Nate clicked his tongue in irritation and tightened his jaw. Lying on his belly, shrouded by the night, he lowered the optics and sighed, handing them off to Erin beside him. She lifted them to her eyes, sucking in a sharp breath as she took in the sight.
“Fucking cunt,” she hissed through her teeth.
Ten corpses were sat against the wall, five on each side of the front gate, all women. Each had been executed with a single round to the head, their lifeless bodies posed like grisly trophies on display.
“This is my fault,” murmured Erin, pulling the binoculars away and dipping her head in grief.
“We share the burden, Erin,” he said softly.
Nate glanced at the young woman, seeing the pain etched in the lines of her jaw. She was confounding at times with her emotional outbursts, popular culture references that went over his head, and her near reckless lack of fear, but she had a good heart. She was unlike anyone he had ever met, and though at times he wanted to throttle her, everything she said and did came from a place of wanting to help, or simply to make those around her laugh. She was a wild flame that was difficult to control, but the light she cast with such an illuminating presence was worth the frustration.
She was also a freakishly quick study. As long as he could get her to concentrate, she was a talented shooter, with an uncommon ability to think and act under pressure.
“I pushed us into this, Nate,” she answered, determined to accept the blame for the death of the women. “I swear, if he’s hurt Charlie, I don’t think I’ll be able to deal with it.”
“If he’d hurt the kid, he’d have taken great pleasure in adding him to his shop window,” reasoned Nate. The boy was probably Bancroft’s ace in the hole, a human shield if everything went to shit, but Nate avoided telling Erin that particular thought. She was already raw with the death of the women, and impulse control was a chink in the woman’s armour. She acted almost entirely on instinct and emotion, as she had when assaulting Bancroft’s relief force. That had been reckless and unbelievably dangerous, but secretly, Nate was proud of her success. It had not been his intention for her to stop reinforcements supporting those firing on Nate at the petrol station, but she had succeeded anyway. She was a quick thinker and had clearly learned from the lessons he had to teach, despite him thinking she was only listening half the time.
Erin seemed mollified by his reasoning, nodding.
“You’re probably right,” she conceded. “Still, I wouldn’t mind coating his balls in sugar and strapping him down next to a wasp nest.”
Nate snorted. “Colourful.”
Erin exhaled sharply, pulling her focus back. “So, what’s the play?”
“The cameras at the four corners,” he said. “Like we discussed. There are blind spots, so do one side first with the spray paint. We’ll wait and see if they send anyone to investigate.”
Nate retrieved the binoculars, scanning the front of the large house once more, before he halted and muttered a curse.
“What is it?”
Nate passed the optics back to her. “Top floor window, third from the right.”
Erin peered at the point Nate directed her to. “What am I looking at?”
“The window is open.”
“It is the middle of summer, Nate,” she replied. “It’s as hot as a fat man’s groin out here, despite the night air.”
“That’s a perch, Erin.” She always listened more when he used her first name. When he really wanted her attention, that was the way to get it. “That’s the best window that gives the largest cone of sight of the grounds, with elevation. If I was setting up a hidden shooter, that’s where I’d choose.”
“Their last sniper was a bust,” she shrugged. “Shooty McFuckface was pretty useless.”
Shaking his head yet again at her strange name for the sniper in town, he sighed.
“Remember, there were two men with service under their belt on the fuel run. One was Bancroft’s brother, and I put him down, but another made it back. Bancroft wouldn’t have had one of his trained shooters on a speculative lookout post. He kept them close to his side and only unchained them when he wanted the fuel run to succeed.” He nodded. “The man in there is a trained shooter, and that’s bad.”
“Go in the back then, over the rear wall.”
Nate shook his head. “Most of those remaining are thugs, no training, easily panicked. I need the chaos I’ve planned so I can pick them off. I don’t want another man trained in room clearance hunting me, especially one with knowledge of the layout.”
Erin put the binoculars to her eyes again, scanning the house, then chuckled.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “And it will help your chaos plan.”
“I’m not going to like it, am I?” he groaned. The grim chortle was a bad sign.
“When have you ever liked my plans? Anyway, you’re going to have to trust me.”
“I trust you.”
She grinned in the darkness. “You almost sound like you meant that. You said it without sighing.”
“What’s the plan, Erin?”
“Well,” she started slowly. “It involves one of those grenades you won’t let me have.”
Nate sighed. “For fuck’s sake,” he murmured.
Isaac tried not to flinch as Bancroft leaned over his shoulder, mere inches from his right cheek as he peered at the banks of grainy monitors. His odour was stale, a mix of sweat, liquor, and aged cologne, a shadow of stubble darkening the lower half of his face. Isaac’s eyes reflexively flickered to the huge firearm in his hand that resembled a cannon more than a handgun. It was a monstrous beast, its type unknown to Isaac except that it was some form of giant revolver, but it fitted Jamie Bancroft’s malicious personality to perfection. It was a weapon designed to intimidate, to inflict maximum damage, and as he stared at the screen with narrowed eyes, he idly cocked and uncocked the hammer. Every crunch and click forced Isaac to breathe for calm.
“Where has that feed gone?” he demanded, his breath on the verge of being flammable.
“I don’t know, Mr. Bancroft,” stumbled Isaac. “Everything says there is no issue with the feed.”
Just as he said it, a second monitor went black, though this time Isaac caught a brief flicker of movement before it did. It was a hand, holding a spray can.
“This one has just gone down as well sir,” he said, protecting himself by pointing it out. If Bancroft noticed it first, he might give Isaac a black eye to match the one he already possessed from his drunken screaming two nights before.
“What’s going on?” Bancroft straightened, then placed the silver barrel of the cannon against Isaac’s temple, causing his heart to seize. “Best guess?” He cocked the hammer.
“Someone’s spraying the lens with something!” he blurted, too terrified to lie. “It’s the only logical reason. There are blind spots, as I’ve said before, sir!”
Bancroft left the barrel placed against Isaac’s temple, the metal impossibly cold on his skin, as he picked up his radio from the desk.
“Buckley? Jones?”
“Here boss,” crackled a voice over the line.
“Go check out the cameras on the left side of the house, exterior wall.”
There was a pause. “Erm, which left, boss?”
“For fuck’s sake,” hissed Bancroft, then clicked the handset again. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘which left?’ There’s only one left, you fucking moron.”
“Erm, well is it the left as we come out of the house, or left as if we were looking at the house, you know, like, from the gate? In which case, it would be the right of the house as we come out?”
Bancroft closed his eyes, blowing out his cheeks as he struggled to control his temper.
“You’re coming out of the house, so it’s your left, you dumb fuck.”
“Got it, boss,” crackled the response.
“All I’ve got left are fucking idiots,” he muttered, as the barrel moved from Isaac’s temple. He released a lo
ng, shaking breath as quietly and gradually as he could. Bancroft moved away from the monitors, heading to the table where a bottle of scotch and tumbler awaited him.
As he turned his back, Isaac caught movement on one of the cameras facing inside the grounds, blinking as he watched a dark-haired woman glide smoothly over the wall, drop to her feet in perfect balance, then start a quiet stalk towards the exterior wall of the house.
Isaac glanced over his shoulder, finding Bancroft’s back still turned as he poured himself a double. Hands on the control panel, Isaac gently pressed a switch to isolate that camera and then with a gentle push, moved the joystick and turned the camera to a wider angle. Bancroft turned back just as Isaac finished edging the lens away from the woman. There was nothing but quiet space on screen now. It was the tiniest act of rebellion.
But it felt like a victory.
Nate watched as two men exited the front door, each carrying Mac-11’s, wild and dangerous weapons in the hands of untrained morons like these two village idiots. He recognised both as part of the crew that had first cornered Erin outside the store, when Nate had put down Bancroft’s simpleton brother. They had not been trusted with firearms while out in the wild, so he doubted they had any shred of ability between them. Still, firing the fully automatic Mac-11 would create a spray of bullets, and even idiots could get lucky, despite the small calibre of ammunition. A bullet in the head was still a bullet in the head.
Nate had watched Erin simply ooze over the wall off to his right and cross the space between the outer wall and the side of the house, cursing as he watched her run right into the field of vision of a camera she had not spotted. Nate gritted his teeth, waiting for the alarm, or some form of reaction.
“Huh,” he muttered. As he watched through the optics, he saw the camera angle away from her, concealing her position. The operator must have seen her to start moving the camera so swiftly.
He remembered the driver of the fuel truck saying one of the captives was an electronics nerd. From this evidence, it seemed the man in control of the cameras was joining the revolution in his own little way.
Putting the binoculars down, Nate picked up the SA80, placing the stock against his shoulder. Perfectly still, he lined up the left-hand thug in the scope. The two were simply talking, not taking their roles seriously in any way.
The goon went down as Nate’s round punched through his chest, the gunshot like a crack of thunder in the still of the summer night. He dropped like a stone and his comrade froze for a moment in shock, staring back at his dead friend. A second crack of thunder struck him down, the bullet smashing him high in the ribs.
Two shots. Two kills.
Nate nodded, satisfied with his work and moved the sight to track Erin’s progress. It took him a moment to find her.
“You demented little squirrel,” he murmured.
Somehow, the tiny woman had scampered up a drainpipe at one corner of the building and was now on the roof. It had been maybe twenty seconds since he had seen her flatten herself against the outer wall of the house. Now she was edging herself across the roof on all fours, trying to keep her noise minimal. Within moments she was directly above the window where Nate suspected the trained shooter was perched. There was no evidence of a barrel, suggesting the man knew what he was doing and was slightly set back from the window, his rifle resting on a table just a foot or two back from the open space.
Flat on her stomach, Erin slithered to the edge of the roof, reversing herself as she first dangled her legs, then dropped to just her fingers, suspended from the edge of the roof. Her toes found the ledge of the window next to the shooter’s and she lowered to that perch, holding herself in place with one hand on the top of the window frame, back flat against it, as her right hand reached inside the large pocket of her loose combat trousers and pulled out the frag grenade.
She looked his way, knowing he was watching, and split her face into a beaming grin, waving with the grenade in hand.
Nate could not stop himself snorting and shaking his head.
Still with her “shit-eating grin”—as she liked to call it—Erin clamped the pin between her teeth, wrenched it out; well, she tried to wrench it out.
“Not like the movies, eh kid?” Nate murmured to himself in amusement, as she tugged and shook her head, before finally managing to pull it clear. Nate chuckled to himself, then watch as Erin somehow managed to lean out and away from the window she was perched on. For such a small individual, the strength in her grip was impressive considering the major shift in her centre of gravity.
Without hesitation, she unerringly looped the live grenade through the wide-open space of the window, then pulled herself back in sharply against the wall and braced.
If the crack of Nate’s rifle had been a thunder in the darkness, then the grenade’s explosion was like the sky tearing open. The dull boom within the confines of the room echoed for a few moments and Nate nodded in approval. Anyone in that space would have just had their night filled with horror, blasted by the concussive wave of the explosion and lacerated by screaming shards of metal as the grenade fragmented.
If the shooter was not dead from the blast, then he probably wished he was.
With the enemy sniper neutralised, Nate rose to his feet, leaving their bag of equipment in place as he moved through the night at speed, heading for the wall with the blacked-out cameras.
Both Isaac and Bancroft jumped at the dull boom rattling the house above them.
“What the fuck was that?” blurted Bancroft.
The explosion came only seconds after they had watched Buckley and Jones dropped by a sniper. Isaac did not know much about marksmanship, but he knew the shooter had to be an expert. Two shots sounded and both men died without even a twitch. Instant kills.
Seconds later, the ceiling above them shook as something exploded inside the house. It had to be the woman he had helped. Bancroft had told him to look out for those matching the description of an older man in his late forties or early fifties, and a young dark-haired woman in her late twenties. The old guy had to be the sniper.
“They seem like decent folk,” Mark had told him, the day after the second fuel run hit. “They could’ve killed me that first time, or destroyed the truck, but as soon as I said Bancroft had my boy, they backed off. The woman was nice, more softly spoken than the old guy.” Mark had puffed out his cheeks, almost suppressing a shiver. “Shit, Isaac, that old bear is a real warrior. He’s not playing at this shit. I’ve seen him in action twice now and the fucker just doesn’t miss. He took seven men down on his own and one of them was Connor Bancroft. That guy had six years of service and done a tour in the Middle East.”
“The woman didn’t do half bad either,” said Isaac. “She took down six of the eight reserves coming to help, no less than half a mile from the gate.”
“Well, she’s obviously had a good teacher. Remember that movie, Taken? Liam Neeson?” Isaac nodded. “Remember the famous quote? Well I’m telling you, this old dog has that particular set of skills.”
Isaac had sworn to himself if he got the chance to help these two people, he would. Even if they weren’t wholly decent folk, anything was better than the madman who held them all in thrall. He had watched in mute horror as Bancroft executed ten of the twelve women he kept as payment for his minions, then ordered their corpses sat outside the gate for when this Nate and Lockey duo came for him. The man was insane.
“Find those fuckers,” snapped Bancroft, his eyes raking the monitors as he picked up the handset. “Sound off,” he commanded into the mic.
Isaac listened as nine voices came back, the last of them being Bancroft’s youngest brother, Caleb. The kid was only seventeen, but Bancroft had shoved a semi-automatic pistol in his hands and told him to suck it up.
All the remaining captives were gathered in the library on the top floor. It amazed him that Bancroft had a library, and Isaac doubted the lunatic had read anything other than a porno mag in his life.
There w
as only one way in and out of the library, with one big window at the opposite side of the house that the woman—Lockey—had approached from. There was no sight into that window for a sniper and the drapes were closed.
His eyes darted about the monitors, but neither of the two invaders could be seen on camera anywhere.
“No sign of them, sir.”
“Fucking bastards,” seethed Bancroft. “How fucking dare they! This is my fucking town. Mine.”
Isaac said nothing, keeping his eyes fixed on the screens in case Bancroft turned that rage towards him. He flinched as a radio was slammed down beside him.
“I’m going up to the library,” he announced. “You keep me informed or I swear to God, I will give you a death that will last a week. Send the feeds to the laptop in the library.”
“Of course, sir,” said Isaac, swallowing dryly.
Bancroft stared at him balefully for too long, Isaac shrinking more with each passing second. Satisfied he was suitably cowed, Bancroft muttered more profanity and stalked from the room, slamming it enough to shake a painting from the wall.
“Dick,” muttered Isaac under his breath. It made him feel better.
He turned back to the banks of monitors and nearly had a heart attack.
The old soldier was staring directly into a camera.
Waiting.
Nate dropped into the grounds the same spot Erin used, knowing exactly where the camera was pointed and avoiding its angle. He slid along the wall to the rear of the house and peered round the corner, finding a camera pointed in his direction. Nate wondered if the first evidence of their unseen ally was a fluke, deciding to test the theory. If the guy monitoring the security feeds was working against Bancroft, this whole operation would get a lot easier.
He stared directly into the camera and waited, eventually releasing his rifle and spreading hands, asking the question.
A grin split his blackened face as the camera whirred away from him, pointing across the back yard and giving him the freedom to pull out his lockpicks. In seconds he was in the French doors that slid open to reveal a huge combined kitchen and dining room, without a soul present.
Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Page 22
