The Collected

by Brett Battles

“You all right?” Orlando asked Daeng.

  He nodded and headed back to the hospital bed without saying a word. Orlando followed.

  Romero had barely moved, his face even paler than before.

  “There are consequences for every action, Mr. Romero,” Orlando said once she was standing beside him again. “You understand this because you were trying to pay back the men who attempted to kill you. I can sympathize to a point, but the problem is, those you went after are our people. No one goes after our people without consequences.”

  “If you are going to kill me, fine. Kill me.” He tried to pump his chest out as if he were making it a target.

  “Whether we kill you or not isn’t up to us.”

  “Who, then?”

  “The man you’ve been calling Quinn.”

  __________

  QUINN AND NATE raced down the stairs, back into the cellblock. Quinn was glad to see all the cell doors open, the rooms empty.

  “Janus is probably trying to get out of the fort,” Nate said. “Which means he’ll probably head down to the wall exit.”

  “The others are there. They won’t let him through.”

  Nate threw open the door at the end of the block, and started to step into the intersecting hallway. “Yeah. We can trap him between—”

  A loud crack echoed down the other corridor and through the doorway.

  Nate yelled out in pain as he thrust himself back into the cellblock, hugging his left arm to his chest.

  At first Quinn thought it had been a gunshot, but then he saw the wound on Nate’s forearm—a long red mark, not unlike those on Nate’s back.

  A whip.

  “He’s not downstairs,” Nate said through clenched teeth.

  Quinn moved around him so he was closer to the threshold. “Which way?”

  “To the left somewhere.”

  Nate lowered his arm, fighting the pain.

  “You going to be all right?” Quinn asked.

  “Fine,” Nate answered quickly.

  Keeping the suppressor tight against the wall, Quinn thrust his gun through the doorway and aimed it roughly in the direction the whip had come from. He let off three quick shots, spreading the fire from side to side.

  There was a whoosh as the whip lashed out again. The tip hit his gun, missing his finger by less than half an inch. He shot again before pulling the pistol back.

  “Together,” he told Nate, as he popped the nearly empty mag out of the gun’s grip and shoved in a new one. “I’ll take high.”

  This time, they both swung their guns around and opened fire. When they heard the whoosh, they pulled their guns back. As soon as the whip cracked, Quinn rushed out into the hallway.

  Janus was twenty feet away, using the corner of another passageway to stay out of line of fire. He was pulling the whip behind him, getting ready to strike again.

  “Drop it!” Quinn ordered.

  The whip flew out, and Quinn pulled his trigger.

  Instead of a whoosh and a crack, there was a whoosh and a thud as the whip fell to the ground. Clutching his hand where his middle finger had been a moment before, Janus disappeared around the corner.

  “Come on!” Quinn said to Nate, and started after the big man.

  The narrow hallway Janus had been hiding in went back only fifteen feet before jogging right, so the big man was already gone when Quinn rounded the corner. At the next turn, Quinn slowed just in case Janus was waiting there to jump him, then stepped around it, his gun held ready.

  What he found was a well-worn staircase leading down, but no Janus.

  Quinn turned on his mic. “Orlando, Janus is heading your way.”

  “My way?” she said after a short delay.

  “We think he’s going for the exit in the wall. Send Daeng out to—”

  “We’re not in the room.”

  “You’re not? Then where are you?”

  Another delay. “On our way there now.”

  “What about the others?”

  “The others are there and armed. And I’m pretty sure they’d be happy if Janus suddenly showed up.”

  “Okay. We’ll meet you there.”

  Though he wondered why Orlando and Daeng weren’t with the freed prisoners, there was no time to think about it at the moment. Still taking point, he and Nate ran down the stairs, and followed the passage until they came to the widened area outside the room Peter and the others were waiting in.

  Janus, bloodied but obviously not broken, was trying to pull the door open. He raged and pounded against it when it didn’t budge, and yanked the handle again.

  Quinn and Nate stopped a few feet into the room and raised their guns.

  “I believe it’s locked,” Nate said.

  Janus whirled around, panting like a bull in a ring, his eyes angry and wild.

  “Calm down there, buddy,” Quinn said. “Nothing you can do now.”

  Janus shifted his gaze from them to the door and back. “Let me out! Let me go!”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Quinn told him.

  Janus roared, and pounded on the door again. “Open!”

  “Not going to happen, either,” Nate said.

  Janus turned back. “Let me go!”

  “No.”

  A frustrated scream filled the space. At first, the big man just stood there, shaking, then something seemed to snap in his mind, and he sprinted toward them as if he were going to rip them apart, piece by piece.

  The first bullet slowed him, but didn’t stop him.

  The second, the same.

  The third brought him to his knees.

  The fourth sailed over his head as he collapsed onto the floor.

  Quinn and Nate heard steps running down the stairs behind them. They turned quickly, ready to shoot again.

  Orlando appeared first.

  “Just us,” she said, holding up her hands.

  The two men lowered their guns.

  Daeng showed up a few seconds later, carrying an old man. Romero, Quinn realized.

  “You two had your hands full,” Orlando explained. “So we thought we’d get him while you were occupied.”

  “What about Harris?” Quinn asked, worried that the bald man had gotten away.

  “No longer a problem,” Daeng said. The look on his face left no question as to what had happened and who had pulled the trigger.

  A silent moment passed, then someone yelled from the other side of the door, “Everything all right out there?”

  Quinn walked over and said, “You can open up now.”

  The hinges creaked as the door swung inward. Lanier looked out, Berkeley and Curson right behind him. Grins broke out when they spotted Janus on the floor, then full smiles at the sight of Romero.

  CHAPTER 60

  QUINN, ORLANDO, NATE, and Daeng made a sweep of the entire fort to make sure there weren’t any more of Romero’s soldiers hiding out.

  The only other people they found were two other nurses, and the three men who had been handling the cooking and the housekeeping. After a quick discussion, they locked the five of them and the nurse from Romero’s room in the kitchen, where the group could wait for the officials who would descend on the island after they’d been notified.

  Once the fort was secured, Quinn and the others made their way up to the top of the wall. Keeping their bodies below the walkway lip, they spread out along the walkway. Quinn turned on the radio they’d taken from one of the soldiers.

  “I’ve got a message for the group outside the fort,” he said in Spanish. “Can you hear me?”

  Static.

  “I’m calling the security force that was sent out to look for the man who escaped. Are you there?”

  More static, then, “Who is this?”

  “You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is that your bosses are no longer in need of your services.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Mr. Harris, who is now dead, and Mr. Romero, who I
’m sure wishes he was. They are not in control of this fort anymore.”

  A long pause. “Why should we believe that?”

  “I assume you’re close to the wall. Am I right?”

  No response.

  “Doesn’t matter. I think you’ll get the message.” Quinn clicked off the mic. With his voice raised enough for his friends to hear, he said, “Now.”

  As one, they angled their guns toward the jungle without exposing more of themselves than necessary. They let off two shots each.

  Quinn keyed the mic again. “Hope we didn’t hit anyone.”

  “What do you want?” The man’s tone had done a one-eighty.

  “It’s not what we want. It’s what you probably want. To get off this island.”

  “You’d let us go?”

  “Sure, we’ll let you leave,” Quinn said. “Or we could continue hunting you down and killing you off.”

  The man took a moment before he spoke again. “Are we supposed to just swim?”

  “There’s a boat at the other end of the island. We’ll give you thirty minutes to get there and shove off. Anyone left after that will be eliminated. Do we have an understanding?”

  __________

  DAENG WAS TASKED with shadowing the remaining soldiers and making sure they all boarded the boat and left. While he did that, Quinn called Gogan, the pilot of their private jet, and gave him the coordinates of the island’s airstrip. Then he, Orlando, Nate, and the other former prisoners—with the exception of Peter—moved the bodies of Harris and the dead soldiers into the downstairs room. They decided to leave Janus where he was, his bulk more than any of them wanted to deal with.

  When they finished, Orlando retrieved the bag she’d brought downstairs. “For your trouble, gentlemen,” she said as she unzipped the bag and flashed the contents at Lanier, Berkeley, and Curson. “Doesn’t necessarily make up for what happened, but it’s something.” She zipped it back up and tossed it to Lanier.

  A little while later, Daeng radioed in that the soldiers had all left. Shortly after that, Gogan called to say he was getting ready to take off and would be there in no more than twenty minutes.

  When Quinn hung up, he walked over to where Peter was sitting with Romero.

  “We need to head out. Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Our friend here is being a little close-lipped,” Peter said. “Doesn’t want to say how he came into possession of our names or found out where I lived.”

  “Unfortunate,” Quinn said. “You need a little more time? We could spare maybe another few minutes. You could hook him up to that electroshock machine.”

  Peter frowned. “That would only kill him. Rather he died on his own at this point. It’s going to be painful.” He stood up. “Besides, I have a pretty good idea where the leak came from.”

  “Well, if you need our help plugging it, you let me know.”

  Once the others had all moved outside, Quinn took a last look around to make sure everything was just right.

  The weapons the soldiers had been carrying were in a pile against the wall, and the bodies were laid out on the floor in a line. Directly behind them, strapped to a wooden chair, sat Romero. In his office, they had found digital movies of the whippings, with Romero clearly visible, watching the proceedings. Orlando had copied the videos onto two separate memory cards. One she kept. The other was in a plastic bag taped to Romero’s shirt, the words WATCH ME written across the plastic.

  Everything in the room looked fine. Once Quinn and the others were in the air, a call would be placed to the Isla de Cervantes state police. The authorities would be told of a gunfight at Fort Duran, and of a band of the surviving rebels racing toward the main island in a speedboat at that very moment.

  It wouldn’t provide complete satisfaction for what had happened, but it would do.

  Quinn stepped outside and closed the door.

  __________

  JANUS KNEW HIS end was near, but it hadn’t quite arrived yet.

  He had regained consciousness to the sounds of voices. He recognized one right away. It belonged to the prisoner Quinn, who had escaped and ruined everything.

  Without opening his eyes, he tried to follow their conversation, but it was hard to focus. He had been shot—how many times, he didn’t know—but his body refused to die.

  Finally the voices stopped, and a door closed.

  They’re gone.

  He lay there for a moment, just to be sure, and then pried his eyelids apart.

  With effort, he pushed himself into a sitting position before rising painfully to his feet. He had to pause and grab the wall. He thought he was about to pass out again, but then the haze cleared and he was back.

  He looked around.

  I’m downstairs.

  Right. That’s where he’d been when they shot him again.

  To his left was the way back into the fort. To his right, the open door to the antechamber that housed the fort’s exit. Through the doorway, he could see something odd on the floor, something his mind was having a hard time processing. He walked over for a closer look.

  Bodies. All wearing uniforms.

  No, not all. Harris was there, too. Dead.

  “Huh,” he said, feeling no emotion whatsoever.

  “Janus?”

  If Janus had been able to, he would have jumped in surprise. Instead, his head slowly turned to the voice.

  Strapped to a chair directly behind the bodies was Señor Romero, looking even more frail than usual.

  “Janus. Untie me. Now!”

  Janus staggered into the room, and stopped beside Romero’s chair.

  “Come on!” Romero said. “Quickly!”

  He looked at the old man, and glanced at the straps holding Romero down. They looked like the same straps that had been on the electroshock machine upstairs. Thick and strong. A good choice.

  “Hurry! Get me out of this chair!”

  Janus walked over to the pile of weapons, awkwardly lowered himself to his knees, and hunted around.

  “What are you doing?” Romero asked. “Get over here!”

  Janus found a knife and pulled it out.

  “If that will make it faster, fine. Now cut me out.”

  A knife was fine, but there was something that would do the job even better. Back on his feet, Janus raised the rifle he’d grabbed and shot Romero in the chest. No sense in letting the old man outlive him.

  He stared at his work for second. His bullet had gone right through the letter A of the word WATCH that was on a piece of plastic attached to Romero’s shirt. Why it was there, he had no idea, nor did he care.

  For a moment, he lost focus, his mind drifting off. When he snapped back, he was looking toward the door to the outside.

  Yes. That’s it.

  Using the rifle as a cane, he made his way outside.

  There was one other person who needed to die before he did today.

  __________

  THEY MADE IT to the airstrip five minutes before they saw the jet descending toward them.

  “You broke the first rule, you know,” Quinn said to Nate as they waited.

  “Never get caught,” Nate said with a nod.

  Quinn put a hand against his forehead to shade his eyes as he tracked the plane’s progress. “I’ve never been caught.”

  Nate’s face scrunched up on one side. “Is that true?”

  “It’s what I’m telling you.”

  “So it’s not true.”

  “It might be.

  “And it might not.”

  They fell silent for a moment.

  “Thanks for coming to get me,” Nate said. “You know I’d do the same for you.”

  “Whether you would or wouldn’t have before, you have to now. You owe me.”

  “Oh, good Lord,” Orlando said. “Are you boys finished? The rest of us don’t want to hear this.”

  “I was just thanking him,” Nate said.

  “And I was just accepting that thanks,” Quinn added.


  She rolled her eyes.

  Seconds later the plane swooped in, its tires emitting a rubbery screech as they touched down. Before the jet had even stopped moving, the group headed down the clearing beside the tarmac to meet it. They were about a hundred feet away when the door opened, and Liz hopped down the ladder.

  “Nate!” she said, running toward him.

  Nate paused for half a second. “Liz?”

  “I knew there was something I forgot to mention,” Quinn said, allowing himself a playful smile. “And by the way, you and I need to have a talk about what you’re allowed to tell my sister and what you’re not.”

  __________

  JANUS COULND’T SEE the plane, but he could hear it. Afraid they’d know he was following them if he moved any closer, he’d stayed within the cover of the jungle, a dozen feet from the clearing.

  The walk from the fort had drained all but the last bit of his energy. Each step now felt like he was moving through a vat of mud. His eyesight, too, had become problematic. Though he could see the others standing together near the landing strip, he had to use all his concentration to pick out the one he was pretty sure was Quinn.

  He was the one who had to die.

  The roar of the jet increased. Putting a hand on the tree next to him, Janus leaned forward so he could see the end of the runway. A plane appeared over the island, and seemed to hover in the air for a second before landing. He watched as it raced down the runway, passed the group waiting for it, and stopped near the other end.

  He thought it would come back this way, but instead Quinn and his friends were walking toward it.

  No!

  He knew he couldn’t go much further. His body had given him all it had and more already. But he couldn’t let Quinn get away.

  He weaved unsteadily out of the brush, and forced himself to follow the troublemaker. Halfway there, he knew he wouldn’t make it. Worse yet, Quinn was at the front of the group, greeting someone who had just come out of the plane. He was too far away.

  Janus wanted to scream, but he held it in.

  Do what you can.

  The rifle felt like a thousand pounds as he raised it to his shoulder. He steadied himself as best he could, pointing the weapon at the back of the pack.