All the Company Men: Marcus Grimshaw #2 (The Secret State)

by C. J. Steinberg

  That was it. His last moments. He had spent his youth on video games and blogging, built a respectable reporting channel on the back of the largest conspiracy known to man, and now, right at the finish, when he learned how deep it truly went and how larger than anything he could’ve conceived ever before in his life it all was—he was about to die. Was that the price for knowing what was not meant to be known? Was this the price for trying to rid the world of evil people who intended to break the world? They used a Covid-19 opportunity that they had created to forward their plans of mass destruction. But of course it was all for the greater good.

  Arthur was afraid, but he was also angry. So angry that he refused to die. His throat might be crushed any second, but he was intent on surviving, finally feeling up a shard of glass under his hand. He was seconds away from dying as his vision blurred and the face of the man responsible for his death disappeared. Then he grabbed the shard with full force, feeling the glass cut deep into his hand, and then he swung it. He felt the man’s meat being punctured, and he felt a sting in his own elbow when his blade hit the bone. The assassin gargled and fell to the side as Arthur fought for breath. It was as if his nose was plugged and something was stuck in his throat. He greedily breathed the air, letting the consequent cough come out. He then remembered where he was and what was going on, and he looked at the man next to him bleeding to his death. His eyes wouldn’t move, fixating on the man dying before him.

  “I won,” he said. “I survived,” he added. This was the price for his life. This was the price for keeping the world whole and alive. He thought that he could just hide in his apartment and type away into a better world, but it didn’t work like that. There were sacrifices to be made. Eventually, the gargling stopped, but it would never leave Arthur. He sat in the corner unmoved, unable to peel his eyes away from the dead assassin. Then his phone rang.

  “He—Hello,” he answered.

  “Sir, this is Joanna, I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, tell me,” Arthur said.

  “Sir,” she hesitated. “I believe I am being followed. I think they want me dead.”

  Arthur was still shaken up, but he felt like he was waking up in that moment. “What... What do you mean? Where are you?”

  “I mean, there are people out there after me. I fell endangered. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Joanna, listen to me carefully. They are following you,” Joanna was exasperated on the other end. “Listen, listen. You can handle it, girl. You can handle that. You know you can. Okay? Go carefully. Go lightly. Be careful like you always are. I will meet you at our safe location. Okay? We have work to do still. Important work.”

  Joanna was quiet. Only her breathing came through the microphone.

  “Don’t give in now. Don’t let them win.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the place. I will.”

  “Joanna, our work is important. We have to make sacrifices that hurt us, we have to risk everything we are and everything we have ever stood for in order to stop them. We, the journalists, are the last standing line. And I can’t do it without you.” In that moment, Arthur could hear police sirens. It must’ve been the gunshot from before. “I have to go now,” he said. “Be careful, Joanna.” He hung up the phone and stood up. He lingered a few more seconds in the warehouse, staring into the body, processing his deed, and then he took to running through the alleys. He hadn't an idea how he was able to stop that man from killing him. He couldn’t remember a single detail of the whole fight with him, except the moment the fighting stopped and he continued breathing.

  He sighed, thinking. He needed to find a way to secure the files from Mr. Robinson and to make sure to establish a legacy, to make a safety net in the event that his life abruptly ends that his discoveries go into the world. But how to that? Whom could he ever trust with something like that, with something so large and so powerful?

  The nausea came back, but he knew that there was nothing left to vomit at that point. Then suddenly he came to a stop. He was staring at his building from a distance, feeling like he was being watched. He raised his head around and noticed that a camera rolled away from him at that moment. On his left, he heard the same noise. No way, he thought. He looked straight across the road, and the camera moved away in that moment. He realized that there was no way out for him. Frightened for his life, hot, sweaty, and almost paralyzed, feeling a great desire to lay down and cry, Arthur ran back toward the alleys.

  He knew they were all over the world. He knew how deep their power went. That day he also learned what their true intentions are. But to have London at their disposal—that he could not believe. In that moment he stopped his walk and looked around the alleys, feeling a tightening in his chest, closing of his throat, and rushing in his head. What now?

  NINETEEN

  A s the two SUVs pressed fast and hard on their tail, Marcus saw only one solution that he hoped would get them out of the sticky situation and keep them alive. It was not a wise move, but it was the only move that made sense at the moment.

  He turned left so sharply that both he and Jack almost fell out of the truck. He carried on down the road as the two SUVs appeared one after the other with screeching tires, hard on their tails.

  “They’re on us,” Jack yelled.

  “I know, I know,” Marcus said. His eyes were going for the rearview mirror even though it was shot long ago. The revving of the two engines was growing louder by the second and their noise was all he needed. Then he spotted the construction site. “Get ready, brother,” Marcus said.

  “Oh, shit,” Jack said, using his legs to keep himself lodged in the seat. Marcus took a left turn and drove onto the dirt road around the construction site of the building. The SUVs followed, lost in the cloud of dust and sand Marcus was leaving behind him.

  He was counting on the fact that they wouldn’t be able to see much of anything when he drove into the support beam with the rear of the truck, letting the entire floor collapse from above, raining down bricks and other materials down upon their pursuers.

  Jack screamed out in excitement, looking back to see that on truck was still following them. “The second one is done,” Jack said. “Yeeeee-haaaa!”

  Marcus didn’t share Jack’s joy in the moment. When he hit the support beam he felt the hit on the vehicle, fearing that the car was going to stop at any moment; it felt wrong under his hands.

  “Oh, yes,” he said aloud, unable to contain his emotions when he spotted another support beam that would make a great diversion for the SUV still remaining behind them.

  “Oh, man,” Jack said. “Oh, come on.” He braced himself as the pickup truck rambled along the road, its front bumper completely falling off seconds before Marcus hit the support beam and brought another part of the building upon the last remaining SUV with a rumble and thunder.

  When the dust settled, the chasing vehicle was completely invisible. Marcus’ eyes were wide open, his breath heavy. Then a smile came across his face, turning into a grin, slowly evolving into a laughter. He looked at Jack who met him with the same exasperation. “It worked,” Marcus exclaimed. “It worked!”

  Jack accepted his arm in a ferocious shake of two brothers surviving the battlefield yet again. “Okay, enough, now—woo!—let’s go. Go. Start the car and let’s move out before we get caught.”

  The only problem with Jack’s plan was that the car didn’t want to start. Marcus closed his eyes as he turned the key one more time, hoping it works, praying it starts, but to no avail. What he had feared happening has happened. And now they didn’t even have a car. “I knew it,” Marcus whispered falling into a slight panic.

  “I’m surprised it got us this far,” Jack said. “Come, let’s go through the construction site on foot. If anyone is still following us, we’ll be gone soon enough.”

  “Alright, let’s do it.”

  Jack grabbed his rifle and handed one to Marcus. “You got the pistol? Good. Let’s go.” They exited
the car, looking around in all directions. They walked across the dirt road and into the half-constructed building. It was interesting to see a building being born. There was a concrete bottom for the steel construction that soared so high they could not see the end of it apart from the sun shining through the top. They passed the melding cans, piles of wooden boards, stones, mixers, trucks, and scarce lanterns. They carried on toward the other end of the site when they heard people shouting behind them.

  They stopped short and looked back. “It can’t be,” Jack said.

  “Jack, buddy,” Marcus said. “Time to run, I think.”

  They hopped off and took to running across the construction site, only to face the fence on the other end that they had no way of passing.

  “This way,” Jack pointed to the scaffolding leading up a floor. They dashed up that one, and then another, ultimately reaching the third floor. Marcus peered over the scaffolding at the military men below and counted them. “The way they move, it’s definitely the Company.”

  “How many did you count?”

  “Five.”

  Jack went into his head to do some calculations, but it didn’t take a math genius to understand that five fully trained and fully equipped men could easily eliminate two almost naked men with a couple of rifles.

  “What do we do,” Jack asked. “Fallujah?”

  Marcus shook his head. “They have the advantage in this scenario. We need to go stealth on them.”

  “If I remember my training correctly, that will not be possible. At all. They prepare for exactly that sort of scenario.”

  “Then, I guess, we could start shooting. Considering our position, we can take out at least two, maybe three before they figure out our vantage point. Then it’s open combat, to be sure, but it’s a fair fight at least.”

  “I guess, so,” Marcus said and slowly cocked his rifle. The men below were roiling about the ground floor, searching for them. Marcus aimed his rifle at the commander and steadied his hands with a few deep breaths. He had the shot, but he was waiting to clear his mind; the moment of taking a careful shot at someone was perfect only when all noise and light were out his mind. He needed to have his target in sight and nothing else. He needed a clear mind, so he took a deep breath.

  Marcus nodded to Jack and counted down from three with his fingers, and let loose at the same time as Jack. The commander of the group recoiled and fell on his back; the man on the far right fell like he was struck by lightning. Marcus moved his rifle to another soldier who was now facing him, though Marcus was quicker. The last standing man fired back at them in a controlled fashion as he gradually stepped back toward cover. First Jack hit him, and then Marcus, killing the man.

  Marcus put the rifle down and exhaled. “That is how we do it,” Marcus said.

  “Indeed,” Jack said.

  “Well, I guess we go down now.”

  As they stepped on the ground floor, Jack grabbed Marcus by his elbow and shushed him. The noise was a thundering one, slowly approaching them from afar. It was becoming louder and louder, revealing its nature. “It’s a helicopter,” Jack said.

  Marcus started running toward the entrance of the construction site for the vehicle the last batch of men used and Jack followed him. “Damn it, brother, they really want us dead.” When they reached the entrance where their pickup truck still stood near the rubble, they heard engines revving in the distance and tires loudly bouncing on the uneven dirt road. To their left the dirt road outstretched, but it was clear that it was not their way out.

  “Let’s go back inside,” Marcus shouted.

  The cables from the helicopter hit the ground right in front of them. They looked up and saw men intent on killing them sliding down to snuff the life out of them. Marcus pulled Jack and they ran up the scaffoldings to get a better spot for themselves in hopes of surviving.

  Car doors slammed outside and the Company men ran into the construction site, quickly joining the men who had repelled down, their rifles primed and at the ready. One of the men who had repelled from the chopper saluted them.

  “Where are they?” The man in charge asked, shouting over the hovering chopper high above.

  “They have to be here. There was nowhere for them to run,” the commander from the chopper said. “Even if they did, the eye in the sky will catch them.”

  The other man grinned in response as the chopper flew away.

  Marcus and Jack had already reached the fourth floor by that time, listening to what was being said below them. The situation was clear in Marcus’ mind, and the outcome could be only one. But he was not the same man he was from a year before. He was different. He was genuine. He was determined. Though he was outnumbered and outgunned, and though his destiny looked set in stone, Marcus was not going to let some Company men take his life.

  “Jack,” he whispered.

  Jack nodded at him.

  “I guess we are doing Fallujah,” Marcus said. “Let’s go up one more floor before we take our positions and begin.”

  Unlike the first or the second wave of the soldiers intent on stopping them, the new group was large in numbers, better equipped, and with a tactical advantage on them by surrounding the entire construction site. “How many of them, you think?”

  “A dozen, I’d say,” Jack replied.

  “Yeah, thereabout. I counted eleven myself. We have to be very careful.”

  “We faced worse odds before.”

  “But not when the faith of the entire world was at stake.”

  Jack felt those words in the core of his being. It was true that they had faced worse odds before, but back then he lived in a different time, with a different mindset. He didn’t really have an objective in mind apart from making a name for himself and making sure his friends and brothers-in-arms love, respect, and worship him. They had to be careful now. They had to be smart.

  Two men had reached the fifth floor before the rest of their group. They were standing close to each other so that if anything happens to either of them, the other will be able to signal to their comrades that the enemy was upon them. That is partly one of the reasons they were using light triggers on their weapons, to make sure their guns fire away with the last death twitch of their bodies.

  Marcus and Jack knew that. They knew how the Company worked, what their ideas were, and how they wanted their men to approach each mission. In fact, they excelled for their former employers in that very regard. They looked at each other and that was all they needed—the moment was now. Simultaneously, they moved from their cover and grabbed the men by their necks. No matter the amount of training, humans will always have the same instincts—if someone grabs you by the neck, you will move your hands toward it to defend yourself, entirely forgetting about the procedure of firing a shot. The only sound they produced was the cracking of their necks. Marcus and Jack gently and softly lowered their bodies onto the floor so as to not make any noise. Marcus took the lead and peered over the scaffolding to check up on the situation below. He waved Jack over and pointed his finger.

  On the fourth floor, right below them, three men were scouring. To shoot them meant to arouse all of them, and if they did that then chances were that they wouldn’t survive the salvo of bullets that would be fired upon them from the front and from below.

  “Okay,” Jack said after a few seconds. “You go up a floor and take the third one when they get here; I got the other two.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?”

  Jack looked at him and smiled; in his hand was a handful of knives. “Go up and take the third one out.”

  Marcus hated that part of their mission from so many years ago because it was completely improvised. It was risky and dangerous, unlikely to pay off.

  “Just go,” Jack said.

  Marcus stepped over the dead body of the man whose neck he had broken a minute before and took his position on the edge of the scaffolding above. He was counting the seconds, trying to ascertain the movement of his target without actuall
y looking down. He closed his eyes and envisioned the man’s movement. Moments later, he opened his eyes and looked out, seeing that he had correctly assessed the man’s pace. As the man continued his trek, Marcus prepared himself. Five, four, three, he counted down in his head and leapt onto the third man from above. The man looked up at him, but Marcus was ready, a knife in his hand—it plunged into the man’s neck and cracked his collar bone, his gargling powerful.

  Jack was watching Marcus carefully from behind the crate, waiting for his own target to come within reach. He had to time it to perfection with Marcus. The moment Marcus stepped forward and prepared for his jump, Jack leapt out from behind his cover and jammed the knife into the soldier’s neck so deep that he was able to move the dying man to the side with ease and let another knife fly from his other hand into the soft point of the back of the head of the second man, who was distracted by the noise Marcus had made behind him.

  “Guys! Guys!?” Someone was shouting from below. It didn’t phase Jack as that was exactly what he was expecting.

  Marcus knew that it was only a matter of seconds before things jump off, and it was all about making sure they get out alive. The Company men had as much of a chance of taking their lives as they had taking theirs. For all he knew, maybe a part of this group were new-generation Marcus and Jack, younger and hungrier. But he had to remain optimistic; such is the human nature.

  The remaining six men took to running up the scaffolding like they were spurred by a fire. One man took his position on the elevation to the third floor on the opposite side of Marcus, knelt, and took his aim. Within seconds, three men appeared on their floor and took cover behind whatever they could find the moment they spotted the dead bodies.

  Silence set upon the construction site. Somewhere in the distance, the thundering of the helicopter still making its rounds was coming to their ears. Around the site and through the construction, the wind was blowing gently, coupled with Marcus’ heavy breathing. No one was moving from behind their covers. They all sweated, calculated, and prayed.