Hell & Back (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  “Hide,” he said, lowering his voice even more but aggressively pointing toward the area she’d been before.

  She frowned at him, looked like she was going to argue, but disappeared without saying a word. He pulled up the stairs and checked the various feeds again. Whom had he missed?

  None of the feeds showed anyone else…except a couple of cameras were off-line. Had someone tampered with them? If so, why leave the rest running?

  Another camera went dark.

  A few seconds later, a fourth camera stopped functioning.

  Someone was quietly disabling them.

  He and Ruby needed to get to the elevator and secure it before whoever was tiptoeing around got there first.

  Hovering over the stairs, he listened hard for any sound that might signal someone besides Ruby was in the room below. Nothing.

  He lowered the stairs, exited his hidey hole, then pushed the stairs back up and walked over to check on Ruby, but her hiding spot was empty.

  Where did she go?

  Glass crunched, and he spun around. A masked man wearing a military urban combat uniform had a gun pointed at him.

  Shit. A rush of crushed ice spread through his chest, turning every breath into an hours-long, bloody battle.

  Had she been captured?

  “Where’s the woman?” The man’s voice was flat and inflectionless, as if the outcome of this attack didn’t matter. It made him the most dangerous kind of predator—so far gone in murder and cruelty he didn’t care if anyone lived or died, including himself.

  The ice in Henry’s chest began to spread and solidify.

  “I don’t know.” Henry purposely glanced over his shoulder. “She was supposed to wait there for me.”

  The guy’s eyes flicked toward the mess of broken equipment before returning to Henry’s face. Not nearly enough time to attempt to disarm him.

  A loud explosion shook the building hard enough to send a fresh wave of dust flying into the air. The guy held firm.

  Conventional weapons weren’t getting anyone anywhere. Maybe he’d try some unconventional ones, like words.

  “This situation is devolving into FUBAR,” Henry said to the mercenary as he shook his head. He needed to connect with this guy or he was dead. “Definitely fucked up beyond all recognition. How the hell did the FAFO convince a bunch of pros to take this job?”

  “Is there anyone else from the CDC in the building besides you and the woman?” the mercenary asked, as if Henry hadn’t just spoken.

  So much for disarming conversation.

  Henry closed his mouth and tried to look relaxed while readying himself to attack the bastard in front of him.

  The mercenary adjusted his stance and hold on his weapon, preparing to shoot.

  A piece of broken monitor screen smacked the back of the mercenary’s head.

  The man staggered, then whirled around, his gun ready.

  Henry launched himself at the other man, grabbing at his weapon and forcing the business end of it up. A three-bullet burst erupted from the muzzle, embedding themselves in the ceiling.

  The mercenary kicked Henry in the shin, or where his shin would have been if he’d still had that leg. Henry’s lack of response was apparently unexpected, because the mercenary had already moved to take advantage of something that didn’t manifest, throwing himself off balance.

  Henry tripped him and ripped the weapon out of the mercenary’s hands as the man crashed to the floor. The man’s hands scrabbled at his belt, searching for another weapon.

  Ruby came out of the debris on the other side of the room, her bat already swinging down with an impressive amount of force. She nailed the guy in the chest with a blow strong enough to break ribs.

  The mercenary’s body stuttered, the wind and all his windy bravado driven out of him, his face pale with pain and shock.

  Ruby swung the bat up, preparing to hit him again, her lips pulled back in disgust. He thought she was aiming for the man’s privates, but instead her bat came down on his right hand, and Henry heard the snap as at least one bone broke.

  A knife clattered to the floor. A knife Henry hadn’t seen.

  The sneaky son of a bitch.

  “Good catch,” Henry said to Ruby. “Nail him again if he does anything you don’t like.”

  She nodded, clenched her teeth, and put her bat at the ready.

  Oh yeah, she was pissed.

  He searched the guy with grim efficiency for more weapons and had a tidy pile when he was done. Four knives—three for throwing and one for close-quarter combat—a Beretta, a wire garrote, and a pair of brass knuckles.

  What a charmer.

  Henry pulled the guy’s mask off so he could study the face underneath, but he didn’t recognize him.

  “Are you freelance or are you with a company?”

  No answer.

  Henry studied him for another couple of seconds. “Freelance, I think. I doubt there’s a company dumb enough to take on a job that will end up killing them all if they succeed.”

  No answer.

  “You did know that, right?” Henry watched the man as he spoke. “Anything taken out of here and used out there won’t just kill the targets, it’ll kill everyone it touches.”

  Contempt screwed up the mercenary’s mouth and nose for a fraction of a moment.

  So that’s how it was.

  Still, Henry needed confirmation, so he said in a light tone, “But, hey, who cares as long as you get to kill people however you like?”

  The asshole’s gaze met his for less than a second, but it was plenty long enough to answer his question.

  Yes.

  And there it was, the answer to his earlier question. Only narcissists and psychopaths would take this assignment. Soldiers with a conscience, who banded together and relied on each other, wouldn’t have touched this job for any price.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Ruby asked, her voice shaky with a mix of rage and fear.

  Tying him up and leaving him in the same room as the other mercenary was a bad idea. Killing him outright was out, since he was immobilized, but if they left him alive and someone on his side of this fuckfest found and released him, he’d be a danger to them again. Even with the snapped wrist.

  That left only one option: rendering the man useless to the other side.

  He grabbed the mercenary’s uninjured arm and used it as leverage to force him onto his stomach. Holding the other man’s arm fully extended, Henry knelt on his back to keep him in place then struck the mercenary’s elbow with an open hand as hard as he could.

  The snap was louder than he remembered the last time he’d broken someone’s arm, years ago and on the other side of the world.

  The mercenary let out a sharp scream and bucked, but Henry kept his weight over the center of the guy’s chest and pressed down hard enough to make breathing difficult.

  Ruby’s jaw dropped open, and she stared at the mercenary for several seconds before slowly raising her gaze to Henry’s face. She looked like she was going to puke.

  “You just broke his arm?” Her voice squeaked.

  And sounded like it, too.

  “It was either that or kill him.”

  She swallowed hard and lowered the bat, but her wide eyes and pale face told him she was on the cusp of losing it.

  “This isn’t a game,” he told her, unable to soften his voice, though he wanted to. He needed her to trust him to do what was necessary. “I have to eliminate threats before they kill us, and this guy is definitely a threat.”

  “You didn’t break the other guy’s arms.”

  “No. He doesn’t scare me like this one does.”

  She examined the man visually, as if trying to understand what made the two men different. “Why?”

  “The other dude kills people because
he likes it. This one doesn’t have enough humanity left in him to care. He’d kill you with as much emotion as he would use to make himself a sandwich.”

  The man, who’d been too busy dealing with the pain to say anything, made a throat-clearing kind of noise.

  They both looked at him.

  “He’s right,” the mercenary said, his face devoid of color. “I’m a monster. You should just kill me.”

  Ruby sucked in a breath.

  “No,” Henry said. “You need to face justice for your part in this. Your arms won’t stay broken forever.”

  “Are we going to leave him here?” Ruby asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll tie him to something so he can’t squirm away.” He grabbed the mercenary’s uniform and dragged him to an anchored power pole on one side of the room. The man passed out just before Henry let go of him, so he was able to tie the man’s feet to the pole.

  He made sure he hadn’t left any of the weapons behind, pocketing them or adding them to the pack.

  After looking outside the room to scan the hallway, he turned to face her. “Stay on my ass.”

  She blinked. “Okay.”

  “Fucking mercenaries,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped out of the room. “How the fuck did the FAFO get enough money to pay for a bunch of homicidal, motherfucking mercenaries?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

  He moved down the hall, every step calculated and deliberate. The sound of gunfire hadn’t let up, but it could at any moment, and when it did, well, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “Professionals like the guys whose arm I just broke don’t come cheap. The risks are significant, so we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for a job like this. Maybe even millions.”

  “Millions of…” Ruby sputtered. “But the FAFO is just a domestic terrorist group. Where could they possibly get that kind of money?”

  “Someone is bankrolling them.”

  “Why would anyone fund a terrorist group determined to kill off most of the world?”

  “The reasons people do bad things to other people are pretty standard,” he told her. He’d witnessed most of them for himself while in uniform and overseas. Oh, shit still happened in the U.S., but it wasn’t quite as blatant as in Asia and the Middle East. There, the rule of law was up for interpretation by powerful men who rewrote it whenever they wanted something different. “Greed and power being the most likely.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Not if your risk of death is as great as everyone else’s. There isn’t enough smallpox vaccine stockpiled in the world to protect more than a few thousand people.”

  “Maybe they think they’ve got some kind of miracle drug or something?”

  “Miracle drug? There are a few antiviral medications available, but none of them are anywhere near as effective as a vaccine, and all of them are hideously expensive. The CDC has been in the media explaining all this for months now,” she replied. “There must be more to it. We just don’t know what it is.”

  “Power-hungry people aren’t always rational,” Henry said. “When they choose terrorism as their strategy, they don’t care who dies as long as their targets are suffering. That’s when chemical warfare or bioweapons become attractive.” Ruby’s angry and confused expression faded into pale fear. “But you’re right. There’s more. Maybe we can question our two friends.”

  “The mercenaries?”

  He nodded. “They may be able to show us the money trail.”

  They passed the lab where Henry had fought the first mercenary. It looked no more disturbed than the last time he’d seen it. He carried on until he reached the elevator. “I have to go get a bag of stuff I left behind when that asshole cornered you. You need to stay here.”

  “Why? Splitting up doesn’t seem like a smart thing to—”

  “It’s too close to the fighting. Chances are good no one is going to come this way while our guys are shooting at them, but if they see us and think we’re coming at them from behind, bullets are going to fly.”

  “Maybe you should just leave the bag where it is.”

  He shook his head. “I need some of that gear.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Ruby?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but you’re the one in charge, so”—she shrugged like her shoulders weighed a lot more than they should have—“okay.”

  Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. “Stay here.”

  The pleading tone in his voice surprised him, but everything about her body language—slumped shoulders, head angled away from him, and lack of eye contact—said she wasn’t convinced.

  “Stay low and shoot anyone who isn’t me.” He handed her the Beretta he’d taken off the man with the broken arms. “If I don’t come back within two minutes, go inside the elevator, let it scan your retina, and press the emergency button. You’ll have five seconds to get out before the doors close and the whole system shuts down. Do not stay in the elevator.”

  She looked at the gun like it was some kind of living creepy crawly getting ready to bite her. “I told you, I don’t know how to use one of these.”

  “Watch.” He demonstrated what she’d have to do to shoot someone, then gave it to her and gestured for her to lift it and point it off to one side.

  “I just squeeze?” she asked, wiggling her index finger before putting it on the trigger.

  “That’s it.”

  She let out a huge sigh. “Okay. I don’t like it, but okay.” Her hands shook with a fine tremor, and she hadn’t regained much color to her face.

  He cupped the nape of her neck with one hand and brought her close enough to lean his forehead against hers. “We’re going to win this.”

  She gave him a brittle smile. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Believe it.” He kissed her, hard and fast. “I’ll be right back.”

  He turned and strode down the hall before he could lose the will to leave her alone at all, but there was no way in hell he was taking her that close to an active fight.

  The room where he’d stashed his duffel full of weapons and other unpleasant surprises was very close to the location of the larger gun battle. A janitor’s closet, it normally contained a couple of brooms, cleaning supplies, extra masks and gloves, and a scattering of tools.

  He’d hidden his duffel underneath a case of toilet paper, which was convenient, since this had turned into a shit show.

  He moved quickly but stayed alert for motion or movement around him. The cacophony of small-arms fire was enough for him to wish for ear protection. Fortunately, anyone in the thick of it wouldn’t hear him sneaking into the custodial closet.

  He reached the door without seeing more than shadows flashing against the wall twenty or thirty feet away.

  Inside the janitor’s closet, everything looked undisturbed, and his duffel was right where he’d left it. He picked it up and listened at the door for a moment. The battle sounds were consistent with what he’d heard moments ago. There was no reason to delay.

  He opened the door, checked the hallway, and after seeing nothing amiss, he headed out at a fast clip back to the elevator and Ruby.

  A bullet whizzed by and carved a divot into the wall a few inches above his head.

  He dropped to one knee and spun, pulling his handgun from its holster attached to his prosthetic. The shot of adrenaline his body dumped into his bloodstream helped him shut down the ifs, buts, and maybes and focus on staying alive.

  He aimed at the man who was shooting at him and fired off a couple of shots. As he hoped, the guy ducked back around the corner.

  Henry got to his feet and walked backward as fast as he dared, shooting at the terrorist every time he tried to come around the corner and take more shots at him.

&n
bsp; The guy looked like he’d walked off a battlefield in Syria or Afghanistan. Wore the same quasi-military desert combat uniform all those men wore over there, complete with a full beard and bandanna over his nose and mouth.

  Someone should have explained that his outfit was as good as a confession here in the United States.

  Was this the explosives guy Dozer had mentioned? A genuine foreign terrorist who had no business being inside the USA?

  Whoever in the FAFO who thought bringing in this guy was a good idea needed to have their head examined.

  Not that they’d made a sane decision in a long time, but this was crossing a hard, huge fucking line.

  Henry finally got around a corner and sprinted all the way back to the elevator.

  Chapter Twelve

  10:03 p.m.

  Ruby waited by the elevator, nervously scanning the three hallways. The building rocked and shook thanks to another explosion, one big enough to break more glass somewhere nearby.

  Henry rounded a corner far up the hallway he’d disappeared down a few minutes ago. He carried a fancy-looking militaryish rifle in his hands, had a full duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and wore a black vest carrying a variety of weapons, ammunition magazines, and…were those grenades?

  He was running, his face an intense mask of concentration, determination, and plain old pissed-off male.

  She opened her mouth to ask both what had happened, and on the ridiculous amount of firepower he was bringing, but stopped herself before she could say anything. Henry wasn’t given to exaggeration—he wouldn’t bring anything he didn’t think he was going to need.

  What he was running from, that was a different question.

  “Trouble?” she asked.

  “All kinds of it. Some asshole took some shots at me, but he’s too busy to move from where he is at the moment.”

  The lights flickered above them.

  A power outage would be disastrous. “Are there stairs we can take instead?”

  “No, but don’t worry about the power going out.” He pressed the button to call the elevator, and the doors opened. They got in, and Henry used his retina scan to unlock the control board and select the level-four lab.