The Destroyed

CHAPTER 29

LAZIO REGION, ITALY SOUTHEAST OF ROME

The throbbing pain in Quinn’s neck was constant, but bearable. The biggest problem it gave him was that anytime he had to look left or right, he had to twist his entire torso, keeping the position of his head and neck steady.

“The number three guard is on the move,” Orlando whispered over the comm.

After reconnecting with Daeng, they’d decided to spread out to keep a better watch over things. Quinn had remained in the vineyard, directly behind the building containing the holding cells, while Nate had moved to a spot nearer the main house, and Orlando had worked her way around until she was back on the hill in a position almost opposite Quinn’s.

“Looks like he’s going in,” she said.

About time, Quinn thought. Now there would be only two guards patrolling the outside, more than enough for most nights at two in the morning.

“Let’s give it ten minutes,” Nate said.

“Copy,” Orlando and Quinn said.

Once the ten minutes passed and no reinforcements had appeared, they reconvened at Quinn’s position.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. Orlando and I go in,” Nate said, looking directly at his mentor. “You watch our back.”

“The hell I will,” Quinn said. “I’m going, too.”

Orlando reached out and flicked Quinn’s neck with her finger, right at the edge of the bandage. He jerked back.

“Why’d you do that?” he said.

“You’re standing watch,” she told him. “If one of us were hurt, you’d make a similar decision. Someone has to keep an eye on things. You’re the logical choice. So don’t be an asshole. I mean, a bigger one than the one you already are.”

He glared at her for a second, but then gave her a terse nod. She was right, of course, but he didn’t have to like it.

“Head back over to the hill,” Nate said. “You’ll be able to see things better there. We’ll wait until you’re in position.”

“I know where I should go,” Quinn snapped.

Orlando stifled a laugh.

“What?” he asked, his eyes boring into her again.

She smiled and shook her head. “You don’t do injured very well, you know that, right?” She glanced at Nate. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

Nate nodded. “Maybe we should shoot him more often.”

“Oh, there have been times I’ve wanted to,” she told him.

Quinn looked from one to the other. “Everyone happy now? Got any more you want to hit me with?”

Nate considered the question for a moment, then said, “I’m good.”

Orlando leaned forward and kissed Quinn on the cheek. “You’re actually kind of cute when you’re annoyed.”

Quinn didn’t wait around to hear any more. He headed left, paralleling the row of grapevines, then cut across the far field and moved into the copse of trees that had a front view of the farm’s two buildings. He settled in and scanned the property.

“I’m in position,” he whispered into his collar mic. “Still just the two guards. One by the front door of the house. The other’s in the parking area, leaning against one of the cars. Looks like he’s having a smoke.”

“Copy,” Nate said. “We’re moving.”

Quinn shifted his gaze back and forth from where the guards were to the detention building. It was nearly a minute and a half before he spotted Nate at the front corner.

“I’ve got a visual on you,” he said, and checked the guards again. “You’re clear to the door. But do it slow and easy.”

“I know how to do it,” Nate whispered in a perfect imitation of Quinn’s earlier response.

Quinn rolled his eyes, knowing but not wanting to admit he deserved that.

He watched as his girlfriend and his former apprentice crept up to the door, opened it, and slipped inside. As soon as they disappeared, he switched back to the guards.

Neither man had moved.

Daeng sat quietly on the floor of his cell, his mind drifting on a river of nothing. Scattered images passed by: the jungle, Wat Doi Thong, a girl in Bangkok named Om he’d been seeing, the street in Rome outside Julien’s apartment. There were no meanings, no messages, just things that were.

He could see the water of the Chao Phraya flowing swiftly by, so real he could almost touch it. As the imaginary Daeng leaned toward the surface, a bright light cut across his face. It wasn’t reflecting off the river, though. In fact, it wasn’t in the world of his mind at all.

He blinked, then squinted. The glare was coming from the door, partially blocked by a shadow standing in the opening.

“So, um, next time, check the door before you close it,” Nate whispered.

“Sage advice,” Daeng said, rising to his feet.

Standing near Nate was a small Asian woman. Orlando, Daeng realized, the woman he’d heard Quinn talk about often when Dang visited him at Wat Doi Thong. She was as beautiful as the American had made her out to be, her small frame radiating with an intensity and strength that seemed out of proportion with her size.

“The girl’s downstairs?” Nate asked.

“ Someone ’s downstairs,” Daeng said.

“One guard. Correct?”

“Yes. When I checked, there was only the one, and I haven’t heard anyone else enter the building. Of course, I didn’t hear you, either, and I knew you were coming, so maybe that’s not such a good gauge.”

Nate took in the information, but said nothing.

“Are we attempting a rescue?” Daeng asked.

“Might be our best opportunity.”

“The problem is, you can’t get close to the guard without him knowing. He could set off an alarm that would bring the others.”

“Not going to be a problem,” Nate said.

He pulled his backpack off his shoulders, unzipped the top, and removed a thin, four-inch-long cylinder.

Daeng raised an eyebrow.

“Stun grenade,” Nate said. “Low power. Enough to disable one or two people if it’s close enough, but the noise should be all contained to the basement.” He handed the weapon to Orlando, and pulled his bag back over his shoulders. “Show me how you saw the guard without him knowing, then I’ll toss this in.”

Quinn’s phone vibrated. Since the only people he had any interest in talking to at the moment were on the other end of the radio in his ear, he didn’t pull it out of his pocket.

Surveying the farm again, he noted that the smoker had finished his cigarette, and that the other man was rolling his head over his shoulders, stretching his neck. Neither made any indication they were aware that one of their buildings had been infiltrated.

On the comm, reception was once more a problem, and Quinn was able to hear only about seventy percent of the conversation between Nate, Daeng, and Orlando. It was enough, though, to know that things were progressing as planned.

When all talk ceased, he assumed they had moved back into the hallway, where words would be kept to an absolute minimum in case the guard in the basement could hear them.

It was amazing how slowly time passed when he could only wait for the others to do the work he should be doing himself. Convinced he would have been finished by now, he glanced at his watch and saw that not even a minute had passed.

Just relax and wait for the click, he told himself.

That would be the signal, a simple on and off click of Orlando’s mic when Nate was about to set off the grenade.

He couldn’t help but look at the windowless building, as if there would be some sort of sign that it was time. Of course there was nothing, just the blank walls and single door. He switched his attention back to the guards. The one at the cars looked as bored as ever. As Quinn panned his binoculars over the patio to check the other one, he heard:

Click.

They walked silently down the hall to the stairwell. Once there, Nate looked at Daeng, who pantomimed how he’d stretched out over the opening earlier.

Nate nodded, removed his backpack, and set it on the floor. As a precaution, Orlando continued to hold the grenade until he was ready to throw it. He lowered himself to his stomach and slinked forward over the steps.

When he was out as far as he wanted to go, he dipped his head, and looked into the basement. The upside-down view was exactly as Daeng described, doors along one wall and the guard sitting in a chair at the far end with a book in his lap.

Nate extended his arm behind him and raised his palm into the air. As soon as he felt the stun grenade touch his skin, he wrapped his fingers around it, and carefully brought it forward over the gap. On the comm he could hear Orlando click her mic, but he barely registered it. All his attention was on the task ahead.

Though he knew the toss was a relatively easy one, he had to account for his inverted perspective or he’d likely throw the grenade into the ceiling. That would alter its trajectory, and could keep it from getting close enough to the guard to be effective.

A nice, simple lob was all that was needed.

He tried a practice swing, adjusted his arm motion, and tried again. Happy with the result, he brought the grenade up so he could see it, and turned the timer to five seconds. He drew his arm back and tossed the grenade into the room, then pulled himself out of the stairwell as quickly as he could.

At the two-and-a-half-second mark, they could hear the sound of metal skidding across the floor. A second later, the wooden chair below creaked as the guard must have started to wake. Then Boooom!

Quinn continued to monitor the guards. Though he expected to be the only one outside the detention building to know that anything had happened, he wanted to make sure there was no reaction from the other two.

Unconsciously, he counted off the seconds after the click.

Four seconds. Five. Six. Seven. Ei Booom!

The sound had most definitely not been contained within the building.

The guards were instantly alert, both turning toward the other building. They exchanged a few words, and one started running in the direction of the sound.

“I don’t know what happened,” Quinn said, “but you’ve got company on the way.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he pulled back. Given his current position-the perfect place for a spotter- he was vulnerable, too.

As he was turning away, he heard the front door of the main house open. He took a quick look over his shoulder just in time to see at least half a dozen men rush outside.

Quinn’s voice. Distant.

Something about company.

That’s when Nate realized he was lying on the floor. Which floor and where took him another second to remember. When he did, he scrambled to his feet.

Daeng was sitting against the wall, Nate’s backpack somehow sitting in his lap.

Nate grabbed it from him and said, “Are you all right?”

“Uh…yeah. Fine.”

A hand clamped down on Nate’s back and whirled him around.

“What the hell was that?” Orlando said. “I thought you said it was low power. That was not low power.”

Screwed by Giacona again, Nate realized, though he doubted the weapon supplier had any idea his grenades were mislabeled. But now was not the time to worry about it.

He jumped into the stairwell, and raced down to the basement. The guard, his chair, and his book were now all on the floor, and two of the cell doors were hanging open on broken hinges.

Nate ran over to the guard, and checked the man’s pulse. Not exactly strong, but it wasn’t threatening to stop, either. There was blood on the floor, but it appeared to be a result of the man’s nose coming into abrupt contact with the ground.

Keep going! Nate told himself.

He checked the two cells with the broken doors, but they were empty, so he headed for the last cell. It had been the one closest to the guard, therefore the most likely place a prisoner was being kept. He turned the knob and tried to pull it open, but it didn’t budge. At first he thought it was locked on the outside. Then he saw that the blast had warped it enough to jam it in place.

He stepped back and kicked at the door. It groaned as it moved inward. From the other side he thought he heard a voice. He kicked it again.

The middle portion of the door cleared the jamb, creating a small opening.

“Mila?” Nate called. “Are you in there?”

“Yes!” she yelled.

“Stand back.”

Once more he attacked the door, this time leading with his back and ramming his whole body against it. The door broke free.

“Come on!” he yelled.

“You came to get me,” she said as she rushed out.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her to the stairway, and up to the next floor. When they reached Orlando and Daeng near the front door, Mila put on the brakes, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“They’re with us,” Nate said. “Intros later, if you don’t mind.”

That tempered her a bit, but not completely.

“Have we heard from Quinn?” he asked.

“Been trying to reach him,” Orlando said.

“Has anyone checked the door?”

Orlando looked at him as if he were crazy. Daeng said, “You’re more than welcome to, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t the only ones who heard our little explosion.”

“Understatement of the year,” Orlando said.

“I’m sorry,” Nate said.

Orlando shook her head. “Never mind. If we had left right away, maybe we would have made it, but by now there’s got to be at least three or four of them out there.”

The single exit was a choke point. The only thing the men outside would need to do was train their weapons on the doorway, and shoot anything that moved through it.

“I’ll go,” Nate said. “You all hide. I’ll convince them I came in alone. Hopefully, one of them will recognize me as the one who was with Quinn earlier. They probably think he’s dead, or at least laid up. I’ll just say I was trying to finish the job of getting Mila away.”

“They’ll come in and look anyway,” Orlando said. “They’ll want to know what happened to her.”

“Yeah, but they’ll be splitting their forces, not coming at you all at once.”

“…o it…” Quinn’s voice crackled through the comm.

“Quinn?” Orlando said. “Are you all right?”

“… got…ont cov…There…an…way…”

“You’re not coming through clearly. Can you repeat?”

“…ther exit…”

Nate narrowed his eyes. “Exit?

“…es…”

“Quinn?” Nate said.

Silence.

“Quinn?”

He was gone.

“If you want my opinion,” Daeng said, “I think he was suggesting there might be another exit.”

“Did anybody see one?” Nate asked.

They all shook their heads.

“There must be something,” Orlando said. “Places like this always have an emergency exit. So I think before you go off sacrificing yourself, we should at least take a look.”

Nate frowned. “Even if there is, don’t you think they’ll have someone waiting on the other side? Hell, maybe they’re using it right now to get in.”

“We have to try,” Orlando said.

She was right, of course.

He looked at the door. The thing about choke points was that they worked both ways. While they searched, only one of them would have to stay behind to dissuade anyone outside from using the door.

He finally nodded. “Let’s take a look.”

Quinn circled back into the vineyards, then cut across the grass toward the rear of the farmhouse. As he moved closer, he began hearing snippets of conversation over his radio.

He didn’t get everything, but it was clear Nate was planning on sacrificing himself, and hoping that would allow the others a chance to get away. Though it was something Quinn would have probably done, he didn’t want them to give up yet.

“Don’t do it!” he whispered into his mic.

“Quinn? Are you…right?” Orlando asked.

“They’ve got the front covered. There must be another way out.”

“You’re not coming through. We don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“Look for another exit! Another exit!”

“Exit?” Nate this time.

“Yes! Yes! Look for the emergency exit. There has to be one.”

“Quinn?”

“The emergency exit.”

“Quinn?”

He knew he was no longer getting through. But whatever they decided on, there was one thing he could do to help.

He moved around the side of the farmhouse opposite the detention building. When he reached the front, he peered out across the long porch. It was deserted. Everyone had raced over to the other building. He could see them in the open field about a hundred feet in front of it, their guns trained on the door.

He scanned them, looking for any familiar faces. Whoever was heading up their team would be an experienced operative, and, if this was indeed Peter’s operation, someone Quinn might know.

He picked out a couple men he’d seen before but didn’t know their names. Tangential players on previous gigs. But, wait.

There.

The tall one near the back. His name was Michaels. A decent op who knew his stuff.

The important thing at the moment was that if he was outside, there was little chance anyone was left in the house.

Perfect.

Quinn crept across the porch and let himself in. Ten seconds later, he found the room he was looking for.