Capítulo 436: Ch 436 - No Time to Lose
Bill glowered at his other team members as they hauled Heidi between them. "Never underestimate your opponent," he said in a low voice. "Amy and James were the best of the best. They just got a little careless. We won't."
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," a voice rang out. It was Jude. "Just hand me the girl."
He stood tall in front of the group, calm and smiling with his arms crossed. As he stood there, facing the kidnappers, Gavin came sneaking silently up to watch them from a nearby corner."
Bill, take care of him!" one of the men shouted.
Bill stepped up in front of the rest of the men and took a long look at Jude. Then he smiled. He knew instantly that Jude was no match for him, no matter how tough he tried to look. He wouldn't even need to use his gun. With a smirk on his face, he tossed his submachine gun to the floor and approached Jude with raised fists.
Jude felt relieved. He had been worried that the whole group of men would try to rush him, but now he knew that he would only have to deal with Bill. And that wouldn't be difficult. An unarmed Bill wasn't a threat. He could handle him with one arm tied behind his back.
Gavin stood back and watched. He was some distance away, but he could see clearly what was happening. He had confidence in Jude, which was why he hadn't called for backup, but he had one weakness. He had a very high opinion of himself. Bill's words rang in his head. Never underestimate your opponent.
As Bill approached him, Jude only felt more sure of himself. After all, Alex had been able to handle two armed mercenaries by himself. Jude could certainly handle a single unarmed one. Just one more notch on the belt, he thought with satisfaction as Bill came within striking range.
He uncrossed his arms and prepared to fight. But just as he did so, he heard a whooshing sound and the loud thud of flesh crashing into flesh. He gasped for air and fell to his knees. Bill had struck him hard in the throat. He grabbed at his neck and gasped as his face turned bluer and bluer, and then he fell forward onto the floor. A thin stream of blood came flowing from his nose, and he stopped moving completely.
"That's one more taken care of," Bill said calmly. He cracked his knuckles and turned back to the other men.
They all laughed. With no one left to stop them, they walked out of the school building with Heidi trapped between them, turned a corner, and disappeared into the night.
Once they were gone, Gavin rushed forward. He had seen everything that happened, but he couldn't have stopped it. With his eyes fixed firmly on Jude's lifeless body, he took out his phone and brought it to his ear. His first call would be to the Baltimore Police Department. Then we would call his superiors.
**
News of the kidnapping spread like wildfire through Baltimore. Before long, everyone important enough to be the target of a potential kidnapping had heard what had happened, and they were all terrified. A group of mercenaries were running around kidnapping wealthy children for ransom, and nobody knew who would be next.
The situation caused endless trouble for Gavin. The agency was stretched to the limit with requests for protection, and the phones at their offices were overheating with angry calls. Gavin didn't just have to deal with incessant requests for personal protection. His superiors kept calling him into their offices to yell at him.
They screamed at him for failing to protect the people and for putting agents' lives at risk. Their anger was intensified by the fear among the upper classes, and Gavin had to sit there and take it. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference. And there was very little he could do.
But the words didn't hurt him. At least, they hurt him much less than the thought of losing good agents under his command. For days after the kidnapping, what concerned Gavin was not the increasing pressure from whoever felt that he was not doing his job. It was the anticipation of the decisions he would have to make once the mercenaries were found. And still, he kept looking for them.
Finally, news arrived that the mercenaries had been found. It appeared that they had not left the city, presumably for fear of being noticed. Instead, they had taken refuge in an abandoned factory in the city, and they had turned it into a fortress. The outer areas of the building had been rigged with explosives and booby-traps, and the mercenaries themselves were armed to the teeth. Without a careful strategy, the cost of taking the building would be enormous.
The news only heightened the tense atmosphere in the city. Everyone was on pins and needles. The whole situation was a powder keg waiting to explode. With each passing day, the mercenaries would become more desperate. And they had hostages, which they would no doubt take with them if they saw no way to make it out alive.
But the mercenaries had no intention of dying in that old factory. They had Heidi, the most important hostage of them all, and they were prepared with enough provisions to hold out indefinitely. If they held out long enough, a helicopter would come and airlift them out, and the authorities would not dare to stop them. They would simply fly away, safe and sound.
The only question was how long it would take.
It was the other side that wrestled with the issue of time. The building had to be sealed off, and no one could be allowed to escape. Those were the orders from above. And while nobody could say how it should be achieved, the situation had to be resolved quickly. If enough time passed, the ordeal might pressure Heidi's father to accept the demands of the mercenaries.
Such an outcome might bring Heidi back home safely, but it would set a dangerous precedent. It was unacceptable. In the end, a timeframe for resolving the hostage situation was set. Gavin and his agents had only ten hours before the building had to be stored. The truth about the situation, along with its timeframe, was classified. No one on the outside was allowed to know.
**
Alex had no idea what was happening. On the day that the deadline was set to expire, he was strolling around the campus of Johns Hopkins with Debbie. They were having a particularly good day, and everything seemed interesting and beautiful.
"Alex," Debbie said, biting her lip. "Could we get married soon?"
He looked at her with surprise. "I don't know," he answered. "You're still in school." He took her hand in his and smiled.
"But I don't want to wait any more," she said softly.
"There's no hurry," he said, and he ran his hand through her thick hair. "I'll wait for you forever if I have to."
Suddenly, his phone rang. Debbie covered her mouth and chuckled. "Go ahead and answer it, busy boy," she said teasingly.
Alex accepted the call and brought the phone to his ear. It was Ethan.
"Alex, thank God I reached you," he said. "Those gangsters have captured Heidi."
Alex wasn't surprised. He had warned Ethan that Heidi didn't have enough protection, and he had known that the men that were after her were no ordinary goons. He was very sorry to have been right.
"That's not my problem anymore," he said coldly. He wanted to distance himself from the whole ordeal, but in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but picture Heidi's suffering.
"Listen, Alex," Ethan said. "The head of the agency regrets his treatment of you. He really needs your help on this."
Alex stood thinking for a moment before he answered. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I don't have time." Before Ethan could retort, he hung up the phone.
They threw me away and rejected my advice, he thought. And now they beg for me to come and do their jobs for them. Let them beg!
He put the phone away in a hurry. His mood had turned foul. As he looked back up, he saw a small group of people over Debbie's shoulder. It was Ethan, Celia, and Gavin. They were coming closer in a hurry.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder