As I approached, I could hear a mass of voices all talking at once. From what I could make out, the pilots spoke only Spanish. The two others—a man with a creepy voice and one with an accent that sounded German but wasn’t—argued with the pilots.
“Listen, I’m telling you that is a gunshot hole, comprendo?” the not-quite German fellow said. I didn’t catch what the response was but it I could tell they were arguing. Good. I slipped under the water and made my way by touch underneath the plane until I was under the docks.
Unlike a wooden dock, aluminum doesn’t have random holes to look through; it is also very predictable. I noticed that with the plane tethered to it, the slats tended to pull then contract. If I was careful, I could look through and see what I was up against.
I almost wished I hadn’t.
From my reading, I learned all about how so-called supervillains are rated. There is no killing potential difference between an F1, the lowest form of super, and F2. Those ratings are for people who have benign powers. See through walls, walk on water, that sort of thing. The powers themselves didn’t increase their potential for mass slaughter. Once you got into the F3 range though, there was a definite uptick of killing power. A man who could lift two thousand pounds could run through a mall punching holes in people and killing dozens before he could be stopped.
That same man with super-speed could kill hundreds. Add invulnerability and that number shoots into the thousands. One of the things that makes ISO-1 unusual is their use of super-powered enforcers. Most people who have powers and commit crimes earn themselves a ticket to the North Dakota UltraMax Prison. Anything violent and they only checked in, never out. On top of all the other criminals we have to jail, the government couldn’t afford to make minimum- and maximum-security prisons for individuals with powers—or at least that is what Dad always said.
It always seemed harsh to me… not anymore. Of course, the irony here was that if I were ever caught I would end up in the same place. At least I wouldn’t get bored.
I had never heard of the three people standing on the dock, but the fact that they had superpowers wasn’t in question. From what I could see, one of them had black feathery wings to go along with his obsidian black skin. He’d make an African look pale in comparison. The other man wore ripped a leather jacket and chains and hadn’t shaved in the last decade. The last was a petite girl with pale blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She wore a tasteful but skimpy outfit, almost like a Catholic School Girl’s uniform but with more knives.
Then it hit me why the accent sounded German… it was Russian. It took one of them saying do svidaniya, for me to get it. Okay, so these bad boys and girl were superpowered enforcers, probably brought in to deal with me. Damn if ISO doesn’t respond quickly. I’ve only seriously screwed up their operations in the last few days and they already brought in a response team.
I moved closer to shore, where I could put my feet on the muddy ground under the water. Once there I slipped the shotgun off my back, careful to hold the sling so it wouldn’t make any noise. I didn’t want to take a chance with these people. They looked dangerous and there was no point in risking a confrontation with unknowns.
I moved the butt up to my shoulder, brought the sights up and leveled the barrel to where I thought they were. I still had the high-velocity sabot rounds loaded, which was excellent, since I needed to take out all three at the same time.
Taking a deep breath, I slowly let it out as I squeezed the trigger—
“What was that?”
The shotgun roared in my hands, kicking me in the shoulder as it sent the twelve-gauge sabot round out the barrel with 3,800 foot-pounds of energy. The aluminum might as well not have existed for all the protection it offered. The winged man took the round in the chest, blasting through him like paper and into the girl behind him.
Evidently, the dude in leather was the one who spoke, because he was already diving off the dock as I fired. Wing-man and the girl went down without a cry; they didn’t have time to feel the pain before they died.
Then it hit me. Like a tidal wave, greater than ever before. A rush like no other. My very being was alive with power. Leather and chains hit the water and came up instantly with a pair of machine pistols firing in my directions. With the sun high in the sky and no real shadows to speak of, I was stuck moving in the regular way. Several rounds impacted my back, hitting me like baseballs as they slammed into my vest. I let the force carry me forward and I used it to dive in the water and put some distance between me and him.
When I surfaced on the other side of the seaplane I headed for the beach, slogging out of the water as fast as I could, shedding weight by the second as my clothes and boots dumped water in a pool around me. I had the shotgun up to my shoulder and was already zeroing in on a target; it wasn’t Leatherman but one of the private security forces. I pulled the trigger and he went down like a sack of potatoes underneath a splash of crimson paint.
My senses were alive with powers despite the daylight and I heard the ligament of a finger pulling on a trigger. I dove forward as a hail of bullets sprayed the air above me. Without looking, I rolled to my side and over my shoulders, spun around and fired. Somehow, don’t ask me how, Leather had acquired some kind of defensive riot shield; it was all metal with a peephole in it. The sabot round was powerful, but it wasn’t armor piercing; it deflected off the shield, shedding the energy on the barrier and knocking him back a foot. I decided to play with that.
I fired again, moving steadily forward with each shot. The rounds banged against him like a hammer as he tried to return fire without falling down. He ditched the machine pistol, then another gun, a large silver revolver with only five cylinders appeared in his hand. Well, dang it all if that isn’t a useful power.
The gun bucked, sending a .500 Smith and Wesson round tearing through my vest without stopping. Normally such a wound would end it for me, but I was jazzed on the power of having killed those two supers and the normal—it was like I was supercharged. I didn’t recall it happening so intensely after I killed the super-powered Russian in Detroit, but at the time I was so far in the exhaustion hole it might have just been what kept me awake for twenty-four hours while I traveled.
I spun as the round hit me, extending the shotgun out and firing it with one hand. The last round went right through his shield viewport, shattering the bullet resistant glass and punching a hole the size of my fist through his head.
The ground came up fast, despite the power flooding through me; I had taken a massive wound and I needed a second to recover.
If the rest of the thugs in the place would give it to me.
Bullets rained down around me as time caught up. I army crawled over to the shield, flipping it over and using it to stop the slugs. They were firing a variety of small arms, from 9mm to .556. If my shotgun couldn’t hole this shield, nothing they had would. But it wouldn’t take them long to flank me, so I had to move. I rolled to my feet, lifted the shield up and slammed the base into the ground, setting it solid. I spun around for a second, putting a round through the pilot who was trying to hide behind the seaplane’s door. It protected him about as much as the aluminum dock did.
I swung back around and using the top of the shield as a swivel, placed the shotgun barrel on it and started firing. In seconds the slide locked back as I expended the last round on the guy way up on the balcony. It was then or never. I charged up the slight hill to the mansion— a hundred yards and I crossed it like it was one-hundred feet! Bullets punched into the ground behind me as they tried to keep up with my sprint. I dropped the mag, caught the ten-round box and slid it into my pocket, then grabbed a fresh mag of buckshot and slammed that home. The slide crashed forward, jamming a round into the chamber. I was ready.
The doors that led to the dock were large, wooden, and ornate. I hit them like a mule. The wood shattered, flinging both doors open and slamming them into the walls. I already had the shotgun barking as I moved in. Ten men, all with snub-nosed submac
hine guns opened fire on me. I should have dodged, but I was too fired up with energy. It felt an awful lot like a runner’s high, but a hundred times better. The bullets that did hit me were like bee stings; painful, but nothing more than an annoyance. From left to right I fired, one, two, three, four, five times.
A lucky round caught the shotgun action and blasted it out of my hands. Okay, I was doing this old school then—well, old school for me. I leaped sideways, whipping out my HK P30L and firing from the hip as I moved. The first two rounds took number six and seven, then the slide locked back on eight as I missed the first couple of times and had to stop to adjust.
By that time nine and ten were out of ammo. Mags dropped to the ground as they scrambled to reload.
“Really?” I asked in my Wraith voice. I slid the pistol home and took out a knife. This was the kind of stupid that needed a lesson.
I would have said “one they would never forget,” but they weren’t going to live to remember it.
Chapter 12
The last man fell to the ground, his throat cut from ear to ear. Now I just needed to find out if there were any more. Before moving on I wiped the blade off on his jacket and slid it back home in its sheath. My own jacket was a shredded mess and since I was going to burn this whole place to the ground, I shrugged it off and tossed it on the floor.
I recovered my shotgun and checked it over; a bullet had lodged in the action and the weapon was ruined. Great. Like Joseph always said, luck isn’t a plan.
This is why I brought backup guns. The shotgun was for big threats like those supers outside anyway; I didn’t need it for dealing with the low-lifes.
I waited another minute for my wounds to fully heal. It was an incredibly odd experience… watching bullets fall out of your body then seeing the holes close by themselves.
The power ebbed, leaving me a tad dizzy as I started clearing the rest of the place. It never worked as well during the day as it did at night, but even still, I had just killed a lot of people and though the high was over I could feel the strength in my body.
Two more popped up as I moved upstairs; they had small UZI-type machine pistols firing off rounds in vast quantities. I fired back exactly two, catching them both between the eyes. They fell dead on the spot as I reached the top of the stairs.
I closed my eyes for a second, calming my beating heart and listening for any more threats. I heard two things at that moment: somewhere on this floor in front of me were at least ten crying, hysterical women who were not prepared for this—they were the cargo ISO was moving out of the country. The other was a low rumble, like a subsonic noise as something big and fast disturbed the air.
“Oh crud,” I said out loud. Every kid who grew up in New Orleans knew the sound of Mach, the leader of the Saints. Even with his massive speed he’d gotten here awful fast. The call must have gone out the second I started shooting.
The last time I heard that sound close-up was the day Charles died. Not that the Saints killed him—Charles adored the Saints. He even swore he would be one someday. No, Charles died because he was a eleven-year-old kid running toward the sound of fighting when he should have been running away. But he wanted to catch a glimpse of Mach, or one of the others.
Fantastic. Now I have to deal with the guy who couldn’t save my brother.
The rumbling grew in my ears but before it washed out everything else, I determined there were no more guards in the house. On the property for sure, but not in the house. No one who saw me was still alive.
Now I just had to get out of here before Mach—
The skylight above me exploded; I threw up one hand to shield my eyes and drew the pistol with my other. Mach landed in front of me in all his muscular glory, wearing his trademark white suit with red and blue trim reminiscent of his time as a USAF pilot. His hair had a lot of gray in it these days and he had a scruffy five o’clock shadow that was more gray than brown—like his head.
He glanced down at the two bodies, then at me and my gun. “That won’t do you any good. Toss it over the railing,” he pointed as he spoke, “and lie face down on the carpet.”
I wasn’t ever stupid. Not as a model, not when on the run, and not in training to be the Wraith. I had hoped not to confront the Saints while I was here, but it seemed someone had anticipated this little move of mine and called them in. I guess they figured taking me out was worth losing a shipment of drugs and girls. Good thing I’m smarter than them.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you I am the good guy here?” I asked as I tossed the gun. It landed next to the discarded shotgun by what I hoped looked like a coincidence.
“We can wait for the proper authorities to sort that out. I’m here because you have… do I know you?”
Crap.
I was sure my eyes were still glowing, and with my scarf over my face and nose he shouldn’t be able to see who I am… but he was also really sharp. He was a Vietnam combat ace back in the sixties, after all, even if he didn’t look much older than sixty himself.
I carefully turned my body so my left side was away from him, then reached into my jacket and pulled the thermite grenade. Mach was an F5; I wasn’t sure if the thermite would even hurt him. But then again, it wasn’t for him.
“I don’t know anyone in this city, not anymore,” I said with my Wraith voice. He raised an eyebrow at that. I glanced past his shoulder and shouted, “Now!”
He looked around only for a second—he was good—but it was long enough. I leaped off the balcony and landed next to my weapons, popping the thermite and dropping it in between the two guns before I ran for the broken door. The air rumbled around me as he kicked in his powers, swooping after me. Just as he reached the ground level the thermite exploded in his face.
Smoke, fire, and heat erupted around the spot. The carpet instantly caught on fire. Mach turned up, sliding across the ceiling as he crashed past me into the backyard, rolling in the dirt several times.
He recovered faster than I expected; a hand whipped out and wrapped around my ankle like a vise grip. He jerked me back so hard I thought my leg had popped out of its socket.
“You’re not going anywhere. Your little smoke show can’t hurt me,” he said. Now he sounded a little perturbed. What did it take to get this guy angry?
“I didn’t think it could hurt you,” I said.
“Then why did you do it?”
“Because the owner of this mansion is a drug lord and human trafficker. He doesn’t deserve it,” I said in my creepy Wraith voice. “Also, there are ten innocent women locked in the conference room on the second floor. They were scheduled to ship out to the middle east this morning.”
A gout of flame leaped out of the first-floor window as the fire spread from room to room with incredible speed. In moments the entire place would be up in flames.
“You’re bluffing.”
“It’s me or them, and we all know how you feel about letting bystanders die,” I shouldn’t have said that last part—it was mean. But it did the trick. He took off like a tornado. I was up and running before he was ten feet away. The late afternoon sun was casting long shadows on the house and trees. All I needed was to reach one and I would be gone. Hopefully, the rest of the Saints were far behind and I could avoid tangling with the whole team.
I hit the dock, running hard when the rumble hit me. He was coming. That was okay. I climbed up the seaplane, spun and fell backward on the East side of the vehicle. He was ten feet from me when I shadow stepped. I re-appeared on the far bank, falling backward out of the shadow of a large pine, one of the few trees on the bank. I hit the ground, rolled, got my feet under me, and ran until I found the next shadow.
Ten minutes later I was driving back along the dirt road, heading west away from the mansion. Nothing I wore made it with me; I made a complete change of clothes, not to mention ditching my red scarf. It would take me a couple of hours to drive the long way back to New Orleans, but it would also put me as far away from Mach and the memories as pos
sible. In the moment I had suppressed them, but seeing his face, hearing his voice, had brought it all back like it was yesterday.
Then I heard it—a low rumble coming toward me. I slammed on the brakes just in time as Mach hit the road in front of me. It was dark enough now that I could escape easily, but I wasn’t using my powers at the moment. No glowing eyes, no crazy voice, and no disguise. Of course, I also didn’t have anything illegal on me.
“Step out of the car,” he said, hovering a foot off the ground.
I opened the door and pulled myself up, standing with one foot on the dirt and one in the car. “Can I help you?” I asked with a calm I certainly didn’t feel.
His eyes narrowed at me. “You’re under arrest for multiple homicides. Put your hands up.”
I looked around, acting as if he were talking to someone else. I didn’t put my hands up, instead, I grinned. “Prove it.”
That annoyed him. He opened his mouth, then shut it. “You were there, I fought you. Then you vanished, I know it was you. There is no point in denying it…”
“I think there’s a great point in denying it. Again, prove it.”
His eyes went wide for a moment and recognition dawned on him.
Crap.
“You’re Charles Dumas’ twin sister,” he said in a whisper.
It wasn’t his fault, I know that, but the way he said Charles name pissed me off. I stepped out and slammed the door shut. “And what if I am?”
All kinds of things clicked together for him at that moment. Despite not having any evidence that I was the one who killed all those people at the mansion, he could make my life hell. All he had to do was haul me into the police. Even if they couldn’t prove it was me, and they probably couldn’t, my secret would be out there.
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