After dispatching the last guard in the basement, I hurried up the stairs and out of the building to find out what was going on. The police should have been here by now. Their response time was awful, and I planned on lodging a complaint with Captain Stevens. He picked up on the second ring.
“Where the hell are you?”, I yelled into the phone.
“We’re in a tactical van a block away reviewing the plans for the building. The plans don’t show the basement that your live feed is coming from. We’re trying to figure out how to get in there without the guards taking the women and children hostage.” He sounded frustrated and angry.
“Don’t worry about that. I took care of the guards in the basement. If you move quickly enough, no one else will be able to get to the captives.”
“What do you mean you took care of the guards? How many did you take care of?” Captain Steven’s voice sounded like he was having a tough time restraining himself and I heard someone in the background saying that the live feed had gone down in the basement.
“Six guards need to go to the hospital.” That was true enough since they’d either be going to surgery or the morgue. “Captain Stevens, you need to move in now. Daniel has a small arsenal of guns in this office upstairs. If he realizes that six of his guards have been knocked out, you’re going to have a much tougher time taking him in and you or your officers could get hurt. Hurry. I’ll try to see if I can take out a few more of them in the meantime.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I hung up on him again and went back inside.
Other than the gate guard and the guard inside watching the cameras, there were four guards left and the truck driver. He was using a hose to wash out the interior of his truck. I found all four of guards relaxing in the warehouse. They were probably called in for the prisoner intake and were hanging around for their next shift instead of heading home. I would have enjoyed knocking them out, but it was faster to just lock them out of the office area by disabling the passcode mechanism using my field. I shifted the passcode reader power wire to R2 and reached into the reader to remove it.
Upstairs, I found Daniel in his office, sitting and talking with his managers and his assistant. They were relaxed and weren’t even discussing their captives. Maybe I missed that part. Daniel was telling them a golf story from his last trip to Florida. Everyone looked like this was just a normal day at the office for them and not like they just took delivery of 40 humans that were going to be turned into slaves to amuse a bunch of sickos. Destroying 40 families meant nothing to them.
I wasn’t sure why all of them were even here. The guards had done all the work and it didn’t take four people to supervise the unloading of the captives. Also, now that the captives were all locked up in their cells, why were any of the managers still around. It was almost a half past two in the morning. Why weren’t they heading home?
The answer came a few seconds later when the computer on the small desk in the office chirped. The finance guy went over and checked the computer. “The money’s been sent to the account, Daniel. Just a bit over $1.9Million. I have the bank confirmation.”, he said.
“Excellent, Jerry! Please see that it gets moved into our other accounts right away.”, Danial instructed.
The finance guy, Jerry, got up to make room for the IT guy to work on the computer. As he started to type on the computer, Daniel said, “Seb, now that the money is in, you have two weeks to get the merchandise to the buyers. I want you to confirm all the delivery details for each piece and send our clients their delivery dates. Use encryption code 6 this time and as usual, don’t use the office computers.” Seb, short for Sebastian I guessed, was Daniel’s assistant and he got up to start his task right away.
Seb didn’t get very far before there was a buzz from Daniel’s phone. Daniel got up and pressed a button on his phone. “Yes?”, he asked.
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“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Darryl at the front gate missed his check-in a few minutes ago and he’s not answering my calls. His last message was the confirmation that the truck had come in. I’d like to send a few of the guards that are on standby to the gate house to check if everything is ok.” This was from the inside guard watching the cameras.
“Send out two guards and put the rest on alert. Keep in constant contact with the two guards that you send. Call me immediately if you lose contact with them.”, Daniel ordered.
Daniel went over to his window and he was soon joined by the finance guy. Both of them stared out, trying to pierce the darkness with their eyes. I moved closer so I could look out too. “I think I see a car coming in.”, Jerry said. “No, make that two cars. What the hell?” Just then, what seemed like a fleet of cars came out of the darkness and turned their flashing lights on. If I was a bad guy, I’d be soiling my pants right about now.
IT guy ran up to the window and shouted, “Oh shit! Daniel, what do we do?” He was in full panic mode, but Daniel was almost calm as he stared issuing out orders to his people. “Seb, call the guards in the basement and have them hole up. Let them know the situation and tell them to use the merchandise as hostages in negotiating a way out. That should distract the police long enough for us to get out of here. Jerry, get back on the computer and erase everything in it. Format it if you can. If you can’t do it in three minutes, destroy the computer.”
Uh-oh, I couldn’t let that happen. I had a better use for that computer. Before Jerry could start walking to the computer, I wrapped it in a field and shifted it to R1. To be safe, I did the same thing with Daniel’s computer. I wanted the police to find that one. With the screen and keyboards and mice still looking like they were hooked up, my work went unnoticed, for the moment.
“Our reinforced doors should hold them off for a bit. They also won’t have the layout of the place, so they’ll go slowly. Robert, go hit the panic button on the server. Destroy it all. Fast.”, Daniel instructed. Mr. IT guy, Robert, started running out of the office and I used the bat to break his leg. I wanted these four caught and questioned and put in jail for life. They weren’t getting out the easy way by getting knocked unconscious.
Robert started screaming in pain and when the others looked to see what had happened, all they saw was Robert on the floor wailing in pain. It looked an accident. He’d tripped, landed badly and hurt his leg. Nothing to panic about or stop them from their tasks.
“Daniel, I can’t reach the guards in the basement. No one is answering.”, Seb called out.
“My computer is down. It’s not working.”, Jerry said.
“Mine too.” This last was from Daniel. “What the hell is going on here?”
The sounds of boots coming up the stairs could be heard. Lots of boots. Seb suddenly ran into the office, closed the door and locked it. “We need to leave. There’s no more time. They’re here.”, he said.
“Seb, open the side door. I’ll get the guns.”
Seb reached for the bookcase lever just as I brought down my bat across his forearm. The pain must have been intense because he didn’t even scream right away. I knew it was coming though and I stepped away and made my way over to Jerry, who was still sitting at the small desk with his hands on the useless keyboard. It was just too tempting a target for me and I managed to bring down the bat in a way that broke both of his wrists with one swing. It was a motion that I used with my staff at Kung Fu and I made sure to put maximum power into it.
Jerry’s scream did not harmonize well with Seb’s, or with Rogers not so quiet whimpers of pain. Daniel looked back and for at each of his crew screaming in pain and confusion was written in large on his face. From outside the room, a voice over a microphone started yelling, “This is the Wilmington Police Department. Come out with your hands where we can see them, and no one needs to get hurt.”
Now Daniel was panicking. He turned back to his credenza to open the walk-in safe to get to his guns, but I had no intention of letting him get off without a few love taps from my bat. I ran through his desk and jabbed him in the back. As he turned around to see what had hit him, I moved to the side and swung the bat into his pelvic bone, specifically his left ilium wing, near or on the iliac crest. I felt proud that I’d remembered that level of detail from my studies of human anatomy.
Daniel crumpled, crying in pain. I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever. I remembered the videos that he took, and I swung again, breaking something in his shoulder. Through my anger filled haze, I couldn’t remember the names of the bones just then. I was starting my next swing, targeting his knee, when the door burst open and men poured inside, guns drawn and shouting orders. It was enough to snap me out of my anger and check my swing. I had things to do.