Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution (12 page)

There were a lot of Glock 22s in the world, but something about the one on the table gave Daniel a very bad feeling.

He reached into his holster and pulled out a gun-shaped hunk of metal, but that was all it was. It was not a functioning pistol at all, but a piece of metal that had been forged to look like a handgun.

Daniel dropped the fake onto the floor, absolutely stunned. Somewhere between the time he left the apartment and now someone had managed to take his weapon and switch it with a fake, all without his knowing. How was that even possible? He couldn’t remember any situation where it may have been possible. No one had more than patted him on the shoulder all day.

He lurched forward, his eyes never leaving his gun. His mind was unable to wrap itself around everything that was happening to him. What purpose did anyone have for framing him for murder? Other than being assigned to protect Demérs he had no personal or professional involvement with any of these people.

He picked up his gun and stared at it. “How?” he again asked himself.

“Drop it!” a voice screamed at him from the doorway.

Daniel immediately dropped the gun onto the floor and turned to see Tommy and his other two men in suits with their guns pointed at him.

“Tommy,” Daniel said calmly, staring into Tommy’s sunken eyes while trying to explain the bizarre circumstance they found themselves in, “I swear, I didn’t kill your uncle.”

“Then who the fuck did?!” Tommy demanded.

Daniel thought for a moment. He couldn’t know for sure, but he had a pretty good idea.

“It must have been Demérs…”

Just as Daniel had finished his sentence, Tommy pulled the trigger of his gun, the bullet slamming straight into Daniel’s chest.

The force of the blast threw Daniel onto the floor. The Kevlar had stopped the bullet, but the impact had still caused a lot of pain and discomfort in his chest.

“And you work for Demérs!” Tommy roared, circling around the table, his gun still pointed at Daniel.

Daniel gasped for air and readjusted his pain receptors. He did all he could to keep his mind from blacking out.

Tommy moved to stand over Daniel’s feet, his gun now aimed at his head.

Without thinking Daniel swung his right leg around, kicking Tommy’s hands to the left. Instinctively, Tommy fired a bullet into the floor.

As quick as he could, Daniel bent the knee of the same leg and thrust it at Tommy’s knee cap, bending it the other way.

Tommy shrieked and fell down on top of Daniel, the pain causing him to drop his gun to the floor.

Daniel saw one of the other men moving in for a shot on the other side of the table. Daniel quickly sat up to grab Tommy as he was falling and use him as a shield. Impulsively the man fired anyway, hitting Tommy in his left shoulder blade.

Tommy screamed in anguish from the continuous pain.

Daniel turned his head to see the third body guard moving around the other end of the table to flank him. Tommy’s gun was sitting on the floor just to Daniel’s left. Quickly Daniel picked it up and fired in the direction of the flanker. The bullet caught him in the right leg just above the knee, a fraction of a second before he was able to get off a shot of his own. His body twisted as the bullet ripped through flesh and impacted bone, causing his shot to miss and sail into the far wall on the other side of Daniel.

Before Daniel could react, the man who had shot Tommy in the back gave up on shooting and went diving over the table at Daniel. His body landed on top of both Daniel and Tommy—Tommy now sandwiched between the two combatants, still shrieking in pain. Daniel looked over to see the man with the wounded leg now bringing his gun back around on Daniel.

Daniel never understood how he thought to do what he did next, but knew only that it all happened in one fluid motion.

He pumped himself up so that he was able to throw both of the men on top of him over the table which sat just past his feet, while at the same time tucking into a roll under the table, grabbing his own gun which still sat on the floor as he did so. Once under the table he reached up with his left hand and in one foul swoop lifted the far end of the table up and brought it down between he and the shooter.

He knew the table wasn’t enough to stop the bullet so he continued his motion, pulling his entire body up off the floor using his left arm as a lever, his body remaining horizontal to the ground.

The man fired. The bullet went sailing through the table and underneath Daniel’s now elevated body. Daniel used his upward momentum to swing himself up and over the table. As his feet touched the ground he pointed his gun at Benze’s wounded body guard as he lay on the ground. A split-second before Daniel could fire the man he had thrown over the table with Tommy jumped on his back, causing his shot to miss.

Knowing the wounded shooter on the floor wouldn’t wait another second to return fire, Daniel spun around as quickly as he could, causing the shot to end up in his other attacker’s back.

Daniel then grabbed onto the now wounded man on his back in order to keep him from falling off before charging in reverse, falling off his heels and crashing into the shooter on the floor.

Both men let out a half-grunt/half-scream upon contact. The shooter’s arm now lay pinned to the floor in front of Daniel. Daniel stepped on his wrist with full-force, shattering bones and releasing the man’s grip on his weapon.

Daniel then spun around and smashed the butt-end of his Glock into the temple of the guy on his back, rendering him unconscious.

Quickly, Daniel stood up and ran to the sliding door at the back of the kitchen, opening it and sprinting out of the house. He found himself standing in the middle of an expansive patio. All around him was an elegant array of outdoor furniture, and in front of him the largest brick grill he had ever seen. To the right was a rectangular infinity pool, complete with a swim-up bar on the far end.

Benze certainly knew how to live life—or at least
did
know how to live it.

Daniel turned to his left and ran around to the front of the house, trying to find his escape. When he came to the front corner of the mansion, he peered around the corner to assess the situation.

Demérs’ SUV was nowhere to be seen. One of Benze’s guards in black seemed to be tending to the other who was out cold.

Over the radio Daniel heard a voice say “There’s still one out there. Take him out!”

The conscious guard in black then turned to take a look around for the target. Daniel took a look behind him. No one seemed to be coming from behind. He looked straight ahead and saw the tree line 150 yards out.

He looked back at the guard. There were still 50 yards between them if he went now. He hoped Benze didn’t hire security staff based on their marksmanship.

Daniel took a deep gulp of oxygenated air, got his heart pumping and his blood and adrenaline flowing. It was time for some cardio.

He pushed off the ground powerfully with his right foot and took a giant stride toward the tree line. Each time his foot planted into the ground he used his quads, calves, and hamstrings to rocket himself forward, quickly bringing his leg back up to repeat the process.

He heard a gunshot from the direction of the front of the house. He hadn’t a clue where it landed, all he cared about was that it wasn’t in his body.

He soared at max speed, having never run so fast in his life. His lungs were burning from the frigid air and his heart was pumping but mentally it felt as though he were at rest. His showing off on the treadmill was finally paying off.

In what felt like minutes but was really less than a dozen seconds, Daniel arrived at the wooded area that surrounded the property. As he approached he saw a down limb at the very edge of the tree line. Effortlessly, he leaped over top of the limb and into the woods. He heard male voices crying out from behind him. Judging by the state in which he had left the men in the kitchen, only two could have still been after him.

He ran and juked through the trees, seeing three moves ahead as he did so. He even managed to take his jacket off while he was running. He made sure to run in a zig-zag pattern to make it more difficult for the guards to track him. After thirty more seconds of running through the woods, he arrived at the black fence that guarded the estate.

The top of the fence was lined with spikes, but given that they were six inches apart it was of no consequence. He took half a second to check behind him and saw no one. He then jumped up and grabbed onto two separate sections of the fence where there were no spikes. He then pulled himself up until he could plant a foot onto another one of the spikeless six-inch areas and thrust himself over the fence.

He took a breath as he again scanned the woods for his pursuers.

“Freeze right there!” Someone barked from behind him. This voice was female.

He turned to see a woman with a gun pointed at his chest standing fifteen feet away from him. She was rather attractive—dark black hair hanging down from beneath a thick winter cap. Her skin was seasonably pale, and her cheeks a rosy shade of pink from the cold air. Her femininely shaped eyes were an unusually light shade of brown that blended seamlessly into her high cheekbones.

“Who are you?” She asked, stepping forward and ripping his gun from its holster. He had secured it just before making his mad dash across the yard.

“Who are you?” Daniel countered.

“Really?” she asked sarcastically, keeping her gun trained on Daniel. Her gun looked very similar to his own.

“They’re trying to kill me,” Daniel explained while trying to convey a sense of urgency. “I need to get out of here.”

The woman stood and contemplated. She was wearing a dark blue snow suit and black boots. Mittens hung down from the ends of her sleeves. It appeared as though she may have been out there for a while.

“Why are you here?” She demanded. “Do you work for Benze?”

“No one works for Benze anymore,” Daniel rebutted.

“What?” she almost shouted. “Did you
kill
Roger Benze?”

Daniel immediately regretted his smart assed comment.

“No,” he explained. “But I’m being set-up to make it look like I did.”

The female assailant thought for a moment, trying to put the pieces together for herself.

“Did you come here with Gordon Demérs?” she asked him.

“You know Demérs?” Daniel countered.

“I ask the questions!” she shot back.

Daniel took a moment then nodded in agreement, hoping to speed of the pace of their little chat. She was the one with the gun after all.

“Yes,” he answered her question.

“You work for him then?” she followed.

“Yes…well…no. Not officially, but I was hired to protect him for the weekend. It seems he had other plans.”

The woman seemed to continue putting together puzzle pieces in her head.

“You work for Richfield, don’t you?” she asked, suspiciously familiar with the name.

Daniel’s instinct was to ask her how she knew Richfield, but he caught himself. She could probably already tell by his reaction that she was correct.

Just then, a man’s voice shouted from the other side of the fence. “Where the fuck is he?”

Daniel turned back toward the woman who had him at gunpoint. “The men trying to kill me,” he explained.

The woman quickly put her gun away on her hip holster and pulled something from her back pocket. “Agent Eva Stone, FBI,” she said in a low tone, flashing her badge. “Come with me.”

Daniel was frozen for a minute, unsure of what had just happened and why the FBI was involved, but he figured she was his best bet to get away safely.

Daniel followed as he and Agent Stone ran through the woods in the direction of the county road. She moved with impressive agility, especially for being in a snow suit. It did not take long before they came out of the trees.

“This way,” she ordered, taking off toward a black sedan parked along the side of the road a hundred feet or so to their left. “Get in” she told Daniel when they arrived at the vehicle. She quickly cranked the ignition and put it into gear, taking off down the two lane road and away from the Benze estate.

Daniel took a moment to breathe and allow his conscious mind to remove itself from his manufactured neural pathways. He could suddenly feel the cold on his skin and the pain in his chest. He shivered and groaned all at the same time, a horrible grimace on his face.

“You alright?” Agent Stone asked him.

Daniel unbuttoned his shirt and noticed the half-flattened bullet still stuck to his vest. He pulled it off to examine it.

“I guess you weren’t lying about them trying to kill you,” she remarked.

Daniel took another deep breath and shook his head. “I need to get back to Elite,” he told her, still examining the bullet.

“Not yet,” she countered. “I’m taking you to a nearby government safe house. The director is going to have a few questions for you.”

“The director of the FBI?” Daniel asked confused.

Agent Stone let out a small laugh. “Of my department,” she explained.