Operation 25 No Survivors
Xander Vale
Xander couldn’t believe how calm the other guys were.
That kept circling his mind while he sat on the filthy cement floor of a gutted warehouse that smelled of wet rot and mouse droppings, with his wrists zip-tied in front of him and a man with a gun and heavy eyelids posted a few feet away.
Calm.
Tech sat with his back against a rust-stained support column, legs bent, glasses slightly crooked from where one of the kidnappers had shoved him down hours ago for talking.
His hands were bound, weapon and phone gone, yet he only looked mildly inconvenienced, as if this was a long airport delay and the nearest Starbucks was fifteen gates down.
Free sat beside him, shoulder pressed to his, wrists bound the same way. He had dirt on one cheek and blood drying along one knuckle from where he’d hit the van floor during the ride, but his expression kept drifting between bored, annoyed, and intellectually offended.
Curtis had fallen asleep.
Actually asleep.
Slumped against the wall with his head tipped back, split lip swollen, one knee bent, snoring in a low, steady rhythm as if he was home on a couch after eating too much dinner.
Xander stared at him.
They’d been kidnapped at gunpoint in the middle of a public street. Taken in a van. Hauled into some warehouse they couldn’t identify. Tied up, guarded, threatened. Held for ten-million-dollar ransom by men aching to get revenge from last week.
And Curtis was snoring.
Tech and Free were whispering to each other about employment possibilities.
“I’m telling you,” Free murmured, “since the task force is shut down instead of job hunting, we should travel for a while.”
Tech’s mouth barely moved. “Maybe Europe. We could always consult remotely. You look amazing in scarves.”
Free’s brows lifted. “That is true.”
Xander was certain he was hallucinating from fear.
Curtis snorted in his sleep, shifted, and mumbled something before he dozed back off.
Xander wanted to slap all three of them.
Maybe this was their normal. But he was about three hours past almost shitting himself.
It’d been hours.
Where was God? Where were the police?
Where was his Cassie?
Where was the FBI, the A-Team, the Green Berets, anyone?
Surely, they had a plan by now. God looked like the kind of man who made plans just for the sake of making plans. He had to have something he could pull from his archives. Something he’d jotted down on a napkin after watching an episode of CSI.
But they were still here.
Still tied.
Tech and Free had stopped discussing travel and moved on to gadgets.
“Did you see the biometric latch on Wes’s lab cabinet?” Free whispered.
Tech frowned. “The one with the pressure misdirection?”
“Yeah. That shit was cool.”
“It had three-factor authentication buried under a brass hinge. Now that’s art.”
Free’s eyes brightened. “I wanted to steal it.”
Tech struggled to stifle his laugh.
“What was really cool was they let me build the dead man’s trigger for the blast zone they did on the final scene. The fire flared at least fifteen feet high,” Tech grinned, then glanced around Free at him. “Xander, what’d you think?”
“Are you both serious right now?” he gritted.
Free looked at him. “About the fifteen feet? It had to be—”
“No, damnit. About acting like this is a damn coffee break.”
Free angled his head, studying him with a little more kindness. “We’re calm because we’re a family. Trust us, please. God isn’t gonna let anything happen to us.”
Xander’s stomach rolled. It had been forever. If they’d been shot, their bodies would be decomposed already.
He glanced toward the kidnappers. Two stood near the doors. One sat on a crate with a rifle across his lap. Another paced near the loading bay, phone in hand.
He couldn’t see all nine at once, and that made it worse. Every time one disappeared through a doorway or into a dark corner, he imagined them coming back with a new idea.
He lowered his voice. “Free.”
“Mm?” Free leaned closer.
“Can’t you hack into my account and transfer them the money?” Xander swallowed. “Then they’ll let us go.”
Tech and Free both turned their heads and looked at him as if he’d just grown another face.
Free blinked. “Of course I can.”
Xander’s pulse jumped. “Then do it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“The question isn’t can I,” Free whispered. “The real question is, will I. And the answer is hell-fuckin-no. No way in bloody hell are these dumbasses getting one cent of your money.”
Xander took a slow breath through his nose, trying to keep his voice from rising. “It’s my money.”
“Yes. Which is why I’m protecting it.”
“I have enough to pay it.” Xander leaned closer, anger and fear twisting together. “If it means keeping you guys alive, I’ll pay it.”
Tech shook his head. “You can’t pay them.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll kill us afterward.”
Xander went cold.
Tech’s voice stayed low and level. “Maybe the one in charge only wants the money. But that second bastard, the one who keeps coming over every half hour to stare at you, this is personal for him. He wants somebody to pay for his brother’s life. And money won’t cut it.”
“We’ve also seen their faces. Which makes us loose ends,” Free added quietly.
“Then what?” Xander was on the verge of sobbing. “If paying them gets us killed and not paying them gets us killed, then what?”
Free tilted his head, his gaze shifting.
“Morrison said he’s not going to let anything happen to you.”
Xander went still.
Free’s lips curved, small and sad. “He said to tell you to stay calm. To keep breathing and to listen to us.” His eyes warmed. “He said he loves you, and he promises he’s going to say that to your face real soon.”
The warehouse blurred as his throat closed around a sound he struggled to restrain.
“He said that?” Xander whispered.
Free nodded. “Yes.”
Xander closed his eyes.
Cassidy loved him.
He tried to make that fact solid enough to stand on. It wasn’t.
“If they know where we are…” he said, opening his eyes, “then why haven’t they come? They can do what they did at the studio lot.”
“The studio lot was self-defense,” Tech said. “This is a hostage situation. God can’t send his enforcers to shoot up everyone.”
Curtis stirred beside him, opening one eye. “Trust me, you really don’t want my dads coming to get us.”
Xander looked over.
Curtis shrugged. “I sleep lightly when kidnapped.”
Xander dropped his head, sighing. “You are all insane.”
“Shh,” Tech said, his body sharpening with alertness.
Free went still beside him.
Curtis opened both eyes.
Xander froze. “What?”
“It’s God,” Tech whispered.
No one spoke.
Tech listened, face angled toward the floor. Xander watched his eyes behind the lenses. They moved once. Twice. Then widened.
“Holy shit.”
Free was listening too, and the expression that crossed his face made Xander’s skin prickle.
Shock. Recognition…fear.
“What?” Curtis whispered, sitting up straighter. “What’s happening?”
Tech didn’t answer right away.
Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t say the plan involves my dads.”
“No,” Tech said.
Curtis relaxed by half an inch.
“Now I know what took so long.” Tech turned towards him. “God called someone else.”
His stomach clenched with nerves. “Who?”
“They’ll be here soon,” Tech whispered. “If they’re not already.”
They?
The warehouse had been frightening all night, but now…it felt different. Xander didn’t know why. “Are they police?”
Free’s expression was grave. “No.”
He glanced over at one of the kidnappers, who’d turned halfway toward them.
“You’re going to want to steel your stomach,” Tech said. “Or just don’t look.”
Xander
Free leaned in so close his lips brushed Xander’s ear. “Here they come.”
Tech’s grin was audible. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
The captor leaning against the far wall looked up from his phone. “Hey! I’ve already told you to shut the fuck—”
A gloved hand shot out of the darkness behind him, seized his chin, and wrenched. The crack of his neck echoed like a gunshot. His body jerked once, then vanished backward into shadow, dragged away without a sound.
Xander yelped. Before the scream formed fully in his chest, a figure in a long white overcoat slid across the concrete on his knees, coat flaring behind him as he came to a sharp, impossible stop in front of him.
A gloved palm was clamped over his mouth. “Shhh.”
The oversized hood hid all of him, except for his dark sunglasses, and full peach lips.
Footsteps pounded around the corner. The man in white tilted his head, listening.
He reached behind his back with his free hand and drew a short black rod.
When one of the kidnapper’s raised his pistol, the rod snapped upward and telescoped into six feet of steel with a wicked point gleaming at the end.
He rotated it in three lightning-fast moves that struck the collarbone, ribs, then temple.
Xander heard each bone snap before the captor dropped, unconscious to the floor.
Xander didn’t have time to recover before the front doors blew inward with an explosion that shook the walls.
Two men in black stepped through the smoke. One wore a knee-length trench coat, its low hood shadowing a dark beard. The other moved just behind him, as equally silent and commanding.
Xander had never seen men who radiated that level of danger, not even in the movies.
The bearded man reached into his coat and drew a large all-black handgun fitted with a silencer. He fired once.
The round punched into one of the kidnapper’s thighs. He screamed, dropped to the floor and tried to scramble behind a pile of rubbish, but before he could make it, two more bullets hit him center mass.
A pool of crimson spread beneath him, dark and glossy across the concrete.
Two others burst from around the corner, weapons blazing. The man in black lifted one side of his coat like a shield—bullets sparked and ricocheted of the fabric , never slowing his strides.
From the shadows, the man who’d snapped the first captor’s neck emerged with two more figures in low hoods, wearing dark brown rather than black. They fanned out and gunfire erupted from every direction.
A captor took three rounds to the chest and slammed into a support beam, sliding down it in a smear of red.
Another tried to run and caught a bullet dead center of his throat. He gurgled, clawing at crushed cartilage before collapsing.
Xander thought he’d throw up. He should’ve looked away like Tech suggested.
Another man, the one aching to avenge his brother, was shot through the knee. He dropped his weapon and received a second bullet through the eye that painted the wall behind him.
Xander pressed his bound hands over his ears, heart hammering.
The last captor staggered out from behind cover, hands raised high. “I surrender! No weapon! I’m unarmed.”
Oh no. Xander was breathing so hard, he was dizzy.
“This wasn’t my plan. I’ll leave town tonight. You’ll never see me again. I didn’t—”
The dark man kept walking, his partner flanking wide.
The white-clad man still in front of them growled a single word, “Meridian.”
He didn’t slow.
His partner circled behind the surrendering man, aimed low and fired two silent pops, one behind each knee. The man dropped to the floor, still pleading for his life around his gut-curdling howls.
The dark killer—the man in white had called Meridian—drew a long, slim sword from inside the lining of his trench.
He gripped the kidnapper’s hair, yanked his head back until vertebrae popped.
He opened his mouth wide in an ear-splitting scream as the man in black slid the blade slowly down his open throat.
Xander clamped his mouth tight, his stomach convulsing.
The sword vanished inch by inch until only the handle remained. The captor’s eyes bulged, gagging, still alive. Meridian held him there, as if he was relishing the agony, the savagery, before he ripped the sword free in one barbaric motion.
Blood sprayed in a red arc before the body slumped sideways with its head almost split in two.
Meridian turned without a word and walked through the ruined doors, partner at his side.
The man in white fumbled at Xander’s bindings, and it took him a minute to realize he was blind. Terror and fascination warred inside him. Despite how fiercely he’d fought with that makeshift cane-weapon, he helped him up with gentle hands.
“Are you all right?” His voice was just as soothing.
Xander didn’t know how he felt.
Free, Tech, and Curtis were untied by the men in brown, shaking out their arms as they got to their feet.
“Holy shit,” Curtis laughed. “Best vacation ever.”
Free raced across the warehouse, ignoring all the death, and grabbed his messenger bag from the back office where the leader of their abduction lay slumped lifeless over the desk.
Free returned with a massive grin, kissing his tablet as if he’d recovered his child.
Outside, three black SUVs idled at the curb, behind a ten-passenger van.
The one in white kept a steady hand on Xander’s elbow as they ushered him into the second truck. He climbed in, still shaking, trying not to look back at the mutilated bodies in the warehouse.
He stared straight ahead.
A group of men and women stepped out of the van wearing black, hazmat-type suits, their faces hidden behind clear shields. They hauled out heavy metal crates stamped in stark white letters.
RAVEN SANITATION UNIT.
BIOHAZARD.
Xander shook harder.
He didn’t know what scared him more—the men who’d kidnapped him, the ones who’d saved him, or the people who’d come prepared to clean it all up.