Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
Page 5
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The Executioner watched the body cam footage from the grab team as it happened, and that was enough. Only one camera had captured Liz as she cut down The Executioner’s team. He had to acknowledge that Liz was impressive…for a woman at least. But, he rationalized, the three dead men had been basically unarmed, or at least slow to draw their weapons. Nobody was expecting anybody but Mick, so the element of surprise went both ways.
The Executioner thought about what had happened a little more, deciding that it wasn’t really that impressive once you removed gender from the assessment. He had talked himself out of being impressed.
The other two cameras offered good looks at Mick, which wasn’t really necessary, and Ally, which was. The Executioner now had two main worries floating around his head. The first was that his reputation would take a hit. If this incident eventually got, it would be hard to argue that he had prepared the team adequately, even if the three dead men were unknown to him – having been hired by his Latin America contact. That man had escaped with the empty van and would soon be calling.
The other main worry was the identity of the two women. Were they with Blue Team? The sense that Blue Team may be on to him was deeply unsettling. Were they out to get him, or were they merely trying to help Mick escape? A few debt collectors had been killed in the last year, and The Executioner had no idea who was behind the killings. Furthermore, the thought of being shot by a woman was worrying. What would people say about him? Shot dead by some angry chick? Blue Team was known to use women for operations, and The Executioner thought about how he would navigate daily life worrying about every woman who walked by, in addition to the men he was already suspicious of. But mostly he worried about what people would think of a man shot dead by a woman.
Finally, the last of the body camera videos feeds arrived. It gave a clear view of only one thing: Liz getting shot and then struggling to breathe while she lay on the sidewalk. The Executioner was bothered by this. He couldn’t put it in words, but something about the scene troubled him. He thought about it.
Then it came to him: he had never seen a woman die before.