Chapter 38 #2
“Sorry I can’t be there with you all,” Orion says glumly. The only time he shows emotion is when it’s about a kill. “Bensotti has me looking into some people and wouldn’t let me leave.”
“Next time,” Knox assured him.
Once we enter the security room, it takes no time to kill the guards inside, Knox using his scary-looking Scream knife while Pyro breaks the other’s neck.
With that done, we check the feeds and find the room where men are guarding a group of huddled prisoners. The adults crowd around the children, protecting them with their bodies as much as possible.
In another room, there are five men on a raised platform, one standing behind a lectern as if he’s giving a speech. Two of the five men are Peter and Dennis.
Sitting in folding chairs, looking raptly at the stage, are assholes that don’t know they’re living on borrowed time.
“Pyro,” Knox says and he steps up beside him. “When we take care of the fucking scum in that room, I want you to get the prisoners free. Try to shoot the guards and look for a key on them if you can.”
“Got it.”
“Thorne, take the men on the stage. I’ll take the crowd.”
“Too easy.”
“There,” Knox says, pointing to a door just behind the stage. “Might be a good entry point for us,” he says to me. “Pyro, you take the front. The two guards will be taken by surprise if you enter first and stab them.”
“Okay.” Pyro’s eyes dance with excitement.
Once we have all the intel, we leave the room and hurry down the stairs as quietly as we can. We break away from Pyro and head to the hallway with the back entrance.
We wait, backs pressed to the wall until we hear commotion in the room, our cue that Pyro was spotted.
Spinning to the door, I kick it in and Knox enters, firing off three shots before all hell breaks loose.
I step in behind him and take out three men on stage, making sure I don’t hit Dennis or Peter. Not yet.
They drop heavily to the ground, either dead or wounded and I turn my weapon to the men seated. They get with the program quickly, some men shouting before running toward the door at the back of the room. I raise my gun and mow them down, pumping round after round into their backs.
Knox steps up beside me, spraying bullets into the men that haven’t had time to get out of their seats.
The two guards Pyro didn’t shoot take cover, firing at us. Two rounds hit me in the chest—where my bulletproof vest sits snugly—but I shake it off, turning my weapon and shooting at them. One of them takes three of my rounds in the torso, then his head explodes from a bullet from the Desert Eagle.
“Go,” I tell Pyro after he searches the bodies and finds the keys. “Take care of them.” He dips his head and races out of the room through the door we kicked in.
A few men were able to run out of the opposite door, cries of fear filling the air.
Knox turns to me and says, “Go, we’ll take care of the rest.”
I race out of the room, firing off a few rounds at the stragglers that didn’t get out with the first round. They cry out and fall. Before I run past, I pump my remaining slugs into them, ensuring they move no more.
Dropping the clip, I add in a replacement and take off after the other men. They’re all lined up at the front door, trying to pull it open, but none of them are smart enough to move the jammer that’s blocking it.
I shoot one man, and he falls, his brains painting the door. The remaining men try to run, but I shot the man in the lead, making them freeze.
They look at me, fear etched on their faces.
“I only want Dennis and Peter. The rest of you can go,” I say.
Two men grab Peter and push him forward. “Here he is. Just let us go.”
Peter drops to his knees, tears running down his face. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll give you anything you want. There are girls in there. Boys too if that’s your thing. You can have as many as you want. Just don’t kill me.”
Another man backs away, hands held high. “Can we go? You have him. Let us go!”
“Yeah, you can go.” Then I raise my gun and shoot all three of them in the face.
Peter screams and tries to run away, but slips on blood and falls to his back, knocking his skull hard on the marble floor. He groans, rolling around and grabbing the back of his head.
Shouldering my AR, I make my way over to him and pull him to his feet. “Who do you work for?” I ask.
“What?” he asks in a daze. His legs almost give out under him as I shake him roughly. “I don’t…I don’t…”
“Tell me who you work for!” I shout in his face.
He collapses into tears, snot running from his nose. “No one. It’s just—”
“I don’t like liars,” I sneer and pull out my Glock. He gasps and I shove it in his mouth hard enough to knock out a tooth. He cries out, but I don’t give him the chance to lie again before I pull the trigger.
His body knocks back and he falls to the floor in a heap. After I glare down at him, pissed that he gave me fucking nothing, I pull the jammer from the door.
I head to the room where the prisoners are held and peek inside.
Pyro is talking to the hostages, though they shrink away from him. He doesn’t seem to mind, asking their names and where they came from. He makes quick work of their bindings, freeing them from their captivity.
I leave him to it and go back to the original room. Knox has Dennis on his knees, asking him the same question I asked Peter. But just like Peter, Dennis is tight-lipped, though fear dances in his eyes and tears leak down his cheeks.
Two of the auction bidders are still alive, one of them having managed to pull himself over to the gun one of the guards dropped.
Before he can raise it to shoot one of my brothers, I raise my Glock and shoot him three times.
His body jolts, then he lies still. Then I shoot the remaining men, in case they have any bright ideas.
Knox looks at me, his eyes crinkling as if he’s smiling. “Thanks for that.”
“I need to get the last bag,” I tell him and he nods.
We’d hoped that the abducted people would at least have on shirts or shifts, but they’re all naked, trying to cover themselves with their hands or the smaller, younger victims standing behind men and women trying to protect them.
We gathered a bunch of clothes, not knowing sizes but wanting them to have some dignity as they take back their freedom.