He switched out the barrel for a shorter one—better suited to an urban environment where extremely long-range shots were uncommon—and attached the side-folding buttstock. In sniper mode, the gun could put one of its old-style metal-jacketed bullets through an armored car, and nothing short of durasteel or permaglass would stop a round.
However, Master Sergeant Kane had hammered into him the importance of always having a backup, so he added into his pack the modular component and shorter barrel that would reconfigure the MK75 into a semi-automatic and select-fire blaster assault rifle. A blaster pistol, a complement of grenades—smoke and fragmentation, a trio of each—and his trusty Echosteel blade completed the loadout.
“Seal the armory,” Nolan instructed Taia, “and make sure all the doors in and out are locked.”
“Already done,” Taia said in his helmet. “And our house guest is resting easy, coming down off the latest dose of Blitz.”
Nolan studied the image Taia displayed on his HUD. The camera zoomed in on Bex’s face, showing her sleeping, not unconscious. The sheen of sweat had disappeared, and her eyelids no longer twitched.
“Good.” Nolan nodded. “Keep an eye on her while we’re out, yeah?”
“I’m almost offended you have to ask.”
“My sincerest apologies, then.” Nolan chuckled. “Open the exit hatch, will you, dear?”
Taia hesitated a long second—her version of sulking—before opening the door leading to the drug tunnel out of his building.
Nolan checked his weapons one last time and drew in a deep breath. “Play time’s over, Taia. We’ve got a cartel boss to kill.”
Chapter Twelve
“I count three hostiles around the exterior and, based on footage I pulled from nearby CCTV cameras, there are at least another five inside the building.”
That tracked with what Nolan was seeing from his rooftop perch. The two White Sharks guarding the front of the Bolt Hole warehouse seemed to be fairly attentive, automatic rifles in hand, eyes scanning the empty street. Last Nolan had checked, the guy in the back had been too busy smoking to give his alleyway entrance more than the occasional cursory glance.
With a flick of a switch, Nolan switched his scope to infrared and swept the building again. The goons had boarded up the windows, making it impossible to see inside, but the thermal IR scope detected four heat signatures through the cheap glass. He’d have guessed a total of six on the interior, but rounded it up to seven just to make a full ten. That felt about the right number for a drug operation of this size.
On the outside, it looked like nothing more than an empty warehouse—granted, one guarded by three heavily armed goons. But according to Agent Styver’s intel, this was the stash house for most of the opioids that ran through Grove District and its neighboring districts to the south and east—including the affluent Canyon View, perched on the edge of the massive Firedeep Canyon.
It made the perfect target for two simple reasons: it was the smallest of the White Sharks’ stash houses, and it was just close enough to Los Espadones territory.
Agent Styver’s dossier had said Gustav Wylun spent most of his time underground, hidden even from the Protection Bureau’s prying digital eyes. Nothing would draw the White Sharks’ boss out of hiding faster than a threat on his operation. Or, as Nolan intended, a full-on crippling assault.
“Perimeter check,” he told Taia.
A moment later, the AI’s voice chirped in his helmet. “All clear. IDF’s nowhere in sight, CCTV feed is momentarily blinded, and the convoy from the Shipyards stash is estimated to arrive in twenty-two minutes.”
Twenty-two minutes. Nolan grunted. I’ll be long gone by then.
Rolling away from his rooftop sniper’s nest, he ran along the wall in a low crouch, careful to keep himself hidden from the watching eyes of the White Sharks below. Even with the camouflage in his combat suit activated, old habits—honed over years in the IAF, Silverguard, and as the Protection Bureau’s assassin—remained habits for a reason. One small mistake, something as simple as excessive reliance on technology, could get a man killed.
Nolan’s boots made no sound as he raced across the roof of the empty warehouse, then skidded to a halt on the southeastern corner of the building. He brought the MK75 up, sighted, and dropped to one knee. The goon covering the back had finished smoking, but was now busy playing some game on his comm device.
Nolan shook his head. Idiot. Then again, low-level White Sharks in a deserted alley wouldn’t exactly be the cream of the crop.
Reaching into the pack on the back of his combat suit, he drew out the suppressor and set about attaching it to the end of the MK75’s barrel. The Old Terran word “silencer” was a misnomer, at least when it came to mechanical firearms. While cutting-edge suppressors could almost fully silence guns like the Balefire, plasma rifles, or blasters, the explosion of gas bursting from the end of an old-school firearm barrel could be moderated and reduced at best. It was one of the very few downsides of weapons like the MK75 in standard sniper rifle mode.
At the moment, he didn’t need to worry about utter silence. From his perch nearly three hundred meters away from the White Sharks’ warehouse, he had little fear of the softened crack of the MK75 being overheard.
Suppressor in place, he brought the rifle up and stared through the crosshairs at the goon guarding the back entrance. “Start the clock, Taia.”
“Starting in three, two, one!”
Nolan squeezed the trigger, and the goon’s head exploded in a spray of pink mist. Before the body fell, Nolan was on his feet and running back the way he’d come, toward the northeastern corner of the ten-story warehouse that served as his rooftop perch. He ignored the numbers flashing in the upper-right of his HUD—he’d been generous with his estimate that it would take the better part of ten minutes to deal with the goons and the stash house. With the White Sharks convoy twenty minutes out and the IDF response time nearly thirty minutes to reach this part of the Bolt Hole, a quarter-hour would be more than enough to do what needed doing.
This time, he didn’t drop to one knee to fire. At this range, just three hundred and fifty meters from the farther of the two White Sharks, he could make the shots even on his worst day.
Crack! One goon’s head snapped back and his lifeless body toppled to the ground.
Nolan’s hand went through the motions of working the bolt action lever, smoothly, with speed honed over years of daily practice. His next bullet was loaded and ready to fire before the second of the two goons realized his comrade had fallen.
Crack! The other White Shark fell with a new hole between the eyes.
The moment Nolan’s finger released the trigger, he swung the rifle around to his back and locked it in place in the combat suit’s magnetic holster. He wouldn’t need the heavy gun for what came next; his pistol would stage the scene better, anyway.
He leaped off the eastern edge of the warehouse, dropping three stories toward the seven-floor tenement building that stood between him and the White Sharks’ stash house. Taia kicked in his boot thrusters just enough to slow his ten-meter drop and push him forward. He landed on the rooftop below already at a full run, with only a hint of the jarring impact racing up the parts of his spine that still had feeling.
The combat suit moved far faster than his legs ever had—one of the perks of his situation, he tried to convince himself. He was across the roof within ten seconds and leaping off the edge, hurtling through the air toward one of the boarded-up windows.
Propelled by a burst from his thruster boots, Nolan crashed through the window in a spray of glass shards and splintered wood, rolled, and came to his feet, pistol leveled at the nearest goon.
“Viva Los Espadones!” His helmet broadcasted the shout with deafening force through the building the instant before he squeezed the trigger three times. The first blaster bolt punched through the White Shark’s chest, leaving a sizzling black hole. The other two were just for show.
Spinning from t
he falling body, Nolan shot down the only other goon in the room with a triplet to the chest and head. The man died before he could even stand up from the couch where he lounged.
He paused only long enough to take in the table in the center of the room, heaped high with fist-sized bags of dark purple powder, and the shelves laden with glass vials and plastic-wrapped bricks of what looked like black clay. With a snarl, he ripped one of the thermal grenades from his belt, pressed the timer button, and tossed it toward a shelf of Black Coke. The drug’s high flammability made it the perfect choice for smoking—and just what he needed to start the fire to bring down the White Shark’s operation.
Nolan raced out the door and sprinted down the hallway of the warehouse’s upper-story offices. He had just five seconds to get out of the blast radius before—
Another White Shark burst out of the door of another office, spraying blaster rifle fire up the hallway. Nolan threw himself into a forward dive, rolling beneath the wild hail of sizzling blue bolts, and brought the thug down with a shot to the knee. The White Shark screamed as Nolan’s bolt shattered bone and burned away muscle. He fell, the rifle still firing into the ground beneath him as his finger convulsively tightened around the trigger. Nolan didn’t need another shot—one of the goon’s own wild-fired blaster bolts ricocheted off a steel wall beam and clipped him in the throat, punching through his gang tattoo and severing his jugular vein.
Something slammed into Nolan’s back with the force of a jackhammer. Staggering forward, off-balance, Nolan dropped into a low crouch and brought the pistol whipping around to fire at the goon in the hall behind him. The White Shark fell without a sound, rifle falling from nerveless fingers. He fired again, three shots this time, to complete the façade.
“Any damage?” Nolan asked Taia as he leaped to his feet and raced on down the hallway.
“The suit shrugged it off,” Taia responded. “But if they’ve got anything heavier, we’re in trouble.”
“Then we don’t give them a chance to hit us!”
Reaching the end of the hallway, Nolan raced around the corner and found himself at the catwalk overlooking the warehouse. He leaped over the railing and kicked on his boot thrusters to send him hurtling through the empty air.
BOOM! An explosion rocked the upper-level offices, and fire blossomed in the near-darkness of the warehouse. The pillar of flames illuminated the warehouse for an instant—long enough for Taia to catch sight of the three White Sharks on the floor below. Their images popped up on Nolan’s HUD, outlined in red with a bulls-eye hovering over their chests.
“Viva Los Espadones!” Nolan roared again, and the sound of his amplified voice echoed through the warehouse.
Automatic blaster fire raked the air around him, but Nolan was already dropping toward the warehouse floor, boot thrusters engaged just enough to keep him from crashing into the ground. His pistol swiveled toward the nearest goon and sent a blaster bolt into the White Shark’s chest. Landing in a full sprint, Nolan darted between two rows of pallets and around a stack of barrels. His pistol barked once, twice, dropping the second White Shark, then he was racing toward the third.
“Drop cloaking!” he ordered.
Taia shut off the sound dampeners and camouflage cells built into his combat suit and boots, and instantly Nolan’s suit transformed from a stealthy, near-silent wraith to a clanking, thundering juggernaut of metal. The White Shark spun toward the sound, eyes flying wide, and brought his blaster rifle around to loose a desperate hail of bolts at Nolan.
Too slow.
Nolan hit him at a full sprint, crashing into the man with bone-shattering force. He kicked on his boot thrusters at the last second. The impact hurled the White Shark into the metal shelving behind him. Wooden crates, glass vials, and rusted steel crumpled beneath the force of the flying body, crashing down around the fallen White Shark and kicking up dust.
Shit! He needed the man alive.
Nolan threw himself toward the goon, leaping atop the man. The collapsing shelving and stockpiled goods slammed into Nolan’s back, but he held his position, shielding the goon with his combat suit. The falling crates and shelving struts hammered the back of his suit, slamming into his helmet, threatening to bury him beneath the rubble.
Nolan gritted his teeth and held his position. The combat suit could handle it, but the goon’s unarmored body would be crushed by the debris.
Finally, the last crate crashed on the warehouse floor and the last clatter of collapsing metal fell silent, leaving Nolan and the goon in an almost eerie silence. One look at the man and Nolan could see the blow had knocked him out.
Perfect.
Pushing himself upright, Nolan seized the thug’s ankle and dragged the man out from the pile of rubble. He moved the senseless man only a few feet—just clear of the collapse, well away from the nearest palette of Black Coke—before dropping him.
Drawing another thermal grenade, he pressed the striker button and tossed the explosive toward the Black Coke. Spinning, he raced toward the building’s front entrance and burst through the doors. A heartbeat later, the frag grenade went off and the warehouse’s interior was rocked by a brilliant burst of flames.
“And, time!” Nolan glanced at the numbers on his HUD. “Six minutes and forty-five seconds? Not bad.”
“I thought you’d do it in five,” Taia chirped.
“Sorry to let you down, dear.” Nolan chuckled. “But you know, if we’ve got nearly a full ten minutes before the Doofs show up, maybe I’ve got time for one last thing.”
Drawing his Echosteel blade, he scratched three words into the flaking paint of the warehouse’s metal doors. Once done, he stepped back to admire his handiwork.
“You think it’s too much?” he asked.
“No, I think it’s about right.” Taia almost sounded amused. “Let’s call it a fail-safe in case the guy in there doesn’t get out of that fire alive.”
A grin broadened across Nolan’s face. “That’s what makes you perfect, Taia. You just get me.”
“Of course I do, Nolan. I am a part of your brain, after all.”
“How long until the convoy from the Shipyards arrives?”
“I estimate fifteen minutes, with the IDF four or five minutes behind.”
“Perfect.” Satisfaction hummed in Nolan’s chest. “On to our next party, then. We’ve got more stash houses to visit before the night’s out.”
He cast a last glance back before racing off toward his next destination—a warehouse thirty kilometers away, deeper in the twisted maze that was the Bolt Hole.
Luck and timing had been on his side here; the White Sharks convoy would arrive to find their warehouse raided and burning—their drug stash along with it—and the IDF would be close enough on their heels that they might actually scoop up the drug-runners.
But the piece de resistance, the thing that would sell the ruse he needed Gustav to believe, was the message he’d left behind. He’d left enough blaster bolt holes in the White Sharks to make it appear the work of amateurs, and if the one goon survived, he’d remember the shouted words Nolan had broadcasted through the warehouse.
If not, the same words had been carved in big, jagged letters into the metal door—large and clear enough for Gustav to understand.
“Viva Los Espadones.”
Chapter Thirteen
Shit!
Nolan had only a second to throw himself behind a concrete pillar before the shotgun in the goon’s hand fired. A thundering boom echoed in the warehouse and a blizzard of small-caliber blaster bolts tore a massive chunk out of the floor.
The White Shark pumped the action for another shot. He never got it off.
Nolan leaped around the far side of the pillar, blaster pistol at the ready. A quick squeeze of the trigger and the semi-auto fire sent four bolts into the goon’s chest, dropping him dead before he hit the ground.
I’ll take that!
Holstering his pistol, Nolan dove into a forward roll, scooped up the shotgun,
pumped it once, and whirled to unload a blast into the face of the White Shark that Taia warned was coming up on his six. The thug’s head exploded in a gory spray of blood, bone, and grey matter that splattered the heavy-necked gangbanger a step behind him.
The huge goon shrieked and clawed at his face, frantically trying to clean the shards of his comrade from his eyes. Nolan pumped the shotgun for another shot, but it clicked on an empty magazine. Dropping the gun, he drew his pistol and put a triplet into the goon’s head, chest, and gut.
BOOM!
The explosion behind him was far louder than the shotgun blast; so loud it set the external sensors in his helmet ringing. Nolan grimaced at the eerie shriek of the speakers as the helmet’s hardware scrambled to compensate for the deafening sound. He had only Taia’s voice in his ear to warn him of the danger at his back.
A stream of heavy blaster fire cut through the pallets around him, sawed the concrete pillar in half, and carved a deadly path toward his chest. Nolan had only one choice: he dropped flat to the ground. Barely in time to avoid the blaster bolts that sliced the air centimeters from his helmet.
“Boots!” Nolan shouted to Taia.
The ion thrusters built into his boots sprang to life, shooting him forward so fast his armor struck sparks on the concrete floor. He had time only to shove himself upward, high into the air, just at the right angle to take out the knees of the White Shark spraying heavy blaster fire through the warehouse. Bone crunched beneath the impact and the gangbanger pitched high into the air, screaming in agony and fury. He landed on the hard floor right on his head. Skull and neck gave a terrible crack and he lay still.
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