Chapter 16 A Hill To Die On
A HILL TO DIE ON
brYS
Nicolai and I have spent the last several hours bored out of our minds.
Pugli left the freeway and cut an hour and a half into the countryside, and then another twenty minutes rattling to pieces down a two-track trail over swelling hills and down into gently sloping valleys before we crested one last hill and spied our target: a massive, sprawling manufacturing plant in the end stages of dilapidation surrounded by endless acres of yellowing, waist-high grass.
"Fucking Pugli," Nico had snarled, letting the truck roll back down from the hill so we aren't skylined, although the plant is a half-mile away at least. "No cover. An old building with basements and subbasements and all kinds of places to hide. The evil bastard is too damned smart."
"So…now what?" I asked.
He shrugs. "Reconnaissance. A fancy word for sneaking and watching and being very bored."
"What can I do?"
He eyed me. "A good question. What can you do?"
"Well, I have zero military training or experience, and I’ve never shot a gun, but I'm coordinated and not a total moron. And I've seen heads blown off already and made it through that, so…"
Nico smirked. "More than most can say." He stared out the window for a few moments, thinking. Then, he looked at me again, serious and steady. "You will not be content to remain here, I assume."
"Not a chance, buckaroo. That man down there…
" I shake my head, unsure of what I was even going to say, only that sitting in this truck doing nothing was not an option.
"No. Whatever happens, I'm a part of it.
I'm not, like, jonesing to shoot anyone, but I will if it puts an end to this once and for all.
For him," I gestured toward the building where Jakob was being held.
"And for you. So I'll do what has to be done. "
Nico had nodded. "Very well. Allow me a few minutes to conduct initial reconnaissance and formulate a plan. I shall return." He patted my hand. "I am only looking and thinking. And we cannot assault them on our own anyway—we must wait for the others."
“How long will it take them to get here?"
He grinned. "Oh, not as long as you are thinking. Jakob has access to some rather fascinating aeronautical technology."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning a Roth jet."
My mind had wobbled a bit—those are the most expensive private aircraft on the planet, and beyond mere expense, they only make a handful every year, so they are nearly impossible to get ahold of, even if you could afford one.
"Oh."
"An experimental, unreleased Roth jet."
"That's…" I trailed off, at a loss.
Nico shrugs. "That's the boss. He can do things, find information, find people, and procure things that should be impossible. And it is not merely a matter of money, either. Money cannot buy everything."
"It's still weird to me that you work for a man you've never met," I said.
He shrugged. "Loyalty is a strange thing." Another pat on my hand. "Now. Stay here, if you please. We do not know if they have patrols. I think not, but it is best to be safe. I shall return in a few minutes."
He had left, sniper rifle on one shoulder, walking parallel to the ridgeline, just below the crest.
A few minutes became ten, then thirty, and then he finally returned. "I bear good tidings, Miss Bennett. I know where he is being held, and I have seen him. They had what appeared to be a veterinarian attend to his wound."
"Why would they do that?" I asked.
"If he died of blood loss before he could be of any use as bait, the entire effort of obtaining him and transporting him here would be wasted, and Pugli would not have any leverage to draw me in."
"You must have some serious dirt on the man."
He nodded. "Oh, I do. Or I did. I turned it over to a German military intelligence officer who was—is—part of a multi-country, multi-agency task force investigating Roberto Pugli."
"So…did it help? Your evidence?"
He shrugged. "I do not know. The wheels of justice grind ever so slowly, internationally especially so."
"And you're not content to wait for legal justice to be meted out," I guessed.
His eyes glitter like chips of obsidian.
"No. There can be no justice. Mere death is not justice, no matter how slow, agonizing, and protracted it may be.
Torture is not justice." A shake of his head.
"No, there is no justice for his crimes.
But removing him from this earth with my own two hands is the closest thing to closure I will ever get. "
"Revenge, eh?"
"No." His tone is intense. "Not revenge.
The man forced my eyes open and burned my wife and infant twin children alive in front of me.
Killing him is not revenge. Revenge would be dissecting his grandchildren while he watches.
Revenge would be carving apart his wife.
Revenge would be making him watch as I dissolved his daughter in a vat of acid. "
"Jesus fucking Christ, Nicolae," I whisper, stomach twisting.
"No. I do not wish for revenge. His wife and family are innocent. He must pay for his crimes, and…" he ducked his head, gathering himself. “I will not find peace in this life until he is dead, and the only way I can know for sure that he is truly dead is if I put the blade into his heart myself."
"I suppose that makes sense."
"I would never and have never done those awful things to anyone, Miss Bennet. I was making a point."
I nodded. "I know. I…well, it's tempting to say I understand, but I know I can't. I just…I understand that you were making a point."
He looked away. "I am a killer, make no mistake, but I only deal death to armed combatants, never unarmed innocents, and never women or children." A pause, a tilt of his head. "If a woman were attempting to kill me, I would protect myself, however."
"I think that's fair."
We spent the next few hours talking. He told me the long, fascinating, and wildly improbable tale of how he met Tatiana, his lover.
I'm not sure of their marital status, and it doesn't feel like my business to ask.
He gave me the loose outlines of the others' stories, but he insisted the real telling belonged to those involved.
It all just sounded so…crazy. Treks across the Brazilian rainforest, gunfights, blown-up drug palaces, midnight rescues, everything was just so intense.
Yet, that phone call was still replaying in my mind. They cared about each other. They were a family—a real, true family. They teased, joked, and poked fun, but it was obviously all in good humor.
I don't have that.
I've never had that.
I've always been Brys Bennett, Lawrence Bennett's only child, heir to the BDI throne and fortune. In the world of Manhattan's wealthy business elite, I was royalty. My friends were chosen by my mother when I was young. My schools were the best prep schools. Everything was just so.
And then Mom died, and I was The Sad Girl.
I was the kid whose mom died. No one knew how to talk to me.
I had no friends—I am not a naturally outgoing person.
I'm quick-tempered, sarcastic, and can be kind of mean sometimes.
That doesn't make you a lot of friends. I was part of the cool clique in the silver spoon academy I went to for high school but only because my dad was Larry Bennett and funded the PTO for a year with a single check, and we lived a block from the school and had a pool with a slide, a movie theater, and a pantry full of every kind of snack food and junk food you could think of.
I suppose all that isolation and friendlessness only intensified my…prickly personality.
The shit that happened to me my senior year at Yale is why I'm unable to trust anyone. But we're not going there, not even in the confines of my own mind. I have never spoken of it. To anyone. Ever. I doubt I ever will.
How could I? How do you put a nightmare into words?
Nicolae did, and rather succinctly at that. So it can be done, I suppose.
A strange noise fills the air; Nico and I are lounging in the truck bed, talking occasionally, and waiting.
I have always been comfortable with silence, so sitting in my own thoughts is no hardship, and Nico seems to have plenty of his own thoughts to occupy him, so much of the waiting is passed in oddly companionable silence.
Now, the silence is broken by the strange noise—a kind of low, quiet, dense roaring.
"What is that?" I ask, sitting up.
"The jet," he answers. "My people." He pointed at a dot on the horizon, low and moving fast.
Really, really fast. Like, it's a dot one second, and then I blink, and it's recognizably an aircraft, and then it's flaring like a helicopter fifty feet above the ground and descending for a landing.
The noise of the jet engines is…dispersed, somehow.
I don't know how to put it. We're not that far away, but the sound seems…
muted. Scattered. I doubt the people in the building on the other side of the hill will hear it at all, or if they do, it will be unrecognizable for what it is.
"Some kind of proprietary technology,” Nico says, answering the question that must be on my face. "Apparently, even the US military-industrial complex does not know how Roth has managed that trick with the engine signature, and he is neither telling nor selling."
"It's incredible. The sound is there, but…" I shrug, at a loss for words, “dispersed, somehow.”
"It is. And very useful." He slides to his feet and rolls his shoulders, twists to stretch his broad back. "Ah, and here is the crew."
I watch them approach, and at first I wonder if my eyes are playing tricks on me, or if there is some weird perspective thing going on, because the one guy looks like he's…
Oh, no. He's just that big.
Jesus.
These guys are…
Jesus.
I sit down, rather involuntarily, onto the truck bed's gate. There are eight figures approaching, each one dressed in black fatigues and body armor—bullet-resistant vests, I suppose. They're armed to the teeth, all of them.