Author's Note: I really apologize guys. I meant to get this out sooner, and to post chapter 5 of Everything is Not Okay. However my dog became critically ill this weekend and is currently in the hospital. I had this done, but please be patient with my future updates for a bit. Thanks very much for understanding.
I hope you enjoy this chapter. Letty is still a badass.
They'd worked out ahead of time that it would be easiest to do what Ramsey needed to do with some sort of distraction. So Letty would be a distraction, and maybe a little bit more. Cipher was dangerous. She'd shown she didn't care much about people. But Letty was safe while she was a bargaining chip. A lot safer than her friend, at any rate.
She banged on the glass divider, doing her best to look belligerent. "Hey. I want to talk to Cipher," she said.
One of the guards laughed. "You don't get to make demands."
Letty lifted her chin. "She's going to want to hear this."
"I can hear it." Cipher's voice filtered through a speaker somewhere. "Talk."
"Not here," she said. "Alone." She doubted she'd be allowed anywhere alone with Cipher, but she really meant not in front of Ramsey. Maybe the other woman could suss that out.
There was a pause, silence stretching on for so long that Letty though maybe the woman's answer was no, and silence would suffice.
"Bring her up," she finally said.
The guards looked displeased, but complied, initiating the procedure to open the sliding glass door. One came to Letty's side, grabbing her by the arm as she stepped out, while the other shut the door again hastily. She turned to look back at Ramsey, who still looked a little wan. She wasn't sure if the other woman was just that good at pretending or if she really was feeling a bit queasy. She couldn't blame her for any anxiety. If any part of their plan fell through, the boys didn't find them in time, the hacker could very well pay for this stunt with her life.
The guard with a hold on her took Letty through the door and what looked like a large cargo area. They went up a narrow flight of steps and down a corridor. At the far end was a door and he took her through into the room beyond.
It was fairly large and well-lit by lights inset above. Desks dominated the space, the walls on either side of them and one narrow table ran through the center. Computers lined most of the desks, some of the ones along either side were manned by people. In the center there was what looked to be some sort of radar and consoles set into the table displaying a variety of maps. Cipher was standing in the middle of the space. Letty saw one other guard aside from the man who'd brought her up, also wearing body armor and carrying a gun.
She slid her gaze back to Cipher, who waved the guard aside. He didn't move very far.
"What is so important?" Cipher asked. "I hope you're not here to waste my time. That sort of thing annoys me."
Letty stifled the urge to roll her eyes. She figured a lot of things annoyed Cipher.
"I want you to let Ramsey go," she began. "You have me. What do you need her for?"
Cipher looked amused. "Need? I guess I don't need her. But it never hurts to have options, Letty. And at the very least I can use her as leverage against you. You are friends, right?" She tilted her head. "You wouldn't want me to hurt her, or kill her, would you? So don't waste my time with this bullshit." She nodded towards the guard. "If that's all… Take her back," she ordered. "I'll give you a pass this time."
The guard took ahold of her arm again and Letty shook him off, trying to think of some way she could stall.
"Something is happening," one young man at a computer said, scowling as strange symbols and letter appeared across the screen. "It's a virus. Something… it's compromising our systems."
"What's going on?" Cipher demanded, turning on her.
Letty aimed her elbow backwards and up, catching the guard in his not-so-armored face. He cried out, bones in his nose crunching. She grabbed the gun from his holster, shot him in the foot. He screamed and fell. Letty dodged, diving behind an office chair, occupied by one of the techs, as the other guard began to fire. He shot the woman unfortunate enough to be sitting there, killing her.
"You fucking idiot!" Cipher snapped, turning towards the door that led out the other side of the room. "Security! Get in here! And someone get Ramsey! Now!"
Using the dead woman and the chair as a shield, Letty fired a few more rounds, hitting a computer screen and one of the towers. The other techs were huddling under desks, taking shelter from the gunfire. Aiming more carefully, Letty's next shot hit the other guard, who fell forward, his gun clattering to the floor. Cipher was already through the door by the time Letty lunged for the second weapon.
She trained the weapon on the nearest tech, glaring at him. There were only a handful of them left in there, and despite the fact that they outnumbered her none of them made a move. She knew she had to do something and quickly, before the backup Cipher had called arrived with way more guns than she could handle.
"Letty?" Ramsey's voice filtered through one of the computers and she turned towards the sound, brow furrowing. "I've hacked into the system and locked the doors to the room you're in." The other woman's voice sounded tinny and echoed strangely. Probably still in the bathroom of the cell. At least she was all right. "It should take them a while to get to you."
"Great," Letty said. "Are you okay?"
"I initiated a ship-wide lock down, so they can't get into the cell," Ramsey said. "But Cipher's already trying to override me."
"So what do we do?"
"Is there a map up there? I need an idea of where we are," Ramsey said. She was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in the tiny bathroom. The tiny computer she'd assembled was little more than a raspberry pi of epicly tiny proportions, hooked to an equally small screen and a tiny flexible keyboard. All bits they'd smuggled in in their clothes. "I'm working with pretty much 1's and 0's down here."
There was silence as Letty looked around the space, finding the screen with the map on it. "Okay so…" she began. "I can tell you that we're in the ocean."
"That's, helpful," Ramsey said, rolling her eyes. "Are there coordinates?"
Letty studied the readout, zooming out on the map. "Okay it says we're maintaining at 2.144, -156.382."
"Great," Ramsey chewed her lip. "We really could be in the middle of the ocean."
"We have to be close enough to land for the copter to have gotten us out here earlier today." Letty said.
"Right. Somewhere around the equator. We might be around Fiji… can you see any land on the map?"
Letty fell silent again, zooming out further. "Yeah, there's some island to the West it looks like. But I have no idea how long it would take us to get there."
"Give me the coordinates to the island," Ramsey said. "I'll change our heading."
Letty gave the info. "And then what? We just hunker down and hope we make it to land?"
Ramsey was about to reply when the comms cut out. She cursed, typing madly at her tiny keyboard. Numbers and letters scrawled across the tiny screen, the only information she had. She was stuck strictly with the programming language with this basic a set-up. "What I wouldn't give for something a little more high tech," she muttered to herself.
"Very amusing ladies," Cipher's voice came through the comms a moment later, and Ramsey could tell she was annoyed. "I look forward to finding out just how you managed to plant that virus, Ramsey. And hack into my systems. You can let me know right before I put a bullet in your brain."
"Fuck you too," Ramsey breathed, typing away. She could feel the boat lurch around her as it turned, and smirked in small victory. At least the course change had been successful. Now she just had to stop Cipher from lifting the lockdown. Because she was pretty sure even Letty was no match for the number of armed guards on board. At least not alone.
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"So… I'm not really understanding this at all," Roman said, looking agitated. "We're on a boat now. We're not sailors man! We drive cars. This is not our thing."
"Since when has any of this been our thing?" Tej asked. "Just because you can't speed around in a lambo or something you wanna sit this one out? Okay. Ramsey gonna be real impressed when we tell her you stayed home while we saved her."
"Hey, hey," Roman stood, glaring at him. "I didn't say I was staying home!"
"Get it together boys," Hobbs told them. "Roman. We've been over the plan already. The cars are safely on deck for when we need them."
"Yeah but when the hell we gonna use them?" he asked. "We've been on the water for hours looking for Cipher's ship."
"Since we're on a naval carrier," Hobbs answered. "We have alternative ways to get back to land a lot quicker."
"Good, cause I do not really do that well on the water, to be honest," Roman muttered.
"Great." Hobbs shook his head, wandering out towards the deck where Dom was standing. He came to stand beside him, leaning his forearms against the railing, gazing out across the water. He couldn't see anything but blue stretching out above and below. But that didn't mean anything. The human eye was only so trustworthy.
"You ready for this?" he asked, glancing over at the other man.
Dom pushed away from the railing. "Been ready since the day Letty drove off," he replied, shoulders tense. "I should be there with her."
"If you were she'd have been in more danger. You know that." He reached over to clap him on the shoulder. "Besides, we're heading for her now."
"Hopefully." Dom rubbed a hand over his head. "Still no signal. No idea if the plan worked. What kind of danger they're in…"
"We're getting a packet in here!" Tej called, drawing their attention. The two men exchanged a glance and then hustled inside to hear what the tech expert had found. He was at the laptop they'd had set up for him in the large garage/cargo area, typing.
"What've you got?" Dom asked.
"It's still coming in," Tej said. "But it's broadcasting on the frequency Ramsey gave us. Low signal, background," he mumbled. "Mixed up with junk. Give me a minute." His hands flew over the keyboard, booting up the program she'd installed for him. "Extracting. It looks like we've got a set of coordinates. A basic layout of what I'm guessing is Cipher's ship… yacht?" He tilted his head. "Damn she musta raided a lot of people's bank accounts for that shit."
Hobbs crossed towards him, looking over his shoulder at the information. He activated his comm. "Hey, Jr," he said, smirking when Little Nobody replied testily that Jr. wasn't his name. "Yeah, yeah. We're sending coordinates up to the bridge. Get the captain to set us on an intercept course."
"You've found Cipher?" Little Nobody sounded surprised, and pleased. No doubt it would be a bit of a bump towards a promotion to bag the notorious hacker. "We're changing course. I'm on my way down."
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It had only been a tense twenty minutes since Cipher had taken back the comms, but to Letty it felt like it had been hours. The techs in the room had figured out she wasn't going to shoot them and had come out from under the desks. But they were relegated to a corner of the room, away from the working computers.
She'd bullied one of them into turning on the cameras so that she had a shot of the hallway she'd come from. Most of the techs were with her, though she was certain Cipher was working on a way to open the door. Meanwhile there were about a half dozen armed men just waiting for her to do so.
She was drawn away from the video feed at the sudden pinging noise coming from somewhere to the left. "What the hell is that?" she demanded, glaring at the group of techs.
"It's the radar," one man replied, pointing to the center console. "Something's in range."
Letty shifted over to the side, looking down at the radar. It was indeed, reading something moving towards them and coming up fast. It definitely wasn't them getting closer to land. In fact the relative size of the object suggested it was some sort of vessel. She wished the comms were still working, or that Ramsey was up here with her. It was driving her mad to be trapped in this room without much idea what was going on.
"Cipher expecting visitors?" she asked.
The techs all shrugged, as if to say Cipher didn't tell them anything, and she wasn't all that surprised. Still, an alarm was set, so even if she was, she'd wanted to know ahead of time. The other vessel was getting closer and the yacht had slowed. She could feel the slow lurch of the ship beneath her. Was that automatic or was Ramsey doing that?
Then again, it was also possible Cipher was regaining control. Letty moved back towards the video feed.
The guards outside the doors were talking, muttering about something. She couldn't make any of it out, but it looked like they were getting orders from someone. Two of the men peeled off from the rear and went down the hall while the others remained where they were, though some of the remaining men seemed to now be guarding the rear. Was someone boarding the ship?
She was about to ask one of the techs to bring up another video feed when a clicking noise behind her signaled the lockdown on the door Cipher had disappeared through earlier was disarmed. She grabbed the gun she'd set on the desk, moving back as the lights on the keypad turned green and the door slid open.
A pair of guards came through first, guns brandished. Letty heaved one of the desk chairs at the first one, who raised his hands to fend it off, stumbling backwards. She aimed at his leg, squeezing off a shot before taking shelter behind the central console as the man behind him began to return fire.
The first man went down, clutching at his leg and Letty aimed again, hitting him in the head and dropping him. She tossed that gun aside, clip now emptied and reached for the other one tucked into the waistband of her jeans. The second guard had stopped firing and she could hear him advancing on her position now, pressing her back against the desk. Beside her was a small stool-like seat on wheels. Letty grabbed ahold of it, waiting, until she heard the scuff of his footfall close. Then she swung, catching him hard in the gut. He stumbled back and she brought herself up, knocking the gun away as she swung again, catching him with the metal wheels across the face. He went down heavily and she grabbed up his gun, aiming it towards the still-open doorway. She didn't she anyone there.
Cautiously she moved closer, then stilled at the sound of a gun cocking. Cipher stepped through the doorway with a rifle, aiming it at Letty.
"You know what they say about if you want something done…" she said, sighing. "You're so much more trouble than you're worth."
Letty didn't stop to let her finish talking. She moved, palm hitting the underside of the rifle's barrel as Cipher fired. The shot went wide, blasting apart another one of the computer screens. The two women grappled, struggling over the weapon. Cipher was taller, but Letty knew she was tougher. Odds were the hacker never got hands on with anything.
Letty grabbed both ends of the gun, wrenching it to the side. Cipher held tight, trying to yank the weapon back and Letty turned with her velocity, slamming the other woman's back into the wall hard. The hacker's grip on the gun was strong, and Letty knew she didn't want to give the weapon up. But that was fine. She didn't need a gun to beat her ass. She kept ahold of the barrel, striking out with the other hand to jab Cipher in the throat. The hacker coughed, her hold on the weapon slipping as she kicked out with one foot. Her boot connected with Letty's shin, which hurt, but she ignored it punching her in the side, just below the ribs.
Cipher looked like the air got knocked out of her, and her hands loosened on the gun just enough that Letty ripped it free, tossing it to the floor. Cipher went for her face, digging her fingers in her hair and pulling, raking her nails across Letty's cheek. "Bitch," she growled, landing a solid right hook to Cipher's jaw, that had the other woman's lip splitting. The hacker bucked away from the wall, toppling them both to the ground as the ship lurched to a hard stop.
"Cipher!" a woman's voice, it sounded like that woman from Jakarta, came through the comms, loud and clear. "We've been boarded! I'm taking the rest of the men to intercept."
Cipher couldn't answer, as Letty had her on the floor, one arm pinned across her throat. She scratched her nails across Letty's arms, trying to pry her off.
"The lockdown's been lifted," Nelani's voice came through again. "Whatever you did, it worked!"
Both Cipher and Letty knew that Cipher hadn't done anything, but Letty still didn't want that door to open. She lunged off Cipher, grabbing up the discarded rifle as the hacker coughed, sucking in deep breaths. The door slid open and Letty dove behind a desk as gunfire scattered across the room. Cipher was crawling for the door. "Don't shoot me you fucking idiots!" she screamed, voice hoarse.
The guards did stop shooting and Cipher scrambled out of the room the way she'd come, calling for someone to ready her chopper. Letty cursed, wanting to pursue her, but stayed huddled behind the central console as the guards began to move into the room. Lifting the rifle she'd taken from Cipher she aimed over the top of it, hitting the first man with a blast that tore through his armor.
"Damn," she breathed, ducking back down as the others turned to fire at her. Cipher had wanted to shoot her point blank with that shit. She turned, reloading as another guard came around the side of the console. She shot quicker, hitting him in the arm and causing him to drop his weapon. He screamed, clutching at his hand, and Letty reloaded, darting behind him as two other guards turned to fire, hitting him in the chest inside. She fired over his shoulder, catching the closest man in the neck as the others kept firing in desperation.
She held up the man in front of her protectively until she heard their guns clicking uselessly, then she let him fall to the ground with a heavy thud, leveling her rifle.
One guard moved fast, and her shot went wide, hitting a computer screen that exploded in a flurry of sparks and plastic. He tried to shove the gun aside but Letty moved with the motion, pulling it back to swing at his head. She followed that up with a punch at his throat, then turned to slam the butt of the gun into his mouth.
He went down, leaving her and a single guard in the room. The man was between her and the door. Letty turned the rifle and pulled the trigger. It clicked empty and the man smirked, curling his fingers at her beckoningly. She sneered, then charged at him with a battle cry that also sounded somewhat like a furious scream. She swung the rifle and he grappled with her for a few moments before ripping it from her hands and chucking it aside.
He was bigger than her, physically stronger. Letty flashed back to the weekends she'd spent at kickboxing classes, working out her frustrations over Dom bringing home someone else's kid on a punching bag. Until her knuckles were raw and bleeding. Until her curled fist was as strong as steel. She aimed two blows at the man's face, stunning him for a moment. He grabbed for her and she dodged, aiming a kick at his shin with the side of her booted foot. He made a grunt of pain and dove in for her again, his big arms around her torso. He lifted her up, and Letty struggled in his grip.
Thought back to the brief sessions with Hobbs throughout the years, Sam's jiu jitsu moves. She brought her feet up, knees bent, pushing against his torso with all the muscle in her legs. He grabbed at her thigh, trying to keep ahold of her, but Letty twisted her body, getting her legs around his neck. She squeezed and he gasped, wheezing for air, fingers scrambling at her legs, nails against the denim of her jeans as he tried to pry her loose. She grit her teeth and squeezed harder with her thighs. He toppled, face red and went down.
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"Should we run through the plan again?" Roman asked as he hooked his body armor on. He scowled, patting at it as if he felt awkward in the gear. Still, better than getting shot, he figured.
"If you don't know the plan by now," Tej told him. "We're leaving you here."
Roman frowned as Hobbs laughed at him. Little Nobody was waiting with a group of soldiers and explained how they would board the yacht. Everyone of them was wearing armor and carrying guns. The team couldn't help but feel a bit on edge. If this was the kind of firepower they were bringing, what were the girls facing? Would they even be reaching them in time?
"It's fine," Hobbs said. "They got the signal to us. They're okay. Now we just have to get to them."
Of course, that was easier said than done. Once aboard they found a unit of well armed guards awaiting them on deck. As the soldiers tangled with them, Dom, Hobbs, Roman and Tej pushed through towards below, where it seemed likely the girls would be held hostage.
They were stopped in their tracks by a woman, but not one they were looking for. It was the woman from the club in Jakarta. Cipher's new combat expert, Nelani Singh. Hobbs narrowed his eyes, staring at her. "You guys go on," he said. "I got this."
She laughed. "As if I'm going to let any of you pass," she said, aiming the rifle she held in their direction.
"You can't shoot all of us at once," Tej told her, leveling his own gun.
She quirked her lips in a small smile. "Then perhaps I should aim for the biggest target," she replied, training the barrel on Hobbs. "Or maybe…. The head of your little family," she turned towards Dom. "Or perhaps the brains?" Tej found himself facing the weapon.
He tried not to show that he was nervous, licking his lips slightly, but sighed when she swung her rifle back towards Hobbs.
"We appear to be at a deadlock, boys," she said.
"No you're not," a voice said from her left, and Nelani turned just as Little Nobody chucked a smoke grenade in her direction. Coughing she dodged away.
"Run!" Dom shouted, barrelling through the rapidly spreading smoke and through the hallway.
Nelani fired after them, but Hobbs came up behind her, huge hands closing over the rifle she held. He yanked it, tossing it over his shoulder, then brought his arms up to block her first kick. She sneered, pulling a wicked looking knife free from the sheath at her waist.
"Looks like we're about to pick up our unfinished dance, Agent Hobbs," she said, lifting the knife.
He cupped his hand, motioning her closer. "Then bring it on."