"King Hunt"
Two hours later, Michele came downstairs into the living room. Kara was on the couch watching television, having taken her own bath and changing into shorts and a t-shirt.
"Triela called. She said they just reached the A50 interchange so they should be here in about 20 minutes."
"Okay. Did you prepare their room?" Michele asked and Kara nodded.
True to her word, just under 20 minutes later Michele's cell rang with a call from Hillshire. Kara slipped on a pair of sandals and followed Michele down to the garage area. Michele opened the gate and Hillshire's E350 wagon pulled in, Kara directing them to a spot next to the Ferrari.
The four exchanged greetings and Kara led them upstairs. As Michele invited Hillshire to the kitchen, Triela followed Kara up to the third floor bedroom.
"Do you think the bed will be large enough for Hillshire?" Kara asked, pointing to the twin bed she normally slept in.
"He usually sleeps on a queen, but the length is the same so I am sure it will be okay. But what about you?"
"I'm sleeping with Michele tonight," Kara replied. A moment later she realized how that sounded and went red. "That didn't come out right."
A sly smile broke out across Triela's face. "Hey, I know you Series Two girls are more mature with your handlers. Do try and keep the noise down, though. We are right underneath you, after all."
"Well I can move the two beds here next to each other if you and Hillshire want to make your own noise to drown out ours," Kara said, sweetly. This time, it was Triela's turn to blush red. Kara had seen Triela become more…physical…with Hillshire since Christmas in Naples and she wondered if Triela had decided it was time to let her handler know how she felt about him.
Triela lightly coughed into her hand. "Uh, this will be fine, thank you."
She followed Kara back downstairs to the kitchen where Hillshire and Michele were looking over the menu of the local trattoria.
"We're going to order in," Michele noted. "Can you two pick it up when it's ready?"
"Sure thing," Kara replied. She and Triela already had their favorite dishes memorized so once Hillshire made his selection, Michele called it in. Since the weather was pleasant, Michele and Kara set up a table for four on the front balcony while Hillshire and Triela squared away their stuff in the bedroom and Triela replaced her dress shirt and tie with a t-shirt, keeping her blue skirt.
Thirty minutes later Kara and Triela put on their shoes and headed out to pick up their order. They returned twenty minutes later weighed down with cartons of food, which they laid out on the main dining table since the table on the balcony was really designed for two.
"Jean said you two were ambushed?" Hillshire asked as they set their plates down at the table.
"At least four guys with assault rifles. We'd been sent to an address in an industrial area in the Pioltello suburb to meet a contact that claimed he had news about a PRF storage and transfer facility. We arrived to find the place abandoned and then the attack came from a warehouse across the street. Kara grabbed the car while I kept them busy. Fortunately she brought her PDW with her, otherwise we might not have made it out."
"You think it was a setup?"
"I'm starting to. They weren't professionals, based on how they handled their weapons and the tactics they employed, but they weren't common street thugs, either. Those type of people don't carry military assault rifles."
"What do you think this means?" Triela asked.
"I fear that it means our opponents may have a better idea of who we are than we have thought. In Venice, Giacomo Dante prepared himself for more than just the GIS. Anti-personnel mines. An anti-material rifle. 40mm grenade launchers. LAW rockets. That's all stuff you employ against hardened armored targets, not special forces infantry."
"You think they know we're cyborgs?" Kara asked.
"I think not, but they seem to know you aren't just average teenage girls and they're starting to adjust their weapons and tactics appropriately. And that worries me."
"It worries me, as well," Hillshire noted.
When it came time for bed, Michele and Kara both changed into pajamas. While Michele normally slept on top of the covers, this time Kara noted she felt comfortable without them so Michele slipped under a light throw.
As was her way when they needed to share a bed, Kara immediately pressed her back up against Michele's and soon drifted off to sleep.
Come the morning, Michele awoke to find Kara pressed up against his back, her left arm draped over his chest and her left leg hooked over his own and he felt her breath on the back of his neck. He sighed and rolled his eyes, then reached over to take her hand in his, giving it a squeeze. He was rewarded with feeling her stir.
"Kara?"
She gave him an incomprehensible reply.
"Kara," he said again, louder.
"Comfy," came the reply.
"I'm sure you are, but I need to get up and prepare breakfast for our guests and I can't do that with you in your current position."
With a groan, Kara untangled herself from Michele and rolled onto her back, stretching languidly.
Michele rose and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. "Go back to sleep."
Kara followed his orders.
The smells of breakfast cooking finally brought everyone else awake and they gathered in the dining room. Afterwards, Kara and Triela went out back to exercise while Michele cleaned-up. Hillshire was about to join him when his cellphone rang.
"Yes...What...Here in Milan? Confidence?…I understand…We're on our way." He snapped his phone shut.
"We just received a tip that Giacomo Dante is trying to escape the city in a green Volkswagen Transporter van," Hillshire declared.
"What, here?" Michele asked, unconsciously parroting Hillshire's own words on the phone.
"It was a tip called into the local Tourism Promotion Agency office by a normally reliable source so the confidence level is pretty high," Hillshire noted. While the main offices of both Public Safety and Special Operations were located in Rome, satellite offices were maintained in the major cities, including Milan, under the cover of the local "Tourism Promotion Agency". Unlike actual "Visitor Bureaus", the TPA's were not open to the general public, but instead produced and published the pamphlets handed out at the Visitor Bureaus and also maintained informational web pages.
Michele waved for Kara, who poked her head inside. "Get your shoes on and grab your pistol. We have an Operational Immediate," he ordered.
Kara rushed up into her room and threw off her t-shirt and sweats, replacing them with a polo and jeans. She grabbed her pistol case, tossing it on the bed. She opened it and removed her pistol, inserted a fresh magazine, cocked it, set the safety, and shoved it down into her jeans at the nape of her back and then slipped her feet into a pair of black patent leather loafers.
Beside her, Triela slipped out of her shorts and t-shirt, replacing them with a button-down dress shirt and slacks. She added her tie and slipped into her shoulder holster before opening a larger case, removing and preparing her own pistol, which she then placed into the holster. She also removed from the case an H&K UMP45 submachine gun. She tied the laces on her Pierre Corthay shoes and yanked her blazer out of the closet.
Both girls rushed down the stairs onto the main floor and they entered the garage. Michele tossed Kara the keys to the F430 and then removed the cover, wadding it up and tossing it in a corner. Kara started the car and backed out, allowing Michele to slide into the passenger seat before she headed for the exit, Hillshire and Triela following in the E-Class.
The report stated the van was travelling along the northern part of the "outer ring road" that encircled Milan and was likely trying to connect to the A51 Autostrade on the eastern edge of the city. Kara and Hillshire drove along the "inner ring road", turning right onto the Viale Papiniano and following it along as it changed names. Hillshire followed the road as it became the Viale Emilio Caldara while Kara turned right onto the Corso Lodi and sprinted down to the Viale Bacchiglione, following it to the Piazzale Bologna roundabout. Hillshire fought his way north up the Corso Buenos Aires, then followed it northeast to the Piazzale Loreto roundabout. Kara, meanwhile, drove directly up the Viale Romagna.
Hillshire reached the Piazzale Loreto roundabout and illegally parked on the corner, hitting his flashers. Passing cars honked in annoyance as they skirted around him and Triela climbed out of the window and stood on the seat, holding onto the luggage rack, the position giving her an unobstructed view of traffic entering the roundabout. In under a minute, a green Volkswagen Transporter (T5) panel van drove by and Triela made a mental note of the license plate as she dived back into the seat. Victor watched the van continue straight ahead onto the Via Andrea Costa and he gave chase, falling into line with two cars between him and the van. Triela called Michele to update them, and Kara suggested they pincer him at the intersection of Piazzale Francesco Durante and Viale Lombardia.
One of the cars hung a right at the next corner and the second made a left turn into an apartment complex. Fortunately, Hillshire closed the gap before they reached the next intersection and he tucked up behind the van. Triela again called Michele and they agreed that Hillshire would force the van off the road once it entered the intersection.
As they reached the Piazzale Francesco Durante, the left-hand back door of the van suddenly sprung open and a man holding an MP5 submachine gun came into view and took aim at the car. The driver jerked the wheel hard over just as the man fired, most of the rounds going wild, but two slammed into the passenger side of the windshield, missing Triela by centimeters. Hillshire violently jerked the wheel to the right and the E350 jumped the curb onto a small pedestrian island and Hillshire steered across a crosswalk and into the left half of a triangular park that made up the Piazzale.
The F430 came storming up the Viale Lombardia. The road was narrow and lined with trees and Kara swerved back and forth, standing on the horn, the brakes and the throttle as she charged forward into the Piazzale itself. She looked out her left window to see Hillshire's E350 coming towards her across the park, the all-wheel drive system allowing the car to maintain traction on the grass and dirt.
Ahead, they saw the van crawling through the intersection, a man's arm sticking out the back as he wildly fired an SMG at Hillshire's car.
"Ram them!" Michele ordered.
"Seriously?" Kara asked.
"Do it!"
Kara gripped the wheel tighter and pressed down hard on the throttle. The Ferrari launched forward and Kara and Michele both saw the man in the van's passenger seat turn towards them, his eyes going wide in horror.
As she entered the open area where the various streets converged, Kara yanked on the handbrake and violently turned the wheel. The F430 neatly pirouetted in a 180° turn and the rear end of the car smashed into the side of the van next to the sliding door. The impact energies pushed Kara and Michele into their seats, causing Michele to bang his head against the ceiling. While the airbags did not deploy, pyrotechnic charges fired in the seat belt reels to retract them as tight as possible, physically pinning Kara and Michele back into the seats. The aft structure of the F430 pushed into the van door, knocking it off the rails and bowing it in. The F430 pushed the van though the intersection and into a chain-link fence in front of a wooden barrier around a construction site. The whole thing was over in under two seconds.
"Michele? How do you feel?"
"I'll live. Secure the van."
Hillshire's E350 exited the park and drove across the intersection, narrowly missing being alternately broadsided and rear-ended, stopping next to the impact scene. Triela launched herself from the passenger seat and approached the van, pistol drawn.
Kara undid her seatbelt and exited the car, pulling her pistol out from her jeans as she did so. She stayed against the Ferrari as she closed, her eye on the right window of the van. She carefully looked in and saw that the passenger seat had been torn off by the impact and the gunman's head hung at an odd angle, telling Kara his neck was broken. She looked on to the driver and he was unconscious, blood trickling out of his mouth.
Triela looked into the back of the van, seeing the person who had been shooting at Hillshire's car lying unconscious on the floor of the van, his right leg at an odd angle. A fourth person lay against the door opposite the one the Ferrari had impacted, bleeding from a severe head wound.
None of the four looked anything like Giacomo Dante.
Kara went back to the Ferrari and wrenched the passenger door open. She then helped Michele out of the car and onto unsteady feet.
A Carabinieri Moto Guzzi California Courassier pulled up, siren wailing and lights flashing. Hillshire flashed his SISDE credentials and informed the officer that the men in the van were wanted suspects in a shooting and that they needed medical assistance immediately. A Carabinieri Alfa 159 arrived within a few minutes and helped control the crowds. Kara and Triela verified the other suspects were still alive, but didn't move them for fear of causing more injuries. It took ten minutes for the medical response van to arrive and they quickly performed triage on the injured, determining the men in back required more immediate attention. A response car arrived five minutes later and they went to work on the van's driver.
Since the EMTs wanted to check over Michele, he agreed to go back to the hospital with two of the suspects. The most injured suspect was strapped to the gurney and the other had his hands and feet bound before being strapped to one of the two side seats. Kara took the seat next to him to ensure he didn't try anything and Michele took the seat against the front bulkhead, allowing the EMT to take the swivel seat next to the gurney. The van driver was loaded into the response car.
After the ambulance and response cars left, Hillshire and Triela watched the vehicle recovery operation. The Crime Scene Investigation unit thoroughly documented the accident scene with video and photographic equipment and then the two vehicles were pulled apart and loaded on separate flatbed trucks and driven to the impound lot.
After a quick examination, the hospital staff decided they did not need to keep Michele for observation. The three suspects were secured in an isolated section of the hospital and watched over by two Carabinieri Vice Brigadiere until they were stabilized enough for transport by military air ambulance to Rome. DNA and fingerprints were taken and expedited for verification should Dante have undergone radical cosmetic surgery.
Hillshire and Triela arrived to pick Michele and Kara up and return them to the apartment. They were all relaxing on the back patio drinking Italian sodas when they heard Priscilla's voice call out "Ciao?" from the living room.
"We're out on the deck," Michele replied.
Priscilla appeared, dressed in a silk crepe top, high-waisted wool mini skirt and leather boots – all from Chloé and all in black. Claes followed behind her in a Burberry exploded check long-sleeve t-shirt and skirt with black leather boots.
Michele indicated a bar area with carbonated water and a variety of flavored syrups and Claes prepared sodas for herself and Priscilla.
Michele looked down at his watch. "You made good time," he noted.
"That car is supernatural!" Priscilla gushed, referring to Michele's new Lamborghini Gallardo. "It sure drinks petrol, however."
"Driving at close to double the posted limit likely didn't help," Claes deadpanned, causing Priscilla to blush.
"I couldn't help myself," she said. "The faster I went the better it drove so I just kept going faster."
"I know the feeling," Triela said, then caught herself. "I mean, I can understand the feeling." She looked to Hillshire and caught his raised eyebrow and she knew she probably had some explaining to do in the near future.