Chapter 31
Georgia
“Navarro!” Rafe yells. He’s still hiding behind the corpse, I hope. Yes, he is and he’s waving his hand as if summoning a stray Uber.
These men advancing into the room in scurrying bursts as they fire must be his company’s men. Mercenaries? Or do we call them security forces, and how did they get into Morocco…
I shut down my endlessly enquiring brain and check the enemy.
The firing dribbles to a last stutter. One of the Evil soldiers twitches as bullets strike and then all is still, apart from a few limbs moving and some groans.
“Demon Man?” When Laz stands, I cautiously do so.
“Who?”
“Him.” He was behind the throne, only now he is lying next to it with blood trailing from his still body. “Dead?”
“Oh yeah. Him. I popped him one in case he had a weapon, since he was close to you, girl.” Gently, he pulls me under his arm and kisses the top of my head.
I wince and move his hand off my ribs where I’m cut.
“Sorry. Sorry. Jeez. Wish I could kill them both again. But...” He inhales and, am I imagining the moisture lining his eyes?
“We are all alive. Let’s get you a medic and some clothes. ”
The hall fills with about eight Navarro men, all armed, all with an orange blaze on their sleeves in the shape of a slanted N.
“Where did you get that weapon? A knife?” Laz asks.
“Kind of. From Stephanie.” I don’t bother explaining what it is.
With Rafe and Lazlo shepherding me, I’m clothed in what we can find in here—my own clothes though they stink from being unwashed for days.
I’m walking slowly, trying not to make anything bleed as we’re directed toward where they’ve an aid station in an outer room.
A Navarro merc leads us to the doorway under the TV.
Stephanie rushes out, pauses to avoid a body, then comes to me.
She takes my left hand, gingerly. “You’re okay.”
I reach out and hug her, one-armed and gently, as both of us have damage.
“And you, and that’s important.” I can imagine what she has gone through because she is me, in a way.
“You are why we are alive and not dead, like him.” I gesture toward Domino’s body.
“Come with us. I’m off to see a medic. You need that too. ”
Her smile is unsteady. “Thank you.”
“You saved everyone. The biggest thank you is yours.”
“Yes.” Rafe nods. “And I’ll arrange for you to be flown out to wherever you need to go. Anything you want, just ask.”
Another timid smile. “The UK, my family—” She chokes up. “They must think I’m dead.”
As we go through the doorway, a Navarro merc approaches and holds up his hand.
“Sirs, ladies. We have a problem. One of the head operators of this place and the men with him are supposed to be here, on site, but we cannot locate him yet. We’re evacuating the fort of everyone who isn’t an active combatant—” Weapons firing deeper in the building draw his attention.
“Okay, I’m sending you all straight to the armored car outside.
It’ll take you outside the grounds. Hanson! ”
A merc runs over with two others and we’re escorted down the corridor then out into the open courtyard.
I’m limping and Stephanie is looking around with her lip in her teeth as if she’s never seen the sun.
I’ll bet she hasn’t been this free for months.
My men are speaking to a soldier, merc, whatever they are, next to the armored car, and this car isn’t red and freaking white. It’s desert colored.
I do wonder how they delivered it? Dropped by parachute? Submarine?
“They haven’t found Mr. Beast,” Stephanie says as we wait to be loaded into this thing.
A roar blasts across this compound as an explosion ruptures the main wall beyond the armored car, sending dust, dirt, and rubble tumbling and spraying.
The dust rolls over us in a cloud as two gray vehicles boil past with screaming, over-revved engines.
They’re aiming for the new gap in the fort wall.
Men are shouting and waving their arms. Rafe and Laz have assault rifles in their hands. Everyone seems to be firing at the escaping cars as they hurtle through the gap and into the desert. The neatness of the felled wall suggests a controlled, planned explosion.
“Get in there, you two!” Lazlo yells to me and Stephanie, pointing at the armored car. “They’re short on men. Lot of wounded here. We’re off to help catch those. Mr. Beast must be on board!”
A Navarro-stamped buggy brakes beside us and five men clamber in.
“Get in there, Georgia!” Rafe also yells from the buggy. Then they’re gone. Three more buggies arrive and form a convoy that accelerates around the armored car then through the gap. Two drones whir past following them before they zip ahead. They’re gone. The dust settles.
The ramp on the armored car has lowered and a Navarro merc beckons to us. “Ladies. Time to go.”
A lady? Me?
Before we enter the armored car, I check the courtyard and find Stephanie running back to the fort, to where the vehicles erupted from—a garage that must have had a concealed door.
“Wait there,” I tell the men. “I’ll get her.” Though it hurts, I sprint after her.
“You can’t go in there! It’s not cleared! Not safe! Stay there, McVoy. I’ll get them. Ladies!”
“Fuck.” It’s not? Of course it’s not. “Stephanie!” I run faster, though I’m hobbling and wincing, and I almost catch up to her before she enters the now empty garage. The merc turns up at my side.
“Go back, please. I’m responsible for you.”
“And I’m responsible for her,” I growl at him.
He’s young and although armed with rifle and pistol, looks flummoxed by my arguments, and is trotting after me like a dog. He probably wants to shoot me but doesn’t dare.
“I saw him! Mr. Beast.” She snatches a heavy spanner off the wall, where a whole rack of tools are hung, then disappears through the only exit, a steel door that hangs open.
In there, beyond where a rectangle of sunlight inscribes itself starkly, is a long corridor and then darkness. She vanishes into that gloom.
A scream echoes back to us.
“Oh fuck.” The merc and I are neck and neck running down there. I’m unarmed so I hope this won’t end with the wrong people dead.
At the door, he goes left and I go right, instinctively splitting the target, in case anyone is aiming a gun this way. I sneak forward. My eyes have enough light here to make out where she has gone.
Stephanie has found someone sitting against the opposite wall and her pale dress shows where she kneels there with the spanner above her head. The meagre light finds the shine of the metal as it swings…
She brings it down with a smack, on their leg. Another scream warbles out, a pitiful one, punctuated by a man’s gasps and pleas for mercy, by cries for help.
“No. no. Please! Don’t!”
The spanner descends.
“Say it again,” Stephanie demands. “Beg me like I begged you, you fucker.”
She lands another blow on his knee, and he screeches and tries to hold the injury with flopping hands, so she smashes his hands.
The soldier halts the next rise of her weapon and gently takes it from her. He steps back, and looks to me, as if he hopes I can sort this out.
“Mr. Beast?” I ask her, over the man’s whimpers. “Is this him?”
Her first blow must have hit his face because it’s disfigured and caved in.
That’s he’s alive is a miracle, especially since his stomach is wet with blood, and the shirt he wears is torn by bullet holes.
His breathing becomes ever more labored as the seconds pass.
Wet, bubbly breaths, clogged with blood and or that mashed throat and face.
“It’s him,” she grates out. “I need him dead. I want it to hurt!” She rocks in place.
“Leave him,” I hear myself say. Me, the woman who wanted blood, blood, blood. “You’ve done enough. This will not heal you.”
She peers back at me, and what I see there, in her wide, terrified eyes, is a plea for exactly what I am going to do—relieve her of the decision.
“He’s going to die anyway. Come with us, Stephanie. Revenge is good until it becomes… This.” I wrinkle my mouth.
Having thought this kind of vengeance was for me, I now know it is not. Perhaps if you left me alone with the man, yes. But I’d rather save her from this horror. Smashing a man to a pulp will leave her with new, gaping wounds. She has enough, more than enough, to heal within herself already.
“Come.” I help her to her feet. “A mercy shot?” I ask the merc. Two more Navarro mercs have come in behind us.
He thinks about it for all of one second then steps over, pulls his pistol, and fires a shot into the man’s head. Mr. Beast shudders and slips lower on the wall.
We leave him there for others to deal with and emerge from the garage into the light. We’re walking slower this time and Stephanie is crying silently so I hold her hand.
The buggies have returned. The armored car waits patiently. By the time we get to it, Rafe and Lazlo are there, arms akimbo. They shake their heads at me then motion us ahead of them up the ramp.
It’s only when I’m within the armored behemoth and we are moving that I start to question what just happened. It’s not how did they get this damn, big armored car here so fast. It’s how did they know where we were?