CHAPTER NINETEEN Justice and Redemption

Jack Stryker was livid. Somebody cut the power while he was trying to decide on his endgame. Once he had Martinez and the flash drive, it would be time to vanish. It looked like he’d waited too long.

He activated his ICS system and paused in the dark. The admiral, that weak, sniveling asshole, stood at his elbow.

“We should—”

“Shut up,” Stryker said.

“I can’t see. Let’s be calm and figure out what needs to happen next.”

Stryker hit Admiral Bates, something he’d been wanting to do since he met the man. It was an almost casual blow to the officer’s chest, which made him shut up.

“If you speak again, I’ll kill you,” Stryker said.

The admiral didn’t have much to say. That was the idea.

Stryker examined the world before him in shades of green. He switched to thermal imaging, the heat signatures of running soldiers bright against a field of black, and then to a view from above. He was surprised to find no drones on station, and the best view he could obtain was from a satellite. It was enough.

He assumed his bosses were trying to kill him, and that was the reason for the sudden loss of power and the gunfire in the corridors of the compound. He waited for the telltale hiss of drones about to explode his skull, and he was surprised to find himself still alive while the shots echoed through the halls. He saw the helicopters, the soldiers running around the base.

Stryker was gifted at seeing patterns. He knew he was a liability now. He was trying to figure out why the Directors acted to kill him so quickly, though. He dragged the admiral by his collar and hunkered down behind a desk, sidearm in his hand.

What if it was the last op Alpha Pack went on? Operation Snowshoe. What if that’s what this is about? They want every bit of evidence from Operation Snowshoe erased. Whatever in the hell these idiots saw is recorded. Maybe it was never only about the drive, it’s about what they saw, and there are only a couple of them left, and me. I brought them the Wolves, and now I’m just another loose end. Think, Iceman. How can you beat them?

In the dark, hunted and cornered, Jack Stryker grinned, feeling invigorated in the way of a college kid with wind in the hair and the drop-top down and music blasting, alive in the moment in a way he seldom was.

He was broken and mean and deadly, and for him, this was a good thing. It was oxygen.

* * *

Hate is a black hole which consumes life and light, warping reality with ever-increasing ferocity until that which is good is crushed and destroyed.

Hatred begets evil. An evil man does not recognize the truth in the mirror, for his small acts of sin seem insignificant, compared to the crimes committed by others. There is always an excuse, a justification which prevents true conviction and remorse.

* * *

With the power of supercomputers connected directly to his cerebral cortex, he culled through files he’d viewed over the last two months.

He reexamined footage of Suzanne Wilkins’ escape from Key West, seeking clues. She must have gotten in contact with her husband, somehow. And he probably got some information to her he shouldn’t have. She could be the key to his survival, a final bargaining chip.

He thought about her means of escape, something tugging at him, and then he remembered. He’d hacked the boat’s GPS system when he’d first set up surveillance. Now he accessed that file again, zipping through waypoints. He knew where he would go, if he were in Suzanne’s position.

He waited in the dark for another hour, then walked through the underground maze, keeping the admiral in front of him, prodding the man to go left or right with a pistol pressed against his kidney.

He went to the cells where the Wolves had been detained, stepping over a lifeless Simmons. The cells were empty. This confirmed Stryker’s hunch. The Directors sent in another kill team to do a clean sweep. They were hunting him now.

“Good-bye, Admiral,” Stryker said, and placed the muzzle at the base of the man’s brain.

“Wait,” Admiral Bates said.

Stryker squeezed the trigger, the gun bucked, and the old man fell facedown on the floor.

Jack pulled out the piece of notebook paper covered with numbers and placed it on the admiral’s back; then he sent an image of this to one of many cutouts reserved for one-time communication with his handlers. He included this brief message: “Call off your dogs. I have something you need.”

He had no confidence it would work, but he had to try. There was no place he could hide where the Directors would not eventually find him. Running from a fight was not in his nature, certainly not when it would mean his eventual demise. He was the kind of man who bided his time, chose his battles.

* * *

A cunning man, Stryker overestimated his own ability in the way that evil men often do, impressed by his ability to survive and thrive, and chalking this up to superior intellect rather than mere brutishness.

He’d killed more men than he could count, but some seemed more important than others. As he slipped out of the compound, he remembered some of them.

His childhood tormentor, of course. That pimple-faced sadist. That one always came to mind first. And the priest, even though Jack did not like to think about that time of his life. Those two murders taught him much about life, death, and himself. He understood that justice and revenge were the same thing, that redemption came from violence.

Sometimes, when he replayed murders over in his mind, he would find himself crying, and he did not understand this. Usually, the memories made him smile. One of the memories that made him smile most often was when he killed Lieutenant “Boy Scout.”

It was a long time ago, back when Stryker was an eager, fresh-faced soldier, still trying to fit in and kick ass.

The lieutenant was some kind of a Baptist, who would pray with his men before patrols, levelheaded and brave, and his men loved him. Stryker tried to, but that feeling was not in him. There was a kind of admiration, at least in the beginning.

He had this way of looking at you like he knew he had a secret he wished you knew too. Like he was almost sad you didn’t know it. But that changed over time when he looked at me. It became disappointment and then naked revulsion. It was as though the man had X-ray vision of the soul, and he judged me, decided I was beyond hope. Transferred me out of the platoon with no warning.

Stryker shot the man a year later with a suppressed sniper rifle somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan while his platoon was supposed to be providing security for Lieutenant Boy Scout.

* * *

Stryker believed in justice. He’d heard the Everglades were nice this time of year.

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