“Alright, I can do that.”
“Give me a bit to get an idea of when they’ll be gone and I’ll give you a call,” I add.
“Sounds good,” Harrold says before disconnecting.
Good, that’s one less thing to worry about. Time to step up to the big leagues and get shit rolling.
Hopping out of my car, I don’t bother to look around too much. The usual suspects are here. We’re missing a couple of the newest circle members, but that shouldn’t be a problem for now.
Heading into the building, I just follow the loud laughs and the garbled scream.
Well, I guess they started without me. Hopefully someone already took the old fart’s thumbs if they need them.
Lucifer, Andrew, Gabriel, Simon, and John are spread around the room as I walk in.
Walking up to Simon, who’s sitting at a desk, I watch as he types away into some program. Then I look over to where Andrew is monitoring the old man.
“How did the waking up go?” I ask.
Simon tilts his head toward the old man. “He’s doing well, for the time being. Though we don’t know why they had him in a medical coma. No injuries or medical reason that we could easily pinpoint.”
“Not likely they were planning on using him as a bio-weapon,” I say to myself.
“No, thankfully not,” Simon replies.
“Maybe they were keeping him on ice to keep him out of the way of the son?” I ask.
“Why not just kill him then? Either way, this was too complicated for a simple removal,” Lucifer says as he comes over to join us.
“What’s he saying?” I ask.
“Nothing as of yet. We’ve tried to get him to talk, but so far he’s refused even a drink to help moisten the lips,” Lucifer says.
“Who’s turn is it on the roster to get answers?” I ask and know I should have kept my mouth shut the instant the words slide past my lips.
Lucifer grins at me. “Why thank you for volunteering, James.”
“Fuck,” I grumble as I look at the both of them.
“Do we have anything beyond using his son, Alexei, as motivation?” I ask.
“Not really,” Simon says with a shrug.
“Well shit, son’s dead anyways,” I sigh then look to the old man. “We keeping him alive?”
“Dead would be for the best,” Simon says.
Lucifer nods his head slowly in agreement. “Yes, that would probably be best.”
“What about sending him back to them?” I ask.
Both men look at me with confusion.
Raising my hands up, I say, “Hear me out.”
Moving over to sit at the desk across from them both, I notice Simon’s got a bit of blood underneath his nose and his right eye is a little swollen.
I cast a quick, sideways glance at Gabriel and see that he has dried blood under his nose too.
Fuckers were having fun without me.
“We make sure he doesn’t have a way to communicate with them, of course. Remove the tongue, eyes, and puncture the ears. Then we send him back with a love note saying they shouldn’t leave their toys in other people’s yards,” I suggest.
“Why?” Lucifer asks, but I can see he likes what he’s hearing.
His eyes are getting that diabolical sparkle to them.
“He was obviously kept alive for a reason, and he was kept under sedation,” I explain. “Something’s not right about that, beyond the obvious. We send him back to them with the hope it causes some serious internal strife. It could cause us one hell of a retaliation… but it could also give us a peek into the deep abyss that serves as their organization.”
I finish with my hands up again. “Will they freak out the old man’s been sent back? Will they freak out that he might have given us names or operational plans?”
“I like the idea, but I’m not sure how we could keep him alive long enough to get him back to them,” Simon says.
“Transportation…” Lucifer says as he looks to me.
“I’ve already called Harrold for a cleanup. We could use him as the shipper. He’s been known to be pretty neutral, and worse comes to worst, we just drop him off in front of one of their businesses in some state far away from us,” I say.
“It’s not as if we have to deliver him to Russia itself,” Simon says.
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s a simple solution that could pay off for us. We could even insert some sort of tracker in the heel of his foot or something. See if we can get a hit on any other locations they may be using.”
Grinning, Simon looks over to me and nods his head. “I like it. I’ll have Michael pick a tracker up from the compound and we’ll insert it… somewhere.”
I take in the face of the old man lying on the stretcher we brought him in on and I’m reminded of what a father in his advanced years would look like. I never met mine, but this man’s snarling visage…
It makes me think he probably looks like the father I might have had.
I can’t be sure though because my father was dead before I ever got a chance to meet him.
“So, old boy, they’re sending me in for the fun,” I say as I take the wrinkled hand without an IV in it and give it a light shake.
The old man tries to hock something up on me, but it ends up just dribbling down his chin.
I guess my bedside manner lacks something.
“What’s the plan?” Andrew asks as he looks up to me.
Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Lots of misery for this fuck. Got a second?”
“Sure, that paralyzing drug should keep him pretty useless from the waist down,” he says before slamming a fist down on the old man’s naked ball sack.
Fuck me, that didn’t even make the old man flinch.
“Gonna need that shit turned down a bit for what I have in mind,” I say.
“Oh, we gonna work on the legs first? Been a while since we did that,” Andrew says while we walk away from the stretcher.
Making our way over to Simon and Lucifer, I motion for Johnathan to join us.
“We need to keep him alive through all of this,” I say to Andrew once we’re all together.
“Fuck,” Andrew groans. “You all know I’m not a doctor, right?”
I grin. “You’ve got this, I have faith in you.”
“What exactly are we doing with him?” Johnathan asks.
“Fingers, ears, eyes, and tongue,” Lucifer says.
“Head, shoulders, knees, and toes,” I sing-song after him.
When every pair of eyes turns to me and just stares, I shrug my shoulders. I couldn’t help it, the song just came out of me.
Lucifer chuckles first, then the others quickly follow suit. Chuckling and shaking their heads.
“Anyway, we’re shipping him off to somewhere out of state. I think the west coast would probably be our best bet,” I say.
“Why not the east coast or New York?” Simon asks.
“Too hard to get through the city and back out. Also, it’s their big hub. Everyone knows their shit’s jacked up all over the eastern seaboard,” I say, trying to get my words out as fast as my thoughts are flying.
“So somewhere west coast,” John says and begins to rub his eyebrows in thought.