The troll looked from one pair of wide eyes to the other, then at the Borzoi. “Must get home and sleep. Looks like patrol tonight.”
The dog’s bark of confirmation sounded worried. Yeah, Maxie, me too. I feel a great disturbance in the force. Professor Charlotte held the door as he and Max headed out. Fortunately, BAM agents are excellent jedis.
Chapter Thirteen
Diana crouched in the darkness of the closed liquor store and waited for the action to begin. She nudged Rath, who stood beside her, their eyes more or less on the same level. She layered a Spanish accent. “I hate waiting.”
He grinned. “Get used to disappointment.”
They laughed together, loudly enough that Anik hissed at them from the other aisle. “Quiet, you two. I’m trying to be professional over here.”
Kayleigh had routed the various drone feeds into their glasses. The prince’s gang had raided the store Alfred had predicted would be first—points to the AI—and was inbound toward their location. The tech had summoned the fire department immediately, and the blaze was under control and would not spread beyond the targeted building. That’s something, anyway.
“Croft, status?”
Cara’s mic picked up the wind from outside. “No sign yet. I’m ready to do the Batman thing.” After their harness deployment from the helicopter, the team had realized that the concept had many other applications. As the most gymnastic ARES agent other than Rath, Cara was the obvious choice to rig a bungee jump from the roof of the building that would allow her to leap safely down the three stories and land on the street among or behind the attackers, depending on how far she flew. She’d have to detach the cord at the right moment, but they’d practiced the move at a local trampoline funhouse and Cara had it down pat.
“Acknowledged. Stark?”
Tony replied, “Hiding in the shadows like some sort of common criminal as ordered, boss.” The channel filled with quiet laughter at the remark. He was posted across the road in an alley and had already complained endlessly about the smells involved with the position.
“It suits you,” Cara quipped.
He snorted. “Not everyone is expendable enough to be risked on a three-story jump. Show-off. On your best day, you’re not half as good as Rath—er, Rambo.” The troll had chosen his own callsign, and the team was still getting used to it, and to saying it without cracking up.
More laughter followed until Kayleigh’s voice interrupted the moment. “You have thirty seconds, tops, before they get there. At the last place, they smashed the front windows, cut through the security grate with a torch, and looted it fast. Five minutes in and out. There is a large group of them with three trucks this time.”
Diana repositioned her hands on the stun rifle and made sure her grip was secure. “Roger.” She focused on the drone feeds in her glasses for a moment and decided only one was really useful. “Friday, keep the center feed and lose the other two.”
The AI sounded its confirmation tone and the extra windows disappeared. “Glam, roll the fire department when things kick off and the police as soon as you think it’s safe to do so.” Ideally, they’d require neither support, but it was always better to have and not need than the other way around.
Kayleigh replied, “Affirmative. Enemy arriving now.” Another window opened in her glasses to reveal the camera of the drone that hovered high over the scene. As the tech predicted, three large trucks pulled into the deserted street in front of the building. They looked freshly painted in bright yellow. Hopefully, it cost them a pretty penny to replace the ones we captured last time. She snorted to herself. Most likely, they stole these too.
As they piled out of the vehicles and took position before the windows, Tony observed, “At least there’s no back for them to rush out of. Idiots.”
Rath laughed. “Stark. Must train more. Run with me and MadMax.”
“Oh, hell no, uh, Rambo. This body is made for lov…dating, not running.”
Banter time ended as the gang members launched their attack. They fired a spray of bullets at the windows, angled upward to avoid breaking bottles. The barrier, which had been extremely thick glass, shattered instantly. Those are probably armor-piercing rounds. Criminals don’t have to follow rules. I’m glad there’s no one above us. A man stepped forward with a large blowtorch and cut away the metal where the windows had been, while another worked on the grate in front of the door. Her finger twitched with the desire to fire a bullet into the torches’ fuel source and end the matter right then.
Anik spoke quietly. “One shot, boss, and boom. Party over. Okay, two, one for each torch. Say the word.”
She put an authoritative tone in her voice as if she hadn’t desired the same thing. “No, they haven’t killed anyone, so we stay nonlethal until it’s absolutely necessary not to.” Thus the stun rifles and the hollow-point ammunition in their weapons that was the least likely to cause random damage from ricochets. The bars fell away, and the first looters entered the store.
“Party time, people. Go.” She kicked it off by stepping around the end cap she’d sheltered behind and fired at the foremost looter, a woman in a bright red blouse and leather pants, with her stun rifle. Her mind flitted back to the raid on the warehouse where they’d first met the pirate’s crew. What the hell? Maybe the apparent eye candy wasn’t eye candy at all. Her target collapsed in a heap and Diana dropped and rolled out of the way of a blast of ice darts that sped toward her as soon as the path was clear for them. They shattered vodka bottles on the rear wall, and the liquor spread onto the tile floor, making movement treacherous.
The caster was removed from the equation by a flying troll. Rath had leapt to the top of a shelf, paused there for an instant, and jumped in a flip and twist to land on the man’s shoulders with one foot on each side of his head. He stabbed down with his shock batons and the enemy jerked for a moment before he crumbled. The three-foot troll flung himself aside and into cover behind the cash register counter.
The door banged open, and the first person through met a stun blast from Anik, who had risen and now stalked steadily toward the opening. As he moved, he laid down continuous blasts and trusted the barrage to keep him safe from counterattack. When the line of witches and wizards that had formed outside the window raised their arms together, Diana thought that perhaps his trust was overly optimistic. She shouted a warning and charged.
When the trucks pulled in, Cara watched from her perch high above and waited for the right moment. The initial push didn’t inspire her to action, as those below appeared to have it covered. The sounds of stun rifle blasts confirmed her assessment. But when she saw the line of magicals organizing, she knew the time had arrived. She waved at Tony, who had watched her for his cue to move, and took a few steps back.
She ran and launched into space, aiming for the center. In her practice sessions, she’d gone from simple safe landings, which were now as easy as could be, to airborne attacks. The latter still involved some challenge, but what was the point of swooping down like the caped crusader if you didn’t deliver some damage at the same time? The first time she’d succeeded using a targeting mannequin they’d brought along, Rath had cheered and called her “human who flies like troll.” Diana had explained he’d watched Dances with Wolves and was renaming everyone. Cara liked it.
For a moment, she plummeted free until the bungee stretched and absorbed some of her momentum. She used the pull to rotate her feet downward and twisted into alignment with the bald-headed wizard in the middle of the line. In one of those strange flashes that happen in battle, she saw Tony hurtle out of the alley with his stun gun aimed toward the witch on the far end. Her target sensed her coming in the seconds before she arrived and his eyes widened as he raised his head.
She slapped the release buckle in the center of her chest, plummeted the last few feet to him, and delivered a powerful kick into his breastbone immediately below his throat. He went down and backward, and she landed with a foot on him and the other on the pavement
, then rolled to the side to absorb the impact. The enemies to her left launched attacks directed at the store and the ones on her right turned toward her, three of each.
Suddenly, the criminals on the right were down to two, then one, as Tony’s rifle buzzed and disabled them. That was the good news. The bad news was the arrival of a fourth truck at his back and the pounding feet of the rest of the already-present gang from behind her. She raised her stun gun but ran out of time to shoot as blasts of force and lightning made her stagger against the nearest truck as her vest absorbed them. Shit.
Rath paused to let any attack that might have followed him pass overhead before he bounced onto the counter. Anik continued to hold the door against a line of henchmen forced to attack him one by one. Diana rose from her evasive maneuver and fired at the last enemy actually inside the store, a mage who launched poorly aimed blasts of force at her. The result was that even more alcohol spilled over the tile.
Outside, Cara and Tony engaged the wizards and witches, three of whom were already down. He frowned at the incoming mass of attackers, easily a dozen or so, who had apparently been held in reserve. Behind them, in the middle distance, he saw a crazy hat. His lips pulled back in a fierce grin.
The troll vaulted at the enemy Diana was fighting and used the wizard as a launching point to go after one of the witches outside. Hopefully, the distraction would give his teammate the instant she needed to overcome the man. He led with his stun batons and stabbed them into the woman’s sides but was immediately hurled away by an explosion of force that radiated out from her. His backward somersault ended in a skid as he landed and charged again. She turned and flung a streak of force darts at him. He dodged several, blocked two more with quick strikes of his weapons, and finally, he was close enough. Rath slashed at her legs with the batons and aimed from the outside and inward. She leapt and delivered a kick to his face that he barely avoided with a deep backbend.
He growled, half in anger and half in enthusiasm for a quality opponent. In mid-air, she launched more darts at him, and he fell on his back to avoid them. She stood over his defenseless form and grinned as she raised her wand to strike a final blow. “Trinity. Help,” he called.
Tony stepped up beside her, his stun rifle at head-level, and delivered the answering line with a grin. “Dodge this.” The weapon crackled and she went down. The big man nodded but immediately yelped as a blast of lightning knocked the gun from his hands. Rath flipped to his feet and turned to see Cara incapacitate the second to last wizard in the group. The final one, closest to the onrushing surge of hoodlums, launched another electrical attack.
Tony dodged around the front of the truck and lightning scored the paintwork on the passenger door. The witch shifted her wand toward Cara, who was occupied with her own foe. Rath saw only one option. He pushed his batons into the ground to collapse them and hurled them in sequence at the witch. The shock feature required a button press to activate it, but taking a pound or so of metal in the face would still be detrimental. The first missed by a wide margin to the left, but the second connected soundly with her forehead. She staggered back, her head impacted against the truck’s side, and she crumpled and fell with a moan.
A sound from his right reminded him of the fourth vehicle and the enemies that surged out of it. Again, only a single option presented itself. He raced toward the closest adversaries and the so-called Prince of Plunder who had his hat and grew to his full size before he plowed into the one at the head of the line.
Diana had an ungraceful moment as she dodged a force blast and slipped on the wet floor to collide with a row of bottles and shatter them. The ensuing waterfall covered her sleeve in bourbon. Maker’s Mark. At least it’s top shelf. She righted herself and fired a stun bolt at the mage, but he deflected it with a force shield and repeated his previous attack. A hurried block stopped the weapon in its path, and she hurled it at him as a distraction afterward. The shouted, “Retreat,” rose over the cacophony, doubtless magically amplified by the sonic wizard-pirate. A grin spread across his face. The muttered word that accompanied the extension of his wand was lost in the noise, but the whoosh of flame that followed was instantly all that she could hear or see.
Anik screamed, and she collapsed and summoned a force shield to encase her. The heat intensified as the contents of the bottles ignited, and even though she was protected from the touch of the fire, her mind was gripped with a primal fear of immolation and shrieked at her to escape. Sprinklers activated, far too inadequate to extinguish the blaze. She only noticed her arm was alight when the burning reached a pain point greater than that of the surrounding heat, and she beat at it to extinguish it. The part of her that rightly feared remaining immobile in a blazing building took over and she pushed to her feet and ran, then hurled herself toward the open grate and broken window.
She landed outside in a roll and maintained the tumble to ensure she was no longer on fire. When she finally managed to stand, she scowled at the blisters on her now bare arm and groaned as another wash of agony accompanied her awareness of the extent of the wound. Brighter pain flared, and she staggered as bullets struck her in the back of the vest and triceps as she flung away. Bloody bastards, now you’ve done it. But at least they don’t all have AP ammo. “Friday, send ambulances to this position. BAM, weapons free. They’ve chosen the hard way.”
There were a few confirmations and an enthusiastic, “Yes,” as she rose in fury and turned to face the enemies that now launched a concerted attack at her. They comprised both firearms- and wand-holders, and in her pained and angry state, she had no inclination to hold back to protect those who had elected to put themselves in harm’s way. She reached deep for fire and scythed a wide, thin blast at knee level. The wizards and witches summoned shields and at least one was generous enough to extend it to the mundane pistol-wielder beside him, but her assault brought at least half of them to their knees.
They raised wands, and Diana threw out both hands to release a line of force to take hold of a nearby trash can from the far sidewalk. She hurled the telekinetic missile at the approaching hoodlums from the opposite side. It was almost comical watching the criminals smash into each other as they defended against one attack or the other, only to be struck by the one they hadn’t prioritized. She turned to discover that Rath had struck the other oncoming group like a bowling ball and that many were down. The rest had chosen to flee and now piled into the two farthest trucks, which peeled away before she could target them. Anik stood over the downed enemies and stunned them as fast as his weapon could recycle. He looked none the worse for wear other than his dark hair, which appeared a little singed.
“Glam, tag it,” she shouted. She heard the high buzz of the drone as it accelerated in a downward swoop and vanished from sight around the corner.
“I have the back one,” Kayleigh confirmed a moment later. “They’re going too fast for me to reach the first. These are not the most awesome drones ever.” She had often complained about the fact that she still used hand-me-down technology on that front because they didn’t have the time to develop their own. Allegedly, DC was working on it, but when she’d mentioned that to the tech, Kayleigh had snorted and responded with a shake of her head. “Ems is not interested in drones. He never has been and never will be. He likes the up-close stuff.”
Diana sighed and considered using her healing potion but decided she could stick it out for a little longer as Cara wrapped a pressure bandage around her wound. She wasn’t sure what the result of taking it would be if there was a piece of shrapnel still inside her and didn’t want to risk it unless there was no other choice. “Get to the cars. This isn’t over yet.”
Chapter Fourteen
The black SUVs coasted to a stop a block away from where the tagged truck and the other one had finished their journey. Kayleigh had shown the team the location on a map and then with the feed from one of her drones. The vehicles had ducked into a pair of large rental garages in an unexpected area, the affluent Shadyside ne
ighborhood east of downtown.
Occasional streetlights broke the darkness, but there was more than sufficient cover as they advanced on foot toward the house where the drones had detected an abnormal number of heat signatures. With my luck tonight, we’ve probably stumbled on a bloody campaign fundraiser for the mayor or something. The wound in her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat and made her downright cranky.
Cara jogged beside her as they approached in the shadows with the men behind and the three-foot troll trailing. They’d given up on the stun weapons entirely and held their carbines close to their chests. Now that the enemy had shown a willingness to kill them, they wouldn’t hesitate to return the gesture. They still carried standard ammo to avoid harming any bystanders, and each had a mix of those and anti-magic magazines.
Diana didn’t appreciate anything about the scenario. “Okay, listen. This will require stealth since they have home field advantage. I hope y’all won’t be offended when I say that Stark and Khan are not exactly the most ninja-like of us.”
Tony chuckled. “I resemble that remark.”
Anik added. “I can be super quiet. I simply choose not to. Um, always.”
The quips failed to bring her any amusement. The deep sense of foreboding she felt banished it before it could begin. It didn’t feel like a trap, and the likelihood that the prince and his crew knew the team would be waiting for them that night was negligible. Still, this was a criminal who had been around for a while and had probably learned a few things. Plus, he had magic on his side, personal and hired. She shook her head. Bad. Not good. Very not good. Lousy. Do not want.
Diana did break a smile when Rath whispered, “Ninja-troll. Stealthiest of all. Let Mortal Kombat begin!”
Federal Agents of Magic Boxed Set Page 73