Chapter 344: Educate Me

Are they going to tell me something I don’t know or can’t figure out on my own?

“Who wants to go first,” I asked as I noticed the remaining yellow highlighted ones in the room pissed their pants.

They didn’t know I understood everything they were saying using a language they didn’t expect me to understand.

To show them the errors of their ways, I got loudmouth’s cell phone, redialed the last number called, and told the person who answered, in the same language as the men, “Got anybody else to send? Those you had around here and the ones coming in the vans learned why it is stupid to attack me. I’m going to have a chat with these guys before going to find my little girl.”

Loudmouth yelled out to blow the site. Five EMP rounds disabled the remote-triggered explosives.

“Whoops. I’m so sorry for ruining your plans,” I told the people on the phone and loudmouth. “Why would I let you kill innocent people, especially kids in high school, to sacrifice yourselves?”

You don’t get it yet, do you?

The people on the phone managed to fire three missiles before I hit their missile launcher with an EMP round after I disabled those in flight before they were half a mile from the launch site.

“Do da dee. The number I am calling will now disconnect,” I said before firing pain bullets at everyone there but two women and a boy they raped.

The screams came through the phone with exceptional clarity. Better than I expected for a burner phone. An EMP shot and the call dropped.

I ignored the others and focused on loudmouth.

“Now where were we. Oh yeah, you were going to tell me everything you know, and I will decide if it is useful,” I told the guy.

These guys didn’t know who hired the people who hired his group. He only knew that they had an unlimited source of cash and no restrictions on what they needed to do to complete their mission. This house was where they were to pass April off. The only bit of useful information they gave me was that whoever paid them required that April use a car seat. Anyone harming her would die a very slow, painful, and very public death. None of the men knew where they were taking April.

I smiled and said, “Thanks for the information. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it. Have an excellent rest of your life, however short that may be. It was a bad idea to shoot the three most powerful women in the world and fail to kill them. I had better information than they do, but I expect them to be along directly. You could try to run, but that will end badly for you. Just sit put, and you might live through their interrogation. I guess it is good that you have no clue where the people who took my daughter from you are heading. No one else pissed off at them is going to beat me to them.”

I went ahead to change out the magazines on the guns before ensuring they were holstered and out of view. Deciding to enjoy the walk to find me a ride, I went toward where the thugs grabbed the girls. I was right. These men were going to beg to have someone shoot them with a pain bullet after it wears off.

Heading toward the coast took me past various touristy car rental places, but I didn’t see any with a car that will be able to catch up with the people that have April. Two blocks from the beach, I heard a man swearing up a storm over a motorcycle. He was telling someone that he made all the payments and had the paperwork to prove it. When I moved closer, I found him arguing with a man in an expensive suit at a high-end motorcycle dealer.

“For the last time, sir,” the man in the suit said. “That motorcycle sells for two-point-one million dinars. Your down payment was fifty-thousand dinars. If you look at your loan paperwork, it states, clearly, that the finance company can require full repayment of the loan at any time they deem you are at risk of defaulting. You did not pay as required in the time provided, and they returned the motorcycle. Sir, according to your bank, your income only permits you to buy a bicycle. Good day.”

The guy bitching to the man in the suit didn’t get to respond since two, large, police officers escorted him to their police car.

I walked around the lot, looking at the prices of the various bikes. I had no idea about motorcycles. When I pulled out my phone, it began showing me useful information on the bike I was looking over. Mostly it gave me top speed and how fast it went from zero to sixty. Inside the showroom, surrounded by glass panels, is a Ninja H2R. From the info on my phone, it can get from zero to sixty miles-per-hour in 2.6 seconds with a top speed of two-hundred-forty-nine MPH.

The man in the suit came over to shoot the shit, but I cut him off by asking, “Is it ready to ride right now? Not sometime later today, or tomorrow, but right this instant.”

“We can have it ready by the time you finish finding out if you can afford this motorcycle,” he said.

“You’re a fucking arrogant asshole,” I told him loudly enough that everyone in the building and parking lot heard me. “How the hell can a place like this stay in business when they have pricks assuming everyone is below them, so they look down their nose at him? Find someone else to shit on.”

My phone pinged me to let me know that, oddly enough, this was one of the oddball things I now owned as part of one of the corporations transferred to me as part of Darren’s payment. I used my implant to make sure that the head man here received a message that he needs to walk into the hall to look at the picture of their new owner. He had to work his way through the others that also received that message.

The expensive suit guy has the cops on speed dial.

Before he could finish telling the cops to get over here in a hurry, the head man took the phone away and explained to the police, “I’m sorry my salesman wasted your time. He misunderstood a question from a man in our showroom and made an incorrect assumption. The man gave an honest assessment of my salesman. Everything is under control, but please dispatch officers to confirm if you wish.”

They wished to verify all was well, much to the delight of the salesman.

As the head man came up to me, I went to give him my driver’s license and found a card with color e-paper inside the lamination. I have no clue what it was, only that it has my name, picture, and something that provided incontrovertible proof to the head man that I was indeed the same David Jones that owned this business.

“Mr. Jones,” the head man thundered. “Please excuse my salesman. He is an arrogant prick who pre-screens any prospective customer. It is why I hired him. We have a large amount of foot traffic. Most are tourists and people looking for a place out of the heat or a bathroom. What brings you around the world to visit us today?”

The salesman may have some value, but he is still a moron.

I shook his hand and smiled as I replied, “I happen to be passing through on some personal business. I’m tired of flying and wanted to take a ride somewhere that I can enjoy the speed of a high-performance motorcycle. I looked through the lot, but the Ninja H2R there keeps drawing my eye. My schedule is very tight on time, which is why I asked asshole over there if it was ready to go right now. How soon can you have it fueled and ready to head out?”

“By the time you ensure you change into your safety gear and ensure you are hydrated, I will have the bike ready to go,” he told me. “Danika will bring you the gear that arrived shortly after the change in ownership. She will show you where you can change and assist if needed.”

I don’t have time for even a quickie right now. I need to be out of here before Skylar, Mary, or Corwin’s families arrive to seek answers.

When I opened the bag with my riding gear, I found standard, run-of-the-mill, road-rash protection pants with a heavily padded leather jacket, and a helmet. It was designed to fit over my combat armor. I quickly changed and headed back out to the showroom, and then Danika intercepted me and guided me into a motorcycle clothing part of the dealership. She found me some boots for riding instead of my sneakers. She was all business and professional.

As promised, the Ninja was waiting for me outside the main door with a helmet sitting on the fuel tank.

Now, how the hell do I make it look like I’ve ridden a motorcycle before? I have all the knowledge on how to ride one, including doing so at high speed, but no experience.

It seems that I didn’t need it. When I put on the helmet and started to adjust it, it activated my implant. It downloaded what I needed to remind me of the muscle memory I had learned during Paula’s stay in the hospital after the accident. Once I had the keys and an alarm fob, I was off.

The helmet was too tight to wear the sunglasses. Once I had the visor down, I learned the motorcycle helmet had some serious computing hardware inside that only needed me to feed it power. Once I allowed a connection to the place in my head, I gained access to a lot of information that I had before. My link to April began providing live data on her location and the best route to reach them if I was ready to do so at that time.

Once outside of town, there was almost nobody on the road in front of me. I blew past, effortlessly, any vehicles in my way. They were a few hours ahead of me if I kept my speed below one-hundred-fifty MPH. I knew I could handle driving the bike to its limits, but the roads weren’t up to it. It turned out good that I hadn’t rushed toward these people. April was gone when I arrived where these people held her. They were waiting for me and wanted to make sure I didn’t walk away. Four inside the building and six outside all wore enough explosives to destroy two city blocks around them. Each one thought they had a deadman’s switch in their hand, but it was fake. Instead, they all had a heartbeat monitor that tied into the other nine bombers. One goes down. They all go boom.

I can’t take out one vest without setting them all off, and no matter how fast I move, I can’t shoot all ten with EMP bullets before one of the others detect the loss of signal.

Duh, David. Pull the power from the vests at the same time, and then shoot each one with an EMP bullet.

I can’t believe I didn’t already think of that instead of trying to figure out how I could shoot from back to the front fast enough to stop them from exploding. I fired the first EMP bullet at the man closest to the center of the group. I had the EMP power tied to my shield to increase the EMP range.

No going boom for you today. Scream in pain, yes.

They had no idea their vests were unable to detonate, and I had a blast walking toward each on to shoot a pain bullet right through part of the explosive. Each attacker dropped like a blob of bird crap on a freshly washed car. All except the one that was in the center of the building. I punched him right in front of his vest, where he had a big wad of some plastic explosive. As his eyes went wide, I grabbed the sides of it to rip it apart before dropping it to the floor.

Why did he shit in his pants already? I only threw a spitball sized blob of plastic explosive at the wall as I pushed in the energy required for it to explode.

“Man, the people who hired you must suck at hiring competent thugs,” I told him. “You can’t even blow me up with everyone wearing bombs. Now, where is my daughter? It can be easy, or very, very painful. Right now, I’m in favor of very painful, given that you were ready to blow yourself up to try to keep me from finding her.”

He was very forthcoming in telling me everything I wanted to know without my even needing to lift a finger.

What a chicken shit!

Yet another, supposedly better, group put the vests on these guys and took off with April.

Back on my motorcycle, my helmet updated me on their destination. It was my final destination to get the answers I wanted. Calls to the various burner phones originated from cell towers at this location. The place and ten miles all around it were heavily armed. Snipers were in hides all over the area.

This ends now, once and for all. I will kill those responsible if I have no other choice.

I blew past the car with April in it like they were standing still. Just outside the range of the snipers, I headed off down a side road away from the area.

These people won’t know they are fucked until it is already too late.

As I approached, I had the implant in my head ensure all forms of communications from this place were blocked. Some well-placed bursts of power welded the gates closed. No one was driving out of here.

Now the fun begins.

With both handguns out, I moved to where I walked up the main road to this small town. I already knew where everyone human and attack dogs are inside the city. I had the place in my head wire-frame the buildings and color-code the people inside. Most were red, two were orange, and I found around sixty tied up and under guard, including children. I sealed the doors to those areas and then hit the guards with pain bullets.

Soon I was in the range of the closest group of snipers. Before they could pull their trigger, I aimed through the bolt of their sniper rifle and hit them with a pain bullet, the energy beam cutting a pretty path to their body. The spotters were next.

While they couldn’t communicate out, their radios worked inside the town. I found it amusing as I proceeded to take out each sniper as soon as I was inside their maximum range. As each spotter start to announce that fact, I hit them with a pain bullet too. From there, I walked in toward where they were holding April. The thugs did their best to shoot me, but they only got so see their bullet knock my body a bit before I returned fire. Before entering the building where they held April, I took out the rest of the guards in town that weren’t in the building.