“I hesitated. The Triad does not tolerate disobedience. They decreed I would die along with my assigned targets. I returned to Hong Kong and killed my employers instead.” He said that like it was no big deal.
“You’re telling me you went to war with a Hong Kong Triad.”
He shrugged. “Only with enough of them to settle the matter.”
“See? I knew you were a badass. Damn, Shen. Did you wear a white suit? Did doves fly by in slow motion while you used a Beretta in each hand?”
Shen didn’t seem to think that was funny. “Nothing so dramatic. When it was over, I agreed to never return to Hong Kong. I had no purpose and nothing to live for. There had been conflict between the Triads and Exodus. I knew they fought for what they believed to be good. To atone for the evil acts I had committed, I offered Exodus my services. It took years before they trusted me. Some still do not. The ones with us here are my family now . . . Very well, Lorenzo, you wish to know what I think?”
“Go for it.”
“Like me, you are experienced in these matters. You understand that only death can satisfy some debts. Regardless of what you have suffered, you must . . .” Shen paused, trying to think of the correct way to phrase it, “Keep your shit together.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. On my worst day I’m still more than a match for these dickheads.” But that was just talk. I was worried. I knew it, and Shen knew it.
“You want to lash out. I have been there. But too much is riding on this mission. We can feel the pressure. The time is close. As you Americans say, it breathes down our neck. You have made mistakes, recognized them, and made fewer. You were still recovering from Jihan’s prison. My friends have no such excuse. I respect Ling. I love her as if she was my own sister. She was one of the first to accept me in Exodus. Only her heart follows a flawed man. Valentine is dedicated, but too passionate. He rushed, trying to pit Underhill against Katarina, and nearly paid with his life. It was foolish.”
“Harsh.”
“Yet true.” Shen trailed off as we stopped at an intersection.
When it was a little quieter we both realized Samuel was yelling for help from the trunk. The carbon monoxide was probably making him stupid. “Keep it down in there,” I shouted toward the back seat.
“I accepted death long ago, but when it comes I pray it serves a purpose. We can’t afford to die without results, Lorenzo. I truly believe the world depends on what we do here.”
“The world, huh?” I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I waited for a light to change. “You talking about Ariel’s predictions?”
“I am.”
“While we’re on the topic of mystical bullshit philosophies . . .” Under the cold light of day I wasn’t going to tell him my crackpot theories. “Never mind.”
“I think she sees patterns others do not. I leave it at that. All that matters is that she is usually right.”
The light changed. “Damn, Shen, that was remarkably unhelpful.”
“Now you understand why I do not make small talk.”
Chapter 14: The Rescue
VALENTINE
North of Paris
October 8th
The plan was simple enough: Lorenzo and Shen would sneak up in the dark and try to get the gate open, while Skunky would provide overwatch with his rifle. Reaper—and his unwilling passenger, Samuel the security installer—was parked a ways off with our secondary getaway vehicle. Ling, Antoine, and I were in our van, hidden off the main road, ready to roll in when the infiltrators got the gate open. We had nothing to do until then, and it was maddening.
I sat in the back, with Antoine, dressed out in full combat gear. I had on body armor, with plates, and a load-bearing vest on top of that. Beneath all of that we were wearing normal clothing, so we could ditch the heavy stuff and not look like weirdos if we needed to. Antoine and I both carried old German G3 rifles, with Aimpoint red dot sights mounted. Antoine’s had a 40mm grenade launcher mounted under the barrel, though we were really hoping not to use grenades since this was supposed to be a hostage rescue. Regardless, we were ready to provide heavy fire support when the time came.
Ling was in the driver’s seat, she was fully kitted out too. Of course, we had left Ariel behind. Despite her enthusiasm, she had zero training, and quite simply wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. I had suggested that she stay with Jill to keep an eye on her. Jill was still recovering, and wasn’t in good enough shape to get around, only Ariel had begged off, saying she was too busy. For whatever reason, I had the feeling Ariel wanted to avoid Lorenzo’s people. She was still at our safehouse.
We were really shorthanded, especially since we had no idea how many men Stokes had. It was too risky to keep the place under surveillance directly, but a little cautious poking around with the farmers in the local villages told us there had been several people staying at the chateau, but the number of cars coming and going had jumped dramatically right after I’d tried to strangle Katarina. That probably meant she had called in reinforcements.
I wished Tailor could help. We’d have a lot better luck getting Bob Lorenzo out alive with a properly equipped tactical team on our side, and from what I had seen Tailors’ guys seemed to really know their shit. However, there was the slight problem that I hadn’t told Romefeller we were doing this. He thought we were still investigating and searching for the bomb. The big Illuminati meeting was in the morning, so I was afraid he’d declare any direct raid against Katarina Montalban’s employees to be unsanctioned, and then we would be out of luck. I wasn’t just worried that he’d tell us not to, but after the mess at the hotel, Romefeller might actively send Tailor to stop us from going in. But if we could retrieve Bob, Kat would lose her patsy and Blue would be delayed. Romefeller might not like doing it my way, but tough shit.
Antoine must’ve read my face, even in the darkened van. “You look pensive, Mr. Valentine.”
“Pensive,” I repeated, keeping one ear on the radio. Skunky was slowly crawling into position. Lorenzo and Shen were doing the same. Since they were going low and slow, the wait was downright nerve-wracking. “That’s one way of describing it, I guess.”
“It is understandable.” It must’ve been difficult to find body armor that would fit somebody as large as Antoine. He had to be six-foot-five, with at least a fifty-inch chest. The G3 rifle he carried, especially with a grenade launcher attached, is not a compact or especially handy weapon. It looked almost like a toy in his hands. His voice was deep and accented, but despite his imposing figure, he always spoke like a schoolteacher. “There is much that could go wrong. Do you still think this is the right thing to do?”
I exhaled, wiping sweat from my brow. We didn’t have the engine running and it was getting warm in the back of the van, wearing all this gear. “I think this is crazy,” I said, bluntly. “But it needs to be done. We can’t let them frame Bob for mass murder.”
Antoine simply nodded.
“Besides,” I continued, leaning back in my seat, “Exodus roped Lorenzo into this mess on the promise that you’d help him get his brother back. He went through God-knows-what because of that. It would be incredibly screwed up to not uphold your end of the deal.”
“Exodus keeps its promises,” Antoine agreed, “no matter how long it takes. But I was not speaking of us, I was asking about you.”
“You guys and Lorenzo came and rescued me when I was being held. You risked your lives for me. Bob’s in the predicament he’s in because of me. Getting him out is the least I can do. It’s the right thing to do.”
We got the signal over the radio. They were almost there.
Good luck, asshole.
LORENZO
The Chateau
“Do you have the shot?”
“I have the shot.”
“Take it,” I whispered.
The sound suppressor hid the gunshot, but the impact of the bullet came as a wet thwack as Skunky blew the guard’s brains out. There was a clack as his rifle dropped from nervel
ess fingers. A shadow passed in front of the light as the man fell flat on the balcony. A red mist hung in front of the lamp for an instant before dissipating in the wind.
“The guard is down.” Skunky’s voice came through my earpiece. He was excitable in person, but on the job it turned out he was all business.
We had been crawling for hours. Now that Skunky had shot a guard, it was a race against the clock before they realized we were here. No alarm sounded. The compound remained quiet. That wouldn’t last forever.
That had been a damned good shot. There was a strong breeze tonight, and it was even harder to judge wind through a night vision scope. My own night vision device was stowed in a pouch on my belt, because it sucked to wear while crawling through the dirt, caught on branches, and after a while the weight killed my neck and gave me a headache.
“Keep holding position. The camera is turning left.”
All the cameras tracked slowly back and forth. We were so close that I imagined I could hear the little servo motors, but that was wishful thinking from my hearing damaged, half deaf self.
I waited, hoping that nobody inside had heard the guard fall, but the yard around the big house remained clear. Shen and I had spent three miserable, filthy hours low crawling through the weeds and brush, moving when the camera was pointed away, and taking cover when Skunky warned us it was close. It had to be nearly as exhausting for him, watching it through the scope and repeating the countdown a few hundred times now.
“Four, three, two, one. And clear. Go.”
Shen and I leapt out of the weeds and sprinted for the fence.
Samuel had given us the stats, and since he was a mile away, tied up in Reaper’s car with the promise that if I got caught, Reaper was just going to leave him there, I was certain he’d been completely forthcoming. There were no motion or contact sensors on the fence. He’d talked Stokes out of it because there were too many deer in the area, and they would always be setting it off. The fence was fifty years old, ten feet tall, and made of thick iron bars, spaced four inches apart, with—Shen had guessed right—decorative pokeys on top, that was it. So it would be a piece of cake for guys like us to get over. My biggest concern was that it would rattle and make a bunch of noise as we climbed it.
We had thirty seconds before the camera on the roof came back around. We reached the fence with fifteen seconds to spare. Shen bent next to it, so I could step ladder my way onto his knee, his shoulder, and as he stood up with my weight on him, I grabbed the top bar. The fence shook a bit, but the metallic noise was less than the sound of the wind. I rolled on top, balancing, letting the fleur-de-lis poke into my soft Kevlar body armor vest as I swung one hand down to Shen. Gloves hit my exposed forearm as Shen pulled. He was pretty damned acrobatic, and made it over the top in a flash, dropping smoothly and silently onto the grass on the other side.
I rolled off and dropped next to him, hitting with a grunt. I’d been pushing my body hard since I’d gotten out of Jihan’s dungeon, training as hard as I could while limited to an apartment with no exercise equipment, so I wasn’t even close to being in prime shape. Shen was crouched and listening, one hand on his slung weapon. There hadn’t been any dogs when Samuel had done his install work, but that might have changed since. There wasn’t any barking and no big angry German Shepherds descended on us, so that was good.
I pointed toward the nearest patch of bushes. Shen and I moved out in a fast crouch. The grass was thick, hadn’t been mowed for a while, and had gone to seed. Secret prisons were lax on their lawn care. The wind was blowing the leaves and shaking the branches. That was a huge benefit for us, as the noise and movement would help hide us from the patrols.
“Camera coming back in five, four, three—”
By the time Skunky got done, we were already on our bellies in the dirt and roots. This would be the last countdown. After this, we’d be beneath the exterior camera’s field of view, and we could push for the front gate. Skunky’s earlier lost tourist scout drive-by had confirmed the gate was too solid to ram. Blowing it up would be messy and time-consuming. Short of a tank we didn’t have, the terrain was too rough to crash the fence at any other angle. So if we wanted help to roll in, we needed to open that gate.
However, there was now a dead man leaking the contents of his skull all over the rear second-floor balcony. Any second somebody was going to miss him or trip over him, and then we were screwed. So time was of the essence.
On my knees and elbows I crawled through the bushes. I could tell they’d been well trimmed once, probably styled into animal topiary, but now they were lumps of wonderful concealment. The wind helped hide any inadvertent shaking I caused. I reached the edge of the leaves and surveyed the back of the house. There were a lot of lights around the chateau, so I’d made the right call leaving off my NVGs. In fact, there were too many interior rooms lit up for comfort. Hopefully that just meant they liked to sleep with the lights on, and not that there were a bunch of them still awake, but probably not.
Seen up close, this was a really nice estate, but a little too snooty, Euro artsy for my tastes. Everything between the buildings was landscaped into gentle curves and cobbled paths. There were terraces, columns, and even imitation Greek statues. The pool was full, but judging from all the leaves and bugs floating on the water, it hadn’t been used for a while. Lights hitting the rippling water cast odd reflections on the walls and statues.
I checked my watch. It was after 4 AM. We were behind schedule. I’d wanted to hit while people tended to be at their natural deepest sleep rhythm, but that weed crawl in had been agonizingly slow and put us behind schedule.
“This is Skunky. Ghost and Slick are in the compound,” he reported to the assault element.
Exodus had made up the call signs. I looked toward Shen, like fuck you, I should be Ghost. In the dark, with his artificially blackened face, all I could see was his teeth smiling back, like up yours, I’m Mr. Exodus Cool Guy. You have to be Slick.
“This is Nightcrawler. We are ready to move at your signal.” That had been Valentine’s Dead Six call sign, and what I’d first known him as. So in that case, I was lucky my call sign hadn’t ended up as Asshole.
I had the 9mm TMP subgun hanging from a single point sling at my side. While crawling through ditches all night, the compact weapon had been handy. Now that I was in a compound with an unknown number of heavily armed mercenaries, I wished I had carried something chambered in an actual grown up sized rifle cartridge. Shen had one of those Czech EVO subguns, with some short, fat European suppressor I didn’t recognize. I pulled out my 1911 with the old suppressor screwed onto the end of its threaded muzzle. We would keep this quiet as long as possible.
This was my element. There was something addictive about sneaking around in the dark. If we needed to bail, I was ready to disappear in plain sight too. Though I was dirty and sweaty and had my face painted, beneath my soft vest, I was wearing regular clothes. I could ditch the guns and vest, and a quick scrub later I could disappear back into society, not that there was any society within a couple of miles, but you never know. But until we had to run, I owned these scumbags. I felt alive.
Shortly, we’d be clear to move. Then we’d either succeed and get Bob back alive, or we’d fail, and probably all get shot in the process. At this point there was no use dwelling on it. We’d made the best plan we could. This crew was motivated, experienced, and extremely skilled. If something went wrong, we’d adapt, and we’d win.
While we lay there in the shadows, Shen unslung the EVO and quietly opened the folding stock. Skunky began our final countdown. “Camera is past in three, two, one. Go.”
I was out and moving quickly toward the edge of the pool shack. Shen and I had talked it over beforehand, and he veered toward the right, staying with the bushes. We had the same target. Two different paths let us watch more angles for threats, plus—let’s be honest—this whole alpha predator in the dark thing is mostly instinct, so having somebody up close on you is awkward. I
kept to the darkest spots, moving from shadow to shadow. I caught one brief glimpse of Shen as he rolled beneath another bush, but then he was gone. The dude was really good.
We knew there were patrols around the interior. For the last few hours Skunky had told us about each one he’d spotted and the path they had taken, but they’d been sporadic enough that there didn’t seem to follow a scheduled route. It was just two dudes with guns walking around periodically.
I began to slide around the edge of the pool house, then realized there was gravel here, and gravel is too loud to walk on, so I backtracked and took the other side.
“Slick, this is Skunky. When you go around that corner, I won’t be able to cover you.”
I tapped my transmit button twice in the affirmative, then I went that way anyway. Like I said, you had to go with your instinct. I made it twenty feet closer to the gatehouse before Skunky transmitted again.
“I’ve got more movement on the rear balcony. Another guard. He’s a few seconds from seeing that body I left.”
The angle was such that I couldn’t see the balcony anymore. I kept pushing on. I was just going to have to count on our sniper.
Skunky must not have realized he was still transmitting. “Come on. Turn around. Don’t open that door . . . Don’t . . .” There was a long pause. I was far enough away that I didn’t hear the sound of the supersonic bullet travelling through the air or the impact against flesh. “There’s another guard down on the rear balcony.”
That was probably the first guard’s relief. When he didn’t go back inside, the rest would realize something was wrong. They’d sound the alarm, wake everybody else up, and then all hell would break loose. The clock was ticking down fast now. It was tempting to rush, but that would get me spotted, so I just kept on slinking along from shadow to shadow.
Slowly, very slowly, I peeked around the corner. Quick jerky movements were what got you spotted in the dark. The gatehouse was in view, but unfortunately, so was one of the random patrols. Two men were strolling my way, with maybe ten feet separating them. They weren’t smoking or joking. They were relaxed, but alert. Heads up, glancing around, these weren’t just goons. Their attitude and appearance said they were pros. The ones Skunky had seen during the daylight drive by had been wearing contractor chic, khakis and photographer’s vests to hide their pistols, so they looked like security, but not so militant as to make witnesses nervous. Apparently that went out the window after dark, because now they were wearing tac vests and carrying shorty AR carbines.
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 33
