The Winning Element (The Specialists)

by Shannon Greenland

  Stealthily, they crept through the night, weaving around the parked cars until they surrounded the warehouse. Six agents shinnied up the aluminum sides all the way to the roof. How they shinnied, I couldn’t tell. I saw no ropes or wires. It reminded me of the Rissala mission and how Wirenut had effortlessly Spider-manned it up the side of a castle with air-lock suction cups.

  In the moonlight, I saw the agents make hand signals to one another, from the ones on the roof to those on the ground. Quick flashes of gloved fingers, brushing their shoulders, their faces. Like the signals TL used with us.

  An agent on the roof threw back a hatch at the same time the agents on the ground crashed through the front door and busted down the back. Light poured out as our guys rushed in.

  Gunshots popped.

  I flinched.

  Screams.

  More shots.

  Shouting.

  My heart lurched. Where was David? TL? Mr. Share? Adam and Curtis and the rest of Team One?

  Nalani grabbed the back of my jumpsuit. I looked over at her. Her whole face tightened, and she nodded once, silently telling me to hang in there.

  Me? What about her? She had to be scared to death for TL.

  I moved my gaze back to the warehouse.

  A man in a lab coat bolted out the back door. An agent followed, tackling him to the ground. He planted his knee in the man’s back and cinched his hands to his ankles.

  More gunshots went off.

  My whole body tensed. Had David gone in with everyone else? With their hoods and camouflaged outfits, everyone looked the same. What had David been wearing? My mind raced to remember. Black. He’d been dressed in all black.

  Screams and more shots sounded.

  God, what’s going on? I can’t stand this.

  I covered my ears with my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t look anymore. I couldn’t listen anymore. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. My breath rasped.

  My parents had died this way. Violently. Gunshots exploding. That horrible sound was the last thing they’d ever heard.

  Suddenly, the place fell completely and utterly silent.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes and slid my hands down my face.

  Nalani let go of my jumpsuit. “All clear.” She signaled Beaker and Ms. Gabrier. “Let’s do it.”

  Beaker grabbed her small suitcase, we pulled our knit caps over our faces, and we left the trees to jog down the sandy hill. My heart thumped in my chest in slow, deep surges. We were about to defuse bombs.

  Disheveled people stumbled from the warehouse, men dressed in safety gear and the slinky dressed women, all with their hands secured behind their backs. Blood trickled down their faces, their arms, their legs. Most of the women were crying. The men all looked really pissed off.

  Agents shouted orders at them, pointing, kneeling them in the sand. With all the gunshots, I could only imagine what the scene was inside the warehouse.

  I followed Beaker and Ms. Gabrier through the back door and caught a quick glimpse of blood and bodies. Someone moaned. My gaze flicked to the person making the painful sound. Dressed in a dark suit, a man gripped his bloody stomach as he sluggishly rolled over. Somewhat hypnotized, I watched him, my mind whirling back years ago to the plane crash. To the bodies that had floated past me . . . My vision blurred as I turned a slow circle, trying to recall what I was supposed to be doing.

  Nalani steered me toward the chem lab. “Don’t look. Focus on the objective.”

  I blinked my eyes a few times and swallowed, refocusing.

  We wound through stacked wooden crates and pushed through heavy hanging plastic into the lab where Adam and Curtis were already waiting.

  “Nobody touch anything,” Beaker ordered.

  Quickly, yet with the most intense focus I’d ever seen, she began walking around studying the flasks of liquids, bowls of powders, piles of clay, copper wire, magnets, tubes of thick substances, boiling flasks, dishes of crystals. In her chemistry notebook, she jotted down the measurements off scales, weird-looking meters, timers, scopes, syringes, burners, bottles.

  Ms. Gabrier gave each of us a heavy lab coat, goggles, and the scenario papers Beaker had drawn up. I swallowed a gurgle of hysteria as I realized a lab coat and goggles would do nothing to protect from a bomb exploding.

  Hurry! I wanted to yell at Beaker, but I knew the necessity of intense concentration when everything was on the line. I slipped my black hood off and donned the safety gear.

  Beaker cycled back around the room. She pointed to two silver canisters with blue liquid flowing in a glass tube between them. “Curtis. Scenario two hundred and three. You have five minutes.”

  I blinked. She’d memorized the scenarios? All four hundred and eleven? Oh my God.

  Curtis hurried over, flipping through his pages, locating his scenario. Quickly, he silently read it. “What’s leum acid?”

  “It’s that black liquid in the syringe,” she answered without glancing up. “It’s next to the silver canister.”

  With a nod he slipped on gloves and carefully took the syringe. I focused back on Beaker.

  “Nalani, this one’s yours.” Beaker indicated a bowl filled with what looked like grape Jell-O. A small copper wire very simply, almost innocently, stuck out the top. “Scenario sixty-eight. Do not touch the bowl.”

  Locating her scenario, Nalani crossed the room. I watched as she picked up tongs, and then I refocused on Beaker. Pick me next, I silently implored. I wanted to get this over with.

  Beaker stopped at a flask of boiling pink liquid with yellow smoke puffing up. She inserted a skinny piece of pink paper, brought it out, and studied the end. It turned white. “Adam. Scenario one hundred and twenty-seven.”

  She moved on as Adam made his way around the table Nalani stood at, reading his scenario as he walked. He stopped, scanned the lab, then went across to where Curtis worked and slid an unused thermometer from the table.

  Nervously, I focused in on Curtis and watched as he gingerly unscrewed one of the silver canisters. I glanced back to Beaker. Pick me next, I silently pleaded. My stress was about to explode my brain cells.

  She indicated a station with a two-foot-tall silver pot. “Ms. Gabrier. This’ll detonate in exactly two minutes.”

  Two minutes?!

  “Scenario four hundred and one,” Beaker calmly instructed.

  How could she be so calm? And for that matter, how could everybody else? I scanned the room taking in my team’s focused, patient movements. I didn’t understand. My heart was about to leap from my chest.

  "GiGi.”

  I snapped my attention to Beaker.

  She stuck her finger in a gold powder and touched it to her tongue. She waited for a few seconds with her tongue out, the spit on the floor. “Scenario five.”

  I raced over, my eyes dropping to scenario five. It read vinyl alcohol, odatedrogen, and silver nitrate. Silver nitrate was the only name I recognized. It said to grate metal naph across the top and then stir slowly counterclockwise for ten seconds. My heart gave a relieved beat. Sounded simple enough. Wait a minute, grate? How much. A light scattering or a thick covering? “It doesn’t say how much to grate.”

  “Sprinkle it,” Beaker answered. “Like it’s salt.”

  I glanced around my area and located a plastic-wrapped block of what looked like green cheese. Its label read METAL LAPH. Carefully, I peeled the plastic off the green block. A grater sat right beside the bowl of gold powder. I picked up the grater and ran the green block across it, watching as it sprinkled the top. I studied the sprinkles, realizing I salted things lightly. Beaker might salt things heavily. I was dying to ask if she would come look, but went on instinct instead.

  Taking a stirring rod, I slowly stirred counterclockwise, watching ten seconds tick by on my watch. What if I stirred slower than her? Or what if she stirred slower than me? I pushed the doubtfulness from my mind and kept going counterclockwise. Ten seconds passed, and I glanced up.

  Beaker and Ms. Gab
rier stood across the room at a very intimidating-looking row of fiercely boiling liquids. Ms. Gabrier handed Beaker a blue balloon.

  "GiGi,” Nalani whispered, dragging my attention behind me. I realized Adam and Curtis were gone and Nalani was already back in her black hood.

  She motioned to me. “Let’s go. That’s the last one. Beaker and Ms. Gabrier will take care of it.”

  I shuffled over to the side door where she was waiting and took off my safety gear. Slipping my black hood back on, I stepped out into the night and took a deep breath. We headed left toward where all the people still knelt. I checked my watch. Only eight minutes had gone by since I’d disappeared into the lab. Seemed a lot longer.

  I surveyed all of our guys, looking for David. But with their hoods and camouflaged outfits, they all seemed alike. One, two, three, four, five . . . I couldn’t remember how many TL said we had. Or if he’d even said how many were dressed in black like David. For all I knew, he could’ve changed into another outfit. I looked at their bodies, unable to distinguish one from the other.

  More handcuffed people ushered from the warehouse with our guys behind them.

  One of the bad guys strutted out, his head up, all haughty, like he hadn’t just been busted. “My father is a very powerful man,” he back talked to an agent.

  The agent shoved him, and the bad guy went face-first into the sand.

  That’s the least he deserved.

  Nalani and I crossed in front of all the kneeling people. I scanned their angry faces, searching for Eduardo’s. I passed by a sobbing woman.

  “Shut up,” the old man beside her snapped.

  These were some of the richest, most powerful people and terrorists in the world. They’d probably never been busted for anything. Most likely they’d always succeeded at getting away with their illegal dealings. They probably thought their money would buy them out of this one.

  Sad truth was, for some, it might.

  And the women. Boy did they pick a bad time to be a rich guy’s decoration.

  “I don’t see Eduardo,” I whispered to Nalani.

  She shook her head.

  Then it hit me. Maybe he was dead. I wouldn’t be able to confront him about my parents. I wouldn’t get any answers. And as those thoughts slammed into me, he walked straight out the back door.

  I froze.

  An agent behind him jabbed a gun in his side, pushing him forward. They strode away from me, past all the kneeling people, and into the night.

  Wait. Where were they going?

  “No.” I sprinted across the sand. Nalani made a move for me, and I brushed her off.

  The agent and Eduardo cut the corner of the warehouse, disappearing around the side.

  “Wait!” I screamed, bolting after them.

  “Stop!” Nalani yelled.

  I rounded the corner, eating up the distance between Eduardo and me, and grabbed hold of them both. They stopped and turned.

  I shoved Eduardo in the chest. “You killed my parents!”

  His lips curved into an evil smile. “Did I now?”

  Rage rocketed through my body, vibrating out every pore. I reared back and slammed my fist straight into his jaw.

  His head moved slightly with the impact. Blood welled in the corner of his mouth. Staring straight into my eyes, he licked it off and spit it in my face.

  I yelled and reared my fist back—

  “No.”

  The female agent’s command brought me to a halt, and tears immediately poured out of my eyes.

  “Why?” I sobbed. “Why did you kill them?”

  “Little girl, I don’t know who you are, or your parents.” Eduardo shrugged. “If they died, they must have deserved it.”

  His casual brush-off made more angry tears come. For the first time in my life, I wanted to kill someone. "Y-you took away everything. You made that plane go down. You shot my parents in the head. I-I was only six. You ruined my life.”

  Blankly, he stared at me. “Ah, yes, the plane crash. Your father was one of my best men. Such a shame to find out he was double-crossing me. Bad things happen to double-crossers. You need to always remember that.”

  My breath hitched at his admittance to being connected to my father. “What did you do with my mom’s body?”

  He shrugged again. “Sorry, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “My mom’s body!” I screamed.

  Eduardo’s brows lifted ever so slightly. “Sure she’s dead?”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” the female agent spoke.

  I switched my gaze to hers, and through her hood in the moonlight, I stared into her blue eyes. I had the unnerving sensation I’d looked into those eyes before.

  [15]

  The female agent broke eye contact with me and manhandled Eduardo along. In the darkness, I turned and stared as they strode down the side of the warehouse toward the front.

  I took a step toward them. Wait, I wanted to yell. Where are you taking him? Who are you? Do I know you?

  Lightly, Nalani grasped my arm. “Let them go.”

  “Who is that?” I asked, sniffing.

  Nalani shook her head.

  I watched as the tall, slender agent led Eduardo away from the warehouse and into the parking area. A black SUV’s headlights flicked on.

  She opened the back door, illuminating the interior. A person dressed the same as her, in all black with a knit hood, sat behind the wheel.

  The female agent shoved Eduardo into the back and climbed in after him. She shut the door, sending the interior into darkness again. The SUV pulled out from the parking lot and onto the dirt road and disappeared into the night.

  I turned to Nalani. “What’s going on? Who were they? Where are they taking him?”

  She shook her head again. “It’s out of our hands. The IPNC decides what happens now. I promise you, though, he’ll pay for his crimes. He’ll pay for what he did to your parents.” She gave my hand a tug. “Let’s go.”

  I didn’t doubt he would pay. I knew he would. “But who was that agent? That one seemed so familiar. Something about her eyes. Do I know her?” I grabbed Nalani’s arm, a thought slamming into me. “They didn’t find my mom. She could’ve swum away. Hidden out. Been pursuing Eduardo ever since. She could still be working rogue for the government. She could—”

  "GiGi.” Nalani squeezed my shoulder. “There’s no way Eduardo would have let your mom live. You know that, right?”

  A couple of long seconds passed, and, reluctantly, I nodded. “He was playing with you just now. Don’t let him mess with your psyche.”

  I sniffed again, drying up the last remnants of my tears.

  “You’re an analytical person. You see things in black and white, and you don’t like gray areas. The fact that your mom’s body was never found is a gray area.” Nalani released my shoulder. “Sometimes in this business you don’t always get black and white. That’s the hard truth. Not everything gets answered, resolved.”