Only the Strong

by Ethan Cross

  Through all of Jerrell’s pacing and preparing, the man in the skull mask didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. He sat there, meditating, and waiting for his opponent to make his opening move.

  Jerrell new that this first move could theoretically be the last. All it would take was one perfect blow to the right spot. He still had the grate cover that he had sharpened to a knife’s edge against the concrete floor. It wasn’t nearly as sharp as a real blade, but he was still confident that his improvised weapon would penetrate flesh. Then there was the metal washbasin and the small wooden table. They could also be used as weapons.

  Or he could just do it the old-fashioned way. A sucker punch or a kick to the scrotum.

  Jerrell paced and thought, paced and thought, and the more he walked, the less sure of himself he became. The confidence of his opponent had unnerved him. He felt like the only person who didn’t understand the joke. As if everyone but him was seeing the world in a totally different light . . . and laughing at him.

  Finally, Jerrell settled on a plan of attack, slipped his hand down the back of his pants, and retrieved the sharpened grate covering. Then he took up a position behind his opponent and made his move.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Marcus woke up feeling as if his head had been used as Metallica’s bass drum. He lay atop one of two mattresses inside a dimly lit concrete cell. Ackerman occupied the other. His older brother sat on the concrete with his legs crossed and his arms in some kind of strange yoga pose.

  Marcus asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m meditating upon the present circumstance.”

  “Wonderful. Any revelations?” His voice was harsh, and his throat felt like sandpaper.

  “I suspect I already know the answer, but the device you implanted into my spine . . . It doesn’t actually track all my movements, does it?”

  Rubbing his eyes against his palms, Marcus replied, “If you’re asking whether or not anyone knows our current position, the answer is probably not.”

  “I feel something there, a foreign object. I’m going to be rather annoyed if your Director friend risked paralyzing me in order to insert a placebo.”

  “It’s a real device. We’re actually still trying to get the funding for the more sophisticated chip and monitoring capabilities from the NSA, but after Foxbury, the powers that be wanted you in the field asap. So they put in last year’s model, in a manner of speaking. The implant can still track you and kill you, but it only sends and receives small bursts of data whenever you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network or cellular hot spot. Basically, the device hijacks an Internet connection and transmits your GPS coordinates. It then receives back a code of whether to detonate or not. As long as it doesn’t receive the kill code, you’re fine. But if you screw up, that chip would eventually end you. You wouldn’t be able to hide from it forever.”

  “But I could kill all of you and strategically make my way to Washington in order to deactivate such a termination order. Hypothetically.”

  “You’re not traveling across the country without hitting some kind of wireless network. Not in this day and age.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Trying to steer the conversation back onto the right track, Marcus said, “The good news is that we just need to get you within range of a network. That security camera probably runs off Wi-Fi. Maybe a team is already on their way.”

  “Doubtful. An internal network in a private compound would have restricted access to the Internet. Our captor may even employ signal jammers. Such devices are easy to come by and inexpensive to build.”

  “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

  Ackerman said, “In light of this new information, my opinion is thus: we should now behave in the same manner that a scuba diver would when coming face to face with the massive jaws of a great white shark. Or, if you prefer, the hiker coming nose to nose with a grizzly bear and her cubs.”

  Marcus had no idea what his brother was talking about, which was a common occurrence, even when he wasn’t groggy from being drugged. He said, “Are you waiting for me to answer? I don’t know. You poke it in the eye?”

  “No,” Ackerman said. “Try again.”

  Marcus snapped back, “You pull out a knife and jam your arm into the shark and/or bear’s mouth with the blade pointing vertically. So when it bites down, the knife is stabbed into its brain.”

  Ackerman chuckled. “I like your line of thinking, if you and I were actually encountering one of those situations. However, I was speaking more metaphorically. Sort of like that old joke about what to do when you’re on a plane going down . . . you put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. We have now come to such a moment.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve never seen you give up before.”

  “I’ve never met anyone who could beat me before.”

  “I beat you.”

  Ackerman chuckled again. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  Marcus growled and cracked his neck. “We really don’t have time for that discussion right now. What makes you think we can’t outsmart or outfight this guy?”

  “Past experience is usually the best indicator, and our new friend has consistently beaten me.”

  “Don’t you mean: beaten us?”

  Ackerman said, “If you prefer. The point is that I have evaluated all the variables, and based upon everything I’ve observed from this opponent and given our limited resources, I see no way that we can possibly defeat him and survive this encounter. Well, perhaps a ten percent chance.”

  “We’ve been in worse situations than this, and we’ve always come out on top. I will never stop fighting, until they cut out my heart and drop my cold ass in the ground.”

  “You misunderstand, dear brother. I’m not giving up. I’m merely preparing myself for the possibility of defeat. There’s a significant difference.”

  With a shake of his head, Marcus paused to consider his brother’s words. He never treated the moments he had with people as if they could be his last. And maybe he should start. He said, “I want to tell you something, just in case.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “It’s a Star Wars reference. You were going to say, ‘I love you.’ And I replied, ‘I know.’ I’ve heard you and Maggie do it before.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “I do love you, in some weird way, but that’s not what I was going to say. I want to tell you that I think you were right all along. I should have listened to you.”

  Ackerman cocked an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to be much more specific.”

  Marcus continued, “We should have turned the Demon case over to another agency. Maybe we still can. I’m sure Valdas could get some team at the FBI on it. You were right. There is no case that’s worth sacrificing any of the people I love. Maggie is off chasing phantoms. We’re in this situation. And I can’t shake the feeling that Dylan is in real danger. If we make it out of here, I think we should walk away from this case. I say we let this dragon sleep.”

  With a shake of his head, Ackerman closed his eyes and said, “It’s much too late for that.”

  “What do you mean ‘too late’?”

  “That ship, as they say, has sailed. Demon allowing us to walk away was a one-time offer. He’s going to destroy all of us and everyone and everything we love, merely on principle.”

  Marcus rubbed the cross tattoo on his chest. “Then what do we do?”

  “Now, the only way out is through. We’re going to have to kill them all, little brother, before they do the same to us.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  Jerrell Fuller had shown an aptitude for martial arts at an early age, and by the time he was in attendance at the FBI Academy, competing for Quantico’s unofficial
hand-to-hand combat championship, he was a black belt in Muay Thai and trained in Brazilian Jujitsu. He had faced opponents who were among the best in the world, but he had never seen anyone move like the man in the skull mask.

  Jerrell had thought long and hard about how the fight would go down. He had decided that he would attack with the sharpened grate cover, but not straight on or directly from behind his opponent. Instead, he would start behind and run diagonally toward the hellhounds, then he would jump into the air, kick off the next level, and come down on the Gladiator from above with the full weight of his body. The bastard would never see that coming, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have time to react.

  Jerrell’s first move worked out exactly as he had planned, with the exception of the blow never connecting. He had been flying through the air, coming down right on top of his adversary, and then the man in the skull mask had simply disappeared.

  Before Jerrell could process what he had actually witnessed, the Gladiator had hold of him, using his own momentum to slam him to the polished hardwood floor.

  Pain shot through his whole body, and the air abandoned his lungs as he belly flopped off the ground. The Gladiator was right on top of him, riding him down, and striking him repeatedly in the back of his head.

  Then the weight was gone from his back, and Jerrell rolled to his feet.

  The Gladiator, or Skullface, or whatever the hell he called himself, stood there with a smug little grin on his face. Or at least, Jerrell imagined there to have been some kind of cocky look of self-assurance beneath that mask.

  Deciding that it was about damn time he saw his tormentor’s real face, Jerrell took off in a dead sprint, as if he were going to tackle the larger man. Instead, he came up short, faked a head-butt, and landed a few quick jabs to the abdomen.

  The man in the skull mask barely flinched at the blows.

  Using every trick he knew, Jerrell responded with a long series of punches, kicks, and feints. The Gladiator simply fended off each attack without making any purely offensive moves.

  After a full three minutes of watching his expertly planned and perfectly executed blows be slapped away or absorbed, Jerrell finally realized that the Gladiator was merely playing with him. The thought drove him to hit harder and faster. He used his wrestling skills, trying to grapple, trying to take the fight to the ground. But his opponent was always one step ahead of him, never taking advantage, but always making sure that the attack fell short. Without landing any significant blow, Jerrell managed to expend a tremendous amount of energy, completely exhausting himself—while his adversary was barely even winded.

  Changing tactics and buying time to recuperate, Jerrell grabbed the items from the small table and threw them at the Gladiator. Then he scooped up the wooden table itself with his left hand and swung it like a club as he slashed with the grate cover.

  The Gladiator disarmed him easily, grabbing him by the wrists and wrenching his arms in the wrong direction until he could no longer grip either item. Then, in his first offensive move, the Gladiator struck Jerrell with an open palm to the throat.

  Not even breathing hard, the big man in the metal mask waited for his opponent’s next move. Jerrell had never wanted to kill someone so badly in his life. He had never felt rage like this.

  He stepped forward, and with renewed vigor, he unleashed an onslaught of quick combinations, all leading up to a major knockout blow.

  But it appeared that the Gladiator had let the show go on long enough, because this time when Jerrell went in for an uppercut after two feigned rabbit punches, the man in the skull mask caught his arm, twisting it up into position. Then Jerrell watched helplessly as, with incredible strength and speed, his enemy used his forearm as leverage to snap Jerrell’s arm in half.

  As an FBI Special Agent, Jerrell Fuller had been trained to deal with pain. He’d been trained to overcome it, to push through it. But he had also seldom experienced such an all-encompassing pain as this.

  Perhaps for truly the first time since his ordeal began, Jerrell now knew, beyond any hope, that he was going to die.

  Still, he couldn’t give up. He wasn’t built that way. He pushed past the sharp stabs in his left arm and swung the right with all his might. The Gladiator merely slapped the blow away and brought the outside of his foot down onto Jerrell’s knee, snapping it just like his arm.

  The world became pain, and then he was falling, collapsing back against the hardwood floor of the Diamond Room. The woodgrain was stained with blood. His blood. The blood of others. Old blood and new. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what was happening. He had to get up; he had to keep fighting. He scanned the ground for the grate cover, found it, and dragged his broken body toward the weapon. As he had just reached his destination and slipped his fingers through the metal of the grate, a shadow fell upon him.

  It was the Gladiator—dropping from above and driving his knee down on to Jerrell’s right hand, the one holding the sharpened metal drain cover.

  Jerrell could do little but watch as his hand was mangled, crushed, and broken.

  The pain was secondary now. He still felt it, but only in a distant, detached sort of way. Jerrell wasn’t sure if his fingers were gone completely or still hanging on by the skin, he just knew that he could no longer feel them in any way to indicate that they remained attached.

  Despite all his injuries, he refused to lie down and die. He clutched his mangled hand to his chest and used his unbroken leg to push himself away from his opponent. His back found the wall separating him from the upper platform.

  Hearing a growing snarl, Jerrell jerked his head away as a Rottweiler’s jaws closed on the empty air where his face had just been. He scuttled from the edge of the sunken platform like a crab, fleeing this new threat with all his remaining strength. Luckily, the animal must’ve simply been warning him to get back from the edge because the beast didn’t follow him into the pit.

  His limbs had grown cold. He was no doctor, but that didn’t seem like a good sign.

  Still, if he could just hang on a little longer . . .

  But he wasn’t sure there was any point in continuing to fight. No one was going to suddenly burst in and save him, just in the nick of time. But he refused to give up hope; Jerrell Fuller just wasn’t built that way.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  Emily Morgan laid her cell phone atop the conference room table and resisted the urge to cry. The person on the other end of the call had been the Director, and he had instructed her to “use local resources” to locate and assist the brothers, adding that she was a field agent now and needed to be able to “stand on her own.” He had screamed most of the instructions. Then he had hung up.

  Perhaps she was being overly cautious and worrisome? Marcus and Ackerman had only been out of contact for a matter of hours, and they were certainly capable of taking care of themselves. Still, she was the rookie agent and had been left alone trying to hold together all the threads of a complex investigation. She could call in additional support from the FBI, but that felt like giving up. If Maggie hadn’t abandoned them, she wouldn’t have had to face the case alone.

  She stared at the phone, hoping for an update of any kind from Marcus, a message she feared would never come. The screen lit up with a San Francisco number she didn’t recognize. Emily snatched up the device and said, “Hello?”

  “Agent Morgan, this is Baxter. I’ve been trying to reach your colleagues to no avail. Was beginning to think I had made a bad impression.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid. The other members of my team are out of contact right now, working on the case.”

  “Right, they had that rendezvous with Oban Nassar. Have you heard any word from them? They had any luck?”

  “No, I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Did they go in without backup? That seems a might reckless.”

  “
What can I help you with?”

  “Well, I wanted to let your boss know that I have a name connected to the hand and tattoo on the video. Stefan Granger. Unfortunately, the guy is a ghost. Appears to be a fake identity, and we have no known address on him. But at least now we have a name and a face, and we’re beating the bushes. According to Illustrated Dan, Granger was an undefeated contender in the MMA world, and so he definitely fits the mold for our Gladiator.”

  Emily considered what the Director had told her about utilizing local resources, and then she thought of the display of Baxter Kincaid’s eccentric skills she had witnessed earlier. She said, “Mr. Kincaid—”

  “Call me Baxter or Bax, my dear. Every time someone calls me Mr. Kincaid, I sprout a gray hair and lose a pound of muscle.”

  “Okay . . . Baxter . . . I need your help.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter One Hundred

  Corin Campbell couldn’t decide if her adrenaline levels, increased heart rate, and rapid breathing were lessening or multiplying the effects of the drug. All she knew was that her world had become like a stone skipping over water, ever closer to going under.

  She was a protector; that was the way she was built. She needed to do something. A man was about to lose his life. But her body wouldn’t cooperate.

  Her gaze traveled from screen to screen and then over to Dr. Derrick, who sat in front of the looking glass, a sadistic little smile across his face.

  She had to do something. She forced her arms to move, to grab the rails and propel the wheelchair toward Derrick. Forcing herself forward a few feet felt like climbing Mount Everest. Finally, she bumped into the back of Derrick’s chair, but he merely turned back and winked.

  “This is the best part,” he said.