[MAX]
I do try not to put myself in situations where I know that federal-slash-intelligence agents will be involved. I'm not stupid, for one, and for another, no matter who says you can trust them, you really can't. It's not necessarily a matter of being morally good or evil; there's a spectrum, and the two ends are agents who are honor-bound and those who are corrupt beyond measure. Either way, interactions between myself and federal agents tend to become really messy, really quickly.
Yet there I was, in Bucharest, armed from head to toe, leading a squad of mercenaries via directions supplied by Reznor.
In any other situation, I'd make some snide remark about how you really shouldn't wander city streets while focused on your phone. (Which you should not do. Ever.) Because the scum of the earth target those who aren't paying attention to their surroundings, and though they obviously shouldn't do that, I can't exactly wipe out all the bad guys in the world in one day. So for now you get prevention tips. Use them well.
And really, don't stare at your phone while you're walking down the street, unless you happen to have a handful of armed people with you at the time. In that case, you're probably good, but that's not exactly a norm for many people in the world.
Mini rant over. Moving on.
Reznor did pinpoint where Logan Jaeger was at the time of the call to within — he guessed — what was about a mile radius. It was a little more difficult for him than normal, for a lot of reasons, all of which he lamented to me via text. But he had over ten hours to work on it, so he was successful regardless.
And so off myself, Danny, and the Fugazis went.
It would've maybe been more sketchy had not Flynn managed to procure a rental SUV to take us to the darker part of the city, which was of course the site of Logan's last known location. That said, it was still pretty sketchy, especially in comparison to the rest of the city,
"Most'a these buildin's are abandoned," Luca noted from somewhere behind me.
"Only by their owners," Dylan muttered from my right. In my periphery I could see him surveying the streets. The moment we had stepped off the plane, he'd gone into leader mode, and I knew he wouldn't be coming out of it any time soon.
"That's assuming they even are owned at this point," Danny remarked from my left. He did his best to look at my phone without wholly leaning over my shoulder. "How far are we?"
I shrugged. "We're almost within the mile radius." We'd left the SUV closer to the outskirts of this part of the city in an effort to ensure it would still be there when we went back for it. We didn't know what shape Team Grimm would be in, but we had to prepare for the worst. And anyway, it's easier to transport the injured in a vehicle than trying to carry them for miles.
"Any idea who runs this part of town?" Keahi asked. "'Cause I'm going out on a limb here and guessing it isn't a mayor."
"Reznor managed to find some information, but it was all pretty vague," I answered. "Their crime lord is actually a crime lady; she's something of a fear monger, and pretty much no criminal in the city wants to get on her bad side."
"Oh, well if that's all," Flynn drawled sarcastically. I could practically hear the eye roll that no doubt accompanied his words.
"No names?" Dylan asked.
I shook my head. "They call her Vipera." The Romanian accent I attempted sounded crude even to my own ears. "According to whatever sources Reznor dredged information from, she's terrifying." I paused and came to a slow stop as I looked around at our surroundings. "Also according to Reznor," I said with a wave of my phone, "we've hit the mile radius." I tucked my phone into my jacket pocket and zipped up said pocket.
"This doesn't look any different from anything else," Keahi said as he came up beside Dylan.
"Do we even know if they're still in this area?" Danny asked quietly as his golden eyes raked over each of the nearby buildings.
I nodded. "Reznor pinged the satellite phone less than an hour ago."
Dylan glanced at me. "Whoever got them could have left it behind after the call."
I gave a shrug of acquiescence. "They could have. But I don't think they did." Not if my suspicions about my involvement were correct. But I kept that thought to myself. I headed further down the street before any more questions could be asked of me. Now wasn't the time for a game of twenty questions, or an interrogation, or whatever.
Now was the time for a search and rescue.
—
We split off into three groups.
Dylan's group found Team Grimm.
They were inside one of the largest abandoned buildings in the area, one which was covered in graffiti and had a ton of broken windows. After Dylan radioed the location to the rest of us, the situation got complicated.
Griffin broke off from our group to set himself up high in a nearby building, and the rest of us took positions outside what appeared to be Vipera's headquarters. Flynn and I made our way up the fire escape so we could sneak in from above, while the rest of the boys took up positions at each of the entrances on the ground.
The good news was, Danny's former team was alive.
The bad news was, from my vantage point, I felt it was safe to assume that they had all seen better days.
I recognized their faces from files Reznor had sent me, but only barely. They were all bruised and bleeding. Vipera had them strung up from chains attached to one of the catwalks, with their hands cuffed above them. Each of their feet only barely touched the concrete floor below, and they all looked miserable. The bright side was, so far as I could tell, it appeared all of them could probably at least walk. That meant that we could hopefully get them out with fewer complications.
After we took out the small army of men on the ground floor, of course.
That was around the point where everything went downhill.
