Hushed Guardian: Brandon's Story

by Shandi Boyes

  My error almost got me kicked out of the Bureau before I was even an official agent. It brought me back onto the straight and narrow, but the hit it caused my personal life is still being felt. The incident took Melody from being the girl I once loved to a girl I no longer know.

  While working my jaw side to side to keep my annoyance on the down-low, I slot into a chair behind a bank of monitors. Grayson has already logged into servers that should be unhackable, so I commence working on establishing a connection with the main compound.

  Criminal associations like the one we’re raiding tonight don’t store their assets at their residences, they use offsite compounds and commercial properties. The more valuable the asset, the more guards to watch them. This site has three men walking the property line, four guarding the main entrance, and another two in a watchtower.

  Once Grayson breaks through the firewall keeping him out of the mainframe, I’m guessing there will be an additional dozen or so men inside. That’s around the standard number of goons for this type of operation.

  The web we’re attempting to eradicate is massive. There are more than a dozen organizations sprouting off from it, and the list of suspects grows exponentially every day. Politicians, movie stars, drug lords, and a name I’m more than familiar with are only a handful of the men we’re chasing. It’s such a long process because this network wasn’t built overnight. It has been operating longer than I’ve been born, and very rarely are the men helming the operations’ cooperative with the authorities.

  Today’s sting will barely create a ripple to the empire as a whole, but it only takes one thread to loosen an entire web. That’s the thread we’re seeking today, and we will continue seeking until each member on our list of suspects has paid for their crimes, and men like my father realize no amount of power will save them from the law.

  “Don’t forget to check the sleeping quarters this time around. There are usually a few men down there every raid testing the merchandise.” Grayson’s jaw tightens at the way I snarl ‘testing.’ This operation isn’t running drugs. They like underage women.

  “Do you have a feed for the main residence?” Grayson asks, his tone curious.

  I jerk up my chin. “Castro isn’t going anywhere soon.”

  He gags when I point to Rimi Castro, suspected leader of a Sicilian crime syndicate currently based in New Mexico. He’s in bed with three women. None of them are his wife, and I doubt any of them are over the age of twenty-one. He likes them young, but his buyers like them even younger than that.

  “What’s your total?”

  Grayson ensures his live stream has every inch of the compound covered before moving for the infrared system to double-check his numbers. “Looks like twenty-three in total. Nine outside the compound, fourteen inside.” He relays that to Tobias through the radio headsets the agents are wearing. They also have body cams and shoulder mics to stop any questions if our sting goes wrong.

  Confident we have everything lined up, Tobias and the team climb into three blacked-out Escalades before testing communications. Once we give him the thumbs up, the operation starts. The two men in the tower are taken out first by a long-range sniper. One slumps into the wooden box they man eighteen hours straight while the larger of the two falls over the railing, landing smack bang between two guards manning the fence lines.

  “Approach compromised. Sending message to Honey Pot. She’s naked.” I don’t mean the female agent we placed undercover in this operation is naked naked. It means she’s without backup and not carrying a weapon.

  After switching my radio signal to a private channel, I say, “Infiltration negative. Target aware.” She can’t reply, but the quick donk, donk that sounds through my earpiece advises she heard me.

  “Wait.”

  Leesa, our Honey Pot, freezes immediately, narrowly missing four men sprinting through the open command center she’s tiptoeing toward. Usually, they wouldn’t give a whore a second look, but since she isn’t anywhere near the sleeping quarters at the back of the compound, their suspicions would rise as quickly as the sound of the AK-47s in the background of our feed.

  “Move.”

  While Leesa races for the computer responsible for the digital locks on the cages in the basement, I stray my eyes back to Castro. He’s still in bed entertaining his guests.

  With my eyes back on the main monitor, and Leesa’s displaying she needs a twelve-digit sequence for access, I say, “Input the code exactly how I state. One wrong key, and you’ll be permanently locked out.”

  After peering up at the camera blinking in the corner of the room, she nods. She looks scared. I’m not surprised. It isn’t every day a rookie agent goes undercover as a whore in a mafia syndicate.

  Tobias had no choice but to pluck someone straight out of the academy. This job ages you very quickly. If he didn’t wade through a long list of graduates, his team would have never made it this far.

  Leesa made quite the impression on Castro’s little brother, Paavo. He refused to share her with his men, and has been seen multiple times the past month in a jewelry store buying her gifts. It’s been an almost seamless operation—almost too perfect.

  “Are you ready?” I wait for Leesa to nod before relaying the string of text and numbers in front of me. “Delta, Juliet, three, hotel, bravo…” I stumble over my last word when I spot Castro moving out of frame in the corner of my eye. He’s not adjusting girl number three’s hips so he can fuck her from behind, he’s throwing her off the bed. “Victor, kilo…”

  While I continue reciting the passcode to Leesa, I ram my elbow into Grayson’s rib. He’s guiding agents through an almost pitch-black night, pointing out suspects lying in wait to kill them, while also remotely leading them through the warehouse, so they take the most direct route to the girls we’re endeavoring to seize.

  I’ve just finished relaying the last digit of the code to Leesa when Grayson’s eyes stray to mine. When I point out Castro’s movements, I stumble onto something much more sickening than him fucking three girls at once. He’s speaking with someone, someone who can’t possibly be in two places at once, much less on two different live feeds. Castro can’t be liaising with Leesa at his residence while she’s staring directly at me from his off-site compound. It isn’t possible. Unless…

  “Honey Pot has been compromised. I repeat, Honey Pot has been compromised. Pull back.”

  My warning comes too late. When Leesa places the last digit into the computer’s mainframe, the cell doors in the basement pop open as predicted. They’re just not filled with underage girls, they are brimming with Sicilian operatives eager to slaughter US government officials.

  2

  Brandon

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Grayson screams before he switches his demands from the agents on the ground to the ones in the air. “We’re being ambushed…”

  While he calls in backup, my fingers fly wildly over my keyboard. Within minutes, I have the unhacked version of Castro’s residence up on the main screen. I‘ve tapped into a live feed via a satellite connection.

  It doesn’t improve the situation.

  It makes it ten times worse.

  Not a single soul can be seen via the infrared vision. It’s as if his mansion that usually houses twenty-plus is a ghost town.

  As I relay the information I’ve unearthed to Tobias, who’s in the middle of an intense gun battle, Leesa peers up at the screen she was staring at earlier, smiles an evil grin, then kills the feed with a pistol she couldn’t have unless she pried it out of the cold, dead hands of a fellow agent.

  “Fuck this.” I yank off my headset, throw open the drawer between Grayson’s and my station, then remove my government-issued pistol. “She sent fellow agents to their deathbeds while smiling. She doesn’t get to leave this compound alive unless it’s in a pair of handcuffs.”

  Grayson doesn’t utter a word, but I know he’s on board with my plan. The removal of his gun assures me, much less his sprint to the weaponry c
abinet to up the ante. “They were donning AK-47s. They’re only distributed by one entity.”

  “The Russians?”

  I’m not technically asking a question, but Grayson still lifts his chin. “We’ve had word syndicates were merging. Do you think this is the proof we’ve been looking for?” Don’t mistake the length of his question as him not prioritizing his priorities correctly. While speaking, he loaded two Colt M4 Carbines, donned a bulletproof vest, and joined me in the remaining Escalade. “AK-47s are the Russians’ weapon of choice. This is a Sicilian-run compound. Something is very wrong with this picture.”

  While I veer us through rose-colored deserts with snow-capped peaks in the background, Grayson takes down three men sneaking into the entrance of the compound within a second of them leaving their Ford Expedition. The bullet casings ting off the windshield before landing in my lap. The hairline cracks they cause to the windshield has nothing on the damage I instigate by t-boning a second vehicle.

  As images of the visual Melody most likely experienced when she arrived at the scene of her parents’ accident swarm my mind, I place a bullet between the eyes of the passenger in the Ford Expedition before adding one to the chest of the driver for good measure. He’s clearly dead, but I’d rather be cautious than be played for a fool—again.

  After taking in an overhead power line, the connection of the electricity box to the steel fence spanning the perimeter, and the hover of a helicopter overhead, Grayson and I move into the main hub of the compound. Situational awareness is one of the first things Tobias teaches his recruits. Being aware of what’s going on around you is the only thing that increases your odds of living when you’re amid an ambush.

  Tear gas stings my eyes and irritates my upper respiratory tract, but the scene is one of many I’ve been a part of the past three years. Guns blaze, lives are lost, and it’s all done without a sound seeping from my lips.

  Calling out during a raid is one of the worst things you can do. It alerts the men you’re targeting where you are and paints a bullseye on your back.

  After creeping down the hallway I led Leesa down remotely earlier and killing an additional six Sicilian crime members on the way, I signal for Grayson to take the corridor on his left while I approach the main entrance.

  Our enemies know we’re coming. I can feel it in my bones, not to mention the brittle warning from a female voice a mere second before the barrel of my Colt M4 peeks out of the corner where I’m stationed. “If you come any closer, I’ll kill him.”

  Every FBI agent handles this threat at one stage of their career. This is my fourth, although it feels different this time around. That might have more to do with the fact the person Leesa is holding hostage isn’t just known to me, he took on the role of my mentor when Mr. Gregg passed away.

  Leesa has her gun pointed at Tobias’s head, proving my message about our Honey Pot being rogue wasn’t received by Tobias. They must have infiltrated our communication servers as well as the mainframe because there’s no way Tobias would have gotten within touching distance of Leesa if he’d known she was rogue.

  He thought he was saving her, where in reality, he walked straight to his death.

  This is one of the reasons Tobias’s team is usually filled with male agents. He can’t look at any female in distress without seeing his daughter. Normally, that type of conflict of interest would be discouraged by the hierarchies in the golden tower. In Tobias’s case, it works in his favor. His impressive stats are solely because he can’t separate his home life from his work life.

  Even with no one in his team knowing why he’s so protective of his daughter, we’re very aware she comes before anything. We’ve never met her. I haven’t even seen a photograph of her. That’s how guarded Tobias is when it comes to Isabelle.

  I stop scoping the area when Leesa sings, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  My teeth grit when she fires at the shard of glass I was using to survey the area a few minutes later, annoyed by my lack of response. I’m not surprised she spotted my snoop, she was trained by the best. I’m just frustrated she’s only using part of the skills Tobias taught her. His training goes beyond weaponry, tactical response, and combat drills. He coaches you to be a better person, and prepares you for the cruelness that generally comes with that. He taught me it’s okay to forgive as long as I don’t forget, and how dying with morals will forever outrank dying without them.

  With that in mind, I press my trigger until it’s halfway cocked, then chance a glance around the corner of the hidey-hole where I am staked out. I’m barely half an inch out when Leesa fires one shot at my head. She missed on purpose, but that isn’t the point. The fact she thinks she can scare me irritates me more than the knife wound I spotted in Tobias’s neck during my quick peek. The amount of blood pooling between his fingers reveals he was most likely stabbed in the carotid artery. If that’s the case, he has one to three minutes before he bleeds out, and that’s assuming he’s only just been stabbed.

  “Ahh… so there’s a little bit of bad hiding in that boyish persona of yours.” Leesa snickers with a laugh when I lodge three feet of air between the closest solid barrier and me.

  I’m a sitting duck.

  Well, so she thinks.

  “Drop it.”

  I shake my head. “That might work in the movies, Leesa, but this is real life. The only way you’re leaving this compound is by conceding or death.”

  She smiles before gesturing for the men I see hiding in the shadows to move forward. I’m not surprised to discover one of them is Paavo. His weapon of choice is more fitting than the men flanking him. He’s holding a lupara, otherwise known as a sawn-off shotgun for English-speaking folks.

  “Just shoot him and be done with it. I’m bored,” Paavo whines like a child.

  When Leesa hesitates for the quickest second, I use her delay to my advantage. Even the strongest couple crumbles when infidelity is placed on the line. My once-blossoming relationship with Melody is living proof of this. We haven’t spoken in years.

  Paavo balks exactly as planned when I murmur, “She can’t. The memories we share are too strong for her to forget.”

  Like a child fighting for his favorite toy, Paavo falls into the trap I laid out for him. “What memories? What is he talking about?”

  I steal Leesa’s chance to reply by asking, “Does he know about the little freckle high on your thigh?” I have no clue about any of Leesa’s freckles, but even someone with flawless skin has some sort of imperfection. However, men like Paavo don’t seek them out like I do, so he is as blindsided by my comment as Leesa. “It sits just below the tattoo you got two weeks after your mother died of cancer.”

  This part of my comment is factual. Tobias ranks applicants on their academic accomplishments and word of their peers. I look at their pasts. Almost every single man and woman in the Bureau are there for a reason other than the wish to protect their country. They’re either running, have run, or will run at some stage in their lives. Leesa fills more than one box. She’s running from both her past and her present, and she’ll be running in her future too. I guarantee it.

  “Made you look like the ideal daughter, didn’t it? But only you and I know the real reason you got that tattoo.” When I peer down to her right thigh, Leesa’s breaths become shallow and weak. “It wasn’t in memory of your mother, it was a reminder of how you swore you’d never end up like her. That you’d be a moral and upstanding member of society. That you wouldn’t be this.” I throw a head nod to Paavo during my last statement. “You’re a fraud, Leesa. You are exactly like your mother.” A solemn tear rolls down her cheeks when I add, “A whore for sale no matter how low the bid.”

  With Leesa’s eyes on me, wide and terrified, and Grayson in position, I make my move. Paavo is fired on first. I take him down with a direct hit to the heart while Grayson pops a bullet between the eyes of the two men flanking him. There’s another six to be contained, but my focus must remain on one. Leesa.

/>   Her finger hasn’t moved for the trigger of the gun she’s holding to Tobias’s head, but that doesn’t mean she’s stable. The instant she realizes everything I just said to her is true, she’ll go from calm to deranged in under a second.

  An appreciation for perfect hearing pummels into me when Leesa’s howling squeal overtakes the hiss of my bullet rotating through the air. This time next week, she’ll be wishing I had aimed for her head. Instead, I ignore the pleas pumping out of her watering eyes and take a second shot at her right shoulder. It has her gun falling away from Tobias’s temple before her finger gets anywhere near the trigger and has her spare hand shooting up to apply pressure to her wound.

  She either applies pressure or bleeds out like Tobias is in the process of doing.

  “We need a medic!” As bullets halo my head, I carefully lie Tobias onto the shell-case riddled floor. “Just hold on, all right? Help is on its way.” After tearing a large swatch of material from my undershirt, I bunch it up then press it to Tobias’s wound. The way it spurts at me when I switch his hands with mine reveals a vital artery has been severed. He’s seconds from death. “We need a medic, now! He’s not going to hold out for much longer.”

  “B-b J-j…” Excluding my mother, Tobias is the only one who has called me BJ the past six years. “I-I-I…”

  I watch him through both the eyes of an agent and a mentee when he slithers his bloodstained hand to a little pocket in the front of his bulletproof vest. After pulling out a tiny slip of paper, he attempts to hand it to me. I can’t take it. If I do, he’ll bleed out even quicker than he is.

  “Izzy. Izzy,” he stutters out, tapping on the sheet of paper.

  “Your daughter?” My daftness can be easily excused. He’s not a fan of nicknames, so he’s only ever called her Isabelle.

  When confirmation flares through his eyes, I say, “It’s okay. She’ll be okay. I’ll look after her.” I peer over my shoulder to the members of Tobias’s team not gunned down in a motherfucking shitstorm. There are more dead agents than militants. “Where’s the medic!”