Takedown

by L. T. Ryan

  Davis walked back to the front of the group. “We’ve got two foreign exchange students with us here today. But just because they’re new doesn’t mean we need to coddle them. They come highly recommended by the Director. Today, they’re one of ours. They’ll watch our backs and we’ll watch theirs. Is that understood?”

  Everyone on the team answered in the affirmative. Bear felt that swell of community that always came with being part of a team. It’d been a while for him, but he never forgot how good it felt to know your brothers and sisters had your back.

  “Then let’s move out,” Davis said.

  The twelve men and women put one foot in front of the other without hesitation. Bear and Sadie exchanged a look and a nod, and that encapsulated everything that needed to be said. If one of them went down, at least they knew everything was out in the air between them.

  The entrance to the abandoned tunnel started as an offshoot from a working train station, which meant quite a few civilians got the scare of a lifetime when two teams of armed agents descended the staircase and made their way along the platform as one cohesive unit. Most people scattered, choosing to leave the station altogether rather than risk sticking around for the show.

  Winters had called ahead and gotten the trains to stop running for a short amount of time. It wasn’t public knowledge, so the platform was still flooded, but it mostly cleared out by the time the team was jumping down onto the tracks and making their way deeper into the tunnel.

  Bear kept his ears open for anything that didn’t sound like it belonged. Despite the fact that they were all walking as softly as they could in their boots, their footsteps echoed off the tunnel walls. As much as he wanted the neo jihadists and their captives to be home so they could put an end to this entire situation, Bear was afraid they’d hear them coming and the missing agents would pay the price.

  Despite the fact that he knew the tracks were momentarily shut down, Bear couldn’t help keeping his ears particularly tuned to the sound of the trains moving back and forth on the tracks. There was little room on either side of the tunnel to press yourself against the wall if something went wrong. And he wasn’t exactly the smallest member of the group.

  Luckily, the first door on their right was the golden ticket. Davis pulled it open while two of his guys walked in, their guns raised and steady. They cleared the room and called out quietly that it was safe for them to move forward. Bear and Sadie double-checked the tunnel behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed, and then allowed the door to shut silently behind them.

  Inside, the group formed a single line and wound their way through a narrow back tunnel. Winters had told them this was the only way in and out of the abandoned tunnel. Years of graffiti and empty bottles told Bear that bored teenagers had discovered the area and probably used it as a party spot. Until the new neighbors moved in.

  The group was met with another door, which was treated exactly the same as the last one. Davis opened it, two agents went through first, quietly called out the all clear, and the rest of the team funneled through the narrow opening.

  The tunnel here was somehow even darker than the last one. Although all of them had lights attached to their weapons, the darkness seemed to suck the brightness away. Bear could hardly see five feet in front of him. He was surrounded by dripping water and rustling rats and a strange stale wind. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  Were they surrounded or was he just being paranoid?

  Bear shook off the feeling and watched Davis signal the team to split off against opposite sides of the tunnel. They pushed forward, as silent as the crunch of gravel and debris would allow them to be. Bear was sweating despite the breeze on his skin. Claustrophobia started to creep in despite the tall ceiling and the fact that the tunnel felt like it went on forever.

  It was the darkness, pressing down on him like the hand of a giant.

  The sound of voices floated toward them on the strange wind. Davis froze and the rest of the team followed, everyone gripping their weapons a little tighter. Bear could feel everyone’s focus zero in on the blackness ahead of them. There was a soft glow to it, like there were lanterns lit in the distance.

  When Davis was satisfied the voices weren’t getting any closer, he motioned for the team to move forward. With short, quick steps, Bear stayed close to the woman in front of him, only looking behind him every few feet just to make sure there weren’t going to be any surprises.

  But sometimes you can’t cheat fate.

  A voice called out in Arabic. Bear recognized the warning, but it didn’t matter. Within a matter of seconds all hell broke loose.

  31

  The scout must’ve been sitting stock-still in the darkness because no one saw him until he jumped up and ran off to the side, disappearing behind a row of concrete barriers and some rippling plastic. The sound triggered something in the back of Bear’s mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  The team moved forward as one unit under Davis’ direction, their footsteps in perfect unison. They were like a single creature with a dozen heads all on a swivel, weapons following the movements like many disjointed eyes. Bear briefly wondered if they looked like a demon coming to collect souls.

  But the thought disappeared as soon as the first flash bang grenade was thrown. They didn’t know how many people were in the other room, or how many of them were armed, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

  Davis called them forward as soon as the grenade went off. With everyone geared up from head to toe, the chance of a fatal shot was at a minimum, but the risk was still there. Bear and Sadie stayed on the other side of the barrier. Better to let the well-oiled machine clear out the room. He and Sadie could get the stragglers.

  It was hard to see what was going on even ten feet in front of him. The flash bang grenade had caused the room to fill with smoke. That mixed with the soft yellow glow that had been barely fighting back the darkness meant visibility was at a minimum. The anti-terrorist unit was trained to clear a room like this, but it still seemed like a Herculean task. One wrong move and you could get turned around. And that meant you might shoot a team member instead of the enemy.

  Grunts and screams filled the air, simultaneously full of fear and anger. The pop, pop, pop of the gunfire was mostly coming from the unit’s side of the battle, but Bear could make out the volley of bullets. The men inside the room had been armed, but they hadn’t been prepared for the onslaught they were being met with.

  “Bear!”

  Sadie’s voice brought Bear out of his introspection about the battle in front of him. His head snapped in her direction, only to see her pointing her weapon directly at him. Instinct took over and he launched himself forward, down on his stomach, eating gravel, his beard saving him from scraping the skin from his chin.

  A double pop, pop followed as soon as he was flat. Bear heard a grunt and a thud from behind him and twisted to see the body of a young man lying on the ground, an assault rifle in one hand. Blood was already forming a pool underneath him.

  Bear turned back to Sadie. “Thanks.”

  “Any time,” she said, but there was no lightness to her voice. It had been a close call.

  “All clear,” Davis called out. Then, presumably turning to a couple members of his team, “Pair up. Make sure the tunnel stays clear. We don’t want any more surprises.”

  Bear and Sadie got to their feet and walked into the next room, their fingers flirting with trigger guards and their H&Ks pointed to the ground but still at the ready. Just because a room had been cleared didn’t mean they were out of the woods yet. Anything could go wrong at any time.

  It was a rough way to live your life, but it’s what had kept Bear alive all this time.

  “Define all clear,” Bear said, spotting a pile of C-4 in the center of the room.

  A woman from their team was kneeling at the base of the explosives. She looked up at Bear with green eyes so bright they shone through the darknes
s. “I wouldn’t light a match or anything, but none of this is hooked up to any sort of timer or remote device. We’re safe for now, but we need to move this out as soon as we can.”

  Bear nodded in understanding and looked around the room for the first time. It was long and narrow, lit by small construction lights that must’ve been abandoned along with the tunnel. The jihadists had white cloth over them to dull the brightness.

  Aside from the pile of explosives, there was little else in the room. A chair here and there. A couple of blankets, like they had been living down here. A couple of cans of food, some opened some still sealed shut.

  “They were holed up here for a while,” Bear said, turning to Sadie. “They probably sent one or two guys up to the surface to get food every few days. Coming in and out of the tunnel would’ve been a risk. Someone was bound to spot them eventually.”

  “Yeah,” Sadie said, but her voice was far away.

  Bear followed her gaze and landed on a face he was surprised he recognized. It was Samson. He was on the ground, arms and legs splayed out to the side. A spray of bullets littered his body and a trickle of blood was still flowing from the corner of his mouth.

  Bear didn’t know what to say. Sadie hadn’t been close with any of the agents, but they were still her men. They had been in London on her orders. And now at least two of them were dead. Whether or not they were your friends didn’t matter. You take that kind of violence personally.

  He’d noticed the corpses but had kept his eyes trained on what had been there before the showdown. Now he couldn’t look past the men who had lost their lives today.

  The first one he noticed was one of their own. He was the only one who fell during the confrontation, but there was a hush hovering over the entire team. One person dead was still one too many.

  Bear didn’t feel pity for the other men, the neo jihadists who had brought this upon themselves. But he didn’t revel in the violence either. He wasn’t like Miller, who enjoyed the thrill and the power that came with surviving when your enemy didn’t.

  As Bear looked around the room, he couldn’t help but notice how young they all looked. They had to have been in their early 20s. Most were clean-shaven. Baby faces. Their lives couldn’t have been easy to have led them here, but in death, they seemed so innocent. Like they couldn’t have possibly wanted to plant a bomb in London’s Underground in the hopes of destroying so many lives.

  Bear didn’t feel pity, but he did feel remorse. He had enlisted to help people. Everything he had chosen since leaving the Marines had been to help people. Sure, it was exciting and extravagant and sometimes even profitable, but at the end of the day it was about putting more good into the world than was being taken out of it.

  And sometimes, like today, he wondered if he was really doing that.

  Shouts from the other end of the room caught Bear’s attention. He and Sadie moved in unison toward the group of agents who had gathered in a semicircle around something near the far wall. When the two of them got closer, Bear needed a few seconds to really understand what he was looking at.

  It was Fredericks, bruised and bleeding but very much alive.

  32

  Bear could see the gamut of emotions running across Sadie’s face. Surprise. Relief. Confusion. Betrayal. Anger. It was replaced by a mask of indifference and professionalism. This man was a traitor, but he was still, at least for right now, a member of the CIA. And they needed to know his side of the story.

  Sadie pushed her way to the front of the group and Bear followed in her wake.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  A young agent was kneeling beside him, a medical bag open at Frederick’s feet. “He’s pretty beat up. They did a number on him over the last week or so. Hasn’t eaten in a while. Couple fractured ribs. Several knife wounds to his upper thighs. A bullet wound in his right shoulder. Nothing fatal.”

  “Is he in any immediate danger?” Sadie asked.

  “Nah,” the medic replied. “I stopped the bleeding. He’ll be fine to move. Once he gets to the hospital, we’ll clean him up, get some meds in him, and he should be good to go.”

  “I need to talk to him,” Sadie said. She never took her eyes off Fredericks. “Alone.”

  The medic looked up at Davis, who nodded. “Move out, ladies and gents. Give them some space.”

  As the crowd dispersed, Bear stood awkwardly to the side. Sadie shot him a look.

  “If you need a minute,” he started.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Sadie said. “Besides, I need someone to keep me from killing this asshole myself.”

  Bear laughed. Sadie hadn’t bothered to keep her voice low. Fredericks clenched his jaw but Bear could tell there wasn’t anger there. Shame, maybe. He knew he had fucked up.

  “Who’re you?” Fredericks asked, looking at Bear.

  “One of the people who’s been trying to save your sorry ass,” Bear said.

  Fredericks finally turned to Sadie. “I’m sorry—”

  She held up a hand. “I don’t want apologies. This is it for you. It’s over. You’re out. The only thing you can do now is tell us exactly what happened and why. Maybe you’ll walk away from this without the word traitor attached to your name, but I honestly doubt it.”

  Fredericks swallowed audibly. “It was never supposed to go like this.”

  Sadie squatted down in front of him. That mask of indifference was still on her face, but Bear could see the anger and the pain just beneath the surface. “You mean you were never supposed to get caught.”

  Fredericks shook his head, then clutched his ribs. “It was never supposed to go this far. We were supposed to get paid and then take out the terrorists, no harm, no foul.”

  “That was a pretty big risk,” Bear said. “You had no idea it wasn’t going to blow up in your face. Literally.”

  “We had plans in place,” Fredericks said. “Backups. Guarantees. But that all went to shit when they got wind of the double deal. They grabbed us, brought us down here where they tortured us. They killed Sheehan pretty much right away. Then they took a video of me and Samson. I’m gonna assume you saw that one already.”

  Bear looked around, taking in the plastic and the lights and the walls for what felt like the first time. This was where they’d shot the video Winters had shown them. The rustling was because of the plastic. The echo was because of the tunnel.

  Bear briefly wondered if Samson and the other fallen agent would still be alive had he been able to put two and two together sooner.

  “None of that lets you off the hook,” Sadie said.

  “I’m not trying to get off the hook,” Fredericks said. “I know what I did. But you gotta believe me. I didn’t want to do this.”

  Bear looked down at him. “That’s not what we heard. Story goes that you’re a greedy little bastard. Decided to be an entrepreneur. You wanted to make a nice comfy living off of cons like this.”

  Fredericks laughed, then clutched his side in pain. “Who told you that? It was probably Miller, wasn’t it? That guy isn’t right. Don’t trust anything he tells you. He’s smarter than he looks.”

  “So are you,” Bear said. “So why should we trust you?”

  “I’ve got proof,” Fredericks said. “Back in the apartment. I can prove this wasn’t my idea.”

  Bear was about to tell him his proof had gone up in smoke, but Sadie cut him off. “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but you’re gonna have to give me something to go off of.”

  “There’s a man named Thorne. CIA. One of the best. He’s got a way of convincing people to do his dirty work. He doesn’t like being told no.”

  Bear and Sadie exchanged a look.

  “You know who he is, don’t you?” Fredericks asked. He sighed and shifted and groaned until he got comfortable again. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “What did Thorne have on you?”

  Fredericks took a moment to find his words. “I’ll admit I’m not the best guy. And yeah, I
can be a little greedy at times. Who doesn’t want more money? To live more comfortably? We get sent to shitholes where we’re expected to sleep in the mud or the snow or the desert. When I come home, I want the best of the best.”

  “So, you found a way to take a little off the top,” Bear said.

  Fredericks nodded. “It wasn’t a lot. I made sure I never took anything that mattered. Not drugs or weapons or anything like that. Just stuff here and there that wouldn’t be missed. Adjusted some numbers. Found a way to cut corners. Brought a few people in on the scheme. Trusted the wrong person.”

  “Who?” Sadie asked.

  “Miller.” Fredericks looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. “Should’ve known better.”

  “So you knew him before now?” Bear asked. “That’s not the story he told us.”

  “He’s a habitual liar. If you believe one thing I say today, it’s that.” Fredericks took a deep breath that appeared to be pretty painful. “He was a loose cannon back then. Still is, as a matter of fact. But I also knew he’d keep his mouth shut. At least to our CO.”

  “But?” Sadie pressed.

  “But then he said something to Thorne. Didn’t know who he was back then. Some spook who wanted to expand my operation. I got scared. Said no. Went cold turkey right then and there.”

  “You stopped skimming off the top?” Bear asked.

  “Cold turkey,” Fredericks repeated. “I didn’t want any trouble. I wasn’t looking to become some billionaire hotshot. I just wanted a nice house. A nice car. A couple luxuries. I liked traveling the world, meeting new people. Helping them. I didn’t want out of that. What Thorne offered didn’t interest me.”

  “I bet he took that nicely,” Bear said.

  “At the time? Yeah. He just said okay and moved on. I shut up shop and that was that. Miller tried to nudge me a couple times after that, but I just told him I’d gotten everything I’d needed. He got kicked out soon after that. I thought I was done with the whole thing.”