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“Yeah. I was out of line too.” He turned his attention to Ajax. “It’s cabin fever. This place is huge, yeah. But being stuck here with no line of communication in or out, not even going into town…it’s wearing on us, Ajax. We can’t keep this shit up forever.”
Hud nodded. “Yeah, I’m feeling the same way. And Vic’s keeping it together, but I know it’s hard on her, too. Especially when we practically teased her with being able to call out to her friends before. Plus, I’m not going to lie…I wouldn’t mind dropping a line to me ma.”
“Same here,” I said. “We’re all used to working closely with each other, but it can get pretty tough being stuck in one place like this. It’s not sustainable.”
Ajax said nothing, his arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against the fridge. It was clear he was thinking the matter over.
He sighed, shaking his head. “Yeah. I get it. Sucks to be stuck like this. Believe me, I’m keeping an eye on the email and seeing if there’s any news about Muller. So far, nothing.”
“Could be that he’s screwing with us,” I suggested. “Maybe he knows that we’re waiting for info on him and that by dropping off the face of the earth, it’ll put us in a state of anticipation for an attack that’s not going to come.”
“Hmm.” Ajax considered it. “Might be something to that. The best way to mess with preparedness is to get a team to be on high alert for no reason. You can only maintain readiness for so long before people start to crack and then pay the price for being too wound up.”
He nodded appearing to have decided on something.
“Alright. Let’s do this for a few more days. Be on alert, watch each other’s backs, and stay on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. If nothing happens by the end of the week, then we can lower the readiness. But I’m telling you guys, I’ve got a bad feeling about all this. Not a chance someone as wealthy as Jurgen isn’t going to find us sooner or later.”
He stepped forward.
“And when he does, we need to be ready.”
20
PYKE
The next few days flew by mercifully fast. Ajax giving us a definitive date on when we’d be able to go off high alert did the trick. Tensions around the house melted a great deal, and things were able to get back to normal.
At least, as normal as things can be when you’re babysitting a princess.
We’d passed the time making food and sparring and watching movies, going on patrol to break the monotony when we needed to. Ajax had gotten in touch with Finn’s security detail. They’d received the same info, that this Jurgen prick had dropped out of the public eye, and no one had seen hide nor hair of him for nearly a week.
It was weird, sure, but it could’ve meant a lot of things, not necessarily bad ones. Either way, I was ready to finish the day and go back to a less high-strung routine around the house. I had fantasies of heading into town, maybe going for a walk and grabbing a big mug of Swiss beer. It was a long shot, but it was enough to keep my morale high.
It was early morning, and I was out on the second-floor balcony facing east, my feet propped up on the railing and my rifle leaning against the little wood table next to me. The sun was coming up, big pink and orange colors rising above the trees in the distance. The weather was perfect, and I had a big mug of coffee close at hand.
I could almost pretend that I was on vacation, with nothing to worry about but relaxing and enjoying the view.
Suddenly, I spotted something through the wooden slats of the balcony.
Movement. I sat up, grabbed my rifle, and leaned forward. On the table was a pair of binoculars. I picked them up and brought them to my eyes.
Part of me had been hoping that it’d been nothing more than a deer or an animal out in the woods.
But it wasn’t. It was a man.
He was armed, and he wasn’t alone.
I stayed calm and still. For all I knew, they hadn’t yet spotted me on the balcony and if that was the case, I didn’t want to give away my position. Besides, they were approaching the fence. If they touched it, there’d be a nasty surprise in store for them.
Slowly I picked up my rifle and eased off the chair into a prone position. Once I was down, I set the business end of the gun between the slats of the balcony railing and peered into my scope.
I counted six men altogether, each dressed in black, armed with a submachine gun strapped to their backs. I watched as one of them approached the wooden fence, reached forward, and placed his hand on it.
He didn’t stay standing for long. His body went tense, then he dropped like someone had pulled the plug out of him. The man fell into a heap, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was dead. The electric fence tripped the motion sensor, and that tripped the alarm.
A klaxon blared, a shrill beep that was enough to wake up the dead.
It was my cue to fire. I took aim at one of the men, flicked off the safety, then shot.
