“Well…no guts, no glory,” DiSanto muttered, not having to dig too deep into his bag of clichés.
“That’s original.” Colgrave grinned.
“Fuck off. Let’s get closer—it’s what we came for.”
Colgrave patted her pack full of thermite and C4 charges. “I thought this was what we came for.”
DiSanto had to grin again. He was carrying a similar load, along with doctored magazines for both his Glock and MP5. Never in a million years had he expected to be doing this kind of thing, not as a cop. But then, he wasn’t really acting as a cop now, was he?
There went his career. His mother would be proud. She’d wanted a priest in the family.
Right now, he felt an underlying shame he could barely put into words. But he hoped helping kill the bad guys would reverse his negative karma, or give his soul a good wash and rinse.
Jesus, what the hell have I done?
Then he did what he’d been doing and put Heather Wilson out of his thoughts.
Carefully they wended their way closer to the house, which had started out appearing small and square, but suddenly it seemed to widen in their view, and its cantilever portion now hovered over them like the lower deck of an alien mothership. They were only yards from the rear of the house, where they could make out a door. They waited in the cover of the tree line and DiSanto tried again to make contact with Lupo.
He kept expecting the door to swing open downwards and a batch of alien grays to come storming out, looking for earthlings to probe.
Hell, was that any weirder than what was actually going on?
He rattled his comm gear again. They’d had good reason to try to synchronize their attacks.
Now what, Nick? What the fuck you want us to do?
Chapter Forty-One
Lupo
“What do you know about this Bastone asshole?”
Lupo shrugged. “Not a whole lot.” He told Charlie most of it in about a minute. “He sounds like a joke, really, a guy who wants to live in his grandfather’s time. Plus I think he has an addiction problem.”
“Drugs?”
“Sex. So they say. He’s a cartoon, maybe. It’s his enforcer I’m most worried about, this Rabbioso. I had Colgrave use her contacts to look him up. He was a soldier—a good one—and then he became a security contractor—a bad one—and it almost seems like two different people. He’s supposedly a likeable, good-looking guy who enjoys killing people in various not-funny ways. Bodies disappear.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Charlie said, echoing Lupo’s thoughts.
He checked his watch. He hoped DiSanto remembered to do the same.
The comm being down or jammed was not good, but they’d planned to base their actions on timing. They were ostensibly in position, so there was no turning back. They’d figured Bastone hadn’t had time to stock up with muscle, but they couldn’t be sure.
Lupo had mumbled something about not taking any prisoners, and Charlie was fine with that.
Cold as it was, they had come in on two borrowed Bozeman single-seat hunter’s pontoon boats, paddling quietly across the fortunately calm lake and finally beaching onto the comma-shaped sandy stretch that was separated from the rear of the house by the stand of bare woods. They’d avoided the single path that connected house to beach. Then they had watched at length and finally spotted a glow where one of Bastone’s guards paced the rear deck, a two-tier affair that led to several sets of French doors set into the back of the house.
While they surveilled, Lupo turned his face to the darkening sky and looked up. Stars were becoming distinct, swirls of the Milky Way reminding him how far he was from city lights. He stared upward, until his neck hurt. He saw a few shooting stars zipping across the wide canvas of the sky.
He hoped he was right.
He had to be right.
Now they crept up to the deck stairs from the near side, knowing the smoking sentry was almost immediately above them, puffing in the dark.
Lupo unslung a cocked Stryker compound crossbow and nocked a hunting-tip bolt into the breech. There was no room for error, but he’d been practicing. Jessie had insisted—long ago she’d used her father’s crossbow in a critical situation. Lupo had taken to it easily, especially after the Archer case.
He used the infrared telescopic sight to line up the smoker’s silhouette. The guy was huddled in a medium-weight parka, leaning up against the railing and staring off into space.
Lupo repositioned his crosshairs so they met over the thug’s enhanced shape, then gently squeezed the trigger.
The bolt shot out and buried itself in the guy’s back, the missile’s velocity just about flipping him over. He went down without a whimper, though the double thump of his boots hitting the deck sounded unnaturally loud.
Lupo grimaced, waiting.
Nothing but breeze through the trees.
He nodded at Charlie and reloaded using the bow’s stirrup, then approached the bottom of the stairs under cover of Charlie’s suppressed MP5. Even though the strong breeze broke the quiet, the submachine gun’s suppressed reports would still be too loud. Hence the crossbow. They’d only break the rule when they had no choice.
Lupo crept up the steps, hugging one side to avoid creaking, checked the windows and doors with a glance, then leaned over the thug he’d harpooned and felt for a pulse. There was none. He put out the guy’s smoldering cigarette before it sparked a fire, then hung his head over the railing and waved Charlie up.
Once they were both on the deck, they checked the doors but all were locked from the inside. The deck wrapped around to the side and front of the house, so they hugged the shadows and worked their way along the planks.
That was when Lupo heard a familiar high-pitched insect-like buzzing that appeared to be rising from beyond the tree line, over the beach.
He’d been expecting it.
Then there was single gunshot from inside the house, and moments later there were surprised shouts as well.
A few ticks later two more gunshots rang out, farther from the house but on the side opposite of them.
What the fuck?
Lupo only had time to think the words before all hell broke loose.
Jessie
She ran, her feet sure under her, slapping too noisily on the vegetation’s winter debris that covered the ground.
She slipped from shadow pocket to pocket, knowing she could be picked out by the flash of her clothing, by the snapping of twigs, by the sound of her breath hitching in her throat.
She had three rounds left, and she could make them count.
The problem was that she’d lost track of where the hell she was, and the night’s shadows hindered as well as helped. She could imagine smacking her face on a tree trunk. Her nose throbbed painfully where Bastone had struck her, and she tasted a tendril of blood. She prayed not to trip, and tried to keep the sky’s last light on her same side so she wouldn’t run in circles. The noise she made she couldn’t help much.
Aiming for a pocket of darkness, she hit a bog or shallow creek and slid like a baseball player heading home, except she hadn’t intended to slide and she felt something rip in her right leg.
Oh God, no!
She rolled over in the muddy patch and got to her knees, and when she stood she saw them, two of the thugs, converging on her from the very dark patch she had hoped would shelter her.
She raised her hand and brought the gun to bear and got off one shot, which might well have hit one of the thugs, but the next trigger pull produced nothing. Even in the dark she could see that its cylinder was fouled with mud and twigs.
Desperate, she ignored the danger and pulled the trigger again and again, but it was no good, the gun was useless. Or even dangerous to her.
She tried to throw it at them, but they were upon her. They grabbed her roughly between them and threw her against a pine, knocking the wind out of her with a whoosh.
“Fuck, Manny, the bitch shot me!”
“Ah,
it’s just a scratch.”
“Fuck you, man.”
Jessie leaned on the pine, winded, hurting. Her face, her leg, her lungs. She was done.
She’d been so busy running, she hadn’t heard the insect-like buzzing sound that suddenly echoed all around the woods, like cicadas on steroids she thought now.
But she had bigger problems. The wounded thug wanted to drag her back to the house, but the other one made clear what he wanted when he put his gun to her head and started to rip open her shirt.
The annoying buzzing increased its volume and seemed to spread out overhead. Then it was as if a cloud of large insects were heading for the house.
Then a quiet, deep voice from nearby said, “Let her go.”
Rabbioso
He had no idea what the damned insects were up to here in the woods. He knew what night sounds were like in the desert, but this was a new one to him. It sounded like an electric cicada convention. But much louder.
He’d tracked the good doctor and almost had her when those two idiots had somehow cut her off, and now they were about to finish what the fucking Don had started.
For whatever reason, he felt his duty was to stop them. There was something about her…
When he said, “Let her go,” he was stripping off his safari shirt, loosening his trousers. His feet were already bare.
When they spotted him—in the twilight he’d been invisible while clothed until his lighter bare skin lit up like a lantern—they hesitated.
Not only was he Don Bastone’s lieutenant and enforcer, but it looked as though he was standing in front of them now completely naked.
In fact, they had to see clearly—now that he stood only a few feet away from them (not quite in front of Dr. Hawkins)—that he was sporting the biggest boner either of them could have imagined.
“What the fuckin’—”
Moments later Rabbioso was gone and the oversize black wolf that had taken his place growled as he lunged at the two startled goons.
Chapter Forty-Two
Colgrave
She felt helpless, lost, and more than a little miffed at the ease with which she’d succumbed to their pitch. This fiasco could mean her career.
Again.
Hell, it could mean prison.
She’d done it before, she was a fool for lost causes, or maybe she could admit having developed a little thing for Nick Lupo. His partner was cute, all youthful puppy energy and good looks, but he was married and he seemed decidedly unhappy. Colgrave knew she was overly serious and couldn’t see herself with anyone who was unhappy, but also unserious.
But at the heart of her involvement was the belief that something wrong was being done, some evil was being perpetrated. The evidence was convincing, and her quiet inquiries through her friend Brant had rung alarm bells. She wondered if she’d been marked, if a flag had been raised right over her. A flag with a target.
DiSanto was frustrated with the lack of comm. But they’d predicted the possibility. She checked her watch. They were five minutes out from what they’d agreed with Lupo they would do simultaneously.
“Forget the comm,” she whispered. “We’ve got five to go. The place seems quiet, so they’re not expecting us.”
“That’s what worries me,” DiSanto said. “There should be all kinds of security. This looks like leaving the back door open intentionally.”
“Just because they have a shitload of resources doesn’t mean they’re not also overconfident. In my experience, just when you think you’ve run into an intelligent criminal, he surprises the hell out of you with his stupidity.”
“I’ve noticed the same about cops,” he said, grinning.
She punched him.
“Seriously, let’s get this over with. Or I’m gonna back out.”
“No way, we promised Nick.”
“Yeah.”
She pulled one of the thermite charges out of her backpack. It paid to have connections. Lupo had said, Jesus, we sure came to the right person! when he’d seen what she’d provided them with, including the Dragon Skin. She’d been lucky, Brant was in town. And he owed her. He’d paid off on the debt gleefully, almost regretful he wasn’t included. At his age, he should have been on a shuffleboard court.
Now they scuttled up to the rear wall and the ominous door, crouched out of sight of the blank-eyed windows, and she armed the detonator. She attached the charge to the door, directly over the plate where the lock would be.
Thermite doesn’t explode, it burns. Hot.
They flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the door and when the charge ignited the intense heat, the pyrotechnic device burned through the metal like a huge Fourth of July sparkler.
Then DiSanto kicked in the door.
DiSanto
They burst in, guns waving, but the oversize mudroom they were in and the sterile hallways outside it were eerily empty.
Following the blueprints that Wineacre dude had managed to obtain and include in the flash drive, they made their way through the maze. It reminded DiSanto of the halls at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in the old television spy show. Every corridor looked the same. Doors were set at various intervals, but no one seemed to be eager to investigate the noise of their dramatic entrance.
Both DiSanto and Colgrave had trained for armed raids, so they were able to work their way toward the center of the complex’s main floor using the standard approach, covering each other as they leapfrogged past doorways.
What had happened? Was this a trap?
Occasionally DiSanto jiggled a doorknob, but they all seemed to be locked.
There was no one home.
They continued toward the large room Wineacre had identified as the control room, where apparently the remote pilots flew the killer drones that Wolfclaw had developed.
Every other corner, or wherever they spotted a structural pillar, one of them placed a C4 charge. They both carried burner phone detonators.
“Someone tipped them off,” whispered Colgrave.
“Or they planned to evacuate anyway, for some reason.”
“The control room should be ahead, not far.”
Then they heard a whimpering that came from an open doorway ahead.
Heather
The healing was slow, but she could feel the regenerative properties of the werewolf gene rearranging DNA strands and doing their magic on her organs and body.
Pain still jabbed through her nervous system, short-circuiting her thought process, but she maintained her wolf form in order to continue healing.
Through the haze of her pain, she wondered why no one else had come to that monster’s aid. What had happened? Were they alone here in the huge complex?
She continued to heal, but the pain was blinding and she continued to whimper.
When the door opened she tried to gather herself for one last leap, imagining that a hit squad or Alpha team had finally arrived to kill her. Her extremities were still regenerating, growing faster now. She’d always been a fast healer, and perhaps that genetic quality had attached itself to the werewolf mutation. She was still feeling excruciating pain all over her body, but her thoughts were clearing.
She prepared for one last stand, growling at her new attackers.
And when she spotted a body-armored DiSanto coming in low, a submachine gun in his hands, she thought she’d lost her mind.
Another armored cop or soldier followed, offering cover with another stubby machine gun, and this was a woman. Heather recognized her from the precinct.
Forgetting that forcing a change would both slow her healing and also spike the pain that would go shooting through her body, she visualized herself changing and made her DNA realign and in a moment she was staggering to her feet—her mutilated, bloody human feet—and approaching her rescuers like a battle-damaged naked Amazon. The excruciating pain forced her to change again.
The woman cop nearly fainted, lowering her gun at first then swinging it up again, sensing danger…and weirdness.
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
DiSanto knocked her gun muzzle up. “She’s with us!”
The woman’s eyes widened.
Heather was a wolf again, but a wounded one. Panting, she rolled onto her side. Her tongue lolled between her fangs.
DiSanto understood. “She’s healing,” he said.
His perception surprised her.
And then he dragged the confused woman out of the room.
Colgrave
Her mind was a jumble of disjointed thoughts. One of them was that she’d been drugged and just didn’t know it. Another was that she’d been conned.
But she’d smelled the blood and death in the room, the scorched skin, flesh, and fur.
She had to accept…
But I can’t accept it…
DiSanto distracted her by waving a C4 charge in her face. “Find the control room,” he mouthed. “Everything else later.”
She nodded, got herself back together. Covered him as they headed back into the maze.
Chapter Forty-Three
Lupo
The deafening buzzing of insects suddenly resolved itself into the very same sound he’d heard when he and Heather had been attacked by the black drones near his apartment.
He and Charlie were still on the deck, trying to decide whether to enter the house or not, when the unseen drones apparently reached the structure and circled it. Lupo thought he’d spotted one, a sort of saucer-shaped craft with four helicopter rotors, but they were quick-moving, like weaponized hummingbirds..
Lupo could almost feel the targeting equipment, the software, comparing his infra-red sensed face with one on a file photo somewhere, computing the similarities and differences and mapping them out to obtain a probability percentage. The GPS coordinates of his location had come by way of a rogue spy satellite, he was sure of it. Heather had described Wineacre as a loser, but there was a lot of incredibly sensitive material buried in his stolen files. The guy could have been another Wikileaks gadfly, if he’d survived.
Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5) Page 27