Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution (19 page)

“Wait, Jordan?” Charlie interrupted. “Like
the
Jordan? What the hell is she doing here?”

Daniel waved his hand to cut Charlie off.  “I’ll explain that later. Right now I have something I have to do.”

“Is this about your little rich friend problem?” Charlie asked in an overly nonchalant fashion.

“Yes,” Daniel responded flatly. “I need you to watch over Jordan while I’m gone—make sure nothing happens to her.”

Charlie put his hands on his hips and began chewing on his bottom lip. He seemed suspicious of the request for some reason.

“Why are you trusting
me
with this?” he asked Daniel in a serious tone.

“Because you’re the only person who’s never suggested that I should trust you,” Daniel replied.

Charlie nodded his head slowly and stared at the ground. “Alright,” he said casually before patting Daniel on the shoulder and strutting down the hall toward Daniel’s room.

Daniel rolled his eyes and went back to Richfield and Blank. As he walked by, both men joined him as they resumed their march to the elevator.

“My gun,” Daniel blurted. “I know Jitters would have grabbed it from the FBI safe house before leaving.”

“I’ll get it from my office,” Richfield acknowledged.

Daniel smiled as he pushed the button to summon the elevator door. Somewhere between attempts on his life something had drastically changed. He was no longer a lost little puppy depending on those around him to tug on his leash and pull him in the right direction. He was now the man giving the orders, and those people around him seemed willing to follow.

The elevator arrived at their floor and the three men stepped inside. Daniel turned to face the door and took a deep breath. He was about to try and kill one of the most dangerous men in the world.

He ran that through his head again.

He was about to try and kill one of the most dangerous men in the world, all by himself.

Oh shit!
He shouted in his mind as the elevator door slid shut.

Chapter 11

Daniel slammed down on the gas pedal. He felt the car shift as it began to pick up speed. He could hear the crunch of the gravel beneath the tires as the black sedan tore down the dirt road.

Before leaving Elite, Richfield had asked Daniel if he needed a vehicle. Daniel told him that it wouldn’t be necessary. Thankfully when the cab dropped him off the black sedan was still waiting right where he had left it, the keys still in the ignition. He planned to cause a fair amount of cosmetic damage to the vehicle, so he preferred to do it to one of Gordon Demérs’ own rather than one of Richfield’s.

“How will you know where to find him?” Blank had asked Daniel.

“When they had me tied up in the car I recognized which direction we were headed. I have a pretty good idea where they were taking me,” Daniel told him.

Daniel felt his gun pressing against his rib cage as he jerked the wheel just slightly to the left, and then back to the right. He was unsure of how many men he would be up against when he arrived at the house. Richfield had offered to send a couple of men with him, but again Daniel had declined, deciding that this was something he had to do on his own. It was about now—the black iron gate with the letter “B” on it now in sight—that he was beginning to regret that decision. He was one man with a single pistol, and he wasn’t even a very good shot.

Daniel came up on the gate quickly, keeping the gas pedal pressed firmly to the floor as he approached.

Instinctively, he closed his eyes as the front of the sedan smashed into the black gate, blowing it wide open. The high-pitched screech of metal on metal filled the inside of the car as it passed through the now blown open gate. Daniel opened his eyes to an array of scratches on the hood and windshield. Both remained intact.

He kept the hammer down. In a few seconds he would be out of the wooded area and in plain vision of the house. Demérs had sent six men to bring him in, he wondered how many more would have been left back for his own personal protection.

That was if Demérs were indeed there at all. Daniel knew there were hundreds of suburban neighborhoods that could be reached via the expressway on which he and his captures had experienced their rather unfortunate accident a few hours prior, but everything about Benze’s home made sense. Daniel kept remembering the image of the body lying in that dark room upstairs. With what he knew now he assumed the person lying in that bed to be one of Demérs experiments in his attempt to create the perfect human.

As he cleared the woods and saw the enormous Benze mansion sitting in the middle of a wide open stretch of land he was taken by surprise. Nowhere in sight was there a vehicle of any kind, nor was there any sign of human life. There were no men standing guard outside the door, and as far as he could tell there was no movement from inside the house.

At first sight it appeared as though he had been dead wrong and that Gordon Demérs had in fact not in fact taken up occupation in the Benze Estate.

Daniel started to let off the gas as he approached the circle drive at the front of the house. He pulled up to the front entrance and slammed on the brakes. Slowly, he stepped out of the car and took a look around. There was not a soul in sight.

He stepped around the front of the sedan and that was when he heard a strange yet familiar noise. It sounded like a sort of mechanical whirring. It didn’t appear to be coming from inside the house, but rather behind it.

Discretely, he shuffled his way around the side of the house. As he neared the rear of the mansion the sound began to grow more familiar. When he reached the back of the house he peered around the corner. His suspicions were confirmed. Sitting in the backyard about fifty feet from the edge of the back patio was a helicopter, powered up and ready for takeoff.

Tending to the helicopter was the first sign of life Daniel had seen since arriving at the estate. Two men were checking on something at the rear cargo hatch of the chopper. When they seemed satisfied with what they were looking at, they closed the hatch and walked around to the side of the aircraft. One of the men was wearing a large headset—no doubt the pilot. The other wore the same black suit as the men back at Demérs’ penthouse. Daniel recognized him as Salvador.

After speaking a few words that Daniel could not hear over the roar of the propeller, Salvador turned and headed back toward the house while the pilot took his seat in the chopper and began running down some sort of checklist. Daniel quickly jumped back behind the side of the house to avoid being seen by Salvador.

Carefully, Daniel looked up through the side kitchen window into the house. It appeared there was no one inside. He then made his way along the wall of the house, peeking into every window as he passed by. As far as he could tell there were no other people on the lower level of the house other than Salvador.

Daniel retraced his steps back to the rear of the oversized homestead, again looking into the kitchen window as he passed by. Salvador was standing in the doorway, the door propped open. He appeared to be waiting for someone—no doubt Demérs.

Daniel stuck his head out around the back corner of the house again. The pilot was still sitting in the cockpit of the helicopter, all of his focus directed at the checklist in his lap.

Slowly but not too slowly, Daniel began to creep around the rear of the house. He prayed that the pilot would not turn his head to the left as Daniel crept toward the sliding door that led to the kitchen. Asking Richfield for tactical gear had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the all black uniform stood out like a rhinoceros in a kiddie pool against the extremely light colored exterior of Benze’s mansion.

Luckily, the pilot never took his eyes off of the checklist before Daniel made it to the sliding door. Hands shaking, Daniel reached forward and slowly pulled the door open. He was in this now—there was no turning back.

The sound of the helicopter deafened the sound of the door sliding open, and Salvador kept his attention forward while Daniel snuck into the kitchen behind him.

Daniel tried to control his breathing while his nerves were trying to get the best of him. In his past confrontations everything had happened so quickly that he’d never been given the opportunity to become nervous. Even in his fights against Jitters and Titan he had not felt the frightened tension that he did in this moment because if he had lost to them he knew that he would be able to pick himself up and start again the next day. If anything went wrong here, it would most likely cost him his life.

He tried focusing on the connection between his conscious mind and the rest of his brain in order to distract himself from his fear. He never thought that he’d be so unappreciative of how easy it had become for him to use his extra neural pathways.

After closing the door Daniel moved out of the view of the window so that he was no longer in view of the pilot. He crouched down and began slinking slowly toward Salvador. Daniel pulled his gun out of his holster and grabbed it by the barrel. He should have wanted to kill the man who helped to frame him for the murder of a notorious mob boss, but he was afraid any gunshots might alert Demérs and whoever else was in the house to his presence.

When he was only a couple feet away, Daniel prepared himself to strike. He planned to pistol whip Salvador across the back of the head and knock him unconscious before he ever knew Daniel was there. Salvador however, was a professional.

As Daniel began to stand upright, Salvador sensed that someone was behind him. He spun quickly to try and catch his attacker off-guard, but Daniel recognized what was happening and was ready for it. He had seen Salvador tense up just seconds before turning.

Salvador threw a haymaker as he completed his one-eighty spin, but Daniel ducked it. Daniel then came up with the butt of his pistol, connecting with the bottom of Salvador’s jaw. Salvador’s feet came off the floor almost an inch from the power behind the blow and he stumbled backwards against the wall.

Daniel followed up, this time bringing the pistol over the top and cracking it against the back of Salvador’s skull. Salvador flopped to the ground, his body having gone completely limp. He would not be waking up anytime soon.

Daniel took a look around to see if anyone had heard the scuffle and was coming to Salvador’s aide, but the sound of the helicopter had been enough to hide it.

Daniel glanced up and noticed that the kitchen had barely been touched since his last encounter there the day prior. The bodies were now gone but the bullet holes and bloodstains were right where he’d left them. It served as a grim reminder of what he had become, and that he was about to become worse.

He left the unconscious body of Demérs’ head of security and made his way into the study which divided the kitchen from the exceptionally large living room. He moved through the all white room dressed in all black, and knelt behind the wall next to the foray. He poked his head around the corner and saw a black duffel bag sitting at the base of the stairs. He brought his head back around and checked his gun to make sure it was loaded and ready. This was it. He was about to become an assassin.

Daniel dropped his head and felt himself start to panic. He never believed he’d be the type of person to kill a man in cold blood. Certainly this man deserved to be killed—but he had never been the type to carry it out.

He took deep breaths and tried to regain his composure. He began longing for the life he had before the procedure. At the time he had felt depressed, but now all of those reasons that had sunk him into depression seemed so petty.

And in the end he had allowed himself to become just this—a killer. This is what he had been built for and now his transformation would become complete. He had let himself believe that he had undergone the procedure so that he could
protect
people, but the truth was that he had been designed to kill all along.

Though he supposed that in reality, killing Demérs was his way of protecting people. Not only the ones he loved, but all those Americans that Gordon Demérs planned to control. Sometimes protecting people meant having to kill others, but Daniel wished it wasn’t him who had to do the killing. He had brought this upon himself.

Although who could have predicted that the man the love of his life had ditched him for was a top-secret public enemy number one?

The love of his life.

Was Jordan still the love of his life? He had certainly believed she was when this all started, but now he wasn’t quite sure. The way he had felt about Norma—it had been similar, yet different. He had never been given the opportunity to decide if he had truly fallen in love with Norma or not. Could one feel true love with more than one person and have it feel different for each?

He shook his head. Only
he
could start contemplating his love life at the very moment he was about to kill a man. The only thing that mattered was that Jordan was truly his best friend and he would do anything to protect her, as this very situation proved. Whether or not she was the love of his life he was now her guardian, and he was not going to let her out of his life again anytime soon.

Daniel poked his head back around the corner to see if anyone was coming. It was as though Demérs were trying to give Daniel too much time to sit and dwell in agony. Finally, Demérs appeared at the top of the stairs. He yelled something down the hall, but Daniel couldn’t make out what it was over the sound of the chopper.