The Depository

by E Y Mak

  Russell rushed forward faking a thrust with the knife in his right hand but instead punched hard with his left. Harry bit on the distraction hard, lowering his arm to protect his body from the knife blow, but then eating the full force of Russell’s left fist.

  As Harry dropped to the ground, out cold, Russell felt the impact reverberate up his arm back to his healing separated shoulder. He grimaced in pain but was able to avoid reacting to the pain any further. He would just have to carry on.

  Quickly, Russell heard the rush of footsteps coming down the hallway. He immediately rolled on the floor behind the door as a man rushed in. It was Fabron, who had quickly spotted Harry lying unconscious on the floor. Before he could react, Russell leaped from behind the door and plunged the knife deep into the taller man’s neck. Fabron crumpled onto the floor beside Harry, screaming out. Blood from his carotid artery painted the cell walls red as the man desperately tried to keep it from gushing out of his body.

  Russell walked over and calmly took Fabron’s shoulder-slung AK47 and holstered Vektor SP1 handgun. He slung the AK over his own shoulder and held the pistol in a two-handed grip. In the close winding quarters of what he had seen of the compound, he preferred the pistol.

  Now fully loaded up, he looked around for his personal effects. He didn’t see them. He crept into the hallway, wincing in pain with each step as his left foot made contact with the cold cement floor. He needed to find his clothes. He peeked out the door, scanning left and right before entering the hallway.

  He was at the end of a long corridor lined with doors and with a large steel door at the end. The explosions outside had stopped, but he could hear the loud, erratic, steps of disorganized and panicking soldiers. When he turned to go back inside the cell, he noticed a backpack sitting right outside the door to his cell.

  He quickly kneeled down and opened up the pack. Inside was a pair of blue jeans, a maroon sweatshirt, and a pair of hiking boots. He promptly put them on. Now fully clothed, Russell lifted his pistol and re-entered the torture room. He knew what he had to do to Harry.

  But it was too late.

  The room was deserted. While Fabron’s limp body was still lying facedown where Russell had left him, there was just a pool of blood where he had left Harry. He was gone.

  A trail of crimson droplets led to an open window.

  Russell rushed to the window and looked out. He saw a dark shape running into the forest, staggering and keeling and tripping into the shrubbery. He looked like he was heading towards a clearing in the distance where a yellow drilling rig, glowing in a wash of floodlights, towered over the trees.

  It was Ndian’s gold-drilling operation.

  Russell considered his options. He could follow him into the darkness. But in the grand scheme of things, Harry was a tool, a weapon. An elusive villain, but at the end of the day, a mere errand boy.

  Mauritius was the head. The information he had, and his ability to weaponize it, could upset nations and destroy first-world economies.

  Russell turned back into the compound.

  As he ran out the door, the floor under him exploded.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  The explosion knocked Russell off of his feet and straight out of the room. He tried to contort into a rolling posture to break his fall. Instead, he was propelled hard against the hallway wall. He landed on the floor with a dull thud.

  Russell lay there for a few seconds looking up at the exposed ceiling.

  He steadied himself to his feet. First, his knees. Then his right foot. Then his left. He had just regained his footing when another explosion rocked the compound.

  This time, it was farther away, and he didn’t get knocked off his feet.

  Russell immediately started running away from the torture room, making his way deeper into the compound. He sprinted down corridor after corridor, running blindly through the cold stone and concrete labyrinth, quietly checking doors. Another cell here, a closet there. He continued along the repetitive trail. All he could remember from the morning was being dragged through a series of doors. And now he could see no identifiable markings nor signs nor other guides. The only reason Russell knew that he wasn’t running in circles was that he didn’t cross back over the small drips of blood he was periodically leaving behind, like a morbid Hansel and Gretel crumb trail.

  It was about ten minutes into his search that he detected a whiff of a familiar smell. It was the nutty scent mixed with the acrid smell of an overflowing pot. A nearby kitchen. His mind turned to the millet paste. He had forgotten until then how little they had been feeding him and how hungry he was.

  He followed the aroma, turning left and right, using his nose to detect the increasing smell. He had found a large kitchen. He peered in. It appeared empty but recently occupied. The stove light was on, and white foam was gushing out of an unattended pot. A telephone was mounted on the wall above a hanging clipboard. The only sound permeating the silence was the clattering of the pot and the buzzy static of a CB radio set on top of a large industrial kitchen island.

  Russell slipped in, pistol drawn, and cleared the room—first left, then right. There was only one other door on the far side of the kitchen. He limped silently over and peeked in. It was an empty pantry.

  First, he turned on the tap and filled his palms with water, drinking quickly. He then removed the pot from the top of the stove. The foam overflowing from the top of the pot settled as he moved it over to the sink. The bitter smell of millet paste seared into his nose. Diluting the paste under some cold water, he scooped a healthy portion into a wooden bowl set beside the pot. He cautiously downed a few spoonfuls while crouching behind the island. It wasn’t tasty, but he could feel the nourishment returning energy to his weary body.

  As he was finishing, he went to the pantry, searched around, and found an unopened medical kit. He tore it open, grabbed some bandages, and taped up his bloodied feet. He found a bottle of Panadol, shrugged, and swallowed two of the painkillers.

  As he walked out of the pantry, he heard muffled voices in the hallway. He quickly rolled back into the pantry just as he heard one of the voices pause outside the room.

  “The place is exploding! No one cares about your food,” a voice shouted angrily in French. “And most of the guys are chasing those jeeps. I’m going to go check on our captive.”

  Russell heard two steps of footsteps—one walking away down the hallway, the other coming closer, probably entering the kitchen. Russell peered into the kitchen and saw Serge, the old man that served him every morning.

  He watched as Serge walked over to the sink. When Serge paused to look at the stove, Russell had already snuck up behind the older man. He jumped and locked Serge into a headlock, dragging him back into the pantry. Russell felt Serge’s weak, tired hands grab onto his forearm, his legs kicking in midair aimlessly.

  “Don’t move and don’t say a word,” Russell whispered into Serge’s ear in fluent French.

  “I was going to come to bring you dinner soon,” whispered Serge.

  “Don’t bother, I’ve already had my share,” Russell said. He needed him for something more than food. He had been wandering aimlessly for the better part of ten minutes. The compound was huge. But could he trust Serge? Russell guessed that he might be forced to.

  “I know you’re just a local trying to find some work. The people here are poisoning your community. Help me in another way. I need you to take me to the servers. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m just a cook. I’m not here for any reason except to earn money to feed my family. Please don’t kill me,” said Serge, no longer thrashing with his feet.

  “Do you know where the server room is? There’s a lot of computers there. Do you know how to get me there?” whispered Russell, tightening his grip.

  “Computers?” asked Serge.

  “Yes. Big computers with lots of people working on them,” Russell said.

  Serge loosened his grip on Russell’s forearm. In turn, Russel
l relaxed his forearms gripped around Serge’s neck. Serge gave a defeated sigh.

  “Yes, I know where it is. It’s on the fifth floor. The hackers aren’t allowed to go anywhere other than the computer room, so I bring lunch and dinner every day.”

  “Can you show me how to get there?” Russell asked as he loosened his grip on Serge entirely and threw him deeper into the pantry. He looked into Serge’s dark and weary eyes. Serge immediately averted his gaze and nodded fearfully.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  “Did you see where Russell was heading?” Candice asked as they crept in the underbrush towards the compound.

  “No,” said Benita. “The walls are too thick for the sensors to penetrate deeply. We’ll have to find him the old-fashioned way.”

  “Okay,” said Candice. “I’ve been staring at the map long enough that I know the way to Russell.”

  After another thirty seconds of half-sneaking, half-running, Candice arrived at the edge of the forest. Twenty steps of thigh-level grass separated them from the gaping hole in the compound set-off by Schmidt and Mueller. A fire raged inside the hole, spewing embers thirty feet into the sky.

  Candice turned off her night-vision goggles as she got close to the fire. She looked over at Benita and mouthed, “Clear. Go on three!” Benita nodded as Candice silently counted off on her fingers. Then they both rushed into the clearing. They pushed forward smoothly, scanning the top of the ramparts as they went. There was no obvious cover in the clearing, so they ran at a measured pace, slowly enough to avoid making any noise. They had only made it about ten strides when a voice from the darkness shouted, “Halt!”

  Candice froze. Her assailant was nowhere to be seen.

  “Halt!” the voice said again in a heavy French accent. It seemed to emanate from directly in front of her, but she couldn’t locate the source of the sound.

  Suddenly, the high-pitched whiz of a silenced round shot by her ear. In front, she heard the sound of a bullet penetrating flesh.

  Patrice’s voice came in on her earpiece. “I got you covered, at least until you get inside.”

  “Copy . . . and thanks,” Benita said.

  They made it the rest of the way without any other problems. They tried to walk directly into the hole created by the explosion, but the flames shooting out of the damaged wall prevented them from using that entry point. So Candice walked further past the wall, following closely behind Benita. They made their way to the iron side door they had noted earlier in the mission. Benita arrived first and knelt down. She scrutinized the door. It was secured by a heavy electronic lock. Neither Candice nor Benita were going to be able to open it without someone hacking the system.

  “Petri,” Candice whispered. “Are you going to be able to help us with the door here?”

  There was a moment of silence before Bob responded on the comm.

  “Negative. We need him here until the Mercs arrive. Follow along the northeast wall, the Israelis opened up a second breach. They remain on the perimeter. No one is paying attention. Three Tangos are trying to put out the fire.”

  “Copy,” Candice said. The pair hugged the concrete of the northeast wall and looped around the corner of the compound.

  After making a sharp turn, they spotted the dark char marks of another breach just sixty yards away. She also saw the silhouettes of three people. They were all preoccupied with putting out the dying remains of a fire started by the explosion and had slung their AK-47s on their back. Candice crept further along towards the breach until she and Benita were less than fifteen feet from the hole.

  Candice bent down and pulled a flashbang grenade from a loop on her vest. She yanked the pull ring and lobbed it into the opening. She simultaneously leaned against the wall and faced away from the breach to protect her eyes and ears.

  Clang.

  She heard the grenade bounce once on the hard floor. She visualized what was likely happening. On the first bounce, all three guards immediately turned towards the sound of metal on stone. She imagined that this was followed by the usual reaction when a grenade hit the ground.

  First, panic. The sound of a grenade is distinct. An instantly familiar sound, a tinny reverberating sound of an irregular metal cylinder spinning off cement.

  Then, a measurement balancing a sense of duty and/or self-preservation. All soldiers would make a split-second calculation to locate the threat. Find the risk, judge the distance, measure the possible options. If the grenade is close enough, you dive. If the grenade is far away, you take cover. There is no time to run.

  Finally, if heroism or flight are not options, then acceptance is the third action. If there is no hope to avoid the grenade or mitigate its damage, panic becomes acceptance.

  Candice could not see or hear any of this with her head turned away from the grenade and put her hands on her ears.

  But she could hear through her hands the sound of a loud bang. The trees from the forest where she had just left were suddenly lit bright white. In the distance, she saw a tall, slender man running into the forest suddenly enveloped in the flash from the magnesium core of the flash-bang grenade. Before she could make out who the man was, she thought she heard the sound of silenced bullets whizzing by. Quick and short and deliberate. All three ended with the wet thwack of a bullet hitting flesh.

  “Targets eliminated,” said Schmidt’s voice in the radio.

  Candice and Benita turned back to the hole in the compound wall. The bodies of all three guards were laying lifelessly on the ground, a bullet hole in each head, courtesy of the Israeli sniper.

  “We’re in,” Benita said as she stepped over the exposed wall and into the compound.

  “Copy,” Schmidt said in her earpiece. “Be careful.”

  “You too,” said Candice.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  The compound was an abandoned fifteenth-century French fortress that Mauritius had reinforced for his own purposes. Home-team advantage. However, Serge had spoke about an exit that was only three doors down—a staircase that led to the fourth floor. He found the door quickly and walked delicately up the stairs. The top of the staircase opened up into a hallway. As he walked up, he spotted the light of floodlamps outside. The immediate area seemed quiet, but Russell walked slowly, tentatively checking his corners before entering the hallway.

  The emptiness of the compound was eerie.

  In the corridor, he hugged the wall opposite the window and hurried along on the path that Serge had suggested. After three more hallways, he heard the distinctive clacking of keyboards in the distance. Russell crept towards the source and saw that the door to the purported server room was ajar.

  He looked in.

  The room was huge—the size of a large gymnasium but filled entirely with computers. It was like a more ragged version of the command center in Phineas Tower, but much larger. Similar to the command center, there were nine large flat-screen displays at the front placed to form one large screen. In total, there could have been about five hundred computer stations, each contained on three sides with one-yard-high cubicle walls.

  The majority of the computer terminals were manned. But everyone, at the moment, seemed to be transfixed on the front display. It was a topographical map. A white blip flashed in the middle of the map. Another red flashing blip was at the bottom left. It looked like the red blip was moving towards the white blip.

  No one was facing the back of the room, but just like in Phineas Tower, there were guards posted at each entryway, including the one that he had glanced inside. Russell suspected that the guards weren’t so much for keeping intruders out as they were for keeping the hackers in, as all of the guards that he could see were facing the inside of the room. They had not noticed him.

  The sound of footsteps.

  Russell heard them walking down the stairs. He moved to pass the doorway without going inside and sprinted forward, ducking into a sunken doorway three doors down from the entryway. He hid behind a large cardboard box of computer parts. />
  The footsteps were louder now. It sounded like three distinct sets. They grew closer. The sounds walked right past the entrance of the server room. Russell peered out from behind the box.

  The first thing he noticed was brown hair tied tightly into a ponytail. It was Benita!

  She’s here! But how?

  Next to her was another familiar face.

  Candice? What the hell was she doing here?

  Before Russell could say anything, he noticed that both had their arms tied behind their back.

  Walking immediately behind them was Dominique.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Russell waited until Candice, Benita, and Dominique were just about to pass the cardboard box. Once they were immediately beside the box, Russell revealed himself and raised his pistol towards Dominique, the handgun but two inches away from Dominique’s right temple. “Let them go,” Russell ordered. He said it loud enough to show he meant business, soft enough to not warn anyone else of their presence. Dominique did not flinch. He was cool as a cucumber.

  Only one second passed before both girls turned around.

  “Russell!” whispered Benita excitedly. She looked around. “I’ll explain everything shortly. Put the gun down.”

  Russell didn’t lower the weapon. All he could remember was the moments of torture that he had been subjected to at the hands of this animal. He responded by moving the gun another inch towards Dominique’s head.

  This time, Candice whispered, “Let’s get somewhere safe and sort this out.”

  Dominique still had not flinched.

  The foursome walked back down the hallway towards the stairs. The two girls first. Then Dominique. Then Russell, who had the pistol still centered at the base of Dominique’s head. They encountered a small empty room before the stairs. No computers. No storage boxes. Not even a broom. The pale moonlight shone in through a box window on the far side of the room.