Northern Sun: Book Four in The Mad Mick Series

by Franklin Horton

  Shani, though, knew exactly what to do to take control of this fight. She moved her right knee from the outside of his thigh to between them. Sensing her intention, Omar tried desperately to press his legs together but it was too late.

  His eyes widened at the uncomfortable pressure of her leg on his groin. It was nothing compared to what was about to come. She straightened her leg, then contracted it hard, throwing all her force into a powerful knee strike to the groin.

  The blow drove the breath from Omar’s lungs and his face went red. Shani repositioned her hands, hooking a palm under each side of Omar’s jaw, her bound wrists resting across his windpipe. He raised his hands to hers, trying desperately to peel her fingers from his throat. While he struggled with her powerful grip, she drove another crushing blow with her knee. Then another.

  His grip loosened. His face was beet red, his eyes watering. She pushed up from him, raising her entire body off the floor. He wasn’t getting a thigh or a glancing blow this time. He was getting pure knee. She drove with all her force, every muscle in her core swinging her knee like a sledgehammer. It impacted his groin and she was certain she detected a pop, something giving beneath her blow.

  Omar screamed and quit tearing at her hands. He tried to get his hands down his own body, needing to cradle his injured parts more than he needed to breathe. Veins bulged from his neck and forehead. He continued to suck air but none came out, his lungs frozen by the pain.

  Shani raised her upper body until she was sitting astride him. Raising her taped hands high above her head, she splayed her wrists apart, and slammed them down across Omar’s face with all her might. The duct tape split, freeing her hands at the same time the blow broke Omar’s nose.

  Although he was not fighting back any longer, Shani couldn’t quit until she had control of the gun. She located it around Omar’s knee, got a hand on it, and launched herself free of him. Her weight suddenly gone from him, Omar’s body contracted in pain. Both hands shot to his groin and he writhed in agony. His body heaved and a deep croak erupted from his stomach as he began to dump the contents of his stomach onto the floor.

  Shani leveled the gun on him, curled her finger around the trigger, and froze. She couldn’t kill him yet. He might know something important. Despite her hatred, she needed to interrogate him more than she needed to kill him.

  “It’s your lucky day, Omar.” Then, as she remembered the feeling of his testicles rupturing beneath her knee, added, “Well, maybe not.”

  She got to her feet and quickly checked the handgun. There was a round in the chamber and the mag had thirteen more. She slapped the mag back home, then covered her mouth, choking on the smoke. They needed to get out of here. She could hear shouting and the occasional burst of more suppressed fire. She dropped back to her knees, where the air at that level was a little more breathable.

  “We’re getting out of here,” she told Omar. “Give me any trouble and I’ll hurt you even worse. Now crawl.”

  When Omar didn’t respond to her orders, she drew back a fist and aimed at his groin. Omar flinched and screamed.

  “Go!” she repeated.

  He dragged a sleeve across his filthy mouth, then got to his knees and began crawling. As she followed him, she could see fresh blood seeping through the back of his pants.

  Damn, she’d done a number on him. Yet she felt no remorse. She knew what he had in mind for her when he pulled her back into the house and it would have been worse. His injury caused him to crawl awkwardly and he was sobbing.

  “Omar, is that you?” a voice asked through the smoke. A man rose from behind the kitchen island and searched for him.

  Shani dropped to her knees and sent two rounds into the man’s torso. He collapsed with a cry, then fell silent.

  The fire roared around them. The thick foam rubber in the couch cushions burned with tall flames, black smoke pouring from it like an oil fire. Through the flames, Shani could see the jagged gash ripped into the side of the building by the tractor. Smoke leaked from it but not fast enough to clear the room. Instead, it was getting worse. She could barely see. She choked and coughed, feeling like she was going to throw up. She began to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Had she gotten this close to freedom only to die from the fire?

  Then she saw the gaping doorway, a rectangle of daylight punching through the thick black smoke.

  “Crawl!” she ordered Omar. “Faster!”

  He did as he was told, seeing the opening and heading for it.

  Not wanting Conor to kill her prisoner, she began yelling through her fits of coughing. “Conor! I have a prisoner! Don’t shoot!”

  26

  Conor moved from behind the van and rushed onto the porch. His hasty plan, which may well cause him to eat a bullet, was to flatten himself against the wall and call inside for Shani. It was all he could think to do. He already had a foot on the porch and had picked out his next position when he saw movement in the smoke. He moved with his rifle tight against his shoulder, ready for the fight. If this was an enemy, dropping him would only require the slightest increase in the pressure applied to the finger already resting on the trigger.

  “Conor! I have a prisoner!” It was Shani. “Don’t shoot!”

  He didn’t call back to her, didn’t know who might be lurking behind her in the darkness, ready to pierce his charming smile with a bullet. He flattened himself alongside the door and waited until the crawling man emerged from the smoke, coughing and rubbing his eyes.

  Seeing this clearly wasn’t Shani, Conor clubbed him in the head with the butt of his gun. The move served as an introduction of sorts and made his presence known. Hey, I’m Conor. Nice to meet you.

  The stunned man dropped flat to his belly and Conor grabbed a handful of jacket. With his right hand still wrapped around the grip of his rifle, Conor dragged with the left, pulling the man off the porch and into the grass by the van.

  He put a foot on the man’s back, pinning him to the ground like an insect specimen, and looked back toward the house. Shani was making her way out the door, eyes pinched shut. She was coughing and choking, strings of spittle running between her mouth and the ground.

  Seeing her distress, Conor ran to her side. “I got you, Shani.” He latched onto her forearm and tugged her free of the smoke, setting her down beside the van.

  Conor dropped a knee onto the man’s back and he cried out. He removed his last set of flex-cuffs from his gear and secured the detainee. Beneath his knee, Omar moaned in pain. When he was trussed up, Conor searched him for weapons, finding nothing.

  “What the fuck you do to him, Shani? He’s crying like you took his doll baby and pissing blood.”

  Shani cleared her throat and spat to the side. Her face was stained black and streaked from her watering eyes. “He’s not pissing blood. I think I crushed his kiwis.”

  Conor grimaced. “Anyone left alive in there? It’s gotten quiet.”

  She tried to speak again but it turned into a cough, then dry heaving.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll check myself.”

  Conor got to his feet and did a cautious circumnavigation of the house. He counted his dead. If they weren’t dead, he helped them along in their journey. This wasn’t UN, Geneva Convention, Rules of Engagement bullshit. This was medieval, barbarian, skull-splitting justice. Conor wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t paid to play by rules. When people brought in the Mad Mick, this was what they were paying for and he made sure they got their money’s worth.

  He found eleven bodies scattered around the house. All his doing. Shani’s prisoner made twelve. He returned to her side with that information.

  “I killed another in the kitchen,” she said.

  “That’s thirteen. There should be two more if the count we had is accurate.” He cast a glance at the burning structure. The heat was beginning to reach them. “If anyone is still in there, they won’t be alive for long.”

  Shani nodded. “The smoke may have gotten to them. It’s thick in there.” Sh
e staggered to her feet and leaned onto the van. She spat again, trying to clear the taste of burning foam from her mouth.

  “If we drag these dead fuckers out of the van, we can use it to move our prisoner to the storage building,” Conor suggested. “That might be a good place to regroup and he doesn’t look like he’s up for a stroll.”

  Shani rolled the dead driver out from behind the wheel. He landed across Omar’s body and the injured man cried out. She looked down at him and shrugged. “Sorry. My bad.”

  Conor extracted the dead man from the passenger side, then dragged Omar to the sliding door. “Can you stand?”

  It wasn’t exactly graceful but Omar somehow managed to wriggle his body into the floor between the seats.

  “Get the van out of here, Shani. I’ll meet you at the storage building.’

  Shani nodded, too beat to question his intentions. They quickly became clear though when he extracted two grenades from pouches on his gear. She smiled. “The Mad Mick and his toys. He wants to play.”

  Conor waited until the van was clear of him, then tossed a grenade into the smoky structure. He covered his ears against the explosion. When the grenade went, it blew out the side weakened by the tractor. Yellow tufts of insulation blew out like stuffing from a toy bear. Conor tossed the second grenade deeper into the structure and backed up.

  This explosion, combined with the spreading fire, compromised the structural integrity of the two-story building. There was a groan and the dwelling sagged to the right, metal siding groaning in protest. It was fully-engulfed now. Conor didn’t expect anyone was alive in there at this point. Any threat remaining in that building was toast.

  As much as he enjoyed a good fire, he didn’t want to leave Shani alone with the prisoner in her state. He retreated from the burning building and jogged across the compound. By the time he reached the storage building, Shani was standing at the door with Omar crumpled at her feet. He was cradling his damaged groin and Conor saw the blood soaking his pants. While he had no sympathy for the scumbag the nature of the wound still made him cringe.

  He fished his key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.

  “How’d you merit a key, Conor? You on a first-name basis with the boys here now?”

  Conor grinned. “Not quite. It belonged to the dead guy you’ll find inside. I think you two might have met before.”

  “George?”

  “Yeah, he and I had a little conversation earlier. Things didn’t end well for him.”

  Shani shrugged. “It happens.”

  The lights were still on from Conor’s last visit. Shani went in and Conor followed, roughly dragging Omar over the threshold and extracting a cry of pain from him.

  “Are you hurt?” Conor asked.

  “Yes,” Omar groaned.

  Conor frowned. “Not you, you selfish prick. The lady!”

  “I’ll be fine. Banged and bruised up but no worse than a hard day at the gym.”

  “Are you cool with watching this guy?” Conor asked. “I want to retrieve our gear. Then I suggest we ring Ricardo for a chopper extraction.”

  Shani nodded. “I’ll be fine. You see anyone else lurking about?”

  “No. I have Mumin’s families locked in the bathroom at his place. I think everyone who lives on the property is accounted for.”

  “Good. While you’re getting our gear, Omar and I will have a little talk.”

  Omar raised his head and looked at Shani. “I will tell you nothing, bitch.”

  Shani looked at Conor and the two of them burst into laughter. They did it mostly for show, for intimidation, but it had a chilling effect on the already injured man. Even if Shani didn’t get the information she wanted, Ricardo’s employers would be able to. They could perform a medically-supervised interrogation that would keep Omar conscious and talking for many, many excruciating hours.

  27

  When the door closed behind Conor, Shani faced her prisoner and grinned. “It’s just you and me, Omar. Is this what you fantasized about earlier? Weren’t you wanting some special time with just the two of us? Oh, I guess you expected I’d be the one tied up, right? Is that what you wanted?”

  When he didn’t answer her, she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him along the concrete floor. “Let’s go find George.”

  She tugged him along until they spotted the body near the gun locker. Shani tugged Omar alongside the dead man and released him in the pool of cold, sticky blood. He stared in horror at George’s bullet-damaged head.

  “Ugly, isn’t it?” Shani asked.

  Omar didn’t reply.

  “For a big bad terrorist, you’re suddenly at a loss for words,” Shani said. “I thought you guys wanted to be heard. I thought you wanted to send a message to the world. Where are those words now? Where’s your message?”

  “Kill me.”

  She gave a disappointed shake of her head. “Finally, he speaks. But no, I’m not killing you. I want information.”

  “I know nothing,” Omar groaned.

  “I don’t believe you,” Shani said. “You didn’t even wait to see what I was asking. The fact that you answered without waiting to hear the question makes me think you’re lying. God, do I hate a liar.”

  “I know nothing,” Omar repeated.

  Shani sighed. “Okay, before I start hurting you again, I’m going to lay the question out there. I want you to listen closely. That way you’ll know how to make the pain stop. I want to know if there are more cells of you assholes sheltering in the US and I want to know where they are.”

  “I work for Mr. Mumin at his casino. I am a custodian. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying. Let’s talk about your injury. I bet more than your pride is hurting right now.”

  Omar looked away but didn’t reply.

  “You know, when I was in high school a friend of mine was walking along a steel handrail. He was showing off, pretending it was a tightrope over a river full of piranhas. Somehow his shoes slipped and you know what happened? I bet you do. It was kind of the same thing that happened to you.”

  “You will pay,” he groaned.

  “His injury was worse than you’d think. The impact split open his bean bag and one of the beans popped out the side. I bet that’s what happened to you since there’s so much blood. You think? Is that what it feels like?”

  The flicker of fear in his eyes confirmed that he suspected it was indeed possible.

  “I can look,” Shani offered. “In fact, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m sure they’re quite swollen and painful. I hope one of your testicles is hanging out the side. They’re easier to snip off that way.”

  “Grubby infidel whore,” Omar muttered.

  Shani grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to the weapons cage, leaving a bloody smear of George’s blood behind him. She crouched, locked a hand around his throat, and jammed his head back against the cage.

  Omar somehow found the courage to sneer at her. He twisted his mouth up to spit in her face but she thrust her hand against his throat with so much pressure he choked and his plan was thwarted. She extracted a thick zip-tie she kept tucked under her belt. She looped it through the mesh of the weapons cage and tightened it around Omar’s neck. He was now lashed against the cage, unable to move his head.

  She reached down and unfastened his jeans, yanking his pants and underwear down to his ankles. She stepped away from him and stood looming above him. Omar twisted his head to the side. Shani couldn’t be certain if he was trying to avoid meeting her eye or if he didn’t want to see his mangled tackle.

  “Infidel whore, huh?” Shani asked. “Those aren’t the words of a casino worker. Those are the words of a terrorist.”

  Again, Omar ignored her. She let her eyes drop down his body.

  “Oh my,” she whispered, covering her mouth. “You have got to see this.”

  Omar tried not to look but couldn’t stop himself. His eyes moved downward until they landed on his blo
ody groin. He went pale, his stomach lurching again at the sight of his injury.

  The door opened suddenly at the far end of the storage building.

  “It’s me, it’s me, it’s Ernest T,” Conor called. He staggered around a stack of pallets, Shani’s gear hanging from his body, and dumped it on the floor beside her.

  “Oh my God!” he said, catching sight of Omar’s injury. “That’s feckin’ gruesome.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Shani asked. “Who’s Ernest T?”

  Conor waved it off. “Never mind. I need to get my gear and I’ll be right back.”

  He was back a moment later, dumping his own stack of gear onto the floor. Shani was already strapping on all the gear she’d removed to go undercover in the men’s building.

  “Have you called for exfil?” Shani asked.

  Conor nodded. “They’re sending a chopper out of Duluth Air National Guard base. I told them we’d secured the scene and it was safe to land here.”

  “You tell him what we’d found?”

  “I did,” Conor said. “Ricardo was both quite shocked and quite pleased by that.”

  Omar had recovered somewhat from the shock of his injury and glared at them defiantly, though it was hard to look too tough with his pants around his ankles.

  “How much time do we have?” Shani asked.

  “Maybe an hour,” Conor replied. “They didn’t have a chopper crew sitting ready.”

  “An hour,” Shani replied, smiling at Omar. “What shall we do with an hour?”

  Omar swallowed nervously.

  Conor tried taking the good cop approach. “Look, lad, you need to tell her what she wants to know. I’ve seen her do shit that put me off my feed and I’m a man who loves to eat. You don’t want to provoke her. It won’t go well for you.”

  “He’s right,” Shani said. “A doctor might be able to sew all that stuff back up if you cooperate. Putting everything back together requires all the pieces be there, though. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, there’ll be pieces missing when you board the chopper.”