“Yup?”
“Why don’t you free your other self tonight? What they don’t understand, will only make them more scared.” John grinned darkly.
“Oh, you wicked, wicked man.” Peter replied, “Can I have your babies?” The chuckles went around.
Two of Black Eagles broke formation and went towards the two security emplacements which were three hundred yards out, then another three hundred yards further away from the main entrance to the refinery.
John told the rest, “Everyone else, take a side. Drop down, have fun. Don’t shoot the good guys.”
“How do we know who the good guys are?” Eric asked.
“They’ll be the ones who aren’t shooting at you,” John replied dryly.
—
“I’m telling you, I hear growling!” Hasayne told Aabad.
The two men were in a dugout surrounded by sandbags with a machine gun poking out a firing hole. They had some rough-hewn wood and a couple of old doors across their head to supply a little protection from above. Not that they had any need of it.
“We are two hundred kilometers from any fighting,” Aabad grunted, “You hear the machinery behind us.” The two jihadis shared a cigarette. “We haven't seen any action since we got here, and if we don’t get picked soon, we are going to be here the whole war.”
Aabad was taking a drag of the cigarette when the growling became loud enough for him to hear. He turned slowly around to look out the back entrance to their dugout. Two glowing eyes returned his stare.
The cigarette dropped from his fingers.
Three hundred yards ahead of him, two men were playing cards when a figure cloaked in black with red glowing eyes ghosted into their security bunker. Seconds later, he stepped back out after cleaning his sword on the dead bodies.
Akio jogged up to the next security bunker and took a look inside. His nose had already told him that the men inside were dead.
He looked around at the blood and body parts. Apparently, Peter was a little more upset than he appeared and was truly going to ‘let his mad out’.
Akio turned and started running towards the large refinery. If he didn’t hurry, he wasn’t going to have any further kills.
—
John dropped the twenty feet from his Pod to the high walkway of the distillation tower with his new rifle. The team had spent a few minutes to sight them back on the Ad Aeternitatem. For the distances he would use here, he wouldn’t have to worry about the slug this threw out dropping due to gravity. John pulled the gun from his shoulder and rolled his head around his shoulders, hearing a couple of his bones pop.
He opened his senses as Bethany Anne had taught him and listened to the creaks and moans of the metal around the refinery as the oil went through the high pressure and heated tanks.
He then heard the footsteps, the heart beats, and the grunts, as men passed each other.
Fifteen. He had fifteen in his area. John pulled the rifle to his shoulder. He had shot once on 10x muzzle velocity and decided unless the situation called for it, he didn’t want the pain that caused again. Even with his advanced healing, it hurt like a bitch.
John looked down and to his left. Two guys were sharing a smoke. He aimed and gently stroked the trigger. The rifle’s kick was inconsequential as the metal slug went through the first guy’s neck at a down angle cutting between his shoulder blades to exit, then entering the chest of the man behind him. Both bodies slumped to the walkway.
Thirteen.
He turned to watch a guard walk down a third walkway and waited for his target to move on to the right. John squeezed his slug through a gap between two eight-inch pipes. The man’s head blew all over the small distillation tank he was strolling past.
Twelve.
The distillation tank had a small hole in its side and oil started dripping out.
“Somebody should look into that.” John murmured.
Thirty seconds and seven more shots later, he was down to five.
Two things happened simultaneously. An alarm went off on the distillation tank he had shot earlier, and one of the dead bodies was discovered.
Two more shots and the second problem wasn’t an issue any longer. But, that damned alarm stayed a problem.
John looked over his shoulder and noticed three men jogging towards the tank. One of them had a rifle.
“Way to make yourself a target, asshole,” John spoke to the wind, mildly annoyed with himself. Another twitch and another guy died. The two running in front of the downed guard heard his fall and turned around to see their guard dead. The first in line, wearing a tan shirt, drawstring pants, and sandals pushed the second out of the way as he ran past him. Bending down, he grabbed the rifle and headed back the way the three had come from.
John reached up to the small microphone by his mouth, “This is Eagle One, we have a good guy with a rifle about to deliver righteousness back to the evil doers it seems. Try not to kill him.”
John clicked off, shouldered his rifle and started down the stairs into the maze.
—
Scott dropped down from his Black Eagle and commanded it to go up. He was wearing full chest and thigh protection. He kept the shielding helmet active and let it show him everything in the nearby area. It was able to interpret movement and then decipher organic sounds with the amplified microphones within the helmet body. From this information, it would list likely targets.
Scott smiled under his helmet, “I’ve always wanted to play Robocop…”
He started walking in a plodding step to the first path, “Please step away from your camels…” He started, then stopped and sighed, “Wow, I can’t even say a racist joke about someone I plan on killing without feeling bad, where is this world going?”
“Who are you?” A voice called out of the darkness to his left.
Scott turned to his left to see three armed men in a row. “God, could you guys make this any easier?” Scott pulled his pistol in a blink and shot once. The three men were thrown back with a massive hole in their chests, surprise the last expression they would have on their faces. He turned to his right, “Clean up, aisle one - aisle two it is.” Scott started walking away from the first three dead bodies.
He could see a hundred yards of oil containers, all dark in the night. “Go infrared.” His helmet showed the areas between the tanks and there were no humans in his view.
Scott looked all around. “Bring me the Black Eagle.” Scott holstered his pistols and pulled off the helmet. His Black Eagle was in front of him within five seconds, so he walked over and palmed the lock. The cockpit slid open, and he placed the helmet in the front seat and reached into the back to grab his rifle.
He reached up to his collar and hit his microphone, “Take the Black Eagle up to the holding level.” His Pod disappeared.
Over the noises of the refinery, a wolf’s howl pierced the night.
Scott jerked around, “Mother-fucking wolf!” Scott yelled and started running towards the plant, “I’ll shoot you myself if you take any of my kills!” He yelled out.
Scott’s heart started pumping as he slung the rifle and pulled the pistols. He came around a corner to find himself in a group of four armed men crossing the ground between sections in the plant. Scott jerked his right elbow up, practically exploding one man’s skull. He twisted to his left, bringing his pistol around and shot the second in his knee-caps. That man screamed in pain, but Scott was already onto the next man to his left.
The third guy in the pack received a bullet between his eyes.
The last man was trying to pull up his rifle and jerked the trigger, sending a burst of shots into the man in front of him. The same man Scott had knee-capped, blowing the unfortunate guy's chest open from friendly fire.
Scott finished his turn and raised his right hand and spoke in frustration, “You rotting cunt jizzy fuck!” Scott shot him in the stomach, “I had fucking plans for him!” Scott shot him in his kneecap, “But now you’ve gone and killed him!” Scott
finished off the man with a final shot to his head.
He turned in frustration after watching the man’s body fall backward, “Fucking shit, how is a guy supposed to …” Scott had to jerk and duck to his left when bullets started screaming at him from a guy firing off a catwalk fifty yards away.
“Losing situational awareness,” Scott heard John in his ear, “Is a good way to get shot.”
Scott bowed his head. John was right. He had been allowing too much emotion to run his decisions lately. Unslinging his rifle and ramping up his speed, Scott darted out from concealment and raised the gun. He could easily see the man at the end of a walkway taking aim at his former hiding place. Scott continued running towards the unsuspecting shooter, tracking movement as his mark tried to find his own target.
When Scott was halfway to the guy, he shot him in the head. Scott was past him before the body fell off of the catwalk to slam onto the ground and lie still.
—
Darryl watched Scott drop down and step out of his Pod and then paid attention as John landed on the high-level catwalk. “That’s smart,” he whispered.
“Hey Eric,” Darryl called.
“Yeah?” Eric replied.
“What say we leave those two to ground efforts, and we play up here?”
Eric’s smile came through his reply, “What, shoot fish in a barrel?”
“Yes, exactly that,” Darryl agreed.
“Works for me. I knew I liked having you around for something besides just getting me a beer.”
Darryl snorted, “Prick, I’ll bet you a six-pack I get more kills tonight.”
“Just say when, old-timer.” Eric quipped.
“Now, you cockup.” Darryl hit the button for his cockpit and pulled up the new railgun rifle. Then, it was a silent contest as the two men started aiming and shooting.
—-
Scott was running into a more dense section of the refinery when he heard regular rifle fire and then return fire in what sounded like a firefight. But the noises weren’t from his group's weapons.
“What the hell is going on?” Scott asked as he stepped onto a catwalk and started jogging towards the gunfire.
John replied, “We have good guys grabbing guns and shooting bad guys.”
Scott turned onto the main team channel to ask a question when he heard Eric yelling. “Gott Verdammt! That was my kill you lazy fuck!” Eric was arguing with Darryl, “I’ve got twenty-one, but if you steal my kill again, I’ll come over there and slap you so hard your momma is going to feel it!”
“Oh, try it, you burrito-eating barbarian!” Darryl shot back, “Twenty-three and four!”
“What?” There was a pause, “Yeah, ok, that was good shooting.” Eric admitted, “But how about this?” Scott heard four ear busting blasts enter a building to his left. Brick pieces were exploding out from the massive wreckage raining down upon it.
“Fuck me! That hurts like a mother-fucker!” Eric called out, “Why didn’t John say it hurt so much to shoot these things on ten?”
“Probably so you would do something like that!” Darryl replied, “Yeah, I see four bodies in there. That was slick. I would like to say it was cheating, but only because I didn’t think of it first.”
“Has anyone seen a werewolf?” John’s voice interrupted the two.
“Why, did we lose one?” Eric asked.
“Here Pricolici…Bark, bark, bark!” Darryl called out over the net.
“Ahhh, fuck!” John called out, “Akio, see if you can find Peter and get him to change back. I’m getting news that my next hit has moved up their timetable. We’ve got to go. Scott, we are leaving in three.”
“Got it!” Scott called out. He had arrived at the scene of the firefight. There were ten ISIS members behind a brick wall firing back at four of the previous hostages. “Ah, screw it.” He popped the switch to 10x and moved the railgun to his shoulder, “You only live once.” Scott held down the trigger.
And all hell broke loose.
In a second, seven rods slammed out of his gun at an incredible velocity. The first three shattered the wall into thousands of killing shards, destroying the bodies of five guards immediately. The remaining four went through the two other living ISIS members. The shots blew holes so large in the bodies nothing was remaining to hold them together. Then, the shots continued into the oil heaters, and that was when the explosions started.
Scott was tossed backward by the ongoing pummeling from the gun. Then the concussion hit, pushing him over the wire safety railing and flipping him back off the catwalk. The whole situation became hyper slow-motion to Scott. He tucked his knees in close to increase the speed of his somersault and then paid attention to the ground to stick his landing on both feet.
He looked left, then right to see if anyone was going to shoot him.
“I give that a 7 for effort, but a four for technique.” Darryl quipped on the network.
Fuck, they saw that. God, he wasn’t going to live that down, now.
“Scott, quit fucking around and get your Olympic gymnastics’ ass in your Pod.” John grumped.
Seconds later, Scott's Pod dropped down, and he jumped in to get ‘out of there’.
“Where’s Peter?” Scott asked.
“Oh, I’m here.” Peter’s voice came in over the radio. “I was cleaning off my claws when Akio found me.”
“Maybe my English is bad, but please explain again to me,” Akio came over the line, “How swiping your claws through someone's shirt is ‘cleaning’?”
John’s chuckle came back after Akio’s question, “It isn’t your English, Akio. It’s Peter’s definition of ‘cleaning’.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Are we bombing them?” Peter asked as the six Black Eagles silently ascended a thousand feet.
“Slightly,” John responded, “Confirm no humans near the storage tanks and use two pucks each to take them out. Eric, I want you to focus on the pipes heading towards the southeast. Go out about ten miles and take out a huge section. I’ll go to the west and do the same.”
Those fighting inside the refinery were startled when ground shaking explosions occurred. They looked to their left to see oil and metal flying high in the air from the sixty-foot diameter holding tanks. No fire occurred, but the destruction was catastrophic, and it was raining petroleum. There were a couple of small fires, and the addition of the oily rain wasn’t going to help slow those fires at all.
The men started running in the opposite direction when two more explosions occurred near to them. No one saw the missiles, but everyone suspected weapons were being fired at them.
Ten miles away and three miles up, Eric released a four-pound puck at maximum acceleration. Below, a massive explosion of dirt obscured his vision.
“Mission accomplished,” Eric declared then looked over the side again, “I think. I can’t see shit down there.”
“Mine too,” John’s voice came back, “It will be good enough. These don’t have to be perfect, close enough is going to work.” John switched over to the group radio, “Ok, next stop is Beni.”
“Where?” Peter asked.
“Beni,” Scott replied, “Shit sophomore, step up your global mapping knowledge.”
“And where the hell,” Peter snapped, “is Beni?”
“East side of the Republic of Congo,” Scott replied.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Peter griped, “There is no way you knew this already. Did John tell you this?”
John cut in, “No I didn’t Pete. But if you had paid more attention to how your helmet works, you might have that information already.”
“Oh,” was Peter’s chastened reply.
“Ok, we are going to visit the ADF, who are resurging. They’ve killed innocent women and children. Often slicing open pregnant women and tying up people before slitting their throats. The politics involve those close to power trying to stop the elections from occurring because they lose power. Frank heard chatter about a small group of about
thirty doing a run on a remote village of about eighty.”
“Can I come out and play again?” Peter asked.
“No, too much can be a drug I understand,” John answered.
“Yeah, it is a hell of a hit.” Peter agreed.
“Ok guys, we are going to fly in, drop down and walk down the small main street to the path the ADF is using.”
“Great! The Magnificent Seven.” Darryl added.
“But, there are six of us?” Akio asked.
“I’m counting Peter’s ability to change as a split personality…So, seven.” Darryl qualified. “Or, we could say Scott and his arms.”
Bitch's Night Out (Frank Kurns Stories of the UnknownWorld Book 2) Page 3
