36. April 17, 2023
Demon
Demon was pissed. “We have to go back! We need to catch these arseholes before they go to ground!”
“We will, but we can’t rush back without a plan, D. There are way more of them than us,” Midas reminded him.
“Since when has that mattered? There were even more douchebags in those mines in Zimbabwe and South Africa, yet we went in there.”
“Yes, we did. But we had a plan, and right now, we’ve been on the ground for all of five hours. You all needed food, hydration, and you should be resting, but instead, we’re here trying to figure out the best plan of attack. So sit your fucking ass down and regather your shit.”
He threw himself into his chair, his brain divided.
One half of him wanted to be upstairs in bed with Cherry, watching over her and helping her through the trauma she was sure to be entering.
The other half wanted to race back to Les Vergers de la Mer , find Zion and General Howard, and rip them apart with his bare hands.
Maybe inject them with a needle infected with sepsis—something exceptionally painful—then sit back and watch them suffer.
“All right, now that Dr. Jekyll has returned from his Mr. Hyde episode, we can maybe put together a plan.”
Midas, TB, Steel, and Demon were joined by Medusa, Loki, and Gilgamesh around the table in the dining area of the estate. A large-screen television on the wall was divided into four squares, holding Waters, Gem, Nemo, and then God’s usual black screen with his voice wave when he spoke.
“Midas,” God called out, “do we have eyes on any of our players?”
“At the moment, no. Last I was able to see, they had returned to the estate proper and appeared to be doing ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ packing up. Demon’s right.
We don’t have a ton of time. But packing up their operations isn’t something that can be done in a few hours.
There are a lot of moving pieces, not to mention that the plantation is a major source of ready cash funding for them.
First thing Zion did when he got back to his office was begin diverting all the liquid assets out of their local accounts.
I’ve got Nova searching globally for where he’s stashing it.
She’ll find it eventually, but it’s going to take a little time.
We shut down what we could, but he was faster due to our primary focus of getting everybody here safely.
“Luckily, Nova was able to freeze the corporation accounts, at least temporarily, but it won’t take them too long to override that.
He wasn’t able to divert those because it requires at least three board members, sort of like US nuclear deployment.
We have their president, Giudici, on ice here.
As far as we can tell, the rest of the board is clueless as to what is going on right now, but since we don’t know who else on that board is also a Salieri member, we have to tread carefully with any information we leak.
“I’ve got Cyclopes infected into their systems, listening in on their emails, and where they have their phones attached to the internet.
I was also able to hack a number of their cell phones.
If chatter starts, we’ll know. We’ve got maybe a week if they’ve got themselves someone as good as me, which I doubt, but it’s always possible.
If we want to be able to keep them from those funds permanently, we’re going to need to go the legal route for that. ”
Waters grunted. “No doubt he’s likely got contingency funds stashed elsewhere that we know nothing about, so those are another factor. We need to freeze him out as much as possible. If he gains access to the corporation accounts, he could go underground forever.”
“Exactly. I’ve given that task to Nova as a secondary goal right now though. Once we get back to the estate and close that down, then I can put her on it as a primary.”
Waters’ gaze was assessing, his fingers tapping on the desk. “Smart. It’s what I would have suggested. Good choice.”
Midas pushed onward. “A little bit harder to do, but not impossible, is tracking Howard. I can’t imagine he’d be dumb enough to return to his base, but if his ego is as big as we think it is, he might think he’s untouchable.
Hacking the American military is something I can do, but I’m going to need immunity if I get caught. ”
A crunching noise made the voice wave jump on the screen. “I’ll deal with that. I may have a channel or two to reach out to. Perhaps we can even farm that out so it doesn’t touch us directly. What about the boy? Andres?”
“Zion took him with. Hostage, maybe?” Midas said.
“Another asshole who hides behind children,” TB grumbled.
“He’s not really a kid. He’s eighteen,” Midas corrected him.
“Eighteen or not,” Demon added, “he’s cut off from his family now. From what I could tell, he’s pretty sheltered. His grandfather seemed to have a short leash on him. He may have done right by helping in his back-assward way with rescuing Cherry, but he’s as emotionally mature as a younger teen.”
“He’s going to have no footprint to follow. Not even a social media account to follow. He truly was a kid of the land.”
Puzzled, Demon asked, “How did he get my phone number then? ”
“I think he cloned your phone. Probably on the tour. Luckily, we use our watches for actual communication and our tablets, which he didn’t have access to, so it was just the number of the dummy phone and all the other bogus information on it.”
Waters brought everyone back to focus on their pressing need. “All right. We’ve gotten all that shit out of the way. Let’s get a plan in place to get back to the estate and see what we can scare up.”
Midas shrunk the team members on the screen and pulled up an array of hacked security cameras on the estate.
“Security is in the process of activating kill switches on all of their computers. I missed a couple, but Nova is holding the others off for now by placing them in an infinite loop. Won’t be long before they work through that once they realize what the problem is.
We have twenty-four hours if we’re lucky, so we need to get in there before they figure that shit out. ”
Medusa offered, “I can fly you back in. I was going to fly the girls out to Gem and Nemo tomorrow to get them to the nearest school, but they can wait another day. They can probably use the rest anyway. Three more bodies are extra firepower.”
“Agreed,” God said. “I would go do your checks, Medusa. I’m guessing once these guys get their plan in place, they’re going to want to take off right away. They can always fill you in along the way.”
“Will do.” The enigmatic logistics expert of Mythos fluidly rose out of her seat and left the room, heading for her helicopter outside.
“All right. Our corner pieces of the puzzle are in place,” God said. “Tracking the money, tracking Howard, tracking Zion, and the girls are settled until tomorrow. What about our guests?”
“I’ll be talking to them shortly,” TB grumbled. “I don’t expect it will take long to get them to fold.”
“Just don’t work them too hard,” Waters cautioned. “They do need to be alive to speak.”
“Please,” the interrogator said with a roll of his eyes. “These aren’t some badass terrorists. All I’m going to have to do is loom, growl, and ask questions.”
“Giudici is mine,” Demon growled .
TB gave him a nod.
“And afterward?” Demon asked.
TB looked at Steel, who looked at Demon. “I’m feeling a little cliché,” Steel replied. “I was thinking we could take a field trip to Mount Pelée. Make a deposit.”
“He should burn in Hell,” Demon snarled. “Poetic justice. Works for me.”
“More important than all of this,” God interrupted, “how’s our handler?”
All eyes went to Demon. He shifted in his seat, working hard to rein in his temper at the men who had hurt Cherry and focus on what he was being asked. “Blood test came back MDMA. She should be out from its physical effects by tomorrow.”
“Good.”
Silence hung in the room like a weighted blanket. He hated those things. Suffocating, hot, not calming. Calming was the silence of the ocean. The rocking of the waves. The cool of the water.
“What about mentally?”
He shrugged. “Hurting.”
More silence.
Finally, there was a crunching noise as God pulverized his sucker. “And?”
“And what?”
“Hurting and…”
With a sigh, Demon ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. She’s shutting me out. There. Happy?” He stood up, his chair scraping violently along the hardwood floor as he stood. “I’m going to check on the girls. Call me when there’s a plan and fill me in.”
He fled the room, his brain screaming at him to go back up to Cherry, but he held the voice down under the waves of panic that he was losing her.
Late that night, he made a call to his team leader.
He knew the man would be awake since he needed very few hours of sleep, and he was probably on a private flight home to take over Flame’s protection detail.
Plus he would want to be available if Kubrick called him from China.
Demon was close to her, given his time guarding her in Roatán last year, and while she hadn’t shared anything, he knew she was struggling with facets of their relationship.
While he knew it wasn’t a relationship-ending issue, he felt bad because he knew it was stressful for her, especially with them being separated for twelve weeks.
He hoped he wouldn’t be interrupting one of their calls.
Waters picked up the call almost immediately. “Hey, D. What’s up?”
“When we go to St. Lucia, I want to stay behind.”
The look his boss gave him was inscrutable. Finally, he asked, “Why?”
“I want to look for Cherry’s father’s remains. It might be a long shot, but she needs this. Without it, she’s going to struggle. Intellectually, she knows he’s gone, but she needs closure.”
His boss considered the request. “And?”
“‘And’ what?”
“There’s more to this request than that.”
Elbows to the table, his hands running through his hair, Demon wondered how much to tell Waters.
“I have some shite to figure out. Not about her. That’s a no-brainer.
She’s it for me. But I’ve been avoiding dealing with a lot of things.
It’s time. Past time. I can’t go to her like this, and it’s not fair to the team. ”
Waters shrugged. “There’s nothing to prove to the team, you know. They accept you just as you are. They’re not giving up on you. Ever. You’ve kept your promises to them, unspoken as they are. ”
“How—?”
“I’ve always known, D. It doesn’t take a genius to see what eats at you.” Waters smiled. “Take whatever time you need and come back when you’re good.”
“I’m sorry. I know we’re a man down with Nemo being gone?—”
The man on the screen waved him off. “We’ve got Mythos if we really get in a jam.
It’s better if you come back to us in a headspace you want to be in.
Just don’t disappear on us, okay? I mean, we can track you if we have to, but I’d rather trust you to return.
If you say you will, I know you’ll keep that promise. ”
A weight seemed to lift off his shoulders. Those words from his boss meant a great deal, a sign of faith he hadn’t realized he desperately needed to hear. Almost as much as hearing Cherry say something to that effect. The latter would take time.
“I promise. I’ll come back.”
Waters smiled. “Then I guess I’ll see you when I see you. And by the way, I’m glad you’re stepping up for Cherry. We would have gone back to look for her dad, but it will go a lot farther coming from you.”
He sure hoped so.