Jamie Welrod sat in his folding deck chair as if it were a throne. It was not his intention but simply his natural disposition to sit like a king no matter the chair. Still and silent. He seldom spoke, even when there was no cigar sticking out of his parched mouth, lips aged beyond his years.
Or that was what people assumed of him.
But he liked it that way. It was his staunch belief that actions carried louder than words; leading by example was a given to him, like the sky being blue and his trench coat being grey. Detective inspector was his title if he remembered correctly. Whichever insignia was sullied by today’s droplets of rainwater, it did not matter. No one questioned the police but the police, and even then, all of the competent ones were vacuuming up the bribery money.
“Sir,” the woman beside him said, “We’ve got a report from Sidos border control. The truck got through fine; they should be a few kilometres from the F.S.A. outpost now.”
“The money?” Jamie asked her.
“It’s been wired through to the account. Three hundred thousand.”
“See to it, those drivers make it back safely across the border. Hopefully, we don’t end up with more enemies than we need.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated the radio operator as she refitted her headset and resumed working. The deal had gone through, and he had wiped his hands clean of it. It left a bitter taste in his mouth being played in such a way. The funds were reassuring, but being forced to trade assets for money he did not need was almost humiliating. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he could swallow it, just like his shame. Things were going smoothly otherwise; there was no point in dwelling on the past.
A complicated array of wooden boxes, wires, speakers and microphones lined the wall from one end of the apartment to the other. Each instrument made an individual hum that one could never imagine unless one heard it for themselves. Alien, yet these operators controlled them expertly. Even if it was only one centre of telegraph communications in the city, it was still a vital part of the network.
“Any more news on that raid last night?”
“No sir, scouts still report heavy police presence, and anyone involved is Federal Police. Government men, none of ours.”
“Fuck sake. They’re taking it seriously now, eh?”
Earlier that morning, Jamie had stressed to his men that the clock was ticking for both sides once the raid started. If they took too long in their plan, the Federal Police would bust down the door to every one of their safehouses before they could even commence. If the enemy took too long, they faced possibly the largest terrorist attack in history.
Like a ticking time bomb, right under the Prime Minister's ass.
Jamie’s nine-to-five admittedly did not pay well, but money was not his motive, nor was it for the people he recruited. The fire of something greater had been lit in their eyes well before he had ever rolled up to their villages, offering them guns and a push in the right direction—a way to enact their revenge.
And that was all anyone knew about Jamie Welrod. That was all anyone needed to know.
He stood up from his chair and found himself a telephone, the only commercially available technology in the room. He dialled himself the first number on a list that only he had, right in his breast pocket at all times. He rubbed his calloused fingers against the rough paper, scratches of grey pencil etched into it.
The dial tone ended almost immediately, and Jamie internally praised how well-disciplined the staff were. It almost made him feel guilty.
“Hello, yes, is this Salan court hotel…yes. Hello, I’m calling on behalf of Harman Food Co. Yes, about our next order, our schedule has been very messy this month, and staff schedules have been shifting and such. So, I was wondering if we could deliver a day early? Yes, of course, no changes to your order. If you could put that through, I’d appreciate it. Thank you. ”
He placed the handset back onto the telephone and walked to his chair. Throughout the next few hours, he called the same hotel twice more. At one thirty in the afternoon, he was a gruff man, inhaling the dust of his luxury rug warehouse, and at five thirty-four he was a nasally middle-aged office worker at an internationally renown pest control firm. By the end of the day, Salan Court was expecting three trucks from three of their Sidosian contractors.
He made one final phone call as the sun began to set, reclining in his chair as he did so. Three rings later, he grew impatient and drew a small pouch from his coat pocket. Cigars encased in a leather holder along with a silver lighter. If there was one small luxury his new job could afford over his old life in the sticks, it was this.
“Who’s this?” asked the call recipient. His tone was low, almost a whisper.
“Everything’s set up. Give the signal to your men to jack the trucks. Distraction blows soon. They cross the border tonight.”
“Yes sir,” he said, not a moment wasted figuring out who his conversation partner was. Jamie put the phone down, returning to the cigar in his mouth. He took the note from his front pocket and lit it on fire.
The tiny flame reflected off the black of his eyes as he watched every line of ink turn ash. He held it up to the end of his cigar, transferring the fire from one object to another. Breathing deeply, he calmed his mind in the face of what would come. With the smoke relaxing him, his breathing slowed.
The engineers they had left over after the deal were an incomplete team, useless outside of being a resource sink to guard them. The factory had been cleared out along with the other twenty hostages, meaning the Police were unlikely to attain anything they didn’t know already. Damn all for their efforts besides a mere portion of the missing persons; that was exactly where Jamie wanted his adversaries.
The smoke plumed as it rose, caking the ceiling in a thin white veil that scattered the dim ceiling lamp’s light, blurring the room’s light and shadow. He finally noticed the smell, one that he liked but admitted was growing pungent.
“Send a telegram to our sponsor, say we need that paid off courier soon.”
“Yes sir,” came the reply as he stood from his chair and meandered for the door, driving the butt of his cigar into the wall and dropping its remains in his pocket as he exited. The old woman living next door greeted her on the landing as she began to descend down the staircase, and he returned the gesture.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The real estate was nothing special; a small apartment block of orange brick sandwiched by two more of the same kind, the design repeating like a city-wide maze. This block however somewhat of a view, and Jamie would often smoke in front of the window by the landing.
Excala did not get old, no matter how much he looked at it.
He would admire the architecture, something he was not able to do at home. Despite his orders, Jamie kept his trench coat on even when stepping outside. Being a Police uniform—or their intelligence division in practice—mean it stuck out sorely anywhere outside of Sidos city. But Jamie seldom took orders as gospel.
As far as manpower and reputation were concerned, most regarded him as the legitimiser of the organisation, the face of it. He had been the one driving recruitment and organising hits.
So much so that his reputation had outgrown one city. Excala was one hell of a playground that he had barely started exploiting, and he would start with a gem of its tourism industry.
At least, that was how people liked to put it. For all they knew, his dedication to the cause was inevitable, his knees in the face of oppression would not buckle, and his struggle would not yield, no matter the cost.
The only thing he could do now to better his reputation was to become a martyr.
“Sir, you’d better come now,” whispered the telecom worker. Panicking, she had thrown open the door, smoke wafting from the dark room into the stairwell. Jamie nodded, following her inside before it could get the chance to cloud the rest of the building. The telecom worker sat down, refitting her headphones and pulling her chair in as she talked.
“It’s a transmission request from one of our Sidos outposts. 62 Grandwell Street, sir.”
“What does it say?”
She read off of a notepad in front of her.
“It came in just then. Transmission has stopped since. It reads, ‘Base taken on behalf of Sidos Fed Police. Members in custody. I am coming.’ And that was it.”
The room fell silent as she read it out. Between the phrases ‘on behalf’ and ‘I am coming’, anyone could make out that it was not anything official. Brutish posturing: it was a scare tactic.
Her. It had to be. His bosses had chalked up the failure at Chestral Manor to be a police ambush, but between the rumours and the sponsor’s obsessive interest, her presence was becoming harder, nigh impossible to ignore. Like the eyes of a hunting cat once you caught their glint in the moonlight, or the flash of a sniper scope in the distance.
The plan was compromised, but it could not afford to reschedule. Scout positions would have to begin watching their backs as well as their targets. The clock was ticking just a little bit faster, that was all. The telecommunications team watched as Jamie left the room again, uttering nothing more than the word ‘walk’.
The first response team watched as Evalyn left the room, uttering nothing more than the words ‘fresh air’. The rain had continued for days, and a symphonic torrent had masked the sound of her suppressed gunshots.
Second one, the man had answered the door, seeing Evalyn standing there like a drenched dog. Second two, he noticed the gun by her waist, pointed directly at him. Second three, he attempted to draw his firearm, but at that very moment, he suffered two shots to the flank. Second four, he fell to the floor and dropped his gun. Evalyn stamped it hard against the wood with her boot as her attention turned to the next man. Second five, she ordered him to drop his sidearm, or else she would shoot. Second six, he tried and failed to reach for his gun.
Six seconds.
After calling up her Federal police associates who took care of the rest, she helped herself to the scene. A telecommunications machine, two grey coats and a small stash of weapons were what her eyes immediately drew to, but she needed a lead, not evidence. Police could be stingy with their crime scenes, and she had little patience for operations room politics. Now was her only chance to scour the apartment.
She scanned through the cluttered content of the telecom desk, doing her best not to touch anything unless she had to. A barely coherent collage notes and papers the pair had probably not gotten around to burning, judging by their ash-filled dustbin. One note sat on top of them as the most recent: a telecom channel and an address.
Evalyn tuned the machine to the correct frequency and, with her limited knowledge of radio code, sent her message to whatever station sat on the other end.
The second was an address she would have to investigate, depending on if the two S.H.I.A. officers were willing to talk. But her victims were hired men, orders of magnitude tougher to crack than a paid-off foreman. It was a coin toss. Either way, she produced a notebook from her pocket and jotted it down.
By then, the first responders had arrived at the scene and began to tend to the wounded. Serious by civilian standards, but nothing a field doctor had not seen before. Evalyn had received orders to capture suspects without her magic, and in the case she resorted to it, to kill the witnesses. Her job here could be considered squeaky clean compared to the worst-case scenario.
That sort of target on her back was worse than the one she had already. The man she had almost killed prior was under heavy surveillance until his predicted death penalty was issued. Whatever secrets he blabbed could be passed off as near-death hysteria, but that would not work in every case.
News spread fast in prison, and in a prison with guards possibly connected to S.H.I.A., word would get out quickly enough that the fiery red-haired woman with the whale tattoo was, surprisingly, not all she seemed to be.
Evalyn knew that leaving witnesses only meant risking her anonymity, and that in turn meant putting those two in danger. But did not wish to make martyrs out of terrorists lest she helped stoke the flames of further bloodshed. If Sidos’s government wanted to, that was their decision. Less to rest on her conscience alone.
The rain had come back in full force that day, both she and the streets were already drenched. The trench coat was thick and water-resistant, but everything above the neckline looked closer to a drenched cat than a woman.
Now that Iris was not around, she barely bothered to keep up appearances. Her eye-catching hair had been tucked away in a beanie, and she had traded her usual outfit for Federal Police detective dress code.
“The sunset should be over there,” she muttered, looking through a thick layer of grey clouds denying her the last of the sun’s rays. Her back was to Geverde, to the small wooden building that kept her heart safekeeping. Everything felt so far.
She could not get the hostages out of her mind. The remaining fifteen or so knew nothing of their whereabouts, but their case had to be put on the backburner as it was no longer the priority. Not her words.
But by now, she was used to it, following orders like that.
She turned to meet the Superintendent and his possie that had just made their entrance. He held a wet umbrella in his left hand, and instead of a grey coat, his was pitch black, much like hers. They exchanged information and were once again on their way, never staying in one place for too long. Evalyn would receive a location to scout, scout it, report her findings to the authorities and repeat.
Her next location was a few blocks down from her, and seeing the state she was in, the Superintendent lent her his umbrella, insisting she kept it for as long as the rain would continue, however long that may be.
A simple gesture that Evalyn could not fully express her gratitude for. Wet, tired, lonely, and cold; a state she hated being in, anyone hated being in. She cursed herself, wishing she was at least a bit more resilient.
She had assumed the weather had made her so solemn, and while her heart did not believe it, her mind insisted on it. A small part of her knew that drawing a gun on someone numerous times in such a short period was never good for her. But ten years had dulled her senses. What would have had her weeping into Elliot’s shoulder would now not make so much as a dent in her resolve. Something Elliot himself had helped her with over the years.
Her quick feet carried her from one block to another, and while the puddles she stomped made her look like she was walking on water, that same sentence bugged her repeatedly. One that Elly, the once stranger, the ace pilot, had asked her years ago.
Have you ever even killed anyone before?
Iris had brought back dilemmas in her mind that she had resolved and pocketed years ago, ones concerning the reason she might brandish a weapon at all. But even then, her philosophy was bulletproof and her methods airtight. Adding one more to her family would just mean her wish had to grow larger and the price she paid for it more demanding. Iris’s future asked a lot from Evalyn, but after mere hours of rumination, she had concluded the answer was nothing she had to think about in the first place. She would shoulder it until the end, and so she stepped out into the rain.