“She going to be okay back there?”
“Yeah. She’s calmer than I am. She wants some payback. She can’t do anything but run away anyhow. She’ll stay until someone comes for the van.”
“She knows the signals?”
“Yeah. Someone comes to the van without flashing her twice with a white-lens flashlight, and she’s gone.”
The signal was a worst case. If it didn’t come, it meant we were all dead, but it was the best I could do. If things got that bad, I had no doubt she’d be dead as well.
I turned to the team, throwing down a sack with black Nomex balaclavas in it. “Okay. Remember what we discussed. No talking at all. No English in the presence of anyone still alive or conscious.”
Buckshot said, “Do we really need to wear the damn ski masks? They’re hot as shit and it’ll affect our assault. Everyone’s going to be dead anyway.”
“No. Not everyone’s going to be dead. I know what I said earlier, but we’re only going to kill when there’s a distinct threat. You find someone who’s not a threat, take him out, but don’t kill him. I don’t care about the damage you have to do, but we’re not slaying everything that moves.”
I saw the look on the faces of the team and cut it short. “You fuckers are the best in the world. You want to go inside like a bunch of gang-bangers on a drive-by, go back to where you came from. It ain’t happening here. We don’t know what we’re going to find. There might be some innocents mixed in with the trash. Either way, we need the masks. When we’re done, the girls will still be alive. I don’t want anyone to know what we look like.”
I waited for a nod from each man, relieved that they didn’t push the issue. “Okay, we clear from top to bottom. We need to clean out the entire house before we can do hostage recovery. First man to a stairwell leads the way. We keep it clandestine as long as possible. Hopefully, we secure the house before anyone even realizes we’re there.”
I turned to Jennifer. “You good with your job?”
She cradled the 416, a little nervous. “Yeah. Anyone comes up the drive, and I block their advance.”
She worked the bolt of the weapon, checking to make sure it functioned smoothly, riding it back and forth to see if there were any problems. She flipped the safety lever up and down until she was sure it wouldn’t hang up in a crunch, then turned on the EOTech sight, checking the reticle. She finished by seating a magazine and loading a round. When she was done, she looked up, ready. I saw the rest of the team watching and relaxing at her practiced moves. They had to rely on her with their lives, and I couldn’t have scripted her actions any better.
I pretended not to notice any of the activities, saying, “That’s right. We hear you fire, and it’s game on. We’ll be in a world of hurt, so don’t miss.”
She nodded, her eyes wide at the responsibility.
I smiled. “Don’t worry. If it comes to that, we still have more skill than anyone else on this continent. You included.”
I addressed the group. “Kit up. Let’s do this.”
Decoy brought out two duffel bags, with the men reaching in and pulling out ordinary-looking backpacks like college kids used. Each one unzipped to reveal a small arsenal of breaching charges and flash bang grenades, along with inserts that housed Kevlar plates for protection and Velcro belts that held magazines for the UMPs. When we were done, we looked like something out of
Decoy strapped a thirteen-inch double-barreled shotgun to his thigh, the barrels themselves flattened out to spread the buckshot in a horizontal arc. The weapon was definitely not surgical. More like something that would kill everyone in its path. He saw me looking at him and said, “You never know when a room clear might be necessary. Mister Duckbill here will be just the ticket.”
I hesitated, then nodded, knowing that thing wouldn’t come out unless we heard Jennifer start banging away and things had gotten desperate.
I caught the eye of each man in turn, making sure they were ready. We had all done plenty of assaults like this in the past, before we joined the Taskforce, but always with the mighty green machine of the U.S. government behind us. Now we were on our own and doing something that was way outside of our mandate. We got in trouble here, and we’d be dead.
I said, “Last chance to reconsider.”
Nobody said anything for a second. Then Buckshot said, “Cut the fucking drama. Let’s go do some damage.”
I smiled and turned on the laser pointer, centering the beam on the head of the man at the guard shack, cleaning a weapon. Retro and Buckshot stared at the screen for a moment, then slipped into the night.
The pointer itself was infrared, which meant they couldn’t see it, but with his PVS-21 Night Observation Device on, Retro could. Nobody liked wearing NODs in an assault because it hampered the ability to index a weapon, but in these situations, it made you a god. Personally, I preferred the older ANVS-9 aviator NODs, but these could transition seamlessly to areas with light, unlike the older nines that would white out, forcing you to take them off. Something that would come in handy on our assault of the house. Here, it didn’t matter. All Retro had to do was follow the beam like a sadistic rainbow, until he reached the treasure at the end.
With the wide-field on, I saw Retro and Buckshot begin the stalk. They moved slowly and carefully, two white blobs closing in on the men like bacteria on a petri dish. When they got within thirty feet, they slowed to a standstill, moving a foot every twenty seconds. The beam was still centered on the head of the man cleaning the weapon, who was completely unaware of the death stalking him. As my team closed the gap, I zoomed in, keeping the four on the screen. By the time the team was ready to assault, they were all within a ten-foot square, and I could once again make out facial features of the men.
Retro circled around behind the man cleaning the weapon, while Buckshot did the same to the cigarette smoker. They paused for a moment, getting ready. Both rose like wraiths from a horror movie, collapsing on the targets, the blur from the thermal imaging blending the forms together. A white-hot jet spurted out of each man, coating the ground like lava on my screen before fading to black.
I heard a gasp behind me and turned to see Jennifer ashen faced. The young whore behind her had no such reaction, either because she didn’t realize what she was seeing or because she did and didn’t care. Jennifer clenched her jaw, then nodded at me.
Buckshot came on my radio.
“Entrance clear.”
“Rolling,” I said.
46
We moved the van forward, getting to within two hundred meters of the house before stopping. I’d milked the girl — Jennifer told me her name was Maria — for all the information on the target I could get, and she’d given us the entire layout of the house, along with the alarm systems used. I didn’t question her loyalty. She clearly wanted us to succeed, but we took what she said with a grain of salt because the worst thing we could do was base our entire assault on her memory, only to find out it was wrong.
Looking through the Blackjack, I saw the first part of her recollection was correct: There was an infrared trigger across the drive to signal an approaching vehicle. Which meant the door alarms were probably real as well. The good thing about the setup was that it was designed to prevent anyone escaping, not for keeping people from breaking in. According to Maria, the alarm contacts were
We exited the vehicle and used the shadows to snake our way to the front door. I pointed out Jennifer’s position, inside the shrubs, and continued on, glancing back over my shoulder to see if she was okay. She was already in the prone with the 416 aimed down the drive, wearing the PVS-21s, which looked like those ridiculous Venetian eye masks people wore on Mardi Gras, only instead of feathers, it had black plastic.
