by Chase Austin
“Yes, three men took one to the north wing’s restroom on the second floor, right above your location.”
“Armed?” Wick asked.
“Probably... why?” Mac had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Sam, what are you thinking?” There was no response. Mac spoke urgently, “Sam, you must not compromise the mission. This...” He stopped. The static over the comms meant Sam had disconnected.
“Jessica… can you hear me?” Mac switched to Jessica.
“Yes.”
“I think Sam is going to do something he shouldn’t.”
“What?”
Mac gave her a short version of what had just happened.
Jessica took a few seconds to revert to Mac with her update. “His radio is off, I cannot reach him. I’m on the second floor but it’s not wise to go out now without knowing what Wick is thinking.”
“Then let’s hope he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Mac said with a sigh.
Wick was still in the restroom, thinking. Saving the girl meant exposing himself and jeopardizing the mission. There was no point in introducing new complications into a job that was going smoothly. Their target was still alive, and they still had the element of surprise on their side.
He was contemplating his options when he heard the screams again and his brain revolted. They had left no other option for him but to act.
Damn it, he cursed under his breath.
He got up and walked to the door. Putting his right hand on the knob, he closed his eyes and pictured the layout of the first floor. Five steps to the left from the restroom were the stairs that went to the second floor. He rotated the knob anticlockwise and the door opened without making any sound. From the sliver between the door and the wood frame, he watched the lobby. It was deserted.
He opened the door and walked towards the stairs—fourteen steps to the second floor broken into two sets. He looked at the nearest CCTV camera.
Mac saw Wick’s face on the screen and then watched him breaking into a run towards the second floor. Wick climbed the stairs without making any noises. He paused briefly at the second-floor restroom door, to steady his movement.
Watching him standing at the closed door made Mac sweat.
Ana was on the bathroom floor. The man who had kissed her had pushed her down violently. She had no strength left to resist her captors. The man now offered her his hand. She had no choice but to take it. He helped her up. She was bleeding, her eyes moist. She tried to speak but no words came.
The man flicked open a knife. “No shouting,” he said pressing the knife at her throat, opening a small cut. Ana groaned. He then used the blade to push her to her knees. With his other hand, he unzipped his pants and forced himself into her mouth. Ana used both her hands against his thighs to resist, but one of the two men standing behind her kicked her back. and she jerked forward. The third man behind Ana ripped her pants open, trying to enter her from behind.
Sitting in the minivan, Mac was glued to his screen, observing Wick’s tense posture at the restroom’s closed door. He didn’t know what was going on behind that door. It was suicide for Wick to expose himself when the stage was so neatly set, but there was nothing he could do. Jessica and Stan were with him on the line, waiting to hear an update. Wick’s choice had a direct impact on those two, but it was Mac who was sweating incessantly. Jakob, who was hearing everything too, came to the back of the van to sit beside Mac.
“What is he doing?” Jakob asked watching Wick.
“I hope not something stupid.” Mac was angry and scared at the same time. “Sam, don’t open that door, goddammit,” he muttered under his breath.
Wick, unaware of all of this, took a deep breath and turned the doorknob.
The commotion inside paused as the door clicked open. Wick took in the whole scene at a glance. On his screen, Mac could see the same woman he had seen earlier, on her knees on the washroom floor. The rest of his view was blocked by Sam.
Wick recognized the woman. She was the one who had asked for the air freshener. Three men standing, two with their pants down. Her clothes— torn. Her eyes—teary. Her hair— disheveled. Ana looked at Wick with hope but then she recognized him. He was the one from the cleaning crew, not someone who would stick his neck out for her.
What was he doing here when everyone was gone?
The three men gazed at him, shocked and worried. They now had two witnesses, both alive.
To Wick, the three men looked similar. Olive skin, lean muscular builds, dirty complexions, same insignia branded on their right wrists—a flying eagle forged from their burnt skin. Wick saw two Glock-26 and three satphones, out in the open – resting on the sink top and the floor, out of immediate reach of their owners.
His mind raced to capture and evaluate his surroundings. His position, the position of the girl, and of each of the three men. His pulse racing, Wick swung the door shut. The two men moved to get their pants back up in momentary confusion.
No one spoke.
Wick’s face had contorted into a menacing look. His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
“Who are you?” The one man with his pants still on strode towards Wick waving the Glock-26 at his face. His skull shone through his cropped hair, a scar mark on his neck. Wick could make out a combat vest under his Nike t-shirt. The man had not made up his mind to shoot Wick. It was not his decision to make, but that of his boss, Joaquin. But Wick had decided. A series of frozen pictures flashed through his head as his brain calculated and analyzed a thousand details in a millisecond. Unimportant parts of the room faded away—walls, doors, furniture, faces—leaving only what was necessary.
The clean rectangular glass plate above the basin. The scar covering the carotid on the neck of the man, walking towards him, gun in hand. The throbbing heartbeat at the center of the second man’s chest. The loose steel soap dispenser cap on the edge of the sink near the second man. The second man’s eye, and his gun that was thirty feet away from his right hand. The pointed barrette in Ana’s disheveled hair.
Weapons, and for each weapon, the intended target—everything disconnected from any sense of humanity. He calculated the distance between each object and the time it would take him to hit his mark.
Then everything happened in the blink of an eye. For everyone in the room, the three things that transpired defied any explanation. There was no form or grace to it, just brutal efficiency.
Wick hit the glass shelf with the edge of his right palm, snapping it in two. He grabbed one half of the jagged glass edge. It hissed through the air and entered the man approaching Wick, revisiting the scar mark on his neck, leaving an opera of blood in the air. The two men gasped and fumbled in their attempt to get their pants back up and took a step back from the girl. The leader of the two dived for his Glock, but Wick was already moving across the bathroom bypassing Ana who was still on the floor, shocked and now blood-soaked. Wick’s left hand swept across her hair, grabbing her barrette. Ana’s head was yanked back, and she fell on her back. The clip changed hands and Wick planted the sharp angle of the clip deep into the eye of the diving man. The opponent lost his balance and his eye hit the ceramic pot, driving the barrette deep into his brain.
That was when the last man standing, seized his Glock from the sink top and jerked it in a sweeping motion from right to left. He was halfway into the sweep that should have ended with a bullet in his opponent when Wick scooped the soap dispenser cap from the bottle at the sink and rammed the steel pipe of the cap into his left eye socket. The man stopped midway, losing the Glock. He fell to the floor, quivering like a frog in a science experiment. The yelling started a second later, once the sensation of pain reached his brain, but Wick gagged his cries with a dusting cloth from his back pocket before they could turn dangerous. Then with his other hand he punched at his mouth to push the cloth further in. The blow hit his teeth hard and a couple of them fell inside his mouth. The man squirmed on the floor like a fish out of water. Bot
h his hands covered his bleeding eye and lips, but the agony was unbearable.
Ana watched the quivering man with shock. The fear on his face was scary. The fact that she had just gone through a similar fear of death made her empathize momentarily with the man who had just tried raping her, but it didn’t last long.
Wick knelt beside the man and grabbed his throat to steady him, watching Ana from the corner of his eye. She was shivering, but in control. He looked at the man and put a finger on his lips in a warning gesture. The outcome was immediate. The man used all his strength to gag his cries. He definitely wanted to live and no one except Wick could grant him that wish.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions. If you shout, I’ll kill you. You understand?”
The man nodded. Once sure that the man wasn’t lying, Wick loosened his grip on the man’s throat and removed the cloth.
“What are you going to do with Carlos?”
The man didn’t respond for a moment. Wick didn’t have time to play. He gagged him again and punched him in the face, breaking three more teeth. Pain shot through the man’s skull. His vision blurred. He tapped the floor furiously to let Wick know he would talk.
“Kill him,” he said spluttering blood all over himself.
“Where?”
“Fourth floor. I don’t know the room, but it has no cameras.”
“Who is your leader?” Wick asked and the man hesitated this time. He shouldn’t have because this time, after gagging him again, Wick rammed the back of his skull against the floor. The man’s left hand relinquished his bleeding eye to grab his head, but Wick clutched his left wrist and put his knee on the other, killing his movements. The man squirmed to free himself, but Wick’s grip made it impossible. He could not scream, he could not move.
Ana could not bear the bloodshed. It was brutal. She closed her eyes and used her hands to muffle her own screams.
“I won’t ask again?” Wick bent to the level of the man’s ear and whispered. The man nodded. Anything to lessen the pain.
“Joaquin Thomas.”
“Keep on talking.”
“We will cut his dead body into pieces and dissolve it in acid.” The man was almost blabbering in fear. Ana gasped loudly. They were going to do the same with her. Wick looked at her and closed his eyes to signal silence.
“Where’s the acid?”
“The minitruck with the container is yet to arrive.”
“What’s the license plate number?”
“I d…don't know.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Who ordered the hit?”
“Henrique.” He was talking about the director of the Venezuela Intelligence Service.
“The ambassador, is he also involved?” Wick asked his last question.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” He pressed the cap into his eye socket with his left hand, driving it deep enough to pierce the man’s brain. The man squirmed on the floor for a few seconds before he stopped moving.
Wick slowly got up, stepping back, gazing at the massacre around him. Heartbeats, the rush of blood, the sigh of breath - all ceased. The room was quiet. Ana was curled up in a corner. The natural order had been restored. His pent-up anger for his parents felt lighter. He looked at the dead bodies and jerked as if snapping back to reality.
He walked up to the sink and turned on the faucet, washing away the blood. He then looked up at his reflection in the mirror. It was a stranger staring back at him.
Chapter 24
In the mirror, Wick observed Ana, she was still at the same place looking at him with fear. He closed his eyes. A sense of calmness wrapped him. The angst and the anger for his parents seemed to subsidize momentarily. He knelt, this time to sift through the pockets of the dead. Wallets, Glock magazines, lighter and some cash. He grabbed one of the sat phones, took out the ID cards from the wallets and discarded the rest. Once satisfied, he then looked at Ana. She was still on the floor, shivering.
He could understand. She had witnessed enough in the last few minutes to scar her for life.
“You okay?” He moved towards her. She pushed herself away from him, instinctively, but the wall behind limited her movement. Watching her, Wick paused.
“Ana, I will not hurt you, but we need to move quickly.”
She looked at him and nodded. Wick reached down again, took her hand and gently helped her up. She didn’t resist.
They had to move fast. The three dead men, when they won’t report back, someone would come looking for them. No matter how optimistic anyone could be in that situation, it was bound to happen and when it did, they would know that they were not alone in the building.
“Why did they want to kill you?”
“I entered the Ambassador’s office and I saw these two men threatening Carlos. When I objected and demanded who they were, this happened.” Her sobs had subsided.
“Listen, I have to move and get you someplace where you’ll be safe, more of them could come at any minute.” He knew where he needed to take her. None of the rooms in the consulate would be safe when this was over, except the one place he knew no one would look. “Everything’s gonna be alright,” he assured her as he strode across the restroom and opened the janitor’s closet. It was large enough for Ana to hide. He grabbed two white towels from the upper shelf and handed them to her. She took them without a word.
“Ana, stay here, someone will come back for you soon but till that time, you cannot come out. Whatever happens, make no sound. You understand me?” He spoke to her softly, but firmly.
She nodded.
Wick helped her inside the closet and made space for her on the floor.
“You have a cell phone?” he asked.
“No, I think I lost it somewhere in the struggle.”
“Anything that could make a sound?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, I will close this door and it’ll be dark in there, but you stay put. You got me?”
“Yes.”
Wick closed the closet door and then looked at the three dead bodies. There was no use trying to hide them and clean the mess. The only thing he could hope for was that he would manage to get Carlos before the bodies were discovered.
Chapter 25
Once Ana was safe, Wick switched on the comms. “Can you hear me?” Wick whispered over the static, careful to not let Ana hear anything.
“Affirmative,” Jessica and Stan replied together. Mac responded soon after. They had all been waiting for this call.
“I hope that Mac has told you everything?”
Jessica and Stan hesitated before replying in affirmative. Mac stayed silent, he didn’t know what to say.
“Then I will tell you what you don’t know.” Wick knew that Mac had no access to the inside of the restrooms. “I’ve got a survivor and three dead bodies in here.”
“Who’s the survivor? Are you hurt?”
“A consulate employee, I am fine, but we will need to speed up.”
“Okay.”
“Mac? What is the situation in the Ambassador’s office?”
“They have just taken Carlos inside the elevator in Carpio’s office.”
“To where?”
“Possibly to the fourth floor, his private suite.”
“Okay, tell me everything happening on the fourth floor. The number of hostiles, their weapons, their positions. Then repeat the same for the other floors,” Wick said.
Mac described as asked. The fourth floor was isolated except for the south wing where two men manned the ambassador’s suite. There was no camera in that room.
The third floor was a different story. There was an army of men. This is the floor where Stan was hiding. Mac counted eight, all armed, stationed in different rooms. He was in the middle of all this when all of a sudden, his screen went blank.
“Can you hear me, Stan? Wick?” Mac was thrown off the guard.
“Yes, we can. Everythin
g good?”
“I think they’ve pulled the plug from the CCTV control room.”
“Can you fix that?” Jessica asked.
“I don’t think so unless someone goes there and manually plugs it in.”
“What do you suggest?” Jessica spoke.
“We will wait. We already have a pretty good idea on the number of hostiles. Three dead. Eight men on the third floor. Two on the fourth and possibly two or three inside the suite with Carlos. Jessica sweep the first floor, especially the Ambassador’s office. I will take care of the second. Stan, you stay put on third. We need to comb the first and second floor before we take on the third. Do not engage until fired at first and be wary of any traps.”
