Twelve

by Dustin Stevens

  “We came across this by accident,” Stone said. “One of my men dropped his flashlight onto the metal lid.”

  “Gives a distinct sound,” Nixon said.

  “Yes, sir. We pulled the rug back and went down in.”

  “So what is it?” Nixon asked.

  “It’s a holding shelter, rigged with a self-destruct.”

  “So the smoke means it self-destructed," Manus asked.

  Stone motioned for them to follow and led them down a stainless steel staircase. They descended into a large chamber that ran the length of the building. A bank of computers lined one side and a series of desks and chairs dotted the other.

  Three-quarters of the room was charred black.

  Stone threw a hand around the room. “Almost. It was designed to send four simultaneous fire charges through the room, creating instant incineration. My men were able to block one of them.”

  Manus’s eyes swept the room. “Are they alright?”

  Stone gave a non-committal shake of his head. “They’ll live.”

  The three stood in silence for a moment.

  “Jesus,” Nixon muttered.

  Manus reached for his hip and brought his cell-phone up to his lips. “Briggs, we’re in the basement. Follow the smoke. Get your ass down here and find me an address.”

  Sixty-Three

  The heavy stone of the third floor was cool to the touch, drawing most of the moisture out of the air. A draft flowed through the open hallway.

  It didn’t matter.

  Beads of sweat formed across Boucher’s brow and ran down into his beard. Perspiration soaked through the back of his sleeveless grey Henley.

  Every few seconds he raised his hands to his face to wipe away handfuls of it. He flung it at the floor, leaving scattered wet circles across the stone.

  With each wipe of sweat, his anger grew.

  His hands balled into fists and hung several inches from his side as he lumbered along. He purposely stamped the soles of his heavy boots against the stone floor, the sound echoing through the hall.

  An open challenge to anybody within hearing distance.

  In his frustration and clamoring about, he didn’t hear the silent bare feet creep behind him. One second he was plodding along like a lumberjack through the woods. The next, two hands were on his back shoving him forward.

  Not a violent shove, more of a warning.

  Or a mistake.

  Boucher stopped his momentum moving forward on the second step and spun around.

  Standing across from him was Jun Xu.

  Boucher paused for a moment and took in his opponent, from his black martial arts pants to his dark gray long sleeve t-shirt and bare feet.

  A smile grew from beneath his immense red beard. “You’re not too smart are you boy?”

  Xu tilted his head a quarter turn, but said nothing.

  “You had the chance to get the jump on me but didn’t take it. Why?”

  Xu twisted his neck to the side. “No honor,” he replied in short, clipped words.

  Boucher smirked, then began to chuckle. The chuckle continued until it rolled up through his barrel chest into a heavy laugh. “You showed up here for a prize fight, and you’re worried about honor?”

  “I fight for money. To help my family. Great honor.”

  “Yeah, well I fight for my family.” He hooked a thumb at his chest. “Me. Great honor in that too.”

  The smile on Boucher’s face slid away and his hands balled into fists. He swung his thick arms by his side and stepped forward.

  Xu turned his body sideways, positioning his left foot out in front of his right. He curled his hands into fists and held them at the ready in front of him.

  Boucher made the first move, closing the ground between them in long strides and swinging three hard looping punches. Xu ducked the first two and rolled through the third. He sprung to his feet out of the roll and shot a hard kick into Boucher’s ribs. Boucher hunched down just a bit at the impact and Xu snapped a snap kick straight up under Boucher’s chin.

  Xu danced back a few feet, bending each of his legs at the knee to limber up.

  Boucher stood to full height and rubbed his chin with his massive paw. He flexed it back and forth a few times. “Another mistake.”

  Xu said nothing.

  This time, Boucher was a little slower in his attack. He feigned a hard charge and pulled back. He threw a quick hook, waited for Xu to dodge it, threw a nasty overhand left.

  The blow just caught the tip of Xu’s nose. Blood cascaded onto the floor and the front of his shirt.

  Boucher took a step forward, smiling.

  Xu ran his shirt sleeve across the front of his face, the grey cloth turning dark crimson, and resumed his fighting stance.

  This time, he took the initiative. He slid in with three quick steps and fired two hard jabs straight into Boucher’s midsection. Above him, Boucher laughed and brought a violent double-handed blow down on the middle of his back.

  The blow dropped Xu to the floor. He rolled forward and up onto his feet and shot a quick snap kick into the side of Boucher’s knee.

  The knee folded in under the weight of the big man. As soon as it hit the floor, Xu shot a kick across the bridge of his nose.

  Tendrils of blood raced down from either nostril, disappearing into the thick beard.

  Xu stepped back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  Boucher remained on one knee. He pressed hard on either nostril and blew his nose, sending bloody spray onto the ground beneath him. “Now, I hurt you.”

  He put one hand down to push himself up and as he did, Xu ran forward and took two quick steps up the side of the wall. Using his increased height, he twisted in the air and aimed a punch at Boucher’s face.

  It never landed.

  Two massive hands caught Xu in mid-air. One grabbed him under the arm pit and another by the groin.

  Boucher rotated Xu in the air and dropped him across his knee. The sound of ribs breaking rang out in the hallway.

  Boucher raised Xu high into the air and brought him down hard again across his knee. More ribs breaking could be heard throughout the hall.

  Retaining his grip, Boucher spun hard and whipped Xu’s body against the stone wall behind him. A bright red spot appeared from Xu’s forehead. His limp body collapsed to the ground in a heap.

  Boucher stood breathing heavy for several seconds, then dabbed at the blood running from his nostrils. The sight of it infuriated him again and he stepped forward and smashed his foot into Xu’s ribs.

  The blow folded Xu in half, turning his head upwards. Lifeless eyes stared straight ahead.

  Boucher stared down at him for several seconds. “I told you you made a mistake.”

  He looked wild-eyed around the room for the nearest camera and stared into it. He raised his arms out by his sides and threw his head back towards the ceiling.

  “I am The Butcher! The Butcher!”

  Sixty-Four

  For the first time, applause broke out around the banquet hall. Men clamped their cigars between their teeth and ladies set down their drinks as they enthusiastically pounded their hands together.

  While Boucher looked into the camera and screamed out a muted gesture, a few even stood. Several cheers went up around the room.

  Winston pointed at the wager counter before them. “That’s what we like to see.”

  As he spoke, the number grew by over five million dollars in one refresh period.

  “Xu put up more of a fight than anticipated," Rosner said. "That helped a lot.”

  “That he did. People like to see how someone responds to being bloodied.”

  “People like seeing power so raw it can kill unintentionally even more.”

  Winston set his jaw and resisted the urge to go after Rosner, the condescending prick.

  Winston would love nothing more than to part ways after tonight and never deal with him again. The reality was though, the same connections that had brought him on
in the first place would keep him on.

  The phone on Winston’s hip began to vibrate. He pulled it out and stared at the screen. “It’s Chester. He says it’s urgent.”

  “Isn’t everything urgent to him?”

  Winston hated the man, but he had a point. Still, he couldn’t afford to take the chance that what Chester had wasn’t legit. He snapped the phone open and told Chester to come in. He then rose and headed for the podium.

  Pressing a series of buttons, he replaced the third floor hallway with the grid showing all of the fighters to the room. A new X appeared in the middle of the screen and moved to settle in over Xu. As it did, cheers went up around the room again.

  Winston pulled the schematic of the grounds to the main screen and scanned over it. A large smile grew across his face. “This should be quite entertaining!”

  He brought a new video feed up to the main screen, drawing a few loud male chuckles. He smiled again, nodded his agreement, and retreated from the podium.

  Chester was waiting at the table for him. Gone was the usual tangle of papers. Instead, he had a laptop.

  “We’ve had a breach,” Chester said by way of greeting.

  “Here?” Winston asked.

  “No.”

  “I told you he had a tendency to overdramatize,” Rosner retorted.

  Winston ignored the comment. “So where?”

  “At the office. Here, take a look.”

  Chester slid the laptop over in front of him. Across it were several images of men in black storming the office headquarters. Chester pressed a button and several more of them appeared searching the building.

  “Where were our guards?” Winston asked.

  “They appear to have been subdued, sir.”

  Winston bit back a retort and stared at the images. “Who are they?”

  “We don’t know yet. The fail safe was tripped a few minutes ago. These images just came in.”

  Winston’s eyes slid upward. “So they found it.”

  Chester leaned in and pressed another button. Images of fuzzy grey filled the screen. “As you can see by the smoke here, the incinerator was triggered.”

  Winston ran his hands over his face. “Thank God for that.”

  “I highly doubt God had anything to do with it,” Rosner quipped.

  Winston again ignored him. “Is there any way they can track us here?”

  Chester shook his head. “Assuming the incinerator worked, no.”

  “Which it appears to have done.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Winston sighed and leaned back. “Alright. Alert the men on the perimeter to be on guard for anything suspicious. Shoot first, ask questions later. All that crap.

  "Let’s just get through the night and we’ll deal with these guys later.”

  “Yes sir,” Chester said. He closed the laptop and retreated from the table.

  Rosner removed his glasses from his face and began polishing the lenses. “Do you think that the office being raided on this night is a coincidence?”

  Winston stared down at the table in front of him. “No. Not one bit.”

  “Good.”

  “But what can we do tonight? Take on the FBI?”

  “Are you sure that’s who it is?”

  “Who else would it be? We find one of their agents posing as a fighter and six hours later our office is tossed. You see that one picture? They held a search warrant up for the camera to see. Who else has that kind of pull?”

  Rosner waved a hand at the crowd. “Most of the people in this room.”

  Winston scanned the room, taking in the people seated around him. “So this could be another test.”

  “Could be.”

  Winston leaned back in his chair. “Shit.”

  Sixty-Five

  The Marine’s name was Robert Austin. He was ambitious and forthright, fast rising through the ranks. At just 25, he was already a lieutenant. By far the youngest of the men on the detail.

  The Marines had split into pairs, operating on the buddy system. Two stood guard at the door. Stone and McMichaels searched the second floor.

  Austin and Tyler worked the first.

  The first half dozen rooms they searched were empty. The seventh appeared to be until Tyler dropped his flashlight.

  The sound of metal hitting metal alerted them both that something was wrong.

  Austin pulled back the industrial rug over the trap door while Tyler covered him. Using the handle at his feet, Tyler hefted the door back on its hinges and Austin went down.

  There was no cord or infrared sensor on the stairs. The self-destruct was triggered the moment the door was pulled open. Austin made it halfway down the stairs when the fire charges ignited. The two across the room went up in seconds. The one behind him as well.

  The only one he had a chance at was the southeast corner of the room, right in front of him.

  The charges came down from the ceiling on copper rails. The rails fed into an incineration tray that ran the perimeter of the room just below desk level.

  The rails were in place to allow ten seconds for anybody inside to get out before the place blew. This time, it allowed for someone to keep the place from going up.

  Austin was on the fourth stair when he saw the final charge in front of him. It was halfway down the wall and crawling fast when he leapt forward from the stairwell.

  Using the flat palm of his hand, he managed to smother the charge just inches before it reached the incineration tray. In one motion he rolled across the hardwood counter and curled himself into a ball beneath the desk.

  The fire burned in one intense blast that singed most of the hair from his body. After that, it was just a few brief seconds before Tyler and the others extricated him.

  Now ten minutes later, Austin sat perched on the edge of a charred table as Briggs and Heller dug through the two remaining computers in the room.

  The heat of the charge had seared the skin from his palm.

  The back of his hand looked normal. The underside was a fused mash of blood, bone and muscle tissue.

  “That was quite an impressive thing you did,” Manus said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Seriously, we’re appreciative.”

  “I saw what they did to your man back there. He used to be one of ours.”

  Manus nodded and looked down at the remains of his hand. “We have a team of the finest plastic surgeons in the world at the Bureau. They’ve been known to do all kinds of disguises for people. I’m sure we can get your hand back to good as new.”

  Austin rotated his hands and attempted to flex his fingers. They barely moved. “I’ll be alright sir.”

  Manus nodded again and turned his gaze to Briggs and Heller. “Tell me you’ve got something here.”

  Briggs pecked away at the keys. He said nothing.

  “Tell me you’ve got something here.”

  “Thirty seconds, sir,” Briggs said. He lowered his face down over a screen until his nose was just inches away from it. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “No, I’m not seeing a damn thing!” Manus said.

  “Sorry, sir. Not you. Heller?” Briggs said.

  “It seems to have begun about six months ago and gotten steadier," Heller responded.

  “You have ten seconds remaining,” Manus announced.

  “That’s got to be something, right?” Briggs asked.

  “Five!” Manus said.

  “It’s all I see,” Heller said.

  “Alright! What the hell is going on here?”

  Briggs pushed himself back and pointed to the screen. A delivery log of white letters on black background was pulled up. “This is a log of every delivery made under Mjollnir Industries. Not just the neat and tidy ones from upstairs either.”

  Manus leaned down and scanned the screen, but said nothing.

  “If you read through it," Briggs said, "it looks like nothing. If you arrange it by address though, a pattern emerges.”

  B
riggs made a few keystrokes and the data rearranged itself into groups by address. One in particular had over thirty deliveries.

  “That’s a shitload of deliveries,” Manus muttered.

  “And look at the stuff going out there,” Briggs said. “Concrete. Lumber. Scrap metal.”

  “Construction supplies.”

  “Yes, sir. Enough to build a fortress.”

  Manus entered the address into his phone and pressed redial. Brenda’s voice came up a moment later. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m sending you an address right now. What have you got on it?”

  For a few moments, only the sound of keystrokes punctuated the silence. “This address is a private residence in Forest Grove. County records show it is owned by an Edda Prose.”

  “What have you got on her?”

  More clacking of computer keys.

  “Sir, I have nothing. Nobody by that name is in our database.”

  “At all?”

  “Nothing. I am sorry, sir.”

  “Shit,” Manus muttered as Nixon, Briggs and Heller looked on.

  “Try Google instead,” Austin said aloud.

  Several gazes turned to focus on him.

  “What?” Manus said.

  “The name of this place is Mjollnir Industries, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a play on words. If I’m remembering my Mythology in Pop Culture class right, the Prose Edda is where Thor’s Hammer originated.”

  “He’s right,” Brenda said over the speaker phone. “The Prose Edda was written around 1220 detailing Norse Mythology. One of the sections discussed was Thor and his hammer, Mjollnir.”

  “Thank you Brenda,” Manus said and signed off. He turned to Austin. “A soldier and a scholar. Good work Marine.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  “Can you ride?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Manus made a circle motion with his hand around the room. “Everybody upstairs. We’re going to Forest Grove.”

  Sixty-Six

  “You alright?” Heath asked, throwing a glance over Kelly’s head to Will.