by Powers, AJ
Hagan reached the streets on the opposite end of the alley and quickly engaged a single hoplite who was canvassing the area. The officer shot first, missing wide left and striking a delivery truck behind Hagan. A quick burst from Hagan’s gun neutralized the man, his body crumpling to the ground in a bloodied heap. Hagan ran past the corpse toward the next alley he spotted. It was narrow, barely wide enough for a car. Hagan spotted a fence about halfway down; he was mentally climbing it already. Digging deep, Hagan leapt onto a small stack of pallets and then jumped again, his hands grabbing the top-most bar of the fence. He pulled himself over the top and dropped to the asphalt below, the impact rocking his tired body.
Aching and out of steam, Hagan stumbled to his feet and pushed forward, ignoring his body’s check engine light. He was almost to the other end when he heard a door burst open behind him.
Hagan drove his boot down onto the pavement and spun around. He trained his sights on the figure in the doorway and snapped his finger to the trigger.
“Come! Quickly!” the woman said, waving Hagan over.
Hagan froze with indecision, but as the sirens closed in, he took his chances with the woman in the alley and ran over to the petite, Chinese woman extending him an olive branch. He stepped inside and the woman quickly closed up behind him. She locked the door, even though there was no accessible handle on the outside, and then tossed on a bar lock similar to the one Hagan had dealt with in the apartment.
“Follow me,” she said with a hushed voice, leading Hagan down a series of hallways and into some sort of stock room filled with shelves, filing cabinets and boxes.
Hagan spotted an old, metal desk in the corner of the room. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, watches and other expensive fashion accessories sat haphazardly across the top, a pair of pliers, a couple of punches and a lightweight chasing hammer at the center.
“Who are you?” Hagan asked the woman.
The woman smiled at him; the youth of her face betrayed by the wisdom in her eyes. She looked to be in her thirties, but Hagan knew she was likely closer to his own age. He’d always had a thing for Asian women. Their grace and sophistication was a turn on, and the fact that they seemingly aged at half the speed as other women made them that much more appealing. The woman in front of him was no exception. Her slender body was wrapped in a long, elegant qipao dress, and she wore bright red lipstick that contrasted her fair skin. Her dark, jet-black hair went past her shoulders and sheened brilliantly under the faux-fluorescent lighting.
“My name is Jinjing,” she said with a near perfect American accent. She didn’t say anything else to him as she retrieved a phone from the desk in the corner. It was an older phone, like the one in Hagan’s pocket. Jinjing tapped the buttons before pressing the phone up to her ear and returned her focus to the stranger in the room. Her eyes filled with both professionalism and curiosity. “I’ve got him,” she spoke into the phone. “Yes… Understood,” she said before clicking the phone off and returning it to the drawer. “This way,” she said, walking toward a row of filing cabinets.
Jinjing took a key that was hanging from around her neck and stuck it into the cabinet closest to the corner of the wall. She twisted the key and Hagan heard a lock disengage—something much more complicated than a standard filing cabinet would have. JinJing tugged on the handle and the entire cabinet slid forward, revealing a small hatch in the wall.
“Well, that’s creative,” Hagan said.
The woman entered a code on a keypad near the handle of the hatch then twisted the handle, opening the door. “Go in there and follow the tunnel until it dead ends. There’s a door on the ground. Go through that, then follow the tunnel until it splits. Go left. Take the first door on the right. They will help you from there.”
“They? Who’s they?” Hagan asked.
“The people who are going to get you out of here alive.”
Hagan was swamped with perplexing thoughts, but a commotion toward the front of the store forced him to trust the woman he’d just met.
“Hurry, you must go!” she hissed.
Hagan nodded and stepped behind the filing cabinet and through the door. “Thank you,” he said to Jinjing.
She shot him a smile and handed him a flashlight without saying anything more, then closed the hatch.
Hagan listened as Jinjing pushed the filing cabinet back into place, reengaging the locks just seconds before he heard several voices on the other side.
“What’s happening?” a woman shrieked in surprise—it sounded like Jinjing.
“We’re looking for a fugitive,” the voice said loudly.
“I’m afraid I haven’t seen anything of the sort, officer.”
“Well, we still need to look around for a moment, ma’am,” the man said. “We appreciate your full cooperation.”
“Of course. Anything for the warriors of Alexandria.”
Hagan didn’t move, the muzzle of his gun pointed at the door. Getting as far away from the search party was his smartest choice, but he refused to leave Jinjing behind after she saved his hide. If they found the secret behind the filing cabinet, Jinjing would be executed as soon as she punched in the code. Hagan wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.
After several tense minutes passed, Hagan heard a man speak. “Thank you for your patience. We’ll see ourselves out.”
Hagan exhaled, breathing for the first time in what felt like days. He clicked on the flashlight and quietly departed from the underground door leading to the jewelry shop. Following the path Jinjing had told him to take, he passed several similar-looking hatches, piquing his curiosity even more. Were these just old hatches from the days of prohibition? Or were they more recent than that?
Reaching the end of the tunnel, Hagan lifted the door on the ground—more of a grate, really—and continued down the dank, dark tunnel system. After a few minutes, he arrived at the fork in the road and took a left. Another two hundred feet and he spotted the door. Cautiously, Hagan cranked on the handle, and, after a few rams with his shoulder, the heavy door opened.
There was a man waiting for him on the other side.
Hagan snapped his pistol up, but the man didn’t so much as flinch.
“We must hurry!” he said with urgency.
Chapter 14
The man quickly moved across the room filled with cast iron pipes and antique boxes and opened a narrow metal door on the other side. Hagan followed closely behind, wondering if he was being far too trusting of people he knew nothing about. But with no better options on the table, Hagan kept pace with the man as they traversed a labyrinth of tunnels by flashlight. The guide did not speak, ignoring all of Hagan’s questions as he led them, hopefully, to freedom.
They dumped out into what seemed like a legitimate storm sewer. Hagan’s boots waded through foul-smelling water that was riddled with litter and rodents—several dead and decayed—as they finally approached a ladder made from rebar mounted directly to the concrete wall.
Hagan studied the ladder for a moment then looked at the man, who is nodding for Hagan to move.
“After you,” Hagan gestured. He wasn’t about to turn his back on the stranger.
The man hesitated for a moment before reaching for the first rung and pulling himself onto the ladder, his boots clanking off the rebar as he ascended the ten or so feet to the surface. Once the man disappeared, Hagan drew his MP7 and mounted the ladder, quickly but carefully climbing to the top.
A hand stretched down as Hagan reached the last rung. He expected to see the man who had led him through the maze of tunnels but was surprised when he saw a familiar face.
“Wilford?” Hagan said with bewilderment before taking the man’s hand into his own.
With easily 75 pounds on Hagan, much of it muscle, Wilford leaned back and pulled Hagan out of the sewer with ease. “Glad to see you made it out of there in one piece,” the bald man said, dusting off whatever invisible dirt might have clung to his expensive, pre-war Armani suit.
�
�Yeah. You and me both, brother,” Hagan replied as he scrutinized his surroundings. They were in a darkened parking garage, vacant except for the black SUV idling just a few feet away. “But how did you know I was here? Better yet, how did you know I was up the creek without a paddle?”
Wilford smirked. “The regime isn’t the only one with eyes and ears all over town.” Shifting gears, Wilford replaced his grin with a look of unease. “We don’t have a lot of time, though. We need to go. Now.”
Hagan followed the man to the SUV, which had the same decals on the door as the one he saw carrying the CRG officer earlier. Hagan hesitated. “Should I be worried?” he said, nodding his head at the decal.
Wilford stared down at the logo of the trident, then turned to look at Hagan. “Worried? Hell no,” the man chuckled. “That’s our ticket out of here.”
Hagan climbed into the back of the luxury SUV—which was in pristine shape for its age—and let out a long sigh as heat blasting from the vents enveloped his shivering body. Two men sat silently up front; the driver was Hagan’s guide through the tunnels. Both men wore black ballcaps, sunglasses and a uniform that closely resembled that of a Civil Republican Guard’s field uniform. Not an exact match, but close enough to fool someone who wasn’t paying attention to the details. Hagan exchanged looks with the driver through the rearview mirror. “Thanks for saving my ass, boys,” he said, a genuine appreciation in his voice.
The driver dipped his chin, as if to say, “I was only doing my job,” but said nothing.
“All right, Bennett, let’s go,” Wilford said as he climbed in on the other side of the SUV.
Bennett shifted into drive and the SUV jerked forward, speeding away from the sewer as they hurried to the exit two levels above. As they got closer to the ground floor, Hagan noticed an increase in parked cars.
“Where are we?”
“Parkland and Howell.”
“The pharmaceutical company?” Hagan asked, his voice cracking with disbelief. “You might as well have dug tunnels beneath the Acropolis.”
Wilford shrugged. “We didn’t build them,” he said, all but confirming Hagan’s theory that the secret passages had been built during the days of prohibition. “But this ain’t our first rodeo, either, cowboy.”
As they pulled up to the exit, Bennett flipped a switch on the center console, activating the flashing lights in the windshield. Bennet cut the wheel hard, their tires squelching as the rubber struggled to find traction on the wet, slick ground. The man’s foot was heavy on the gas pedal, and the SUV’s V8 engine roared to life. They headed south at a high rate of speed as hoplites, CRGs and other unmarked personnel canvassed the area for a man that was now right in front of them. Seeing the enemy, separated by a little bit of steel and tempered glass, had Hagan caressing the machine pistol under his coat.
“Relax,” Wilford said. “They won’t give us a second thought if we don’t give them a reason.”
The man was right. Though the driver and passenger wore uniforms that didn’t quite match the CRG’s, and there was probably a few things about the SUV that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, either, the hundreds of people on the streets were too focused on finding a single man than to analyze the nuances of the black vehicle flying down the road. They would barely process a black SUV with flashing red lights and iconic white logo driving past them, much less take the time to look at the passengers inside. And, even if they did, the two men up front looked the part, and the rear windows were tinted. Nevertheless, Hagan’s hand continued to rest on the MP7 until they were well outside of Parkland Heights and into one of the less desirable areas of St. Louis. It wasn’t quite the slums, but not as heavily surveilled as the places closer to downtown.
People on the streets looked briefly at the incoming SUV and made their way to the nearest door. Hagan suspected they didn’t often see a CRG vehicle passing through, and when they did, they wanted nothing to do with it. That was fine with him. The less witnesses, the better.
The SUV turned onto a run-down block that was a mixture of hundred-year-old houses and old corner shops and continued to the end of the road where a chain link gate was already being pulled open. The SUV hopped as it ramped up the short but steep incline into the junkyard and traversed a maze of cars that had been decaying there for decades. Long before the war started. Some of them probably before Hagan was even born.
They pulled into a building that was too small to be a warehouse, but too large to be a garage. An old Toyota sedan sat in the middle. The SUV stopped next to the car and Bennett killed the engine. Hagan followed Wilford’s lead and climbed out of the car. He breathed in the cold, damp air whooshing through the open bay door of the building and exhaled slowly as he came down from such a close call.
Bennett and the passenger got out of the SUV and immediately stripped themselves of the faux-CRG uniforms, revealing jeans and t-shirts beneath. They tossed the uniforms onto the seats of the SUV and then headed to the Toyota in the middle of the room.
Hagan followed Wilford to the car and climbed into the back seat that had considerably less legroom than his previous ride. The car’s muffler clattered loudly as the four-cylinder engine fired up. Bennett put the car in first and eased off the clutch, the car bucking forward. The old Japanese car darted out of the large garage and navigated the junkyard through the increasing snowfall. A man opened the gate once again as they quickly approached. Bennett didn’t even brake, and, instead, shot out of the junkyard and back onto the street, the car nearly bottoming out, the shocks creaking and groaning from the maneuver. Then, as quickly as they arrived, they departed the scrapyard, and, at the direction of Hagan, headed toward the farmhouse where he stored the ATV.
Sighing heavily, Wilford looked over at Hagan. “You know… I warned Aileen you’d be a pain in the ass.”
Hagan’s eyes narrowed on the bald man. “Is that so?”
The man laughed. “Yeah. You’re not the first soldier I’ve bailed out of trouble.”
“Don’t act like you’re anything special. I’ve rescued my fair share of Devil Dogs in the past,” Hagan replied.
Wilford looked at him with puzzled eyes. “How’d you know?”
“You just have that Jarhead look to ya. You know, dumb and confused. Plus, I’m pretty sure I saw crayon stuck in your teeth when we first met,” Hagan said with a smirk.
Wilford burst into laughter and gave Hagan a slug on the shoulder. After the close call he had today, Hagan appreciated the jovial moment of laughter with a fellow warfighter. Even if he was a Marine. But Hagan knew that his rescue did not happen just out of the goodness of Aileen’s heart. There was a reason they had come to exfil him out of the hot zone before he got nabbed. And, as if Wilford was reading Hagan’s mind, he began to speak.
“We gave you that phone for a reason, brother. You need to answer it,” the man said, trading out his joking demeanor for one that was more serious.
“I’ve been a bit busy,” Hagan replied.
“Yeah, well, if you had answered it earlier this afternoon, we could have told you that you were hip-deep in crap before you had to shoot your way out.”
Hagan glanced at him.
“Like I said. Eyes and ears everywhere,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just don’t forget, you work for us, now. We expect to be able to reach you whenever we need to.”
“I don’t work for you,” Hagan said gruffly.
Wilford shook his head. “You do if you want any more names from us.”
“Quid pro quo. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. It doesn’t mean I’m on your payroll,” Hagan shot back.
“Not how this works, G.I. Joe. Aileen might seem like a sweet little angel on the outside, but she’s a redhead through and through. Her temper and patience match her hair. If you shirk us off again, we’re done. You got me?”
Hagan bit at his lip as he stared out the window, his view of dilapidated houses and decrepit strip malls gradually being replaced with fields and large swaths of trees. He hate
d being in such a position—to be enslaved to any group in this manner—but he knew when someone had him by the short and curlys. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll try to make myself more readily available to talk.”
Wilford huffed, as if he didn’t buy the genuineness of the response. Skeptical or not, however, Wilford continued. “We need to move some cargo tomorrow morning. And we need you to come along for the ride.”
Easy enough, Hagan thought. “What’re we shipping?”
“Not your concern.”
Hagan wanted to protest, but he didn’t have it in him. Especially with the thin ice he was already skating on. “Where to?”
“Outlands.”
“You don’t trust me, do you?” Hagan asked.
“Would you?”
“Fair enough.”
“I believe you to be a good man, Typhon. But even Satan once wore a halo around his head,” the man said somberly. “Believing you’re trustworthy and actually trusting you are two very different things.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Hagan replied, showing a deeper sense of respect for Wilford than he already had. “Okay, then. What can you tell me about tomorrow?” Before Wilford could reply, Hagan spotted the big, white farmhouse up ahead. He pointed out the windshield and said, “take a right at the next drive.”
The brakes squealed as the car slowed. Bennett cut the wheel to the right and turned onto the long, gravelly driveway leading back to the house. The car rocked to a stop near the front porch, and Bennett let it idle.
“Someone will be here to pick you up at 0500. Leave the big guns at home—we’ll provide the iron. If all goes well, you get to do some sight-seeing and then maybe we’ll flip ya a name or two when you get back.”
“And if things don’t go well?” Hagan asked.
Wilford smiled, his big, bulky cheeks raising up high enough to squint his eyes. “Well, that’s why we’re bringing you.”
