The Mantis: Action Adventure Thriller Read online

  The Mantis

  The Fighting Mantis #1

  Mike Gomes

  The Mantis

  The Fighting Mantis #1

  Copyright © 2020 Mike Gomes

  Published by Hudson Indie Ink

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it wasn’t purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referred to in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  The Mantis/Mike Gomes – 1st ed.

  ISBN-13 - 978-1-913904-40-1

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Mike Gomes

  Other Authors at Hudson Indie Ink

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  Mike Gomes is an Amazon #1 best selling author who loves writing fast paced, action packed novels for Adults. The desire to create fun, page turning books that lets readers slip away into another world is what drives him to write. Mike lives with his wife and four children in Massachusetts.

  To get in touch with Mike, you can check out his website www.mikegomeswrites.com

  Also by Mike Gomes

  The Fixer Series

  The Fixer

  While Collar

  9MM

  Piranha

  Holiday

  Down Under

  Gods Executioner

  Combat Zone

  Alone

  4th and Goal

  The Fighting Mantis

  The Mantis

  Broken Hearts

  Smuggling Blood

  The System Series

  The System

  Peace, Love and Death

  Old Man River

  The Young Adventurers’ Club

  The Young Adventurers’ Club

  Vertra’s Revenge

  Another Day

  Other Authors at Hudson Indie Ink

  Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy

  Stephanie Hudson

  Sloane Murphy

  Xen Randell

  C. L. Monaghan

  Sci-fi/Fantasy

  Brandon Ellis

  Devin Hanson

  Crime/Action

  Blake Hudson

  Mike Gomes

  Contemporary Romance

  Gemma Weir

  Elodie Colt

  Ann B. Harrison

  Chapter One

  Moscow Russia

  EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO

  “She is the perfect weapon in every way.”

  “But she’s eleven years old.”

  The two men in military uniforms stood next to a wall made of glass that could only be seen through on the side they were on. In the adjoining room there was nothing but soft walls, and a standard examination table in the center. Standing next to the table was the young girl they were talking about. The girl had straight, black hair that was cut to shoulder length, and she wore nothing but a hospital gown. She stood motionless next to the examination table, staring straight ahead.

  Turning away from the window, the larger of the two men took two steps back and sat himself in a chair. His shoulders were wide, and his jaw was squared off. He was also the older of the two men, his gray hair sneaked out from the sides of his uniform hat.

  “She looks like any little girl you would see anywhere in the world, but she is more powerful than anyone could imagine. Though she’s still a little girl. Nothing can change what she is.” The older man spoke with authority to the younger man. “I understand that you and the team have put a lot into this girl for a long time, but she is still just a child.”

  “Her parents were two of the finest agents the KGB has ever seen. They made the transition after the move to democracy and stayed in our secret service. They died in the line of duty leaving a one-year old child, and this is her” said the younger man, gesturing towards the girl in the adjoining room. “Her name is Gabriella. All the skills her parents had, have been transferred to her. She is a natural, without fear. We programed her just the way you would a computer, to give you exactly what you want.”

  “Colonel Makarov, has she been tested?” questioned the older man. “None of it really matters until she is tested.”

  “We did test her. She has been conditioned with both negative and positive reinforcement. She has been commanded to kill a number of things, and has done so without hesitation,” replied the younger man. “In the last test, which was just two months ago, we put a man with a blindfold on inside the room with her, and told her to kill him with a gun that was on the table. With no hesitation she picked it up and fired it at the man. There were blanks in the gun, and the man was instructed to play out his part of being hit. She simply laid the gun back down on the table and waited for her next instructions.”

  “No hesitation?”

  “None,” said Colonel Makarov, holding back the smile he so desperately wanted to show.

  “Remorse? Nightmares? PTSD?”

  “None,” said Makarov.

  The sound of a door opening caused both men to look into the padded room with the girl, as a group of three people dressed in hospital clothing entered the room, locking the door behind them.

  “Hello, Gabriella, my name is Dr Hardiman. I have come here to give you an examination. These two gentlemen are nurses that can help us if we need it.” The woman wearing a long lab coat spoke softly to the girl. “If you could sit on the table for me, we can get things started.”

  Without saying a word, the girl turned and boosted herself onto the table, staring straight ahead.

  “I have been told that you do not like to talk much, and I will not pressure you to do any talking. I am here just to make sure that you’re medically doing well. Is that okay with you?” asked the doctor, not getting a response from the child at all.

  Placing her hand on the child’s knee with care, Dr Hardiman moved closer and gave a soft squeeze, causing the girl to pull back and lock her soulless eyes on the doctor.

  “I’m sorry did I hurt you?”

  “Do not touch me,” Gabriella growled, through gritted teeth and angered eyes.

  “I need to touch you to do the examination,” the doctor tried to reassure her. “I will not hurt you.”

  �
�That’s what the men say, but they hurt me. They touched me in the night,” the young girl said emotionlessly, looking at the male attendees in the room.

  “I promise you that nobody will do anything to you anymore. I will see to it,” the doctor spoke gently. “The only thing I really have to do is give you a shot. It is for the flu. Very standard, everyone gets one without exception.”

  “No,” said the child sharply.

  “I am sorry, but we have to.” The doctor pulled the needle out of her lab coat pocket as she spoke. “I don’t like giving them as much as you don’t like having them.”

  “I said no!” barked the young girl, staring coldly back at the doctor.

  “Gentlemen if you could hold her it would be helpful,” Dr Hardiman asked the two nurses in the room.

  Taking each of her arms, the two men pulled the girl down to the laying position without much of a fight, allowing the doctor to walk over and clean an area on her arm with an alcohol swab.

  “This will be very quick, and we will be on our way,” said the doctor with a small smile.

  Before the doctor could do anything, Gabriella pivoted her hips and spun her legs up, placing a kick on the side of the doctor’s head, knocking her to the ground.

  As the men tried to catch up with what was going on, Gabriella pulled her arm from one of the men and used her fingers to dig in tight to his eyes, causing him to let go of his grip. The girl rolled to the floor and scurried around the outside of the table, picking up the syringe and pushing herself back up, glaring at the one man left standing. The man lunged at her, to be met by the needle of the syringe jamming hard into his left eye, causing a spray of fluid to shoot from it and screams to roll out of his mouth.

  “Call security now!” yelled the older military man in the adjacent room, as he watched over the girl who was now down on her knees rummaging through the pockets of the doctor, then rushing to the door with a set of keys she had just found.

  One by one, she sifted through the keys until on the fourth attempt, she found the one that opened the door. Bursting into the hallway, she ran the side route that held all the patient’s rooms. Most were barred, and some had no window to look in.

  Passing the ten by ten room that had served as her home for eleven years, she peered in, seeing her only possessions. A bible, and a nonfunctional hand gun.

  The young girl’s feet slapped off the linoleum as she covered the distance swiftly to the corner where the elevator sat. For as long as she could remember, she had never been on the elevator or even seen much of the outside world. Hitting the button, the slow mechanical sound grinded out as she looked down the hall at the orderlies closing in on her.

  Bracing herself for a fight, the doors of the elevator opened, revealing a large man with a smile on his face.

  “Okay, sunshine, let’s just go back to your room.” The man was holding a club in his hand, and tilted his head at her as he spoke. “I do not want to have to hit you with this, but I will if you make me.”

  Placing her weight on her left foot, the girl drove her right foot hard into the crotch of the big man, causing him to gasp for air. As he bent, she grabbed the club and lifted her knee into his face in one smooth motion. The big man’s body leaned back, and he staggered with blood running down his face from the broken nose he had received. Blood shook from his face as he moved, trying to regain his composure, but it was all too easy for Gabriella. She struck the man with the club across the left side of his face, and then swung back in the opposite direction, hitting him again, rendering him unconscious and in a heap on the ground.

  Blood stained her clothing as she knelt down and pulled his walkie talkie from his side. Turning the sound up, she could hear the chatter for the alarm that had been set off for her.

  The doors of the elevator shut just before the oncoming orderlies got to her, and soon she was on the first floor of the building with the doors opening and nobody waiting for her.

  Moving down the hall, more and more people started to be in her area, and luckily for her, not looking like they thought she was out of place.

  Getting to the front lobby of the building, she saw a sign that said, METROPLITAN HOSPITAL, and a large, burly, military man standing at the doors.

  Stopping in her tracks, Gabriella assessed her situation knowing that she could take out the military man without a problem, but it would alert too many people. Falling back, she found a stairway and moved herself up one floor, then slipped onto the medical unit. Pushing the door open to a patient’s room on the left side of the hallway, she slid inside after hearing a commotion of people coming up the hall.

  Slowly walking deeper into the room, she saw an old man hooked up to a ventilator and working to keep his breath. His eyes just half open and locked on her. Struggling to lift his hand, he waved at the girl and she did the same to him. No words came from his mouth as he attempted to say hello, but his eyes made the girl feel comfortable and accepted. A feeling she had not had before.

  “I have to go,” Gabriella whispered. “Can I have this?”

  The girl held up a shirt, that was far too long for her, and a pair of hospital scrubs pants. The man nodded that she could, and without a speck of modesty the girl changed in front of the man, tucking the shirt into the pants and rolling them up to her ankles.

  “Thank you, sir,” Gabriella said, pushing open the small lower window and starting to slip her body though the opening.

  The older man grunted and winced at the site of the girl getting ready to jump from the window. Fear filled his eyes as he banged his hand on the side of his bed.

  “It’s okay, this is a short fall for me.” Gabriella winked, just before letting go of the window and dropping to the ground below. Like a well-trained paratrooper the girl hit the ground and rolled in one motion, before popping back up to her feet and running off down the street into the darkness of the night.

  Chapter Two

  The Moscow night held a chill that cut through to the bone. The wind rose up out of the west and sliced its way through the city, cutting in and out of each roadway and alley, causing every man, woman, and child, no matter how tough or strong they were, to shiver at the contents that the wind carried. Moscow wasn't for the weak, it wasn't for the faint of heart, it was for people that knew that day-to-day life would be tough; sweltering summers, freezing winters, and a population of people who had battled the tyrants, weather, and invading forces over and over again to claim their own stamp on that part of the world, and were not eager to ever let it go.

  As Gabriella moved up the street, her feet hit the ground making a clapping sound, her arms crossed in front of her with her hands tucked under each armpit. A glazed look fell over her eyes as she assessed each thing that she passed by. The shop windows, the people walking on the street, and even the street lights she had never witnessed in person. Those images had come through photographs, books, and television. Her world had consisted of the underground lab that held her for her training, and it kept her encapsulated from everything in the world other than what they wanted her to see.

  With the world opening up before her, Gabriella's feelings of excitement soon turned to dread. Despite being held captive and not having her own free will, she now was faced with every decision in the world. For a girl that was in her pre-teens, having to make sense of everything from a stray dog to where to find the next bite to eat had suddenly jumped into her mind. Her training was as a warrior, someone that would not give in, someone that would fight to the last breath, but this was different than a battle, this was survival on a whole new level, right down to who she was as a person, and she did not even know that.

  The idea of having a personality, being an individual, was a foreign concept for the KGB and those that had trained for being elite warriors. The program housed many men and women who had grown up within the KGB system to be trained to be the agents that would never question their orders, and whose only delight was to complete a mission, and only doing so within the appropri
ate parameters. There was no time for celebration or glee, it was an expectation that each one of them understood. They had no need for family, relationships, or material goods. Their praise came in the form of commendations, and when they had completed a task especially well, the chance to pick what they would have for their meals the next day.

  The shops had already closed up for the night and the lights were off. Gabriella's eyes peered through each window, looking at the clothing and the items that were for sale. The days of having rations had gone by and nobody stood in bread lines anymore, but the trauma was still there from the people, the money was still minimal, so the lights that hung in the store windows were, more often than not, a temptation rather than a realistic thing that anybody who lived in the downtown area of Moscow would be able to purchase. The elites lived outside the city and drove their way in, expensive Mercedes and BMWs pulled up to the Kremlin to do the work of the nation. But the common man had nothing.

  Gabriella's eyes stopped as she looked through the window of a particular store that had a large display in the front window. There were clothes, scarves, hats, small pocket watches, and Swiss Army knives. Everything had a certain military flare to it, but more than anything, her eyes were caught by the far end of the room, to the collections of firearms that were inside glass and waiting for the right person to come along to purchase one.