Wiley didn’t wait for a response. He jogged back to the storage area and headed for the gun rack. He grabbed another semiauto shotgun, a Benelli Super Black Eagle II. Then he strapped on two more holsters, one for a Glock G17 .45 ACP, the other for his 50-caliber Desert Eagle. He also clipped an A. G. Russell tactical folding knife to his belt. A leather bag sat on the table, and he filled it with ammo for all three weapons, along with some 380 rounds and the Hi-Point for Duncan.
“Wiley.”
He glanced back, saw his brother had his eyes open. Wiley went to him.
“How you doing, brother?”
Ace offered a weak grin. “Never been better.”
Wiley scooped up the water jug, tilted it so Ace could take a sip.
“Need another shot of Demerol?”
“It depends. Where are the bad guys?”
“Knocking at the front door.”
Ace shook his head. “Instead of the drugs, how about something in a Magnum?”
Wiley smiled for the first time that day, which was also his first smile of the decade. It felt strange, unnatural. But also good.
“Got a Taurus in .357, and a Ruger in .44,” he said.
“Gimme the Taurus.”
“Ruger has more stopping power.”
“Too much kick. Throws off the aim.”
Wiley patted his brother on the chest. “I miss these little conversations, Ace.”
He turned his attention to the open first-aid box and dug out a syringe and a bottle of Prilocaine.
“This won’t put you to sleep. Just numb the area.”
Ace winced when Wiley gave his stump several injections. Then he went back to the pegboard, added the Taurus and a box of rounds to the ammo bag, and slung it over his shoulder.
“This won’t be pleasant,” he told Ace.
Ace only cried out twice as Wiley dragged him across the floor to the great room. Once when he first moved him by pulling his arm, and again when his stump accidentally hit the doorway.
“It’s me!” Wiley called out to Fran. “Hold fire!”
He tugged Ace over to the sofa and couldn’t tell who was breathing harder, him or his brother. Fran had followed directions and overturned the large oak coffee table. She’d set it on an angle to the doorway, so it would be the last thing someone saw when they opened the door and walked into the room. Wiley approved and felt something akin to pride.
It took all three of them to lift Ace up onto the sofa. The sheriff stayed stoic, though his face scrunched up and his forehead beaded with sweat. Wiley propped some pillows behind his back and aimed him at the door, on an angle like Fran had done. Then he spent a minute showing her how to load the Beretta and showing Duncan how to work the slide on the Hi-Point to jack the first round into the chamber.
“The TV,” Streng said, pointing. “They’ve got Josh.”
Everyone looked at the plasma screen. Someone held one of Wiley’s remote cameras in front of a man’s face. The man was screaming in terrible pain. Wiley was grateful there wasn’t audio.
“We have to help him,” Fran said.
Wiley shook his head. “No. They want us to open the door so they can get in.”
Josh’s scream went on and on. Wiley couldn’t imagine what horrible thing they were doing to him. He picked up the remote and switched it off.
“Put it back on,” Fran said.
“Don’t torture yourself by watching it.”
“We have to save him.” Fran’s eyes were glassy, pleading. “He came back for us.”
“I know you don’t want to risk Duncan’s life just to save Josh.”
“Please.” Fran was crying now. “Please do something.”
“We can’t. He’s dead. Forget him.”
Fran walked up to him, met his eyes. “That should be you out there, not Josh. He’s a good man. Have you ever done a single good thing in your life?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Of course it’s about you. Everything has always been about you, you selfish bastard. If you’re not going to do anything, I am.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“I’d rather die fighting than live in fear.”
“You’ll leave Duncan without a mother?”
Duncan appeared at his mother’s side. “Mom?”
Fran knelt down, hugged her son. “I’ll be back, baby. It’s okay.”
Wiley shook his head, amazed. “This man means that much to you?”
Fran looked up. “Yes.”
Wiley cleared his throat again. When was the last time he’d spoken to someone? Weeks? Months? When was the last time he cared about anyone other than himself?
He looked at Ace. “You and Duncan hold down the fort. I’ll need Fran to work the hatch.”
Duncan looked up at him, his small face so full of hope.
“Are you going to save Josh, Wiley?”
Wiley stared down at his grandson. What would a grandfather do? He chose to pat the boy on the head and wink at him.
“I sure as hell am going to try.”
Dr. Stubin had to walk away because Josh’s screaming was giving him a headache. While the brain specialist had never broken a bone, he couldn’t imagine why a few bent fingers would make a man howl like that. That Special Forces sergeant Stubin killed earlier had his arm blown off and made a lot less noise.
Stubin had set the timer on the explosives in the helicopter footlocker—left there for him by the Red-ops team when they’d landed—and blown up the Special Forces team when they landed. The sergeant babysitting him had barely even whimpered—even when Stubin beat him to death.
Stubin sighed. This operation had taken much longer than necessary. Stubin didn’t blame himself. Warren Streng had proven much harder to find than anyone could have guessed. The lottery ruse was a quick and relatively simple way to gather and interrogate a small group of people, and it had been used by the Red-ops many times throughout the world. Greed had no color, race, or political affiliation. But it turned out no one knew where the bastard was hiding. And even now that they’d found him, they couldn’t get him out of the bunker he’d built for himself. Under that fake deer was a steel hatch that couldn’t be forced open, not even by Ajax. If torturing Josh didn’t gain them entrance, they’d have to go back into town and raid the hardware store to make explosives.
Stubin checked his watch. The military had quarantined the town, as expected. But General Tope would be sending in more Special Forces units soon. Good as the Red-ops were, they were only five people, and Ajax was functioning in a diminished capacity and might not last the night.
Stubin wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. Truth told, he hated these monsters that the army had forced him to create. Ajax cut up his parents at the age of eleven. Bernie had been given the death penalty for burning down a nursing home. Taylor—a vicious schizoid serial killer—was another death-row rescue. They’d gotten Santiago from South America, a sadistic freelance interrogator who wound up working for the wrong side and was captured by the CIA. And Logan was another psycho who’d been plucked from the mental ward, prone to such violent outbursts that her diet consisted mainly of thorazine.
Human garbage, each of them. But they were the only ones he was allowed to perform the implantations on. The only ones he could experiment on. The military spent incredible amounts of time and money teaching soldiers how to kill, and some of them still hesitated at the moment of truth. How much easier it was to take killers and turn them into soldiers.
So now, under his care, he had five Hannibal Lecters with Rambo training and transhuman modifications. The Chip made them programmable, controllable. The Charge rebooted the Chip when it sensed other thoughts interfering with the program. It also fine-tuned their instincts, making them more aggressive, faster, stronger. There were also indications it unlocked powers of the mind known only to monks and mystics. The ability to withstand pain. To function in extreme conditions. To heal faster. Some experiments had shown it could even enhance extrasensory perception.