Jericho nodded. There was truly nobody better for the task than Lake. He was calm under pressure. He had an aura of peace around him that people responded positively to.
“Then we go in tonight.”
* * *
“Blue team, are you in position to breach the tunnel?”
Jericho and his boys sat dressed in all black in another of Thomas’s plain white work vans. The man seemed to have an endless supply. They had balaclavas, but they were rolled up so they could still see each other’s faces. It was chilly but not cold enough to want the rough cotton clinging to his face.
If they were somehow caught sitting in the middle of the nearly deserted garage, it wouldn’t matter if their faces were covered, anyway.
“Red team’s a go,” Jericho said, making sure the round was chambered and the safety off. The others did the same.
“Blue team?” When there was no answer, Noah said again, “Uh, blue team?”
There was a sound like scraping, and then August’s voice came over the line, calm but clearly irritated. “Blue team’s a go.”
“Everything good?” Noah asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, except your fiancé decided to drink a gallon of coffee before we left and made us stop ‘cause he had to take a piss,” one of the twins said.
Adam’s surly voice appeared on the line. “I didn’t sleep for shit last night. I had to dump a body, remember?”
“Everybody, focus,” Noah said, bringing their attention back to the task at hand. “The security footage is looped for twenty minutes. Blue team, taking out security is priority one. Red team, safe patient extraction is your goal. Everybody know what they’re doing?” Everybody answered in the affirmative. There was a long pause, and then suddenly Noah said, “Okay, three…two…go.”
Jericho and the boys obscured their faces and poured from the van, breaching the barely visible garage door. The tunnel was short and surprisingly clean and bright. Even megalomaniac doctors seemed to worry about the safety of their workforce. Or maybe he just didn’t know how many people he wanted to trust with his super secret underground lair. In truth, it was probably just untouched from the elements outside so had withstood the time since the hospital closed until Reed took it over.
Jericho felt a sliver of anticipation as they reached the end of the tunnel and held their position. They had no idea what they were walking into. Calliope would tell them where to go moment by moment, but for now, it was a mystery what lay on the other side of the door. The hospital was in the shape of a cross with a nurses station smack in the middle.
“Red team’s in place,” Jericho said in a stage whisper.
“Hold for go,” Noah said. “What’s your position, blue team?”
“The two security guards have been neutralized topside, but Atticus is limping,” August said.
“What happened?” Jericho barked, adrenaline sparking through his blood.
There was the sound of snickering through the piece in his ear. “He got caught on the razor wire and cut his leg. Don’t worry, Jericho. Freckles says it’s only a flesh wound,” one of the twins taunted.
“Go fuck yourself,” Atticus said, tone sulky.
Jericho smiled. God, he fucking loved him. He didn’t love the way his brothers constantly taunted him, though. He was going to end up fighting the entire Mulvaney clan if they didn’t back off of Atticus.
“I’d prefer to hear it from him. You good, Freckles?”
“I’m good. Promise,” Atticus said, sounding resigned to the level of teasing he was likely to get over his small snafu.
Calliope’s voice suddenly appeared in their ears. “Alright, children. My name is Calliope and I will be your tour guide for this excursion. Do what I say and everybody will make it out alive.”
Calliope’s voice loosened something in Jericho’s chest. She always added much needed levity to the conversation.
“We’re in luck today, because there doesn’t appear to be anything in the sub-basement except the generator and other various machinery, so that narrowed our playing field immensely,” she said.
That was something. Jericho had been dreaming about revenge for so long, but now, he just kind of wanted it over with. He wanted Reed dead, the patients freed, and for all of them to walk away unharmed.
“Red team,” Calliope said, pulling Jericho’s focus. “You are in the north hallway. Just inside the door, you’ll find four patient rooms, two on either side. Past those rooms, there’s a nurses station. There are currently two employees sitting there and another in a break room down the east wing. You’re going to need to work fast to get the patients freed. I’m releasing the locks on their rooms as soon as you enter but, remember, they may not all be lucid.”
“Roger that,” Jericho muttered, pointing at the boys standing beside him. They nodded in understanding.
