Chapter 8 - The Puppet Master
Alexander stared down at the stranger in the bed. The hollow face beneath the bandages had been surgically altered to mimic Marcus’s jawline, but the eyes, the hands, the scars were entirely wrong. It was a decoy, maintained purely to bait Alexander into the open.
Victor’s bloody laughter echoed off the high corrugated ceiling of the drydock. “You spent six months mourning an empty coffin, Alexander, and now you stormed my facility for a vegetable from an asylum! Marcus was never here!”
Alexander slowly turned his gaze back down to Victor. Without an ounce of emotion, he pressed his heel harder against Victor’s broken wrist. Victor’s mocking laughter instantly transformed into a shrill scream that bounced off the steel walls.
“Where is he?” Alexander asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but the sheer menace in it made the doctor behind the tool chest begin to sob hysterically.
“I won't tell you!” Victor wheezed, spit flying from his lips. “Kill me! Marcus dies the moment my biometric check-in fails! The life-support signal on my smartwatch resets every hour! If my pulse stops, his cell floods with seawater!”
Alexander glanced at Victor’s left wrist. A rugged tactical watch glowed with an active green pulse monitor. A countdown timer on the digital face read: 00:41:12. Forty-one minutes remaining before the automated failsafe triggered.
Briggs stepped up beside Alexander, looking grim. “Sir, if this watch sends an encrypted radio ping, tracing it could take hours through an offshore relay.”
“We don’t have hours,” Alexander replied. He knelt beside Victor, drawing a small, curved tactical blade from his belt.
Victor’s eyes widened with genuine, primitive terror. “What are you doing? I told you, if my heart stops—”
“Your heart won't stop, Victor,” Alexander said calmly, grabbing Victor’s collar. “You are going to take us there personally. And if you pass out from the pain, I will inject adrenaline directly into your chest until we arrive.”
Alexander dragged Victor to his feet by his coat, shoving him toward Briggs. “Get him into the transport. Doctor, grab your emergency trauma kit. If this piece of filth dies before that countdown reaches zero, you will take his place in that bed.”
The doctor scrambled to gather his bags, nodding frantically. “Yes! Yes, sir! Immediately!”
They rushed out of the drydock into the torrential storm, the armored SUV roaring to life as Briggs gunned the twin-turbo engine. Victor sat slumped between two guards in the back, gasping for breath while the doctor wrapped a tourniquet around his bleeding wrist.
“The timer is at thirty-five minutes, Mr. Vance,” Briggs shouted from the driver’s seat as the vehicle ripped through the smashed dock gates. “Where are we heading?”
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Alexander pulled his Kimber .45 and pressed the cold muzzle against Victor’s temple. “Give him the coordinates, Victor. Or I blow off your right knee and let the timer run down to zero.”
Victor’s nerve shattered completely under Alexander’s unblinking gaze. “The offshore oil derrick... Platform Nine... three miles past the territorial line!”
