Only the Strong

by Ethan Cross

  Emily said, “That’s enough, professor. Let him up.”

  He sighed as he ripped the knife out of Willoughby’s flesh and punched him in the chest in one arcing motion. Willoughby landed on his rear and scuttled back a few steps like a crab. Ackerman held up the bloody knife and said, “Total surrender. Sealed in blood and vowed under threat of death. I consider that to be a warrior’s oath. Or a knight’s code if that analogy better suits you. In either case, I would feel honor bound—if you were to break such a vow—to cut off your hands and feet, cauterize the wounds, and then have some fun with you. Do you like milk and honey?”

  “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “First off, I’m going to write down a message for you to deliver. I want to stress to the letter’s recipient the kind of people with whom he’s dealing. I want you to stress that to him upon delivery.”

  “A message for who?”

  “For your associate, Mr. King.”

  “I don’t have access to him. No one does. He has his top people who deal with him, and then you meet with them.”

  “Then deliver the message to his intermediary.”

  “That would be Oban.”

  “Tell us about him,” Emily said.

  Willoughby swallowed hard, clutching his bleeding hand and mewling like a wounded animal. “Can I tend to my hand?”

  “After we’re done,” Ackerman said. “Now answer her question. Total surrender.”

  “I only know what I’ve heard about his past, but he’s Egyptian. Word is that he started out as a boss in Cairo before being recruited by Mr. King to be his right hand.”

  Ackerman licked the blood from one side of the blade. He did it slowly, allowing the point to rest on his tongue and penetrate his flesh. “Anything else we should know about him?”

  “One strange thing. A mutual business partner told me that the name Oban means ‘King’ in Egyptian.”

  “Are you suggesting that Oban could actually be Mr. King?”

  “That’s what my friend thought. But I’ve spoken with King on the phone, and the voice on the other end wasn’t Oban.”

  “Why would a little pauper like you receive an audience with the king?”

  “He makes a phone call to every person who starts working for him at a certain level. He pretty much just stressed how seriously he takes revenge.”

  “I want to know every word.”

  Willoughby stammered around the subject a bit but finally said something that caught Ackerman’s interest: “I don’t remember exactly, but there was this big story that involved Attila the Hun or someone like that.”

  Ackerman searched his own memory banks. He had read much about all the great conquerors and killers throughout history. His memory couldn’t compare with his brother’s, but he still prided himself on his ability to recall details.

  But he couldn’t conjure from memory a story about Attila the Hun that focused heavily on revenge.

  But Genghis Khan . . . He was famous for holding a grudge.

  Ackerman said, “Could it have been Genghis Khan that he told you about?”

  “Could be. I really can’t remember for sure.”

  “The Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan, once sent a trade caravan through the Khwarezmid empire that never returned. The traders were killed when their caravan was seized by the governor of one of the cities. To exact revenge, Genghis Khan invaded the empire with two hundred thousand men and killed the governor by pouring molten silver in his eyes and mouth. He even went so far as to divert a river through the Khwarezmid emperor’s birthplace, completely erasing it from the map. He redefined the idea of getting on someone’s bad side. Could one of those instances be the story he told you?”

  Willoughby raised his hands. “Total surrender, but I can’t remember.”

  Ackerman said, “Very well then. Next question. Why haven’t you talked to Tyson about you being his biological father?”

  “Frank!” Emily snapped.

  He growled deep in his throat. “Fine. Since we can’t discuss the Tyson situation, I want to know everything you know about Mr. King’s organization. But hypothetically, about the whole Tyson deal, you should definitely tell him the truth. Honesty is always the best policy.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Willoughby lived up to his end of the bargain. Total surrender. Ackerman listened as Willoughby gave a full account of King’s operations, which ranged from running guns from Mexico up to California’s inner cities to human trafficking of Eastern European and Asian women by way of the Canadian border. And these were merely the activities of which Willoughby, a lowly corporal in King’s empire, was aware. All of it being accomplished through intermediaries while the King remained in his castle.

  Ackerman was impressed. The alleged agoraphobe had built quite the criminal empire. He mused that in another life, he could have easily built his own kingdom through similar tactics.

  Willoughby droned on about the way King had banded several scattered groups together, typically brokering the deals between the different criminal outfits. The tactics seemed familiar to Ackerman, but he couldn’t yet ascertain the historical template that King had used to construct his business model.

  Emily asked, “So where do you fit in, Mr. Willoughby?”

  Their informant had shied away from that information previously and seemed physically affected by the mere question. Ackerman said, “You had mentioned previously that you wouldn’t associate your criminal and legitimate enterprises. So, no guns. Must revolve around human trafficking, correct? Remember, total surrender.”

  Willoughby licked his lips and said, “Sometimes, but it could be anyone that King needs disposed of. He brings me people that he wants erased.”

  Ackerman cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell. You incinerate them somehow, don’t you?”

  Willoughby curled up his front lip. “I have a license to use exotic weapons on the range. So I have a flame thrower. Then I built a hidden pit out on the back of the property. The bottom is filled with my own patented formula for dissolving bone and charred flesh. Atop the solution is a steel cage. We drop people in, burn them down to nothing, and sweep what’s left into the Sludge.”

  “Fascinating. I would love to—”

  A familiar sound echoed through Willoughby’s store and stopped Ackerman mid-sentence. It was the reverberation of metal rolling over a hard surface. He knew the sound of a grenade or gas canister well. But which was it?

  He searched the floor, homing in on the sound, and found a gas canister coming to rest only a few feet away. But then he heard several other canisters joining the first and beginning their rotation.

  With a roll of his eyes, he said, “Well, excrement.”

  Then he took a deep breath and scanned the room for the person or persons who had thrown the tactical devices. Part of him hoped it was Tyson—Willoughby’s illegitimate son and apprentice—then they could have some in-depth family therapy.

  He spotted a massive man standing among the rows of army surplus gear. The attacker wore a hooded sweatshirt and a gas mask. Knowing his only chance at preventing their capture at this point would be to disable their uninvited guest and retrieve his mask, Ackerman rushed forward and engaged the interloper.

  He came in hard and wild with a series of jackhammer blows. But the newcomer in the gas mask deflected each blow with an expert’s hand. Ackerman switched tactics to Muay Thai and then Indonesian Sulat, but he failed to connect with a single direct blow.

  He came in for another attempt, his lungs screaming for air. His third blow of the series had just missed when his opponent engaged in his first offensive maneuver. One that was perfectly planned and timed.

  The man in the mask ducked under the blow and lunged forward with a punch aimed at the space just below his ribs. The blow was executed w
ith a perfect upward motion, as if his opponent was attempting to push his stomach up into his chest. But Ackerman instantly saw his mistake and recognized the brilliance of the assault—a blow designed specifically to knock the wind out of him.

  He took four steps backward and rode the wave of pain. But, in the end, he had to breathe or pass out. As he finally dropped to the floor, Ackerman wasn’t sure if it was the hypoxia or the gas from the canisters that would ultimately lead to his unconsciousness, but he was fairly certain where he would wake up. Which was fine by him. Ackerman had wanted to get a good look at Mr. King’s private crematorium anyway.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Ackerman awoke in a pit of corroded and charred metal. The only light came from the few over-achieving rays that had snuck in around the hinges and edges of the metal trapdoor which formed the ceiling of the dungeon. The grated metal floor smelled oddly of wintergreen, the aroma of who knew how many people’s erased remains simmering in a chemical soup below.

  Emily Morgan slumbered beside him on the steel cage. She looked so peaceful when she slept. He had always thought so. Her red-tinted hair swept over her pale Asian cheekbones, which were speckled with freckles that were only visible when her face was ruddy.

  He reached out, brushed the hair away from her face, and then flicked her ear with enough force to make an audible thwap. She instantly came awake and said, “Ouch, damnit, Jim!”

  Ackerman felt a stab of some unidentified emotion at the mention of her dead husband’s name—one of his many victims during the dark years.

  Emily’s eyes slowly revealed recognition of their current predicament. She looked up at him with a frown and asked, “Did we survive?”

  “Nope. Welcome to hell.”

  “Then I know we survived. Hell is one thing I don’t fear because I know I’m not bound for that place.”

  “Not sure I can say the same. But I still don’t fear it.”

  Pushing herself up into a sitting position, she said, “I would suggest that escaping from this pit would be your area of expertise.”

  “I woke up ten seconds before you did, but give me a minute. Maybe two. You can’t rush brilliance.”

  He stood and felt his way around the walls, examined the hinges to the trapdoor over their heads—which he could barely touch on tiptoe—and then he turned his attention to the floor. It was a solid cage, except for a small trapdoor secured by a small but formidable lock, which required a key. Finding no weaknesses exploitable using their current resources, he turned his attention to the sludge beneath the metal floor. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to see, but within thirty seconds, he found what he had been hoping for.

  With a smile, he said, “Actually, my dear, our escape is going to depend solely upon you. My arms are too thick to reach through the grate, down into the sludge, and grab that piece of metal, but your slender appendages will slip right through.”

  “What piece of metal?” She moved closer, and he pointed down through the cage floor. She said, “What is that?”

  “My guess is that it’s a metal support rod, which had been implanted into the leg or hip of one of Mr. Willoughby’s victims. How often do you think they’re alive when he burns them? Considering that I find pleasure in pain, perhaps I would be best served by a fiery demise.”

  “Nobody is meeting their demise tonight. Fiery or otherwise. What do we do with the rod if I’m able to reach it?”

  “You’ll have to get on my shoulders and pry out one set of hinges. They’re only held in with four screws.”

  “That could take forever.”

  “I estimate we have less than five minutes.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Maggie was growing increasingly worried about Marcus. She had rarely seen him so . . . deflated. It was as though a fire in him had gone out. He sat across from her on the FBI jet headed to San Francisco, and he had actually fallen asleep. She had rarely seen him sleep, let alone pass out anywhere but in a controlled environment. He simply wasn’t the kind of guy who dozed off, and the ease with which he had done so scared Maggie. She had seen Marcus push forward with bullets still embedded in his flesh, broken bones, and everything in between. But to deal with this wound, he had passed out like a machine shutting down for repairs.

  Maggie couldn’t allow herself to sleep, but not because she wasn’t exhausted. She had work to do. After Ackerman had informed her of the hole in the Taker investigation, she had pulled the files and reviewed them again for herself, still unable to trust Ackerman at his word. But he was right. And she had overlooked it for years.

  She needed to track down every one of her childhood neighbors and, eventually, her father. Unfortunately, she couldn’t involve Stan, and so she would have to do the leg work herself.

  With that in mind, Maggie pulled out her laptop, connected to the jet’s Wi-Fi, and set out to find someone who may have caught a glimpse of the Taker on the day he stole her brother.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Sixty

  The metal ceiling flew open and blinding artificial light filled the pit. The time in near darkness was enough to make Ackerman’s vision go white. He closed his eyes against the sudden illumination and tried not to move. He had advised Emily to do the same.

  Through squinting eyes, Ackerman saw a reject from a 1950s robot movie. Based on stature, he assumed the mechanized intruder to actually be Willoughby wearing a face-shield and protective acrylic clothing. The flamethrower in his hands was a long vented tube with a pistol grip and hoses running back to a metal tank on his back. The end of the weapon held a lit flame in front of the barrel.

  Willoughby cursed and pulled back his protective mask. He said, “They’re gone.”

  In order to hear the conversation above, Ackerman had turned his head so that one ear poked out of the sludge in the bottom of the pit. Emily had been correct. They hadn’t the time to dislodge the hinges from the metal door over their heads. But he did have ample time to pick the lock in the cage floor, allowing them to drop into the sludge pit of chemicals and human remains. They had then pulled themselves back into one corner and waited, their heads just above the surface. The strange-smelling soup was lumpy and blackened, and the cage didn’t offer much of a view of the liquid resting three feet below. To all appearances, they had disappeared.

  The big man who had bested him earlier while wearing the gas mask stepped forward. Now some type of surgical mask covered his face. Cocking his head, the expert fighter stared into the empty pit and said, “Oh well. Oban said to let them go anyway. You’re just lucky I was dropping off a package and was halfway here when you triggered that silent alarm.”

  “But how in the hell did they . . .”

  The man in the mask said, “Not our problem. Oh, and one more thing, Mr. King wanted me to give you a message.”

  He punctuated the sentence with a perfectly placed blow to Willoughby’s Adam’s apple. The tiny marmoset man was caught completely by surprise. Clawing at the air, Willoughby struggled to breathe as he choked to death on his own dislodged body part.

  The big man in the mask calmly but forcefully pulled the flamethrower from Willoughby’s grasp, slipped the tank from the choking man’s back, and shoved him into his own pit. The marmoset man was still fighting for air when the man in the mask aimed the flamethrower downward.

  Ackerman quickly looked at Emily, took a deep breath, and ducked under the surface. He felt her following suit beside him shortly before the flames scorched the air above their heads.

  Waiting for the heat to subside, Ackerman wondered how long Emily could hold her breath.

  He received his answer when he felt her start to move toward the surface, but the heat was still pushing down on them, and there would be no air to find above. He grabbed hold of Emily and held her underneath the surface until the fire stopped.

  Fina
lly, the flames relented, and they both tried to gasp in the hot air without alerting the man standing high above them with the flamethrower. Ackerman had to admit that he somewhat enjoyed the smell of Willoughby’s blackened flesh.

  The man in the mask said, “I assume you can hear me down there. If so, Mr. Oban has you on his calendar for tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

  The overhead doors closed, and he and Emily waited in the darkness for several minutes. Finally, judging that it was safe to make their escape, Ackerman said, “All in all, I would say we had a productive evening.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Sixty-One

  ~~Sunday~~

  Special Agent Jerrell Fuller couldn’t find his way to the sleep his mind so desired. It wasn’t that he was tired. He had slept more than enough over the past couple of days, waiting for whatever trials his captor had prepared for him. It was just easier to sleep, easier to dream, than to stare into complete darkness.

  For a while, he had searched and plotted escape, but there was nothing to help him. He was basically inside a concrete shower stall with a smooth steel door on one side. One weak point might have been the window in the center of the door, but he was sure that the Gladiator or whatever his tormentor called himself would have paid the extra cash for reinforced glass, which pretty much meant he would break his hand before he could punch through it.

  As he lay in the darkness, coveting a dream, Jerrell went over the cell’s design again for what might have been the millionth time. There was a speaker in the wall by the door, but it was flat and smooth and dotted with pencil-sized holes. He couldn’t get any leverage on it. The only other possible flaw he could find was the drain in the center of the floor. It was smooth, no screws, which meant that it was probably glued down. The holes in the drain were large enough that he could slip his figures inside and pull up on the circular metal grating.

  Under normal circumstances, Jerrell conditioned his body as if fitness was a religion. Not because he wanted to impress anyone. He worked his body so hard in his down time because he knew that a few extra muscle fibers could be all the difference when wrestling with a murderer.