They’d been partners together in the field for over a decade. Their Strike Force training was the reason Jamie had assigned them to attack and hold the rear. In unison, Alexei and Kyle scaled the side of the yacht, their magnetized gloves making it easier than if they’d had to do it barehanded. Alexei let his gun hang from his body away from the hull, making sure to keep it from making any noise.
The yacht was large enough and heavy enough that the extra weight on one side didn’t move it at all, and their presence went unnoticed. Alexei slipped soundlessly over the railing, bringing up his weapon and staying out of the light coming from the cabin where the command controls were.
Alexei sighted down his weapon as he edged around to the other side. Two men stood at the opposite railing, rifles in hand but not on guard like they should be. They were taking a smoke break, chatting in quiet French while facing the château and not the water.
If this had been a training exercise back when he was with Strike Force, and Alexei was in their position falling down on the job, he would’ve been excoriated by his CO. In Alexei’s experience, the men and women who played at being soldiers were the ones who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
They also made easy targets.
Alexei and Kyle got within arm’s length of the men before they even registered the threat. By then, it was too late. Alexei got his target in a chokehold, letting go of his rifle to swiftly and cleanly break the man’s neck before he had a chance to shout a warning.
Kyle took out his target in the same manner and they both carefully dragged the bodies away from the railing to the middle of the boat where there was less chance they would be seen. From there, it took less than a minute for them to clear the rest of the yacht. It seemed only two guards had been assigned watch duty in the rear of the property. Alexei hand-signaled Kyle to move out.
Alexei eyed the stone river wall that acted as a barrier in this section of the Seine. It looked nicer than the earthen mounds sometimes used, and the rich were all about appearances. The distance between the yacht and the wall was short enough that jumping from one to the other was easy.
Alexei’s feet hit solid ground and he sank into a crouch, scanning the immediate area. Kyle joined him seconds later. They spared a moment to disconnect the oxygen tubes from their air filtration masks and dropped them in the river before advancing forward. Shrubbery lined the river wall except for the clear area they passed though, kept that way for anyone who arrived or left by boat.
“Moving into position,” Kyle reported, voice barely louder than a whisper.
“In position,” Katie replied.
“In position,” Brigitte said.
The other members of Alpha Team and the Chasseurs sounded off on their readiness to proceed. Kyle signaled to Alexei that he was leaving and disappeared into the foliage to Alexei’s left. Alexei continued forward, skirting close to the tree line on the right.
Lights were on in the château, and Alexei could pick out guards patrolling along the outside perimeter. The area between his location and the building was an open lawn bracketed by trees and bushes. A stone pathway curved around the lawn to merge into a single walkway that led down to the river. Alexei counted four guards holding position on that pathway outside the circle of illumination from floating lights above the walkway.
Alexei and Kyle’s job was to secure the rear of the house. Trevor had erected a telekinetic shield around the property outside their set perimeter. Donovan and two other Chasseurs fighters were in position along Trevor’s shield to take out any enemy fighters who tried to escape. Katie’s main task during this operation was to shield their minds from any empathic interference Jansen might throw their way. Shielding the minds of twelve metahumans was easier for her than gaining complete control over a person.
That being said, Katie’s job was the toughest. They would be relying on her to ultimately take Jansen down by undercutting his empathy. She’d been given wide latitude in the use of her power, but breaking through someone’s mental shields took effort, and Jansen wasn’t going down easy.
That was proven by the gunfire that ripped through the air across the lawn in a wide spray, missing where Alexei and Kyle had been standing barely two minutes ago.
The deep bang of Kyle’s sniper rifle going off in quick succession heralded the deaths of the two fighters across the lawn, while the two closest to Alexei kept shooting indiscriminately into the dark. Crouched behind a bush, with decent line of sight, Alexei took them out with two bullets.
A body fell off the roof, landing in a heap on the ground three stories below, taken out by Kyle’s exacting aim. “Go, Inferno. I’ve got clear LOS. I’ll cover you,” Kyle said through the comms.
Alexei moved, staying low and keeping to the shadows. Kyle shot out every light hovering over the pathway, pitching the rear of the property into darkness. Light shone out of most of the windows in the building though. One or two were stupid enough to pass in front of a window, resulting in Kyle taking them out.
The HUD compensated for the light coming through the windows as Alexei approached the building from the side. The windows were all multiple panes of plas-glass, with supports holding the small squares together. Breaking through those would be difficult, so he didn’t even try. The map on the HUD led him to a side door used by staff more than the grand entrances the owners always walked through.
The door was made of synthwood, one that opened on hinges as opposed to a sliding door. Alexei tried the handle and found it locked, so he shot the lock off, kicking open the door. The sound of his entrance was drowned out by a particularly loud blast from the front of the property. Madison had arrived, or someone on Jansen’s side had an RPG launcher.
Alexei would put money on Madison.
His tactical goggles reverted to normal viewing as he moved down the narrow hallway into a kitchen with stone walls and floor offset by modern appliances. The kitchen was empty, and the château was large. Alexei didn’t have time for hide-and-go-seek.
Viper? Could use some guidance, Alexei said through the telepathic links she had anchored in their minds.
Second floor. The bastard is barricaded in a bedroom with about a dozen guards outside his door. There’s more between you and him, Katie replied.
Alexei smiled toothily behind his mask. He always did like a challenge.
The building’s map overlaid the physical space as he cleared a corner and stepped into another hallway. Three steps later and someone hurried around the corner at the far end, shouting in French. Alexei shot the man in the chest, aiming for center mass, and he went sprawling to the floor, out of the fight for good. Alexei ducked through a door into an empty room to use the entrance as cover when more members of the Libération Nationale Français came thundering down the hallway.
Alexei took his left hand off his weapon and called up his pyrokinesis. Hot fire exploded around his gloved fingers, not touching him, and he coaxed the flames larger, forming them into a fireball. He hurled the mass of flame down the hall, guiding it with his power toward the enemy in his way.
The loud shouts and screams of agony as people were engulfed in flames got Alexei moving. Fire swirled around his arm as he ducked out of the room, sighting down his rifle at any remaining targets. He aimed and fired, finding and taking out his targets without hesitation. Several had dropped to the floor, desperately trying to put the flames out. Alexei shot them where they lay, knowing better than to think his power was enough to keep them out of the fight.
He kept moving.
The sound of people yelling and guns going off farther in the building had Alexei checking his six, but no one was approaching. He kept moving, making his way to the wooden spiral staircase near the front of the building that would give him a direct way up to the second floor.
Alexei was unsurprised to find the space occupied. What surprised him was the absolute mountain of a man aiming out a window with a SST .950 rifle and not being bothered by the recoil in the slightest.
He wasn’t the only one present in the room, but he was the most immediate threat. Alexei pulled the trigger on his weapon, but the shot went wide, the same way his arms did. His rifle was yanked out of his grip by an invisible force and went spinning end over end across the room, only to be caught by the rifleman’s spotter.
That same unseen force picked him up and slammed him against the opposite wall, legs and arms spread-eagle three feet off the ground. The telekinetic pressure keeping him pinned to the wall rapidly increased. Alexei struggled to breathe as the rifleman’s spotter wiggled her fingers in Alexei’s direction, a snarl on her face.
She was older, dirty-blonde hair threaded through with white, and an ugly hate in her eyes that Alexei tried to burn out. Fire exploded around her, but the telekinetic shield she erected around herself and her partner—who kept shooting, goddamn him—wasn’t something Alexei’s pyrokinesis could breach no matter how hard he tried.
Sean, on the other hand, could get through anything.
Right when it felt like Alexei’s ribcage was about to cave in, Sean phased through the floor, two iron fire pokers of all things in his hand. He phased one through the woman’s chest and the other through her head.
Then let them go.
The pokers, no longer in contact with Sean’s phase power, solidified in the woman’s chest and head, sticking out of her body at odd angles. She keeled over, the iron ends gouging furrows in the floor. The telekinetic force holding Alexei up disappeared and he crashed to the floor, landing hard on his knees.
Heaving for breath, Alexei staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth against the heavy ache spreading through his torso that spoke of cracked or broken ribs. He could still fight, and that was all that mattered. Sean had his six, though, and Alexei watched as the other man unholstered the tactical pistol from his thigh and shot the rifleman through the heart and head, a clean double-tap that would make even Kyle proud.
“Status?” Sean asked. He grabbed the SST .950 rifle and phased it into the floor before releasing it, letting it solidify itself in the foundation like a fossil, out of reach of anyone else who might use it against their side.
“Am fine,” Alexei gritted out.
Sean’s face was hidden behind his tactical goggles and mask, but Alexei knew his lover was rolling his eyes. “We need to move. Viper will link you from here on out.”
Sean picked up Alexei’s weapon and returned it before grabbing his hand in tight fingers. Alexei’s encrypted comms went dead in his ears as Sean’s phase power flowed through his body. With a kick of his feet, Sean launched them into the air, aiming for the ceiling. Alexei’s vision went dark for a second or two as they passed through the structure of the building.
They phased through to the second floor and were met by a hail of gunfire that passed harmlessly through their bodies. Sean pulled them all the way clear of the floor, and then Alexei took the lead. He used his thumb to switch his AKR-75 assault rifle from semi-automatic to fully automatic. Then he braced the rifle butt against his shoulder, took aim in a wide sweep, and held the trigger down. While his weapons remained phased, the bullets solidified the second they left the muzzle and Sean’s phase field.
Some of the fighters were smart enough to throw themselves to the floor, but that didn’t save them. The ones up front died immediately, bodies riddled with bullets. They kept dropping, one or two using their dead comrades as shields to try to escape the relentless onslaught and return fire, but it proved useless.
Then one of the last men standing got the brilliant idea to arm a grenade and toss it in their direction. Alexei watched it land in front of their feet and closed his eyes to protect his eyesight from the bright explosion that ripped through the hallway, blowing out walls and parts of the ceiling and floor. Smoke and fire roiled through the air.
Alexei couldn’t feel the force of the explosion while phased, but he still tapped into his pyrokinesis to bring the fire under control. They needed Jansen alive, and Alexei didn’t want to put the rest of the team at risk.
I need both of you to get to Jansen and divide his attention, Jamie said through the mental links. The remaining fighters are going absolutely berserk out here.
Empathic interference? Sean asked as they hurried down the hallway.
Yes, and Jansen is fighting me. I can’t do a hard mental strike to break his shields without risking his mind. I’ll keep you both shielded, but we need him alive and cognizant, Katie said.
Alexei would really prefer the bastard dead, but to each their own.
Alive, Inferno. That’s an order, Jamie told him.
“Should have broken neck in London,” Alexei said out loud.
“In hindsight, yeah, probably,” Sean agreed.
Sometimes the easy way to get rid of a problem was through sheer brutality. If Katie needed Jansen knocked around a bit to break his concentration so she could get control of his mind, then Alexei was just the guy for the job.
The Libération Nationale Français they’d taken out in the bottleneck behind them weren’t the only fighters on the second floor they needed to worry about. When they came around a corner, Alexei saw what Jamie meant by berserk.
The armed men and women between them and the room Jansen was hiding in had no sanity in their eyes. Their breath came rapidly, chests rising and falling in quick succession as they practically vibrated on their feet in rage. The manufactured emotion overrode all sense of self, driving them near to madness at Jansen’s emotional interference, with only one goal in mind.
Protect the Dutchman.
The fighters charged forward, but in their phased state, neither Alexei nor Sean were impeded by the attack. That didn’t stop Alexei or Sean from taking out the enemy so none of them reached the rest of the team.
It was a slaughter, and if they weren’t phased, they might have been overwhelmed. Except Alexei and Sean were metahumans, and the fighters were merely pawns to Jansen’s power, no matter the beliefs they held and their affiliation to a terrorist group.
This exact situation was what had governments up in arms ever since the first recorded existence of metahumans. Humans had no defense against the powers metahumans wielded, and the psionic ones were the most insidious to many people. Regulation of metahumans might look like slavery in some countries—and it was—but every attempt at control came from the same fear shared by people across the world.
That metahumans were, and always would be, dangerous to humanity.
Alexei proved that by burning and shooting his way through the group while Sean focused on keeping them phased. Alexei’s head felt heavy as they moved through dead men walking, the ache there less from being telekinetically slammed against the wall and more from Katie’s entrenched telepathic power to keep them safe from Jansen.
Sean got them through the melee and through the walls, phasing them into the bedroom where Jansen was hiding. Alexei was unsurprised to see the older man crouched on the floor with his back against the wall, out of sight of the windows but not from them.
Sean let him go and Alexei’s feet hit the floor with a quiet thump that Jansen didn’t seem to notice right away. Alexei was halfway to his position, weapon primed to shoot, when Jansen finally clued in that he wasn’t alone. At any other time, his comical, wide-eyed look would be funny, but Alexei wasn’t amused by the situation they were in.
“Hands up,” Alexei demanded.
Jansen scrambled to his feet, holding out his hands in Alexei’s direction, as if that would stop him from advancing. “Stay back.”
“Like I listen to you.”
Jansen had nowhere to go, but he still tried. With a shout, the Dutchman lunged at Alexei, attempting to get his hands on the AKR-75 assault rifle. Alexei easily dodged Jansen’s attack, twisting around the wild punch the other man threw that didn’t connect. He was telegraphing his moves so broadly it wasn’t even a fight. It would be pathetic if Alexei weren’t itching for a reason to shoot the fucker dead.
But his captain had given him his ma
rching orders, and Alexei could only obey. So rather than shoot Jansen like he wanted to, Alexei stepped in close and used his assault rifle like a club. The rifle butt connected with Jansen’s skull with a loud, satisfying crack. Jansen dropped like a stone to the floor, limp and unconscious.
My turn, Katie said into their minds. Whatever she would do to Jansen’s mind, they wouldn’t have any part of the attack.
Grab him and retreat, Jamie said.
Alexei knelt down and hauled Jansen over his shoulders in a fireman carry. Standing up, he hiked Jansen’s deadweight into a more comfortable position, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs as he did so. It wasn’t accompanied by a deeper ache that might mean an internal wound, so he wasn’t worried. Alexei grabbed his weapon and switched on the safety before hooking it to his tactical vest. His hands were too full to shoot, but he didn’t have to worry about getting injured, not with Sean fighting by his side.
“Ready?” Sean asked, reaching for his hand.
“Da.”
Sean’s grip was strong as they walked toward the windows overlooking the front of the property. Walking through walls was no longer strange, and they stepped out into open air, floating down to the ground two stories below. Alexei could still hear gunfire from within the building, which was momentarily drowned out by the sound of an explosion from the rear of the property.
“That didn’t sound like Nova,” Sean said.
“Was boat probably,” Alexei said.
Kyle would have blown the charges either because someone had tried to access the boat, or more likely because he wanted to and in doing so, made sure no one else could use it.
They reached the ground and immediately made a run for the rendezvous point. Brigitte was in charge of their exfil, tasked with teleporting all members of Alpha Team back to the MDF in Washington, D.C. The few members of her team that had joined them for the mission would handle cleanup with the Gendarmerie.
The EAMSG had agreed to turn over Jansen to the MDF on the basis that their people had taken the harder political hits over the past couple of years. Jansen could clear up some of that mess since mental testimony had been valid, acceptable evidence if it came from a government-affiliated telepath for the last fifty years.
In the Requiem (Metahuman Files Book 5) Page 11