Chapter 42
Elijah
“Yeah. I’m on my way. Let me talk to my wife.”
The phone goes dead, and for a moment, so does my heart.
Being on the phone with that piece of shit and knowing he was only feet away from my wife was actual torture.
The only thing that got me through it was knowing that our plan has worked so far.
They don’t know we’re here. They haven’t set up their sharp shooters yet.
That’ll be another test. It will be the first time any of our men come face to face with theirs.
“Twelve men are headed to the long-range positions. Eyes up, guns at the ready.” Cotton speaks like he’s accustomed to leading. That fits with what Adam said about him. The fixer. The brains.
So that’s twelve men on rooftops. Forty-five men inside the warehouse, and another ten on foot, watching the perimeter.
All I can do now is wait and hope. Hope that none of our men are the ones to fall.
If they do, not only do we lose a vital member of the team, but we also alert the Latvians that we’re here.
Every inch of our plan is set on a tightrope.
It has to go exactly as designed or the whole thing goes up in smoke.
“Targets five and six, dispatched.”
Uneasiness calms a fraction with this first report.
“Nine and ten, expired.”
Several minutes or an eternity goes by before more news is relayed.
“One and two, terminated.”
Six. That’s six men down.
“Okay. Shit. You guys took all the good ones.” Jax is with Cal on Site Six. Damn, it’s good to hear his voice.
“We got it, we got it. Restart. Eleven and twelve, decommissioned.”
“Ew, that was a good one, brother! Seven and eight, in the pit.” Marshall is with one of the Italians on Site Four. Matteo is his name. He’s probably the most seasoned shooter in the bunch from what I heard in the briefing.
“Three and four. I don’t know. They’re pretty fucking dead.” No surprise that Adam lacks the enthusiasm of the rest of the group. Even having Eve by his side doesn’t alleviate the tension that she’s here in the first place.
Throwing my head back on the seat, I heave a deep relieved breath.
They all made it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Undeniable skill and the element of surprise secured a win in phase one of the plan.
There’s still nearly half an hour before I’m supposed to be pulling through the gate.
The hour time frame would put me at breaking the speed limit the whole way if I were leaving from Austin.
My guys can’t go after any of the men on the ground because we don’t know which one is signaling when I arrive.
“Shooters remain on the roofs. Phase two, guys, clear the ground after I enter the building. The rest of you, head down and get into position to help clear the ground.”
Our men on the ground outnumber theirs, and we’ve managed to retain the element of surprise.
This means the next big obstacle is inside the warehouse.
We’re relying on the sharp shooters’ visual to let us know where all the men inside are positioned.
Thankfully, the clear panels in the roof allow for good visibility.
I’ll be nearly useless for a time once inside.
They’ll pat me down, so there’s no need to bring any weapons.
“Vaughn and Grizzly are in chairs about twenty feet apart on the west end of the building. Their hands are bound behind their backs and...FUCK. They’re both beat to shit. They’re moving. They’ll be fine.” Marshall radiates a furious heat through the radio.
They beat them. They beat her. All at once, a familiar calm comes over me. I was born for this. The fear is gone. Uneasiness, no more. There are letters to be written. Messages to be sent. I’m the soldier for the job.
Inside the gate, I can only count six men on the ground. The others must be on the south end.
There it is. One man lifts his radio to his mouth, speaking quickly. My arrival has been relayed inside. Ground crew can move.
Once I step out of the truck, three men close in on me and pat me down. Leading me inside, they pass me off to three different men inside the warehouse. These men pat me down again. This time, they remove my boots and touch every square inch of me. Nice to know my reputation precedes me.
“Mr. Post Man. How kind of you to join us this evening. I assume English is preferred, yes?”
“How you doing over there, Little Devil?”
“Peachy, baby. I have this under control. Go home.”
The sight of her would send me somewhere ugly if I weren’t so relieved to see the rise and fall of her chest and hear the smooth cadence of her deep, sexy alto.
“I’m here. Unarmed and alone. That’s my part of the bargain. Let them go.”
Even his laugh seems to be accented. Hearing it doesn’t surprise me, though. We always knew these guys had no intention of letting any of us leave here alive.
“Actually, there’s been a change of plans. Turns out there is quite the market for a tech savvy ex-Navy SEAL and an even better one for the newlywed wife of the legendary Post Man. So you see, there’s just too much money to be made here for us to keep up our end of the bargain.”
The three men who pat me down are all clustered around me. One holds my left arm. Another has my right, and the one at my back has his arm linked around my throat, just barely allowing me to speak. Suppose this is my cue.
Using my tongue to remove the tiny remote we painstakingly secured to the roof of my mouth; I position it between my teeth and send up a prayer. Please let my guys be clear. I wink at my wife...and bite down.
The explosion pierces my eardrums and blows me off my feet.
The three men surrounding me are all vaulted forward several feet and go to the ground with me.
The man who was behind me is dead weight on my back.
There’s no time to assess whether he’s alive or not.
We needed this distraction to get men inside and hopefully take out some of their key players in the process.
Within seconds, I’m on my feet. The two men at my sides are attempting to get up, but their necks snap fairly easily.
“Vaughn!”
“Yeah.”
Her voice is coming from a different spot. Her seat is empty.
“FUCK! Vaughn!”
“Yeah! I told you I had this. Now you’re blowing shit up.”
There’s a note of humor in her voice, and when I see her...she lights my whole world up. She’s free. She’s standing behind Grizzly using something to saw at his binds. She freed herself. That’s my girl.
My men are coming through the massive hole the car bomb created in the side of the building.
When they say guns blazing, this is the shit they’re talking about.
These men are lethal. Each time a gun is fired, someone falls.
No one was ready for them, and they’ve only just recovered from the explosion.
They’re taking men out before they’ve even gotten to their feet.
Adam has a gun in each hand, firing both with precision, dropping two men for everyone else’s one.
Eve stands just behind him and off to the side.
She’s throwing knives that she pulls from who only knows where, and screams sound off with each one she loses.
Cal is...well, he’s laughing. He’s laughing and pin balling around the room like he’s a player in a Nerf war.
Cotton is at Eve’s back, watching for anyone coming in from the rear.
Jax and Marshall. Where the fuck are Jax and Marshall? There. Back-to-back. Shooting and turning like they had worked out each move beforehand.
Bullets are lobbed back from the other side, and one hits Dante somewhere high on the upper body. “Ah, fuck!”
Romeo steps in and shoots the guy who fired on Dante in the throat. He grabs Dante and helps him to his feet while Keir and Maso cover their exit.
Men continue to fall from seemingly nothing. That’ll be Mateo and the other shooters on the roofs.
My men take return fire, and some are hit. I can’t concentrate on who or where until Jax goes down. “Fuck!” No sooner have I started for him than Marshall has him back up, and two of Adam’s men, Hunter and Patton, step in to cover their exit.
There are bodies everywhere. Not one of our own, although I know we’ve been hit, and some have been taken outside. Vaughn. Time to get her out.
My blood turns to ice, seizing up every muscle in my body when I see her.
“ENOUGH!” Juris screams out the command so loud that it reverberates through the building before he shoots into the air above twice. Gunshots cease. He has the attention of every person in the room because he has....Vaughn.
I still can’t move. We did it. We had them. Including Juris and Aleksandrs, they have a total of eight men standing, and some of them appear injured. Even Juris is bleeding from the nose. Looks like he got some of the venom. She’d have his ass on the ground if he didn’t have that gun.
We still have thirteen men inside, ready to fight, but...we’ve lost. Aleksandrs stands behind Grizzly. I know John could disarm this man in seconds, but he won’t. He’d risk Juris shooting Vaughn.
My hands go up in a position of surrender. My men look to me for guidance, and all I can do is nod. They don’t even look defeated when they lower their guns and place them on the ground. Do they think I have a plan? I don’t. I have nothing, and I’m about to lose everything.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised. I suppose you aren’t the Navy’s go to soldier for nothing.
However, even you can’t stand against us.
We are smarter than our predecessors. Maybe we should thank you.
You paved the way for a bigger, more profitable business.
Alliances that wouldn’t have been possible before have spawned due to our mutual hatred of you. ”
“Tell him, Juris. Get this shit over with. I want to go home.”
Juris hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He smirks. Whatever he has to tell me, he doesn’t want to miss my reaction.
“What did they do with the bodies of your fallen comrades in Liberia? With the body of the Silencer...your brother?”
The mention of my team...of my brother, pulls at my sanity.
Weakens my resolve. Why would they even ask this?
Their bodies couldn’t be recovered. We had men outside who got those of us they thought could be saved.
Some of us made it. Some didn’t. Abel, Parker, Jackson, and Samuel were all already dead when they came for us.
Most of us were unconscious during the extraction and heard about it days later.
The extraction crew had to fight to get even those of us they were able to save.
These men likely accessed government records using hackers of their own, but why mention it now?
“That look. I like that look on your face. This is what it looks like when the ghosts of your past come to haunt you. Eh, Post Man?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but, if you’ll let Vaughn and Grizzly go, my men will leave with them, and I’ll stay here with you. If we continue to fight this out and I get killed, I can’t imagine you’ll be happy about returning that thirty million you’ve already collected on me.”
Their warped grins bring on a new terror and a sense of uneasiness. I was wrong. Wrong about everything.
“The thirty million wasn’t for you.”
He pauses to let that sink in, but I had already figured out this part.
“That was for your brother. The Silencer himself.”
My eyes strain to stay focused on Juris, but the image has blurred. My mouth goes dry, and my legs threaten to give out beneath me. Pins and needles in my fingers.
“We sold him to the Russians for thirty million dollars. We were due as much. We nursed him back to health, after all. He had to be kept in a coma for several months. Then there was all the rehab, of course, and the prosthetic leg. Not cheap. He had to train on that for quite some time before he was ready for the hunt. We plan to ask more for you since you still have all your limbs.”
The hunt. That does it. I turn and fall to my knees, vomiting up the contents of my stomach and then dry heaving, trying to purge my body of this pain.
My heart. It’s in pieces on the floor. Abel was alive?
He was a hostage of these sociopaths for months.
Maybe a year. Then....fuck. I can’t think about that.
I can’t think about how he was sold and then set free so that some sick fucks could hunt him.
A prosthetic leg. How much of a disadvantage was he given?
My mind is faltering, trying to catch up to this new world.
This world where Vaughn is going to be sold.
A world where my brother needed me and I didn’t come for him.
Distantly, I hear a voice come over the radios that some of my men still have at their hips. I must be losing my grip because I would swear that it was Abbi’s voice. She says, “Let loose”.
Just then, as she speaks, a man steps out from the upper landing behind Juris and Aleksandrs.
Their remaining men turn their weapons in that direction just as bullets fly from several directions.
All six men drop like dead weight. The roof shooters, but Vaughn.
The man on the landing holds out two guns and, with expert precision, shoots Juris and Aleksandrs through the backs of their heads.
The bullets both shoot clean through, and one nicks Grizzly in the ear.
A shot like that...so precise. So quiet. He even knew the exit point and didn’t seriously harm either hostage. Who the fuck shoots like that?
I remain on my knees, broken and more confused than I’ve ever been, when the man pulls down the gaiter that covers the lower half of his face.
He’s wearing some sort of toboggan that covers his hair and forehead.
He was almost completely covered until now.
Until he reveals my face, just slightly changed.
It’s like looking at myself in the mirror.
Only now, my face is slimmer, and there’s a scar across my cheek.
“Abel.” My brother. He’s here. He’s alive.