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.
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13
“What do you hear, Blackout?” Raptor said, making a loop over the mall roof.
“I’ve got nothing on any band within half a mile of the place, Boss,” the sniper replied. He was set up in a parking deck fifty yards across a parking lot from one of the mall’s main entrances, covering the doors with his rifle.
“All quiet over here, too,” Lone Star said from the opposite side of the building. He was reporting from quite a bit further away, hidden in a blind built from a U-Haul with the back door slightly raised. The truck was on a freeway overpass half a mile from the mall, pulled off to the side of the road with its blinkers on. Lone Star’s view was obstructed as traffic passed, but there was no vantage point that gave him a better view and the elevation he needed.
“Anything on your side, Breaker?” Raptor asked over the comm.
“Rooftop seems clear, Raptor.”
“My end of the mall is empty, too. Except for a bunch of jailbait teenagers and a couple of zit factory boys working in the video game store. Nobody that looks like a threat, either to the mall or anyone’s virginity.” Viper’s laconic drawl cut through the air, bringing a smile to Raptor’s face.
“I think I got something,” Tank said. “Raptor, give me a flyby on a blue SUV moving toward the east entrance. It’s hauling some ass through the parking lot. Going way faster than it should.”
“On it.” Raptor banked hard and with the flex of her ankles, increased the thrust on her jets. The tiny propulsion unit strapped to her back when she was in the field, giving her about three hours of normal flight time thanks to its high-density solid semi-solid gel fuel. That, coupled with the wings built into her prosthetics, gave her the ability to stay aloft for half a day if she glided whenever she could and conserved fuel. But now she went into full burn, jamming on as much speed as her tech would allow.
She spotted the SUV in question seconds after she cleared the mall roof. It was an early 2000s Expedition – big, heavy, and more than able to tear through the flimsy metal bollards the mall had “protecting” the doors.
“That’s a definite bogey, Tank. Can you get to it?” Raptor asked.
“Negative,” the big man replied. “I’m all the way across the parking lot.”
“Go ahead and get after it,” she said. “There might be a second vehicle.”
“10-4,” Tank said. Raptor heard the sound of a heavy engine turn over, and Tank was underway. The SUV was fast approaching the mall now, far too close for Raptor to stop it. She altered course, pointing her face skyward in a giant loop-de-loop and coming back down, straight for the roof.
“Breaker, follow me in!” She yelled, then fired a three-shot burst with her MP-5 into a skylight. The glass shattered half a second before the SUV crashed through the mall doors, and Raptor dove through into the pandemonium.
She spread her wings and dropped to the deck right in front of the van, training her submachine gun on the windshield of the Expedition as it rolled to a stop in front of her. She heard a solid THUD behind her as Breaker landed, the hydraulics built into the heavy gunner’s legs taking most of the impact. He unlimbered his custom drum-fed shotgun and chambered a round. The semi-automatic 12-gauge could spit three slugs per second, and the three-inch hunks of lead turned anything they hit to paste.
“Come out of the vehicle with your hands up!” Raptor shouted. “We are federal agents, and your shit is over.”
“Don’t shoot!” came a voice from inside the SUV. “It was an accident. Our accelerator stuck and the brakes went out!”
Raptor and Breaker shared a dubious look. “Then come out with your hands up, and we will escort you from the vehicle,” she repeated.
“Okay, we’re coming out!” Called a man’s voice. “Don’t shoot!”
The two front doors opened, and a pair of men stepped out into the mall, staying behind the doors with their hands down out of view.
“Let me see your hands!” Raptor shouted.
“No problem,” the driver said, smiling at her. He was a white guy, blond, with a thin beard and black-rimmed glasses. He raised his right hand above the door frame in a friendly wave. Then his left came around the corner holding a black pistol with an extended magazine, and he opened fire. Bullets spat from the fully automatic TEC-9 machine pistol, and Raptor took off straight up into the air.
“Take cover!” She shouted to Breaker, who was already moving left to get a better vantage point on the passenger. The rear doors of the Expedition flung open at that point, and three other men spilled out into the mall, all brandishing guns and opening fire on the nearby shoppers.
Breaker’s shotgun barked five times in half as many seconds, and the red-haired man behind the passenger door dropped before he ever got a shot off. The flimsy sheet metal was no match for three-inch slugs fired from a tactical shotgun, and the car’s door looked more like Swiss cheese than an automobile part as the man dropped, dead.
Raptor cut loose with another burst from her MP-5, putting two 9mm rounds in the driver’s forehead, in the lethal triangle right above his eyebrows. He went down like his strings were cut, and she switched targets, looking for the men from the back seat. Her eyes locked on one running for the anchor department store entrance, and she poured on the jets to catch him. He almost got away, but Raptor dropped out of the sky right in front of him, let the submachine gun fall to its sling against her chest, and sliced his throat open with the talons of her right hand as he brought his Uzi up to draw a bead on her. He fell backward in a rapidly growing pool of his own blood, his throat and carotid arteries a savaged mess.
Raptor heard the BOOM of Breaker’s shotgun again, then three more quick shots. She leapt into the air, firing her jets to gain altitude, and looked back at her partner. She saw Breaker’s head poking up a hair above the edge of a large planter where he’d taken cover. Scanning the crowd for the surviving gunman, Raptor saw nothing to indicate where he went. “Where’s the last one, Breaker?” She said into her comm.
“I do not have eyes on him,” Breaker said, standing up, his shotgun at the ready.
“Keep the door secured,” Raptor said. “I’m taking the second level.” She swung over to the mall’s upper level, eyes scanning the crowd for the missing target. “Viper, do you have him on the security cameras?”
“Negative, Raptor. I never saw the last guy. It’s like he vanished as soon as he stepped out of the van.” The hacker’s words made something in Raptor’s memory tickle, like she’d seen something important and couldn’t call it up. What was it?
“He’s in the—“ Gunshots erupted from the game store seconds before she yelled “video game shop,” as Raptor remembered seeing the bright blue polo the man wore. It was identical to the uniform of the TechWorld employees, letting him blend in until she and Breaker focused elsewhere.
Raptor whirled around, bringing her MP-5 up and aiming herself like an arrow to the small game shop in the corner of the mall. The white tile in front of the store was already running red as customers’ blood soaked it. “Do you have him, Breaker?”
“Negative,” the big man snapped back. “I can’t get a shot through the hostages.”
Raptor got a good look into the store and saw what he meant. There was a solid wall of customers lined up in the front of the store, all of them looking scared out of their minds. She flared her wings and dropped to stand on the planter Breaker had taken cover behind.
“Okay, pal,” she called out. “You know there’s only two ways you leave here today—in handcuffs, or in a bag. What’s it going to be?”
“I’m walking out that big fucking hole we made in the door, bitch. It’s just a question of how many of these idiots are breathing when I do.” Came the shouted response. She still had no visual on the shooter, and with two dozen or more people crammed into the store thanks to the van crashing into the mall, she had no chance of taking him down without casualties.
“If all those people are still breathing when you come out with your hands up, I’ll make sure you live to see trial. If you hurt anybody else, I guarantee you won’t.”
“Your negotiations suck, lady,” the gunman laughed. “You can’t afford to let any of these folks die. Not with all those cell phone cameras out there.”
Raptor looked around, seeing dozens of civilians standing in the danger zone, every one of them holding their phone up in front of their face. “What the fuck are you people doing?” She shouted. “This is a dangerous situation. Get the fuck out of here!”
“Fuck you, fascist,” a trim man with a full beard and shaggy brown hair yelled back at her. “You just want us to go away so you can assassinate this citizen.”
“It’s not assassination if it keeps all those people alive,” Raptor shouted at the man.
“Yo, don’t engage, boss. He’s just there to stir the shit.” Lone Star’s words over the comm cut through the noise around her, and Raptor focused on the man’s steady voice. “I am on the roof. I do not have a clear shot, but his head is bobbing in and out of my field. Keep him talking and he’ll stand still. Then I can end this.”
“Got it, Lone Star,” Raptor whispered. She turned back to the store, raising her voice. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t want anyone else to die. Not even you. So let’s talk about this. What do you want?”
“We want the government to cease their human experiments on our military. We want our men and women who serve to be treated like heroes, not like lab rats. We want all documentation on the cyborg programs to be destroyed, and all the existing abominations to be destroyed.”
“I guess you mean me,” Raptor said.
“Yeah, I mean—“ The man’s words were cut off as his head exploded. Half a second later, the crack of Lone Star’s sniper rifle echoed through the mall, as glass from the skylight rained down on Raptor.
“Tango Down,” Lone Star said as the gunman fell. At that distance, there was barely enough brain activity left for neurons to fire after the bullet shattered his skull and sprayed brains all over the used Playstation games on the wall of the store.
But barely enough wasn’t the same as none, and the gunman’s right hand clenched as he went down, firing a burst from his TEC-9 machine pistol point blank into the back and skull of the two teenage employees standing in front of his as a human shield. Raptor saw the two boys go down, their faces shredded as bullets flew through the back of their heads, and she shouted “NO!” as they fell. But her words were for naught. All three, the gunman and the two innocent teens, were dead before they hit the ground.
“Shit!” Lone Star swore. “I swear to God I put the bullet in the triangle,” he said over comm, referring to the instant kill zone that cut off all motor activity instantly.
“Guys,” Tank called in from his van outside.
“Not now, Tank,” Raptor said.
“Oh yeah, Raptor. Now. We got a problem. Those weren’t the only bad guys.”
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12
The tall man slammed to the thin blue exercise mat, his breath whooshing out of him. He held up both hands and said, “Okay, enough.”
“I think I’m all patched up, Duke,” Raptor said, standing over him.
“Yeah, I gotta say I agree,” her commanding officer said, rolling to his knees and standing up. “Looks like all the repairs they did on your chassis worked out just fine.”
“Yeah, Vulcan even got me a better retraction system for my wings.”
“Vulcan? You mean Spiro, the little guy down in the lab?”
“He wanted a code name, and since Vulcan was the god of the forge, I figured it was as good as any.”
“Easier to fucking spell than Hephaestus, that’s for damn sure. Okay, Raptor, take to the sky. Let me see how your new wings work.”
Raptor crouched, gathered her legs under her body, and sprang straight up, flinging her arms out to the sides. Her titanium wings snapped out from her ribcage and locked into receivers in her forearms, gleaming fans of metal that came out with a smooth metallic hiss. Small jets extended from her shoulders, and Raptor leapt toward the ceiling. She flew high over Duke’s head, making tight corkscrew spirals and hairpin turns. She moved like a performance race car, only there was no steel and plastic frame wrapped around her, and no airbags or seatbelts. There was just her, rushing through the air in the large gymnasium, flying twenty feet off the polished hardwood floor and zooming low to buzz Duke’s head. She made one last big loop around the room, then dropped down in front of her CO, a broad grin splitting her features.
“I think the wings work just fine, boss. We took them out into the desert yesterday and did some high-speed stuff. I managed to get up to 10,000 feet with no problems. I didn’t want to fuck with the air traffic controllers, so I didn’t go any higher.”
“Pretty sure you still would have freaked out any ground controllers that picked you up on radar, Raptor.”
“Well, then I hope I was too small to notice, or at least outside of their range.”
“You’re good. I would have already heard about it if you’d freaked out the folks at the FAA. Again.”
“Hey, I said I was sorry about that one.” She knew Duke was just giving her shit, she could tell by the grin on his face. It felt good to be flying again. The three days she’d been grounded after the clusterfuck at the Manus compound had felt like a month. Not that she went anywhere, none of them did, since their whole team was on a media lockdown. But just knowing that she couldn’t leave the ground made it worse. “What’s next, boss man? More hand to hand? Or are you tired of getting your ass kicked by a girl?”
“Raptor, I’m pretty sure you could have kicked my ass when you were all factory original parts. With the upgrades we put in you, I never stood a chance.”
“Oh, come on, Duke, you lasted a whole three minutes last time.”
“Yeah, because you were blindfolded. Otherwise—“ Their banter was cut off by a klaxon sounding through the base. The lights in the gym flashed red, and they turned without a word and sprinted to the Command Center.
Raptor easily outpaced her CO on the run to the base’s operations hub, falling in step behind Tank as they thundered around a corner into the long room.
“Beat you,” Tank said, stepping through the door half a second before her.
“Only because I couldn’t get around your fat ass in the hall,” Sheila shot back, taking a chair near the video projector.
Whisper stood at the front of the room, a remote in her hand. Lone Star was already in a chair, and within a minute, Viper, Breaker, and Blackout filed in and took seats around the long conference table. When Duke strode through the door, Lone Star, Raptor, Breaker, and Blackout stood at attention. Viper ignored him, and Tank gave their boss a jaunty wave from where he stood at the back of the room. The Command Center wasn’t designed for long briefings, so there wasn’t a chair solid enough for Tank to actually sit.
Whisper pointed her remote at the ceiling and pressed a button. The screeching alarms fell silent, and the strobing warning lights all returned to normal illumination. “We have credible intelligence that suggest that the Cedar Valley Mall in Arlington will be the site of a multiple shooter attack this afternoon. The chatter we have intercepted indicates that the attack is a response to our little dustup with Reverend Manus last week.”
“How credible is this threat?” Duke asked.
Whisper pointed her remote at the projector, and an email appeared on the screen at the end of the room. “As credible as an emailed threat can be. We received this an hour ago. It says ‘You invaded the sovereign nation of Free White America, and now we will wreak havoc upon your materialistic society by bringing your capitalist god of commerce to her knees.’”
“At least the terrorists understand God is a woman,” Raptor said.
Whisper continued reading. “‘We will send soldiers of God Almighty to the hedonistic palace in Arlington, right on the doorstep of the Zionist Imperialist Occupation Network headquarters in Washington, D.C. We will destroy seven times seven of your heathen sinners for every life you took in Nebraska.”
“Can these assholes even count that high?” Lone Star muttered.
“And you think this is legit?” Duke asked.
“I do,” Viper said. “I traced the email through five proxy servers and a couple of anonymizers until I got it back to a house in Richmond that’s been rented to an Aryan Nation splinter group. These guys have rhetoric that talks about how Himmler didn’t go far enough in the concentration camps, and that America better get ready, because a race war is coming. These are some heavy-duty nutcases.”
“And well-armed one, too,” Whisper said. “Viper also found receipts where members of this same group have purchased large quantities of 7.62 mm ammunition. About ten thousand rounds in the last two weeks.”
“That’s a lot of AK-47 ammo,” Breaker said.
“Way more than casual use,” Viper agreed. “There are some other purchases I couldn’t identify, too, but the amounts were pretty high. Could be for automatic weapons or explosives, but the sellers did a good job of hiding the actual items shipped.”
“What did they claim to be selling?” Raptor asked.
“Baby formula,” the lanky hacker replied. “But none of the cell members have infants, and I’ve never seen anybody buy thirty grand worth of strained carrots.”
“Alright, team,” Duke said, standing. “Load up. Time to go to the mall. I hear they’ve got a blue light special on assholes.”
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11
Edward Carstairs, Freedom Party candidate for President, gadfly, loudmouth, climate change denier, flat-earther, and general pain in the ass to anyone in any established department of government, charged into the conference without waiting for an invitation, much like he’d inserted himself into the series of debates scheduled in the runup to November’s election.
“The second I get to the White House, I will have your stars, General,” he snarled at Duke as he walked past.
“Colonel,” Duke corrected, his voice even. The big man looked completely unfazed at the interruption, as if he’d been waiting for it.
The florid-faced politician froze in mid-stomp and turned back to the TECH Ops CO. “What did you say?”
“I said, I am a colonel, not a general. Mr. Carstairs. Now, would you kindly return to your quarters? Or are you hungry? Do you need someone to show you to mess, perhaps?”
“Did you make a wrong turn on the way to the restroom, sir?” Raptor asked, following Duke’s lead and keeping her tone light. Carstairs already looked more than halfway to blowing a gasket, the last thing they needed was him stroking out in the middle of their base.
“I am not hungry, I know where the damn bathroom is, and I will not return to that piss-poor excuse for a jail cell you call ‘quarters!’ I don’t know what kind of convict you expect to live in that room, but it’s barely big enough to turn around in, much less for me and my wife to share. This situation is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in Congress for eight years!”
“Those are Pyro’s quarters,” Tank said, his voice a low growl. He didn’t look at the rotund, red-faced politician, but every face in the room turned to stare at the big man. “Pyro died this afternoon trying to protect your fat ass. He’s lying in a morgue with a dozen bullets in him while you’re in here bitching about sleeping in a bed he didn’t make it back to. So if you want to sleep on the floor, go ahead. If you want to walk out the front door and get yourself killed, you go ahead. But if you say another goddamn word about how shitty it is that you get to sleep in my friend’s bed while he’s wrapped in a body bag, I’m going to stand up and right here in front of my commanding officer I am going to rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck. Then I’m going to shove your head so far up your ass it comes out the other end. You understand me, cockmonkey?”
Carstairs’ red face went ash-white, and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as he stared at the huge man wrapped in steel and hydraulics. He no doubt remembered the strength Tank had shown back at the convention center, and it looked to Raptor like he had little doubt the man-monster could make good on his threats.
“I-I’m sorry, son. I truly am sorry for your losses today. I’m sorry to all of you.” As no one got up to hit him, the brief glimpse of humanity they’d been given faded, and they once again watched the politician take hold as Carstairs found his rhythm again. “But that does not excuse the abject failure of this organization to perform their very simple job – secure the facility against threats.”
This time it was Raptor who spoke, standing up before Tank murdered the man. “That wasn’t our mission, sir. We were tasked with aiding the Secret Service in protecting the candidates, and providing a visual presence to deter trouble. Our primary objective was to keep you and the other candidates safe, and on that front, sir, I think we did a damn fine job.”
“A damn fine job?” Carstairs’ face was back to full crimson now, as if he could somehow shift its color with his mood, or whatever mood he chose to project. “You call that a damn fine job?”
“They do,” came a new voice, and all heads turned as Democratic candidate Vincent Fortuna walked into the room. Far from the cowering man they’d escorted from the convention center, this Fortuna seemed completely together, restored, and vital in a set of BDUs scrounged from the Bunker’s uniform storage. His lean form presented a complete counterpoint to Carstairs’ fleshy figure, and the relaxed smile on his face was welcoming, where the Freedom Party candidate seemed livid and threatening. “I do, too, to be honest. These men and women kept us alive and without a scratch, at great risk and loss to themselves, and I appreciate it.”
He smiled around the table, and as his warm hazel eyes met hers, Raptor couldn’t help but give him a slight smile back, no matter how much she knew he was pandering. “Now, today’s operation could have gone better, but it certainly seems like the team was set up to fail from the start. I don’t know much about that, but I know that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, so let’s get going on working together towards a solution and find the culprits behind these dastardly attacks!”
“I don’t know if he sounds like a motivational poster, or a Little Rascals cartoon,” Viper muttered to Lone Star, who nodded.
“Gentlemen, if you would please excuse us and return to your quarters, we have—“ Duke started, but stopped with a sigh as yet another man stepped into the conference room wearing scavenged BDUs. It seemed to Raptor that only Carstairs chose to play the “bedraggled victim” wardrobe card, with the major party candidates going for the “rugged man of action” look.
“I bet the loudmouth found out the hard way that we don’t carry fatigues in size fatass,” Lone Star whispered to Viper. The lanky man held up a fist, and Lone Star bumped knuckles with him.
Jared Henry stepped to the front of the table like he owned the room, shouldering Carstairs aside without a second glance. He nodded to Fortuna, then turned and snapped off a crisp salute to Duke, who returned it. Henry then surveyed the room, his blue eyes piercing under his close-cropped grey hair. “I’m sure you all know how grateful we all are for the sacrifices you made today. I know what it’s like to lose men in battle. It sucks, and it doesn’t ever get easier. It sure doesn’t help to have a bunch of DOJ pussies second-guessing your decisions. Or worse, and bunch of jackasses on The Hill who’ve never strapped on a pair of boots.”
Raptor found herself nodding without even realizing it. She stopped herself, thinking This guy is good.
“You all know that I am the only one of the three of us that ever served, and I saw my fair share of action in the first Desert Storm. So I know the kind of strain you’re under ever day out there, dealing with impossible situations on not enough information, and having to make life or death decisions in a split second. I’ve been there, and the last thing I want to do is to make you think we don’t appreciate everything you’re doing for us.”
“But,” Viper said before the smooth politician could go on.
Henry looked at the skinny hacker and nodded at him. “Yes. But, there are some things that simply cannot be done, and barging into the homes of American citizens and violating their First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights is one of them,” He banged his fist on the table for emphasis, rattling the water glasses.
“Pretty sure we didn’t force anyone to testify against themselves, Mr. Henry,” Blackout said from his chair. The tall man was in an almost mirror image of Viper’s posture, his chair kicked back and his feet on the table. The only difference was there was no hint of a sarcastic smile across his chiseled black jaw.
“What are you saying, son?” Henry turned to him.
“You mentioned the First Amendment, which protects speech, press, and religion. Since we attacked a cult leader’s compound, you could make some argument that they were exercising their First Amendment rights to express their religion, or that they were exercising their right to speak freely when they criticized the government. They had guns, so there’s your Second Amendment. I suppose you could say we violated their Fourth Amendment right against illegal search and seizure, but most law enforcement agencies would say that when they opened fire on us, exigent circumstances applied and we could go anywhere in that compound we wanted to in search of guns or other dangerous elements. But nowhere in that op did we require anyone to incriminate themselves, which is what the Fifth Amendment protects against. That’s why bad guys plead the Fifth on the witness stand, so they won’t get busted for their own crimes when they’re testifying against someone else.”
Henry’s face started off calm, but as Blackout continued his lecture on Constitutional law, his complexion slowly reddened, until by the time the tall sniper finished, the politician was almost as crimson-hued as Carstairs. “Who do you think you are, son? Some kind of lawyer?”
“Law professor, actually, sir. I served ten years in the JAG Corps, then left the service to teach at Georgetown. Duke convinced me to re-up when this program started. He said it would be a way I could serve my country again, and the country could repay a debt that it owed me.”
“And exactly what the hell do you think your country owes you, son?” the perpetually-angry Carstairs asked.
Blackout stood, his full six and half feet towering over most everyone in the room. He removed the black tactical ball cap that sat atop his head, then pulled unbuttoned the long-sleeved black dress shirt he wore. The cybernetic left arm he sported came into view as he did so, and he folded the shirt and laid it on the table. He pulled his black t-shirt over his head, allowing the visitors to see the fully robotic arm and shoulder that hung from the left side of his body. He stepped away from the table, unbuckling his belt as he did so. He unfastened the button on his black tactical pants and let them fall, the gleaming metal of his cybernetic right lower leg and entire left leg shining between the line of his boxers and his crumpled pants.
Blackout looked at the candidates, his dignity untouched by standing half-dressed in a room full of completely clothed men and women. “Sir, I don’t believe my country owes me anything, except the protection of my rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But I gave up one arm, a kidney, three ribs, half my pelvis, one and a half legs, and three years of my life in rehab, so I appreciated Duke’s offer to let the United States of America balance those scales somewhat, and give me the opportunity to combat her enemies at home and abroad in the process. My country doesn’t owe me a damn thing, but you do, sir. Respect. I have fought for this country, bled for this country, lost brothers for this country, almost given my life for this country, and I will not sit here and be talked to like a fool by anyone, much less two men who had never worn a uniform and another who can’t even remember what the goddamned Fifth Amendment says. Now would the three of you please get the fuck out of our conference room before I decide to stop being polite and, as my mama said, show my raising all over your sorry asses?”
Blackout bent over to pull up his pants, then dressed without a word. Every other TECH Ops member got to their feet as he did so and stood, arms folded across their chests, staring wordlessly at the three candidates. After a pause that stretched almost to the interminable, Henry turned and stomped out of the room, the other two men hot on his heels.
Lone Star leaned over and closed the door, and everyone took their seats. The team all looked at each other, then Breaker spoke. “You think I oughta tell them you got fucked up in a snowmobile accident on vacation in Colorado?”
Blackout grinned across the table at his teammate. “Nah, let the dumb fuckers think I got my shit shot off by a Taliban sniper or something. I never said I was wounded in action. Just said I served, then left to be a professor. I didn’t mention I lost my arm and legs on winter break the second year I was out of the Navy.”
Raptor laughed, and it was an almost unfamiliar sound after the events of the last few days. Too bad it was the last time anyone would hear it for a while.
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10
Raptor cleared the door and leapt for the skies, but her wings malfunctioned. She got about three feet off the ground and sprawled face-first into the grassy clearing. “Shit,” she muttered.
“Saw that,” Blackout said in her ear. “Three O’clock.”
Sheila rolled over on her back and fired her pistol in the direction he called out, putting two rounds in the center mass of an onrushing woman carrying an AR-15. “These guys have got some decent hardware,” Raptor said.
“It’s all mass-market stuff, semi-auto,” Whisper replied. “You can buy it at flea markets. Nine O’Clock.”
Raptor sprang to her feet and shot the man kneeling behind her with a shotgun pointing her way. One round in his forehead and he died before he could squeeze the trigger. “How many of these motherfuckers are there?”
“Intel suggests fifty or sixty adults,” Duke said.
“Adults?” Tank asked. “Does that mean there are kids around here?”
“As many as twenty,” Duke replied. “From infant to teenagers.”
“Fuck,” Lone Star said.
“Yeah, smaller targets suck,” Viper replied. Silence greeted him across the comms. “What? I can’t joke?”
“No killing kids,” Raptor said, looking around the clearing to evaluate her forces. Tank and Breaker were back to back in the middle of the quad, turning in slow circles and spewing lead at anything that moved. Lone Star and Viper were essentially out of the fight, stuck in the Humvee with Duke. Blackout was still perched in a tree stand atop a ridge five hundred yards away, but his shooting skills made him a threat no matter the distance. Sheila had no idea where Whisper was, but she felt certain the woman was doing something scary to someone somewhere in the compound.
She was grounded, with an MP-5, two magazines of ammunition, and a Glock .40 with four magazines. Not the kind of armament she’d like to have for a ground assault, but things went sideways when she used her wings to shield Manus and herself from the blast of the grenade.
“Make a plan, execute the plan, plan goes to shit, make a new plan,” Raptor said under her breath as she moved to take cover behind a small nondescript car parked in front of the church. Her eyes widened as she saw a young man with a pistol was already there. The man, kid really, was sitting on the ground with his back pressed up against a rear tire, his knees pulled up to his chest and his gun pointed at the ground in front of him.
When he took notice of Raptor, his eyes went wide and he pulled the gun up. Sheila reached out with her cybernetic arm to hold the barrel down and looked right in the kid’s face. “You can live or die today, and you’re making that decision right now. You want to live, you let go of this gun and lie facedown on the ground with your fingers laced behind your head. I guarantee you none of my people will harm you in any way.”
“You want to die, you point that gun at me. I can see by your eyes that you’ve never killed anybody. I have. It’s not as easy as it looks in the video games and movies, and it stays with you for a long time. I have enough baggage on my soul that one more dead asshole with a gun won’t bother me too much. You aren’t there yet, and I pray to God you never will be. But the only way you find out, is to let go of that gun.”
The kid never spoke, just stared at Raptor for long seconds until finally, with a deep exhalation, he released his grip on the pistol and rolled over to lie facedown in the red dirt and sparse grass of the compound.
“Good call, kid,” Sheila said, ejecting the magazine from the pistol and flinging it away. “Blackout, give me a sitrep.”
“The center of the compound is clear thanks to Donkey and King, the Kong brothers and their big-ass guns. Turns out if he throws enough lead in the air, even Tank can hit the broad side of a barn.”
“On a good day,” the big gunner replied with a chuckle.
“The center of activity now seems to be the school, about two buildings from your position. I’ve seen at least a dozen men and women head in there since everything started, and nobody has come out.”
“What about Manus?” Duke cut in. “Anybody got eyes on him?”
“I kept him alive through the grenade attack, then I rendered him inert and left him lying on the floor of his office.”
“Inert?” Tank said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means she knocked the motherfucker’s block off and left him lying in his own drool and blood,” Whisper said. “I have him now. He is secure, and still unconscious. Next time you want to knock somebody out, Raptor, just shoot them. You’ll do less damage.”
“Sorry,” Raptor said, in about as insincere an apology as she’d ever given or heard.
“Meh, he’s still alive. Which is more than I can say for my boys yesterday,” Breaker chimed in. “I’m just glad you left us a little something to take apart when we get back to—holy fuck!”
“What is it?” Raptor said, standing up and turning to where Breaker and Tank stood in the center of the clearing.
The big men were both staring down the street, weapons lowered. Breaker pointed, and Raptor turned to follow his finger. “You have got to be fucking kidding me…”
“What’s going on up there, Raptor?” Duke snapped.
Sheila stepped out of cover and into the main thoroughfare of the compound, which was almost big enough to be a little town square. She looked up the street at the small wooden schoolhouse, which was totally engulfed in flames. Fire shot out of every window, and in seconds the roof was completely ablaze. “Sir, it looks like the school is burning.”
“The school where every person in the town is holed up?” Duke asked, his voice hushed.
“Yes, sir, that school. Whisper…” Raptor hesitated, then pushed on with her question. “Is that us?”
“Not a chance, Sheila. I don’t do civilians. There were kids in that school.” Nobody failed to notice her use of the past tense.
“Guys, you’ve got company,” Lone Star said. “Half a dozen news vans just passed us on the road, hauling ass to your location.”
“Son of a bitch!” Raptor spat. “This whole fucking thing was a setup.”
“What?” Tank asked.
“Get our extraction ready, Tank. We need to be out of here, like ten minutes ago.” Raptor said. Normally she would take to the skies and not worry about an extraction, but with her damaged wings, flight was out of the question.
“I’ve got Manus. We’ll meet you back at the Bunker,” Whisper said.
“I’m in the wind, too,” Blackout said. “I’ll be at the Bunker by morning. Don’t sweat me. Radio silent unless I need you.” His comm clicked off, and the sniper was gone. Raptor had no concerns about the two of them. No one would ever see Whisper unless she wanted them to, even with the battered Manus in tow. Now she just had to get out of there with Breaker and Tank, unless she wanted to learn the intricacies of the Gitmo lunch menu.
Raptor scanned the grounds, empty now except for a few bodies and some flaming bits of debris from the demolished school building. Her earpiece crackled to life and Tank’s voice came over her comm. “Heading your way, Raptor. Breaker, to you in sixty seconds. Be ready to jump for it, we won’t be stopping.” The rumble of a big diesel engine came to her ears and Raptor stood, her head on a swivel.
Tank came around from behind the building housing Manus’s office in a battered Dodge dually pickup that might have started life as white, but now was as much Bondo and rust as paint. The cybernetic behemoth pulled the truck alongside the car Raptor was hiding behind, and she leapt into the passenger seat.
“Strap in, boss,” Tank said, jamming the truck into drive and kicking up dirt and gravel as he headed for the compound’s gates. One news van was already inside, its door open and a cameraman sprinting toward Breaker with a blonde reporter in tow. Breaker crouched, then sprang into the air as Tank barreled past them, his bulky frame landing in the bed of the truck and making the heavy vehicle slew sideways as they shot out of the gate and down the dirt road. The big man pounded on the cab of the truck, then sat down and slumped against the cab.
“Any casualties?” Duke asked.
“None of ours, sir,” Raptor replied.
“How many of theirs?”
“Unknown, sir,” Sheila said. “At least a dozen in the firefight, but I have no idea how many people were in the school when it went up.”
“All the children,” Whisper’s voice was low and tight. “I have confirmation from Manus that there were at least two dozen children in the school, along with another dozen adults.”
“Whisper, I need him alive,” Duke said.
“Nobody needs this motherfucker alive, sir.”
“Do not kill Manus. That is a direct order.”
“Yes, sir,” Whisper said, almost too low to hear.
“And do not put him in a situation that you could let him die accidentally. You are to transport him to the Bunker in at least as good a condition as you acquired him. So I make myself clear?”
“Crystal, sir.” Raptor could almost hear Whisper’s teeth grinding together, but she knew it wasn’t in the other woman’s makeup to defy a direct order from Duke. No matter how much Manus deserved to die a horrible death.
“Get back to the Bunker. I’ve got to talk to the Secretary of Defense about this clusterfuck. I’ll debrief all of you when you get home. Duke out.” Their leader’s comm went silent, and Raptor slumped back into the truck seat, her head bouncing with the rough road and Tank’s erratic driving.
“He sounded pissed,” Tank said.
“You have a gift for understatement, big guy,” Raptor replied.
“How are we going to explain this one to the brass?”
“I have no fucking idea, Tank. I have no fucking idea.”
*****
“What the ever-loving fuck was that?” Duke’s voice roared through the conference room.
“I have no idea, sir,” Raptor stood at the end of the line of TECH Ops at rigid attention.
The stark contrast between the career military members of the team and the previously civilian personnel was apparent in their posture. Breaker, Blackout, Lone Star, and Raptor were at attention, while Tank leaned against a wall, his nonchalant posture doing nothing to calm their irate CO. Viper was the only member of the team seated at the table, his chair leaned back and his feet on the large oval table. Whisper was nowhere to be seen, off somewhere with Manus no doubt.
“How did the news crews know we were there? Were they monitoring our comms?” Duke motioned for the team to sit. They did, Raptor smacking Viper’s feet off the table as she did. The skinny man’s chair wobbled, but Sheila was disappointed to see that he didn’t tumble to the floor.
“No sir,” Breaker said. “I built the encryption on our communication system myself. There is no way any civilian cracked that shit. They must have been tipped off somehow, or Manus called them before he came out to meet us.”
“They were there too fast for that. His compound is at least half an hour from the nearest city, and some of those vans were from even further away. They had some kind of notice ahead of time,” Lone Star said.
“I agree, sir. That fits with something Manus said to me when I confronted him, before the grenade attack. He knew something was going on, and he was a step ahead of us the whole way.”
“At least one,” Viper said. “Now we look like assholes to the whole world.”
“Assholes and murderers,” Tank said. “I don’t mind looking like an asshole, but killing babies? That’s some bullshit, sir.”
“I agree, Tank,” Duke said. “But the genie is out of the bottle now. Between cell phone cameras from the wounded on the scene and the footage the news crews shot themselves, there’s plenty of footage of us on the ground in Albuquerque, and none of it looks good.”
“Did we get anything out of Manus, sir?” Raptor asked.
“Not yet, but Whisper is working on him. If he knows anything about the D.C. attacks, she’ll get it out of him.”
“Yeah, but how much will be left of him when she’s done?” Tank asked. “That chick is scary.”
“Thank you,” Whisper said, suddenly appearing right behind Tank’s chair. The big man jumped out of his chair, which then collapsed under his weight when he landed back in it.
“Goddammit, Whisper! I’m gonna put a friggin’ bell around your neck!” Tank yelled from the floor. He stood up and grabbed a reinforced metal chair from the wall, then slid it over to the table. “I liked that chair. It had a nice cushion for the ass.”
“It didn’t have a cushion, Tank,” Raptor said. “It was just slowly collapsing under your exoskeleton.”
“Let me dream, Raptor,” the big man protested. “I haven’t sat in a normal chair in years.”
“Yeah, but you can walk, you big oaf,” Lone Star said with a chuckle. “Everything’s got a price.”
“What did you get out of Manus?” Duke asked, motioning the others to be silent.
Whisper walked to the end of the conference table and took the lone empty chair by Duke. “He was emailed a script for his anti-government speech this week and sent a bank transfer for a quarter million dollars. He has no idea who sent it, and the money came from a numbered account in the Caymans. I have a few people looking into that, but I’m not very hopeful.”
“Well, you’d better be more than hopeful, young lady, or the second I take office, this program and every one of you metal murderers is going on the scrap heap!” Came a new voice from the doorway. Raptor turned to see a rotund man with a sweaty red face standing in the doorway, with a face full of fury. It looked like one of their protects had decided to join the festivities.
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9
Raptor glided in over the farm, her enhanced vision relaying a feed of what she saw back to Duke, who directed the assault from a mobile command center a mile away. “There are two guards in each of the three towers,” she reported. “Each one armed with a scoped rifle. Probably a Remington 700 or something like that.”
“I’ve got eyes on the north tower,” Lone Star said over the comm unit. “They are positive targets.
“South tower is covered,” Blackout’s voice came across in a low murmur. “Two positive targets.”
“West tower is covered,” Whisper said. “One positive target.”
“There are two tangos in the west tower, Whisper. Confirm.” Raptor swept back around and double-checked. There were two people walking the post in the tower, just like she saw a – what the hell?
The shorter guard turned, took three quick strides over to the other guard, and wrapped an arm around his neck. Seconds later, the taller guard dropped to the floor.
“West tower secure,” Whisper’s voice came across the comms. “One tango down in the tower, one down in the barracks.”
“Jesus, Whisper,” Raptor said in a hush. “How the hell did you manage that?”
“That’s what I do, Raptor. Duke, west tower is secure. It’s go time.”
“Roger that, Whisper. All teams go. Remember, we need at least a couple of them alive.”
“Too late for these guys,” Lone Star said. The flat crack of his sniper rifle echoed across the fields twice, and the two guards in the north tower slumped to the floor. Half a second later, the guards in the south tower were down.
Raptor tucked her wings in tight to her body and aimed her head down, turning her body into a missile aimed at the ground. Bare seconds before she crashed into the turf, she spread her arms, wings flaring out to the sides and bringing her up in a tight arc just inside the reinforced gates of the Warriors of the Power compound.
Raptor stepped forward and lifted the heavy wooden bar across the metal-reinforced wooden gates, tossing the four-by-four chunk of lumber to the side. “Gates are clear, come on in, boys.”
“There in three, Raptor,” Tank’s voice was gleeful as he spoke. “You don’t want to be too close to that gate.”
Sheila sprang back into the air, activating the small jets on her back just as Tank slammed into the gates with a thunderous crash. The unstoppable force met a very movable object, and move it did. The gates flung open to reveal Tank standing there holding his electric claymore, wearing nothing but a huge Black Watch tartan kilt, blue face paint, and a vicious smile. Breaker stood next to him with a modified minigun in his hand and a case of a thousand rounds of 7.62 ammo strapped to his back. The two behemoths stomped through the door in matching Doc Martens, but Breaker was at least wearing something resembling tactical clothing in his black t-shirt and black pants. The red and blue luchador mask on his face put an end to any semblance of propriety he almost made a nod to.
All over the compound, doors slammed open and men armed with hunting rifles, AR-15s, and shotguns poured out into the central clearing. Raptor stitched a line of 9mm bullets into the ground in front of them, strafing the dirt with her MP-5 from thirty feet in the air.
“You should all rethink a lot of your life choices really fast,” Raptor called down.
“Or don’t,” Tank said, still grinning like a maniac. “I’d really, really like it if you don’t.”
“We have taken your guard towers and destroyed your gate before any of you could fire a shot. We will happily kill every man, woman, and child old enough to pull a trigger in this place if you give us even a hint of an excuse. It’s been a very long week, and we would like to spill some blood.”
“So give us an excuse,” Breaker said. “Pretty please.”
“What in God’s name is going on here?” A tall man with silver hair, a white beard, and an air of absolute calm authority stepped to the front of the group. Sheila recognized him as Harold Manus, leader of the Warriors. His hands were empty, but Sheila took note of the Colt 1911 on his hip and the bulge of a smaller pistol stretching his left pants leg.
“Hideout pistol, left leg,” she murmured, knowing the small mic affixed to her throat would pick up the vibrations and amplify her words to the entire team.
“Got it,” Blackout said. “If his hand goes anywhere near his Colt or his ankle, I’ll part his hair for him. Lone Star is en route to Command.”
“He just got here,” Duke said. “Command is en route to you guys.”
“Roger that,” Raptor said. “I’m going down.” She cut her engines and glided down to land in front of Tank and Breaker, her slender form dwarfed by the heavy gunners, but to be honest, there were entire football teams dwarfed by Tank alone.
“Mr. Manus, my name is Raptor. We need to talk to you about some of the things you said online yesterday.”
“You see, my children!” Harold Manus turned to the others in the clearing and spread his arms wide. “I warned you that this day would come. I told you that the imperialist Zionist Occupation Group, ZOG, the cancer that has grown within our own government, would one day come for me! I have seen this day many times in the visions that God has granted to me, his most favored son! These jackboots are here on the orders of the Zionist infiltrators to oppress me and my white brethren! They are here to force us into race-mixing with Mexicans and the mud people! They are here—“
“I am here to put a foot up your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up and answer my questions,” Sheila said, spinning Manus back around to face her. She reached up to the tall man’s collar and jerked him down until they were almost nose-to-nose. “We are going to go into your office, and we are going to have a conversation. If I don’t like what you have to say, my friends here are going to turn every racist cocksmoker out here into Swiss cheese. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, I understand everything, little Bird of Prey,” Manus said, his voice pitched so that only she could hear. “The question is, do you understand anything about what you have done for me today?”
Raptor looked at him, baffled, then scowled and spun the tall man around again. “I’m going into Mr. Manus’ office. My commanding officer will be here in a moment, and we will have a chat with your leader. If anyone tries anything stupid, it will not go well for you.”
“Please try something,” Tank said with a maniacal grin. Moments like this, when he had his blood up and wanted to hurt somebody, Raptor wondered what he was like when he was wrestling. She had a feeling it was pretty scary.
She led the trim “pastor” into a nearby building and into a small office. Manus sat down behind the plain desk and leaned forward, his elbows on the large calendar that bore the name of nearby feed supply store. “What can I do for you, ma’am? Besides sure the federal government for its unlawful attack on my property. The men you murdered were U.S. Citizens, bearing arms in accordance with their Second Amendment rights, defending our way of life from the influx of—“ His words stopped short as his eyes focused on the barrel of the .40 Smith & Wesson pistol Sheila had pointed at his left eye.
“If you say another word that is not the answer to a direct question, I will paint that window behind you with your brains. Do you understand me?”
Manus nodded, his head moving very slowly. “Yes.”
“Good. Now we’re going to sit here in silence until my boss gets here. Then you’re going to answer all of his questions, without even a hint of reservation, or we are going to make you and everyone in this camp disappear. We won’t send your ass to Gitmo, we will erase every record of your existence from the world. You won’t just vanish, it will be like you were never born. As far as every computer network and public record is concerned, that’s exactly what will have happened – nothing. Do I make myself clear?”
Sheila could see the muscles in his throat working, the lines in his forehead growing deeper, a tiny bead of sweat forming at his temple as he fought the almost irresistible urge to use his charm, his charisma, his honeyed tongue to work its magic on her ears.
After many long heartbeats, he nodded. “Crystal clear.”
“Good, then we can just sit here quietly while my guys keep everything nice and calm outside, and our fearless leader rolls in from—“
“Raptor!” Lone Star’s voice across the comms cut her off. “We got a bogey coming your way!” She heard the crack of his rifle, but no accompanying confirmation that the target was down. Tank’s heavy machine gun spat thunder, and she heard the screams of people outside.
Sheila sprang to her feet and reached across the desk. She latched onto Manus’ shirt front with her cybernetic arm and yanked him up and over the big chunk of wooden furniture.
She heard Blackout yell “Grenade!” over the comm half a second before she heard the glass splinter behind Manus’ desk. Throwing herself and the thin man to the floor, she flexed her shoulders and expanded her wings to their maximum spread. The titanium-alloy fins flared out, and she wrapped them around her body and the man beneath her just as the grenade exploded. Shrapnel tore through the room, turning the heavy wooden desk into a pile of matchsticks and shattering the rest of the window from the frame.
The concussion drove the air from Raptor’s lungs, and the peppering of metal shards shredded her Kevlar jacket, but the microfiber chain mail mesh woven into the coat stopped the worst of the shrapnel. She still felt the warmth of sticky blood running down her back, but she could tell nothing vital was hit.
The rest of the compound erupted in gunfire and mayhem as her TECH Ops team engaged with a suddenly rabid and armed group of what once appeared to be civilians. Sheila stood, looked down at a grinning Manus, and realized the level to which they had been set up.
“You planned this all along, didn’t you?” She asked, pushing herself to her feet.
“Of course,” he said, a small cut on his forehead streaming blood down his face. “I knew you Jew-puppets wouldn’t allow a free white man to stand tall without trying to bring him down. So I trained my warriors of faith to turn aside the forces of ZOG whenever they entered our Holy Land.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she said, swinging her robotic fist through his jaw, shattering it and sending him slumping to the floor, unconscious.
“Duke, get the hell out of here! It’s a trap!” She yelled, exiting the office and running for the front door.
“Good call, Admiral Akbar, now what?” Viper’s laconic voice came over the comms.
“Same thing we do every night, Pinky,” Tank sounded like a giddy little boy at Christmas. “Kill the bad guys and try not to get dead!”
