I am not lonely [Mystrade]

CHAPTER 63 : Retaliation

"Sir, your helicopter is ready." Anthea informed her superior after pocketing her phone.
The auburn nodded before grabbing the black bag laying between his feet and made his way to the door leading to the heliport. Despite the act he was to accomplish he was feeling oddly relaxed and when taking a seat in the helicopter he wondered if he wasn't going to fall asleep before they reached their destination.
To help himself focus on his task, he opened once more the red file on which Giorgio Alvarez's picture was pinned. All the information that his assistant had been able to gather on the man were reunited in this summary. All his habits, prison sentences and murders or suspect murders printed in black letters on white paper. Even if Mycroft haven't hated the smuggler before reading this he would now without any doubt. He, alone, was responsible for at least 67 murders and 12 abductions, half of which were committed against children and teenagers.
"We will arrive in five minutes sir." the pilot indicated him in his headset with a thick French accent.
The official took a look on the Alps by the window, contemplating absentmindly the snowless landscape. He always had found mountains odd without snow even if he could see in the distance the highest mountain warded off with eternal snow.
As soon as the shepherd refuge where Alvarez was hiding appeared in his sight, the elder Holmes felt all the anxiety he hadn't felt yet filling himself. Smoothly, the pilot lower the attitude of the vehicle until the landing skid were only half a meter away from the ground. Quickly, the official jumped out of the cockpit and headed to the refuge 50 yards away from his position, bending to avoid the blast of wind moved by the helicopter.
Taking a grip on his gun and loading it, he opened the decayed door with a single kick discovering a single room and Alvarez laying down on a foul mattress in one of the corners. The smuggler was agape, looking at the auburn without actually believing what he was seeing. Taking advantage of the Peruvian's surprise, the elder Holmes raced to the mattress and gave a kick into the Glock lying beside it before the smuggler got any idea to use it.
"Up." he ordered, trying to hide the nervousness of his voice. Alvarez still didn't move, looking from the gun to its holder. "Up !" Mycroft repeated, kicking the man in the ribs to get a reaction.
Suddenly, the Peruvian jumped on his feet and recovering his mind he tried to punch the official and to grab his gun. Forgetting all the decorum and loyalty rules, in a survival instinct, Mycroft threw his knee right in the smuggler's private parts with an incredible strength making him bellow and collapse on the floor.
"Care to try again ?" brashed the auburn stepping two feet back to avoid a new physical confrontation, his gun still targeting the man on the floor. "Up."
Grunting and cursing the elder Holmes in Spanish, Alvarez stood up and joined the unsound chair that he was indicating him. The two men observed each other silently during a few of minutes, the Peruvian sat carefully on the chair and the auburn standing a couple of meters away, looking at him archly, his gun pointed to the man's chest.
"What were you doing in London ?" he finally asked, leaning against one of the wooden walls.
The smugglers looked at him with as much bravery as he could gather and even managed a smirk through his pain. "You have no idea." he tried to laugh with a thick Spanish accent.
Mycroft fired a bullet through the wall behind Alvarez, just a meter away from the man's head. "I recommend you to answer the questions if you don't want the next one to be fired in your rotten brain. Am I clear ?" Feeling powerful again, all the nervousness of his voice had vanished and he was giving the man his most threatening voice. "What were you doing in London ? And don't worry, I already know the answer so you better say the truth if you don't want to lose a knee to my gun."
"Extending my market." jerked out the smuggler, obviously pissed off and doubting that the official was telling the truth but to careful to risk his knee to confirm his doubts.
"Your market or La Mano's market ?" smirked the auburn. "I asked you for the entire truth or 'boum'."
"You know La Mano ?" wondered Alvarez, a glimpse of fear passing through his eyes.
"I ask the questions here." Snapped the elder Holmes. "And for your guidance, if you want to keep unnoticed, you should probably avoid kidnapping and killing one of our ambassadors, that usually attract attention. So you were in London for La Mano. Were you alone ?"
"No, we were three." admit the Mexican, understanding that he had no other choice than saying the truth if he wanted to avoid being tortured to the pulp. The gang members were usually forbid to talk and shall prefer death over revealing any informations but the man had the feeling that the British guy facing him already knew everything and was just playing a sort of sadistic game and that whatever he could say, he wouldn't kill him but only break every possible bones in his body before bringing him to court.
"Where are the two others ?" requested Mycroft to whom this information was completely new despite what he was trying to show to the other man.
"They took the first fly to another country." revealed Giorgio Alvarez.
"Which country ?"questioned the auburn pacing around the room.
"Algeria and Libya." conceded the Peruvian, not revealing that their final destination was, like his, Morocco.
"Were they with you when you take the shoot at the police officer in the warehouse ?" asked the elder Holmes, glancing at his watch. He had asked to the helicopter to pick him up half an hour after dropping him, letting him only ten minutes to get over this interview.
"No. Manchester." the smuggler jerked out.
"Why taking the shoot ?" questioned the official, looking at the other man right in the eyes, finally coming to the matter that really interested him.
"I couldn't get arrested." admit the Peruvian, carelessly.
"And still, here you are, in the middle of nowhere, under the threat of my gun." the auburn chuckled, humourlessly.
"Yes." nodded Alvarez. "At least I hope I got him right. That would be at least one cop less..."
Without letting him finish his sentence, Mycroft rushed to the man and slapped him with the gun's crook before grabbing him by his collar and shoving him against a wall.
"Cops lover are you?" laughed the smuggler.
"You have no idea." retorted the official before letting his prisoner down and taking three steps of distance. The man was standing up when the elder Holmes took a shot right in the Peruvian's left foot making him collapse back on the floor. "That one is for your laugh."
The smuggler was grunting on the floor, a little puddle of blood starting to surround his wounded foot without the other man actually caring. The remark that Alvarez had just made had put him in a cold anger mood and the sensation of power due to the gun was filling him driving out of him all his moral principles and sense of measure. All he wanted was making the man who had injured his boyfriend suffer and suffer again. Suddenly he heard the noise of the helicopter approaching.
"What are you going to do with me ?" the Peruvian wondered, hearing the helicopter too and guessing it was coming for the auburn.
"Give me one reason to keep you alive ?" snorted the official.
"You haven't got the guts to kill a man." the other man dared him.
"Really ?" the elder Holmes chuckled shooting a new bullet, five inches away from the man's head.
"You are like those cops, you carry guns but you are afraid of using it, that's why people like me are to kill people like you. Like this cop, you are just cowards. He deserved to die, that's natural selection."
This last provocation against his boyfriend finished making the last walls of moral of the elder Holmes fall down and without even thinking about it, he adjusted his target and shot a bullet in the heart and another one in the brain of the smuggler who sprawled in his own blood, nearly instantly dead. With a last look at the corpse, he exited the refuge before grabbing a bottle in his bag and lightening the lock overpassing from the plug and throwing it inside the wooden hut, starting a fire. The helicopter was already lowering its altitude and Mycroft climbed in it, weirdly not feeling guilty at all for what he just had done, despite the fact it was going against all and every of his principles.
While the helicopter was taking off again, the elder Holmes looked at the blaze by the window, thinking that Molly definitely knew what she was doing when cooking a Molotov cocktail. "Maybe she had been in violent riots when she was younger or is a retired agent of the special forces ?" he thought, chuckling to himself. He unloaded his gun and placed it back in the bag at his feet. It wasn't the first time he had a gun in his hands but it was the first time he had killed someone, the simple thought of having to do something like this usually making him want to puke. But this man had nearly killed Gregory, the person who, alongside his son, he was caring for the most in the world and for who he was, apparently, ready to kill.
Maybe that was 'self-justice' as his uncle had described it but Mycroft had no remorse. Someone had tried to put a bullet through his lover and he had done the same. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and no witness to make him change his mind.
When the helicopter touched the ground of the heliport half an hour later, the official was feeling more peaceful than he ever had felt in the last two weeks and he even managed a smile to his PA who was waiting for him near the door through which he had come not even two hours earlier.
"Job done ?" she wondered.
"Yes." the auburn replied following her inside and through another door leading to a silver car which was supposed to lead them to the nearest airport where they were to board on the next flight for London.
"The Prime Minister have called to ask if you would like to join the dinner he is giving next Wednesday with the Belgian Prime Minister. I said that you will confirm before tomorrow night." the young woman informed him while they were taking their seat.