I suppress a growl, marching on and wading into the water, climbing on my ski. Brad is beside me, getting on his. “You need to take a few breaths, Danny.” He frowns when Leon tugs around a loaded ski and ties it to the back of the boat as Ringo, Otto, and Goldie get onboard. “Higham said—”
“You want to go in unarmed?” I ask, feeling the top of my head for my shades. No shades. And then Leon appears, holding them out to me. I accept and slip them on.
“Fuck me,” Brad breathes, looking across to James. Then we all look back to Higham driving off.
“Let’s go,” I say, chugging out. “We go in from the left, close to the cove. There’s a concealed, dilapidated jetty a quarter mile from the shore,” I go on, more for James’s benefit, since he isn’t familiar with our old base. “We’ll go on foot from there.”
I get no acknowledgment, everyone silent and taking a moment, before I put pressure on the throttle and stand from my seat, picking up speed, but not so much that Ringo can’t keep up.
We stick close to the outskirts of the bay, and as soon as I have Winstable in my sights, I don’t take my eyes off it, doing everything I can not to let my anger rule me. The place my father built when I was fifteen, my childhood haven, now being used to hold abducted women? Lord, have mercy on my soul, I will butcher them all, and when I find out who bought it? Who fooled me into standing down? My teeth clench.
Calm.
I shut off the engine when I’m a few feet offshore and let the current carry me onto the pebbles next to the jetty. “Fucking hell,” Ringo mutters, eyeing the disintegrating wood. “If the current picks up and pulls the boat, this thing is collapsing and going under.” He gingerly steps onto the wood and leaves some extra rope before winding it around a stray post, the sturdiest he can find, which still isn’t too sturdy.
“Will it hold?” I ask, stepping onto the shore. My boots land a few feet away, courtesy of Goldie, followed by James’s and Brad’s too.
“Pray,” he grunts, and I do, stepping on board to help Otto drag the loaded ski closer.
“What’s inside?” he asks, steadying it as I reach for the catch at the back and release it.
“I don’t know.” I let the hydraulic levers slowly hiss their way up.
“So it’s like a Pick N Mix for criminals?” he asks, and I chuckle, but quickly stop when I remember...
“Fuck off,” I snap.
“Easy, son,” Otto mutters, pulling out a harpoon.
Son?My nostrils flare, and I grab an AK47, pointing it his way. It’s not loaded, but he’ll get the gist.
“Boys!” Goldie hisses, smacking my gun away, followed by Otto’s harpoon. “I’ll kill you both myself.”
I snarl, as does Otto, and we get back to business, passing back all the weapons and loading up. “Higham’s five minutes away,” Ringo says, holding his phone between his teeth while he slips bullets into a magazine.
I start jogging along the shoreline, getting more charged the closer I get to Winstable. A few times, I lose my focus and cast my eyes out onto the ocean, seeing me, a young lad, recklessly riding across the water. Then I see me, a grown man, kissing a woman. Then being blown up.Fuck. I realign my focus.
We make it to the shore, and I spend a moment taking in the drastic change in the landscape close-up. It’s derelict. Tidy, sparse, the land clear, except for the hangar, which makes hiding impossible from this side. The dense bushes and trees remain on the entrance side, hiding the hangar from the road. I hear Ringo’s phone chime quietly and look at him. He nods. Everyone locks and loads and moves in.
Then James holds his hand up and we all stop. A man appears, lighting a cigarette. He looks up, spots us, and just as I’m about to fire, James moves in, forcing me to lower my gun. In one swift, stealth move, he grabs the man, applies pressure to his neck, and he’s soon crumpling to the ground, unconscious. We all crowd around his lifeless body. “Don’t ever do that to me,” I say, hearing Brad chuckle. “Wait, I know that face.”
“The Chameleon.” James looks down at him, his face expressionless but deadly. “So your hunch was right. They’re operating from here.”
I blow out my cheeks, an icy chill tickling its way down my spine as I kneel and pat down his body. I pull out a VP9. The fuckers. I was right.I was fucking right!I’d love nothing more than to put a bullet between his eyes, but for the sake of keeping our presence undetected, I resist the urge.
We move forward again, James now leading, and I’m fine with that. The bloke spent years in the shadows, unseen, unheard, and I’m not arrogant enough to admit I could learn a thing or two from The Enigma. And that move back there? He’s showing me how it’s done. It could come in handy when my wife won’t heel.
“Right,” Otto says flatly from behind me, and James is suddenly moving again, stealth as fuck, somehow making it behind a tall, lanky fucker before he has a chance to raise his gun. He drops like a sack of shit and his Glock lands in James’s waiting hand before it hits the concrete.
“Good catch,” I say quietly, moving forward, poised, wondering what the fuck Higham is playing at. “Wasn’t he supposed to distract them?” I ask.
“Left,” Goldie mutters, making James turn quickly, sweeping his leg out, taking another man off his feet. He hits the deck on his back with a thwack, and everyone winces at the sound.
“I’m changing his name from Rambo,” Brad says. “Meet Bruce.”
“Wayne?” I ask, accepting the Glock James hands me and dipping, throwing a brutal punch, knocking out James’s latest victim and taking his gun too.
“Wayne?” Brad asks. “No, Bruce Lee.” He claims the second Glock. “Who the fuck wants to be a rodent?”