Fuck!
The violent wind pouring into the car made it impossible for the two men to keep their eyes open. They had to raise their hands to shield their faces just to feel a bit of relief.
Ahead of the Peugeot was a pair of riders on a motorcycle. The one in the back had just emptied his magazine, and seeing how close the Peugeot was, he stood up on the backseat, clearly about to leap across.
Owen rummaged through the glove box and managed to find two pairs of sunglasses. Once they had them on, it was slightly better. But suddenly, a dark shadow flew toward them—Swagger instinctively hit the brakes and swerved.
The car thumped and jolted violently as if it had just run something over. Owen looked at the now-lonely rider on the motorcycle ahead and realized what had happened. He gave a moment of silence for the unlucky guy.
The rider up front kept glancing back. From the expression behind the helmet, he clearly hadn't expected his partner to end up like that.
"Hang on tight…"
Swagger shouted, and the speeding Peugeot suddenly surged forward, slamming into the rear of the motorcycle.
The bike jolted forward like its tail was on fire, wobbled a few times in a futile struggle, then crashed to the ground with a roar, sliding under the Peugeot in a shower of sparks.
Another jolt ran through the Peugeot as it ran over the wreckage. The mangled remains of the motorcycle quickly appeared in the rearview mirror.
The rider, however, had been launched into the air by the impact and rolled through the open front windshield into the car.
Owen and Swagger ducked just in time to avoid the flying body. Owen reached over and hit the electric rear-door button. The door slid open, and the just-landed biker was instantly tossed out the back with a scream.
"Nice one!"
Owen couldn't help but slap Swagger a high five, but suddenly a burst of bullets struck the window to his right.
Shit!
Owen dove for cover, scrambling into the backseat. At some point, another guy had managed to sneak up on their right side. From the look of it, he'd tried to overtake and shoot into the cabin from the side.
Swagger jerked the wheel hard, veering right until they were nearly scraping against the roadside barrier. The motorcycle trying to flank them got wedged between the Peugeot and the edge with loud, metallic crashes before the rider was flung off the bridge.
His scream lingered in the air as the Peugeot returned to the road. The wreckage of the motorcycle tumbled away and soon disappeared in the mirror.
Lying on his back in the rear seat, Owen suddenly noticed that not only the right, but also the left side had another motorcycle pulling up. A solo rider now rode parallel to them, one hand on the handlebar, the other raising a submachine gun aimed at the driver's seat.
Fuck, this is bad.
With no door on the driver's side, Swagger had no cover at all. If the rider fired, Swagger would be a dead man.
"Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang~~"
In a rush, Owen opened fire blindly through the side panel. The 5.56mm rounds punched straight through the steel and took the rider down.
The biker and his motorcycle crashed to the ground and were then run over by others behind them—he was done for.
Owen let out a long sigh of relief, and Swagger did too. Without a door for protection, he had felt exposed the entire time.
But before they could relax, the door on the other side was suddenly pulled open.
Fuck, not again? These bastards just won't quit.
A pair of two-man riders had taken the chance to try and hijack the car—did they think the guys inside didn't exist?
Their Peugeot was a seven-seat MPV-style family car, and the rear side doors were sliding ones. Now one of them had actually managed to open it.
The rider in the front kept close while the one in the back was already standing up, ready to jump in. Worse yet, the mirror on that side had been shot out earlier, so Swagger had no idea what was happening.
Just as the biker flung the door open and tried to jump, Owen sat up in the backseat, coming face to face with him. Their eyes locked. The biker froze for a second, but Owen didn't give him a chance—he squeezed the trigger on his M4.
"Bang bang bang bang bang~~~~"
The M4 recoiled wildly as the rear rider who had just made eye contact took a burst and fell out of sight.
When the shooting stopped, Owen realized that somehow the front rider hadn't been hit at all. He was drenched in cold sweat, eyes wide in disbelief, as if he couldn't believe he was still alive.
Owen was stunned too—how had he missed him? But he quickly aimed the rifle again. The biker's face fell—he thought it was over.
"Click click click~~~"
Just then, Owen's M4 ran dry. The biker's eyes lit up again—was he blessed by God?
But then came another surprise.
Owen shoved the empty M4 into the front wheel of the motorcycle. The "lucky one" did a full 360-degree flip, and the bike shrieked as it broke into a pile of scrap.
Watching the guy tumble across the road, Owen felt a lot better.
He looked around. Only one pair of bikers was left—the same duo who had tried to bomb them earlier.
Persistent bastards, these two were still trying to blow up the Peugeot. They'd approached several times, but each attempt was foiled—either someone flew out of the car or another biker's mistake ruined it for them.
"Bang bang bang… click~~"
Owen pulled out his pistol, but after a few shots, it was empty too. Today just wasn't his day.
Frustrated, he threw the empty gun like a dart. The earlier shots hadn't even grazed the enemy. Hitting a moving target from another moving vehicle was no easy feat.
Now unarmed, Owen desperately searched the car for something—anything—he could use. But all he found were useless pillows that wouldn't hurt a fly.
The biker, realizing they were out of ammo, grew bolder and pulled up close.
The lead rider accelerated until his motorcycle was alongside the Peugeot. Owen could clearly see the bomb in the rear rider's hands through the window.
It looked like plastic explosive, maybe C4—easy to attach to the car. The detonator was strapped to the lead rider's arm.
Owen wanted to block them somehow, but the car was even more barren than his pockets.
The bikers grinned, seeing Owen's panic. They edged closer. The bomb was now right next to the fuel tank.
Just as they thought they'd finally succeeded, Owen suddenly popped up at the window and unleashed a spray of yellow mist from a canister right into the front rider's visor.
The dye-filled spray instantly coated the helmet, blinding the rider. At the same time, it felt like someone shoved him—the bike wobbled.
But the expected crash didn't happen. Incredibly, the biker managed to brake just in time.
The Peugeot sped ahead as usual, widening the distance. The rider pulled off his dye-covered helmet and saw Owen leaning out the window, grinning and waving.
"Goodbye~~~"
Owen's voice drifted through the air. The rider looked down just in time to see what was in Owen's hand. His eyes widened in disbelief, but it was already too late.
"BOOM!~~"
Owen pressed the detonator, and the two-man team vanished in a fireball.
As the explosion consumed the riders behind them, Owen casually tossed the remote out the window. He had snatched the detonator off the lead biker's arm when they lost vision.
They thought they'd dodged the bullet—only to be blown up by their own bomb.
With that, all the motorcycle riders had been dealt with. Well, almost all of them.
Owen looked outside—and sure enough, moments later, that elegant silhouette appeared again by the sliding door.
"Looks like none of them passed their audition…"
Exhausted, Owen still couldn't resist poking fun at the female assassin.
Janet looked at the beat-up Peugeot—glassless, doorless, practically a wreck—then looked at the two battered men inside. The absurdity of it all hit her.
Just these two and this junkyard of a car had taken out her whole squad. Granted, they were rookies—but still, a whole squad.
"You did well—better than I expected."
Hearing the compliment, Owen felt a little proud. That was a rare bit of professional recognition.
"What? Trying to recruit me? I'm not looking for a job change. And sorry for killing so many of your people—hope it doesn't mess up your hiring process."
Janet just smiled at the joke.
"I'm curious—how much is he worth, to send so many after him?"
Owen had been wondering the same thing for a while.
"Six hundred thousand dollars."
"Oh, not bad. Almost tempting."
"You didn't bat an eye at a hundred million, and you're tempted by six hundred grand?"
She clearly knew who Owen was.
"So you've known all along who I am?"
Owen was about to say more when the sound of sirens came from behind. From Sarah's house to here, they'd been fighting nonstop—now, finally, the cops were catching up.
"This ends here. Next time, I'll handle it personally…"
Janet sped up, her motorcycle overtaking the Peugeot as she made her escape.
"I won't let you succeed!" Owen shouted after her.
"Try me~~~"
…
Her bike picked up speed and vanished from sight. Owen sat back down in the passenger seat.
"Man, did I see that right? You were flirting with the assassin who just tried to kill me?" Swagger grumbled from the driver's seat.
"Shut up. We just know each other, that's all."
"You think I'm blind? You're CTU. She's an assassin. You're chatting mid-battle, and you want me to believe she's not your girl?"
"She's not my girl."
"Come on, the way you two were talking, it sounded more like a date than a cop-criminal standoff. And you're still denying it?"
"Fine, maybe not yet..."
Owen felt defeated but couldn't let Swagger have the last word. He fired back, "Enough about me—let's talk about you."
"What about me?"
"What's going on between you and your buddy's girlfriend?"
"You mean Sarah? What's there to talk about? She's Tony's ex. We just met for the first time."
"Yeah right. First time meeting and she's already harboring a fugitive? And those flowers you send her every year? Don't think I don't know."
"Oh, come on, those were for her to give to Tony."
"Who believes that…"
…
After shaking off the police, they found a spot to ditch the car and get another. Their last ride was just too eye-catching—people couldn't stop staring as it rolled off the highway.
Swagger's driving wasn't great, so Owen took over.
As they were driving, Owen's phone suddenly rang.
"Owen, did you look at the info I sent you earlier?"
"Uh…" It was Becky. Owen had nearly forgotten. He'd been about to look at the Sokolov file when the sniper attack started.
"Not yet. We had a little… incident."
"Oh. Well, I dug up something else I think you'll want to hear."
"Let's hear it."
Owen put the phone on speaker.
"That guy Sokolov—I checked all his bank transactions over the past few years and found something interesting. Every so often, a particular account wires him a hefty sum. I tracked that account, and guess what I found?"
Owen and Swagger exchanged a look—they knew something big was coming.
Becky didn't wait for them to answer. "That account belongs to a strange company that does business with a bunch of major corporations.
Their offices are in Virginia and Delaware, but they're registered in Panama. They own a ship, but it flies a Libyan flag. They're definitely not a government agency, but they've got deep military connections. I don't know exactly what they do, but the transaction volumes are huge."
Owen and Swagger's expressions turned grim. That company might just be the puppet master behind everything—very likely the same group Isaac Johnson works for.
Becky had mentioned their military ties. Swagger still didn't know Isaac Johnson's full background, but he was certain the man was connected to the military.
And Becky wasn't done. The rabbit hole went even deeper.
"Surprised? Don't be. The real bombshell's next."
Becky sounded excited. "That company's just the beginning. I looked into its financials and found that it's closely tied to a fund called 'Energy Investment.'
So I checked out the fund. Guess who the investors are? Medo Oil. Chenters Energy Group. The Parsons Family Fund—yeah, the one with the California State Senator. Bomei Arms. Westline Aviation… Damn, it's all big names. Together, they could practically control the future of the United States."
Owen and Swagger stared wide-eyed. These weren't just companies—they were giants. Each one alone was nationally known. Together, they covered energy, weapons, finance, transportation—every critical industry in America. And now they all showed up in some obscure little fund?
Cold sweat ran down Owen's back. If these companies really were behind the events they'd been caught up in, then no matter how hard they fought, it would be useless. In the U.S., capital power was absolute. And these companies were the embodiment of that power.
"You mean… these corporations orchestrated the assassination of the Ethiopian Archbishop? Why would they do that?"
"No, I'm not saying that," Becky replied. "What I'm saying is—guys, you might've just kicked a very big hornet's nest."
[Check out my Patreon for +200 additional chapters in all my fanfics! Only $5 per novel or $15 for all!!] [[email protected]/Mutter]
[+50 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[+5 Reviews = +1 Extra Chapter]