March 15th, 2012
Ram Island, Long Island, New York
If was ten minutes past midnight when Angel Hartford stepped from the entrance of the main house. The weather was just as forecast, light winds sweeping off the ocean, cooling the night to a chilly forty-eight degrees.
'Perfect,' the drug lord thought, staring out at the vast empty tree line in the distance. He didn't expect any trouble out here, which is why he had bought the place all those years ago. It made it easier for his friends to the north to move product into the city, and since he was the only home for miles he didn't have to worry about noisy neighbors.
Two more men flanked him, normally his bodyguards, both of whom carried semiautomatic pistols holstered on their hips. They used to work for him, but that stopped being the case when the Boss showed up yesterday. Now he and everyone else worked for him.
Hartford took another deep breath of the fresh ocean breeze, letting it soak into him. Another forty-eight hours and the deal would have been complete. A great way to get everything back on track after the chaotic hell New York had turned into for the past week. Nothing would have stopped him from getting all he wanted. And then the new Boss showed up at the door.
'Not a bad way to go,' he supposed. His new boss wasn't forgiving, and this was to be his punishment.
The Boss, Kilgrave, walked into the house earlier today during a party and simply told everyone to shut up. No one could even consider doing otherwise. A few of the girls were picked and he took them upstairs, while everyone else was ordered to stay where they were and not move or make a sound. As the hours went on the room began to smell of piss and shit, a few of the others passed out, but none moved or spoke.
He didn't know how long it had been since the boss showed up, but it was dark when Kilgrave came back downstairs and said he was hungry. Then he smelled us. The man had made a face, displeasure clear, and all of us felt our hearts break a little at our failure. All we had wanted to do was please him, make him happy, we just needed to know how. What had we done wrong?
Those who had once been Angel's bodyguards were told to take all the people who had soiled themselves outside and shoot them. While they were doing that, Angel was ordered to cook him dinner. He knew he wasn't a good cook, but he could say anything to protest. He did his best, trying to make something his boss would like, to please him, but apparently the pancakes weren't to his liking.
"You will go outside, dig a hole with your bare hands, and lay in it." To the guards he added, "When he lies down, kill him."
He made the boss angry. And he couldn't say anything to make it better.
Angel did as he was told. He dug a small hole with his hands, no bigger than his own fist, and lied down on the ground. The two men who had protected him for the last six years, Frank and Brian, had been loyal and fierce protectors. He had gone Frank's wedding, and Brian's kids were friends with his own.
They didn't hesitate to pull their triggers.
"He just….they just…..did that!" Jessica was stammering again, much to Harper's annoyance. Not that he disagreed with the sentiment.
Twelve hours ago the two of them had watched from afar as their target, one Kevin Thompson – aka Kilgrave – walked into the middle of a party at a private residence in an upscale part of Long Island like he owned the place. The guards at the door gave no resistance, and within twenty seconds of entering the facility had compelled all those inside to sit on the ground and cease making any kind of disturbance. After making a show of looking the various people over with slow, flesh crawling gazes, two lovely ladies in fairly revealing dresses were compelled to follow him upstairs in the master bedroom and proceed to service him. Thanks to the high resolution cameras that Dr. Sterns had provided for his mission, Jessica, the six other team members in the back of the van, and Harper were able to see and hear everything that had happened.
Ten hours later the target returned downstairs and, apparently having grown bored with so many hostages, ordered the onsite security team to remove half the people from the premises and execute them. A few of the hostages gave token resistance or said a few words prior to death.
Reasonable conclusion that target's compulsion on the affected individuals was beginning to wear off. Target must have noticed this, as he gave follow up instructions to those remaining in the building to continue being quiet.
"Sir, movement in the house," a tech announced from the back of the van, breaking Harper out of the mental report he was preparing. It wasn't something he needed to do right now, but he liked to keep his mind active and sharp. Preparing the paperwork ahead of time was one way to do so.
Jessica sat up a little straighter at that, "Oh great, what is the purple-suited fucker doing now?"
"Target ordered the death of the home owner," came the clipped reply, followed by, "apparently he didn't like pancakes."
Jessica watched, wide eyed and slightly panicking, as the man calmly walked outside, laid down, and was shot six times by his own men. Harper grunted at the sight, and filed it away to add to his report.
"When the fuck are you going to shoot this asshole? Why are we just sitting out here when we could be cracking that fucks jaw off?"
"Hostages," came his reply, again, for the tenth time today. Harper was beginning to second-guess bringing an untrained civilian along for this, but the boss said she was coming with so as far as Harper was concerned she was coming.
The added super strength to his team was a nice bonus.
"That is what you said when he killed half of them!"
The tech, King Richard everyone called him – even though his name was Greg – spoke up. "Ma'am, we have been following this target for a few days now. His pattern is to show up, stay a night or two, and move on. Usually no one is ever hurt. We don't know why he is acting against his M.O."
Harper gave another grunt of acknowledgement. "If we had expected this behavior, we wouldn't have waited to grab him."
The file McCole provided, and he was going to need to sit down and talk to him about how he even knew about this man when it had taken three days for brain boosted personnel to find him in the first place, had agreed on that aspect. Thompson is rapist and a sadist, but not normally a killer. Something escalated his behavior at location, but that wasn't what was really important. What was important now was preventing things from getting worse.
Harper glanced at her, not moving more than was necessary, and said, "I had wanted to try to grab him while he was traveling, to reduce risk, but there isn't much of a choice here." Looking back into the van at his tact-team, he barked, "Plan B, load up!"
Jessica turned back to him, her face stern, "We do not take this asshole alive. He has to die."
Her voice brokered no argument, and personally he had no issue with killing this individual considering what he had already done and was likely to do in the future, but his orders from the big man had been "alive if able."
Then again, he also said that it was no loss if he couldn't.
"I'm serious, Harper," Jessica put her face within inches of his own, and despite their friendship he was seriously concerned she might try to hurt him. "I mean it. We put him down. I don't care if this guy has a power that Michael wants or not, this guy gets shot, burned and scattered to the winds. His power is too dangerous for anyone to have."
The SUV raced up the driveway and came to a quick stop at just after two in the morning. The two men on the running boards leapt off and raced toward the building, their weapons scanning all around, searching for any targets. The driver and passenger joined soon after; they all carried the same equipment, H&K submachine guns with fat silencers on the end of the barrel, with pistols strapped to their thighs. Each was equipped the same as well; Amber Armor infused plates taking the place of the body armors normal inserts, with black Nomex suits under that covered them head to toe.
Harper didn't want anything heading back to the boss if things went south, so that was why he used gear as much over-the-counter gear as possible.
The four of operators formed in a tight stack near the entrance, and the man in front reached forward and gently tried the door latch.
Locked.
Jessica moved up from the back of the stack without a word. She reached out and quickly turned, breaking the lock and letting the door swing open with barely a sound.
She stepped to the side and the three men holding weapons rushed into the dark room, guns up and weapon lights burning arcs in the blackness. Jessica took a moment to compose herself, and joined up with the others in the room.
Each man had a sector to clear and did so quickly and efficiently. In ten seconds they had unarmed the motionless guards and began moving toward a stairway that led to the second floor.
++No movement. You are clear.++
King Richard's voice in their ears was welcomed, breaking up the tension as they moved swiftly. Harper gave a grunt of acknowledgement and moved up.
Two open doorways were in front of them now, one on each side of the hallway the staircase opened to, with a closed door down at the end. The first and second men in the train peeled away; Harper going left while the other man when right. Both men found targets – armed bodyguards waiting for them, and fired; suppressed rounds thumping loudly in the confined space.
While he and the other man were engaging in the rooms, the third man remained in the hallway and kept his weapon trained on the door ahead, confident in the warm presence of Jessica Jones watching his back.
Quickly the two men returned to the hallway and aimed their guns forward. A second later they moved on to the closed door. They stacked up again, and the first man quietly checked the latch.
It was unlocked, so Harper paused only long enough to lower his body a few inches while his buddies did the same. The three men moved in as a team, Jessica on their tail, while lights under the three guns swept the room.
They found their target in the center of the unlit bedroom. Thompson lay in the bed, his arms wrapped around one of the still awake and very frightened women. The other woman lay on the far edge of the bed, also awake and just staring at the ceiling as tears flowed down the corner of her eyes.
The three gunmen in the doorway all raised their weapons…
"Finally!," Thompson announced with an air of amusement from where he lay, "Do you know how long I've been waiting for you all to show up? I've been looking forward to this meeting for days!"
Harper frowned behind his mask.
++Do not communicate with target.++
The metahuman looked at them with what could only be described as a knowing smirk. "Oh come now. I knew it only a matter of time before someone came for me. I've gotten very observant over the years, always looking over my shoulders and covering my tracks. Didn't take much for me to realize the game was up."
Thompson paused, his voice full of mirth. "And I see you've come prepared. Were the hazmat suits really necessary? Come on, take off those masks."
When no one moved his smile turned into a sneer. "Remove your masks or I order all these lovely hostages to kill themselves. Maybe I'll have them att-"
Harper sensed Jessica move before he saw her, turning into a blur as she charged past him and the others straight for the target, but it was too late to stop her.
Nor did he want to.
One second the creature known as Thompson was speaking, and in the next there was a person-sized hole in the wall behind the bed where Jessica had burst through it. Thompson was still laying in the bed, most of him anyway.
Harper noted that the head was missing.
The team leader grunted, then subvocalized, "Target neutralized. Move on to S&R."