hands, pushing the pain down deep inside myself and compartmentalizing it. Surprisingly, he released his weapon, stepping back into a fighting stance and drawing his knife simultaneously.

  I drew mine and we circled each other until he lunged, his blade snaking outward in a slide at my stomach. I stepped into it allowing his wrist to smash into my side and rendering his blow relatively pointless. I jabbed outward with my knife, driving it into his throat. He stumbled back, wide-eyed as he clawed at the metal embedded in his neck.

  A horrible feeling filled my stomach as I watched him flop to the ground, his lifeblood leaking through his fingers. While I hadn’t really thought about why it would matter how I killed someone before, I did now. Shooting someone dead was easier. Stabbing him was harder, and I’d done it without blinking. What kind of person did that make me? Gunfire tore through the distance, shattering my thoughts as my head snapped toward it.

  “It makes me the kind of person who survives,” I heard myself say in a voice far colder and emptier than my own. It was a little weird because I knew it to be true. Whatever I had been before, I wasn’t anymore. I’d been pushed around, played, tricked and now?

  Now, I was what they had made me. The realization made me a little sad as I moved back toward the clearing, but not sad enough to keep me from driving my fist into the kidney of the soldier in front of me and stepping over him as he writhed on the ground and picking up his weapon.

  A couple soldiers surged toward me, but it didn’t matter. I took them out with a spray of gunfire as my lips settled into a cold, hard line.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I asked as I approached the hummer where they’d thrown Flash. I didn’t see any more soldiers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. “Because this is what you have now.”

  I circled the hummer in one quick movement, but seeing no one, jerked the backdoor open, careful to keep it between me and any occupants. A guy who looked younger than me stood with a pistol aimed at Flash’s head. Her eyes were closed and blood was dripping from her mouth, but she was still breathing. Even from here, I could tell she was mostly fine because it didn’t look like any shots had penetrated her body armor. Good for her.

  “Don’t take another step,” he said, voice rushed and scared. “If you do, I’ll kill her. Don’t think I won’t.”

  Instead of replying, I calmly pointed my machinegun at the kid, not surprised in the least when he didn’t shoot Flash. She was his leverage after all. My lips tightened into a hard line as his eyes focused on my gun. He wasn’t ready for this at all. He was just some scared kid. Why had they sent him after me? It didn’t m
ake any sense. I let out a slow breath. In the end, I guess it didn’t matter much, but I knew one thing to be true. Killing this guy would make me feel bad. Guess there was still some good in me after all. Who would have thought?

  “Drop your weapon, or I’m going to put a bullet in your head.” I said as matter-of-factly as I could. “You might think you’ll get a shot off or something, that maybe you’ll be a hero. But you won’t. For one, your bullets will bounce off me like I’m Superman, and for two, you aren’t faster than me. I fire this thing at you, and you’ll wind up being little more than a smear on the ground. So make your choice. Give up or give up the ghost. Sadly, neither one bothers me. There was a time where it might have, but that time is not now. Look into my eyes and know my words are true. So the only question remaining for you is this: Am I going to have to wipe your smudge off my boots or not?”

  He dropped the gun, and my heart hitched in relief. I hadn’t been looking forward to killing some stupid kid.

  18

  “This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” I exclaimed, barely believing the words coming out of Flash’s mouth as we drove the stolen Israeli hummer toward the military prison in the distance. Desert spread out of us like a vast expanse of endless sand so there was virtually no cover, and what was worse? There was a single lane road heading toward the only gate in and out from the place. Even from here, I could see numerous mounted guard towers and had no doubt each one held at least one gunner, if not more, inside.

  “You clearly have not heard Bang’s plans before,” the Russian femme fatale said as she glanced at me, her lips quirking into a wry smile as her gaze swept over me. I reached out, gripping the dashboard with my hands as she swerved, one tire running off the road and onto the shoulder because she wasn’t watching where she was going at-freaking-all. “This is pretty tame plan. I assure you.” Her words concerned me, a lot. If this was a tame plan, I’d have hated to see an extreme one because from what I could tell, this plan was absolutely insane.