Gabriel: Only one gets out alive.

by mike Evans

  He walked up to Jacob and looked at the rest of the class, feeling bad about what he needed to do. Clary knew he could lose the entire class if they were not shown who was in charge and who was the alpha here. He waited at the edge of the mat for the two instructors to sit on the bleachers with the rest of the class, where they could lick their wounds. Jacob started to walk in slowly, but Clary held up a finger. “Just one more minute. Let’s let the instructors get situated so they can get some training as well. Seems to me that they have forgotten some of the many things that they’ve learned over the years.”

  Jacob walked to the edge of the mat, making sure he kept plenty of distance between himself and the man that was much shorter than he was, but much stronger. Clary waited patiently until the two had their seats and then turned around cracking his neck and stretching his fingers. He too made fists and came in with a boxer’s approach. Jacob kept walking backwards towards the edge. Unlike Pietras, Clary didn’t underestimate the young man. He kept his chin down and walked at an angle, knowing that the smaller he kept himself, the harder it was to hit him. Jacob waited for him and when he threw the first punch, he slid to the side bringing a leg up for the man’s head. Clary backtracked a step, gripping Jacob’s thigh, lifting him up off the ground, and slamming him with every bit of force that he had down on the mat.

  Jacob tried to roll, but Clary kept him in place with an iron grip around his shoulder. He dealt two mind-numbing punches to Jacob that left him dazed and dizzy. For the briefest moment, Clary looked up to see if he had the class’ respect back and in that millisecond, a knife-hand strike to his throat took away his ability to breathe. Clary gripped his throat as a natural reaction and when he did, Jacob used every bit of muscle in his leg to flip the man off of him, over his head, sending him into the air, and landing on his back. The hit further took air out of him and Clary rolled to his side, seeing nothing but red. He climbed back on the mat. Jacob pushed back up to his feet, staggering backwards and shaking off what was left of his dizziness.

  Clary made a conscious decision that he wouldn’t take his eyes off of the young man again. If he was around, his eyes would be on him. Jacob approached this time, and when he did, Clary left him standing patiently, not sure what to expect from the surprising young man. Jacob lifted a foot, as if to kick low; as he extended his foot, Clary was ready for it. Jacob then surprised him by jumping off his standing foot, spinning in the air, and connecting it to the side of his instructor’s head. Clary tried to back up and give himself a moment, but Jacob was on him, delivering massive knockout punches; one, two, three punches from the young man. Clary could see the lights starting to go dark, but before they did, he ran up, taking more punches and bear hugged Jacob, squeezing him tighter than he had known was possible.

  Clary ran a few steps back with him, making sure he was perfectly in place to finish the kid. He whispered, “You got heart kid. You are going to be fucking great one day.”

  He brought his head back and then snapped it forward into Jacob’s, leaving him dazed as blood poured from a new cut across his forehead. He released the young man and sent a palm strike of his own into Jacob’s chest. Jacob stumbled backwards and was gone; to prove his point to the student and the rest of the class watching, he sent one size-twelve boot into the young man’s groin and then a knee into his face, flattening the less-experienced Jacob out. Jacob watched blurrily as the instructor stood over him while the lights from the barn swayed back and forth. The room spun until he finally blacked out. Pietras and Wesenberg looked at each other, only mildly amused, knowing that if he had taken out Clary, there would be nothing left to try to teach the students. They would think one of their own already knew more than the instructors.

  Clary wiped at blood on his own face and pointed to the student sprawled on the ground. “This is a great lesson to be had. You must keep their hands off you. I don’t care how many of them there are; you make sure you do. Once they get a hand on you, your balance is thrown, your distance of keeping yourself safe is off, and there is little, if anything, that you can do to get away. When multiple assailants are attacking you, you need to be confident in your abilities, but when outmatched, you also need to know when to run. Sometimes running can keep you from looking at things from the flat of your back. Going forward, take in as much as you can learn. We don’t learn on the job here. We don’t try and hope you learn from your mistakes. Once you leave here, you die. You don’t learn to live another day. You will be, in most cases, on your own and if you fuck up, you die. If this sounds harsh, I’m doing my job. There is nothing we can do for you once you leave here; there is no further advice that we can give you and nothing that we can do to save you. If they don’t kill you, then one thing you can be very confident of is the horrible ways they’ll torture you; they will do it in every way possible until they think they have every bit of knowledge extracted from you that they can get.” Clary stared at the young faces with a smile and said, “Everyone still thinking that leaving college at twenty-one was a good idea? If you aren’t nervous now, you're stupid. If you are, then you just might stand a chance.”

  He looked at his two instructors sitting on the bleachers like the rest and yelled, “Is there a reason they are still sitting on bleachers? They look like they are just dying to take a run around the lake!” Pietras got up and glanced at Jacob lying on the mat, “You think he’s up for a run, sir?”

  “No, I think he’s had enough for a bit. I think that he earned a break teaching his instructors a valuable lesson on underestimating a recruit on day one. It was surely a mistake that will never happen again.”

  Both men nodded, stretching their backs out and Pietras bellowed, “Get the fuck up and get out that door before I kick the shit out of every last one of you! Move! Move! Move! Do it now!”

  The class exploded out the door. They took their time running this time, none of them quite sure if they would be running their last run of the day. Pietras ran in front again, showing the recruits what an old man was capable of. He said a little prayer that Jacob was out for this run and that he wouldn’t be someone that he needed to try and best. Wesenberg took the behind position in the run, screaming at the top of his lungs every time someone thought they could for one minute slow down.

  Clary walked over rolling, his shoulders, feeling the match between himself and the much younger man. “You doing all right, August? Do you need to go to the medic or do you think some bunk time would be enough?”

  Jacob pushed himself to sit up, shaking his head. He could feel the warm blood dripping down his face and disappearing into his black shirt. A drop of it hit his eye, making it sting. He pulled his shirt up to wipe at his forehead. “You always this hard on new recruits?”

  Clary smiled and walked up, holding a hand out to pull Jacob up. “To tell you the truth, yes, yes I am. I don’t usually bring it quite so hard on the first day, but no one has ever gotten one over on Pietras and Wesenberg before. Usually they’ll send someone to the infirmary with a broken rib or nose depending on how they feel about the recruit. Good chance that was exactly what they were attempting with you. It kind of looks like you went and fucked up their plans, didn’t you?”

  “So, that’s how you teach recruits? You beat the shit out of them until they are brought into submission?”

  “You hunt, August?”

  “That isn’t what I asked. I said…”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what you asked. I asked do you hunt?”

  Jacob shook his head slowly. Clary said, “Well, I’ve been bird hunting since I was able to walk a hill. Now, if you take out a dog and you don’t teach it respect, you lose its respect for its entire life. Now do you think you can effectively teach something that doesn’t have the utmost respect for you, or at the very least, the fear in what they can and will do for you?”

  Jacob opened his mouth, but it was just what Clary was waiting for. “I know that we might not have your respect. You came out of the night and no one knows anything
about you, other than you are here to learn some seriously scary shit. Now the rest of the class is still watching everything with puppy dog eyes and needed to be gripped by the neck and choked out for a minute. They needed to know who was in charge and that they need to respect those that were leading. I think that happened, while it might be shitty for you, there was no other way. Now get your ass to the bunks and catch some shuteye. If you decide that you need some medical attention, I highly suggest that you go and do it.”

  Jacob stared the man in the face. “If I stay here, you’ll be able to teach me? You’ll be able to make sure I have the skill set that I need to survive and to take out those that don’t deserve to live?”

  Clary nodded his head. “If you’ll listen and learn, we can make you the scariest son of a bitch that the enemy has ever seen.”

  Jacob nodded, turned around slowly, and headed to the bunks where he could relax and heal and come back stronger and more prepared. He had every intention of being more ready than anyone that they’ve ever had in their class before.”

  Chapter 7

  Another Day

  October 1, 2024

  Gabriel sat at a traffic light looking around, checking his rear view, and realized he was being more cautious than need be—if there was such a thing. He had a job to do today: a high-profile gig that would set him up for the rest of the year, even if he were to spend money at a rate that would make a banker cringe. He drove down a desolate street in a part of town that didn’t have much going for it except bank-owned bankruptcy properties and his own small, abandoned warehouse. Back when he had a handler, he had purchased this piece of property for himself under the name of a shell corporation.

  Gabriel hit the remote for his garage door and waited as it slid up. He pulled in, parked quickly, and went to the doorway, where he hit the close button and punched in a security code. He glanced at the squares of C4 fastened to the sides of the walls. The light went green and he turned around, walking backwards as he watched the red lights everywhere turn green again. He thought of the people coming in that didn’t belong here, and that the flashing red lights would be the absolute last thing they ever would see.

  Gabriel got back in the truck and put it in line with his other cars that he kept there. He had a collection of rusty, old work trucks, beater cars, an ambulance, and some vans that had a collection of interchangeable signs he could put on them. He walked to the side of a green van and attached a magnetic sign, which read Lambert Elevator Repair and Sons, Since 1908. He turned the engine over to make sure it was still running topnotch and then turned it off again. His life depended on its reliability. He walked up to the changing room where he kept changes of clothes, depending on the job.

  Gabriel turned on the lights, and they flickered on their yellowish-green tint, filling the room. He went to the locker labeled Elevator Repair and opened the door. Gabriel checked his watch. He still had two hours to spare so he took his time going over his plan. He logged into his computer; there was little time for people to back out, but if he was doing a local job, he always made a habit of checking. His fastidiousness cost him nothing and could very well save his life one day.

  The laptop, which was as secure as any computer could be, fired up and came to life. Gabriel waited patiently for the password code box to display itself. When it presented the space to type in the words, he typed in his sister’s first name, her middle initial, and the date of her and his parents’ funeral. He knew that he would never ever forget something as dear to him as that day. He tapped in the keys carefully and punched the enter key.

  He sat back while it loaded, bringing up the yellow biohazard symbol. It cast a yellow glow across his crisp, white shirt and turned his face an unhealthy-looking shade of lime. He brought up the website that managed the transactions and jobs. He went to the day’s date and typed in more commands. He verified on the page that there were no cancellations; there was only a short two-word message typed in green, saying good luck. He shut it down and put it back in his briefcase.

  Gabriel thought over everything; he was ready and didn’t have any reservations to worry about. His research on the mark was solid, and there could be no better intel because he had done it himself, as he always did. He thought about the drive ahead of him; he was going to have to drive slow or risk getting there much too early. He refused to stay in the silent warehouse for a long period of time, though. If he did, the quiet would win and eventually he would begin to think. He would think until the demons and ghosts made their way into his head. He knew that getting them back out again was not a task to be done lightly.

  He stood from the bench, unbuttoning his white dress shirt one button at a time. He laid the clothes neatly in a burn bin next to the lockers and then carried it over to a ventilation shaft. He doused it with a generous amount of gasoline, not wanting to leave anything behind. He was unworried about the SUV because he’d wiped it out clean before coming to the warehouse, as he did every time he had a job near home. The truck would be traced back to no one. The VIN on it was lost long ago in the motor vehicle registration. He knew that he was being overly cautious, that the chances of someone coming in and diffusing all of the bombs before they went off would be near impossible. If they were able to keep this from happening, that meant there were many people there. They only way they would be able to accomplish such a feat would be to move with military precision and speed. He knew that there was an even smaller chance that they would be able to find the ones that weren’t out in the open. This number, of course, outnumbered the ones that were visible.

  He pulled out a pack of matches and set the clothes ablaze, letting them burn as he watched the flames dance into the shaft until there was nothing but a smoldering pile of ashes. Gabriel pulled a pair of dirty blue overalls out of the classic tan lockers. The overalls smelled like he’d done the job every day for twenty years and that he’d worn this same pair, unwashed, the entire time while chain smoking. He brushed some of the overalls’ grease on his face and forehead and messed up his hair a little before putting on a cap that covered up his short-cropped hair.

  He opened a trunk and looked at a small personal armory. This was what kept him alive in times of danger. He pulled out a harness and slid it on, tightening its leather straps over his shirt. He put silenced pistols into the leather holsters, clicking them tight. He hid knives everywhere that he was able to; people who underestimated the weapons usually ended up dead. He attached magazines across his body and on the harness as well. He prayed that there would be no reason to try and use this many, knowing that if he did, something would have gone horribly wrong.

  Gabriel went to the van, taking a quick walk to check that everything looked in place and then double-checked the sign. He slid his elevator repair toolbox into the vehicle and got behind the wheel. Gabriel headed across town, taking his time and making sure to obey the traffic laws. He thought of the insane price he had placed on the kill and realized they truly wanted this man dead if they were this serious about paying his fees. He typically wasn’t about to do anything so radical when it came to a fee, but the day after he had begun his client’s contract he saw that the man had been taken in by the FBI.

  He had sent the client his price already, but sent a new figure when he had realized the probability that he was going to have to do something with a federal building. He didn’t like changing a contract once a price had been negotiated. He, however, was not stupid to what would happen to himself if he was caught while trying to do the job. Assassins were not the most popular people in the world. He knew from experience what they would do to a hitter if he were caught. He’d found it a little strange that when he had told the client that he was going to have to raise the price they accepted immediately. Gabriel actually contemplated that maybe he should have asked for more. It seemed the second he sent the request to up the price and ask if they wanted to continue with the job, the client had already been typing the words “yes” in response.

  Gabriel checked
his GPS and saw he was only two blocks away when he stopped on a side street. He did a final check in the mirror, looking at the ensemble and trying out a thick Russian accent for good measure. When he quit staring at himself in the mirror, he looked out the van’s cracked front window. He craned his neck at the hotel, which was tall enough that it looked like it could disappear into the blue sky.

  He usually wouldn’t put himself in these types of situations, but he was aware that was what gave him the ability to charge such insane prices. Anyone can kill for a living, but the difference between a guy that makes five grand for killing a cheating husband and a guy that can take a half-mile shot between two buildings, comes down to one thing: skills. Gabriel had them and he was marketing them brilliantly. He knew how this would go down. He would sneak into the hotel and make his hit on a federally protected witness.

  Gabriel knew when he read the fact sheet about the man that there was one sure thing—that was going to be the end of him. Gabriel knew just looking at pictures of the man on the internet that he was a long-time smoker and he would be in need of one eventually; without a doubt, the itch for nicotine would get under the man’s skin. So, Gabriel watched the building long enough to discover the time and the spot they took those that couldn’t keep the habit at bay. It worked out perfectly with the hotel because it was going to be when it was at its quietest. The previous day’s guests would be gone by now and the new ones would not yet be ready to check in, leaving the floors filled with people. They would not care why a repairman was there or what he was doing.

  Gabriel put the van back in drive, closing the distance and took it around to the back where the workers and vendors parked. He knew that a member of the staff would have a heart attack if he tried to go through the front door of the building.