Julie was still standing there in a daze, and from the look on her face, Jack could guess what she was thinking. "No, I'm not Tarzan, and I'm definitely not King Kong."
"Okay, and I'm not some blonde damsel either," Julie said, flicking her damp shoulder-length hair. Jack's references were to two old Hollywood movies, both featuring classic blonde heroines whose main role was to scream and set the mood.
"So what are you going to do with them?" she asked, walking over to where Jack was tying tourniquets on the two assassins' arms.
Both men had been shot in the right hand, each left with a gaping hole from a 10mm AUTO round. It meant they'd soon need to start learning how to wipe with their left hands—just like certain parts of the world where that's the custom.
"Get them to give up the rest of their crew, of course. There's a good little spot for an interrogation not far from where we came up," Jack said, yanking two thick vines from a tree. He wrapped one around his arm, testing its strength, and grinned in satisfaction.
—
Ten minutes later, the two assassins regained consciousness one after the other, only to find themselves dangling upside down, swinging slightly in midair. The girl they had been chasing was now calmly tying knots on the vines securing them to a large tree.
"You're awake?" Jack squatted in front of them, casually toying with two small sticks, and smiled. "I just have a couple of questions. First one: how many of you were sent to Hawaii?"
The two assassins exchanged glances but didn't say a word.
Jack didn't seem surprised. He poked at a mound of dirt beneath their heads with the stick. "Looks like you still don't understand your current situation."
A portion of the small mound collapsed, and out swarmed a dense swarm of fiery red ants. By the time Jack retracted the stick, over a dozen of them had already crawled onto it.
"Hawaii used to be a paradise—the closest thing to Eden this world has ever seen. Fertile volcanic soil, no mosquitoes, no poisonous snakes or bugs, and barely any thorny or toxic plants.
But the arrival of colonizers changed everything. Every single species you see on this island today is an introduced one—including the flowers the natives use for their leis."
Jack began delivering his lecture in a voice mimicking the tone of a certain controversial old wildlife documentary host.
The two assassins struggled to crane their necks to see what he was talking about. They stared at each other, confused about what Jack was trying to say, until he held the stick up to their faces. The red ants on the stick waved their antennae, searching for the ones who had disturbed their nest.
"Recognize these?" Jack said with a wide, innocent-looking smile. "Red fire ants. The smallest but deadliest invasive species on this island. Their abdomens have venomous stingers attached to venom sacs."
The moment they heard "venomous," both assassins simultaneously strained their necks upward, trying to pull their noses as far away from the stick as possible.
Jack chuckled, then flicked the stick—distributing several ants onto each of their faces.
These aggressive little creatures latched onto their skin with their mandibles, then curled their bodies to jab them repeatedly with their stingers.
Unlike honeybees, which lose their stingers after one sting, fire ants can sting continuously, releasing venom each time until their venom sacs are empty.
The burning pain spread across the two assassins' faces so fast and so sharply that they momentarily forgot the agony in their wounded hands.
In truth, red fire ants were nowhere near as dangerous as the bullet ants found in South America. A few stings weren't unbearable.
But Jack knew how to put on a show. Technically, he wasn't wrong—red fire ants are a serious threat, but mostly to ecosystems. Their venom isn't particularly deadly, and only a small percentage of people have severe allergic reactions to it.
Still, his threat was very real. The assassins' heads were dangling just a few centimeters above a massive ant nest.
As they struggled, the vines securing them began to stretch and shift slightly, lowering their heads even closer to the swarming nest.
Even Jack was startled by how effective the setup was. A few ant stings wouldn't kill anyone, but if either of their heads plunged into that nest—well, tens of thousands of red ants wouldn't just make them suffer. We're talking literal skin-peeling levels of pain.
And the dramatic effect was incredible. Both assassins immediately went wide-eyed with panic, tilting their heads back as far as they could and screaming like madmen as they stared at the ants waving their antennae below.
"Three people! There were three of us sent here! Please get us down!"
"See? That wasn't so hard. We're on a tight schedule here. Now, where are you from? What identities are you using?"
Jack helpfully flattened the mound a little more with his stick, raising their heads a few precious inches farther from the ants. But that only made things worse—the disturbed nest now sent out even more ants, spilling over in waves and making everyone's skin crawl just watching.
"San José, Costa Rica! We flew in yesterday! Please! Don't do this to me!"
—
"Stay still and don't struggle. These vines should hold until someone comes to pick you up."
With that, Jack ignored the two wailing assassins and pulled out his satellite phone to call Kono. He reported his GPS location and told her to alert Danny and Cheng Hao so they could send people to retrieve the upside-down pair.
Then he passed along the information he had extracted. "They said aside from the three of them, there's a fourth person—someone sent to provide support. White woman, around thirty, unknown identity."
"That's the cleaner," Kono replied. "According to info from your colleague Alice in New York, the Baja cartel's kill teams usually consist of four people.
Three shooters and one cleaner. The cleaner is responsible for cleanup. If the shooters fail, the cleaner finishes the job."
Kono continued, "I'll check surveillance footage from all flights arriving from Costa Rica. If she passed through, I'll get her image and run facial recognition to confirm her identity."
Jack checked the time and said, "Prioritize matches among anyone who might show up at the courthouse. That's likely their last shot."
After hanging up, he called Danny and Cheng Hao and told them to drive to the nearest road to wait.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
Every 100 Power Stones = 1 extra chapter on Saturday.
Every 5 reviews = 1 extra chapter on Saturday.