“The dude I relieved told me to pass something on to you,” Brady shouted back. “He didn’t want it going over the radio.”
Brady was almost panting from walking up five flights. Too much desk duty had layered some fat over his frame. He shouldn’t have missed all those wo
rkouts.
This was not good. Not good at all.
Walking up the last flight, he got his breathing under control. He was going to need everything he had to neutralize this kid.
“He wanted to keep something from Jackhammer?” the young man asked.
Brady had the two-way radio in his hand. The time was counting down on the screen, telling him that in about three and a half minutes, Jackhammer was going to be looking for his eighteen guys to check in.
Brady wasn’t sure of the answer code. The password. Or whatever the fuck these guys always said to let him know that they were at their posts and that all was well.
He stood three steps down from the kid and said, “Can you just read this? Will you fucking just look at it?”
The kid adjusted the eyeholes in his mask and walked down two steps and bent his head to look at the radio.
He said, “I don’t see what the prob—”
Brady stepped up, putting his weight on his left leg, and reached his left hand around the kid’s neck and pulled down hard. The kid yelled, “Hey,” striking out and wind-milling with his arms, but he couldn’t regain his balance.
The kid’s feet shot out from under him, and as he slid down the steps on his ass, Brady got behind him and got his neck in the vise he made with his right biceps and forearm.
The kid cried out and Brady tightened his neck hold, his forearm pressing against the kid’s carotid.
The kid tried to reach behind him, and Brady applied pressure, not enough for the kid to black out but enough for things to start to go fuzzy.
Then he let up just a bit.
The kid said, “What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck is wrong with you, man?”
Brady asked himself the same question. Thinking that over the past half hour, he had crossed some defining line. Was this really the person he had become? Or would any man if pushed this far do the same damned things?
Brady said, “You want to breathe? Lie still. What’s your name?”
“Brian.”
“What’s Jackhammer’s name, Brian?”
The kid got it now. He was going to die.
He said, “Don’t do it, man. Please don’t hurt me.” Brady applied some pressure and the kid grabbed futilely at his bulked-up arms. This kid was either a murderer or he was complicit in the many murders aboard this ship. But there would be no by-the-book interrogation for Brian. No Miranda rights.
Brady relaxed the hold and gave the kid a little blood to his brain, a little air.
He asked again, “What’s Jackhammer’s name?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anyone. None of us do.”
“So why did you do this? Why did you take this job? You wanted to kill people? Ruin people’s lives? Why?”
The kid was exasperated as well as frightened.
“I don’t even understand your question. Look. Let me up. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
There was no way around this kid. None. Brady said, “I’m sorry, Brian. There’s no other way.”