Pacific force, p.5
Pacific Force, page 5
“We’re in Birmingham now, close to Solihull,” Jake said. “We can be there in two to three hours.”
“Capital,” Grant replied, giving them an address in the northern part of London. “We’ll meet there and then have a quick reconnoiter of the target’s flat.”
“Should I bring my guitar, Grant?” Rik asked.
There was a long pause. Grant would not be surprised that the woman was armed. That was one of her normal jobs, with Spencer as her spotter when Jake needed ranged firepower brought to bear. Normally a high-powered hunting rifle or maybe something heavier. Grant was usually either well away, or perhaps right up front, fast-talking his way in a door while trusting that Rik and the others had his back.
“Probably not the worst idea,” Grant finally said. “They’d appreciate a little Robin Hood mixed with Lady Godiva around here.”
“I’ll be dressed, you goof.” Rik laughed with the rest of them.
“A man can dream, can’t he?” Grant said.
They got off the phone quickly, and Jake looked around the room.
“Strongarm?” Hollyanne asked.
“You’re on point,” Jake nodded. “I’ll trail and cover your wing. Rik and Spencer will watch. Grant will either need to knock, or he can sit back with the others and keep watch.”
“Do we tell anyone we’re going in?” Spencer asked now.
Jake considered it. They weren’t supposed to go around the authorities, but usually did. Jake didn’t need warrants or approvals from Home Secretaries to act. That was part of Pacific Force’s edge.
Plus, the current Government had proven itself more than a little inimical to private vigilante groups. And they leaked like a rusty pipe. Jake wondered how much Russian money had been propping up the Tories lately now that they were in the process of destroying the last vestiges of the Once-Mighty British Empire.
“No,” he decided after a moment. “Spencer, you make sure you’re monitoring police frequencies. Maybe hack into the CCTV system so we have cameras on our target. But be prepared to shut down their whole system if you have to.”
“Brought my little black bag for just such an occasion,” Spencer said with an evil smile. “Need to swing by a spot and chat with a friend on our way in. Owe him a favor and it’s on our way.”
“As long as he doesn’t know what we’re about,” Jake warned. “It’s just us going in.”
“Oh, he’s one of us,” Spencer assured him.
Jake was mostly mollified by that. They all had friends with questionable backgrounds, but everyone Pacific Force worked with had been vetted.
They were already walking on a narrow ledge.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Rik gave off watching the flat across the way and ducked back down behind the low wall to look over at Spencer. It was night, so odds were low that anyone would see them, but that was no reason to take chances.
“Two questions,” she said. “First, how did you talk that guy into letting you borrow his entire camera rig for the night? And second, can that thing really see in the dark, or were you planning to beat someone to death with it?”
Spencer looked up from the bag he’d been rifling through and placed a possessive hand on the camera with the long lens on the front.
“You know anything about cameras?” he asked.
“No.” She snorted. “You know that. I can maybe get my phone to take some reasonable pictures, but that’s it.”
“Sure,” Spencer nodded back. “D-SLR means digital, single lens reflex. Highest end stuff you can buy. I have this one set up for surveillance, so the biggest telephoto lens, and the light-gathering is good enough that I can take pictures in her window from here or shift and catch someone moving outside. The other one in the bag is more for portrait work. You know: up close, well lit, nobody moving. Evidence sorts of things, although we don’t usually need that.”
“And he’s letting you play with all his expensive hardware without him standing right there?” Rik teased. “I know how you people are with your toys.”
“Any pictures I take, Josh and I are sharing ownership later,” Spencer grinned. “Jake will need some of them for evidence, but not all. The rest Josh can sell to newspapers once we’re done. Being that it is Pacific Force, those will sell and make him money while I get credit. It works out, like you and the comic books with Verónica.”
“Huh,” Rik decided. “All right, what can you see from here?”
“I was just about to find out,” he said, coming upright from where he was kneeling. “Usually, you need a tripod or something when shooting at night, but I won’t be using a flash, so it shouldn’t get jittery. Got your headset on?”
Rik checked the earpiece and adjusted the mic a little.
“Testing one two,” she said.
“Clear here,” Spencer replied.
“Same here,” Jake also said.
“I hear you,” Hollyanne piped up.
Rik popped up like a meercat now but stayed low. She had her blond locks tied back loosely and had a light-colored knit cap on to break up her silhouette against the stone coaming.
The target flat was across a wide street and down a little. They were on a roof one floor higher with a reasonable view into a living room. Rik assumed that the bedroom with the curtains drawn contained a small workshop, since someone was watching TV in the living room. She could see legs, but not anything more from her vantage.
But her job wasn’t watching. Or rather, not just watching. She had assembled her bow from the guitar case and strung it. For travel, it broke down into three pieces: a center and two arms that got bolted down with a big Allen wrench. She had a nifty toy to string it, hooking it and the string over one end, and then pulling a loop over the far end to rest on the stave itself. You stood up and it bowed everything to the point you could attach the string and be done.
Not her highest tech bow, as it only had a whisker biscuit on the side for holding the shaft of an arrow. Back home, she had a much heavier compound bow with illuminated pin sights, a peep sight, and various attachments and modifications to silence the string and the wheels.
London made far more noise than the Cascade Mountains, even at night. And her target wasn’t a nervous deer or elk. Hell, the elevation might remind people of a tree stand, but if she had to shoot through that window over there, that was barely a six-foot drop.
More interesting would be going after a target on the ground, with a four-story drop and a long, slanting angle, depending on which way the rabbit turned when she hit the bottom of the stairwell. No wind tonight, which helped.
“One female, in the living room, seated,” Spencer said quietly over the channel he had secured. “No one else visible, but the lights are on in the bedroom at present. What’s the perimeter look like?”
“A couple of folks either coming from a pub or headed to one,” Rik said, turning right and left. “Parked cars everywhere. Adequate lighting. No other watchers I’ve been able to see.”
“Good,” Spencer said. “Interior team?”
“We’re just outside the back in an alley, waiting for you,” Jake said. “Grant nods that he is ready to make his approach, but doesn’t have comm.”
Which made sense. If he was supposed to walk up to someone’s door and knock, he needed to look like a guy with a bag of takeout food that had written down the wrong address. Jake and Hollyanne would be covering him.
“Standby, I have movement in the apartment,” Spencer suddenly said louder as the camera began to click. “Female subject has risen and moved to the hallway. Stopped. Talking to someone in back.”
“Conversation or yelling at a dog?” Hollyanne asked.
“Uhm, conversational interludes, I think,” Spencer said.
Rik shifted around her arrow a bit. She had four with lead tips that were blunt on the end and about the size of a quarter. Awkward and short ranged, even shooting from a roof, but they hit like a baseball when you did it right.
Next to that, she had one with a hollow tip and paint. That stuff was lime green and also fluoresced hard under black light in case someone started to run, and you needed to track them.
Rik picked up the one that was one of her favorite inventions. Steel tip, hardened and ground down to a sharp point. Behind that was a small chemical igniter and a tube of modified gunpowder. Shot it through a window or something hard enough to set it off, wait one second, and you had a pocket flash-bang good enough to blind anyone in a room and usually stun them. Blew the arrow apart, but they were cheap shafts she picked up by the dozen online anyway.
Two people or more suggested the need for a hard distraction when the team at the door got aggressive. Up until now, Rik had been expecting maybe a runner she needed to trip with a corner shot, like banking the eight ball.
“Sniper, ready to flash-bang the room,” she announced quietly as she nocked that arrow and rose from her crouch to a slumped standing position, staves horizontal now but fast enough to get vertical if she stood to shoot.
This was not her first rodeo.
“Female target is moving to the front door now,” Spencer said, clicking more photos. “Do we approach and intercept or let her escape containment and engage separately?”
“Is the other person visible?” Hollyanne asked.
“Negative,” Spencer replied. “Feels like someone just got sent to the corner market for something. She’s putting on a jacket now.”
“Shit,” Hollyanne muttered. “Okay, Team One will engage her outside the apartment. Team Two and Sniper be prepared to penetrate the space.”
Rik nodded to herself. Hollyanne and Grant would accost the woman. Jake would either knock on the door or kick it in. Either way, Rik needed to be ready to switch targets quickly. She glanced down and placed the stun-tip arrows in her mind.
Spencer kept up a running commentary, but Rik tuned him out. He was just doing play-by-play at this point. She remained focused on the sliding glass door in front of her. And the need to shoot.
“Female is out of my sight,” Spencer announced. “Will maintain observation on second target.”
Rik smiled.
Somebody was in for a rude surprise shortly.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Hollyanne had hoped that they could walk right up on the target and trap her in her flat. Easier to control someone that way. Here, she and Grant were outside the front door of the building, out of position to catch her even in the stairwell, assuming she went this way. Jake had the back stairs, and it was a crapshoot.
“Drop the bags and pretend we’re on a date,” Hollyanne muttered to Grant.
She took his hand in hers, and they emerged from the alley onto the sidewalk and started towards the front door, not quite jogging but moving quickly.
In her head, a clock was ticking, but then, it almost always was when violence was on the menu.
They got to the front of the building and opened the door. Foyer with black and white tile floors that needed to be updated. Old wood walls stained nearly black with age and shoulders brushing against them.
Wood steps up on her right, but she didn’t hear anyone coming down. Maybe the female was silent. Maybe she had gone down the back.
Hollyanne wanted to take the steps two at a time like a military operation, but she kept herself tightly controlled, holding Grant’s hand like two lovers coming home from a few pints and about to screw each other’s brains out as loudly as possible. At least that was the look she hoped she had on her face.
Grant’s plastic face was innocence itself, but he did that. She smiled and he turned into a Lothario before her eyes with a grin.
Second floor. Nothing, so they kept going. Maybe she was moving slow?
No. Hollyanne heard a tussle over the headset.
Damn it, the woman had gone down the back stairs and run into Jake.
Hopefully, he could control the situation.
Hollyanne needed to kick a door in.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Jake entered the rear of the building, off a small yard that connected the backs of several buildings and had probably been something of a park before it got cobbled over into an ugly parking lot.
This door had the look of more of a servant’s entrance, small and dingy. The sort of place you might slink in quietly in the morning with an embarrassed slut walk, regardless of gender. These stairs were narrower than the ones up front. Maybe six feet wide instead of ten. Old wood, bowed a little in the middle. Walls instead of being open to the air like the front.
The air stank of curry and kimchi that had been too many dinners around here.
Jake got to the second floor quickly and had just turned to head up the next flight when he caught the sound of someone coming down. One person. Alone. Moving quickly but not trying to be silent. Not running, either, so much as bopping down the stairs on their way somewhere.
This was where Jake was at a disadvantage. Nobody knew what the woman looked like except Spencer. He’d seen her through the window. Maybe Rik as well.
All Jake knew was that his target was a female. And no longer contained in her flat.
He took a deep breath and let himself flow into preparation for a combat state, just in case. He’d hoped that the woman would go down the front, where Hollyanne had help to take her down.
Jake started up the steps like he had just finished a long day on the docks and needed to change before a hard night of drinking. Kind of slumped and hunched. Growly.
A woman was coming down the stairs as he looked up. Hard thirty or a reasonable fifty, it was hard to tell. A little pudgy around the middle, with extra hips and thighs. She wore jeans and a black cotton jacket zipped up against the wind and chill outside.
Brown hair once, but mostly stringy gray now, shoulder length where it had escaped the hair band holding most of it back. Her face was just irregular enough to be homely without being ugly.
Hazel eyes locked on him as they were about fifteen feet apart but closing rapidly. She blinked and her step faltered.
“You,” she gasped.
There were downsides to being famous as a crime fighter. Sometimes the bad guys know who you are before you know them.
The woman reached for a back pocket. Jake guessed she was going for a gun.
He moved, charging up the steps at her. There wasn’t any space to maneuver in here, and he had specifically not brought a gun with him tonight. Or even to England. There were ways and people if he needed one, but this was just a contract connection.
She had a gun, though. Her motion was obvious as her right hand went back. The jacket probably saved his life, as she couldn’t get it up and over the gun fast enough to draw it.
Fighting on stairsteps was another interesting way to dance. Her weight was back. where her right leg was still up a step, and her shoulders were turned almost sideways now.
He needed to make sure he didn’t end up throwing her down a staircase and breaking her neck.
Jake snapped out his right hand to knock her left hand up and away, punching up into her stomach with his left.
The woman fell onto her bottom and that jarred the gun loose. Thankfully, it didn’t fire when it dropped out of her hand. You never knew with cheap guns.
Apparently, she had studied close combat somewhere, because the woman kicked out from where she sat on the step, and Jake took it on his hip and thigh, staggering him to his right.
If he gave her any opening, she’d have that gun, so he lunged at the woman, striking with a fist and elbow, but she got both her hands and a knee up to block, almost curling into a ball like an armadillo to keep him at bay.
Jake shifted as she blocked, trying to shove her now, letting the ball shape work in his favor long enough that he could get to the gun and disable it. Or just disable her.
She wasn’t going to fall for it, though, springing out to put both feet flat on a step and grabbing at him. This woman had no reason to keep him alive, so Jake had to protect himself.
They ended up tangled like dancers or lovers, almost nose to nose for a moment as hands shifted. She’d studied martial arts as well as he had, and similar ones. Each grip was immediately blocked. Every elbow met a shoulder or a forearm. Knees blocked.
She went to head butt him, but Jake saw it coming as she reared back, so he leaned his weight back sideways on the step and pulled instead.
He collapsed his knees just enough that when he leaned back, he was able to bounce the woman’s face off the sheetrock instead of his nose. Hers might have broken. There was blood, at least, flowing freely.
Jake let go long enough to rabbit punch her from his lower position, shifting to put his own butt on a step and getting leverage. She grunted and lashed out with a fist that connected enough with his ear to sting. Fortunately, she was on the wrong side to break his headset or drive it into his ear, but he needed to pay attention to keep that out of her reach.
He had a hand on her side, just behind and below her left breast. Jake put his other hand on her bottom and shoved her flat into the wall and down another step.
She needed to be kept away from the gun. If nothing else, Hollyanne could get here at some point, so the woman needed to be disarmed.
He grabbed for the gun, and the woman jumped on his back, pummeling his ribs with punches.
Jake snapped an elbow back, but she blocked it. It did overbalance her, though, and she fell onto her side.
The gun was out of reach unless he wanted to get hit some more, so Jake rolled with her like a gator, coming up and over and ending up between her legs, as if they had stopped to shag right in the stairwell like a couple of drunks.
The woman wrapped her legs tight around his hips now to hold him in range, while she started punching and striking again. She had an advantage for leverage, but he had her pinned in place and didn’t try to do anything but tire her out.
Instead, he planted his toes on a step and thrust forward, driving his hips into hers. She bounced off the wood with a curse that should have moved them down the steps some, but Jake wasn’t feeling like a caring lover. He humped her harder, squishing the woman’s head and shoulders into a step and hunching her over.
