Wilms’ stared in horror at Mitchell.
‘That’s insane! MJ-12 will not tolerate such a…’
‘They’ll drop you just as they dropped me,’ Aaron growled back, ‘because like you said to Lopez, you’re not important enough. Besides, they won’t even know where you are. As we speak your vehicle is being driven to JFK and your jet will depart on time. You just won’t be on it, Victor. The jet will experience a fatal accident half way through its flight and you will be recorded by the Air Accident and Investigation Board as having died in the crash, the pilots exonerated of any responsibility for your demise.’
Wilms realized that Aaron had executed the perfect abduction and concocted a suitable fate for him, one where nobody would be searching for him and nobody would listen to his cause or his pleas that he had been set up.
Located on an island in the East River between Queens and the Bronx, Riker’s Island was a city of jails, with a population of fourteen thousand inmates, all awaiting trial. As a new arrival, Wilms would be housed in the New Admissions Cells where he would be kept in a sort of quarantine until the results of tests for tuberculosis and other diseases came back from dedicated labs. Then, he would be incarcerated into one of the most dangerous and feared facilities in the entire United States. Wilms swallowed thickly. Rikers was a ferocious jail packed with murderers and drug addicts, hardened killers bought up on the mean streets of New York City. As a supposedly convicted pedophile, he knew what would happen to him.
‘This will never work,’ Wilms spat at Aaron. ‘I’ll never talk.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ Aaron replied. ‘We don’t need you either, Victor. All we needed was the faces of MJ-12, and the chance to lock you up for good while we start in on them. Your time is done. You’re not getting out of this, either your jail time or your prison sentence, and I look forward to you screaming out loud to a judge that you’re actually a member of a secret organisation called Majestic Twelve and that you’ll be sprung anytime soon. They’ll add an insanity plea, probably, which we’ll make sure doesn’t get through.’ Aaron smiled at Wilms. ‘You’re not the one with powerful friends any more, Victor. Tell me where LeMay is.’
Wilms’ face twisted in frustration and he cursed.
‘Larchmont.’
Mitchell nodded once, and then looked at the driver. ‘Continue to Rikers.’
‘I just gave you LeMay!’ Wilms screamed.
‘You just saved your own life,’ Mitchell said, ‘nothing more. Life’s going to get tough for you from now on, get over it.’
Wilms heard a scream erupt from his own throat as he lunged at Aaron, his fury and frustration unleashed in one terrible burst. The big man was too quick, however, and both Wilms’ arms were batted aside as one thick fist ploughed into his skull and Victor’s world dimmed to blackness and silence.
XXXVI
Ethan reached the main blast door of the base with Hannah alongside him and Del Toro behind them both, and together they slid the braces out from behind the door and opened it a crack. Ethan saw the docks extending away from them, the tunnel in the distance dimly illuminated by the fading light of the glow sticks scattered across the dock, and could just make out the shadowy forms of men hiding in the darkness within.
‘This is pretty much suicide,’ Del Toro whispered. ‘They’re gonna shoot you down rather than let you go.’
Ethan pushed ahead through the open door.
‘I’m hoping that their curiosity will get the better of them,’ he replied.
Hannah followed him reluctantly out onto the dock as Del Toro slammed the blast door shut behind them. Ethan noted that he heard only one brace being slid back into place on the far side of the door, Del Toro likely standing by in case they had to run to get back inside.
‘What the hell are you going to say to them?’ Hannah asked in an urgent whisper. ‘Pretty please can we have our friend back?’
‘I hadn’t got that far in my thinking yet,’ Ethan said as he walked at a steady pace, hoping to veil any sign of nerves as they closed in on the tunnel entrance.
‘Reassuring as always.’
Ethan kept walking until he reached a spot perhaps twenty yards from the tunnel mouth, where he came to a stop and waited patiently. A few moments later the deep voice boomed out across the cavern.
‘Ethan Warner, I figured you’d show up sooner or later.’
Ethan did not betray any surprise that this man knew his name. Given their repeated encounters with agents of Majestic Twelve, it in fact only confirmed that they were indeed facing MJ-12’s mercenaries and not the military of some other country hell bent on beating America to the Black Knight.
‘Like a bad penny,’ Ethan replied, peering into the darkness but unable to see much. ‘You know that you’re being paid to walk to your deaths up here, right? You know who your employers are, don’t you?’
‘Need to know basis,’ came the reply, ‘and we’re being paid well enough to have no problem in icing you and your team. Our government knows that we’re here.’
Ethan smiled.
‘That’s strange, because it’s our government that sent our team here too, so how come you’re firing on fellow Americans?’
‘Our mission is our priority! Surrender your positions and you’ll be allowed to leave peacefully!’
Ethan glanced at the corpse of the MJ-12 soldier lying nearby, a ragged bullet wound in his skull bleeding black blood onto the icy dock.
‘Like your comrade here?’ Ethan asked. ‘Nice of you to put him out of his misery.’
‘He was no longer an asset,’ boomed the reply.
Ethan grinned, keen to sow dissent among this man’s followers.
‘Neither is our friend Amy,’ he replied, ‘but we’re standing here hoping to get her back, not putting a bullet in her head for being an inconvenience.’
‘My men are behind me,’ came the reply, ‘and they’re not going to walk away from me, so you can quit the divide and conquer routine.’
‘You’re no military commander,’ Ethan said, ‘you’re a fake who hides behind his men, a coward.’
Ethan heard a rustle of movement and from the shadows loomed a huge man with a thick, black beard that was laced with ice. He peered at Ethan from the mouth of the tunnel, radiating hatred from his every pore.
‘It’s been a long time since anybody dared call me that.’
‘So it’s happened before then,’ Ethan replied. ‘Got us a pattern developing there, don’t we?’
The figure took a pace closer and Ethan spotted a glint of light coming from a pistol the big man held in his hands.
‘Surrender your positions or die,’ he rumbled.
‘Sorry, no can do,’ Ethan chortled in response, covering his fear of death with a bizarre carefree attitude that surprised even himself considering the dire circumstances. ‘Amy won’t make a damn of difference because our priorities match yours. Give her up and maybe we can work together on this little problem of ours.’
The big man’s eyes widened for a moment and then he chuckled, shook his head.
‘Here’s what I intend to do with them if you don’t surrender your positions.’
The big man whistled briefly, and two of his soldiers marched out with a thin, pale man clutched between them. The victim was half naked, shivering with cold, his skin an unhealthy shade of blue. Before Ethan could even speak, the two soldiers suddenly rushed forward and hurled the hostage into the freezing water of the dock.
Ethan instinctively moved to help as Amy cried out in horror, but he knew that to enter the water was suicide. The thin man cried out in agony as he surfaced and gasped for air, his lungs and limbs paralyzed with the cold and unable to swim to safety.