| CHAPTER TEN, Death Bringers of the West Part Two |

May 3, 2008; Sterling Resorts ~ Sea Breeze, Biloxi, MS

After Reid Shallows finished the pre-op briefing, Harry dismissed his men, except for Ron, to their rooms, requesting their presence in Harry's room in 20 minutes.

"Quite an operation you have," Harry said after Swan closed the door behind them.

Reid only shrugged. "Another day of work I suppose."

"Your careless attitude doesn't suit you, Shallows," Ron began, "especially given the target." Ron, of course, was talking not just about Seward Roscoe, but about Reid's cousin—third cousin to be exact—as well. Reid and Donovan Shallows had attended Blixthorn Academy together, and though they were family and shared multiple interests in classes, Donovan had been placed into the Pyrrhos house, the Blixthorn house that turned out more Dark Wizards than any of its other four. During the Shallows' seventh year, Roscoe and his men had infiltrated the school in an attempt to steal an undetermined item from the tower's vaults. Despite their unsuccessful attempt, Donovan saw Roscoe as an idol rather than an enemy and after graduating, joined his forces, despite the Dark Lord's demise only a month before Donovan's finish.

Reid, on the other hand had joined the Department of Magic's Magical Regulation Agency (MRA), which was the entire body that consisted of all magical law enforcement personnel and operations. The 'Lightning King,' as Donovan had dubbed his cousin due to the former's common use of the Lightning Curse, rose to become one of the most successful duelists the Agency had seen in years until Reid was appointed task force head of Operation: Hercules—the directive to cut off every head of Roscoe's 'hydra' and ultimately slay the 'beast.'

Reid gave Ron a threatening look before saying, "I'm 'supposed to be as impartial and objective as possible for the sake of the mission,' imitating some authority of his.

"Good luck with that," Harry teased.

Scowling, Reid turned to the cork-board filled with layout plans, presupposed scenarios, routes, and photos.

"So this is where you think Roscoe is?" Harry said, pointing at a glowing red room on the layout of the building under surveillance; the team in place managed to cast a spell inside that revealed the entire layout. The building had thought to be enchanted from the normal Muggle plans—they were right.

Reid nodded, his arms crossed and one hand up to his face, his thumb and forefinger lightly pulling at his chin. "I suspect he'll be holed up where as many of his men can come to his aid as quickly as possible, not to mention be where he couldn't get hit by any destructive spell from someone on the outside. Ever since our last run-in with him, the man's been exceptionally paranoid; which is bad for us."

"So no sightings of Rowle, then?" Ron asked.

"No. And I mean, we do have a body in the morgue that's burnt nearly to a crisp—we assume whoever it was got caught in one of Roscoe's Fiendfyre traps. We think it's him since we haven't had a sighting of Rowle in years. And since we don't have his brother to compare magical auras with, it's not confirmable."

"We are working on that," Ron said, who'd recently been working diligently with Hensbolm—arguably the Auror Office's greatest detective—to track down the missing Death Eater.

"No doubt, Weasley," Reid assured, "these Death Eaters—Bringers—whatever…these bastards are slippery. We caught one of Roscoe's men even making preparations in New Mexico to take a vanishing portkey to Punta Arenas in Chile."

"Merlin," Harry said, shaking his head. "Any idea what injured Roscoe?" Harry inquired, referring to the initial-sighting-report claiming that Roscoe had been limping into the Death Bringers' current lair.

"Not really. Coulda' been anything. The report was pretty vague and I even debriefed the agent myself. He couldn't recall any blood, strange auras, or anything sticking out of him. He just said 'limping.' If I had to guess, I'd say it was something beast-related. Roscoe's healer, whom he keeps close to him, woulda' been able to patch anything up that we woulda' done."

Harry and Ron nodded almost simultaneously. "Alright, Harry began, "we need to go brief our men and then we'll catch you for lunch?"

"A sound plan," Reid said with a wink, echoing the annunciation of a Prince from a Muggle video game. "Oh, by the way, the password for the room is 'house-elf.'"

Harry nodded and he and Ron excused themselves. "I am not looking forward to sleeping tonight," Ron said after they got into the hallway.

"Hensbolm?"

Ron sighed frustratingly. "You remember the blast-ended screwt whoopee cushion George released last year?"

"Yeah."

"It sounds like that."

"Get off it," Harry said, unable to prevent the grin spreading across his face.

"No lie," Ron said as Harry waved his hand at the lock on Room 701. Inside waiting were Churchmore, Hensbolm, Swan, and his six men—one a woman.

"So let's get to it then," Harry said. "As you're all familiar, with Code 14 missions the Minister himself prefers to brief his team personally. With the time crunch, Shacklebolt had to do it in letter form so here goes."

After the briefing-letter, which stressed that the capture of Seward Roscoe was the number one priority, and that lethal force, while not unacceptable, was immensely discouraged, Harry's team joined Reid's for lunch around 1:30 at McAlister's Deli—after changing into Muggle attire of course. During lunch Harry found out that the clerk that Harry seemed to have charmed believed that Reid was in fact a man known as Franklin Richards, a high-class lawyer from Chicago who was politely demanding—if such a things exists—and on a business trip for a high level murder trial.

As their meal drew to its natural close, Michael Gossard, Reid's field-partner, alerted everyone that the moment they had been waiting for was upon them much sooner than expected: Roscoe was preparing to move to a new location, which was a window that allowed for more multi-tasking, which meant less attentiveness to security. The two teams hastily rose from their chairs and made their way for the bathroom, which was around a corner and because the restaurant had a major lunch-rush, they would be able to apparate to their respective hotel rooms without notice, which is exactly what happened.

After properly gearing up, the teams reconvened in Room 707 where they took a single-passage floo to the staging area that was half a mile from the resort. The plan before the now 31 member force was to have the four wizards who had been monitoring the house to begin placing charms over the house to keep anyone from leaving—even via portkey—something which they'd yet found an opportunity to do with the number of security. Once the charms were nearly in place, Picard and Swan's teams would breach the front and rear of the building, followed closely by the more elite wizards; Janeway's team would remain as exterior reinforcements in case any tried to escape the sphere of containment on foot or broom, as well as to deal with any Muggle passerby's, or worse law enforcement.

"Remember the briefing," Harry said to his team as they all concealed themselves along the back of the house next door to Roscoe's, "keep your eyes open for traps on the floors and remember that our American friends are approaching from the opposite side." The team acknowledged Harry's words and the latter looked into his square of two-way mirror, looking into Reid's face, awaiting the signal for breach.

Suddenly, an unexpected bang sounded from the side of the house and a voice cried, "We got company!"

Belenus Swan moved first and stunned the Death Bringer where he stood. The hit wizards moved in swiftly, Harry and Peter Churchmore behind them, Ron and Mack Hensbolm bringing up the rear; as they moved to the door Harry caught a glimpse of char on the grass and an unconscious MRA agent nearby.

As Harry entered the house he found that one of Swan's team was already down, his front side charred from what was unmistakably the work of one of Roscoe's infamous Fiendfyre traps. Harry ducked a blue light and reactively fired back a Blasting Curse. Nearby, Peter was ducked behind the overturned wooden kitchen table and was hastily digging into his right pocket. Finding what he was looking for, Peter took one of the same red orbs Harry had in his own pocket between his thumb and forefinger before squeezing down. It made a light crack and Peter threw it into the dining room where the largest numbers of Death Bringers were concentrated in. Harry instantly cast the Shield Charm before him and not two seconds later did jets of scarlet light rapidly fly all over the place.

Once they stopped, the fighting seemed to cease. Harry rose from between the counter-covered cabinets, his shield still before him. "Clear!" Swan cried as he came in view of the dining room. Harry, watching his step, began to follow the man and found, as he expected, all of the Death Bringers stunned.

Behind him Harry heard a few separate utterances of "Rennervate" as some of Swan's unsuspecting team members were hit by the fury of Stunning Spells. Harry moved off to the left, peering down the hallway to the front door, his wand raised before him. The hallway was long, as it had the span of both the dining and living rooms along next to it. However, all Harry saw was Christian Picard, the leader of Reid's personal hit squad. The man mouthed 'clear' to Harry and the latter's team began to move toward the front of the house to gather before the stairs. The main floor of the house was, as they knew, unenchanted; when they ascended the stair case, that would be when things began to get more confusing as the second floor was the 'size' of the length of a warehouse.

"Henson told me that the primary entrapment is in place," Reid said to the group. "No one's going anywhere, 'least not without us knowing about it." Several of them nodded in acknowledgment. "Everyone ready?"