The Jewel of Babylon (The Unusual Operations Division Book 1)

by Jacob Hammes

  “There are bigger things at work here than you and I,” John said. “I don’t want any trouble with you. Just let us go.”

  “You’ve killed too many people already, John. I’m not going to let you kill your sister, too!”

  “He would never hurt me,” shouted Tiffany from behind John’s back. She looked like a drowned cat. “You killed my parents and you tried to kill my brother and now you’re telling me that John is the bad guy? He told me all about your plans!”

  “Quiet, Tiff,” John said, holding his sister back behind him. “It doesn’t matter now. None of this makes any difference. All we want is to be left alone.”

  “Tiffany,” Phillip yelled. “You have no idea what is going on here. You need to get away from your brother. He killed your parents, not us. I work for the Department of Defense, Tiffany, and right now you are in grave danger.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” she screamed painfully. Phillip could tell that she was in obvious emotional distress.

  “That’s enough,” John said. Suddenly he was in action. In one quick movement, he was holding a full length lounge chair like a shield. With the chair blocking his silhouette, he started charging headlong toward his aggressor. He came hurtling at Phillip like a linebacker on a blitz and with that shield it was impossible to get a good shot off with a dart gun.

  Phillip decided that he had also had enough. In the second it took for John to close the distance between the two, Phillip reached into his coat and pulled the pistol that shot real, lead bullets. He would only have one shot at putting this guy down and he wasn’t about to lose it now.

  He raised the pistol just in time to squeeze one round off through the center of the chair. The boom came along with a bright clap of lightning overhead casting an ethereal light over the entire area. Then there was silence.

  Both Phillip and the chair slammed to the ground sending water flying everywhere. He lost his grip on the wet pistol but still had his tranquilizer gun. The water was halfway up his face beneath the weight of the chair and the huge man on top.

  A sudden pain ripped through his wrist as John tore the tranquilizer gun from his grip. Underneath the chair he knew that somehow he had missed the one shot he had to take this guy down. Though he couldn’t be sure, he swore he saw a hole in the middle of the chair. He was a crack shot and by far one of the best in the company. Somehow, though, he had missed his one chance at ending this mayhem. Now he was sure of only one thing.

  He was going to die.

  “Now,” Phillip hardly heard John yelling through the wet chair and the puddle that was threatening to drown him. “You leave me with an interesting opportunity. You might prove useful, little guy. I think I’m going to take you with me. Soon enough you’ll taste my blade, too.”

  A sharp stabbing pain shot through his shoulder and immediately Phillip felt a drowsiness engulf him. His muscles stopped working properly and he lost the ability to struggle. His arms and legs felt heavy, the sound of the pouring rain was distant and Phillip couldn’t tell whether the darkness was from the failing light of sunset or the fact that he was quickly losing consciousness.

  John flung the chair aside with just enough time for Phillip to catch a glance before he fell asleep. He looked like a madman. Fiery red-lined eyes and facial hair accented the rage that was curling the corners of his lips.

  With one hand, John picked him up and flung Phillip over his broad shoulders. Just inches from his closing eyes was the exit wound of the pistol round. There was no blood coming from the gaping wound—just dry, torn flesh where it had exited out the other side of the muscles that clothed the madman.

  Chapter 32

  Marcus was using every trick in the book to get to the hotel as fast as possible. The lights overhead were flashing and the siren was screaming and he had already ridden on two sidewalks to get around traffic that was at a complete standstill. Henry had been in almost constant contact with Cynthia, giving updates on the situation every few seconds on everything from where they were to what they had heard from Brenda and Gregory. There was finally some good news, though Marcus did not understand what it meant.

  “We have a constant read on John via satellite,” Brenda was relaying. “Something is going on with his signature. Gregory thinks it’s because he has Tiffany but there is no way to be sure. The satellite is registering something once every few seconds. It’s like looking at GPS readings and from what I’m getting he has already left the hotel.”

  “God damn it!” Marcus yelled and punched the steering wheel when he heard the news. “Has Phillip checked in?”

  “No,” Brenda said. She was on speakerphone now. “I checked in with the hotel and no one has seen him. I’m not sure what to do. Everyone is too interested in the rain, the light show overhead, and some guy that apparently committed suicide by jumping out of his window. We can safely assume it was John’s work.”

  Marcus knew she wanted to voice her concerns about Phillip and he was glad that she didn’t. They did not need any more bad news or foreboding feelings. It would be the last straw for Marcus, were another one of his teammates hurt.

  “Keep trying to get in touch with Phillip and keep us updated on where John is headed.” Marcus swerved around a pedestrian, spraying the hapless person with gallons of water in the process. The failing light and the immense amounts of rain was making driving at high speeds dangerous.

  “Well, it looks like he’s heading south toward I-20. It will take him some time to get there though, so maybe you can cut him off.”

  Marcus jerked the cop car into a skidding right turn, barely missing a huge light pole as he jumped the curb. If John was headed for I-20, then so was Marcus.

  “That son of a bitch must have just passed us!” Henry said over the three-way connection. “We’re hooking a U-turn. Maybe we will be right behind him. Where’d you see him last?”

  “He cut around you, Henry,” Brenda said. “He used Juniper Street, that’s west from where you are. He will be hitting I-75 in moments and then it’s a straight shot to I-20. You need to follow him if you’re going to make any headway. Midtown is completely stopped up.”

  Henry didn’t need to be told as he was experiencing it firsthand.

  Marcus was only a mile from I-20. He could be there in a matter of minutes if he could keep weaving through traffic. The difference between the stick-on, revolving light that Henry had and the cop car was its massive sirens. People could hear Marcus coming from a block away and it was working to his advantage.

  “What type of car is he driving?” Marcus asked. “We need to figure out what he’s driving if we’re going to have any chance at this.”

  “I’m looking into it,” Brenda said. Her fingers flew across the computer keyboard as only an expert’s could.

  “You need to look as fast as you can,” Marcus said. “I’m coming up on the freeway entrance any second now and I need to know what I’m looking for.”

  “I’m getting in touch with the hotel, just give me a second,” Brenda was just as irritated as everyone else and Marcus was making it difficult for her to keep her cool. The frustration was palpable from both sides.

  “The guy at the front desk says that someone was murdered,” Brenda said a few moments later. “He came in driving a new Pontiac GTO, one that’s hard to miss. The cops have already showed up and wouldn’t you know, the vehicle is gone. ”

  “At least he sprang for a high profile car,” Marcus had seen pictures of the new GTO with its 350 horsepower V8 engine was hidden beneath a sleek exterior that rivaled its toughest competitor. Unfortunately, it also rivaled its competition in terms of power and all around speed. Once on the freeway, John could obtain a very dangerous speed in a matter of seconds. He would have a definite advantage.

  “You’d better hurry, Marcus,” Brenda said. “He just hit I-75. It’s only going to take him a minute to get to I-20, even with the weather. ” Every time she spoke it was more bad news. At this point Marcus wished she would just shut her
mouth.

  “Jesus he’s moving fast,” Henry came over the speakerphone. Marcus agreed. He could see the exit just ahead but getting there was another matter all-together. There was so much water in the streets vehicles had started stalling, causing even more traffic. It was an obstacle course of massive puddles and stalled cars before he could get to the high onramp.

  With some tricky driving, Marcus made it through the last hundred yards to the eastbound onramp for I-20. By Brenda’s calculations he was five miles back. It had taken another precious five minutes to get to the freeway through the maze. The extra time provided John with enough distance to hit I-20, the major freeway between Atlanta and the east coast. Even if Marcus drove sixty miles an hour faster than the GTO, it would still take him five minutes to catch up. That meant John had an extra five minutes to figure out what he was going to do to his sister. Marcus presumed that John had some plan that kept Tiffany alive for the time being. If not, she would have been dead already.

  He was betting on it.

  Henry was not far behind. In fact, the onramp that he took actually put him on the freeway in front of Marcus by a good half mile. Somehow, they had all come to this point together. Whether it was dumb luck or the team’s perfect timing, they were now properly manned and able to finish the job with at least some sense of safety. All they had to do was figure out how to get to John before he decided to do something else out of sheer madness.

  Cynthia looked at Marcus from the passenger seat. It was the first time that she had made any sort of significant movement since she got in the car. Through all the crazy driving and rain that was still coming down in buckets, she had managed to pull herself together. Her dark eyes had changed. The sadness that had contorted them before, left those leaking tears, was gone. Now all they held was anger and vengeance.

  “Can you drive this thing a little faster?” she prodded. No matter how hard she tried to mask it, she was thinking of nothing but murder. “If she were alive, my grandmother would be outdriving you right now.”

  Marcus couldn’t catch a break. His only regret in life would be that he didn’t have enough time to learn everything, especially everything about women. They were more resilient than even he could imagine in times of duress. He was proud to have the best team ever conceived and he would avenge his friend Bishop, even if it was his last act.

  “You want to see some good driving then?” he said, smiling for the first time in quite a while. “Let’s see what this hunk of junk has to offer.”

  Chapter 33

  John was all gone inside. His conscious mind had not come back since he had murdered his parents. That was also when his unwanted visitor had pulled the last vital part of information out of him—the whereabouts of his sister. Now, he had been discarded like some piece of trash. He felt himself slip away, slip under the huge tide that had drowned him like an ocean of blackness. It was overwhelming, the force that had entered him. No matter how many times the battlefield had tested him, this time he found himself unprepared.

  What remained now was entirely alien. It was no person, just the shell of what had once been a man. It was cold, silent, calculating, and purely sociopathic. It blended perfectly and, like a chameleon, it had almost perfectly copied John’s attitude. Whatever it was that had taken him over had no remorse and no worry about what it was hurting or why. It didn’t think twice before simply letting the darkness take John away, or before it dragged that blade across two innocent people’s throats.

  It was a perfect killing machine and it was out for more.

  Somehow the façade that it had taken was working with Tiffany, John’s sister. Even a blood relative could not tell that John was gone, only to have been replaced by some foreign invader. She was still under the impression that her brother was truly the good guy and that he was merely the pawn in some greater government scheme. She had seen the Bourne Supremacy and for her, conspiracies were as common as freckles.

  Tiffany had always held her own opinions about the government and what her brother was doing. She disapproved greatly of the secret killing that she had heard about through the grapevine. It seemed to her that the government would do anything to protect itself and John’s explanation had been more than convincing. Even the slightest hint of a Special Forces soldier going rogue in the attempt to protect his family was enough for her.

  She believed every word. It all rang especially true since she had seen more than one of her friends lose everything in a struggling economy. The United States government was not all it was cracked up to be.

  She even believed the reasons that John had given for keeping Phillip, tied and gagged in the trunk of the vehicle that they had stolen from the man that her brother had murdered. He was a secret agent, all a perfectly logical part of the bigger plan. So was the innocent man lying dead in the entryway of the hotel.

  She was, however, frightened to death. She was shaking and had been since John told her about how her parents had been murdered. As much as she would like to blame it on the rain and the colder than usual temperatures she was nervous and frightened and could not deny it. John had been very convincing, even giving her a gun to protect herself from anyone who might snatch her up and throw her in a ‘black van with no windows’.

  Sure, Tiffany had fired a few pistols in her time, but she doubted she could use one against another human being. Even if she did, she knew that it would be a long shot to actually hit her target.

  What was most unbelievable was that she, a respectable surgeon, was on the run from a government agency. It was beyond comprehension that her vacation had ended like this. She had gone to get over the death of her brother in the first place and had come home to the death of her parents and the realization that her own government might want her dead.

  Tears leaked uncontrollably from both of her eyes.

  John did not seem to notice. He was busy keeping both eyes on the road and both hands on the steering wheel. The rain was torrential and John told her that he would be driving very safe not only to keep from crashing but also to keep from bringing unwanted attention. He knew that, by now, he would be the subject of a statewide manhunt.

  If he could just keep from being caught for two more hours, he wouldn’t have to worry any longer. His plans were coalescing before him nicely.

  “Where are we going?” Tiffany broke the silence after ten minutes on the freeway. “Why are we headed east? Don’t you think they will be looking for us on the freeways?”

  “It’s raining too hard to put a chopper in the air,” John said as he leaned forward in the driver’s seat to get a better look of the sky. “No one will be looking for us where we are going. It’s going to be rough for a few days but we are going to camp out in Stone Mountain State Park.”

  “Stone Mountain,” Tiffany repeated. “Aren’t they closed this time of year?”

  “Yes,” John responded. “Which is why they won’t be looking for us out there. It’s a big park and we are going to ditch the car on a frontage road before we get there. It should take the feds a few days to find it and by then we will be gone.”

  “What about the guy in the trunk?” Tiffany asked.

  A cold shadow passed over John’s eyes, a shadow that Tiffany saw. It scared her. It also made her realize what the Army had done to her brother. He was planning something sinister.

  “Leverage,” the answer surprised her. “We can use him as a bargaining chip to get out of here. If worse comes to worst and the government finds us we have something to work with.”

  “You’re not going to kill him?”

  “No,” John sounded surprised. “You think that I would just kill an innocent man?”

  “He shot you with that tranquilizer gun and tried to shoot you with a pistol,” Tiffany answered. “He’s hardly innocent.”

  John had changed shirts with Phillip at the first chance he had, switching the one with the hole through the abdomen for a fresh one. He claimed it was because the man had been wearing something cleaner
and less drenched. In truth, however well he could stem his blood flow he couldn’t hide a hole spattered with bits of flesh.

  “Don’t worry,” John said, reassuringly. “I’ve got a plan. You leave the logistics to me and I swear we will get out of this alive.”

  Tiffany looked very hesitant. She couldn’t shake the shadow she had seen cross her brother’s face. It was as if, for a moment, he was someone else. It made her briefly question the whole situation. She looked awkwardly forward in her seat, watching the rain spatter off the windshield.

  “Look, Tiffany,” John said, sighing. “I’m your brother but I’m also a soldier. Sometimes, in cases like this, you have to put aside your compassion for humanity. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do in order to survive. I may act as if I have no compassion, no sympathy, but all I am thinking about is you and I. I don’t want to see my last surviving family member hurt and regardless of what I have to do, I will keep you safe. “

  That was it. That reassurance was exactly what Tiffany needed to pledge her absolute loyalty to her brother and their survival. At that moment, she was determined to do whatever it took to live through this. She could prove that her brother was the victim of some government plot to keep its secrets safe and sound. She knew she could.

  “Okay,” she said aloud. “I believe you, John. I’ll do whatever you ask me, even if it means we kill that bastard in the trunk.”

  Chapter 34

  Marcus was going as fast as he could down the freeway, which turned out to be about seventy miles per hour. He wanted nothing more than to catch John, yet he was not about to ruin the entire chase because he hydroplaned off the road. For the most part, I-20 was flat and straight, yet even on the easiest road the amounts of water coming down would be hazardous.