Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (20 page)

He went downstairs to the vault and filled a backpack with the tools of his trade. Rayce needed to case the Eastern Security compound, and if opportunity presented itself, he had to be ready to take action.

Thirty minutes later, he was there. Rayce parked out of sight of the compound and walked to the parking lot from the side where he wouldn’t be noticed. The info Rayce had received from his intel guy, Evan, already told him that the building had cameras on each corner that would cover most of the open areas surrounding the compound. He also knew that the security cameras were watched from the reception area on the main floor. The main floor consisted of a substantial reception area, a couple of boardrooms, and a few smaller breakout rooms. The upstairs contained the living quarters for the Eastern Security personnel and was composed of a number of bedrooms and a common entertainment area.

From his place of concealment, Rayce saw that there were only two trucks in the back lot but didn’t know if that meant the full contingent was at home or not. The flicker of colored light coming from the second floor windows told him that someone was watching TV.

Rayce sunk back into the shadows when the compound front door opened. A man’s face was illuminated by the fire of a match lighting a cigarette. Rayce watched as the man strolled aimlessly out front while enjoying his smoke. Based on the size and pear shaped physique of the man, Rayce came to the conclusion that this was not a mercenary. More likely a security guard hired to monitor the cams, answer the phone, and greet walk-ins.

Rayce did not hesitate to execute a quickly formulated plan. He advanced to the building from the side where the guard would not see him and waited at the corner until the smoker’s pre-occupied saunter brought him close.

There was no fight. Rayce came out from around the corner and closed the gap to the guard in two large strides. His massive hand closed on the man’s throat to prevent any sound, and the guard was brought easily down onto his back, unable to even breathe under Rayce’s iron grip.

“I’m going to release my hold and allow you to speak. If you yell for help, two things will happen. Neither of them will be good for you. Are you going to call for help?”

The terrified guard shook his head no.

“Good,” said Rayce as he released his hold on the guard’s throat.

“Who are you?”

The guard struggled to recapture his breath. “My name is Milos Thompson. I work for Round-the-Clock Security. I’m not one of them,” he stammered.

“Not one of who?”

“The soldiers upstairs. I’m not one of them. I work for a security company.”

“How many people are upstairs?”

“There are four. The rest left earlier today.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. They don’t talk to me.”

“Are the men upstairs armed?”

“Yes. They always have their weapons with them.”

“What about the big man? Is he here?”

“What big man?” he answered with a blank stare.

“The big man with the little boy voice.”

“No. He’s not one of them.”

“I don’t understand. He’s not one of them, but you know him. Who is he?”

“He comes here to talk to them sometimes. I can tell the guys upstairs are afraid of him. His name is Ogrodnik. That’s all I know about him.”

“Milos, do you have a family?”

“Yes, I have a wife and two young children. Please, leave them out of this,” stammered the guard as his voice trembled.

“Do you want to see them again?”

The guard just nodded.

“I’m willing to let you go on this condition. You go home, you don’t say anything to anyone, you call in sick and you never come back here. “

“Okay,” said the guard as Rayce released his grip on him, and he ran in the opposite direction.

Rayce watched to make sure Milos was true to his word and then advanced cautiously to the front entrance. The reception area was empty as expected. His plan was simple: kill three men and then capture and interrogate the fourth.

Rayce, with duffel bag in tow, walked down a hallway to where he knew the power panel was and then threw the switch to cut building power. The entire building went black for a few seconds before the ethereal orange light of the emergency lighting kicked in. Rayce quietly ducked inside a doorway near the power panel and waited. The sounds of movement upstairs carried easily throughout the quiet building as did the muted snips of conversation. Rayce couldn’t understand their words but knew their meaning. The senior in the group upstairs was ordering the junior to go down and check it out. He heard the cadence of a body coming down the stairs. The door was pushed open, and the soldier spoke in a loud voice, with a thick Eastern European accent, “Milos, Milos, are you here?” as he walked down the hallway toward the panel and Rayce.

Rayce stood behind an open doorway with a knife in hand. When he passed the doorway, Rayce took two steps and simultaneously grabbed his mouth from behind and sunk the blade into the man’s back. It was a precision move that required skill and strength. Rayce’s knowledge of human anatomy and its functions was extensive. Years of studying combat techniques from many cultures had taught him the most efficient ways of incapacitation. In this case, fatality was the only option. He thrust the knife into the center of the soldier's back midway up the thoracic vertebrae chain. He knew that a well-directed knife into the T6 area of the spine would sever the spinal cord and carry on to puncture the heart. It was clean, efficient, and relatively painless for the victim. Rayce took no joy in the administration of pain and death. To him it was a means to an end. It was a tool he owned, and he used it judiciously.

He let the body slide quietly to the floor as its life spilled out of the wound and onto the floor. The body was pulled into the nearest room and he took his next post, beside the door leading upstairs so that he would be behind the door when it swung open.

It wasn’t long before sounds of impatience came from upstairs. Again, Rayce didn’t understand their words but knew what they were saying. If they spoke English, it would be something like, “Lukas, what the fuck are you doing down there? Is that useless guard there with you? Are you getting a blowjob from him? Hahaha.”

Another soldier came down the stairs. Rayce could tell based on the timbre of the voice and sound of the stomping footsteps that this was a big man, much larger than the first. He quietly sheathed his knife and pulled a small spool of woven germanium nano-wire from his pocket. The wire was a foot long, about 2 millimeters thick with padded loops at each end. It was designed for a single purpose. The move he was about to try was risky. If he had his gun pulled or if Rayce didn’t catch him by surprise, it would get messy, and the two soldiers upstairs would be alerted. Rayce stayed on plan and focused on the footsteps coming down toward him. The door swung open, and the soldier called out loudly, “Lukas!” Rayce waited for the words to complete and then slipped the garrote around the man’s neck from behind. The garrote prevented any calls for help, but the man was strong. The soldier caught his balance, braced himself by widening his stance and twisted his torso wildly to the left in an effort to send his attacker off balance. Rayce was ready for the move and rode it out easily. He was also ready when the big man twisted back to the right, and as he swung back around, he crashed his knee into the side of the big soldier’s leg right at the knee joint. The leg caved in sideways in a way that no knee is meant to bend, sending the soldier toward the ground. The weight of the big man falling only increased the pressure around his neck as the killing wire was now the only thing preventing him from falling all the way to the floor. Rayce had used the centuries' old fighting technique by using a man’s weight and strength against him. Within five seconds, the loss of blood going to the man’s brain had weakened him considerably. Another ten seconds and he lost consciousness. Rayce maintained his grip for a full minute until he was sure that reprisal was not possible.

Rayce could already hear the sounds of movement from the floor above. He didn’t know if they suspected anything was amiss, but the next stage of his plan could not wait.

He pulled a handgun and started upstairs. As he headed up the stairs, he heard the other two mercenaries calling out to him asking him what was going on in a language he didn’t understand or speak. He tried to mimic the big soldier's stomp as he came up the stairs and replied to their queries with unintelligible grunts in a voice that was meant to copy. The voices upstairs were coming from the TV area to the right of the staircase. All he had to do was make it to the top without them getting suspicious.

Rayce came up to the top of the stairs framed by the ghostly glow from the emergency light. As soon as the others saw him, they reacted. The soldier sitting on the farther couch, facing the staircase, jumped up and reached for his sidearm. He was not nearly quick enough. Rayce’s muzzle flash seemed to freeze the action at a point in time like you might see on the front page on a pulpy police journal. With a single shot to the chest, he was slammed back into the couch where he came from, and where he would stay. The blast was deafening and threatened to blow the windows out with its sonic boom, its objective fully realized.

Rayce had chosen his weapon well. He could have brought a silenced Glock that made a sound like a grandmother sneezing or used an automatic assault rifle that could empty a room of live bodies in a single three second burst. He had chosen a .44 caliber Colt Anaconda, a massive handgun that kicked like day old moonshine and had a discharge blast to match. In order to prevent the fourth soldier from retaliating, he had to make a statement. The Anaconda made that statement for him.

The lone remaining soldier froze in mid-movement, still sitting on the couch but leaned over to free up the gun in his chest holster.

“Don’t make a move or you’ll end up like your buddy,” Rayce growled with the gun sights squarely at the man’s head.

“Take your gun out of the holster with two fingers, and throw it toward the television.”

He hesitated for a second and then complied with a look of resignation on his face.

“Now lie down on the floor, face down and put your hands behind your back.”

Rayce cuffed his hands with nylon straps and flipped the man over to face him. “I have questions, and you have the answers.”

“Fuck you,” he spat out.

Rayce holstered the big gun and pulled out his knife. He heard the forced resolve on the man’s voice and knew it was only a thin hard veneer of defiance and failed to cover the fear he saw deep in the man’s eyes.

He didn’t have time to waste. The clock was ticking, and Elliot was out there being chased by killers. He needed intel from this man quickly and knew how to get it. He was not proud of the things he knew. He sometimes wished he didn’t know them. He wished he could un-see them, erase them from his memory. But he’d never be able to do that. He still felt the scars from some of those things he knew. The physical scars he could deal with; it was the psychological scars beneath them that still hurt. Those memories were who he was. He could no more forget them than forget his own name.

Rayce flipped the soldier face down and straddled him so he couldn’t move. He lowered the blade toward the corner of his eye, and the screaming started.

Satisfied with the intel he had extracted, Rayce set about to finish the job.

He went downstairs and dragged the first body out into the reception area where the large soldier’s corpse lay. He quickly hauled whatever furniture was within sight and piled it on top of the two bodies. He added the video recording device for the cameras to the pile, and then, on top of his makeshift pyre, he added his overalls, ski mask, gloves and weapons. From a jerry can out of his duffel bag, he poured the accelerant over the pile, and finally, from the duffel, he placed a pair of timed incendiary devices, set to go off and ignite the pile in three minutes. In the three minutes before ignition, the gas fumes would fill the open reception area and create a firebomb that would blow out the windows and swallow the entire building. Rayce knew that a building of this age and construction wouldn’t last more than a handful of minutes after the fire ignited.

Three minutes gave him plenty of time to jog to his vehicle and make his getaway across the Victoria Bridge and southwards toward home.

As he exited the bridge on the south side of the St Lawrence River, he thought he heard the distant sounds of a fire truck rushing to a fiery event.

Ten minutes later, his cell phone chirped as he was making his way along the Richelieu River toward home. He checked the phone and stomped on the gas pedal.

Elliot hefted the bag up on his shoulder and slipped out the back door without turning on any lights. Making as little fuss as possible, he backed out of his parking spot and slowly rolled down the back lane. He couldn’t do anything about his running lights, but he made it a point not to use his brakes or indicator lights until he was safely away from the house. Satisfied there was nobody following him, he made his way across the city to the bridge and then out to Rayce’s.

He parked around back at Rayce’s and let himself in. Exercising caution, he did not turn any lights on and sat by the large window at the back of the house that overlooked the patio area. The chair he chose was off to the side of the window, in the shadows of what little light was coming in from the dark of night. He stared out into the inky darkness thinking about the case; the only visible light was the faint glow of a neighboring town up in the sky to the north. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could make out the faint outline of the bordering trees against the sky, and every now and then, he’d see a reflection through the trees of a wave catching a flash of light from somewhere up the road. He sat there for some time contemplating all that had happened over the previous days.