The man holding the handheld metal detector walked directly toward Adrian Knight and began checking him from head to toe with the same care airport security would use on a suspicious passenger.
He slowly passed the scanner over Adrian’s chest, waist, legs, and arms, but the ultra-micro camera Mouse had attached was too small and carefully concealed for the device to detect.
The detector produced only a faint electronic buzz before the man finally stepped back without raising an alarm.
“This him?” Derek asked, giving Adrian a brief glance before turning toward Benji.
Benji nodded and answered, “Yeah.
Like I told you, he’s got a reputation.” Derek Keyes stood with a shaved head, a hard expression, and a black bag hanging from one hand as he studied Adrian more carefully.
Derek slowly opened the bag and said, “Benji tells me you used to run with the Belz brothers.” Adrian nodded without hesitation and replied, “Yeah, for a while.
Up in Bucktown.” Derek’s eyes sharpened slightly as he asked, “Those crazy bastards still driving around with chainsaws in their cars?” Adrian met his stare calmly.
“Maybe.
Old habits die hard, but maybe they’ve switched to guns by now instead of carrying around that outdated crap.” Derek raised an eyebrow at the answer but didn’t immediately respond, while Adrian remained confident because he and Benji had already coordinated the basic details of his cover.
For several seconds, Derek simply stared at Adrian as though deciding whether he believed him.
Then, without warning, he turned toward Benji and asked, “Where’d you disappear to last night?” Adrian’s pupils tightened the instant he heard the question because Intelligence had taken Benji quietly and returned him without anyone supposedly noticing.
Benji’s body stiffened, and he avoided Derek’s eyes for a moment before forcing himself to answer.
“What are you talking about?
I was home, man.” Adrian inwardly cursed because Derek never would have asked the question if he actually believed Benji had been home.
Derek gave a cold smile and said, “Funny.
This guy tells a different story.” Two more men appeared from behind the SUV, dragging a badly beaten man between them before roughly throwing him onto the hangar floor.
The injured man was covered in blood and could barely do more than groan weakly after hitting the concrete.
Derek looked down at him without showing any emotion.
“Your friend says you were gone for a couple hours, and you’re telling me you were home?” Benji stared at the bloodied man and instinctively backed away, while Derek added with malicious amusement, “Best part is, you didn’t even remember your shoes.” Adrian could feel the situation collapsing around them.
If Derek kept questioning Benji, the operation would be exposed before they had anything useful on record, so Adrian stepped into the conversation with an annoyed expression.
“Hey, I don’t care where he was last night.
Are we here to do business or work out your family problems?” Derek shifted his gaze toward Adrian and watched him silently for a moment before finally nodding.
“All right.” He opened the black bag wider and reached inside, while Adrian focused closely on his hand because if Derek produced the drugs they had come to buy, the hidden surveillance equipment would finally capture solid evidence of the transaction.
Instead, Derek pulled out a Beretta pistol fitted with a suppressor.
The muzzle immediately swung toward Benji, whose face went pale as he cried, “Don’t do this, boss!” Before anyone could say another word, Derek fired, and the suppressed shot echoed through the hangar with a dull thud as blood burst from Benji’s head and his body collapsed lifelessly to the floor.
Adrian reacted the moment Benji went down.
He violently swung the bag containing the operation money into the nearest man, knocking him off balance, then immediately charged another attacker before the group could surround him.
The first man stumbled and crashed down while a second caught part of the heavy bag against his body and staggered backward.
Two more men rushed Adrian at almost the same time.
Adrian sharply brought his elbow down across the first attacker’s head, snapping the man’s face sideways and forcing him to stumble away, but another man managed to get behind Adrian and wrap both arms around his upper body.
With his arms trapped, Adrian immediately jerked his head backward and smashed the back of his skull into the man’s face.
Blood burst from the attacker’s nose as his grip weakened, giving Adrian enough room to break free.
Adrian turned and drove one hard punch into the man’s ribs, followed by a second strike to nearly the same spot that made him double over in pain.
The moment the man’s upper body folded forward, Adrian grabbed the back of his head and drove his knee sharply into his face.
“Fuck!” the man groaned as he staggered away clutching his bloodied nose and mouth.
Adrian’s movements were quick and controlled because he had graduated from the police academy and already possessed basic hand-to-hand training, while the 30% Vitality increase from the Punisher System had made him noticeably stronger and faster.
Even so, he was far from invincible, and the men around him were large, experienced with violence, and difficult to put down with only a few strikes.
Adrian started turning toward the next attacker when a sharp electrical crackle sounded behind him.
He reacted immediately and tried to swing around, but a stun baton slammed into his lower back before he could defend himself.
A powerful electrical current surged through his body, causing every muscle to seize as he let out a strained groan.
His arms and legs stopped responding properly, and violent spasms ran through him as he fought to remain standing.
The electrical shock overwhelmed his control within seconds, making his body stiffen before he collapsed heavily onto the floor.
Adrian tried to move, but three men rushed him immediately and pinned him down before he could recover.
“Hold him!
Strip him!” one of them shouted as they began searching him.
They ripped away Adrian’s suit jacket, threw his shoes aside, and quickly checked his clothing for anything suspicious.
Then one of the men suddenly froze after finding something tiny attached to Adrian’s shirt.
“Damn.
Look at this,” he said, pulling out the ultra-micro camera Mouse had installed before the operation.
Derek’s expression darkened instantly as he took the button-sized device, glanced at it for less than a second, and threw it onto the floor.
He brought his shoe down hard and crushed the camera beneath his heel with a sharp crunch.
Outside the hangar, the Intelligence Unit’s surveillance feed died at almost the exact same moment.
Hank Voight’s expression changed instantly, and he grabbed his radio while already pushing open the vehicle door.
“Move!
Move!
Everybody move!” he shouted as the rest of Intelligence reacted without hesitation.
Vehicle doors flew open one after another as officers poured out and began sprinting toward the airport maintenance hangar at full speed.
There was no longer any reason to preserve the undercover operation or remain hidden.
Adrian’s cover was blown, Benji was dead, and Intelligence now had only one priority.
They had to reach Adrian before Derek did something worse.