The Brimstone Series

by Robert McKinney

  I swallow hard and try to come up with something smart, or at least coherent, to say. Another voice answers before I can get myself into trouble.

  “Put it down, Killer.” says the older mercenary driving van. Something about the way he says the last word leaves no doubt in me that it’s more than just a passing phrase.

  “No deal, friend.” says the woman. “We can’t finish the mission if we’re rotting in a cell.”

  The last comment is pointed, and seems to be aimed over my head and to Diner Boy on the other side of me.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” he says, and I can detect a bit of shaky humor in his voice. Like most good Marines, he seems to be trying to make light of the situation, de-escalate the tension until the risk of impulsive shooting dies down.

  “Three square meals,” he continues. “plenty of exercise. It’s almost like a spa if you think of it that way.”

  His words draw a snort of amusement from the woman, and a full throated bark of laughter from the older driver up front. Personally, the joke doesn’t seem funny to me, but I can feel the tension bleeding out of the cramped, stinking quarters of the van nonetheless.

  I remember enough about kidnappings to know that tense hostage holders are more prone to make mistakes. I already know that I’m on thin ice as far as the woman is concerned, so I’ll take any easing of itching trigger fingers that I can get.

  The period of relief lasts longer than I’d like. Throughout the whole drive we’ve been clocking high speeds, punctuated by every curve or patch of rough road. That speed starts to lessen, though, a few minutes after the Diner Boy dispenses with his joke, and within moments, we’re still - the car engine moaning like a drunk from the stress we’ve put it through.

  Changes in patterns tend to put my nerves a bit on edge. I’ve almost gotten used to being tossed around in the back of the van, and now that we’ve stopped, I half wish that we could have kept driving for a little while longer. Stopping here, wherever here is, means that we’ve probably come to our destination. While my captors, hungry for payment, may be happy with that, I am definitely not.

  A shift in the sounds of the car tells me that I’m missing something, though. There’s tension in all three of the mercenaries again. I can feel it in the rigid muscles of Diner Boy on one side and the woman on the other. I can hear it in the sudden, seemingly forced regularity of the driver’s breathing. In people who are more than used to doing violence, breathing easy and steady isn’t the result of a lack of concern. Quite the opposite in most cases, including this one, where I think he is trying to keep himself calm.

  “OK.” says the driver. “Let’s get this done with.”

  I have less than a second to wonder what the hell “this” is, before Diner Boy grabs onto me with rough hands and starts to drag me towards the back of the van.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Fuck no!” I shout as more hands grab onto me. With my legs tied ups as tight as they are, I can’t really kick, but that doesn’t mean I’m wholly helpless. I try and head-butt whoever is trying to grab onto my shoulders, and snap my teeth into the darkness as well once the poorly secured hood rides up high enough to uncover my mouth.

  I know that my outburst is dangerous, but Three Letter Agency’s earlier threat no longer worries me. I’ve got bigger things to be worried about now. Every time you change locations in a kidnapping situation is a point against the kidnappers. Plenty of kidnappers have lost track of their victims because someone got sloppy when moving their captives from a car to another building.

  The fact that now may be my last best chance to attempt some kind of escape isn’t my reason for fighting so hard, though.

  I struggle because I know that plenty of other kidnappers have killed their victims after arriving somewhere the bad guys felt safe.

  If these mercenaries have parked somewhere they feel confident enough to pull me out of the van, then there’s next to no chance I’ll be able to get out after being taken inside. I’m not going to die here. I’m not going to die at all. Not until I’ve gotten payback for Mary. Not until I’ve finished Ole Beeze, then it doesn’t matter what happens to me.

  A gunshot, loud and echoing off what sounds like high ceilings above, goes off nearby. The fact that I don’t start gushing blood immediately just means that it’s unimportant. A warning shot. I keep on fighting.

  Finally, I feel an arm wrap around the back of my head in some kind of arm lock. The guy it belongs to, the driver I think, straightens up far enough to lift me off the ground. My tied together feet keep kicking in the air for an instant before another pair of hands grabs them tight and more or less holds me still.

  “Next time,” I hear Three Letter Agency say, “just let me shoot her. She doesn’t need both kneecaps for this thing to work.”

  “She was kicking too hard. You could have missed.” replies the driver, still holding me, “Hit an artery and you’ve wasted our only damn lead.”

  I hear a grunt of annoyance from the woman, who does not sound like the other person holding me. There’s a sensation of movement and the creak of doors opening. Finally the two mercenaries holding me come to a stop, and place me down, awkwardly, in what feels like a chair.

  The hood gets ripped from my head so fast that I can do nothing but blink in the bright lights that shine in. A spotlight or something shines bright in my face, blinding me almost as effectively as the darkness of the canvas sack.

  Almost isn’t completely, though. I can make out some details that are present on the less dazzled edges of my vision. I’m in an industrial space, maybe a warehouse, with a wide open room. What I think may be windows, wide and tall, cover one of the walls towards my left. Most of the space to my right is unlit, and impossible to see with my night vision burned away by the annoyingly bright light in my face.

  I heard the sound of something metal scraping on the other side of that light. When I squint, I can just barely make out the outline of a person settling down into a metal folding chair. The figure reaches into a pocket and pulls out a phone. It dials something, and moments later, I hear the woman’s voice from before over speakerphone.

  “Where’s Tom, Ms. Kohl?” says the woman on the phone.

  “Fuck Tom.” I say. “Where the fuck am I?”

  One of the three mercs in the room with me must not have liked my answer, because the next thing I hear is the sound of metal smacking against the back of my head.

  Here’s a spoiler for those who live life far from the edge. Getting sucker punched hurts a whole fucking lot. Getting sucker pistol whipped hurts a whole lot more.

  Pain radiates outwards, starting about an inch behind my right ear and pressing forward till it settles like a migraine in the space behind my eyes. I’d intended to play tough girl for a while to give my confidence a boost, but I should have known better. While “don’t get kidnapped” is rule number one for surviving these kinds of situations, “don’t antagonize your captors” is easily in the top three.

  “Answer me.” says the woman on the phone again coolly. “Where is Tom, Ms. Kohl.”

  Head throbbing, I wonder about the cost of telling her anything. I’ll need a body and brain that works to escape. I’m pretty tough, but there’s only so many hits like that I can take before I’m worthless, and unable to think quickly.

  “I don’t think you’re going to believe the answer.” I say.

  “I can believe a great deal of things, Ms. Kohl.”

  “I don’t think you’ll like the answer much, either.”

  The voice pauses for a moment before speaking up again.

  “There’s been little to like since you took my husband from me, Ms. Kohl.” says the woman on the phone, this time with an edge of bitterness to her voice. “Where’s Tom?”

  Head throbbing, I take in a long, shaking breath. I doubt she’ll react well to my upcoming answer, but I think she’d handle a li
e even worse.

  “He’s not where I left him.” I say. “He’s not in hell.”

  I take another breath and continued, my voice echoing through the hollow insides of the industrial building.

  “We know.” says the woman on the phone, shocking me. “We know that he’s here on earth, enslaved. What we don’t know is where on earth he actually is. That’s why we took you in the first place. To bring us to him.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I just stare at the outline of the driver sitting and the phone he holds behind the light, for a silent handful of seconds as my pistol whipped brain tries to process what I’d heard. I’d read up on Tom’s mercenary company three years ago, shortly before I’d found him and made him pay his share for Mary’s death. The mercenary shop that he ran was no small thing. They had spies on their payroll, and not just retired ex-Marines like Three Letter Agency. If any organization short of a nation state had a chance of tracking down a devil, it was the shop that employed these mercenaries.

  Then again, I thought, locating a devil wouldn’t be much use to them. My ability to drop, when it works right at least, is a borrowed shadow of what devils like Ole Beeze and the one wearing Tom can do. Even if you find them, they could be a continent away moments later. Keeping up with them would be impossible.

  Unless, just maybe, they had someone like me.

  Out of all the people in the world, I would have had the best shot of keeping up with a devil. There’s few places I haven’t traveled, and even fewer devil dogs out there, real ones not Marines, who know how to drop quickly and on instinct without attracting fatal attention while in transit downstairs. If these mercenaries knew anything about the real me, they’d know that at least. Too bad they didn’t know that my drops were no longer working. Their plan wouldn’t work. Not with me. Not anymore.

  I’m about to explain as much to the woman on the phone when a loud crunch-whumf interrupts us from outside. Two shapes in the corner of my eye run towards the windows a split second later. I turn my head to track them, and see that my eyes have adjusted enough to the bright light nearby for me to make out who they are and what they’re doing.

  Three Letter Agency and Diner Boy are standing at opposite edges of one of the windows to my left. They crouch low behind cover, squinting out into the darkness outside of the building.

  “What is it?” I ask from my spot on the chair.

  “An accident.” says Diner Boy.

  Three Letter Agency responds to him with a snort.

  “If that’s an accident, then it’s the most pristine crash that I’ve ever seen. Bastard smacked right into the back of our van. We’re not going anywhere. Not that way at least.”

  “Damage isn’t too bad.” replies Diner Boy. “Broken tail lights, dented bumper. We can clear the car, move it, and leave.”

  The confidence in his voice makes me cringe a little. I’m a smuggler, not a shooter, but even I can tell that the crash was some kind of delaying action, or worse, a distraction. I’ve known my fair share of ex-soldiers, gangsters, mercenaries, rebels who’d been too proud of their own skill with a rifle to show hiccups in their plans the right level of respect. They had all been young, right down to the last man. I guess old fighters know better. I guess that’s how they got to be old in the first place.

  “If you want to go out there, that’s fine with me. I’ll be staying here where there’s cover, though. Smart bet would be for you to stay here too. If this were Baghdad,” Three Letter Agency says, “I’d swear this is the lead in to an IED.”

  “This isn’t Iraq.” says the younger mercenary, “No IEDs here. I’m going to go out back and circle around. Get an idea for things past the wire.”

  “Take your weapon.” says the driver’s voice, still mostly hidden by the glare of the nearby lighting.

  “Way ahead of you.” says Diner Boy, pulling out a pistol that had previously been concealed.

  I hear a grunt from the driver, and the muted voice of the woman on the phone, apparently no longer on speaker.

  “A real weapon.” he says. “Keep it shouldered and ready. I don’t like this. The boss doesn’t either.”

  “Got it.” says Diner Boy, as he retrieves his shotgun. I hear him load a shell into the chamber before stepping out into the night outside.

  “What else does the boss say?” asks the woman a moment later.

  “About what you’d expect.” says the driver. “Head on a swivel. Do what needs to be done. Don’t let the package get her hands on a match or lighter.”

  I try to keep quiet at that. I really do, but I can’t help myself.

  “Heaven forbid I have a problem with being kidnapped.” I say. “Would be a shame for me to get away before I finish answering all of your questions.”

  “It would be a shame.” says the driver, nonplussed. “Those were good men that you took along with you to Hell. None of them deserved what you did.”

  “Good men?” I say,”They helped take my sister from me.”

  “I was briefed on what happens to people down there.” says a different voice, Three Letter Agency, still crouching by the edge of the window. “I’ve seen some real monsters in my time, but the shit you pulled fucking takes the cake.”

  Her words spark the flame of anger that’s been waiting inside me ever since I’d gained back my memories in the diner. I remember my sister, her body broken, crumpled next to a jagged hole in a wall. That and the mercenaries, friends of these people, standing next to her body.

  “I’m not a monster.” I say, feeling my rage grow until it’s practically a taste in my mouth. “Just a person trying to do right by my family.”

  I hear the driver sigh, still out of focus behind the light.

  “I can say the same for all of us, ma’am. Those boys that you took are our people. Our family. Name me a man worth his salt who wouldn’t kill for his family?”

  The muted boom of a shotgun in the darkness outside shuts the conversation down. From the sound of it, the gunman was four or five dozen meters away - the outside edge of standard buckshot’s effective range.

  “Status?” asks the driver, apparently into the smartphone or a radio I haven’t seen.

  Silence is the only answer he receives.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Waiting for violence is hard on the nerves. There’s a particular quality to it, almost like the air itself has taken on a sickness whose only symptom is to stretch the edges of time. It makes the seconds seem to lasts minutes, and minutes go on until whole years seem short. The added anxiety of the others in the building with me, from people who seem to know both the literal and figurative business of killing does not help the tension of waiting.

  Despite their knowledge of devils and that I can drop into Hell, I can see that, for the first time since they’d started tonight, the mercenaries holding me may be in over their heads.

  Stuck in the chair, and with nothing to do but think in the silence, I try to figure out who could have crashed into the van. None of the answers I come up with are pleasant. If this had been three years ago, before Mary had been taken, there’d be a chance that it was a rescue from some of my old acquaintances or friends. I’ve sold enough weapons to men with unspoken power, rubbed elbows and shared laughter with enough operators that some of them, maybe more than some, would have taken it upon themselves to give a hand if they’d heard I was in trouble.

  I know that this is true, because more than several had agreed to help me in the hours after Mary had been taken. Some had expected favors or payments in return, but a few of them had agreed to kit up before I’d told them more than a sentence. If this had been then, I’d be sure this was done by my allies.

  This isn’t then, though. All of my allies, all my friends, are dead. They’d been killed because I’d been sloppy. Hunted down and killed within hours of taking a phone call from me, asking for help in getting
Mary back. Hunted and killed by the same company of mercenaries that now held me in this abandoned building.

  Knowing that is the case prompts a growing dread in my stomach. The mercenary company led by the buyer I’d once known as Tom was far from the only organization, or even government, that would gladly call for my head. It’s not surprising. Anyone who’s been in the business of arms smuggling for as long as I have would’ve picked up a fair number of enemies. Maybe one of them picked up on my presence at the mess in the diner, and had been able to connect the dots quick enough to set up an ambush here.

  It’s not a pretty thought. If I’ve got no friends left, what’s waiting for me outside probably isn’t a rescue, probably isn’t any better than being tied up in this shit hole van either. it comes down to it, I’d rather take my chances of getting by on my own wits than relying on the armed pair holed up in the high ceilinged room with me.

  “I think you should untie me.” I say. My voice comes out louder, clearer, than I’d expected and breaks the stillness growing in the building.

  Something hard and metal pokes, albeit briefly, into the back of my head.

  “Not the time for distractions.” says the driver. “One of our own is on the line. We need to focus on him.”

  I shake my head.

  “Yeah, that’s actually why you should untie me.” I say. “It’s why you should free my legs at least. You said it yourself, this shit is dicey. And that accident looks suspicious as Hell. We may need to run. I don’t think you’ll be wanting to carry me if it comes to that.”

  Waiting for the answer carries its own kind of tension as well, although one that’s easier to stand than the continued silence outside. At least I’m doing something, now. Or trying to. I almost hear the cogs turning in the driver’s head as he comes to a decision. After a few moments, he kills the light shining into my face, reaches into a pocket for something, and answers.