Chapter 51   Black Ops

The Puma helicopter remained stationary  at about ten meters  over the waters. Six silent, dark shadows dropped from the carrier into the cool waters of  the Thames River. Their close oxygen circuits did not send treacherous air bubbles to the  surface, while they moved on silently for  the last three thousand  meters. The observation team in Southwark  had recommended the long and  straining underwater approach in order not to raise suspicion from either the target or any other docklands dweller. Helicopters were not a common feature within the harbour facilities and apart some river police patrol boats no traffic  was  permitted by the British authorities during the night hours.

As soon as they reached the two large canalisations that connected  the storage facility underground  with the Thames, the six silent shadows, still hindered by their palms and respiratory systems crawled into the concrete tubes. Only when they were far enough inside  to feel completely secure, they took off their diving gear  and replaced the masks with night-vision goggles each of them had stored in a waterproof bag at his belt.

Freed from cumbersome 75 cm long palms, they forced their way through smelly used waters with cat-size rats rushing away from the nightly intruders on a  sidewalk habitually used by the Greater London Canalisation Maintenance.

Each of the six kept his breathing down, since the used waters smelled strongly.  It took them ten minutes to walk through the canalisation until they reached  a 45% angular elbow with an iron ladder.  Although  it was  impossible that their targets  could hear them in  the underground, none of the six men spoke. They communicated by sign language.

Damien Tremayne auctioned  his intercom with Quérelen. A simple pressure of  his thumb against the sensible  earphone told  General Fillon and the Ops Centre that they were on target. In the darkness  of the canalisation tube the small camera  fixed  on top of each man's night vision system was unable to transmit images. A  minimum of light was necessary for  the high tech device to function properly.

'Clear!' Sounded in the ears of each member of  the commando.

Tremayne and  Denez-Pregent were the first to  climb up the iron ladder. They moved like cats. Damien pushed the  iron plate that covered the canalisation inside the storage facilities basement with his shoulder.

'Go' The voice from the DGSE team in front of the building cleared  his entry.

The young wizard drew his wand  with his right hand. As  soon as he  had his  feet firmly rooted on the ground, his left hand ushered the HK from behind  his back.

'Way's free!' He whispered into the intercom. Yvan Denez-Pregent appeared by his side, wand ready and the container for the bottle ghost in his left.

'Go!'  The anonymous voice ordered the  next member of the team.

Alain Genty rushed upstairs, waiting for further indications  from  the observation team.

Damien and Yvan had  to take chances since the djhinnij  could be wherever in the storage facility. To the sophisticate listening devices the ghost did not exist, and the video cameras saw only mist. But the dervish  -Nouredine  Ben Kad'r had  the habit to  sleep on a couch inside his office and Alain had memorized the way from the canalisation to his target.

As soon as the three first arrivals had cleared  the basement silently, Capitaine de  la Bedoyère tapped his two NCOs  on the shoulder. The men climbed at  speed and secured the perimeter for their commanding officer. When Snape arrived too, the first thing he did  was to replace the iron plate carefully on their secret entrance.

His right held out the HK instinctively, while with his left he sent a short Morse message to base. They had all arrived!

The voice  from the observation team explained calmly  that all their targets  were firmly asleep  in their habitual places. Already during the morning session of studying the location, Severus and the two  NCOs had agreed upon a job sharing. Since Snape was a wizard and could in case  of emergency support either Genty or Tremayne and Denez-Pregent, his two non-magic companions would take upon themselves the extermination  of  six targets that habitually slept upstairs in two distinguished rooms. Although this share left Snape with four Islamists at his own discretion, he had not opposed the idea.

Claude's orders were formal and  even though the operation had basically been approved   to weaken Voldemort, the French  Prime Minister and Patrick Delacour had agreed upon a demonstration of power against the GIA as an add-on.

There  was no  quarter  given! Fillon had carefully instructed  his men to cause a maximum bloodshed.

The two NCOs disappeared in the dark of  the night, while Snape tugged  away his noisy HK and drew a long, sharp commando dagger from a  shed  at his right ankle.

At this very moment he did not care about the dervish and the djhinnij. He trusted Damien, Yvan and Alain to do what they had to do and disappear into the night and straight  to the Poseidon which waited for  the 'cargo' close to the  place where the Puma had dropped  them some  thirty minutes ago.

The  French vessel was not  to  wait  for him and  the two NCOs. They were supposed to get themselves out of  Southwark on their own, relying on the help of the British muggle authorities and a River Police vessel  that would navigate up and down in front of the facility at fixed times….if  the worst should ever happen.

He took a turn to the left, making his way to a small cot hidden behind some merchandise. The man who  had the  habit of sleeping  there was to be his first target. Severus had studied each and every of the  half-wits he was to  dispose off with care and N° 1 behind the merchandise  seemed to be the most Crabbe-and-Goyle like of them all.

His night vision system showed him a metal frame on  which a meatball snored peacefully. The target had a  naked, hairy foot tugged  over a light blanket. A tuff of  black hair contrasted an ugly yellow and red pillow. Before the man realized what had happened to him, a black-gaunted hand clutched mercilessly over his mouth and nose  and the sharp stinging pain  of a metal object that penetrated through a solid layer of fat right into his heart from underneath his left armpit had ended his life on earth.

Severus maintained  his gaunted  hand  until he felt that the target would never breath again…..suffocated by a  stream of blood in his lungs. He gave a small sigh before continuing his quest.

They'd take care of the targets as soon as Alain, Yvan and Damien were out. A simple puncture between the third and fourth rib  was not 'maximum bloodshed' but  the work of  a sophisticate specialist!

The next two targets were somewhere to the right. He did not feel anything after this perfect kill. He had kille dmore  then once  in his seventeen years  of service! One pawn was off the chessboard.

The two others were  trickier, since he had to confront a metal door before the kill. He tugged his dagger away and fumbled a tiny endoscope  from the side  pocket of his diving gear. The endoscope's head was small enough to slip under the door and into the room. Within a second, the device's  alimentation was connected with a computer screen the size of a pack of cigarettes fixed to his left forearm. Snape pushed the 'Enter' button before auctioning his intercom device.

'Clear!' An unfamiliar voice replied to his request. His night googles showed him two cots, one to  the left and one to the  right against bare concrete walls.

Carefully he tested the handle of the door. It was polite enough  not to squeal, but he nevertheless muttered 'Alomohora' and made an opening movement with his left hand. The metal door obediently swung open and Severus  sneaked into  the dark room like a shadow.

The two men slept indeed soundly. One snored loudly, while the other gave only regular breathing.  The snoring Islamist would  go last. His own noise would prevent him from hearing the death struggle of  his companion.

The merciless, unfeeling dark shadow hung for the  quarter of a  second over the  cot  before two black gaunted fists hit with terrible  precision the temples of  their sleeping victim.

The  only  reaction from the condemned creature was  a slight 'ouff'. Snape retrieved his  dagger from its shed.  With an easy,  casual movement he slit the unconscious Islamist's throat from his  left ear to his right ear; Then he  turned the dying man around to allow his lifeblood to spill in a dark puddle on the concrete  floor.

His  right hand pressed the intercom relay in his ear twice.

The anonymous voice from the observation team stated without a hint of emotion 'Six'.

Severus gave a sigh of relief. His two NCOs had  finished business upstairs. As to Alain, Damien and Yvan he had no news but neither had he requested this intelligence and before messing around  in  other peoples' business  he would finish his own  job.

The snoring Islamist on the second cot met Allah without even realising that he had died. The strong arm that had enveloped  his neck, while a gaunted hand prevented him  from breathing or crying was enough to break a human neck within the second.

Severus had still one  target left to him. The last would be  the most difficult; He  was the man he  had  identified on the transmissions  from the observation  team  as the brightest and most alert and he slept in an individual room on the far end of the storage facility, close to an exit that led right into a lively street of Southwark, were night-time was business-time! The target had also a habit to sleep with an arm under his  pillow.

A soft noise reached  the  young druid's ear. He was so absorbed in his dealings that he could not make out  if it was a curse or a  counter-curse but he had the feeling that the dervish was not one willing to be taken easily.

The voice must have been Alain, he comforted  himself. Unfortunately his comrade was condemned to duel that bastard  down instead of sending him to the realm of the death with an Aveda Kedavra.

Another soft noise disturbed Snape's concentration and effort  to find  his way  around ranges and ranges  of  multicolour fabric and wooden trunks  with customs  markings in black and  yellow.

'Crucio' the same well-known voice barked through the dark.

'Finally!' Severus' second  self stated in a detached manner. What use to put on gloves and avoid  the Unforgivables for the sake of a  legislation  that hardly ever cared about methods employed during a black operation.

'Crucio!' The familiar voice repeated with more dexterity, while a shrill cry of pain pierced the dark of the storage facility and the summer  night.

Snape automatically accelerated his pace  into a jog. Even the dumbest and most sleepy half-wit could not overhear such a desperate noise.

He pulled his  HK from behind his back unarming the sub-machine  gun in the same movement. When the door burst open in  front  of him, he did not even think  twice before pulling the trigger and  emptying his charger in full automatic mood into a black shadow. The shadow went down to his knees with a strange guttural noise, emptying  his guts onto the barren floor and suffocating on his own blood.

Severus did  not  even care to throw a look on his victim. His  left foot hit automatically the dark metallic thing the lifeless hand had been brandishing only instants earlier. The target's own firearm was out of  reach if  ever the man was  not completely dead by  now. He auctioned his intercom mechanically  four times  and sprinted off into the direction of the desperate cry.

Sweat was dropping from his front, creeping under  the night vision goggles and making his eyes burn,  but he ignored the irritation and just kept his  direction. While still moving he pushed the HK behind his back and drew  his wand from his left sleeve. Claude had been formal about the dervish; He was  to be  brought in alive and kicking at whatever price!

When Snape arrived  where  his ears and  instincts  had led him he  heard a comforting 'Petrificus Totalis' and 'Silencio' before his night vision  system showed him a man with oriental features whose eyes had gone completely white with pain and who was nevertheless unable to either move or cry.

Alain Genty gave him a relieved thumbs up.

'Have  to get my bastard out, before he's losing his mind under the 'Crucio'!' The young wizard whispered , while his  hand covered the intercom.

'Damien?Yvan?'  Snape  whispered back, copying the gesture of his friend.

'Piece of  cake! The bottle  ghost was a piece  of cake, but  this bastard…….'  He gave the agonizing dervish a  heartless push with his elbow 'fought like a devil! Had to 'Crucio'  him  twice….. Yours?'

Severus passed his thumb in a very obvious gesture over his own throat 'All gone! We'll be with you in a second. I only make sure  that the remainders look gory enough for the audience.'

Genty gave a broad grin 'Vingardium  Leviosa!' His wand pointed the dishevelled, body-bound dervish and ushered him towards the basement and the canalisation.

'Get your ass out of here at high speed, Sev……or you'll miss the chopper back home!' He cautioned his relieved comrade.

'Give us five minutes and we'll be downstairs too!' The other wizard  replied, tugging his wand away and turning on his heels to join the two NCOs  on the storage facility's second floor.

Father Yannick Le  Floa'ch watched the boy carefully. Harry had indeed  dared and asked the question  that obsessed him. But the one most concerned had not given the expected reply. Instead Severus  had opted for a strange and very medieval gesture: He had rolled up  the sleeve of his diver's combination, bent one knee in front  of  the child and offered Harry to touch the Dark Mark. When the boy had hesitatingly covered  the ugly scar with his small hand, Sev had put his own hand over Harry's  and  forced him with  his black pits into a long and silent eye contact.

Yannick knew that Severus was able to read a man's mind while shielding his  own from any effort of  penetration, but during the perhaps  five minutes of the strange scene, the Benedictine was convinced  that his elusive and secretive friend had allowed the boy to read  what no one  else before  had ever seen.

Now Harry sat  with strangely unfocussed eyes in the  middle  of the abandoned hangar,  his long, skinny legs crossed Indian style and the boy was  staring holes into the walls; He had not spoken a single word, since the six dark shadows had disappeared with the Puma. He just sat there, allowing him to put two soothing hands on his shoulders and obviously expecting him to shut up.

Harry's  breathing had been going regularly for the first thirty minutes. Then a sharp intake had startled Yannick and he  had almost lost his control and asked for  the reason why,  but before  he could  formulate the question the child was back to normal. Another five minutes had passed and the next sharp intake had almost uprooted the experienced exorcist and former  soldier, but when Harry returned back  to a slow constant breath  Yannick told himself that it was better to let things run and just make the boy feel that he was not alone in  his trial. 

The  Benedictine tried to adapt his own breathing rhythm to  Harry's. He was  fully aware that some hundred meters away Claude and Albus and Alastor were able to follow the whole operation in direct. The team had been equipped with intercoms and small nocturnal cameras which would  transmit  exactly what their eyes saw to the Ops Centre of Quérelen and the screens of the observation team in Southwark. But a long forgotten professional code  prevented Father Le Floa'ch from interfering. It had been his very  own choice  to opt for Harry and the harder part of the operation; support the boy without  knowing what was going on…..Time went bye slowly. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours  and  the short timeframe  that separated him from his former comrades  on the other side of the sea dragged on like endless days! Suddenly the priest felt the tense muscles  of the boy relax under his hands.

'It is  over!' Harry stated. Then the boy stood up and tucked his hand unceremoniously into the icy trembling hand of his companion.

'I need the Pensiève and I show you what I have seen!'  He stated matter-of-factly.

Yannick gave a small sigh  before he dared to ask the very question 'Everything's o.k., Harry?'

The boy gave a simply nod.

Outside a low, menacing  swish announced the  arrival  of a helicopter that lowered itself slowly on the Quérelen heliport. The strong SNECMA engines sizzled like upset wasps  through the night air.

Harry fetched the icy hand in a hard grip and  dragged the Benedictine through the same small door six dark shadows had used a lifetime  ago to  disappear into the night.

When the angry wasp made contact with the ground, the boy let go  the hand of  the man he was  supporting. Ducking his head  instinctively under the wind of the  long  rotor blades he strode  determinedly towards a  black hole and as soon as the first dark shadow set  foot on the ground of the  French military base  he threw two  long, skinny arms  around the shadow's neck and held him in a bear hug as if he'd never ever let him go again.

Severus put his arms gently around Harry and lifted him from the ground as if he were a small child.

'It's O.K., Harry! It is over!' He whispered gently while  stepping aside to allow his fagged  and drained comrades to leave  the Puma. His black-gaunted hand pulled Harry's head closer to his shoulder.

'That was absolutely dreadful!' Harry sobbed between two sharp  intakes of breath. The black and grey  diver's combination smelled blood, decay and stale water.

'How could you…..?' Harry wrung his lanky arms even firmer  around Severus' neck,  almost strangling the young wizard.

'