Victoria wiped the final tears from her eyes as she lightly stepped toward the wounded Chaos soldier. Jen-Jen and McCoy held the man’s arms, not allowing him to move even an inch. Kalani loomed over the bloodied man, combat knife still in hand. The mercenary’s breathing was erratic, but the big Hawaiian refused to relent. Victoria had to put a hand on his to calm him down.
“What’s your name?” Victoria asked the mercenary, calmly and with no emotion coloring the tone of her words. It was almost as if she were having a normal conversation with a stranger. Still, the man refused to speak, rewarding her instead with a look of the purest disgust. “Again I’ll ask you: What is your name?” Again, nothing but defiant silence.
Victoria was far too exhausted to play these kinds of games. She’d interrogated men like him before—they always played tough. Normally, she’d go through the entire song and dance and, after a few hours, she’d be able to leverage some answers out of her subject. This time her patience had worn thin, and the man who’d killed her friend would give her the answers she needed—and he would give them immediately. She turned and cocked an eyebrow at Kalani.
“Cut him,” she said softly, before turning her back on the grisly scene.
Kalani did as ordered, digging the blade an inch into the mercenary’s abdomen. The man bucked and thrashed, but the two Company agents held him firmly in place and he screamed in agony. A consummate professional, Kalani only penetrated the muscle and fat, causing excruciating amounts of pain, but no damage that couldn’t be reversed.
Kalani removed the blade from under the skin and Victoria waited a few moments for the man to calm down before speaking again.
“Your name,” she demanded, her voice calm.
The mercenary coughed, but this time he obliged, not wanting to face the wrath of the knife-wielding Hawaiian for something as trivial as a name.
“Moran,” the man said, finally. “You crazy bitch. I hope you don’t think—”
“Cut him,” she said again, wasting no time letting this man talk tough. Kalani moved quickly, but the mercenary screamed once more.
“No! Wait! Don’t cut me again, damn it!”
“Then I suggest responding to the question I’m going to ask with an answer I’ll like,” Victoria demanded. She saw Charlie’s reflection in the windshield of the car and, while the brutal torture of their enemy clearly unsettled him, he still had his characteristic grin.
“What do you want to know?” the mercenary asked, deflated.
“I want to know where the rest of you assholes are positioned.”
“It won’t make a difference. You’ll never get those girls.”
“Then it’ll do no harm for you to tell me, will it?”
The mercenary looked conflicted, as if trying to decide whether to answer. Kalani showed him the knife once more—and it did the trick. The man’s reply was exactly as Victoria would have preferred it—short and to the point.
“Two in the Tower lobby. Two in Holloway’s room with the little girls. Our Captain is in the room next door with the wife. Two more riding the monorail. The three you just killed. Then there’s me and my spotter.”
“That’s twelve,” Victoria stated. “It adds up, but you’d better not be lying to me.”
The man shook his head and swallowed. “Is that it?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Victoria informed him and turned on her heel, grabbing Charlie gently by the elbow and leading him away from the scene. Charlie just caught a glimpse of McCoy withdrawing a suppressed pistol from his shoulder holster before he was led out of sight. Still, he heard two muffled gunshots and knew that Chaos Squad was now seven members short.
Ignoring the feeling of nausea creeping up in his stomach from the overabundance of violence he’d witnessed in such a short period of time, Charlie stopped walking and faced Victoria.
“Vee, I’m so sorry about Mason. He was a good man.”
“He knew what he was doing. We all did,” she managed, trying to look detached. Charlie could tell she was hurting. Losing Mason had really cut this poor woman deep and Charlie couldn’t help but feel responsible for Mason’s death—after all, nobody would be here if it weren’t for him. He decided not to voice his concerns, realizing it wouldn’t help to ease Victoria’s troubled mind. Instead, he chose to direct her anger toward justice for their fallen comrade.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked. He had already come up with a few ideas of his own, but he knew that allowing Victoria to plan their route would help to get her mind off Mason for the time being.
“We’re sticking together. I don’t know how you took that bullet but it won’t happen again. It might seem like a bad idea, but we’re heading straight through the Tower’s main entrance. The plan is simple: we storm the lobby and kill the two assholes stationed there. Then we take the elevators to my dad’s floor, and keep shooting until your girls are back in your arms. We’re so close, we can’t fail.”
The plan was risky but Charlie knew it was their only option. Normally, he’d try to formulate a new plan, but he simply went with the flow. He was exhausted, he was bleeding and he was in a hurry to finish this nightmarish scenario and be reunited with his family.
“Then let’s finish this. I’m not getting any younger,” he joked and put his arm around Victoria’s shoulders. Victoria gratefully returned the gesture and then the pair joined the remaining members of X-ray Team around Mason’s body.
One of the team had rolled Mason onto his back and closed his eyelids. Charlie spied a bloody rag nearby; someone had cleaned the blood off the fallen agent’s face. Hands folded neatly over his chest, Mason looked at peace. Charlie could see that Victoria was thankful that Mason hadn’t suffered long. Even though she tried to act tough for the sake of her team, Victoria still couldn’t suppress the tears that came once more upon the sight of her friend’s body. She wiped clumsily at her eyes until Jen-Jen led her away.
No words were spoken for the fallen operative, just a moment of silence as each man found their own personal way to harness the pain that they felt from their loss. Finally, they’d all found a place to bury their emotions and they moved to follow Victoria and Jen-Jen.
As the five armed combatants made their way toward the main entrance, fire trucks pulled into the lot and furiously set to work on the blazing cars. The landscape, so full of violence and wreckage, more closely resembled a war zone than a vacation resort.
War.
Charlie tasted the word—savored it—for it was war he was about to bring to his adversary’s doorstep.