by Declan Finn
Set To Kill:
A Sean A.P. Ryan Novel
By
Declan Finn
Honor At Stake by Declan Finn
ISBN-13: 978-1534946040
ISBN-10: 1534946047
Cover art by: Dawn Witzke
Copyright 2016 John Konecsni
Printed in the United States of America Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights Worldwide English Language Print Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved 2016 Any attempt to reproduce this material without permission will end badly for you, do we understand each other?
Dedicated to those who all those who made it possible.
To Moses, who demanded a sequel
To Vanessa, who suggested the premise.
And to all those who helped design the world of the Puppies Bite Back
Acknowledgments
This one was odd, in that it's a combination of multiple elements that became the story.
After It Was Only On Stun!, I expected to not do any further books with Sean A.P. Ryan as a security consultant at SF conventions, despite having a trilogy of them planned. However, when I got a message of “I NEED ANOTHER SEAN RYAN NOVEL, I READ IT WAS ONLY ON STUN! 5 TIMES!!!!” I can take a hint.
I had been going to do an out of date plot that would have served, but someone suggested, purely as a joke, that I have Sean Ryan meet “the Puppies,” which is another project entirely.
At which point I said, “I can do that.”
And thus, you have the book you hold in your hand.
This was helped along by: Tom Knighton, Tom Kratman, Jim Bellmore, Richard Evans, Johnathan La Force of the Aloha Snack Bar, Dawn Witzke, Vanessa Landry, Moses Lambert, Jason Clarke, Rory Modena, Jasyn Jones, and probably multiple people I'm forgetting.
And, because people are both stupid and lawsuit happy, I'm going to once again point out that is entirely fictional. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of my deranged / insane imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In fact, I would say it's downright miraculous.
And now, for one final time, UNLEASH THE PUPPIES.
Prologue: SWATting at Puppies
Tearful Puppies Bite Back
The first murder attempt came at 1:30 in the morning, in Provo, Utah.
Author Gary Castelo, known on the internet as the self-dubbed Intergalactic Lord of Rage, was asleep on his bed, which he commonly joked was made of skulls, stuffed with the hair of virgins, and blanketed with tanned unicorn hide. Most people didn't get the joke.
The first two rings of the phone didn't even jar him. On the third, the massive paw of his right hand slammed down on the handset and ripped it off.
“WHO DARES AWAKE THE GREAT INTERGALACTIC LORD OF RAGE?”
“Hey, Gary, it's Sgt. Murphy, down at the station?”
Gary rose from the mattress and grabbed the water pitcher on his night stand. “Oh. Hey, Murph,” he said in a more normal tone of voice. “Sorry, you woke me. What's up?”
The cop at the other end of the phone chuckled. “Well, you see, we had this call come into 911. Caller said you were going to shoot somebody. Do you have Johnny Prada over?
Gary rolled his eyes. “Nah. I was asleep. Haven't threatened anybody in…hours, really. And that was with my death stare.”
Murphy chuckled at what he naturally assumed was a joke. “Well, when we told the SWAT team, everybody knew your address, so we figured I should just call. Can I come in? I'm outside.”
Gary shrugged, then sighed. “Sure, why the heck not?”
Gary Castelo arose, stretching to his full seven-feet. He stepped on the polar bear carpet (that he had personally handmade), kicked his bazooka back under the bed, and strode down the hall, the house shaking slightly with every heavy step. He passed the wall of machine guns, hung a right down the stairs, where the hunting rifles lined the walls. He touched the handguns by the door like a mezuzah, then opened the door.
Officer Murphy touched the brim of his cap. “I really appreciate it, Gary.”
Gary shrugged. “Not a problem. I understand. Coming down to the range next weekend to improve your shooting?”
Murphy took a few steps in, looked around, then headed out. “Yup. Thanks again, Gary. See you Friday at the barbecue.”
“Deal.”
Gary closed the door, then opened the window seat. He looked down at the figure there, bound hand and foot. “Now I told you to be calm and be quiet, or you can swap places with Mr. Spenalzo.”
He closed the lid, and went back to bed.
* * * *
The second attempted murder took place the next day, in Sunset, Utah, in a charming, cozy, pleasant little house.
The SWAT team stacked up on the door, waiting for the battering ram. It looked like the forty-pound cylinder tapped the door, and it exploded open.
The team swept inside, stepping past the ruin of the door. They trampled the carpet, kicked over a coffee table, and checked the entire house.
No one was there.
Then they heard the burst of loud static from outside. The team looked at each other and re-stacked, charging out the back door.
The SWAT team was almost burned down as the flamethrower spat in their direction. The lead with the ballistic shield jumped back in terror. They barely heard the roar of insane laughter as the flames swept past them. The team backed into the house, and the tongue of fire moved on, torching a stack of leaves, twigs, and old issues of the New York Times.
The SWAT team braced for another attack, and leveled their guns, but held fire. Nothing happened. The man who wielded the flamethrower didn't even seem to notice them.
The SWAT leader slowly approached, then grabbed the nozzle with one hand, and the man's shoulder with the other.
The guy with the flamethrower started, then smiled at him with a broad, almost skeletal-like grin. He was of average height, with a balding head that looked almost as perfectly symmetrical as a basketball. He looked over his wire frame glasses and said, “Yes, can I help you?”
“We've had reports of a man with a gun threatening people.”
He frowned, and furrowed his brow, confused. “Odd. This isn't a gun.”
The SWAT leader sighed. “Obviously. Sir, your name is?”
“Omar Gunderson.”
“Why are you shooting this?”
Omar blinked. Then blinked again. “Um … Because it's cool? Obviously. I just finally got a chance to try this out at long last. Borrowed it from a friend of mine. See?”
He showed them the label on the side, and the label read “Property of ILoR Castelo.”
The SWAT leader studied Omar for a moment, then looked around. The mild mannered fellow had been burning down stuff on his own property, with no one else around, and the surrounding area looked damp, so it had to have been previously wetted down with a garden hose.
“In which case, sir, we'll let you alone.”
Omar shrugged. “Okay.”
&nb
sp; As the SWAT team left, Omar Gunderson shrugged. “Huh.” He frowned and stared down at the flamethrower. “Aw. We never get guests anymore.”
Omar looked almost like a kicked puppy.
Chapter 1: The Return
Atlanta, GA
Sean Aloysius Patricus Ryan shot the first FBI agent in the face, and the next in the kneecaps.
He took a step forward, wheeling around the doorway, firing three more times. Two of those bullets punching into, and through, his target's face, and a third went right through agent number four's eye.
Sean grabbed the survivor by the collar and dragged him into the hotel room.
Sean tossed the whimpering mass of flesh to the floor, disarmed him, and stomped on one of the ruined kneecaps.
Sean did a tactical peek outside the door, looking both ways. Then he took a step back into the room and shut the door, looking down at his new captive. “Okay, who sent you?”
“We're FBI agents!” the wounded man bawled. “We said that!”
“FBI agents come in twos, or in whole tactical teams. They don't show up with four people at the door. You still have your balls, so don't think I can't hurt you some more.”
“I told you—”
Sean didn't say anything, just swung the muzzle down to aim for the balls.
“No! No! Don't! There's a bounty on your head!”
“How did you hear about that?”
“The dark net. I can show you—”
Sean stomped on the bounty hunter's head. “Thanks.”
Sean dropped to one knee, gun up, and patted down his still-breathing victim. He came up with a cell phone, unlocked with a biometric thumbprint reader. He unlocked it with the owner's thumb, and the first thing that came up was Sean's cocky, smiling face, and a caption that read, “WANTED DEAD: $10 MILLION.”
“Only ten?” Sean thought, shoving the phone into the luggage. “Someone doesn't know me that well. I'm worth at least twenty. They're going to put in at least that much effort. And pay out that much life insurance.”
Sean slammed the door closed, and threw the bolt. His next step was to grab his luggage, close it up tight, and hurled it through the hotel room window.
And people wonder why I buy Halliburton cases for my luggage.
Sean then backed up, charged, and leaped right out the window of his tenth-story room.
Thankfully, no one was in the pool when he landed.
Sean arose from the pool, trudged his way towards his suitcase, and stormed down the concrete. He glanced at his diver's watch. “Dang it. I might be late. Must be Tuesday.”
Sean went back into the hotel in order to go out through the main exit. And he had to shoot two more of the gun-wielding idiots in the lobby. He stopped at the concierge and shrugged. “Sorry about the mess.”
* * * *
The mercenary named Michael DeValera stood off in a corner of the hotel lobby and took notes at what happened right before him, and it concurred with everything he'd seen already.
Sean Ryan was a little insane, and had enough skills to back up his audacity.
DeValera flipped through his notes on Ryan. Originally, he believed this job to be fairly standard, and even easy. Ryan wasn't a former military man, part of a large private military contractor, nor did he have any real tactical training. Really, on paper, Ryan had all the education of your standard infantryman, at best. Maybe more like the standard mechanist. No espionage, intelligence, or formal training outside of martial arts.
On paper, he was a functional moron.
DeValera looked at that, and compared it to his last job, in Europe. Which was what—DeValera assumed—had gotten Ryan a bounty on his head. And that job was insane. What had started as a simple engagement between gunmen (something Ryan was obviously suited for) had turned into an extraction from a World Court prison, a political campaign, a legal battle, and a straight-up military crusade.
At the very least, he's flexible, DeValera thought.
DeValera watched as Sean Ryan worked with the entire Atlanta PD, walking them through the crime scene, explaining exactly what he had done, and why. It was a good thing that the hotel security was so thorough that there were cameras almost everywhere. It also helped that the dead men had fingerprints that tied very neatly to multiple local unsolved homicides. When Ryan suggested they check Interpol notices, the police shook his hand as if he was their new best friend.
When it was all said and done, the mercenary clicked his pen shut, slid it into his pocket, then tucked the notebook into his inside jacket pocket. He was glad that he had engaged those subcontractors. Their deaths had provided him with valuable data. It was clear that the only threat that Sean Ryan couldn't repel was the one that he couldn't see coming.
DeValera smiled. He will never see me coming.
* * * *
Sean Ryan walked into yet another hotel and just looked up, the atrium going through every floor, straight to the ceiling of the Hilton in downtown Atlanta.
“Nice. Why can't I ever stay in places like this?”
“Mister Ryan?”
Sean looked to the side at the newcomer, then looked up again. The lady was well poised, brunette, and freaking tall. Her black hair flowed down her body, framing strong features, with really deep brown eyes. Her outfit consisted of knee-high black boots, white vest and pants, with black, long-sleeved t-shirt. She had a little flair pin of a cute gray kitten with dragon wings, and coughing up a fireball—the caption read “Kitty Dragon.”
“I'm Yvonne Wicklund.”
“Sean Ryan.”
She looked Sean up and down, her glance clearly showing that she was not expecting an international bad ass to be only 5'6”—six inches shorter than her. “A pleasure.”
Wicklund took Sean over to the plush chairs in the lobby. The colors were all dark—from a gray carpet so dark it was almost black to the rich wood paneling, even to the dark brown leather chairs. The only thing that wasn't dark were the tables—and those were glass, so the effect was the same anyway. It wasn't well lit, but there was reflected light from the mirrored pillars. He frowned at the layout, dragged a chair against the nearest column, making sure to angle it at a mirror on the wall.
Wicklund had watched Sean the entire time, from his assessment of the layout to his deliberate placement of the chair. “Paranoid much?”
Sean tossed himself into his chair. “You're kidding me, right? I'm in security. Paranoia is a job requirement, but it's one of the few things I can't actually put on my CV.”
Wicklund smiled and pulled out a sheet of paper as she sat across from him, the glass table between them. “Which is interesting, considering that you've put property damage and body count on your resume.”
He shrugged. “It's a gift.”
“Indeed.” She gave it another glance, then put it off to one side. “If I may ask you one or two questions before we begin discussing WyvernCon?”
Sean chuckled. “It's your interview.”
“Let's do some of this in order. First, I know from your CV that you used to be a stuntman. What turned you into a security consultant?”
Sean appreciated that she didn't call him a bodyguard. As much as he liked the film with Kevin Costner, he didn't like some of the conclusions female clients had occasionally drawn from it. He fingered his wedding ring, and considered that this was the first job he'd taken on since he'd been married.
Then again, we had the better part of a year as a honeymoon.
As for his life, “Didn't you read that section of my website? I put it in the FAQ section.”
She nodded. “I prefer to hear your version.”
“I saved a director's life by accident once—he was being robbed in front of a restaurant, I smashed through the front window, and jumped the mugger. When he slipped me cash and thanked me, I figured I had a better career path in my future.”
She nodded slowly. “So it's just a job?”
He smiled broadly, showing bright white teeth against his Medite
rranean tan. “Absolutely. It's a job where I take on clients I like and who I would kill for.”
Wicklund furrowed her brow. “I thought your job was to die for the clients if need be.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “Now that sounds like a different movie. Am I willing? Sure. But I prefer to kill the bad guys rather than get shot. I'm really tired of being shot. My Kevlar allowance is already too high.”
“So, you would say that your general security style is … creative?”
Well, there was the time with the exploding Barney doll, where I've climbed along molding to get to my objective, where I've thrown a midget into a duffel bag in order to get him out of the way. The house I blew up because it was a meth lab …
“Creative is my usual line, yes.”
“Can you tell me about your last public job?”
Sean winced. That was a long, long story. “Since the last time I had a job the public knew about, I shot up half of Rome, went to war with half of the uncivilized world, and damn near nuked the Vatican. So, calling it a 'public job' feels like a sad, inadequate way to phrase it.”
Wicklund shrugged. “Point taken. Could you tell me about it?”
Sean rolled his eyes. “I'm told there are at least four books out about it—and I'm counting a trilogy as one of them. I think the guy wrote it up as a novelized history. Which is odd, because he was there.”
She laughed. “Are you referring to the Pius Trilogy?”
He sighed and shook his head. He had hated those titles. He had hated the idea of the novels. He had hated being the center of all that attention. He had hated having a target on his back since he went to war. “Seriously, that was a collection of stupid titles: A Pius Man, A Pius Legacy and A Pius Stand? Yeesh. There are some people who like puns, but that was a bit much.”
“Presume I haven't read the books.”
Sean groaned. He would rather be set on fire—again—than have this particular conversation. “I was hired by Pope Pius XIII to help train the priests and nuns to kick ass and take names—”