“The fuck?”
“Let him go, Jace,” Mal said, “We are running The Messenger here.”
“Oh, I thought they were all going to die?” Jace asked sarcastically.
“I decided it’s better to give them a little fear instead,” Mal joked.
Seven QRF soldiers ran up on them and Mal pointed to the man underneath his knee.
“He needs to get to a hospital ASAP,” Mal said, “get him stable because, I need to have a conversation with him.”
Mal turned to walk back into the first floor of the apartment complex as he rubbed against the wall and got blood on his arm.
Yuck, Mal thought as he rubbed it against the wall.
Mal looked around to see brain matter stuck to the wall from two separate brains.
Not bad, Mal. Not too bad at all, He thought looking at his handiwork in the first floor hallway.
He entered the atrium, into Wilke’s office and grabbed the MP-5 off of the desk, swinging it around his back.
“I swear, Malcolm I didn’t know this,” Chris motioned, “was what they had in mind.”
Mal took a deep breath because he didn’t believe Chris. Chris may not have wanted this to happen but from Mal’s interactions with people like this, it shouldn’t be a surprise.
“I believe you Chris but you need to talk to the authorities about this, you helped these guys get here, now you have to do everything in your power to make that right.”
The QRF members had entered the atrium ready for war, they were dressed in tactical armor and one giant man slung a mini-gun from his hip.
“Little late for the firefight guys,” Mal said, “But take Chris back to headquarters and keep him in protective custody. Treat him well.”
Sugar is going to get us a lot more than vinegar, Mal thought.
Chris left with the men and the big QRF member walks up to Mal and asks.
“What can we do?”
“Well, get rid of the bodies we dropped in the back,” Mal said.
“We aren’t your cleanup team,” One of the younger men said from the corner of Mal’s vision.
“You are a Quick Reaction Force,” Mal said, “I killed some bad guys, your job is to react and cleanup the bodies, Rog?”
The bureaucracy of these teams always bothers Mal, they think they are gods but even when Mal was deployed, he had to be on cleanup duty occasionally. Everyone has to do part of their job for a team to be successful and right now.
“There’s only about thirteen of them, shouldn’t take long,” Mal said as he turned to walk away.
“We saw the sniper and we see you but where’s the rest of your team?”
“That was it,” Mal said, “The other guy took the civilians past the perimeter.”
The QRF team chuckled loudly.
“You expect us to believe that an old man and a woman took out Thirteen reds without much of a fight?” Said a young dusty haired BANS soldier with an apple in his hand.
“Do you see any evidence to the contrary?”
“I mean you two idiots let one get away from what I hear so,” The soldier said in a cocky manner, “are you sure you did a good job?”
Mal turned around to the back door and pointed to the area painted red with blood, viscera and brain matter.
“Why don’t you go out there and ask them?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Reaction
Mal stared into the one way glass to the young man he had stabbed outside of the Wilke Apartment complex. The young man’s medical treatment was large but it was mostly skin deep outside of his shoulder which Mal had stabbed to illicit some desperation out of the man’s cohort.
“Why don’t I talk to him,” Tim said as he walked forward to meet Mal, “I have had some good success with the good ole’ ‘Talk or we will execute you’ idea.”
Mal shook his head.
“What part of ‘Stay out of my way’ was difficult?”
Mal nodded to Tye and he began to walk in the door.
“Hello,” Tye said as a smile as he sat down, “Is there anything I can get you?”
“Oh, are you the house servant here?” The soldier snidely asked back at him, his face was filled with jagged teeth that were obviously the consequences of less than adequate dental care across the wall.
“No, I was merely asking you if you would like something?”
“I know how soft you folk are on this side of the wall, it’s why we are going to win and folks like you,” The man said while gesturing to Tye, “are going to find yourself back where you belong.”
Tye turned around to Mal and shot up his eyebrows at Mal in the glass.
“Well, I am going to let you talk to my partner,” Tye said, “I am sure you will find him enlightening.”
Mal walked over to the door as Tye walked out.
“All yours, old man,” Tye said.
“Tim, turn off all cameras and leave this place,” Mal said and Tim stood there like he was kidding, “I am not joking, Tim. You need plausible deniability in case someone gets a stick up their ass.”
Tim turned to the Video operators and gave a signal to stop everything there, as they left the interview room.
“Please don’t kill him,” Tim said, “You have dropped enough bodies for today, don’t ya think?”
“Is there ever too many dropped bodies?” Mal asked as Tim rolled his eyes and closed the door.
“We will be careful not to break your toys.” Mal said yelling before he remembered that the room was sound proof.
Mal stared at the Soldier through the glass.
“Tye, I barely know you at this point but, if this makes you uncomfortable,” Mal said sternly, “ I do apologize.”
Mal pushed open the door to the interview room and stared at the young man.
“Oh, great the old man is in here now,” he said.
Slamming the man’s head into the table, smashing his nose.
“Don’t speak unless I ask you question, do you understand?” Mal asked.
The man stared back with a fear in his facial expressions.
“What’s your name?” Mal asked.
“Richard,” he said, “that’s my name.”
“Okay, Dick,” Mal responded, “So there’s a couple of ways this can happen. You can stay healthy and talk about your leader or you can not talk, if you don’t talk: I am going to hurt you, alot.”
“Oh yeah? Old man, even handcuffed I would whoop your bitch a…” Mal interjected by driving his thumb into the man’s shoulder, Dick screamed out so loud that his voice broke.
“Please stop! STOP!”
“You know, as a practitioner, I am very much against torture but you have gotten me in a situation where I don’t have much choice,” Mal said.
Mal was telling the truth because torture usually doesn’t provide good information. Usually lots of lies, but the realities in this situation are that: his intelligence and accusations can be checked pretty quickly plus they have no choice, they can’t come out of a conversation with him and get nothing. Mal Pressed so hard into Dick’s shoulder that he could feel muscle over the man’s shoulder blade.
“TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!”
“OKAY!”
Mal released his grip on the man immediately.
“Great, now I will not be asking you these questions because I am not aware of every situation in this city. The gentleman you spoke to first will be, you will be much more respectful or I will be back in here, understood?”
Dick nodded his head vigorously. Mal smiled and got up to the door and Tye was ready to go in but Mal stopped him.
“Grab Tim and the video people first,” Mal stated as Jace opened the door, waving in the man that she still had some disdain for from the look on her face.
Tim walked up next to Mal, the two towering men stood next to each other as he finally turned to him.
“Well, let’s look at the positives,” Tim said, “He’s still alive and even better, he doesn’t look he has
been roughed up that much.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Mal said, “I gave him a sandwich.”
“No…you obviously broke his nose.” Tim joked.
Tye walked back into the room and smiled at Dick.
“Okay Dick, now tell us about Ares,” Tye said while looking at the pad of paper that Mal, Tim, Jace and himself had jotted questions onto.
“Ares? Which one?”
“There are more than one?”
“There are three of them,” Dick said.
“Tell me about the one that is here?”
“He’s young, 28 or so but he was a SEAL, so he knows his shit,” Dick said, “I think he killed his old man though, some sort of SEAL legend from this area, known as The Wolf.”
There’s something I haven’t heard in a while, The Wolf, Mal thought.
Mal forcefully laughed out loud in the very tense room. Tim looked over at him with a questioning look on his face.
“What? That is very funny, that David thinks he could kill me,” Mal said.
“I think you may have some mental health issues,” Tim stated.
“Nothing that a drink can’t fix,” Mal retorted.
Mal and Tim both refocused on the interview room.
“What are your plans here? You got in through the sewer hole in the apartment complex but what’s next?”
“That’s above my pay-grade but, I know the plan is to cause as much chaos as humanly possible, repetitively, Ares here stated that every target here was a soft target but we would hit it with everything we got,” Dick said.
“Any particular targets you can tell me about?”
“Alcoa power plant comes to mind, AB brown and the Nuclear facility you guys operate outside of the city.”
Tim snapped his fingers to an assistant and whispered something into his ear.
“Security was just raised at those places,I am guessing?” Mal asked.
“Yeah but honestly, this seems like a goose chase on these,” Tim said, “If you made a list of valuable targets, they would already be at the top.”
“I would tell every man I sent to that apartment some sort of false intelligence,” Mal said, “Just so if or when they are captured, that false intelligence will call into question everything he says.”
Tim nodded to Mal.
“This is the most fucked up game of two truths and a lie I have ever seen,” Jace joked.
Mal chuckled at the assertion.
“So, tell me, how did you know that Mal was in the building?”
“Mal?”
“The guy you saw earlier?
“Malcolm Daniels?” Dick said as every eye in the room turned to Mal.
Mal’s focus wasn’t on that but what happened next, Mal stood up straight against the wall he was previously leaning against and walked forward till he could almost touch the glass with his nose.
“Yes.”
“That’s who that was? Makes a whole lot of sense though he’s an HVT according to our orders, Capture or Kill.”
“Who else is an HVT?”
“Tim Carpenter, Malcolm Daniels, Jace Garcia and a Raynor Davis.”
Mal shot an eyebrow up.
“Who is Raynor Davis?” Mal asked.
“I have no fuckin’ idea,” Tim said dumbfounded.
“Find out?” Jace asked.
Tim snapped his fingers again and another person left the room.
“Once we find him, lets get him here, ASAP,” Mal said, “He has to have something to do with their game plan here.”
Tye got back to questioning Dick.
“You didn’t answer my question though: How did you know Mal was there?”
“From my understanding, we have that whole place wired top to bottom and the second they heard his name, our QRF was on the way,” Dick said.
Not exactly earth shaking information, I had thought they were when they comms network had problems with interference, for them to interfere with a high burst transmitter it would require audio-only transmissions all over the building, Mal thought.
Mal thought back to how Wilke had greeted him back at the Apartment complex by saying his full name and his title.
Wilke’s victim act could be real but I doubt it’s fully true especially since he announced my full name, like he was telling someone else I was there, Mal thought, it’s probably 50/50 like most intelligence assets. Half of what they tell you is the truth hands down and the other half is what they want you to think of them.
Mal pressed a button that made a sound in the room, Tye turned on his earbud as Mal muttered something under his breath that was unable to be heard by anyone else. Tye’s large black, bald head nodded back at Mal with a smirk.
“Did Wilke know it was wired?”
“I don’t know, Ares dealt with that mostly.” Dick answered
“How many men do you have and where are they located?”
“Last Fireteam came in last night so about eighty?”
Mal and Tim’s eyes meet.
“We are in trouble,” Mal said, “have to start picking off these guys from a distance.”
“You aren’t wrong,” Tim said, “we will have to be a bit inventive but I think if BANS sends reinforcements like they promised, we can handle them.”
“Where are they located though?” Tye asked
“All over the county,” Dick said, “we broke into smaller cells to keep things asymmetrical but, I did catch a couple of the locations and I will give them to you for a price.”
This guy talks in a way that seems more closely to related how Special operations guys talked in movies, not how we talk in reality.
Mal began walking to the door and opened it.
“Lieutenant Jordan, I may be wrong but is it my turn again?” Mal asked as he opened the door to see the pure fear on Dick’s face.
“Actually, I will point them out, anything to help my new friends!” The soldier said as Mal smiled and closed the door slowly.
As Tye and Dick go over the locations of all of the Reds teams he knows of Tim and Mal walk out of the room.
“What are you thinking?” Tim asked.
“I am thinking this whole thing with the disappearing soldiers is about softening up the area, so these units could be more successful. Whatever they are looking for during this whole thing is what will give us the ultimate answers here,” Mal said. “I also think…they have been here much longer than you know.”
“Looking for?”
“They want something,” Mal said, “I can’t help but shake that this Raynor guy is somehow the prize.”
Wallis ran up and was out of breath.
“Try exercising, Wallis,” Tim said before Mal gave him a sharp elbow to his ribs. Wallis had ran to the top floor of the station from the basement.
“What’s up?” Mal asked.
“I found one of their bases and Mal, you aren’t going to like who greeted him outside of it,” Wallis said, “I ran facial recognition on him and it says you two served together.”
“Quinn.” Mal and Tim in unison said.
“This sounds like some shit he would come up with,” Jace added.
Daniel Quinn was a SEAL who made the trip cross country with Tim, Jace and Mal but chose to move to the other side of the wall when it was built. Quinn, like Mal was a seasoned combat veteran of the wars before the Civil War broke out. Mal had always thought his politics were a bit dangerous because he tended to not read into the cyclical hypocrisy in his own opinions. When David was a new SEAL, may went out of his way to make sure that he got assigned to the odd numbered teams because he would get to stay on the west coast but the only team that had opening was Team three which Quinn led.
“Well, you get to kill Quinn, your dreams are coming true,” Tim said.
“I don’t want to kill him,” Mal stated, “want to send him home.”
Mal was telling the truth there, if this war restarted from the tenuous peace that was created from the wall because a terrori
st group not technically aligned with the Reds, it wouldn’t stop until this country was ash.
CHAPTER SIX
Intimidation
“So we are still talking to Ricketts?” Tim asked from the driver side of the car
“There’s no way they could get everything they needed over here on their person,” Mal said, “They have to have a network of people on this side of the wall, this guy has to be a member of said network.”
Mal grabbed his tablet and viewed the drone’s camera feed as it flew over the compound that Quinn was inhabiting.
“Wouldn’t you rather be storming that place?”
He turned off the tablet’s drone feed and sighed. He switched over to the feed from a camera that was directly outside of Rickett’s place, inadvertently seeing just how many cameras his hometown had now.
1400 active cameras and passive audio on every cellular device with a SIM card, Mal thought to himself, I guess the idea that absolute freedom can be had with absolute security is now dead.
“We aren’t storming that place,” Mal said, “it’s in a subdivision and from what I can tell, Ricketts is the only person there on the regular other than…”
Mal was staring at the tablet as he scrubbed through a few days of camera footage waiting to find what he wanted to get information on until he got to the night the Reds arrived locally. Quinn walked into camera from a Toyota Camry driven by someone else. James Ricketts was in the garage working on a pristine 1971 Dodge Challenger.
Sweet ride, Mal thought.
Mal viewed the car as Quinn walked up behind James, asking for directions to his brother he was sure. James looked him up and down to see if he was a threat like he was analyzing something. Mal wasn’t really looking at Quinn, he was looking at James. James pointed towards the door into the house from the garage. Quinn waved for the driver and backseat occupants to follow him in. Mal looked back at the car to see who got out: the driver was a Six foot five inch man who was built like he broke down rocks for a living. Mal looked at his uniform and saw US Army patches and a Beret on his head.
Army Special Forces, he must have recruited some Green Berets who stuck around at Fort Campbell. This mission wasn’t really up their alley skill-set wise but they are still worthy adversaries here.
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