by Ty Patterson
‘Infrared beams,’ Bear grunted when the drone pinged the night and got back an acknowledgement. ‘That’s probably the first line of defense.’
‘Can it detect pressure pads?’ Bwana asked hopefully.
‘Nope. But with your build, who needs pressure pads?’
‘First sentry,’ Zeb interrupted them. ‘Hold it right there.’
They watched the guard pace along the side of the main building, keeping close to its shadows. Roger played with the controls and zoomed in on his face and pointed silently at the night vision goggles around his neck. Bear whistled softly when the man turned around and his rifle came into view. ‘That’s an HK417, uses NATO rounds. Wasserman has his men well-equipped.’
The drone moved on and spotted eight more patrolling men, all similarly equipped, and when it had completed a full circle, Roger hovered it out of sight of the first lighted window. He lit a thermal imager on the drone and orange and yellow blobs appeared on one half of the monitor.
An hour later they had an idea of the layout of the main building and another hour later they got to know the outer buildings.
‘All empty. I guess Wasserman cleared them out, knowing what was coming.’ Bwana tapped the monitor and zoomed in on one of the stables, zoomed out again when they saw it was deserted.
‘Thirteen men?’ Zeb looked at his crew, seeking confirmation.
‘Yeah. And I think we spotted Wasserman in one of those rooms.’ Bear agreed.
‘Fourteen then. We’re still good to go?’
‘He could have forty in there and we’d still be good.’ Bwana snorted.
Zeb bumped fists with them silently, watched them pack their gear and split. The three men would position themselves in a rough triangle while he made his entry.
‘Zero,’ he called out while driving away and got three acknowledgements in his bone phone.
Zero came before action. Zero was the call to ready the beast.
Chapter 28
Zeb reached a private airstrip after two hours of hard driving, made his way to the deserted building; deserted but for the solitary figure lounging against its wall.
The figure straightened when the SUV’s headlights caught him and approached the vehicle sideways, an arm shielding his eyes from the bright lights. Zeb turned off the beams and night reclaimed itself again.
‘You, Zeb Carter?’ The man’s voice was rough and gravelly as if it shaped words rarely. Zeb gripped his hand silently and followed the man to a disused runway on which stood a Cessna Citation, its nose pointing toward the stretch of concrete that blurred into the night.
‘You’ve done this before.’ The pilot’s voice was flat, a statement, not a question.
Zeb didn’t reply. He laid down the gear he was carrying; a HALO chute in grey, coated with the same specialty chemicals that were painted on the drone, a body suit that he donned, handgun, blade and magazines and finally a small backpack that he strapped on.
The pilot helped him with the chute, his oxygen mask and tank, adjusted the backpack so that it wouldn’t interfere with the rest of his gear, and when he was ready, Zeb gave him a thumbs up and the night came to life with the roar of engines.
The Cessna gained altitude and when it reached forty thousand feet, it circled and headed to the coordinates Zeb had given the pilot.
The night was clear, the sky was empty, the air was cold and the universe was Zeb’s when he left the comfort of the plane.
The dials on his wrist read out his speed and counted down to chute opening, but Zeb didn’t glance at them, the clock in his head was running down silently and the beast inside him kept track of the speed.
Zeb glanced down, saw just shades of dark. He looked up; the Cessna was out of sight. He was alone in the cold vastness, just the wind for company.
One minute.
He ran through his landing sequence, flexed his toes and fingers inside his suit.
Two minutes.
He tapped a panel on his left arm and it glowed to life, a fast moving dot showing his position. He pulled when three thousand feet separated him from ground, when he was falling at more than one hundred miles an hour.
The chute tugged and unfurled above, the mad descent stopped abruptly and became gentle, slower. He corrected for drift and through the thin wisps of cloud saw the darkness shape itself into the ranch, which morphed into its component buildings as he drew closer.
In another minute he was on top of the main building, a couple of feet away from where he had planned to be. He removed the chute swiftly, folded it and thrust it under a metal grating and the bodysuit followed. He was down to his combat suit beneath which he wore his armor He strapped his weapons, mounted his backpack, and tested his mic and got answering clicks.
‘About time too,’ Bwana mumbled softly.
The top of the building was flat and smooth and free of sentries. Zeb had landed over what was the living room, the largest room in the building, which ran to its side and front and opened into several other rooms. He went along the roof to the rear of the building, lay face down and peered over the edge.
The first guard came into sight ten minutes later and he timed the man’s movement. The guard disappeared round a corner and instead of returning, another man emerged.
A rolling patrol, smart move, reduces monotony. But maybe not so smart or else they would have watchers on the roof. They figured no one would get past their perimeter, but didn’t think of a HALO jump.
Wasserman paced the living room uneasily, his eyes constantly flicking between the windows and the hallways in sight. It was two in the morning, a time when the rest of the world was asleep. He had cut back on his sleep ever since his man had confirmed Carter’s presence in New York and his planned attack in five days.
He was prepared, there was no more communication with the principal, but he was still uneasy. The last time he had felt like this was in Sudan just before his team had been ambushed.
He turned into the hallway, walked past several rooms and entered the control room; rows of monitors faced him all carrying camera images. A man in thick glasses, Karl Nickle, his security man, monitored them constantly, his head bobbing to a beat that piped into his ears through thick headphones.
Wasserman tapped Karl’s shoulder in irritation, he’d told the man several times not to listen to music. Music dulled the senses, slowed reaction times. Did Karl listen? No.
‘Anything?’
The headphones came off, the head shook. ‘Nothing boss. The night’s deader than a corpse. See for yourself.’ He turned the central monitor in Wasserman’s direction, who waved it away impatiently.
‘Radar?’
‘All quiet. Infrared’s cool too.’
‘Patrol’s up?’
‘Yeah. They aren’t even smoking.’
The disquiet didn’t go away. He pulled out his phone and called his man in New York. The phone rang several times before a sleep laden voice came on. The voice sharpened when his man heard Wasserman’s voice.
Yeah, Carter was still in the city. He had seen him just that morning at the café. He had two other men with him.
Wasserman made to hang up, but something stopped him and he barked a question.
The man stifled a yawn. Did Carter go regularly? No. It was the first time he had been to the café.
The words went through Wasserman’s ears, raced through his brain and even before it had decoded their import, his mouth opened in a warning yell.
The phone died in his hand. He cursed and tried again but got no signal. Karl was looking at him blankly, music still spewing through his headphones. Wasserman spotted his phone, grabbed it, and tossed it away when he got no signal.
He ripped the man’s headset off. ‘Connect me to the patrol.’
Nickle read his voice and silently passed him a headset.
Wasserman shouted into it but got no reply. He tried again and flung the headset in rage. He grabbed Nickle and hauled him up. ‘We’re under attack. Go warn the men.
We have no comms.’ He shoved the man toward the door and watched him stumble out.
He turned to the monitors and peered closely at each one of them.
The lights went out.
The generators kicked in and they came back in a second. Floodlights lit the outside of the ranch and turned night into day.
Not for long. The outside lights went out one by one till the night reclaimed its territory.
Bear put down his M24 after shooting down the lights from his side and watched the drone hover over the front of the building. He nudged it forward gently and when it had reached the end, circled it back. Roger had shot out the floodlights at his end and was operating a similar drone at the rear of the ranch; both carried jammers for mobile and radio networks, which were effective up to a mile.
‘Did I miss anything?’ Bwana murmured in their bone phones. He glanced at a monitor in front of him which had a split view; one received images from the bodycam on the front of Zeb’s suit, the other from the rear bodycam.
‘I hustled my ass for a mile, sliced through the power cables, then crawl forward so that I am just within a mile of the ranch and find that you’re still enjoying the view. Get to work, Zeb.’ He complained.
He didn’t wait for a response knowing it wouldn’t be forthcoming. He turned to the bulky case by his side, stripped it open to reveal his favorite sniping rifle, the M82. He assembled it, laid it on a bipod, mounted a Nightforce scope and his universe was bathed in hues of green. He slapped a ten-round magazine in the Barrett, pulled the gun against his shoulder, rested his cheek against his stock and settled down.
Zeb’s bodysuit was coated with a ‘friend’ identifier that glowed through Bwana’s night vision. He mounted a last device on the underside of the barrel, a mini-computer that gave self-aiming capabilities to the weapon.
Such mini-computers had started making an appearance commercially, but this one went further. It synced with the drone’s images on the monitor and calculated angles, humidity, wind speeds and gave the sniper the ability to shoot blind.
He went into his breathing cycle and waited.
Zeb waited for the sentry to go past his position and then slithered down silently using a drain pipe and the webbing on his gloves to slow his descent. He wasn’t too worried about the guard turning around to spot him; Bwana’s clicks in his ear meant he was covered and the drones had spotted him.
He landed, lay prone on the ground and listened. He thought he heard muffled shouting from within the ranch, but the structure was solid and he couldn’t be sure. He tapped the wall; some kind of wood, a solid build that offered shelter and sanctuary.
Not against a .50 cal bullet.
He rose and went after the guard who disappeared round the corner. The guard was fumbling with his radio when Zeb reached him and felled him with the barrel of his gun.
He caught the man, grabbed his rifle and stopped it from clanking and with a swift glance behind him, dragged him away from the building and after securing him, thrust him against a bush.
He started out and stopped just in time when a warning hiss sounded in his ear. Another guard had just appeared and looked around in confusion; the other sentry should have crossed him. Zeb saw him take a step forward and collapse like a sack when his head disappeared. He rushed forward, dragged the body away and hid it in deep shadow.
He peered round the corner, spotted the window that would give him entry to the kitchen. Kitchen’s the least used room in a house full of men. He timed his move but before he could thrust forward, a window opened behind him and a voice called out. ‘Sergei?’
Zeb bent low and turned around to find a man with glasses peering out, away from him. The voice called out again, low and urgent. The head turned in his direction; Zeb was close enough to him to see the man’s eyes widen behind the thick glasses, and then the man was falling, his shout muffled against Zeb’s glove and then he stopped moving.
Zeb was dragging him away when a voice exclaimed in surprise from close behind him. He flung himself away, twisted on his back, his gun materializing from thin air. It spoke once, but the guard staggered twice, once from Zeb’s shot, the other from the giant hammer that Bwana triggered from nine hundred yards away.
‘Thanks, Bwana. Next time can you not leave it so late?’ Zeb said breathlessly as he dragged both the bodies away. Bwana’s chuckle broke into his ear. ‘Just keeping you on your toes, bro.’ He waited for Zeb to emerge from the thicket. ‘The sooner you go in, the better, Zeb. Next time we may not be so lucky.’
‘Roger,’ Zeb acknowledged. There were initially nine men outside, five inside; now those were reduced to six and four. But those six could turn up at any time. Bear and Roger were keeping track of them, but their warning could be too late.
He ran back to the window the spectacled man had opened, extracted his cable camera and peered inside. It was well lighted but empty. He could see a hallway through the half open door.
I can go back to the kitchen, but Wasserman knows he’s under attack now. He might have a man there.
He signaled to his watching men and hoisted himself over the sill and was inside. A second later, he turned off the light and the room went dark.
Roger’s voice drawled softly. ‘Now all you gotta do is find Wasserman. How hard can that be?’
‘Karl,’ Wasserman called out from the control room. He waited for a few more minutes, swore under his breath, went to a cabinet and removed a Kevlar vest. He tightened it around him, pocketed a Smith and Wesson, spare mags, grabbed a flashlight and peered cautiously. He turned off the control room’s lights and moved out with his gun arm extended. He spoke into radio, cursed himself mentally when he remembered, called out softly. ‘Jake?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’re under attack. Warn the others. See if you can locate Karl. He went to warn those outside.’
‘Radio is down. Cell phones aren’t working either, boss.’
‘I know that, dammit. Why do you think I’m talking out loud to you?’
Jake moved off, stopped when he called out again. ‘Get them all inside. We are too thin inside.’
‘Yeah.’
He heard Jake drifting away, thought of telling him not to poke his head outside, there were likely to be snipers, but discarded the thought. His men were experienced, this was basic tradecraft.
There were ten more rooms on the ground floor other than the living room and the control room; study, kitchen, dining room, bathrooms, bedrooms. Wasserman had three men spread out downstairs and two upstairs to cover the empty bedrooms.
Two not three downstairs. Karl’s probably dead.
He took two steps ahead, paused and turned back. Perimeter security is down. But the house has cameras inside which are powered by generator.
He went back to the control room, moved the mouse and brought up the camera feeds. Six cameras, all of them panning the various hallways below, all of them concealed in the fire alarm detectors.
Living room to kitchen was empty. That shadow there? Turned out to be one of his men. Passage to main bedrooms was empty. One other hallway had his man looking alert, his back to a wall, covering all the entrances that he could see.
Carter could be anywhere. Wasserman rose, picked up his gun and turned to leave. The flicker of movement caught his eye.
Utility room!
Carter was heading down the hallway leading away from it. That would go past the kitchen where Darin was located and further down was Pickles. Wasserman’s lips twisted in anticipation.
Carter was trapped.
Chapter 29
Zeb moved out of the room, down the passage which was twenty feet long and had several doorways. He peered through the first one, it was an indoor gym. The next one was a storage room, the third was empty.
It’s a big ranch, rooms to spare which can be converted to bedrooms.
The next doorway was wider and brightly lit from within. He crouched, thrust his cable camera through. Kitchen.
The k
itchen was large, as big as the ground floor of many modern homes. Wooden cabinets gleamed; a double-door refrigerator hummed softly, an oven’s red light winked on and off. He watched for a long time, but there was no movement from inside, his radar didn’t ping. He rose and continued down the hallway.
Too quiet.
Then it wasn’t anymore.
He threw himself flat down when the shadow fell on the floor ahead. A barrel poked through first and ripped open blindly. Lead shredded walls and threw up debris and dust.
The gunman appeared, crouched low, his eyes searching, his HK seeking. He lost a fraction of a second, expecting to find Zeb at chest level.
His first round collapsed the gunman’s right leg, the second caught him high on the shoulder, and the third went into his head.
Zeb rose and moved forward, knowing the shooting would draw other hoods in. He raised a leg to step over the dead shooter when he felt a presence behind him.
Shooter!
The gunman came out of nowhere, probably from the kitchen. His trigger finger was whitening, his eyes were cold.
Zeb threw himself back, slid down, but knew it was too late. There wasn’t any room in the narrow passage. A single burst would find him.
The heavy bullet left Bwana’s M82 at close to three thousand feet per second. Its armor piercing capability was designed to stop trucks, aircraft, and even tanks. It punched through the first three brick walls and lost a little speed and kinetic energy, but even what was left was enough.
The shooter disintegrated in front of Zeb’s eyes. His body collapsed like a sack, the HK clanked to the floor.
Zeb took a deep breath and collected himself. He made sure both the gunmen were dead and looked down the hallway.
How did they know I was here?
The walls were bare, nothing hanging off them behind which cameras could be concealed. He looked at the lights. The fixtures were too small to hold anything.
