In my hand the cold, matte steel of my custom-made Beretta is a familiar comfort.
“Move in,” I command, my voice low. “Clear the ground floor. I want a path to the heart of this place.”
They flow past me, a river of black Kevlar and lethal intent. The main warehouse door groans open, revealing a cavernous space swallowed by darkness. Our helmet-mounted lights cut beams through the gloom, illuminating floating dust motes and a forest of silent, skeletal looms. The air is thick with the ghosts of industry and something else, something waiting.
We move in a standard tactical diamond, Marco at my back, his presence a solid, reassuring wall. Our footsteps are swallowed by the vastness, but every sound feels amplified to me: the thud of my own heart, the rhythm of my own breath.
Ezekial is here. Ezekial is close.
The certainty is a drug, hot and sweet in my veins.
A door creaks open to our left. A scrawny man with wild eyes and a kitchen knife lunges out, screaming garbled nonsense. He doesn’t even get within five feet. Two suppressed shots from the point man, a dull thump-thump, and he crumples to the concrete.
Another one tries to ambush us from a catwalk above. A single shot from another of my men and he pitches over the railing, landing with a wet crunch behind us. The violence is clinical, efficient. It fuels my excitement.
Each dead disciple is a thread cut from Ezekiel’s delicately worked tapestry, making him weaker, more exposed.
We find a set of metal stairs leading down. The intelligence said the lower levels were the nerve centre. Of course. Rats in the basement.
“Heat signatures are coming from below,” Marco says, checking a small handheld scanner. “One. Maybe two. The rest are cold.”
“He’s cornered.” I say, the words tasting of triumph.
The stairs lead to a long, narrow corridor lined with rusted pipes. The only light comes from our own beams, creating a moving pool of clarity in the oppressive dark. At end of the corridor there is a heavy, industrial steel door where a sliver of warm, yellow light spills out.
This is it. This has to be it.
I signal my team. Four men stack up on the door, weapons raised. One gives a silent count with his fingers. Three. Two. One.
They breach fast and clean, sweeping the room with practiced precision. I hear their calls. “Clear! Clear!”
I step across the threshold with Marco a shadow at my shoulder.
The room is not what I expected. It’s small, circular, an old boiler room perhaps. But it’s clean. The rust has been scrubbed from the pipes, which are painted a dull gold. Tapestries hang on the walls, rich, embroidered fabrics depicting strange, esoteric symbols—a serpent eating its tail, a ladder reaching into a fractured sun. Candles burn in sconces, their flickering light dancing over the only piece of furniture: a simple wooden chair in the centre of the room.
And a man.
He stands with his back to me before the chair, gazing at one of the tapestries as if it might be his very salvation. He’s tall, wearing a simple dark t-shirt and jeans. His posture is relaxed, contemplative. He doesn’t flinch at the violent entrance of my men, he doesn’t turn either. The arrogance of it is staggering.
A fierce, hot joy erupts in my chest.Finally.After months of dead ends and phantom leads, here he is. Ezekiel Sewell. The man who thought he could challenge us. The man whose head will be my gift to the Grand Master.
My men have him surrounded, the red dots of their laser sights painting his back like a constellation of death.
“Ezekiel,” I say, and my voice echoes in the stone room, thick with triumph. “Turn around. Your rebellion ends tonight.”
The man does not move. A cold trickle of unease cuts through my euphoria. Is this too easy? Where is the panic? The defiance?
But my source has never let me down before. He was the reason I could set my little trap in Paris, could eliminate six Esau rats in the freezing cold woodland of Estonia. He’s not wrong about this, he can’t be wrong.
“I said, turn around.” I bark, stepping further into the room, my Beretta raised.
Slowly, with an almost theatrical deliberation, the man begins to turn.
It feels like an eternity. I see his profile, a strong nose, a greying beard. My finger tightens on the trigger. I am already composing the report in my head, the words I will use when I present him, bound and broken, to our Grand Master.
He completes the turn.
And the world stops.
