Other Fan Fiction ❯ Stolen ❯ Plans ( Chapter 9 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Chapter 9 - Plans

Jackson hopped off the smaller prop plane and headed directly for his connecting flight that would take him directly to San Antonio towards his employer's current base of operations. He never knew where he was headed when he received a call for an assignment and he wouldn't usually find out until he was in the air. His employers moved around a great deal and for various reasons. Sometimes they did it for convenience so that they could be close to the newest, highest priority job. Other times they just decided that for anonymity purposes they needed a change of location. He'd met about half of them personally and it was a testament to just how important he was to the organization. Pulling off the Keefe job was just another notch in his belt. It was the first high profile case he'd been given where he was given the priority role. He'd made the vital decisions, organized the manpower and given the final go ahead when the time came. He was also the one to deal with the highest variable mark that they had to rely on in many years. He pulled it off and today he was sure to meet a few more of his high level superiors.

You never knew what to expect from each one you met. Some behaved strictly professional, much like what you'd imagine what you'd come into contact with at any major corporation and then there were the odd ones. These individuals would never speak except about the missions. Their demeanors were far more stoic and cold then what Jackson had ever managed to achieve. Those in particular even made him check his back while leaving the room. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, which refused to do anyway but it was due to the simple fact that nearly all of them had been more than just assassins, they had been killers.

The difference lay in the enjoyment level of the job. For Jackson, it was just that, a job. He performed it like any other person in their career. He did his research, thought of the best way to accomplish the goal and they carried it out. He excelled at it but he didn't experience any perverse pleasure at the end result; the actual taking of life. But there were those that got into this line of work because instead of being serial killers, which pays nothing, they thought they'd combine their love and fascination with macabre killing to their career. The great pay that went along with contract assassinations was simply a bonus.

Jackson made himself comfortable in the first class seat that would bring him to his employer's location within a couple hours. He pulled out his water bottle from his carry on bag as well as a small, black device that looked deceptively like a blackberry. He flipped open the cover, took a quick peak inside and then closed it again just as quickly while he leaned back and got ready to take a bit of a nap. Lisa was in her room and alive. It had better stay that way.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lisa paced back and forth, occasionally stopping at the door and listening intently for any sign of life on the other side. She'd been doing just this for the last two hours and was actually beginning to believe that Rippner had indeed left her alone like he'd said. She stopped her incessant pacing turning to reexamine the room she'd become all too familiar with over the last month. Jackson had indeed left her alone and for up to five days. She hadn't felt this invigorated in God knows how long. She immediately decided that she needed to do something. Just sitting here, waiting for him to come home was simply unacceptable.

She walked to the window and again assessed the possibility of escaping that way. She noted that small scratches that she'd managed to put on the clear surface with her desk chair. She ran her fingers over the small imperfections she'd managed to cause and then looked around the room again. The chair was made of wood, she needed something more solid but there was nothing but wooden furniture in the bedroom so she headed to the bathroom.

As soon as she stepped in she headed immediately for the towel rack. There was a metal bar about three feet long and an inch thick. It took some effort, mainly a lot of kicking and pulling but Lisa finally managed to rip it from its place on the tiled bathroom wall. With a determination she hadn't felt in some time, she walked up to the window and cracked it against the surface.

“Shit!” She yelled as she dropped the now ringing piece of metal to the floor. The reverberation of the impact had stung her hands and she now stared crossly at the object of her hoped salvation. She needed a handle to absorb the impact because there was no way she was going to be able to break that damn window without it. She trotted over to her bed and pulled one of the pillow cases off of her bed. She then wrapped it around the base of the bar and started to pound away with much better results. Within a half an hour, the innermost layer of glass began to chip away and spider webs of broken but intact glass began to form. She was exhausted within an hour but it didn't stop her. It wasn't her muscles that would determine when she quit but the glass she was violently attacking.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jackson walked into a simple office of white walls and cheap, sparse furniture. It had surprised him the first time he'd met one of the higher ups. They didn't surround themselves in the wealth and luxury that they had accumulated; instead, they relied on quickly moving operations rather that leather chairs and mahogany desks. The desk he now approached had tan metal sides and a Formica top. It looked more like a room you might expect in a janitor's office then that in the operational area of the world's most effective supervisor of contract assassinations. There were no secretaries or office assistants, just four people. Two bosses and a bodyguard whom Jackson had no doubt could kill him in a dozen different ways before he could get anywhere near upper level management. The guard that had frisked him on the way inside was now standing directly behind him.

“Let's see the plan and then we'll discuss the allocation of recourses.” Spoke the woman that was obviously in charge of the center. Jackson nodded his head, set his case on the surface of the cheap desk and pulled out the dozier of the proposed target as he got down to business. He'd met this supervisor before just a year ago and this was one of the disconcerting ones. She wore sunglasses the entire time and said nothing aside from discussing points and achieving clarification. By the end of the meeting, the boss laid some information down on an encrypted disk and handed it to Jackson. In it contained the account numbers that would provide him with the recourses needed to begin the operation as well as the phone numbers for a number of different professionals that the boss believed would be good for the job.

However, if Jackson had anyone specific in mind that he wanted to use, then he had the entire purview to do so. These were just the preliminaries for a job that would likely take place in three to four months but any decisions made now would be vital later on. The early portions of the process were often the most important and that was why it took solid thinkers and researchers like Jackson to pull them off. This was Jackson's seventh high profile case. It was a Russian diplomat that had been making trouble for the client the company had decided to take on. The only deadline was to have the job completed before the Russian elections took place in December. That gave Jackson plenty of time, far more than on the Keefe job.

He'd spend his time within the drab offices with some very high tech communication devices in order to gain the right people and the right equipment required to accomplish the mission. This operation had to be done quietly and the final product had to look natural. That meant medical experts would be preferred to give the old man a semblance of a heart attack. Though these jobs require less manpower, it was a far more difficult and tricky operation to finalize. Jackson knew just whom to call.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lisa closed her eyes and breathed in the warm ocean breeze. It had taken the entire day to break a hole in the glass that was big enough for her to fit her head through. Once she'd done that, she frowned seeing just how difficult it was going to be to get anywhere from the window. A hundred feed below, breakers crashed on jagged rocks and there was at least fifteen feet of flat, vertical surface on the outside of the house that she'd have to scale in order to get out. She quickly realized that her only hope would be to catch a small portion of the roof that stuck out about three feet over twenty feet vertically from her. She sighed and pulled her head back inside to glance around her room looking for anything that would help her overcome her latest obstacle.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

By the end of the third day, Jackson already was satisfied by the people he'd gathered for the job. All were officially arranged with the initial payments received to assure their continued interest with the assignment. In all, he'd gathered seven people, a very small number for a case considered this important and with the size of payoff being offered. The boss was still wearing her sunglasses as she looked over the assembled operational information. She took notes on several portions before nodding.

“This is green.” She said simply and then stood to leave. When she reached the door she turned to address Jackson a second time before leaving. “Pull this one off and you'll get your own team.”

Jackson inclined his head in agreement and smiled but she'd turned, already leaving before seeing the gesture. Having his own team would be great. It meant less leg work but more responsibility and money. It's exactly what he'd been working toward for years now. If this went as he thought it would, that would mean he'd be in the running to become a boss within the decade.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!” Lisa yelled for probably the fiftieth time in the last day. Catching the roofing overhang that towered twenty feet above her and five feet to the left was proving to be nearly impossible. She'd redesigned her grapple system half a dozen times and had met with no success. She was so exhausted and discouraged. She only had a day left. She pulled herself out from the window and glanced at the room. It was a shambles. Her bed was torn apart to make way for the materials she'd hoped would get her out of the room but now it just looked like a torn disarray of fabric and dense foam. She'd taken apart part the refrigerator for other components she thought she'd be able to use and there was glass everywhere. Her entire plan had been to make it to some type of communication system to let someone know where she was and that she was indeed alive, after that, she had no idea since she didn't know what existed on the island past the three rooms she'd seen of the house. She'd been so hopeful in the beginning but as more and more time passed; she was discouraged by the fact that she hadn't even gotten out of the room, let alone to a phone. She started to feel trapped once more. The adrenaline of deciding to attempt escape had already left her after the first day. She turned back to the window, sighing in frustration but she didn't give up.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jackson grabbed his bag from the small cargo hold on the bottom of the prop plane, waved to the pilot and headed to the jeep at the edge of the runway. He'd returned a day early, having done all he could do to get the mission started. He jumped in the jeep in a bit of a rush, curious to see what Lisa had been up to while he'd been away.