by Derry Sandy
“I want at least one of our men inside.”
“Fair enough. Wrise is acceptable.” Kat replied quickly as if she had already considered it.
“Mr. Wrise, I assume you are fine with this?” Uriah asked to which Wrise grunted an affirmative response.
When they finally emerged from the stairway and back into the office, it was three in the morning. “Wrise, follow our car and I will introduce you to your teammates for this adventure. We are going to have to raid the house as soon as possible before Cassan is killed or moved. This little girl might have been a lost spirit or she may be under our obeah man’s control so we cannot assume that we will have the element of surprise.”
When the ladies finally got back to the car and closed the door, Kamara asked, “Why Wrise?”
Kat was thoughtful for a moment. “He reeks of blood, and where Rohan and Voss are about to go will require bloody men. Wrise will not hesitate to pull the trigger if needed.”
“You think it will be dangerous?” Kamara asked, worry creeping into her voice.
“Extremely,” Kat replied and let her response hang without elaboration.
As they drove back to Stone, it occurred to Lisa that there was a reason only immortals did this sort of work. This lifestyle would stress any ordinary person to death in a week. She yawned. It had been another long night and the headlights of Wrise’s car shining through the back window reminded her that the night would only get longer.
Chapter 15
“Yuh talk about run.
Ah nearly bus’ mi head. Run.
De livin’ running from the dead. Run.
A ghost say “don’t run mi lad,
come leh we play a game of cards.” Run.
Well is now ah runnin’ in truth. Run.
Mi foot stick in a mango root. Run.
Ah fall down inside a tomb. Run.
Ah get up with a zoom.
–From “Love in the Cemetery” by Lord Kitchener
Rohan, Voss, Tarik, and Agrippa had been cruising around St. James waiting for the moon to set so they could visit the Guild, when the ladies called to say they were headed back to Stone. The soucouyant being her usual cryptic self would give no further details about what transpired during the meeting at Kings and Commoners. Instead she requested that the men cut short their outing and return to Stone immediately.
Voss turned pointed the car eastward, but before returning to the house stopped to purchase doubles along Ariapita Avenue. Tarik ate seven, Agrippa ate nine, Rohan and Voss settled with two apiece, after which they piled back into the car.
“Is it just me, or has Kat summoned us?” Rohan asked as they were driving off.
“I feel pretty summoned,” Voss responded.
As they pulled away from the curb, a white panel van clipped the front of their car, causing them to stall. The van itself was derailed by the impact and ended up running into a lamp post. Voss and Rohan got out of the car.
Drunk drivers on Ariapita on a Friday night, nothing new here, Rohan thought. Voss started towards the van, but Rohan placed a hand on his shoulder. Something about the occupants of the panel van made him hesitate. Agrippa’s fangs were bared and a snarl rumbled through his body.
“Hold on, something isn’t right here.”
“I just got this thing waxed,” Voss said pointing to the broken head light and the dent on the right side of the car.
The people in the van did not get out. The driver was attempting to restart the van but it was choking. Voss’ eyes narrowed. “What are they doing?”
The occupants got out of the van, three men, a woman, and a small girl. The party of five ran into the middle of the street forcing traffic to stop. Agrippa’s snarls were now a thunderous roar but he stayed put. Two of the men approached the first car in the halted line of vehicles and hauled a young man out through his driver side window and dumped him on the ground. A vicious punch to the face of the shocked man ensured that he stayed floored.
The hijackers entered and sped off in the stolen car, pursued by a wake of curses and horn honking. The entire thing had happened in under a minute.
“What the f…” Rohan stemmed the curse with a glance at Tarik.
“Do you smell that, Rohan?” Voss asked.
“I do,” Tarik replied, wrinkling his nose. “They smell like dead bodies.”
“Shall we follow them?” Voss suggested.
“No, let’s get back to Stone.” Rohan replied, weighing Kat’s urgent summons against the urge to pursue the people who had so brazenly stolen the car. “I will call one of the other houses and let them know what happened.”.
By now a small crowd of motorists and late night limers had gathered around the unfortunate carjacking victim and a couple was helping him to his feet. Rohan couldn’t help but think that the man was lucky to be alive.
Thirty minutes later when they pulled into the driveway at Stone, Rohan noted a strange car parked next to Kat’s SUV. He entered the house and Jonah directed them to the conference room where the women were seated conversing with a stranger. The man observed their arrival warily. Rohan noticed that his hand inched closer to the hem of his jacket where a trained eye would note a bulge that Rohan knew was a gun. Voss stepped forward and held a hand out to the man. “Wrise, what a pleasure it is to see you again.” Voss was smiling but the smile did not reach his eyes.
“You know this man?” Kat asked.
“Yes, Wrise and I go way back.”
“You have not aged a day, Voss,” Wrise said as he stood and took Voss’ hand.
“Long walks on the beach, eight glasses of water a day, and no caffeine.” Voss replied, still wearing a plastic smile. “You look pretty good yourself.”
Kat made introductions and spent the next few minutes filling the men in. “We need to hit the house tonight, well this morning, before he is moved or killed,” she ended. “Lisa has drawn a map and can give you additional details about security.”
Rohan looked at the map and whistled. “Do you know where this is? This house is in Ward Seven territory, right in the middle. There will definitely be guards.”
“Ward Seven?” Lisa asked.
“The narcotics gang that controls East Port-of-Spain.”
“And that is why we have our three best boys doing the wet work,” Kat responded.
“Best four. I want Richard on this too.” Rohan replied referring to his close friend Richard of River House.
“I don’t know Richard, but I trust your judgment, Rohan.”
Rohan held a hand to his chest in mock abashment. “Well, surprise, surprise. My judgment passes the Kat test.”
Kat ignored the jibe.
Voss then spoke up. “So the way I see it, we need to make this very stealthy. A quick in and out. We’ll use close-quarters combat firearms, suppressed of course, try to avoid the guards, but silence them quickly if necessary. If Lisa’s map is accurate, we can go over the back wall. One man can then scale the outer wall of the house to Cassan’s window while the others cover. We cut the bars, extract Cassan through the window, then exit over the wall.”
Wrise cleared his throat before replying, “The only issue I see here is cutting the bars. Who knows how long that may take. The guy on the wall will be cannon fodder if we are spotted. Hell, Cassan might even raise an alarm. I say we go in through the back door, put the guards down floor by floor, then exit through the same back window from inside. We might even be able to do a hard hit: flash-bang, and tear-gas grenades and be out before they know what’s going on,” Wrise finished.
It was Rohan’s turn. “I’m with Voss on the fact that we have to be stealthy. No one hits a Ward Seven safe house not even the police. If we go in hard, it’s likely they might simply shoot Cassan. Then we’ll be engaged in a prolonged firefight just to get out. On the other hand, Wrise has a point. I don’t want to be the man dangling from a window sill, with a potentially hostile rescue target on the other side. He was unguarded when Lisa saw him, but who knows if
there is a dude in there now with a sawed-off. I say we go in quiet and put down any resistance as quickly as possible. Then either we get Cassan to recognize Wrise or gag and bag him and rope him down to the yard after cutting the bars from the relative safety of inside the room.”
They went back and forth for a while, hashing out the finer details until formulating a plan that was a hybrid of Voss’ and Wrise’s method as suggested by Rohan. By the time Richard had arrived it was close to four am. The group decided that his job would be to cover the target house with sniper fire from a nearby abandoned apartment building. For that task he had brought two guns a L115A3 AWM which was a British gun manufactured by the revered firearms company Accuracy International. His second weapon was a Barret M85 a fifty-caliber anti-materiel rifle that he lovingly called Denise Belfon.
Chapter 16
Once they had agreed on a plan of attack they put it into effect swiftly. The men suited up in dark-colored street clothes and body armor from the Stone House armory.
Once dressed and armed they left in three vehicles at five-minute intervals with Rohan and Voss driving a beat-up old-model Land Rover, Wrise in a black Nissan Sentra B13, and Richard in an ancient Datsun 180-B. None of their vehicles would raise any suspicions travelling through Laventille. Each of the men carried a side-arm. Voss and Rohan also had compact sub-machine guns designed for the close confines of a building. Wrise had a pistol grip shotgun with a suppressor. They also took knives, rope, smoke canisters, and a few flash-bang grenades. If the situation really got sticky they were ready with four incendiary grenades. Additionally, they each pocketed several pairs of plastic restraining cuffs. For cutting the bars on the window they brought an industrial bolt cutter and Rohan also packed plastic explosive charges just in case they really had to beat a hasty retreat. Always be prepared.
“How do you know Wrise?” Rohan asked Voss as they drove off into the night.
“Wrise and I were mercenaries for competing outfits. We’ve worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, The Congo, Rhodesia before it was Zimbabwe. Basically every other hot spot you can think of.”
“So I take it he is not exactly a buddy. Is he like you?”
“No, not a buddy and I honestly have no idea what Wrise is. By all appearances he is an ordinary human being, at least physically. But mentally he is an entirely different creature. He is bloodthirsty, psychotic, and a very efficient and remorseless killer. Do not turn your back on him, do not trust him and do not leave him alone with anyone you love. To be honest I’m just waiting for a good moment to put a bullet in his brain.” That Voss, of the fangs and claws was referring to someone else as violently inhuman took Rohan aback.
Voss turned off the main road and drove up Pashley Street. Every rut in the tarmac was transmitted through their bodies via the stiff suspension of the old Rover, and there were many ruts. Voss drove halfway up Pashley then pulled aside just before the steep hill that led on to the extension road. He parked the van behind a dumpster piled high with refuse. Across the street there was a man-made drainage channel about ten feet across and eight feet deep. They planned to use the channel as cover for their approach to the house. Wrise would approach from another direction and Richard would let them know when he was in position.
The men were linked via inner-ear short-wave radios and throat microphones. Rohan and Voss hugged the vertical wall of the drain as they approached the house at a brisk, stooped jog.
Wrise’s voice came over the intercom startling Rohan. “We have a problem. They walled up the window to Cassan’s room. I’m looking at it right now and there are fresh bricks and mortar filling it.”
“Something else guys.” This was from Richard. “I’m scanning the upper floors with the thermal scope and there is no one in the walled-up room. There are three armed men in one room and in the adjoining room there is one person who might be Cassan.”
Voss exhaled, then said in a low tone, “Okay, fine. We enter the house and hit the one-man room first. If Cassan is not there we are going to have to do a floor by floor search top to bottom. Wrise, scale the wall and find a hiding spot. We’ll be with you in under a minute. Richard, monitor the movement of the guards and be prepared to provide cover fire if needed.”
Rohan and Voss stoop-ran about another four hundred meters down the overgrown drainage channel. They stayed in the shadows cast by the wall in the moonlight. The bushes and wild shrubs that grew along the side walls of the storm drain provided further cover. When they reached the exit point Richard confirmed that it was clear to scale the walls. From his vantage point in the upper floors of an abandoned building about a third of a mile away he had a clear view of the target house and the surrounding walls and yard. The security wall of the house was built directly on top the wall of the drainage channel creating a twenty-five-foot climb. Rohan tossed a grappling hook up the wall and quickly scaled to the top. He scanned the yard below then dropped down to the other side gingerly avoiding the roll of wickedly sharp concertina coil that topped the wall.
Landing silently on the overgrown lawn he promptly slipped behind a clump of tall bull-grass and lay flat on his stomach. The yard was unmanicured, with waist high grass, large bushy shrubs and even small trees all of which provided ample cover but also made it difficult to move silently. Voss joined him a second later and whispered into the communications mic. “Wrise, what is the situation at the entry point?”
“Two guards and a dog. No way we are getting in with them all alive. If sniper-boy can take the dog I can hit the guards before they know I’m there.”
“We must minimize collateral damage and avoid a firefight. Hold tight we’re heading to your location,” Voss replied, then off air to Rohan. “See? Blood thirsty.”
Wrise was crouched low behind a patch of wild banana trees when Rohan and Voss found him. He had a pistol drawn and his shotgun strapped across his back with some sort of hi-tech rig. He looked very much at home hiding in the bushes waiting to kill someone.
Rohan surveyed the scene. The guards stood chatting and smoking right in front the door they planned to enter. The door itself was about fifty feet away and obliquely to the right of their position. A massive dog, some brand of athletic mastiff or bandog sat alert at one of the guard’s feet. It was not on a leash and it was sniffing the wind suspiciously. Richard’s perspective was ninety degrees to the left of the door so that the guards, with their backs to the door, presented their profiles to him. Voss, Rohan and Wrise were downwind of the security detail otherwise the dog would have already raised an alarm.
Rohan evaluated the situation and said, “I agree with Wrise, the dog definitely has to go, but I can get the men before they know I’m here, without killing them that is. Richard on three put the dog down, I’ll handle the rest. Do not miss,” he emphasized. “One…” Rohan slowly broke cover in a crouched jog. “Two…” he scooped up a smooth, fist sized rock that looked like it had been part of some, now defunct landscaping project and broke into a dead run at the guardsmen.
The men were still chatting, but the dog’s large head swiveled towards Rohan. For a moment the dog looked at him quizzically as if it thought he was completely insane. It sounded no warning bark or growl as it charged him. The men’s heads turned to trace the dog’s trajectory. “Three…” Rohan launched the stone and it took the first man in the temple with a sickening thud. The unlucky guard fell in a heap.
Rohan leapt into the air and the massive brindle-coated dog leapt too. The second guard was overcoming his shock and moving his AK 47 into firing position. Richard’s bullet took the dog in its right side while it was in mid-air. The high velocity round struck the dog just behind the shoulder joint, knocking it off its collision course with Rohan. It was dead before it hit the ground. Rohan’s boot heel slammed into the face of the second guard an instant later, before the man could fire a shot.
The injured man staggered backward but gamely clung to consciousness attempting to bring his gun up again. Rohan pun
ched him, hard. This time he went down and stayed down. Rohan began gagging and bagging the two downed guards securing their wrists and ankles with the plastic ratcheting cuffs. He never heard the second dog that slammed into him from behind. He did however hear a buzz then a snap, which was a small sonic boom of a bullet travelling faster than the speed of sound, as a round zipped past his head and struck the attacking dog in the face.
“You’re welcome Ro.” Richard said into the intercom.
“We could have just shot them,” Wrise said grudgingly as he and Voss jogged up to Rohan.
Voss unscrewed the single naked bulb overhanging the door so that they were again enveloped by the moonlit dimness. One guard had a bunch of keys which Rohan took. Wrise dragged the still-unconscious guards back to the banana patch and left them there. The keys unlocked the back door. Richard confirmed that there was no one on the other side of the door at least as far as his thermal scope was concerned.
The men entered cautiously. The house was old and its layout muddled as if one set of people had started its construction and subsequent builders added to the building without paying heed to the previous builder’s architectural goals.
They had entered a living area with three doors, one that led to a bedroom, one that opened into a hall, and the one through which they had passed. In one corner it appeared that someone had started the construction of a walk-in closet and had abandoned the idea. The area now housed a pile of boards.
Voss led the single file advance down the hall. Richard periodically relayed thermal intelligence to the three invaders. Thus far the only room with any sign of inhabitants was that single room on the third floor. A nagging thought occurred to Rohan. The house seemed rather poorly guarded for a safe house
They found a set of concrete stairs that led to the upper floors. They ascended directly to the third floor and into a long empty hallway that led to the target room. Rohan felt completely exposed. If any of the guards in the room next to the target room decided to exit, the men would be spotted easily and a fire fight would ensue. As they snuck past the door to the guard room, Rohan heard muffled laughter on the other side. His uneasiness at the effortlessness of their entrance increased. When they came to the target door, where Richard had seen the seated person in the thermal scope, they positioned themselves around the door for a tactical entry.
