Brett Battles - The Collected

“You, there,” the man behind them yelled.

They kept moving, pretending like they hadn’t heard.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

“Stop,” Quinn whispered. “But only I will turn.”

Quinn faced the man who’d called them. He had expected the speaker to be another soldier, but instead he was looking at Harris, the bald former mercenary himself. Quinn kept his expression neutral.

“Tell your commander that I’ll be in my room and am to be notified the moment the fugitive is brought in.”

“Yes, sir,” Quinn replied.

Harris opened a nearby door and passed inside. Quinn marked the location in his mind, and told Daeng who he’d just seen.

“If Harris is here,” Daeng said, “then Romero’s got to be somewhere nearby, right?”

“One would think so.”

“When they brought us back, Janus and one of the guards would come into the cell with me,” Nate said. “I couldn’t see what was going on with the others, but it sounded like the same thing.”

Nate told them that so far, after every torture session, they would leave the prisoners outside for a while before taking them back to their cells to await the next event. That was good. Quinn had been worried they would just be left in the courtyard. Making an assault there would have been a quick way to get one or most of the prisoners and themselves killed. The guards on the wall would quickly pick everyone off before Quinn and the rest had a chance to do much of anything.

When they finally settled on a solution they all thought would work, Quinn said, “From this point forward, if someone’s in your way, kill them. Understood?”

It wasn’t a hard sell. Though none of their job descriptions was that of professional killer, they had all killed before. Given what had been happening at Fort Duran, none of them would take issue with doing so again.

They checked their comm-gear, got into their positions, and waited.

The pounding of feet echoed down the hallway, signaling the imminent arrival of the prisoners back to their cellblock.

“Daeng, are they to you yet?” he said into the radio.

Daeng was in a room down the hall with the door open but lights off. His would be the first position they passed.

“Seconds away,” Daeng whispered.

Quinn and Orlando were in the same hallway, but on the other side of the door to the cellblock, hidden by the curve of the corridor. Nate was in the cellblock itself, at the far end, tucked around the elbow turn of the hall he’d used to escape.

There was a click over the radio-Daeng letting them know the soldiers and prisoners were outside his door. A few seconds later, he whispered, “Four guards and that big blond.”

“Copy,” Quinn replied.

“Copy,” Nate chimed in.

The footsteps kept coming, until it almost seemed as if they would pass the cellblock entrance and head right around the curve of the hall to where Quinn and Orlando waited. But then, not quite in perfect synchronization, the prisoner detail stopped.

The door to the other hallway opened with a creak, and the ragtag march started up again as the prisoners were led inside. As soon as the door closed, Quinn and Orlando came around the corner and stepped over to it. Daeng joined them a few seconds later.

“In position,” Quinn said into his mic.

A single click from Nate. Message received .

Quinn grabbed the door handle, ready to pull the door open as soon as Nate gave them the two clicks that meant go .

Nate stood as close to the corner as he could possibly get, waiting for the preplanned moment. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going on. In front of every cell, a soldier-and-prisoner pair stood waiting until Janus deemed it was their turn to go in.

A door opened, then three sets of steps-Janus, a guard, and a prisoner. As they passed into the cell, the sounds of their movements diminished.

Janus’s voice drifted down to him. “Do not get too comfortable. You will not be here long.” This was followed by a laugh, and the sound of Janus and the guard exiting the cell and closing the door.

One down.

Nate continued to listen as the second prisoner and then the third were put back in their rooms.

When the door to the third cell shut, he clicked his radio once. Be ready .

The fourth cell opened. Janus and one of the guards took the last prisoner inside.

Click-click.

As soon as the message was sent, he stepped out to where he could be seen. “Hey, I hear you’re looking for me.”

Quinn counted off five seconds after the double click before he pulled the door open as quietly as he could.

“…looking for me.”

As expected, the three guards in the hallway had all turned in Nate’s direction and were not paying attention to the door. Quinn, Orlando, and Daeng moved inside and spread out.

The guards, all eyes still on their escaped prisoner, began unslinging their rifles.

Quinn’s target was the farthest guard, Orlando’s the middle, Daeng’s the nearest. Within a second and a half, they each pulled their triggers. Like dominos, all three guards fell to the ground, dead.

The open cell was the one nearest Quinn and the others. The guard who’d been inside stepped out to see what was going on. A bullet to the forehead from Quinn’s gun sent him crashing back inside.

Nate jogged down the hall, stopping fifteen feet on the other side of the open door. “Janus! Come out!”

A scuffling of feet, then nothing.

“Janus!” Nate yelled again. “Give it up. Come on out. This is done.”

“Nothing is done. I think you will let me go.”

“You think wrong.”

A laugh, then Janus appeared in the doorway. But he wasn’t alone. He had Peter in his arms, and was holding him high enough to protect his own head and chest.

Peter grimaced. “Just shoot him.”

Janus peeked around Peter at Nate. “Well, Quinn, you are pretty good. You bring help?”

“Put him down,” Nate said.

“Go over with your friends or I break his neck. You know I can.”

“I don’t care if you hit me,” Peter said. “Shoot him!”

No one pulled the trigger. Peter was-if not quite a friend-someone who’d been an important part of their lives for a long time. They weren’t about to shoot at him if they could help it.

Quinn motioned for his old apprentice to join them. As soon as Nate did, Janus eased out of the room, turning to keep Peter between them and him at all times.

Quinn searched for a shot, anything that might disable Janus and allow them to get Peter free, but Peter was unintentionally doing a pretty damn good job of shielding the other man. Quinn might be able to shoot Janus in the foot, but it was iffy at best.

Janus started backing down the hallway in the direction Nate had been hiding. Nate took a step forward to follow.

“Don’t,” Janus said. “I will kill him.”

“Kill him and we’ll kill you,” Nate said.

“Peter here will still be dead, and I might still get away.”

Janus took another step back. This time Nate didn’t move.

“Good boy,” Janus said, not stopping.

“Shoot him!” Peter yelled.

Janus momentarily freed up a hand and punched the former head of the Office in the face. There were no more outbursts.

“What’s going on?” Lanier called from his cell.

“Yeah,” Berkeley said. “What’s happening out there? Are you here to get us out?”

“Everyone shut up,” Quinn said.

“Come on, man,” Berkeley said. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that we’re going to leave you here if you say another word.”

Janus had reached the turn in the hall. “Don’t follow me,” he ordered, and then disappeared.