Savior (The Savior Series Book 1) (19 page)

Just hang in there, Ace,
I thought as I abruptly launched myself into the crowd of Strangers behind me. I was a bowling ball against pins as my 800-pound body sent most of them flying and toppling into each other. Jason continued to hold his own in the sword fight with Tango as I plowed my way through the crowd of Strangers heading toward Howie.

I came to a dead stop when Charlie pressed his massive pistol to Howie’s temple. They were both fifteen feet away from me. I could have covered that distance in no time but I knew that I couldn’t cover it in less than the time it would take Charlie to squeeze the trigger.

I whipped around as soon as I heard Jason’s piercing scream in my earpiece. I turned just in time to see Tango withdraw the blade of one of his swords from Jason’s right shoulder. I instinctively sprinted toward them just as Tango pulled his swords above his head.

Faster!
I shouted to myself as the blades of Tango’s swords descended upon Jason. I felt the roof beneath my feet crumble and cave in as I accelerated to a speed that I had never achieved before.

The blades of Tango’s swords were within inches of decapitating Jason when I swooped by and yanked him out of the clutches of the arching deathblow. Tango’s swords sliced into the roof beneath him as I rocketed across the rooftop with Jason in my arms and leapt away into the night air. As I soared through the piercing blackness of the night sky with Jason held tightly within my arms, I hoped that he would still be alive when we hit the ground.

Tango had been right all along. In the end, the only reason Ace and I were still alive is because I decided to leap from the rooftop. But what about Howie? What would become of him? It took everything in me to leap off of that building and leave him behind, but I knew that I could only save one of them.

Charlie had the drop on Howie, which made saving Jason my only viable option, but that sentiment didn’t make me feel any better about my decision. Maybe if I hadn’t promised Howie that I’d get him out if anything happened, I wouldn’t have been so devastated about leaving him behind. Maybe then I wouldn’t have felt like such a failure.

37. EXPENDABLE

HOWIE:

IT HAD BEEN ALMOST FOUR DAYS SINCE THEY LEFT ME on that rooftop. As I sat in the pitch black closet sized cell that The Strangers kept me in, I had to keep reminding myself that Reaper had made the only logical decision that he could have at the time. If he had moved against Charlie, Charlie would have shot me in the head. I knew he had made the right decision, but I still couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t come for me yet.

I was sure that Reaper’s density would allow him to survive the fall after he leapt from the rooftop; so where were they? Did he truly save Jason instead of me because it was the right decision, or was it because I was expendable?

“Snap out of it, you idiot,” I muttered, surprised at how feeble and dry my voice sounded. The Strangers were only providing me with food and water approximately once every 36 hours so I had grown quite weak by that point. I expected them to kill me, but instead I was whisked away and immediately thrown into that forsaken place. In the beginning I was hopeful, but as I withered away, inundated by the darkness within that cankered cell, the last few remnants of my hope finally gave way to my despair.

In the movies, the clever heroes always figured out some ingenious way to escape. Unfortunately, for me it didn’t always happen that way in real life. The only purpose my 229 IQ served was to help me come to grips with how desperately hopeless my situation truly was. I was running out of time and I had no idea if my savior was even coming for me. To make matters worse…I didn’t even know if he thought I was worth saving.

38. MASTERMIND

THE SUSPECT:

I NEVER EXPECTED THEM TO GET AS FAR AS THEY DID. Then again, even I couldn’t have anticipated the Reaper variable. Who is he and why is he able to do the things that he can do? And most of all, why was he working with Howard Vargas?

I had to know. I had come too far to let some high school kid and a freak of nature derail my progress. The night vision equipped camera in the corner of Howard Vargas’ cell allowed me to watch him squirm in the darkness that beset him. He, like many before him, expected physical torture followed by a swift death, but my choice method of torture was always that of a psychological nature.

Tango, my most skilled operative, watched me in silence from across the dark control room in which we sat. It was he who I had to thank for the apprehension of the prisoner. I had my doubts when The Righteous chose him as my second in command, but his presence had certainly paid its dividends.

I was smarter than all of them, but I lacked the physical might to keep them in check forever. Without Tango, one of them was bound to challenge my rule at some point. With him at my side, my dominion over The Strangers went unquestioned.

Of course, I had considered the possibility of Tango making a play for my seat. At the end of the day, he was irrevocably a mercenary. His only true allegiance was to money and power. Sure, he was content for the moment due to the millions of dollars that The Righteous was paying him to serve as my second in command, but I could tell that he enjoyed power just as much as money. The Strangers were becoming more powerful by the day and I am certain he realized that.

I glanced at Tango, then back to the monitor. Fortunately for me, I knew his weakness. The Reaper and his partner were not quick enough to spot it, but I figured it out the moment I saw him. He was a thousand times more deadly than I, but if it came down to it, I knew exactly what to do to take him down.

39. LET HIM COME

HOWIE:

“GOOD MORNING HOWARD.”
THE ELECRONICALLY DISTORTED voice rang out from the darkness above me as I lay still on the cold stone floor of my cell.
There must be an intercom in the ceiling,
I thought, as I pulled myself into the back corner of the tiny cell. I hadn’t eaten in a little over a day so I was far too exhausted to attempt to stand.

“It’s afternoon; not morning,” I finally replied as I rested my head against the wall. Minutes went by with no response. For a moment, I thought that I had possibly imagined the voice.

“Impressive internal clock, Howard,”
the mysterious person finally replied over the intercom. After a moment, I realized that this was more than likely The Suspect.

“Did you think I would lose track of time?” I asked, forcing myself to laugh. “Perhaps you were hoping I would become more desperate when you inevitably lied and told me how
long
I had been imprisoned here?” I asked.

“You look plenty desperate to me.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“It’s been five days, Howard. You know they’re not coming for you.”

“It’s been four days. And yes, they are,” I snapped. The room fell silent. His sporadic silence bothered me, but I refused to let him know his psychological game was working.

“You might as well get it over with because you won’t get a word out of me. I know you’re only keeping me alive because you want to know why we came after you,” I said.

A few more minutes of silence passed before he responded.

“I have kept you alive simply because I haven’t determined the most satisfying way to kill you. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you are of any importance to me.”

“You know I’ve always wanted to try the firing squad. How’s that sound?” I chuckled.

“I was thinking more along the lines of starvation,”
he hissed.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve systematically decreased the frequency in which we bring you food and water. The slice of bread you ate yesterday will likely be the last thing you’ll ever eat.”

I didn’t reply. My stomach growled as if signifying the gravity of his diabolical words.

“After you burn through your remaining body fat, your body will start to break down your muscles and use them for energy to keep your heart and nervous system functioning for a few more days. Good luck with the severe case of diarrhea that follows. You can’t exactly crack a window in that cell.”

He was a mad man. An absolutely, certifiable, mad man.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this,
I thought. I was supposed to be out there making a difference, saving the world alongside Jason and Adam, not wasting away in a matchbox of a cell waiting for my body to eat itself.

“In the end, you are left with two choices, Howard. You can resist and die face down in a pile of your own feces, or you tell me what I want to know and be granted a swift end.”

“What do you want from me?” I grumbled.

“Why did you attack my facility?”

“It wasn’t an attack. It was a rescue mission. We came for the girl but we didn’t know that she had joined The Strangers. The media gave the impression that she was kidnapped.”

“Of course, they did. They can’t have the world knowing that the daughter of a prominent Senator joined what they believe to be a terrorist organization.”

“We don’t simply believe that you’re terrorists. You are terrorists!”

“
Then what of the people’s say? To them, we’re heroes. To them, our work is righteous.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re no hero. You’re just a puppet and there’s no difference between you and any other megalomaniacal failure from the past. I’ve watched you sow your insidious seeds of deceit while claiming to serve a righteous cause since the first day you logged on to that chat room three years ago. You may have fooled the public, but you’ll never fool me. I know a terrorist when I see one.”

“Then what does that make you, Howard Vargas? It’s your program that we used to disable the cellular grid during the Fox Valley State operation. In fact, your program is the very reason we were able to move forward with my plans to go militant. In short, you are just as responsible for the lives that we have taken as I am.”

“I didn’t know that people would die! You never said anything about that!” I yelled.

“Spare me the worthless, plausible deniability defense, will you? You had to have known! That’s why you left us, remember? You went from being a full time contributor to contracting once I began my movement because you weren’t willing to sully your pretty little hands. But that didn’t stop you from taking the contract to create that program, did it?”

“I needed the money! My family needed the money!” I shouted.

“Was that money so much more important to you than the lives of the people you knew we would kill? And you call me the bad guy? I do what I do out of a sense of purpose and servitude. I kill in order to set the example for those who dare to repeat the mistakes of the ones that we chose to sacrifice. You kill in order to score a cheap buck!”

“It’s not true! I am not the same as you,” I sobbed. But it was true. I had taken a contract from one of my former Stranger contacts about a year before the first attack. He wanted me to create a program that could temporarily disable cell phone towers and land lines within a fifty-mile radius. At the time, I truly didn’t consider what they could have been planning to use it for, but now I knew that there was no way they could have executed their attacks without my program. The Suspect was right. I was responsible for every life that they had taken, even Adam’s older brother, PJ. I was far too dehydrated to produce tears as I continued to sob, but my despair was no less potent.

“Who is The Reaper?”
The Suspect demanded.

“He’s your worst nightmare,” I growled. I was light-headed and my body felt like it was about to shut down again, but I fought hard to stay conscious.

“If you don’t tell me what I want to know your, home and your school will be the next places that we attack. I invite you to consider the hundreds of lives you will be sacrificing in order to protect one man.”

“You should prepare yourself. I don’t know if he’s coming for me or not, but I know for a fact that he’s coming for you,” I said as I collapsed to the cold concrete floor and slipped out of consciousness.

“Let him come,”
The Suspect replied, just before my world faded to black.

40. WELL I’LL BE…

CHARLIE:

TANGO AND I HAD WORKED TOGETHER ON A LOT OF JOBS in the past, but this one definitely took the cake. The whole Stranger business had turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be when Tango first brought me on board. As far as pay was concerned, I wasn’t pulling down as much scratch as my buddy Tango, but my share was definitely nothing to sneeze at.

Before then, I had never exclusively committed my talents to just one outfit, but between how much fun I was having and how much money I was makin’, I didn’t see a reason to go anywhere else any time soon. Heck, I had gotten so used to wearing that red Comedy mask on my face that half the time I didn’t even realize I had it on. I always thought it was funny how the more you do something, the more numb you become to it.

I suppose that’s why I didn’t notice him at first. I had done so much surveillance without ever getting’ any action that sometimes I just plumb forgot to actually look.

You planning on sitting there in the shadows all night, Hoss?
I thought to myself as I slowly placed my favorite black cowboy hat on my head and continued to stare at the computer screen in front of me. I kept my back turned and pretended not to notice when a dark figure dressed in all-black emerged from the shadows behind me.

I slid my right hand down to the .44 magnum revolver holstered on my right hip as the intruder stealthily made his way across the dimly lit control room.

Not one for jaw jackin’ I see,
I thought as the cold steel on my hip called out to my hand. My trigger finger was home at last as I swiftly pulled the pistol from my hip and squeezed the trigger, ripping a bullet over my shoulder without even bothering to look behind me. The room fell completely dark as the bullet shattered the light above us.

I whipped around and brandished my steel just as the mysterious figure pounced at me. I smiled as I recognized the Spade painted over his mask.

“Well I’ll be... Nice to see ya again, Hoss,” I chimed as I squeezed the trigger.