by Jacob Hammes
“So you’re leaving me here and stripping me of my constitutional rights?”
“You can think of it that way,” she said coldly. “Or you can thank me for getting you out of a lifelong prison sentence which just might end with you on the wrong end of a lethal injection.”
He swallowed the information he had just been given. He didn’t have many options, it seemed, but Brenda seemed serious. Somehow he had made a powerful friend in the NSA by killing his best friend. Though it didn’t make him feel any better, at least he had hope that he would see his family again.
“Did you see anything strange before you had these hallucinations?” Brenda asked.
“Maybe,” Derek said. “We’ve seen some crazy stuff up at that old mill. One time we stumbled into a rave, so I don’t consider much strange about the place. This time, though, we saw a few people leaving the area before we heard the girl screaming.”
“Any descriptions of either the vehicle or the people would be helpful,” Brenda said, hoping to drag some more information out of him.
“I can’t recall,” Derek said sadly. “I don’t remember what they were driving. I do remember there were three or four of them. They left in a hurry.”
“Three or four people,” Brenda said quietly. “Sounds like they might have planted something up there for you. Do you have any enemies?”
“None that I know of,” Derek said. “I wish. It would make this thing a bit easier knowing I was the subject of someone’s revenge.”
“Keep your head up,” Brenda said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Anything else you can tell me?” She hoped Derek would remember something that might help.
“No,” he shrugged. “I thought I was going crazy. The fear I felt near that place was like nothing else I had ever experienced. I just wanted to get away.”
“You’re going to need to talk to someone about this,” Brenda said. “We will arrange some counseling. Don’t talk to your family about it, please. It’s not going to help any of you.”
Derek nodded, tears welling up in his eyes.
“I’ve got nothing further,” Brenda said, picking up her bag after a brief moment of silence. The few things she had remaining, she stuffed into the bag before closing it and heading for the door. Though Derek was visibly shaken by the entire ordeal, he seemed as if a few decades had been added back to his life and a few tons of weight had been taken off his shoulders.
The interview was as long as it had to be for Brenda, especially since a large power spike had been reported in the area. What should have been an abandoned sawmill seemed as if it were fully operational for about two hours. It was enough evidence, for her at least, to see the man set free. Obviously he would be burdened with what had happened for the rest of his life—it would be a miracle if he didn’t commit suicide.
The long hallway out of the jail was lined with posters telling inmates and police alike to be on guard. She grinned at the irony they presented. In such conditions, with dull dirty walls, flickering overhead fluorescent bulbs, and bars over the windows, it wasn’t easy to relax.
Her legs, conditioned from years of exercise, moved her easily across the dingy floors and over the threshold of the hall into the reception area. There, she retrieved her identification and weapon before saying goodbye and heading outside. The two police officers that followed her were a little too close for comfort, but they all shoved through the door and headed in their own respective directions.
Besides them, there were only two vehicles in the parking lot with people inside. One car she didn’t recognize, but a man was reading a newspaper in the bright sun. The other was her taxi driver, fast asleep beneath the shade of a large oak.
Brenda tapped on the window to wake him up. He started audibly and smacked his head on the window, causing a string of profanity. She stifled a laugh, trying hard not to upset the half-asleep man. Instead, she grabbed her phone out of her pocket and checked her messages.
Stephen had texted her three times.
“You ready?” the taxi driver asked, starting the car. Brenda smiled and nodded her head. She was so happy to be with someone like Stephen, who shared the same values that she did. He always knew what to say to cheer her up.
The next millisecond changed her life forever. Looking down at the phone, she was able to see something she never expected. A bright flash and severe pressure change came from beneath the car, followed instantaneously by a fireball which ripped the air to shreds. The fire expanded before her, faster than her eyes could ever register. It flowed into every facet of the vehicle, burning paint and upholstery, leather and electronics. As it worked up into the car, it started searing the flesh from the taxi driver. Chunks of the floorboards ripped up through him, splattering his fragile body as they tore through him.
The fire worked outward, too, enveloping Brenda’s lower half as instantly as it had started. The pressure blew her back and over another car, rendering her unconscious with its blast. Her body flailed as it flew like a ragdoll belonging to a grumpy child. She toppled end over end until it came to rest beside a truck, propped up as if she were sitting of her own accord.
The fiery wreckage that had been the taxi came down from its short lived flight back into its own inferno. There, it blossomed into something that burned with a rage fueled by gasoline. The man inside was dead, instantly killed by the force of the blast. Brenda, on the other hand, had been thrown quite far from the fire.
The cops witnessed the explosion. To them, the entire thing had happened in an instant. After the initial reaction of ducking for cover wore off, they realized something serious had happened in their parking lot. With guns holstered, they ran to the wreckage while calling for help over their shoulder-mounted radios. In seconds, Brenda was found by one police officer who could only look at her horrified at what he saw.
Where the fire had blasted out from beneath the taxi, it had also damaged anything it had touched. Her legs below the knees had been mangled beyond recognition. Where there had been skin and flesh before had been replaced with something unrecognizable. What remained of her legs were not legs at all, but the leftovers of a disaster. Blood seeped out onto the black pavement and with each beat of her heart, the puddle grew.
The puddle kept growing, despite the efforts of the officers to stop it.
Chapter 15
The plane with Marcus and the team landed just shy of five in the afternoon. They were greeted by the few team members they always were after being out it the field for any amount of time. Two or three logistical support personnel were there to pick bags up while two more men were there to debrief. The NSA agents who sat across from them in their own building were also present, as always, to ensure nothing out of the ordinary was leaked out.
Everyone smiled and laughed as they realized finally they were on their own soil once more. Even the downtrodden Henry smiled as he was hauled away in a gurney for a once over at the local hospital. They had experienced too many close calls with death not to realize how fortunate they were to be home. Marcus called Julie along the way to let her know just when he would be home. She had surprises waiting for him, or so she teased.
It wasn’t until after they had arrived back at the office building they realized something was awry. The usual black SUVs pulled them in through the gates, still light in the mid-afternoon sun, before dropping down into the bowels of the building. There Gregory, Phillip, and Shelia, the analyst that had helped them find so much information, waited patiently.
Marcus realized something was wrong right away. That old familiar pit in his stomach came back with a vengeance and suddenly he didn’t feel like smiling anymore. He didn’t see whether or not the rest of the team had felt the same way. Instead, he ensured that he was the first one out of the vehicle.
Sheila had the remnants of a river filled with tears drying up on her dark face.
“What’s the matter,” Marcus asked, never one to mince words. “Out of dozens of field problems,
you’ve never come to greet us yourself. It must be bad.”
“It is,” Gregory said quietly. He allowed everyone to gather around and quiet down before he delved into what had happened, just hours ago.
“As you all know, Brenda went to see the guy who is being brought up on murder charges. She was going to figure out whether the guy’s story was consistent with what you were able to experience when you got too close to the box.
“Apparently someone knew she was coming. I’m not sure how this correlates in any way but she, along with the driver of the taxi that she was riding in, were involved in a pretty severe incident.”
“Gregory,” Stephen said, eyes widening. Marcus instinctively grabbed his shoulder.
“Someone planted a brick of C4 beneath the vehicle she was riding in. When they detonated it, it killed the driver and sent her across the parking lot. She’s alive, for now, and in critical care at a D.C. trauma center. Stephen, I need you to go and be with her.”
Stephen, as big and tough as he was, couldn’t hold his emotions in. He cursed out loud as tears rolled down his face, pacing back and forth like a feral animal.
“Is she okay?” his voice trembled and broke.
“No,” Gregory admitted. “Doctors don’t see her living through the night…”
“No,” Stephen screamed. His knees hit the floor. The pain he felt radiated through everyone present, though none of them felt was he did. He was immediately surrounded by compassionate people, all vying to help him keep control.
“One of the drivers will take you over there. You need to be with her.”
“Yea,” he whispered. “I need to be with her. I should have been with her. Someone should have been with her, watching her back. It’s not like us to work alone.”
“If two people had gone, two people would be in this situation instead of one,” Gregory said solemnly. He ran a trembling hand through his short cropped, gray hair. “I’ve worked it through my head a million times, Stephen—there’s no one on this planet that should be trying to kill us.”
Stephen couldn’t say anything else. Instead, he pulled himself up off the ground and retreated slowly to one of the SUV’s. There, the driver instantly took off, pulling out of the parking lot and off toward the wounded woman. Stephen would try his hardest to keep her company until she died, though it would be the hardest thing he would ever have to do. He had been a Navy SEAL, gone on countless missions and killed dozens of men, but he had never experienced a loss so personal.
Marcus felt the weight of a thousand stones suddenly resting upon his shoulders. He knew something had gone awry in this case, though he still couldn’t pin down exactly what it was. How this could happen without them even knowing who they were chasing made his head swim in confusion. He hadn’t the slightest idea where to start, figuring out exactly who was out to get them and how they had anything to do with this goddamn machine.
“The rest of you,” Gregory was whiter than Marcus had ever seen him. The news had drained him completely. Brenda was not only a great colleague, but one of the smartest women he had ever met. Losing her was just like losing Bishop.
“The rest of you need to come with me. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Sheila started giving the crew a debriefing as they made their way upstairs. She had retrieved more information while the team had been gone and Brenda wasn’t around. Gregory displayed confidence in her, though. She had brought good information forward on multiple occasions, meaning she was valuable.
Wherever she had come from, she was better at her job than anyone else Marcus had ever met.
“We’ve been trying to contact Lambert Frederickson for some time now,” she started. “His assistants say he is out of town. Others say that they might be able to get in touch with him, but then they end up hanging up on us and not answering anymore. I’m not exactly sure what this means for our friend Lambert, but he’s acting quite suspicious.”
“It means we’re going to bring him in for questioning,” Marcus growled. “It means that once we get our hands on that slimy son of a bitch, we’re going to strangle him until he tells us every single thing he knows.”
Everyone felt the same way. They had been though too much to be brushed off by a man they had come to trust. If he didn’t have answers about how sinister Stewart was, or how they had almost been killed in Nigeria, or even how Brenda came to be the target of some mysterious ‘hit’, then he would be spending countless days behind bars until he did. They didn’t want to stop and think about how much danger they might be in, just for investigating a box no one could claim.
They walked the rest of the way to the briefing room in silence. Once in, Gregory turned the lights on. Remembering he had other places to be, he made to walk back out. The image of a ghost is what greeted him, hiding in the shadow behind the door. Before he could react, the man who everyone but Marcus had thought was dead, punched Gregory in the nose. The blow sent him sprawling to the floor and sent everyone else grabbing for their weapons.
“Ah,” Stewart said, a smile decorating his smooth face. “You can keep your weapons in their holsters.”
“How the hell did you get in here?” Gregory said, lifting himself back up and making to retaliate against the bespectacled man. He was wearing a three-piece suit and fancy shoes. A deep red tie decorated the ensemble, though it was tucked beneath a vest of something bulky.
“Don’t worry about that,” Stewart said, pulling his coat open to reveal a vest full of little gray boxes. Each one had C4 stamped in block letters. “I’ve been known to be very persuasive.”
“So we’ll just kill you and get it over with?” Marcus said, leveling his pistol on the man’s head.
“Well you could,” Stewart said, waving the detonation device in front of his face. “You’d stop me from blowing us all to hell, but not the guy listening to us on the radio.”
The room became quiet. Everyone knew what he was implying. If Stewart were to suddenly become deceased, another man who might be listening could just as easily detonate the vest for him. That much C4 would level half of the floor while carving a chunk out of the side of the building. Marcus found it very difficult to believe Stewart. After all, he had tried to kill him in Nigeria. Now, he was strapped down with explosives.
“Have a seat,” Stewart said, jiggling the detonator to emphasize his point. “I don’t want anyone doing anything stupid. Though I’m willing to die, I don’t necessarily want to. This is more for your protection than mine, really. See, I don’t act on impulse. Everything I do is deeply thought out, planned, and organized. You, on the other hand, fly by the seats of your pants more oft than not.
“I would very much like to see your hands at all times, too,” he said, pointing to Cynthia. She reluctantly pulled her glove off, showing a severely scarred hand and forearm.
“What’s the meaning of this, Stewart?” Gregory asked, obviously upset by the entire ordeal. “Why break into a government building and hold government employees hostage?”
“First things first,” Stewart started, staring Marcus down. “I’m surprised at your resiliency. I fully expected you, Marcus, to die. You survived a fall, found your way out of a mine, and killed quite a few of my employees. Henry lived, too, I am told.
“I must say, it doesn’t necessarily bode well for me to be standing amongst such resilient individuals. It’s the reason I’m strapped down with so many explosives, you see.
“I’m not here to hold you hostage,” Stewart emphasized the point by waving his hands. “I’m not here to kill you, or threaten you, or any of those other things you might be thinking. I’m simply here to give you a message, albeit a strong message.”
“And that message is?” David was just as upset as everyone else. Sitting far away from Stewart, he still seemed to be as tall as the shorter man.
“To drop this investigation,” Stewart said. “It’s simple really. You’ve sort of stirred up a bee’s nest amongst me and my associates. I’ve had to make so
me adjustments to the management, too, as you can tell. No more calling for Lambert, no more investigating these boxes or the mines in Nigeria. No more snooping into my past life or trying to figure out what Lambert has been up to all these years. He’s gone and I’m not.
“I’m asking you to give up on this case. It’s not going to make you sleep any better at night, knowing what happened to the little girl. The boxes are none of your concern, as they will never again appear in public. Your services are not needed here, you see. They are not welcome, either.
“If you could be so kind as to leave me to my work, than no more of you have to die.”
Everyone was extremely still. From Gregory to David in the back of the room, everyone took even calm breaths. They didn’t want to show how much they planned to counteract everything he had said.
“Look,” Stewart said, sitting on the edge of the table. “You’re all reasonable individuals. I’m giving you a simple option—leave me to my work, which will never again surface for any reason whatsoever in the public eye, or face the consequences.”
“How about we just follow you to your hideout?” Marcus said honestly. “Realistically, you know we’re not going to let this go.”
“Marcus,” Stewart said. “You’ll never see me again, though I’m sure you think you will. If you take a step out of this building in the next hour, you’ll be shot dead. If anyone leaves the office in the next hour, they’ll be dead before they get to their car. On that note, you had better tell your security guard to stay put, or else he might find himself just as dead as anyone else would be.
“I’m leaving. I’m going far away, on a private jet you have no record of and you never will. This is where we part ways. Go ahead and search for me if you choose, but I swear to you that you will not like what you find. Do we understand each other?”
Gregory sneered and growled audibly at the suited perpetrator. The rest of the team said nothing at all.
“I’ll take that as acquiescence,” Stewart said sarcastically. He turned to leave, not concerned as to whether or not someone would tackle him. He knew that no one would be so stupid.