Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Devil's Due ❯ - 57 - ( Chapter 57 )

— 57 —

March 24, A.C. 205. Zenica, Tanzania. 6 am

Xane was staring up at the sky as he leaned against a building on the far side of the bridge. It was early, and the temperature was already comfortable for his jeans and t-shirt. Since his and Judas’ conversation had gotten cut short, they hadn’t been able to make any extreme plans, so Xane had opted to hang out and sleep a few hours before doing anything. Considering that Jordan had ingrained into them how important it was to sleep when you could because you never knew when you’d get the chance again, he assumed his comrade had planned the same sort of thing. It had been confirmed when his cell had vibrated briefly at five-thirty.

Judas had sent him a simple text message with one word. Now.

Considering that Xane knew how heavy a sleeper Mario could be, he’d silently made his way from the room, digging into the fridge and moving to sit down as he waited to see where the resources were.

Jordan wasn’t kidding, he’d seriously meant to keep Xane in the building. It’d taken Xane several minutes to figure out how to get around the soldiers. In the end, he’d won his way free and had made his way to the bridge.

Judas had his hands in his pockets as he moved over the thing, looking out at the river. He had a single-strap across his back from a black backpack with his laptop and other paraphernalia…including an extra scrambler. He wasn’t the only pedestrian walking, either. There’d been a fairly consistent stream since Xane had initially decided where to wait.

“Hey,” Xane muttered as the other neared.

“Yo,” Judas returned.

“Any problems?”

“Morgan was trying to be an issue,” the guy noted, considering it. “But I’d figured that last night when he did this,” he showed a dark bruise on his upper arm to his friend. “You can tell Jor hasn’t gotten to train him so much.”

“Mario was still sleeping when I left,” Xane noted with a grin. “The resources didn’t hinder?”

“I don’t imagine it was any worse for me than for you. Do you suppose Jor’ll castrate us?”

“I hope not,” Xane shoved away from the wall. “We should probably find something to eat. I swung by the house on my way here and it wasn’t showing any signs of life, so I’m gonna assume he doesn’t know. We can figure it out better when we get there.”

“Sounds solid,” Judas agreed, looking around. “I wish all mornings were this nice.”

Xane grinned in response to that. “His flight should be here by ten.”

“So we have four hours…how long you thinking about spending at breakfast?”

“Oh, an hour at least,” Xane shrugged. “We’ll probably have people sent after us, you know that don’t you?”

“Oh, Morgan will be furious,” Judas agreed pleasantly. “He’ll probably call Maxwell then and there.”

Xane sniggered slightly. “What’re the odds?”

“In our favor,” Judas retorted, giving him a look. “You never really want to know the odds.”

“It’s kinda like asking ‘what else can go wrong?’, huh?” the other agreed. “Words I never intend to ask.”

“Oh, I do,” Judas flashed him a grin. “Or else it’d all be way too easy.”

- -

March 24, A.C. 205. Zenica, Tanzania. 7 am

“Yeah?” Mario asked blankly, realizing he’d opened his phone and wondering if that was a bad thing.

“You trust him way too much,” Chance snapped irritably. “You were sleeping, weren’t you?”

“Yeah?” Mario repeated, sitting up and looking at the second bed in the room and blinking.

It was empty.

“Don’t tell me he’s not right there, Allul,” Chance snapped. “Don’t you tell me…”

“He’s in the kitchen?” Mario offered, climbing out of his bed and darting to the door. The main room had a few of the resources sitting tiredly on couches who gave him curious but pleasant looks.

“He better be,” Chance snapped.

“Mm…the courtyard?” Mario offered, moving through the place and looking around as he kicked himself silently for not keeping himself out of that deeper layer of sleep.

“You suck so hard,” Chance muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“Hey, you’re the one who told me only to cuff him if he was being a hassle…where are you?”

“In an airplane with a fairly pissed former gundam pilot,” Chance returned, groaning. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Ifhera disappeared, too.”

Mario smacked his forehead, leaning against the wall. “I feel like an ass,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Chance muttered with another heavy sigh. “You haven’t been trained specifically in the shit they do.”

“I just…I thought he’d try something, you know?”

“There’s no way in hell they wouldn’t have done just what they did. It’s Jordan’s fault.”

Mario could hear the man in question starting to rant in the background.

“Get some of our guys and…Xane told you where the house was, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Mario agreed.

“Go wait a ways away from there…near enough that if they come out running you can back them up. Don’t interfere with whatever they’re doing. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

Mario sighed heavily. “Yes, sir.”

- -

March 24, A.C. 205. Zenica, Tanzania. 7:30 am

“I wanna ask you something,” Judas muttered as they hunkered down in the yard behind that of their mark…the occupants of the home had left for work, so they were safe to play at hacking, or whatever else they could get into with the little black backpack.

“What’s that?” Xane returned, scanning the yard.

They’d been around the place in question several times and hadn’t seen a single soul. The only camera they could find was one covering the front yard. They’d both recognized it as a wireless thing, which meant there was a network they could breach with a little luck and time.

“If a tree falls in the woods…” he trailed off, looking to his friend.

“What?” Xane asked, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s right, you weren’t there,” Judas mused. “It was you we were playing at.”

“What?” Xane repeated, frowning at him. “Are you talking about Jordan wanting to shoot Corringer?”

Judas raised his eyes to meet his friend’s, not saying anything as he waited to see what the other man thought. He’d found several times over that Jordan’s mentality on the matter circumvented a helluva lot of red tape.

“We can’t,” Xane noted, looking away. “Don’t say stuff like that or you’ll get us both in trouble.”

“It solves one problem,” Judas muttered. “You have to admit…”

“No, actually, it’d circumvent justice.”

“I wish I could call you a hypocrite,” Judas grumbled.

A ball of guilt exploded in Xane’s stomach as he remembered the weapon he’d sold and the notebook still hiding in his apartment. He looked away.

Judas noted the change of demeanor and blinked at his friend curiously, then shook his head and went back to finding the network.

Xane dropped onto his rear, looking the yard they were in over. “What do you suppose it’s like to be normal?”

“That’s an utterly scary thought,” Judas remarked. “Ha, I’m in…I think.” He waited while the feed loaded, then grinned as he saw the front yard of the house they’d been tracking. “Do you suppose he has security guards?”

“Get all the way in,” Xane retorted. “Check the computer set-ups.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Judas retorted. “We could just turn on the scrambler.”

“And have them all over out here being suspicious?” Xane demanded. “Your sense of humor never fails to fall short.”

Judas sniggered at that. “Ooh, wha’s this…”

Xane shifted around to see the screen himself…and a shot of a living room.

“So we have internal cameras,” Judas nearly purred. “How decadent…”

“You know you’re strange, right?” Xane asked.

“Hush hush,” Judas dismissed easily. “Mm…seems to have a thirty second cycle.”

“How many rooms?” Xane asked, sitting back normally again.

“Living room, foyer…kitchen…hallway,” Judas returned. “Upper hallway…looks like an office…and back to the driveway. That gives us three minutes to get from one to the next. There are four doors off the upper hallway,” he added, looking to the other. “By the window in the office, I can tell it’s the front. That gives us three unknowns upstairs, plus two doors off the hall downstairs.”

Xane raised an eyebrow at that. “Okay, why would you have a three minute sweep? Seriously, it’d take us about five seconds to get in and if we can get into one of those rooms without a camera they wouldn’t have any idea we were there…I’m assuming the doors’re all closed?”

“Yep,” Judas agreed, then blinked at the screen.

“What?”

“I missed it,” Judas returned nervously. “There was something dark there.”

“Dark?” Xane asked, shifting to see the screen himself. It seemed excruciating to wait, but if there was an anomaly in the scan…the circuit went around again.

“Huh…” Judas started, starting to look to his friend. “I guess…”

“Basement,” Xane cut him off as it showed a dark room. There didn’t seem to be any movement in it, but there was a strange blue-green glow in the corner.

It flicked away.

“I thought I saw something,” Xane noted, looking to Judas. “Can you pull that camera up?”

“Just a second,” Judas returned, starting to click through menus…until a window popped open, lit by that same glow.

“Looks like a night-light,” Xane noted, moving in closer to study the scene. “There doesn’t seem to be any windows.”

“There aren’t,” Judas reminded him. “The ground area was all bricked…why is there a nightlight in the basement?”

The light shifted around, reflecting off movement.

“What’s in there?” Xane whispered, leaning closer. “There’s something moving in there.”

Judas, however, had thought it’d been a leg…a human leg…and it made his stomach drop. “Xane?” he whispered.

“What?” Xane asked.

“Weren’t there spies that disappeared? Three of them?”

Xane focused on his friend’s face sharply.

“Jordan said there were three people sent in to look around who disappeared. Two were together and one was off by himself.”

“You don’t think…” Xane started uncertainly. “Couldn’t that be the guard room?”

“This system is located in the garage,” Judas noted quietly. “There are two trucks and a car in that driveway. I bet that is a finished garage with the monitoring system.”

“So…we need to get in and see what it is in that basement,” Xane noted, looking toward the sky.

“We can pray it’s not dogs or Turrell’s room.”

“I’m gonna suggest his room is upstairs,” Xane noted. “And it’s serves to reason for one of those doors to be a bathroom and a guest room.”

Judas nodded.

“And you said two doors off the lower hall?” Xane added, looking back to the house. “I bet one’s the basement entrance and one’s another bathroom.”

Judas nodded again, watching the badly lit room.

“So,” he added, looking to Judas again. “You need to make these cameras come up on the front-screen,” he tapped the lid of the laptop. “And I need to call Allul.”

“What?” Judas asked blankly.

“If that’s really them,” Xane noted quietly, looking to his comrade seriously, “then we’re getting them out of there…I know what it’s like to be tied up and defenseless…and it gives me nightmares now…and that was…what? An hour? A couple hours? It wasn’t that long.”

“We have to make sure it’s them,” Judas noted quietly.

“I know,” Xane said, studying Judas. “I guess it’s time to see what we’re really made of, huh?”

“Call Allul,” Judas agreed, then frowned. “If he was a solider, why isn’t he up yet?”

“Let’s not overcomplicate this anymore than we have to,” Xane suggested quietly. “Get the names of our three.”

“Right,” Judas muttered, opening a browser window and starting to click through his screens.

Xane started to dial.

- -

March 24, A.C. 205. Negamono, Mozambique. 7:45 am

“They’re doing what?” Morgan demanded in disbelief of Mario.

“They went to that house and they think the guys the government had sent in are being held in there. They’re gonna go in and bring them out…”

“Holy shit,” Morgan whispered.

“I have to go,” Mario added. “We have to be ready to cover them when they come out. I have no idea how long this will take them. Tell Yuy for me?”

“Yeah…I’m calling now,” Morgan returned quietly, ending the call as his heart pounded in his chest. He’d been just shy of shocked to wake up and realize that Judas had disappeared…pissed, but not shocked. He’d called Maxwell instantly then, and he already had the numbers typed in now.

“Talk to me,” Jordan said, sounding agitated.

“Mouthy and your chameleon think they found the spies,” Morgan returned promptly.

“What?” Jordan demanded in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Allul just called and told me that Mouthy had called him and said they were just outside the hit. They said they’d hacked into the man’s wireless network and it showed a basement room. They’re going in because they think it’s the guys who went missing.”

“That’s a huge leap of logic,” Jordan snapped. “Don’t let them do this shit!”

“I’m in our mission building, Maxwell,” Morgan snapped at him. “I can’t leave, remember?”

The man made a disgusted noise, then started speaking quickly in the background. He made an agreeing sort of noise, then grunted into the mouth-piece…and the call ended.

Morgan closed his phone and rubbed at his eyes as his stomach churned again.

He didn’t know what was going to come of this…and the fact that it wasn’t even eight in the morning suggested his day was going to suck.