Chapter 344 - Old Acquaintances
The black dots got bigger as they fell, and four of them hit the empty ground around the bowling alley, while three of them smashed into it.
Luke smelled an intense stench of blood. He quickly ran back to his car and took out a pair of binoculars before he looked at the sky.
“What the hell?” He was dumbfounded by what he saw despite his usual calm.
Several more objects were still falling from the sky, but had already passed over Luke’s group.
But that wasn’t important.
The important thing was that, with the binoculars and his acute dynamic vision, Luke had seen Mr. Smith’s face.
Even wilder was that the guy and four men in black suits were shooting at each other in freefall and had yet to open their parachutes.
Luke finally realized what was going on when he looked at the two bodies that had just fallen.
Mr. Smith was somehow engaged in an air battle with those men in suits. The ten or so bodies that he had caused to fall from the sky left quite a few huge holes in the bowling alley.
Mr. Smith, I think only Detective John can compete with you in terms of crazy! Luke was utterly stupefied.
He would never do anything like this – this was playing with your life. If the battle grew too heated and he opened his parachute too late, he would be smashed to pieces on the ground. Elementary Self-Healing wouldn’t save him from that. Swallowing hard, Luke thought for a moment, before telling Sonia to wait here.
He and Selina drove the car in the direction that Smith had landed.
Mr. Smith opened his parachute in the end, but Luke had to find out if he had survived the landing.
Suddenly, Luke raised his head, only to see a few more parachutes in the sky.
Looking at them through his binoculars, he was instantly amused. “Hey, they’re all old acquaintances.”
The guys landing from the sky were none other than the bearded man who called himself a behavioral consultant as well as his trusted subordinates.
Luke hit the gas pedal and sped toward the abandoned factory where they landed.
He snuck into the factory after the bearded man and his man entered, leaving Selina in the car to keep an eye on the surroundings.
In the factory, Smith was struggling on the ground as he gasped, “You again?”
The bearded man gave an ugly grin. “That’s right, Smith. How are you going to escape this time?”
Smith coughed and didn’t say anything else.
He had been shot in the shoulder, and he had broken several ribs during the landing. He had also dropped his gun.
He was at the end of his rope now. Luke didn’t step forward, and merely watched in silence.
The bearded man obviously wasn’t going to kill Smith immediately. He was like a cat toying with a mouse.
“Smith, tell me where the woman and the baby are, and I’ll give you a quick death,” he said with a creepy smile.
Smith spat a mouthful of blood and saliva at him.
The bearded man had seen it coming, and avoided it. “What a tough guy! So, let’s talk somewhere else. We have a lot of time, don’t we, Smith?”
He then had his subordinates tie Smith up.
Twenty minutes later, two black SUVs arrived and picked up the bearded man as well as Smith.
Luke returned to his own car and chased after them.
Selina asked, “What’s going on?”
Luke thought for a moment, but still shook his head. “Pretend you don’t know. I’m also an outsider here, so it’s safest to know nothing.”
He had checked the bodies of the men in suits who fell from the sky earlier.
While their bodies were mangled, their clothes and equipment all suggested that they were well-trained and very rich.
Or rather, that their employer was very rich.
The fifty shooters who attacked Smith last time were almost beggars compared with these guys in suits.
Only the men in black combat uniforms who had been killed in the small hotel were on the same level.
A boss who could afford a team like this couldn’t be ordinary.
Or rather, a boss who needed a team like this couldn’t be ordinary.
For example, Jennifer Perry could afford a team like this as a big celebrity, but she didn’t need this sort of advanced equipment.
This was a team more geared toward killing rather than protecting.
Luke had made up his mind to stay out of the matter, at least on the surface.
Smith seemed to be a bigger troublemaker than he thought. He didn’t know why the guys in suits were so bent on hunting him down.
From what Luke could tell, the guys in suits and the bearded man clearly weren’t on the same side.
So, Mr. Smith had pissed off two tricky forces at the same time.
Selina didn’t ask anymore questions after getting an answer.
She wasn’t as good at acting as Luke was, and ignorance was the best cover.
Driving east for another twenty minutes, Luke stopped the car and said, “Drive the car back and tell Sonia to return to the police department.”
Selina nodded and drove off after Luke got out.
Luke broke into an abandoned building next to the alley where he had stopped the car. A moment later, he climbed out of another window in a black mask, gloves and a hoodie. He then approached a factory two hundred meters away.
He turned on the electronic detection function on his fake phone; he didn’t think that there were any cameras around, but it never hurt to be cautious.
With his grappling hook, Luke climbed nimbly up to a broken skylight. He fixed a camera at an angle before stealthily slipping away. Looking at the feed on his fake phone, he went around the factory and then eventually climbed up the side of one wall.
Entering through a wide gap between the top of the building and the wall, Luke slowly made his way through the mess of abandoned machines as he approached the group at the entrance.
Gloating, the bearded man said, “Some people are smart and some are idiots. Who’s the winner now, Mr. Smith?”
Smith looked at him and said, “Your boss Hammerson’s plan is screwed. Henry Elsworth is dead. You can’t threaten him with the baby anymore. Also, everyone will see his death as the doing of weapon dealers like you, and his gun control plan will receive even more sympathy and support.”