This weekend I’ll be at Congregate in High Point, NC. You can find my schedule here –John’s Congregate Schedule! I’ll also be at the Falstaff Books table, and we will have a small bookstore suite each evening in a room to be announced on site. Come see me! For the more visually oriented, here’s a pic of said schedule.
Sorry about that, gang. I’ve been working on getting YouTube content up more frequently, but I’ve been very lax about posting it here. You know, where I’ve been posting content for about a decade. Sorry about that. I’ll do a run over the next few days to get all the videos uploaded here so you can check them out, but in the meantime, you can go preorder the new Black Knight Chronicles book wherever you buy your books! I’ll have them starting at ConCarolinas if you want print copies, too!
Are you missing any chapters? Click the Raptor tag at the bottom of the post to get them all!
Chapter 16
Raptor slapped her arms tight to her body, ripping through the air like a bullet as she flew toward the devastated house. Heat slapped her face like a furnace as she pulled up at the last minute and flared her wings. The Hummer roared down the street and up onto the lawn, back door flying open to disgorge Lone Star onto the lawn almost before it stopped rolling. Sheila turned to see the Latino man running in her direction, his face pale in the dark night.
“We can’t stay, Raptor,” he said, tossing aside scraps of lumber as he made his way to her side.
“Whisper’s in there,” Raptor said, her voice hoarse with smoke and emotion. The remnants of the house lay lay scattered across the lawn, small piles of debris burning merrily in the darkness. Lights flicked on in the neighboring houses as Raptor dashed for the wreckage of the house. She had almost made it to the rubble when she felt Lone Star’s arm wrap around her waist and hoist her into the air.
He set her down with a grunt. “You’re heavier than you look.”
“I’m forty percent titanium, jackass. Now get out of my way.”
“We have to get out of here. The fire department and police are already on the way.” Sure enough, the sound of sirens, still faint in the distance, pierced the quiet suburban stillness.
Raptor looked up at the lanky man, watching the yellow and red firelight flicker in his eyes. She could see that he was as conflicted as she was, but she nodded. “Let’s go. We won’t do anyone any good if we have to deal with a bunch of local LEOs.”
“I thought Duke logged us with the police?” Lone Star asked as he ran around to the driver’s side of the Hummer.
“He did, but that just means they know exactly who they’re looking for when they need someone to blame. If we’re here when they arrive, we’ll be dealing with them all night, and probably end up in a cell for a couple of days while the people back at HQ get our shit sorted out. Now get this beast in gear and get us home.”
“Not a problem.” Lone Star reversed off the lawn and tore off down the street leading up to the wreckage.
Raptor tapped her comm, then looked over at the man driving. “Base is out.”
“Nah, your comm probably shorted from the blast. Use the dash radio.”
She leaned forward and tapped a screen set into the Hummer’s dash. Duke’s face appeared on the screen. “Sir, we have a—”
“Situation,” Duke completed for her. “I saw. We’re in contact with local law enforcement now, but they aren’t happy about having a house blow up in their jurisdiction in the middle of the night.”
“Did you mention to them that we aren’t happy about having our friend blow up in the middle of the night, either?” Raptor shot back.
“I did mention that we had an operative in the house when the bomb went off, and that backed them down off blaming you. A little. They still have a lot of questions for you two.”
“All due respect, sir, but we don’t have time for that shit.” Lone Star turned onto one of the roads leading out of the neighborhood, then took a quick left as he saw blue lights flashing around a bend. “We need to find the motherfucker who blessed up Whisper, and we need to explain to him what a bad idea that was.”
“I agree, but I can’t completely ignore the local police chief’s requests. If they see you, they will bring you in for questioning. Which will take time that we don’t have.”
“Then we just have to make sure they don’t see us,” Lone Star said.
“And you have to make sure they can’t track us,” Raptor added with a look to Duke.
“Bishop has that covered. Your locators are scrambled, so no one without access to our servers will find you, but you have to go radio silent for a bit. Don’t try to contact us. We’ll ping you when it’s clear on this end.”
“Roger that,” Raptor said, pressing a button below the screen to end the call. She looked over at Lone Star. “You ever been a fugitive before?”
“Nope. But I’ve seen Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid a lot.”
“They both die at the end of that movie.”
“Then we should do better. I’ve got a plan. Trust me, boss.” He turned onto another side street, then took a hard left out into a main thoroughfare. Seconds later, they were roaring down a four-lane highway with emergency vehicles zipping past them in the opposite direction.
“You got a place for us to hole up?” Raptor asked, swiveling her chair to the side.
“Yeah, I know a couple places. I’ll get us to one. Should be there in about twenty.”
“Good deal. I’m going to go run a diagnostic on my comm.” She could tell by his look that he knew a lie when he heard it, but he let it go.
Raptor walked in a crouch back into the Hummer’s spacious tech compartment. She plugged a small fiber-optic cable into a jack under her left arm and watched on a monitor as the video from her eyecam rolled simultaneously with Whisper’s body cam. She saw in double vision the room, while she watched the featureless roof from above. Then the machines, then the shattering of windows nanoseconds before the explosion engulfed the roof and blew the walls out of the house. Anything still inside that building would have been vaporized. It was a miracle the houses on either side weren’t leveled.
She played back the video again and again, looking for any hint of Whisper’s body running from the scene, but as soon as the shock wave hit her, the feed from her eyecam went out of a second, and Whisper’s body cam winked out at the same moment. After the tenth time watching it, she finally put her head down on the console and let the anger and greed wash over her. Whisper was gone, the op was blown, they were no closer to finding out who had it in for them than before, and they were on the run from the cops.
Fuck. This was shaping up to be a hell of a morning.
***
Fifteen minutes later, Lone Star pulled them around behind what looked for all the world like an abandoned service stations, then hopped out and banged on one of the garage bay doors. He stood for a moment, looking around nervously, then banged again. After a few more seconds, the door started to slowly rise, and the stocky man turned and jogged back to the driver’s seat.
“Where the hell are we?” Raptor asked.
“Remember when I said I know a guy? Well, that guy lives here.”
“He lives in an abandoned garage?”
“It’s not abandoned, it’s just undergoing renovations.”
Raptor looked over at him, noting the little half-smile tugging at the corner of Lone Star’s mouth. “Okay, if you say so. But if I have to kill everybody in the building, I’m gonna kick your ass when I’m done.”
“Fair enough,” Lone Star chuckled and put the Hummer in gear.
They rolled into an interior that definitely didn’t match the outside of the building. While the exterior was all dingy white paint and faded lettering, everything inside was gleaming and looked brand new. The floors were spotless, the toolboxes lined up neatly against the walls, even the hydraulic lifts shone with brand new paint. If she hadn’t ridden through the dirt-smeared roll-up door, Raptor would have thought she was on the set of a new Fast and Furious movie.
“Holy shit, Pablo. This looks better than our motor pool back home.”
“You ain’t lying, Raptor. My boy Jerry keeps his shit buttoned down.”
“How do you know this guy? I thought you were from Oklahoma.”
“We served together. He was on one of my tours through the sandbox, before I got hurt. When he got out, he came back here. This place was his dad’s, he’s been fixing it up. Ain’t that right, Jer?” Lone Star said as he opened the door and slid down to the floor.
A trim blond man with a light beard walked up and slapped hands with Lone Star, then gave him a one-armed hug. “Anything you say, Disney, anything you say.”
“Disney?” Raptor asked, coming around the back of the Hummer to maintain separation between herself and the stranger. Lone Star obviously trusted him, but Raptor wasn’t in a terribly trusting mood.
“Yeah,” the man said with a grin. Raptor felt herself relax unconsciously at his disarming smile and sparkling blue eyes, and gave herself a mental slap to bring her mind back into focus. “Because his initials are PG, we all called him Disney. Like a PG-rated movie.”
Sheila let herself smile a little, and stepped the rest of the way out from behind their vehicle. “Yeah, I get it. That’s pretty good.”
She saw Jerry’s eyes widen as she stepped fully into the light and he saw her cybernetic arms for the first time. Normally when she knew she was going to interact with civilians she kept the skinsleeves on, but she hadn’t planned on speaking to anyone except suspects last night, so she hadn’t bothered with them.
“Holy shit,” the blond man said, taking a step forward. “You’re a…”
“Cyborg,” Raptor said with a nod. “Yep.”
“I was going to say TECH, but whatever.”
Raptor shook her head. “I forget that we were declassified in a hurry after the convention center thing.”
Jerry laughed. “Yeah, and since the shitshow at the mall, you guys are one of the lead stories every single night. There have been more articles on how you’re made and chose than on the candidates lately.” He looked at Lone Star. “What the fuck happened there, man? You’re a better operator than that. Every story I’ve seen is calling y’all Robocop 2.0 and shit like that.”
Raptor and Lone Star exchanged a troubled glance. “Shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Lone Star agreed.
“Well, nothing we can do about that from here, so we might as well focus on the problem at hand.” Sheila walked over to where a stunned Jerry stood and held out her right hand. “Sheila Hewson. Call sign Raptor.”
He looked at her hand but didn’t move to take it.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have enough control not to crush your hand like a grape. Even though I could.” Raptor smiled at this. Jerry didn’t seem nearly as amused, but reached out and shook her hand.
“Man, that’s weird.”
“It’s a lot less weird when she’s wearing her skin, but we didn’t think we were going to have to see anybody on this trip. It was supposed to be a quick in and out, recon, extraction, exfil.”
“Only it was nothing like that,” Jerry said. “Been there, done that.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Lone Star nodded. “This was a setup from the jump. We walked into a trap. Lost one of our people, and now the po-po is all over us. Can we hide out here for a couple days?”
“Yeah, that’s not a problem. I’m not opening for another two weeks, and everything this week is scheduled for outside work anyway. You should be okay to hole up in here, as long as nobody is tracking you.”
“Nobody we don’t want to find us will ever find us,” Raptor said with a smile.
“Okay, then. Let me get you guys some coffee and we can talk about your next move.”
“Oh, I know our next move,” Raptor said, following Jerry into the small office. “We’re going to hunt down the bastards who blew up our teammate, and we’re going to kill the motherfuckers.”
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Chapter 15
Raptor paced the briefing room, readying herself for her second ass-chewing in as many days. She snapped to attention when Duke strode in and slammed the door. “What the literal fuck is going on here, Raptor?” Her boss asked.
“I have no idea who shot that man, sir. We were working to defuse the situation when—“
“I know about that,” he cut her off. “I’m talking about you drawing down on a bunch of unarmed civilians inside the mall. What the hell was that about?”
Sheila took a deep breath. “It was fucked, sir. We took down the targets, but there were two civilian casualties. The people in the mall were working themselves into a frenzy, and I thought that I could…” Her words trailed off, and she shook her head. “I fucked up, sir. I didn’t want anyone else to die in that place, and I thought that I could snap them out of it. I was wrong.”
“No shit,” Duke growled. He walked to the head of the dark oak conference table and sat down. He waved a hand at one of the other chairs, and Raptor sat. “Sheila, you’re a good soldier. A damn good soldier, and most of the time, you’re a good leader. But sometimes…sometimes I wonder if you’re not a little head-fucked from what happened in Korea. You’ve got a temper on you, and according to your file that’s always been an issue.”
“Yes, sir,” Sheila said, thinking back to a DI at Parris Island that ended up with a broken nose after a disagreement about training methods.
“You cannot lose your shit in the field. You have to keep cool, do you understand? Not only are you and every member of your team too valuable as far as training, but you’re worth tens of millions of dollars in tech. We literally can’t afford to lose you because of a stupid error. And that’s what this was – a stupid error.”
Sheila studied the grain of the table. “Yes, sir.”
“But we suffered no losses, and you stopped what could have been a major terrorist attack with minimal civilian casualties. So good job there.”
Raptor didn’t respond, thinking back to the blood flowers all over the shirts of the two teenagers who died in the attack. Minimal wasn’t none, and those dead faces were on her just as much as the deaths of the terrorists. “Are we calling them that, sir? Are they terrorists?”
“That’s what I’m calling them, and I don’t give a good goddamn what the jackasses on TV call them,” Duke said. “They attacked a place with nothing but innocent civilians, for no reason the than it was a relatively easy target. That sounds like a terrorist to me.”
“Yes, sir. Do we have anything on the sniper?”
“Not yet, but Whisper is tracking the frequency that your friend with the mustache was broadcasting on. Maybe that will turn up something.”
“Do we really think so? I mean, if he was in league with the sniper, why would they kill him?”
“I don’t try to figure out their motivations or their mommy issues, Raptor. I just hunt them down and send the assholes home in body bags. Now get checked out by TECH AGENT and clean your weapons. I have a feeling this shit isn’t over by a long shot.” Duke stood up, saluted, and walked out of the room. Sheila sat back down in her chair, staring down at her fingers tracing the whorls in the table. Maybe she did need to get checked out, but whatever was going on with her, she didn’t think TECH GUY was going to be able to fix it with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.
She didn’t have long to sit and contemplate her future, as Whisper’s voice came over the base-wide intercom. “Raptor, report to the Comm Center. Now.”
Raptor smiled as she stood. Whisper didn’t mince words, and didn’t give a damn about protocol, but she got shit done. Sheila would like to have a dozen of her on the team, but there was only one Whisper. She stepped out into the hall and broke into a run. Whatever the stealthy operator wanted in Comm, Raptor wasn’t going to keep her waiting.
“What is it, Whisper?” Raptor asked moments later as she pushed through the door into a crowded Comm Center. Duke, Whisper, Lone Star, and Blackout all hovered over a very nervous-looking tech sitting behind a wall of computer monitors.
“Bishop here has traced your mustached friend’s broadcast back to a repeater in Alexandria. We should have drone imagery in a few seconds,” Whisper replied.
“It’s up now, ma’am,” the tech Whisper called Bishop said. His voice had that tremulous quality people got around Whisper, around most of the TECH team, if Raptor was being honest with herself. She tried to be as normal as possible around the unaugmented personnel, but her gleaming silver arm was impossible to disguise.
Sheila turned her attention to a large monitor mounted above the tech’s desk. On the screen an aerial view of a suburban neighborhood came into view, with tree-lined streets and a minivan or hybrid in every driveway. It looked like an idealized version of middle America, a modern-day Normal Rockwell pastoral scene with prosperity and wholesomeness oozing from every pore. Except this picture had a shadow lurking somewhere beneath the surface.
“What are we looking for, Whisper?” Duke asked.
“Just a second, chief,” the trim woman replied. The drone paused its flight, switched to hover, and zoomed in from a hundred feet or so down onto one house. “That’s it. That’s where the signal was coming from.”
The house was almost offensive in its plainness. It was a mid-sized brick ranch, with white aluminum gutters and a rectangle of solar panels on the eastward slope of the roof. Nothing about the place looked out of the ordinary, not even the small satellite dish on the roof. There was a boxy German station wagon sitting in the driveway, outside a set of garage doors that no doubt led into a space used more for storage of junk and Christmas decorations than vehicles. Nothing about the house screamed “domestic terrorist,” Raptor thought. But then they wouldn’t be very good domestic terrorists if they advertised, would they?
“What’s the deal with the windows?” Duke said, leaning closer to the monitor.
“Tin foil,” Whisper replied. “The conspiracy theorists think lining the windows with aluminum foil blocks infrared. The really crazy ones think it blocks any kind of electronic surveillance.”
“Like from the aliens,” Bishop chimed in. He looked around, grinning, but refocused on his screen at a glare from Whisper.
“Does it do anything?” Lone Star asked. “I mean, blacking out the windows shits all over my sniper shots, but I can’t think of anything else it does.”
“The rattle of the foil against the glass does screw up some directional mics, but it doesn’t do shit against IR or any kind of wiretaps,” Blackout said.
Raptor gave the big sniper a raised eyebrow and he shrugged. “What? I do more than just shoot things from a mile away.” Sheila nodded at the man and gave him a little grin.
“What else can we see, Whisper?” Duke pressed.
“Not much. The drone doesn’t have IR capability, or any kind of audio, so all we can do is circle and keep an eye on it. If we want any real intel, we’re going to have to get in there. It’s close, though. We can be inside the building in less than an hour.”
“Do it. But subtle.” Duke turned to Raptor. “No Tank, no Viper. We need to keep this under the radar, and I want you focused on the mission, not on keeping Viper from killing civilians.”
Raptor was surprised to find herself defending Viper. “He held himself in check at the mall, sir, and that was a pretty heavy situation.”
“This is a residential neighborhood, and we don’t have good angles for extraction. I only want trained operators on this one. No time for amateurs, even ones as solid as Tank. Viper’s out. Now roll.” Duke turned away from Raptor and pulled a chair up next to the comm tech.
Sheila nodded, then turned her attention to Lone Star and Whisper. “You heard the man. Motor pool in five. Let’s go lay a smack down on these assholes.”
*****
Four minutes later the trio rolled out of HQ in a modified H3 Hummer. Raptor drove while Whisper sat in the back seat with headphones on surrounded by monitors, monitoring the drone and the chatter from base. Traffic was light, and the big vehicle rumbled into a cul-de-sac a block away from the target twenty minutes after they left base. Whisper slid out of the backseat and started moving toward the house at a slow jog, while Raptor slipped on a helmet and took to the air.
Lone Star moved into the back seat to run comm on the operation. “Check in, ladies,” he said, settling into his seat and slipping on a headset with a microphone.
“Raptor, check,” Sheila said into her mic.
“Check,” Whisper replied, her voice barely above her namesake. “I’ll slip in through a side door or window and clear the building. Raptor, you can follow once I give the all-clear.”
“I’m ready to roll in if you need backup,” Lone Star replied. The Hummer was outfitted with rear-seat joystick drive capability, in case the surveillance operative needed to make a quick getaway or insert themselves into the action.
“Sounds good,” Raptor said. “Star, can you patch Whisper’s body cam into my HUD?”
“Will do,” the man said, pressing a few buttons on the console in front of him. Seconds later, video images overlaid Sheila’s vision as the smoked screen of her flight helmet flashed to life with streaming images from Whisper’s body cam. The tiny wireless camera on a shoulder harness let the rest of the team stay abreast of the stealth operator’s progress without forcing her to respond over comm in a delicate insertion. Sheila circled eighty feet above the house as she watched in double vision as Whisper, little more than a liquid shadow on the ground, slipped to the side of the house and vanished inside. On her screen, Raptor saw the interior of the house as Whisper slipped from room to room.
The house was almost bizarre in its normalcy. There were no bomb-making components lying on tables, no anti-government banners hanging on the walls, no Anarchist’s Cookbooks tossed on the sofa. The house looked like a deserted suburban home, with no furniture and just a flickering light coming from under a doorway at the end of a long hallway.
“Something isn’t right about this,” Lone Star muttered over comm.
“Yeah, this doesn’t feel right,” Raptor concurred. “Whisper, get out of there. This is starting to feel a lot like a…son of a bitch.”
Her words trailed off as Whisper opened the door. The only things in the room were a giant video display and a stack of electronics, what looked at a glance to be routers and servers. On the display was a looping video of the team’s recent activities, cut and edited to display them in the worst possible light. Everything from the massacre at the debate, to the assault on the compound, to the image of two teen boys dropping to the floor of the shopping mall, blood pouring from multiple gunshot wounds. The last frame of the video before it started over was just an image of a mushroom cloud and the word BOOM! on the screen in huge letters.
“Whisper, get out of there!” Raptor shouted. “This is a trap. I’m on my way!” She tucked her arms into her sides and dove for the house, wind rushing against her face.
“I’m rolling,” Lone Star said as the Hummer’s engine roared to life.
“What the hell is that?” Whisper said, turning to point the camera at a stack of electronic devices all blinking in unison. The lights sped up until they were almost a constant light, and Raptor watched through her heads-up display as Whisper turned and ran down the hall. The slender woman crashed through a door and into another empty room, her video wobbling as she sprinted for a window to dive through. Then the display went white, and Sheila pulled out of her dive as the house erupted into a ball of fire. The shock wave knocked Raptor head over heels in the air, and when she managed to right herself and turn back to the target, there was nothing left of the house but a hole in the ground and a foundation. The surrounding homes were beginning to catch fire from the burning wreckage strewn dozens of yards in every direction, and Raptor dove through a huge cloud of smoke as she streaked to the last spot she saw Whisper.
Are you missing any chapters? Click the Raptor tag at the bottom of the post to get them all!
14
Raptor turned to look at the screaming woman in the game store. “I’m going to be ass-deep in civilians for a few, Tank. Can you handle it?”
“I can get a visual on him in under two, Raptor,” Lone Star said.
“Get there,” she said, then stepped to the front of the store. “Is anyone else hurt?” she asked.
“Reggie’s dead!” a blonde girl shrieked. She was kneeling by the boy who was leaking blood from several small-caliber bullet holes. Her blue shirt was spattered in blue, and some of her co-worker’s blood was in her hair. Raptor knew all too well how nightmarish the girl’s next shower was going to be.
Raptor stepped past the stricken girl and examined the downed terrorist. She pulled off his ski mask and looked down at the brown-haired face of a twenty something white man. “Goddammit,” she muttered. Another domestic. It’s like they’re breeding assholes somewhere in my country.
“What the fuck did you people do?” Came an angry voice behind her. Sheila stood and saw a red-faced man in a dress shirt embroidered with the mall’s logo on his chest. He was a tall, fit man with perfect teeth. Raptor hated him on sight, thinking back to a guy she dated who had teeth like that. He was a dick. And this mall manager wasn’t starting off much better.
“We saved a lot of lives, is what we people did, sir,” Sheila said, stepping forward to meet him before he got too close to the scene and slipped in the blood. “This van was driven by a group of gunmen who came here to injure as many of your customers as possible. We have eliminated the threat, but in the process, a young man was killed by one of the attackers.”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re going to say,” a fat balding man with a thick walrus mustache shouted from the relative safety of a dozen feet away. “Government assholes come in here, get this kid killed because they’re all inept idiots, and now we’re supposed to just believe what they say. Don’t be sheep! Hold these fascists accountable!” A crowd was gathering, getting angry now that their lives were no longer in imminent danger. Raptor stepped back, slipping on the blood herself, but catching her balance before she went down.
“This doesn’t sound good, Raptor,” Breaker muttered, stepping up alongside her. “People, we need you to step back. There will be a full investigation of this vehicle and these men, and we need you to cooperate so we can find out where they came from and what they were doing here.”
“What about Reggie?” The blonde screeched again, drawing it out to sound like Reg-geeeeeee. “He’s dead, and it’s all your fault!”
“She’s right,” Walrus mustache said. “You got that boy killed! Now I’m making a citizen’s arrest!” The burly man stepped forward, with two others close behind. They froze as Raptor raised her submachine gun and pointed it at the lead man’s face.
“Don’t make a mistake you can’t undo, friend,” Raptor said.
Breaker put his hand on her shoulder. “Raptor, maybe we need to step things down a notch.”
“Yeah, Breaker, that’s a good idea. Maybe all these motherfuckers need to step down a notch. Maybe they need to look at the fucking automatic weapon these guys carried when they drove their fucking van through the doors, and thank their lucky stars there’s only one dead civilian.”
“Not helping, Raptor,” Breaker said, his voice suddenly sharp.
Sheila shook herself and lowered her MP-5. “Shit. I’m sorry, Breaker, you’re right.” Raising her voice, she called out “Everyone please calm down. Take at least one step back from the vehicle and the bodies, and let us investigate the scene.”
A shopping bag from Pier 1 Imports sailed through the air and smacked into Raptor’s robotic shoulder. She heard a crash of glass, and her head was engulfed in the smell of spice and orange as the scented candles within shattered. A yell went up from the crowd, and other packages began to fly through the air at them.
“We gotta get out of here, Raptor,” Breaker said. “If we don’t, we’re going to have to hurt civilians.”
“They’re scared, Breaker. Most of these people have never seen violence like this, and it’s rattled them. But you’re right,” she ducked to avoid a CD whizzing my her head. “They still sell those?” She asked.
“Okay, fuck this,” Raptor said. She dropped her MP-5 into its sling and snapped her wings into the open position. She grabbed Breaker by the belt and back of his collar and lifted straight up into the air, making a beeline for the wrecked skylight.
“That’s right, you government puppets! Run from freedom-loving Americans!” Walrus Mustache shouted.
Raptor cast a glance behind them, trying to log the man’s face in her memory, and what she saw there chilled her. He was screaming, shaking his fists in the air, just like the other members of their terrified mob. But for the barest instant, Raptor saw the anger drop away from his face like a veil, and he smirked at her. Then he raised two fingers to his brow in a mocking salute, and resumed his chanting and screaming.
Raptor flew through the skylight and deposited Breaker on the roof. “What’s your situation, Tank?”
“Not good, boss,” the big man replied. “I’m kinda stuck between a rock and a minivan.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Tank?” Raptor asked. “Lone Star, what the fuck is he talking about?”
“I think he means that he stopped the other van from getting into the mall, but now he’s in kind of a tight spot,” Lone Star said.
Raptor hoisted Breaker into the air again and flew toward the other pair. “Would you two stop pussyfooting around and tell me what the fuck is going on over there? Never mind, I see you,” Raptor said as Tank came into view. The big man was leaning against the front end of a light gray minivan, pressing his shoulder into the grill. The van’s tired kicked up smoke as the driver mashed the accelerator, but the vehicle didn’t budge.
“Lone Star, where are you?” Raptor called, then heard the crack-crack-crack as the sniper put three rounds into the engine block of the van. It sputtered out, and Tank dropped the front of the vehicle with a crash and a groan. The van’s doors flew open, and armed men spilled out onto the asphalt. One pointed an AR-15 at Tank, but the big man just charged forward and slammed the attacked to the ground. Two quick punches, and the terrorist was out.
Lone Star’s rifle spat twice, and the man from the passenger seat dropped in a heap. That left four men running toward the mall entrance with assault rifles at the ready. Raptor swooped down and deposited Breaker in front of them, then flew straight into one of the men, her talons extended. He went down in a spray of blood, both carotid arteries severed, as well as most of the rest of his neck. Breaker opened fire on the three remaining men without missing a beat, and his heavy slugs tore them all in half.
Raptor flew up to do a quick scan of the parking lot, but saw no more hostiles. Anyone bent on attacking her team had either reconsidered their plan, or was already dead. She landed in front of the minivan and retracted her wings. “Lone Star, cover me.”
“You got it, boss.”
“Breaker, keep an eye on those doors. I don’t want to deal with a mob.”
“You mean another mob,” Viper drawled over comm. “They’re still pretty riled up in here. The rent-a-cops have kept them peaceful so far, but you definitely don’t want these guys getting sight of you.”
“Can you get to us, Viper?” Raptor asked.
“Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.” The skinny man quoted. “But they can’t tell I’m TECH, so I can bail in a few minutes and meet you back at base.”
“I’ve got a feeling we don’t have a few minutes, Viper,” Blackout said. “Local PD is on the way.”
“That’s fine,” Raptor said. “We’re the good guys.”
“Don’t be naive, dear,” Whisper’s voice cut through the chatter. “It’s unbecoming in a lady. I have a helo inbound. It’s landing at the end of the parking lot in sixty seconds. Anyone not on it is on their own.”
“I can live with that,” Viper said.
“Get your ass to the chopper, or I’ll detonate your implants, Viper,” Raptor said.
“Fine, goddammit,” he replied. “I should be able to slip out the door in back of the sporting goods store. Can I at least get a lift to the helo?”
“I’ll be waiting,” Raptor said. “The rest of you, haul ass. Blackout, you’re on your own for exfil.”
“Already rolling out of the parking deck, boss lady.”
A metallic crunch sounded behind her, and Raptor whirled around, bringing her MP-5 up. She laughed and lowered the gun as she saw Lone Star hop down off the dented roof of the van. The wiry sniper grinned at her and started toward the far end of the parking lot at a jog, followed by the much larger, and slower, Breaker and Tank. She walked to loading door of the Frank’s Sporting Goods store to wait for Viper, and was almost to the door when it flew open, the skinny man crashing through the emergency exit at a dead run.
“If you don’t want to shoot a bunch of people, or don’t want me to shoot a bunch of people, you better spread those wings, lady!” Viper shouted at her.
Raptor’s wings snapper out with zero hesitation, and she took off, grabbing Viper by the chest harness every TECH Ops team member wore for just that purpose. “Where’s your disguise, Viper?” She asked, hauling the man into the air and turning them toward the end of the parking lot.
“I ditched it after they made me. Thought having access to my guns and RAZOR NAME was gonna be more important,” he panted.
“How did they make you?”
“No fucking clue. I was sliding through the shoe department, looking as interested as I could at all the lame fucking sneakers, and some dick with a stupid mustache came in yelling that he’d seen one of them in here. I was the only ‘them’ in the place, so when he caught sight of me, half a dozen rabid mall-monkeys came after me.”
“Are they armed?” Raptor asked.
The flat crack of a pistol was her answer, and she heard the angry hornet buzz of a bullet as it whizzed by her head. “Guess so.” She flexed her feet to add speed, and seconds later dropped Viper with the other members of her team. Then she whirled around, heading back to where six angry middle-aged white men ran across the parking lot. Their pace was much slower than her team, even without accounting for their tech. Walrus Face was in the lead, but he waddled more than ran, showing how often he exercised. Raptor dropped to the ground in front of the men.
“Stop.” They obeyed, jogging up into a sweaty clump in front of her. Walrus Face held a small pistol, and Raptor trained her submachine gun on him. “Drop the gun.”
He did as she asked, giving her that same little smirk again. “You going to murder us, fascist? Going to gun us down in the parking lot and make up lies about it to the liberal media? We won’t go quietly, abomination. We’re real humans, and we won’t take this shit anymore!”
“Raptor, do not engage,” Whisper’s voice came over her comm. “I’ve picked up a signal coming from your location. The fat bastard is broadcasting this somewhere.”
“Where’s that helo, Whisper?” Raptor muttered, too low for the men to hear.
“Thirty seconds. Get your ass out of there. Do not engage.”
“What are you doing, fascist?” Walrus Face asked with a grin that his compatriots couldn’t see. “Listening for orders from your Zionist masters?”
Raptor shook her head. “What the fuck are you talking about, fatass? Are you anti-government or anti-semitic?”
“I hate all of you Jew-loving government drone abominations! All you half-human trash needs to be thrown on the scrap heap and recycled. When we rise up, all of you Terminator wannabes will be overthrown, along with our corrupt government. We’ll take down the lapdogs and your masters, all at—“ The man’s head exploded. One second he was talking, the next, everything above his neck was gone, making a red-and-gray mist several feet in diameter. Pieces of Walrus Face sprayed Raptor and his companions alike.
“Sniper!” Raptor shouted. “Get down!” She sprang into the air, knocking the remaining men to the ground as she leapt forward. “Who the fuck shot that guy? Lone Star, was that you. Tell me it wasn’t fucking you!”
“Negative, boss. I just got on the chopper. Wasn’t any of us.”
“Blackout?”
“I’m three miles away heading in the opposite direction, Raptor. I couldn’t have shot him if I wanted to. Which I did. Want to, that is. That dude was s douche.”
“It wasn’t any of our people, Raptor,” Whisper said. “I don’t know who it was, but—“
“But they just made that cocksucker into a martyr,” Raptor said.
“Exactly. Now get to the chopper and get back to base. We’ve got some shit to figure out.”
“I’d say you do,” Duke’s voice cut into their comms for the first time. “This is seriously sideways and we’ve got a shitstorm brewing back here. Get to base now, and check all weapons before you come to debrief.” Duke clicked off, and Raptor flew to the helicopter, wondering what kind of mess she was going to find back home.
