Complicated Creatures: Part Two

by Alexi Lawless

  “No, I’m in the ‘nailing Nazar’ business,” Sam responded. “If that means I’ve got to hold a kid hostage overnight, so be it.”

  “I don’t want him hurt,” Wes muttered, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “He’s just a punk.”

  “Don’t worry, Wes,” Sam replied. “I’m not going to waterboard the brat. Just hold him for a little while until we know what’s up. We’ll give him all the pizza and Xbox he can handle at the air base.”

  Wes grinned. “Well, in that case, can you hold me hostage too?”

  *

  Dec 21st—4:03pm

  Leviathan Risk International Headquarters, London

  J A C K

  “What are they?” Mitch asked through gritted teeth, his pale face covered in sweat, his body radiating agony.

  “What are you taking about?” Jack replied, one eye on Lightner as he talked with one of his men just a few feet away.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Jack,” Mitch hissed. “The pills—what are they? Because if they’re painkillers, I need them right goddamn now—”

  Jack looked down at Mitch’s thigh, crimson and covered in gore. Lucien knew what he was doing, the evil bastard. It was a through-and-through wound, hadn’t hit an artery. He’d had one of the guards tie a tourniquet around it, staunching some of the bleeding, but Jack knew Mitch was in complete torment at this point, his eyes glazed over from the pain.

  “Lightner!” Jack called out. “You’ve made your point. I’ll give you what you want. Just let Mitch go. Or at the very least, give him a couple of those pills.”

  “Don’t think Ambien will help the poor bloke much,” Lightner replied over his shoulder, expression amused.

  “They’re Percocets,” Jack admitted. “I’ve been taking them for an old injury,” he lied.

  No way in hell was he going to admit to this asshole he had a drug problem. God only knew what a guy like Lightner would do with that little bit of information.

  Lightner glanced at Mitch, shaking and sweating, his face a dull gray from the blood loss.

  “I’ll need you to unfreeze those accounts first,” he replied.

  Jack still had no idea what the hell Lightner was going on about, but he decided to play the game. “I can’t do that with my hands tied. I need access to my laptop, or at the very least I need to make a call.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lightner replied.

  “We’ll use your phone,” Jack negotiated. “You dial the number. If I say anything you don’t like, I know what you’ll do to me or Mitch. I know you’re not fucking around, alright?” he gave Lightner a hard look. “Consider me incentivized,” he gritted out. “If you won’t release him, at least give him a couple of painkillers. Please.”

  Lightner pulled out a phone. He sent Jack a look. “I’m waiting.”

  Pissed, Jack spat out a number.

  Lightner put the phone on speaker after he dialed, holding it up to Jack’s face as he watched with a small, amused smirk.

  You’re going to die, Lightner, Jack thought as he listened to the phone ring. I’ll do it myself.

  “This is Marvin.”

  “Hey, Marv—Jack Roman, here,” he said, struggling to sound calm and easy. “I need you to get ahold of Mr. Bear for me. Tell him to call off the dogs on our British friend. Make sure all the money gets back into his accounts within the next hour or so.”

  Jack waited a beat as he prayed Marvin would play along.

  “Of course, Mr. Roman,” Marvin answered smoothly after a moment. “I’ll make the call now.”

  “Thanks, Marv.” Jack looked up at Lightner as he hung up the phone.

  “See?” Lightner smiled, stepping back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “A deal’s a deal, Lightner,” Jack said, his face flushing with anger. “Just give him the pills.”

  *

  Dec 21st—4:16pm

  Security Office of Leviathan Risk International Headquarters, London

  R O X A N N E

  “We’re evacuating the building. You two: Get up and make sure we’ve cleared the floors,” Rox barked out through the fireman’s mask in a decent approximation of a British accent. The two rent-a-cops sitting at the bank of security screens in the private office snapped to attention.

  She would have never made it past real Leviathan guards, but of course the best ones were already up and out of the office, working with the local police on clearing and locking down the building. The two guys left glanced at each other for a second before getting up and leaving, seemingly more than happy to comply with the rapid-fire commands now that she was wielding a fireman’s ax.

  Rox locked the door after them before pulling off the hat and mask. She set aside the ax she’d lifted from the stairwell and sank down in front of the monitors, thankful for the brief reprieve. Her body was still aching from being tossed around like a rag doll inside the Fiat, then dragged over cement and broken glass by her Good Samaritan.

  “What a goddamn day,” she sighed, toggling between the security screens.

  Her phone rang, startling her. Rox dug around in the fireman’s jacket for the phone, wondering why Sam would be calling her early.

  “Chica, you won’t believe the day I’ve had—” Rox began.

  “Well, it’s about to get more interesting,” a man replied. “Don’t hang up—” he said quickly, “This is Carey Nelson. I’m Sam’s partner—”

  “Is she okay?” Rox asked immediately, cutting him off. “The only reason she’d have you call me directly is if—”

  “No; last check-in she was fine,” he assured her. “Sammy told me to only call you as a last resort and only if it was related to either her or what she’s asked you to do.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There was a bombing in London—”

  “I know, I was there,” she drawled, sitting back.

  “Jack just called Marvin. Told him to reach out to me and funnel all the money back into Lightner’s accounts within the hour. Since neither of us knows what the hell he’s talking about, I figured you would know what that meant.”

  Shit, Lightner definitely had Jack.

  Rox’s fingers worked the keyboard as she toggled faster through the security camera feeds in the building.

  “What else did he say?” she asked, eyes rapidly tracking the screens.

  “That’s all Marvin knows, but I tried the guys we had guarding Jack and none of them are answering. The trackers on their phones indicate that they’re still in the building.”

  More bodies. Lightner would have had to kill them en route, somewhere that would make capture difficult, she thought, her mind working through the scenarios.

  —Inside the Leviathan offices? Possibly. Everyone would have been expecting him to come in, but that raised the number of potential casualties significantly, and too many people in the area would make the situation difficult to control. Lightner hadn’t gone through all of that mess of faking his death just to flounce through the door and hold up the place like a desperado.

  —The stairwell? No. Too tricky, too many people fleeing the building.

  —The roof? How would he get the guards to go up? And he wouldn’t risk exposure to the helicopters surrounding the city in the mayhem. And he certainly couldn’t escape by helicopter; too easy to track or take down.

  —The garage? All her thoughts converged on that point. Possibly. The guards protecting Jack would have hustled him out of the office at the first sign of trouble. They’d be easy to intercept in the garage. Plenty of hiding places.

  “—you still there?” Carey was asking.

  Rox returned her attention to the call. “You said he asked for the money back?”

  “Yeah. What is he talking about?”

  Shit. That gave her a very limited amount of time to find him. She was on the clock now.

  “You don’t need to know,” Rox answered. “Listen; I’ll call you when this is over. If you don’t hear from me or Jack, you’ll know something�
��s wrong.”

  “Rox, I don’t know you, but Sammy thinks highly of you,” Carey replied. “That means something to me. If you need me to help you in any way—”

  “What I need, you can’t give me. Stay close to the phone.”

  Rox hung up, fingers moving quickly as she looked for the closed-circuit feeds of the parking garage.

  17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 11… wait. Rox toggled back. 12? Where’s 12?

  There weren’t any camera feeds of floor 12.

  Why?

  Because Lightner wouldn’t want any.

  Rox smiled.

  Found him.

  Chapter 31

  Dec 21st—10:43pm

  Nazar’s Processing Facility near Bunyad Khan, Afghanistan

  S A M A N T H A

  Nazar’s heroin processing facility was a long, low mud brick building at the edge of the Hari River, on the southeastern part of the border between Iran and Turkmenistan, startlingly close to the fortified Iran–Turkmenistan Friendship Dam. Strategically, it was brilliant. Using the river water, Nazar would be able to boil kilos of opium, dissolving the natural alkaloids quickly before beginning the process of converting the morphine into a heroin base. Given the location of the building, it would be easy to get product into Iran, Turkmenistan, or back up to Herat by road, river, or air.

  Ibrahim Nazar was a greedy, twisted bastard, but he was a smart one. And she understood now why he had so many Leviathan men on his payroll. With Iranian military, local mujahedeen warlords, and pro-Taliban forces all knocking at the door, it made sense that he’d need apolitical mercenaries guarding both his stash and his ass.

  Wes’s contact said there were generally about thirty men inside the building working at any given time. Nazar would be arriving with at least a three-car caravan. Best chance at minimizing casualties would have been on the road to the facility. If you could call that sodden dirt track a road. The other option was nailing Nazar as he was leaving the compound with the loaded trucks. No way was there enough space here to land a cargo plane. No; Nazar would have to go back toward Herat to do that, some tract of land neatly hidden in the valley, where the ground was dense enough to support the landing and the takeoff.

  But that option felt too risky. Wherever Nazar went, it would be too hard to follow unseen, too difficult to find cover as they attacked.

  No. It had to be here, she decided. They’d wait until the trucks were loaded, use the daylight and the distraction of loading up thousands of pounds of black tar onto pallets to steal closer; tighten the circle around their prey.

  Sam stared through infrared binoculars, watching the security detail below from her perch in the Baba Mountains that surrounded the site, about a football field away all told. The air was crisp and cool, the warmth of the sun long gone below the indigo horizon. In the moonlight, the long, straight, level-backed ridges her team hid behind looked blue-black and slick, almost wet. She had the men pick through carefully, mindful of trip-wires and IEDs, close but not too close to the site, alerting no one of their presence.

  Davis’s men were approaching stealthily up through the river, hidden in the water, shielded by an embankment of black poplars and ash. They remained radio silent and still, each team member assigned a target or a goal, responsibilities divided, corners covered at every angle as they waited.

  Sam watched through her binoculars as one of the six Leviathan guards patrolling the area paused, lowered his cross-slung submachine gun, the grip still in easy reach of his right hand. He reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, snapping a silver lighter open as he bent his head, lighting the cigarette. He took a deep inhale as he peered out over the river, unaware he was probably staring into the sights of an ST6 rifle.

  For now, she’d just let this poor bastard enjoy his cigarette.

  Tomorrow he wouldn’t be alive to finish that pack.

  *

  Dec 21st—4:33pm

  12th Floor of Leviathan Risk International Headquarters, London

  J A C K

  “Where is Samantha Wyatt, Jack?” Lightner asked casually, half-sitting on the table in front of him, his legs crossed like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack replied.

  “Not the answer I’m looking for,” Lightner responded, nodding toward one of his henchmen. The guy stepped forward, landing a powerful right cross against Jack’s cheek. From that height and angle, it felt like his eye had exploded. Jack bit back the pained grunt as he glared back up at Lightner, his eye already swelling.

  “You can beat my ass as much as you want, Lightner,” he spat out. “Doesn’t change the fact that I want to know where she is too.”

  Lightner’s gaze flickered to the guard. The guard landed a powerful hook into Jack’s left side.

  “Fuck!” Jack gasped, certain the guy had managed to crack a rib. Jack’s arms ached from being tied behind his back so long, but now he felt anger and adrenaline coursing through him, burning a path of fire through his body as he struggled against the ties around his wrists.

  “Now that looked like it hurt,” Lightner winced mockingly.

  “Why don’t you untie me and make this more of a fair fight?” Jack snarled.

  The guard moved to punch him again and Jack feinted to the side, narrowly ducking the hit before he stood quickly, head-butting the guard. The hit took the guard more by surprise than did it hurt him, but that second of stunned response gave Jack just enough time to turn swiftly, picking up the back of the folding chair and knocking the guard back with the metal legs. As the guard skidded back across the concrete floor, Lightner laughed, clapping delightedly.

  “Well done, Jack! Well done,” Lightner clapped, looking pleased as he watched the guard pop back up, visibly angered at being outwitted and outmaneuvered by Jack. Jack dropped the folding chair from his hands, kicking it back and out of the way, ignoring the guns the other guard’s had drawn on him in the tussle.

  “I’ve had just about enough of this shit,” Jack spat out. “If you’re going to shoot me, just get it the fuck over with. I won’t beg for my life.”

  “Now why would I do that, Jack? You still have a couple things I want,” Lightner replied, his tone reasonable. “But while we’re waiting, we might as well make this entertaining.” Lightner nodded toward the guard. “Bruno—” he smiled. “Get him.”

  Jack immediately turned to face the guard as they rounded on each other. Jack didn’t favor kicking as a fight tactic, but growing up playing competitive soccer had given him years of precision control of his legs. He may be at a massive disadvantage without the use of his arms but he’d be damned if he didn’t go down fighting.

  “Don’t think this is going to land your way, Jack,” Lightner smiled as he watched him and Bruno square off. “But I like your gumption.”

  “Fuck you, Lightner,” Jack spat.

  The guard pounced forward, striking out with a powerful jab, cross, right elbow combo that Jack only just managed to dodge. He felt the air brush past his ear as he saw the elbow slash sideways a fraction of an inch from his face. The dodge backward gave him the space and momentum he needed to deliver two rapid-fire torso kicks to the guard’s side, shocking the man and making Jack’s shin ring with pain as he felt the crunch of the guard’s ribs against the bone.

  “Come on, Bruno,” Lightner tutted. “You can do better than that.”

  Glaring Jack down, Bruno leapt forward with a cross that wasn’t a cross at all. As Jack bobbed back to avoid the hit, the guy socked him hard with two uppercuts to the stomach. Jack bent inward on a gasp, his stomach burning and his lungs desperate for air that wouldn’t come. Bruno took advantage of Jack’s forward posture, bringing his knee up and striking Jack square in the jaw. Jack’s head rung like a bell as he staggered back, just avoiding another sharp elbow, more by luck than skill at this point. Blood filled his mouth.

  Lightner and the two other guards watched, riveted while Mitch bled on, his face gray now as he ba
rely clung to consciousness, his head lolling on his shoulder. That quick glance at his best friend and business partner reminded Jack that he had to be smart; that he had to calm the hell down enough to help Mitch make it through this ordeal.

  “What’s say we make this interesting?” Jack panted, spitting blood and saliva out of his mouth.

  Lightner stayed Bruno with a brief gesture. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, clearly amused.

  “I knock this guy out with my hands tied behind my back, you let Mitch go,” Jack stated in a calm voice that belied the racing of his heart.

  Lightner inclined his head. “And if Bruno knocks you out first?”

  Jack glanced back at Mitch again, worry slicing at his insides. “When I come to, I’ll tell you where I think Samantha is.”

  Lightner considered him briefly, his arms crossed.

  Jack resisted the urge to look back at Mitch again, telegraphing his concern.

  Lightner’s sudden smile was wolfish. “You have a deal.”

  Chapter 32

  Dec 21st—4:47pm

  12th Floor of Leviathan Risk International Headquarters, London

  R O X A N N E

  Rox avoided the elevators, not wanting to prematurely announce her presence, particularly since she wasn’t sure if Lightner would be there, and if he was, how well armed he’d be. So she slid open the fire escape door, just enough to listen in. And she heard…. a fight?

  The solid thud of punches and audible animalistic grunts reverberated through the empty floor, echoing off of the exposed ducts and cement ramparts.

  Was Lightner just kicking Jack’s ass for the hell of it, or was there a legitimate battle going on?

  When Rox was certain that no one was near the stairwell, she opened the door wider, sliding through. She held her breath, easing along the wall as she peered around the corner—

  She caught a glimpse of two men with broad shoulders and the ramrod-straight posture of military men watching something, their backs to her. From the sounds of it—a serious scuffle. Rox frowned. It didn’t sound like someone was taking a beat down. She heard the traded hits, the grunts and gasps of two different men, like some kind of fight club.