While he calls in backup, my fingers fly wildly over my keyboard. Within minutes, I have the unhacked version of Castro’s residence up on the main screen. I‘ve tapped into a live feed via a satellite connection.
It doesn’t improve the situation.
It makes it ten times worse.
Not a single soul can be seen via the infrared vision. It’s as if his mansion that usually houses twenty-plus is a ghost town.
As I relay the information I’ve unearthed to Tobias, who’s in the middle of an intense gun battle, Leesa peers up at the screen she was staring at earlier, smiles an evil grin, then kills the feed with a pistol she couldn’t have unless she pried it out of the cold, dead hands of a fellow agent.
“Fuck this.” I yank off my headset, throw open the drawer between Grayson’s and my station, then remove my government-issued pistol. “She sent fellow agents to their deathbeds while smiling. She doesn’t get to leave this compound alive unless it’s in a pair of handcuffs.”
Grayson doesn’t utter a word, but I know he’s on board with my plan. The removal of his gun assures me, much less his sprint to the weaponry cabinet to up the ante. “They were donning AK-47s. They’re only distributed by one entity.”
“The Russians?”
I’m not technically asking a question, but Grayson still lifts his chin. “We’ve had word syndicates were merging. Do you think this is the proof we’ve been looking for?” Don’t mistake the length of his question as him not prioritizing his priorities correctly. While speaking, he loaded two Colt M4 Carbines, donned a bulletproof vest, and joined me in the remaining Escalade. “AK-47s are the Russians’ weapon of choice. This is a Sicilian-run compound. Something is very wrong with this picture.”
While I veer us through rose-colored deserts with snow-capped peaks in the background, Grayson takes down three men sneaking into the entrance of the compound within a second of them leaving their Ford Expedition. The bullet casings ting off the windshield before landing in my lap. The hairline cracks they cause to the windshield has nothing on the damage I instigate by t-boning a second vehicle.
As images of the visual Melody most likely experienced when she arrived at the scene of her parents’ accident swarm my mind, I place a bullet between the eyes of the passenger in the Ford Expedition before adding one to the chest of the driver for good measure. He’s clearly dead, but I’d rather be cautious than be played for a fool—again.
After taking in an overhead power line, the connection of the electricity box to the steel fence spanning the perimeter, and the hover of a helicopter overhead, Grayson and I move into the main hub of the compound. Situational awareness is one of the first things Tobias teaches his recruits. Being aware of what’s going on around you is the only thing that increases your odds of living when you’re amid an ambush.
Tear gas stings my eyes and irritates my upper respiratory tract, but the scene is one of many I’ve been a part of the past three years. Guns blaze, lives are lost, and it’s all done without a sound seeping from my lips.
Calling out during a raid is one of the worst things you can do. It alerts the men you’re targeting where you are and paints a bullseye on your back.
After creeping down the hallway I led Leesa down remotely earlier and killing an additional six Sicilian crime members on the way, I signal for Grayson to take the corridor on his left while I approach the main entrance.
Our enemies know we’re coming. I can feel it in my bones, not to mention the brittle warning from a female voice a mere second before the barrel of my Colt M4 peeks out of the corner where I’m stationed. “If you come any closer, I’ll kill him.”
Every FBI agent handles this threat at one stage of their career. This is my fourth, although it feels different this time around. That might have more to do with the fact the person Leesa is holding hostage isn’t just known to me, he took on the role of my mentor when Mr. Gregg passed away.
Leesa has her gun pointed at Tobias’s head, proving my message about our Honey Pot being rogue wasn’t received by Tobias. They must have infiltrated our communication servers as well as the mainframe because there’s no way Tobias would have gotten within touching distance of Leesa if he’d known she was rogue.
He thought he was saving her, where in reality, he walked straight to his death.
This is one of the reasons Tobias’s team is usually filled with male agents. He can’t look at any female in distress without seeing his daughter. Normally, that type of conflict of interest would be discouraged by the hierarchies in the golden tower. In Tobias’s case, it works in his favor. His impressive stats are solely because he can’t separate his home life from his work life.
Even with no one in his team knowing why he’s so protective of his daughter, we’re very aware she comes before anything. We’ve never met her. I haven’t even seen a photograph of her. That’s how guarded Tobias is when it comes to Isabelle.
I stop scoping the area when Leesa sings, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
My teeth grit when she fires at the shard of glass I was using to survey the area a few minutes later, annoyed by my lack of response. I’m not surprised she spotted my snoop, she was trained by the best. I’m just frustrated she’s only using part of the skills Tobias taught her. His training goes beyond weaponry, tactical response, and combat drills. He coaches you to be a better person, and prepares you for the cruelness that generally comes with that. He taught me it’s okay to forgive as long as I don’t forget, and how dying with morals will forever outrank dying without them.
With that in mind, I press my trigger until it’s halfway cocked, then chance a glance around the corner of the hidey-hole where I am staked out. I’m barely half an inch out when Leesa fires one shot at my head. She missed on purpose, but that isn’t the point. The fact she thinks she can scare me irritates me more than the knife wound I spotted in Tobias’s neck during my quick peek. The amount of blood pooling between his fingers reveals he was most likely stabbed in the carotid artery. If that’s the case, he has one to three minutes before he bleeds out, and that’s assuming he’s only just been stabbed.
“Ahh… so there’s a little bit of bad hiding in that boyish persona of yours.” Leesa snickers with a laugh when I lodge three feet of air between the closest solid barrier and me.
I’m a sitting duck.
Well, so she thinks.
“Drop it.”
I shake my head. “That might work in the movies, Leesa, but this is real life. The only way you’re leaving this compound is by conceding or death.”
She smiles before gesturing for the men I see hiding in the shadows to move forward. I’m not surprised to discover one of them is Paavo. His weapon of choice is more fitting than the men flanking him. He’s holding a lupara, otherwise known as a sawn-off shotgun for English-speaking folks.
