by Logan Jacobs
Aurora slipped the little gun into a small holster at the small of her back and cradled the P90 gently in her arms. The smile on her face was both alluring and kind of scary.
“Last, but certainly not least, what do I have picked out for Marc here,” O’Donnell smiled much like Aurora. And again, it was both alluring and scary. “I’ve seen what you carry in a lot of your matches, and you definitely seem to favor more traditional firearms. That Eradicator is a hell of a gun, I gotta say. You also seem to have a penchant for quoting movie lines at the strangest of times which tells me you’re a big film geek. So… I give you the John Wick package.”
Sergeant O’Donnell lifted several large plastic gun cases on to the counter with a flourish. Her hands danced deftly over the latches, and she flipped the lids open.
“Oh, my,” I heard myself say although I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “That’s… amazing.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that a lot,” O’Donnell smirked and winked at me. “I’m sure you know what you’ve got here, but I’ll run it down for everyone else. I borrowed a bit from all three films.”
“Wait, there was a third one?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh, yeah,” O’Donnell nodded. “It made one and two look like fucking Pixar movies.”
“I have to get that in my eye holes as soon as possible,” I muttered as I continued to ogle the buffet of ballistic beauty that lay spread out before me like an eager lover.
“First up,” O’Donnell said as she held up a stunning 1911 frame pistol with heavy modifications. “Is the Taran Tactical STI 2011 Combat Master chambered for 9mm with slide cuts, extended slide release, extended mag release, fiber optic front sights, and twenty four round mags. I pity any Skalle Furia who stands in your way with this beauty.”
“Word,” was all I could eek out as I took the gorgeous pistol from her and slid it into a Blade Tech combat holster that sat on my right hip. I absently began to fill my clip pouches with extra mags for the gun while O’Donnell moved on to the next masterpiece of destruction.
“This little beauty doesn't have any fancy bells or whistles but she does have it where it counts,” O’Donnell said and held up a compact Glock 26. “It should fit nicely in the concealed carry holster I fitted on the back of the JPC.”
“Thanks,” I said as I took it from her like I had the Combat Master, loaded a snuby mag into it, racked the slide and put snugly away at the small of the back. It was a good backup gun should anything happen to my main pistol or if I needed something in a hurry.
“And now, the pièce de résistance,” O’Donnell practically crooned as she reached into the largest of the cases and pulled out a heavily modified AR-15 looking rifle. “The Cohaire Arms CA-415 with shortened barrel, EOTech 553 holographic sight, vertical foregrip, and MagPul PMAGS as made famous in the church parking lot scene in the first John Wick movie.”
Once again I took the assault rifle from her, checked the chamber, loaded a mag into the well, then put the two point sling over my shoulder so that the gun fell comfortably at my right side.
“I think that should cover us,” I said and then whistled through my teeth as I looked over my team. We looked like we could take out a small country.
“Now get out of here before the Colonel comes back in and busts my ass down to corporal for taking too damn long,” Sergeant O’Donnell said with her hands on her hips. “I look forward to hearing how they work for you. Go kick some space terrorist ass and get the President’s daughter back.”
“Affirmative,” I shot back at her as my team began to file out of the room.
“Havak,” O’Donnell said just before I was out of the room. “Maybe when all is said and done you give me a personal debriefing?”
“I’ll give you a long, very detailed, report for sure,” I said rakishly, winked at her, and walked down the hallway back to the command center.
Thomas’ team was there, and he was suited up for combat as well. It was a little weird how much we actually resembled each other, especially all geared up for war. He had Blade behind him with five other Spec Ops soldiers ready to go.
“Commando Jaubert is on side and preparing to breach,” Thomas said. “So, Chaz, I suggest you do your thing. My team will cover the rooftops, and Team Havak will take position on ground level. We’re headed to a small, run-down hotel close to Monmarte. Let’s do this.”
“Right away, Colonel sir Havoc,” Chaz said with purpose. His blue antenna glowed, and Thomas and his team disappeared in a cloud of foul smelling purple smoke. “Now for us!”
Chaz’s antenna glowed again, and my team and I were engulfed in the same brimstone smoke. When the smoke cleared, we were in a dark, confined, cobblestone covered tube that smelled worse than the brimstone.
“What a wonderful smell you’ve discovered,” I said as it dawned on me that we weren’t on the street outside a shitty Parisian hotel. We were knee deep in the Paris sewers.
Chapter Five
“Oops,” Chaz said as he held his nose. “Sorry, guys. I must have miscalculated where the street level was. My bad.”
“Nope, it’s okay, buddy,” I said as I nearly gagged from the putrid stench. “We all make mistakes.”
“I am very glad I kept my boots,” Aurora commented.
“Rub it in why don’t you,” I snarked as I felt the cold sewer water seep into my boots. I pulled the CA-415 from its sling and clicked on the small tac-lite mounted on the Picatinny rail near the front of the gun. The LED shot out five hundred lumens of white light, and I moved it around to get a better bearing on our location. Small streams of light streamed in from grates in the street above and there were a few ancient sodium arc lights mounted every twenty feet that provided just enough light to not run into a wall.
We had landed in a pretty big main sewer pipe. It was twenty feet across and at least ten feet high and stretched on ad infinitum in both directions.
The rest of the team, while grossed out, all seemed to be in pretty good condition.
“Strike Force,” I said into the small radio mounted on my shoulder strap, “do you copy? We had a slight locational malfunction. Do you read?”
“Team Havak,” Thomas’ voice came into the small receiver embedded in my ear. “Where the hell are you?”
“Um, the sewer,” I answered.
“Get your asses up to street level,” Thomas said impatiently. “Jaubert is breaching now.”
“Okay, Chaz,” I said as I turned to the little blue alien who still held his nose like a little kid. “We need to get street side, buddy--”
“Come again, Jaubert?” Thomas’ voice broke in over the radio. “You are breaking up. Strike Force, get me a visual on Jaubert--”
Static crackled and I thought I heard the staccato stutter of automatic weapons fire.
“Sir,” Blade came over the radio channel. “It’s an ambush! Jaubert is trapped in a kill box, sir!”
“Strike Team!” Thomas said, his voice strong and surprisingly calm. “Breach from the roof. Engage all hostiles you come across and let’s see if we can’t help Jaubert out. Team Havak, we need--”
Again he was cut off by a burst of automatic weapons fire and the WHUMP of a grenade exploding.
“We need to get up there…” I started to say.
“Marc, look!” PoLarr said and pointed to a spot in the sewer wall about forty feet in front of us.
A small, wrought iron door burst open and fifteen, skull masked, Skalle Furia terrorists rushed out. One of them held a blinking transmitter in his hand.
“Strike Force,” I yelled into the radio as my thumb instinctively flipped the safety on my rifle to full-auto. “Get out of the building now. They’ve set it to blow!”
“Say again, Team Havak?” Blade’s voice filled my ear.
“Ah, shit, no time,” I mumbled, sighted through my optics, placed the small red dot on the fleeing Skalle Furia’s hand and squeezed the trigger. A short, controlled burst of 5.56mm hot lead flew at thir
ty-three hundred feet per second and turned the transmitter and the hand that held it into a mass of mangled plastic and flesh.
The good news was that I’d stopped them from detonating an entire building and killing god knows how many innocent people as well as whoever from both Jaubert and Strike Force were still alive. Bad news, fifteen heavily armed bad guys now knew they weren’t alone.
“Team Havak engage!” I yelled as I threw myself toward the wall of the sewer and let loose another controlled burst from the CA-415.
The inside of the sewer turned into a madhouse of muzzle flashes, yelling, and bullets.
There were small little outcroppings of stone every few feet that were the only cover to be had, and I shouldered up to one as the Skalle Furia ahead of us broke their grouping and tried to find cover as well.
My team reacted like a well-oiled machine. Nova immediately started laying down long bursts of cover fire as she fired the M270 from her hip like a kick-ass female version of Rambo. Tempest jumped out of the knee deep water onto the narrow walkway that ran down either side of the tunnel and, even though it must have been horribly gross, put herself in a prone position with her MK 12 laid out in front of her. Har’Gitay, even though she technically wasn’t an official member of Team Havak, melded seamlessly with the motions of the group. She took a position next to Tempest and had her shotgun at the ready as she scanned our six in case there were more Skalle Furia on their way from another direction. PoLarr and Aurora flanked me on the opposite side of the sewer, PoLarr’s big-bore .45s barked loudly next to the short, stutter of Aurora’s P90.
These Skalle Furia weren’t some fresh recruits. Once we engaged they set up their own firing line. They seemed to be armed with a short barrel variant of an AK SBR and the larger 7.62mm shells were loud, bright, and chewed up the ancient stone of the sewer as if it were cardboard.
“Havak, what’s your situation? Over?” Thomas’ voice came through my earpiece. It was hard to make out over the din of gunfire.
“We are engaging a squad of Skalle Furia as they exited the building through the sewer,” I replied as best I could.
“Copy that,” Thomas said. “Can you push your position into the basement of the building and work your way up? Commando Jaubert took heavy casualties and my squad and I are encountering heavy resistance on our way to get them. Our informant grossly underestimated the size of the force we’d go up against.”
“Yeah, sounds about right,” I said. “We’ll push our way to you. Copy that, Team Havak?”
Everyone on my squad confirmed.
“Aurora, do you have enough juice to give us a shield?” I asked as I changed mags on my rifle.
“I think so, sugar,” Aurora answered. “I’ll need a snack after though.”
“Snack away on anyone who might be left,” I said into the radio. “Push a pillar of dark matter down the center of the sewer. PoLarr, Nova, and I will rush in behind and take out the Skalle from the flanks. Once we engage, Aurora, drop the shield, and Tempest, you start picking off any stragglers. Har’Gitay, once that happens you rush up and get ready to clear the basement.”
“Copy that,” I got from all my squad.
“Now!” I yelled.
Aurora let her P90 fall to her side on its sling and wove her hands, her fingers splayed in a classic “devil’s horns” sign as purple-black dark matter formed around them. A solid pillar of the energy shot up in front of us and as if pushing on some unseen force Aurora moved the pillar forward.
Bullets pinged off the dark matter and sent sparks flying in all directions.
Nova, PoLarr, and I rushed in behind it and sloshed through the filthy water toward the Skalle Furia. I edged around the right side of the shield and began to pick off some of the terrorists with controlled, three-round bursts. Some Skalle fell and didn’t get back up, but others stumbled and regained their footing. Their body armor was damn good.
“Nova, give ‘em something to think about with the SAW,” I shouted over to my two sexy teammates who had taken a position on the left side of the shield. “PoLarr, go over her head and headshot the fucks. Their body armor is taking a lot of our center mass shots. You too, Tempest.”
“Just waiting on you to get out of my way, boss,” Tempest snarked.
Nova switched the SAW into her left hand and, like a fucking boss, held the gun one-handed like a pistol around the edge of the shield and let loose a chattering stream of hot lead. Eat your fucking heart out, Chuck Norris.
PoLarr moved into position behind Nova, and with her added height, she stood close to six foot two, which allowed her to fire her .45s double fisted over Nova’s head. I watched as Skalle Furia faces turned into black clad hamburger as PoLarr’s rounds all found fleshy homes.
Our advance had broken the Skalle ranks, and they started to panic. We’d taken out maybe half of the original fifteen or so who had come into the sewer by the time we were ten feet away.
“Aurora, now!” I yelled, and the purple-black shield melted away in front of us as I brought my CA-415 up in front of me, left hand on the forward grip, the little red dot holographic sight scanning for targets. It didn’t have to wait long to find them. I put a three-round burst into the chest of the nearest Skalle Furia at nearly point-blank range. The terrorists flew back as if kicked by a horse and sank into the dirty water. I put another three-round burst into where he fell for good measure and then moved on.
I was about to take out another Skalle when his head literally disappeared in a spray of purple brain matter. Two more of them dropped in a similar fashion. Tempest was as deadly as she was sexy.
A boom as loud as crashing thunder from behind me made me spin in that direction, and I saw Nova standing with the Desert Eagle in her right hand as it spat violent penance at a few of the remaining Skalle Furia. The massive .50 cal bullets literally tore one of them in half as if he were a paper doll in the hands of an angry toddler.
The next thing I knew Har’Gitay was by my side as I threw myself against the wrought-iron doorway that the Skalle Furia had burst from not a few minutes earlier. Her VEPR 12 was clutched in her more than capable hands. I changed mags on my rifle again and nodded to her. Without a word, we rushed into the basement of the rundown hotel.
In front of us were maybe ten Skalle Furia ready for action. They must have been the back up for the crew that we’d taken out in the sewer. I felt no sympathy for them because they were about to meet the same fate as their fallen comrades.
Both of us were about to unleash hell when there was a loud boom from behind us and the doorway we had come through, where the rest of our teammates were preparing to join us from, crashed down in a cascade of metal, stone, and rubble.
“Marc,” Thomas’ voice came through the radio as dust swirled all around me. “Abort that last directive. We’ve pushed the remaining Skalle Furia down toward the bottom of the building. They’ve cut us off, however. You’re going to get a lot of company very soon. Back off and regroup, take them out from a distance if you can.”
“Captain,” I coughed. “You still there?”
“Right next to you, Havak,” Har’Gitay said through the cloud of dirt.
“Looks like we’re gonna have to fight our way out of this one,” I said.
“Then let’s get to it,” she replied. “I’ll take left if you take right. We hit the stairs and don’t let anything stand in our way until we see sunlight.”
“Hell hath no fury,” I whispered, brought my rifle to my shoulder and exploded from the cloud of debris like a full metal jacket wraith.
Har’Gitay’s VEPR barked a twelve-gauge slam poetry song from beside me as we began to clear the path toward the stairwell. In the space between heartbeats and the strange slowed down adrenaline-infused time warp I found myself in, I was able to watch the Captain work… and her job was dealing death. And she was damn good at her job.
She advanced into the room like a pro as she used the already existing smoke and chaos to cover her movements. Before t
hey even knew what hit them, Har’Gitay came upon two Skalle Furia clustered together, their stubby AK SBRs pushed out in front of them as if trying to ward off an evil spirit.
They were thin protection.
Har’Gitay squeezed off two shots from the VEPR, and in the haze, I could just make out that she had a black coded mag in the semi-auto shotguns well. The first shot hit the nearest Skalle Furia in the hip and nearly tore his entire right leg off at the waist. She then pivoted at the waist and put the second shot into the belly of the next Skalle Furia terrorist from only about three feet away. The result was devastating. He collapsed in on himself, nearly folding in half, as flank steak sized chunks of grizzly orange flesh flew out of his back. Pieces of his spine sprayed out like razor-sharp shrapnel into the faces of the Skalle behind him.
They cried out in pain, and I put them out of their misery quickly with four controlled bursts from my CA-415. I caught one last glimpse of Har’Gitay as she expertly changed mags on her VEPR before I had my own Skalle Furia baddies to contend with. I clipped two by a narrow stairwell at the opposite end of the old basement we’d found ourselves in before another one blindsided me and grabbed the barrel of my rifle and tried to jerk it away from me. Instead of fighting him I pushed it forward, which he wasn’t expecting. It threw the Skalle off balance, and I kicked his leg out from under him. As he stumbled backward and lost his pull on my rifle, I shoved it into his chest and squeezed off a long burst that emptied the gun.
I didn’t have time for a mag change, three more of the skull clad assholes were drawing beads on me with their own machine guns. The CA-415 fell to my side on its sling as I pulled the STI Combat Master from the holster and began to fire at the nearest goon from the hip as soon as the muzzle cleared the holster. I continued to pull the trigger. My rounds slammed into him and sent blooms of multi-colored alien blood into the air as if were springtime as I extended my arms out into a full-fledged combat triangle stance. Once I was there, I pivoted on my foot and put two well-placed shots into the head of the Skalle on my left. No sooner had his body hit the floor than I was on the move, my gun held out in front of me, just below eye level as I scanned my surroundings for the next possible threat.