“Jonathan’s father was a member of the council years ago,” Cody explained. “A pretty powerful one actually but things went bad on a routine mission and he ended up dying. Jonathan has worked very hard to make himself known to the council so that he could have a shot at a seat on it one day.”
“Jonathan is using political maneuvering?” Gabriel asked.
“Politics have a place,” Ryan nodded. “Even here, although they usually are more civilized, well for the most part they are. It got a lot better when we took out that whole clause about eating the loser’s heart.”
Gabriel just stared at him with a dumbfounded look on his face, his brain rapidly searching through all the Guardian history and lore that he had been going over the past few days.
“Joking,” Ryan said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Come on; let’s go get you suited up, the armor smiths just delivered yours this morning.”
“Are you really sure that I am ready for this?”
“We wouldn’t bring you alone if we didn’t,” Tony remarked. “Besides, do you realize what you did earlier?”
“Got my rear handed to me?” Gabriel asked, drawing his eyebrows together.
“No,” Ryan smiled, shaking his head. “You actually made it through a fight with Ethan. Not just made it through though you actually landed some pretty good hits against someone that’s been training and fighting a lot longer than you.”
“I got lucky.”
“Luck has nothing at all to do with it,” Tony snapped. “You’re good a lot better than anyone thought that you would be, including Ethan. You’ll do fine against the goons that we are about to go up against.”
“What if said goons have guns?”
“That’s what bullet resistant armor is for,” Ryan smiled.
“I know that is supposed to make me feel better but it’s not exactly working,” Gabriel sighed.
“You’ll be fine,” Ryan said.
Gabriel hoped that he was right.
CHAPTER 8
Figuring out where the New Aryan Nation was hiding wasn’t difficult. Marissa and Everett made fast work of tracking the group through various websites and information gained through the Guardian contacts at the FBI and ATF. It turned out that their number two man was not far away, located in Columbia, Missouri. Once they verified his presence at the group's compound, everything kicked into motion.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Cody asked, as Gabriel looked over his armor. He didn’t have a quiver like Cody did but he did have a sheath for Aequitas on his back. The armor looked like a combination of plate and hard armor, and was black and dark grey.
“Bullet proof,” Cody said, tapping Gabriel’s chest. “And also fairly good at stopping shrapnel and dispersing kinetic energy.”
“It’s made of the strongest material that Aegis produces,” Ryan went on, indicating the black and gray interlocking metal plates. “And as light as plastic, seriously you could take a grenade hit and you’d barely feel it.”
“And this?” Gabriel asked, indicating the LCD screen in his right gauntlet.
“Real time tactical display,” Tony said. “It can be used to hack into computer systems, display data and incoming messages and pretty much everything else you can think. It doesn’t do porn though, trust me on that.”
“Why do you...you know what, nevermind,” Gabriel said, shaking his head. “Forget that I even asked that question.”
Tony only smiled.
“Here you go,” Ryan said, handing Gabriel a pistol.
“Enforcer 9,” Gabriel said, taking the offered weapon. It was sleek and organic looking, like something that had been pulled from the screens of the latest futuristic first person shooter game.
Each member carried different weapons. Everyone was equipped with the Enforcer. Cody had his bow and quiver full of specially designed arrows, and Tony was carrying the Enforcer’s big brother, the X-12 Hammer assault rifle. Like the Enforcer, the Hammer was an assault rifle that looked like it was pulled out of a futuristic shooter.
“Stingers only,” Jonathan said, as he walked in.
“Are you kidding me?” Tony asked. “You do realize that these guys have real bullets, right?”
“So no heat rounds?” Cody asked. “I’m guessing I should go lite on the explosives too?”
“You just took a lot of the fun out of it,” Tony frowned.
“Oh grow up,” Marissa responded, heading out of the room. “Come on, let’s go over the operations briefing.”
The rest of the team followed, heading back to the briefing room.
"We found our friends here," Marissa said, gesturing to the screen.
They could see a large compound, including what looked to be a main house and several other smaller structures. The whole place was surrounded by a dense forest and a heavy concrete wall. It looked like a government installation, not the home of what could easily be identified as home grown terrorists.
"Intelligence shows that the place is pretty heavily armed and fortified," Everett went on. "From what our drones show the compound has a fairly large stockpile of weapons and drugs, most of them in these warehouse like structures."
"Who are we looking for?" Cody asked.
"His name is Daniel Cray," Marissa explained. "He's the leader of this wonderful group of human beings and probably our best place to start looking."
"Insertion point?" Tony asked.
"We'll have Elise land here," Everett pointed. The map zoomed into a clearing about five hundred yards from the west side of the compound. There were still plenty of trees and dense foliage in the way to conceal their landing and hopefully, their escape as well.
"Air defenses?" Elise asked. She knew the likelihood of the New Aryan Nation having hardware that could detect and lock onto the Guardian helicopters was almost non-existent. Most military grade technology couldn't break through the jamming signal that was emitted by the glyphs and the high tech stealth field generators but it never hurt to ask.
"Nothing that can touch us," Everett smiled. "Even more so when you are at the controls."
"Smooth," Elise smiled. "Any sign of anything not human?"
"Nothing that our drone picked up," Marissa nodded. "Plus the way that these idiots talk, I think they'd stay away from anything that's not human, hell they don’t even like most humans on the planet.”
"Exactly how are we going to get in?" Gabriel asked. "Just walk up to the door and knock?"
"We could just blow the door in," Ryan suggested. "Reaper works pretty well for that."
"Subtle," Tony smiled.
"There's an access gate near the back of the compound," Ethan pointed. "We'll make our entrance there. Cody, intelligence indicates that his bedroom is on the top floor of the east wing, find a spot and do your thing. Tony, you head to the warehouse, although it wasn't part of our original plan, I think it’s safe to say that blowing it up might be a good idea, Marissa and Elise back him up on that."
"And the rest of us?" Ryan asked.
"The rest of you are going to breach and secure the main house," Ethan continued. "And then have a nice little chat with our friend."
"Sounds simple enough," Gabriel nodded.
"Should be," Ryan agreed.
"We lift off in a half hour."
Everyone rode in silence, seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Gabriel was doing his best to remain calm. Despite the reassurances that he got from Cody, Ryan, and Tony he still felt that he was nowhere near ready for a mission of this scope. They would be taking on a heavily armed force - probably a poorly trained heavily armed force, but a heavily armed force nonetheless.
Gabriel forced himself to take deep breath as the helicopter made a smooth banking motion to right and then came into a slow hover, the nose tilting up. In the distance they could see the lights of the compound. So far, there didn't seem to be any sort of indication that they had been seen. Elise brought the helicopter in smoothly, shutting down the engines and electronics quickly.
�
�Move out,” Ethan ordered.
They hit the tree line, running hard. Gabriel was sure that he wasn’t going to be able to keep up but soon found out that he was barely breaking a sweat as they raced through the forest. Cody was on point, moving swiftly and gracefully through the trees. Gabriel watched with a sense of awe as Cody flipped and somersaulted forward, using all the objects around him to keep moving forward. It was a site to be hold, the rest of the team was close behind him. It didn’t take them long to reach the compound and soon they were staring at the gate at the rear.
“Looks like two guards,” Cody said, clipping his night-vision goggles back to his belt. “Don’t worry, I’ll just taze the hell out of them.”
Cody stood up, slipping his bow off his back. He drew an arrow, one that was equipped with a Stinger tip, notched it and fired. The first man was down before he even knew what hit him; the second joined him just as his eyes registered his partner falling to the ground.
“Good shot,” Gabriel whistled.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Cody smiled.
"No alarm," Ethan mused, as they slipped through the gate. "You would have thought that they would be paranoid enough to at least put one in."
"They probably thought that no one could find them all the way out here," Everett offered. "Or they are a lot stupider than we thought."
"Probably a combination of both," Elise shrugged and then she took off in a run toward the warehouse. Tony and Marissa followed close behind Elise and Cody bolted for a nearby light tower that faced the house.
For the most part it appeared completely deserted. That was not sitting well with Gabriel. As far as he knew all these organizations were paranoid - a key ingredient in their pointless diatribes. He looked over at Ryan, who just smiled. Taking a deep breath he followed after Ryan, Ethan, and Everett in a dead run toward the main house.
It was a large house, the kind that you usually saw sitting in well to do areas of the city. It had a huge courtyard in front, surrounded by tall pine trees and various stone statues. A large garage was located at one end of the house and beyond that a large barn.
As far as they could tell, there didn't appear to be any guards outside. The main door was a large two door affair made out of some solid looking wood. They could see scattered lights throughout the first and second floors. According to imagery and blueprints that they had managed to obtain, the main staircase was just inside the foyer.
Everett stepped forward and took a deep breath. He traced a magical glyph on the door, which glowed a bright orange, searing into the wood. Seconds later the door started to come apart, as if it was being eaten by thousands of termites. The door was nothing more than a pile of sawdust not a mere ten seconds after Everett placed the glyph on it.
"After you," Everett gestured inside.
As they stepped through the door two large powerful looking men came around the corner. They weren't armed, at least not as far as Gabriel could see. They did however realize that there now four heavily armed teenagers standing in the foyer of their boss’s house and that they should probably do something about that.
"Hey!" one of them shouted.
"Well, that's original," Ethan said, rolling his eyes.
And that's when both Ryan and Gabriel surged forward, slamming into their targets. Gabriel sent his flying backwards with an open palm strike to the chest. Ryan used a roundhouse kick to send his target spinning to the floor. The men didn't even know what had hit them.
"Good work," Ryan smiled.
"Actually, yeah, that was," Ethan responded. Both men lay unmoving where Ryan and Gabriel had dropped them.
"Don't sound so surprised," Gabriel retorted.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Oh hell," Ryan snapped.
At least a half a dozen men were gathered right outside the door to the house. Unlike the men that they had found in the house, these guys appeared to be well armed. The one that spoke said something into a radio and moments later an alarm sounded throughout the entire compound.
"Deal with them," Ethan responded. "Everett, you're with me, let’s go find Daniel."
"What?" Gabriel gasped, watching as Ethan and Everett took off up the stairs. Ryan looked at Gabriel and nodded, yanking his sidearm free of its holster and firing several rounds.
Gabriel had never seen the stinger rounds in actual action, though he had read about them. The glowing blue projectiles slammed into the men, sending them writhing to the ground, flopping around like fish out of water. Ryan was faster on the draw, hitting another two targets before the remaining man brought up his assault rifle and fired.
Gabriel dove right, while Ryan dove left, both ending up behind large pillars that were right inside the front door. Outside they could hear the man shouting at someone for some help, leaving no doubt that their quiet little insertion wasn't going to remain that way for long.
"Looks like he's trying to round up some friends for us."
"Is this usually how missions go?" Gabriel asked.
"More or less," Ryan shrugged.
"It's a wonder that you managed to accomplish anything at all," Gabriel snapped back, firing blinding around the pillar. He ejected his spent clip and reloaded.
"We have our moments," Ryan shrugged again. "Sounds like he brought company."
Several more weapons joined in the fray, tearing into the walls, stairs, pillars, and whatever else happened to be in the foyer.
"I'm open for suggestions," Ryan said.
"Me?" Gabriel asked. "I'm the noob here, you're supposed to be giving me suggestions!"
"Oh, right forgot about that," Ryan smiled. He grabbed something off his belt before he turned back around to Gabriel and winked.
"I hate that look," Gabriel grumbled. "You aren't going to blow them up are you? I am pretty sure that Jonathan specifically stated that we weren't supposed to blow them up."
"Flashbang, silly."
Ryan tossed the grenade in the general direction of men firing at them. Several heartbeats went by before the weapon went off in an intense blast of light and noise. Gabriel and Ryan rolled out from their hiding places coming up on one knee before firing off several precise rounds that took down the remaining attackers.
"Guess that wasn't so hard," Gabriel said, surveying the downed men, some of which were still twitching. “I sort of envisioned they would be better shots.”
“No kidding,” Ryan snorted. “I think stormtroopers are better shots than these guys.”
“Whoa there,” Gabriel said, putting his hands up. “Did you just make a Star Wars reference? You better be careful, you wouldn’t want your geek showing.”
Below them, Ethan could hear the gunfire abruptly die down. No doubt Ryan and Gabriel had the situation handled. Ethan and Everett reached the top of the stairs and started to fan out, executing a room by room search. All of their intelligence said that Daniel lived alone, without a family. The main bedroom was at the end of the hall and so far it appeared to completely unguarded on the second floor.
“He’s not half bad, is he?” Everett commented, as they continued down the hall.
“Don’t you start,” Ethan snapped, easing open the door to another empty room. “I already said that he didn’t completely suck.”
“Such high praise,” Everett grunted.
Everett shrugged the comment away. When they were convinced that the floor was empty, they moved to the bedroom. Once again, Everett created another glowing glyph on the door that reduced it to sawdust in seconds. They stepped into the room, weapons drawn. There didn’t appear to be any sign of Daniel, although the bed did appear to be disturbed like someone had been sleeping in it.
Ethan caught movement to his left and ducked mere seconds before a shotgun blast tore into the wall behind them both. They hit the ground as another blast splintered drywall and wood. Everett pointed toward the bathroom where they both could barely see the barrel of a 12 gauge sticking out. Ethan made a yanking motion with his hand. Everett smiled a
nd then with a wave of his hand, pulled the weapon from Daniel.
“We can stand around here and do this all night,” Ethan called. “Or you could come out here and face us like a man.”
A man emerged from the bathroom, rather pale and scrawny looking. He had a receding hairline, somewhat of a pot belly, and didn’t look at all like someone that could inspire his apparent legions of followers. Everett and Ethan exchanged rather confused looks.
“You’re the idiot in charge of this outfit?” Ethan asked.
“Kids!” Daniel snapped. “And a...”
Before he could get a word out, Everett made another gesture, this time sending Daniel flying up against the wall, pinned by an invisible force.
“I’d be careful what I said from now on,” Ethan cautioned, holstering his weapon. He walked slowly toward Daniel, surveying the rather plush accommodations. When he was within arm’s length of the pinned man, Everett let him drop to the floor.
“You’re kids!” Daniel growled again. “Stupid freaking kids!”
“Oh, he’s very astute,” Everett said, rolling his eyes. “How on earth did these guys get to be a legitimate threat again?”
“First off, we’re teenagers...we have more angst then kids,” Ethan said, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “And second off, we managed to break into your compound and subdue your loyal guards without even breaking a sweat. All we want to do is talk to you.”
“You were sent by the government-“
Daniel did not get a chance to finish his sentence; Ethan’s fist caught him across the face with a right cross, sending him to the floor. He reached down, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and tossed him not so gently onto the bed.
“Do we really look like we are from the government,” Ethan snapped. “You’re starting to irritate me and I think we both agree that’s bad idea.”
“You can’t make me talk,” Daniel snarled. “What are you going to do, torture me?”
“Is torturing in the mission brief?” Ethan asked, as he turned toward Everett.
“We were just told to get information,” Everett shrugged. “They really didn’t specify how.”
The Guardian Chronicles 2: Dark Horizon Page 15