Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution (8 page)

As Daniel landed on the other side of the counter, he held down both the clerk and Jordan so that they couldn’t get up and put themselves in a dangerous position.

“Stay down and nobody gets hurt!” He heard one of the robbers yell over the frightened screams of the other customers and staff in the store.

Once he was satisfied that the saleswoman wasn’t getting up, Daniel threw both arms around Jordan. He took a breath and went to open his neural pathways only to find that they had already done so on their own.

“We only want the merch and then we’re gone!” The same crook yelled to the crowd. “Now shut up!” he said as he used his foot to nudged the back of an older woman on the floor who wouldn’t stop whimpering.

“Now who runs this place?” The thief asked.

Daniel looked through the display case in front of him to see that the men now held guns in their hands. Two appeared to have automatic rifles—the one doing the talking and the one guarding the door—while the third appeared to be holding a shotgun and keeping watch over the crowd.

Daniel quickly began looking around for an escape. It was not a very big store. It was rectangular—about sixty feet deep and thirty feet wide. About four feet behind the counter and just to the right of where he and Jordan were squatting was a small hallway. On the right side was what appeared to be a small office, and in the reflection of the office window he could just barely make out a small sign on a door that said “Employee Restroom.”

Daniel looked back to find the appointed leader of the trio speaking to one of the employees.

“I am the manager,” the stocky male employee said to the robber.

“Good,” the lead crook responded. “I imagine you’ve already pressed the silent alarm, which means we only have a few second to get this done. I want you to open up the display cases and put as many items into this bag as you can in the next sixty seconds.”

The leader pulled a brown sack out of his coat and handed it to the manager.

“If you don’t hurry your ass up, I’m going to shoot somebody. And if we’re still here when the cops show up, that means we have to take hostages. So hurry the fuck up!”

The manager immediately bent down to unlock the display case directly in front of him. Fortunately for Daniel, the manager had been helping a customer in the front part of the store when the three men walked in, far from where Daniel and Jordan were at the very back of the store.

Currently, the leader’s attention was focused on the store manager filling his bag with precious metals, while the man guarding the door had his eyes fixated out the window. The third man who was carrying the shotgun had his back to Daniel and Jordan, observing the customers in the front of the store.

Quickly, Daniel grabbed Jordan and pulled her along as he darted for the hallway. Three long strides and he found them directly in front of the bathroom door. He immediately swung the door open and threw Jordan inside. As he did so he turned to make sure none of the robbers noticed them. As he followed Jordan threw the doorway it appeared as though they had gotten away unnoticed. He could only pray that the sales clerk kept her mouth shut.

Daniel quickly but silently shut the door behind them and locked it. There were no windows in the bathroom, there was only the light that bled through the cracks of the door.

Daniel quickly pulled his Glock out from his holster and trained it on the door.

“You have a gun?” Jordan involuntarily yelped.

Daniel threw up his left hand and clasped it over her mouth. He winced and prayed to the high heavens that the three men with deadly weapons hadn’t heard that.

“Forty-five seconds!” He heard the leader scream. Thankfully he was a real loud mouth.

“Can you help them?” Jordan whispered almost too loudly to Daniel. Apparently the fact that he had a pistol now made him invulnerable to three men with two automatics and a shotgun. “That’s what you do right?”

“No!” He shouted in a hushed tone. He kept his gun aimed at the door handle.

“No. I
protect
people,” He explained.

“Well there are people out there who need your protection,” Jordan countered.

Daniel rolled his eyes. He did not feel like explaining the nuances of his job at this very moment.

“I protect
specific
people,” he elaborated. “And right now I’m being paid to protect
you!”

Jordan took a couple more breaths, digesting Daniel’s words.

“I can’t have other people get hurt because you’re in here protecting me,” she whispered.

“Shh!” Daniel shushed.

He stood and contemplated, his gun still pointed at the door.

“Twenty seconds!” The lead robber yelled. It would all be over soon.

“This happening has nothing to do with you,” Daniel assured Jordan. He was actually glad to hear himself say it and know that it was the truth. This was a random act and as long as they stayed quiet they would be safe.

“Besides,” he continued, “just a few more seconds and they’ll be gone. As long as no one tries any
hero shit,
they’ll leave quietly.”

Just as the words were out of his mouth Daniel heard sirens come screaming up from outside of the store.

“Shit!” he yelled in a whisper.

He instinctively wiped the sweat from his brow. Until that point he hadn’t even realized that he was sweating.

“Fuck!” a different voice yelled this time. “Fellas, we got company!”

“Give me the damn bag!” The first voice yelled. “Where’s the back door?”

Daniel’s heart stopped. He remembered seeing the back door was just a few feet past the bathroom.

“No way,” a third voice said in a calmer tone. “Cops will have the back door covered already. We do this the hard way.”

A split-second later Daniel heard a woman scream followed by the voice of the leader.

“Relax!” He yelled.

“We gotta show ‘em we mean business.” The third voice had a very deep, rough tone to it with the flavor of an overly thick New York accent.

The leader spoke again, “They know we have hostages you dumb motherfucker! Unless you want to add a murder charge to armed robbery for no fucking reason, I suggest you calm the fuck down!”

This was followed by a brief pause and then the sound of a woman crying.

A voice then came over a loudspeaker. Daniel was unable to make out any words from inside the bathroom.

“
Now
they need you,” Jordan whispered from beside Daniel.

Daniel continued to breathe slowly and keep his eyes focused on the door handle. Richfield’s words kept echoing through his head.

“Stay with the client.”

“I can’t leave you,” Daniel insisted. “If anything happens to you, it’s on me.”

“No,” Jordan countered. “As your employer I am ordering you to go out there and help those people.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Daniel responded harshly.

From out in the store he heard the front door open and one of the men yell something to the police outside.

“You are the only person who can save these people, Daniel,” Jordan persisted. “You
have
to.”

“What do you expect me to do?” He asked her almost too loudly. “I’m just one man.”

There was a level of defeat in his voice. He had built himself up to be this superman, someone who could take down anything and anyone, but now here, in front of Jordan, he was faced with his own mortality.

Most of the other agents at Elite probably could have taken out all three men with three quick shots before they even knew what was happening, but Daniel didn’t have those kinds of skills. Jitters was right, he had no business being the number one agent.

One thing that had not changed about Jordan however, was her stubbornness.

“I think you proved in the gym this morning that you are certainly not
just
a man,” she said with what almost sounded like some joy in her voice.

For the first time since closing the door behind them, Daniel turned to look at Jordan. It was dark, but he could see that she had somehow managed to curve the side of her mouth into a smirk.

Daniel took a deep breath, and brought himself to maximum pump.

“What’s the point of joining a group that
protects
people if you’re only willing to save the people who have the money to pay you?” She asked him.

“We’re a
personal
security force,” Daniel countered with one last attempt to get her off the idea of him rescuing everyone in the store.

“Maybe
they
are, but I know you better than that. You’re good, you want to help people. I see it in you. It’s not in your nature to stand by and let these things happen. You want to be better than everyone else. Well if that’s true then prove it, because a
better man
wouldn’t hide in a bathroom.”

Daniel dropped his head between the two arms that held his gun out in front of him. She had to go there. She
always
went there. Even after all these months with no contact she still knew the exact buttons to press.

“I’ll be fine in here,” she added, knowing already that she had won. “Just sneak back out and take ‘em down.”

“No,” he responded, only this time more tactfully that stubbornly. “That’s too risky. They have to think I was in here alone. Take this.”

He reached over and handed Jordan his Glock. He wasn’t a very good shot anyway.

“Lock the door behind me, and if anyone tries to come through you shoot them,” he instructed.

“I don’t know how to use this thing!” Jordan whispered in a panic.

“Just point and shoot,” he told her calmly, cupping her hands in his as she gripped the gun.

He then reached behind her and flushed the toilet, then turned on the sink. He waited five seconds before turning off the sink and turning toward the door. He unlocked and opened the door, stepping out into hallway and making sure to close the door behind him. He turned to see a confused bandit pointing a shotgun directly at his chest.

Daniel slowly stepped forward and threw his arms up in the air.

“Whoa, what’s going on here?” He decided to play overly dumb. The idea that someone could have been in the bathroom for that long and not heard everything going down in the store seemed positively absurd.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The robbery’s leader asked from over by the door.

“Get down!” The man with the shotgun yelled, extending it out over the counter, just a foot or so from Daniel’s face.

That was exactly what Daniel wanted.

Remembering what Elise had taught him, Daniel quickly swung his arm down and grabbed the barrel of the gun while simultaneously moving his head in the opposite direction. The man fired.

Daniel felt the heat from the barrel on his hand as the rounds went into the wall behind him.

Daniel then pulled the gun over the counter. The man maintained his grip on the gun and started to come over with it.

Expecting this, Daniel threw his other arm forward in the direction of the bandit’s face, palm up. He felt the man’s nose cartilage disintegrate underneath his palm as he pushed his arm through the man’s face until it reached full extension.

The man screamed and immediately let go of the weapon, throwing his hands over his nose as he gushed blood onto the floor. He then tried to get to his feet but was too woozy to do so and instead fell back over onto his side.

The blonde sales clerk yelped as some of the robber’s blood got on her blouse.

Daniel quickly turned the gun around, cocked it, and aimed it at the leader of the group, but he had already grabbed one of the hostages off the floor and was holding them up in front of him with his gun tip stuck into their ribcage.

Daniel looked to the third crook and saw that he had his automatic weapon trained on Daniel.

Now what?

“Nice moves cowboy,” the leader spoke. “But did you forget there were three of us?”

Daniel kept the shotgun aimed at the leader, whose face was peering over the shoulder of his tall, male hostage. Even if Daniel were the greatest shot in the world, the spray of a shotgun would do him no good in this situation. He could have taken out the man guarding the door, but he couldn’t risk the leader then shooting his hostage.

Daniel could tell that these men didn’t want to kill anyone, though they surely would as a last resort if their survival depended on it. He tried to figure out how to use that to his advantage.

He reached down and picked up the wounded man from the floor and held him up by his collar in front of him. Daniel then placed the barrel of the shotgun up against the man’s chin.

“I’ll kill this piece of shit in a second,” Daniel told the man, trying to pull off the best crazy eyes look he could manage. Truthfully he had no intention of killing anyone. Critically wounding however…

“Go for it asshole,” the leader responded. “Bigger cut for me.”