Friday, June 16th, 2017

Scopello, Sicily

Casa Genovese

00:56 GMT+2 (22:56 GMT June 15th)

Hit Girl slunk through the vines, closing in on the solitary guard for that section of the perimeter.

The man was in the way and therefore he needed to be removed from the playing field as Hit Girl saw it in her mind. The man had heard a sound a minute or so earlier and he was investigating that sound, not expecting to find anything as nobody would dare to come close to Casa Genovese after dark.

"Bravo Teams be advised; Alpha Teams are at Position Whiskey. Pending go order from Bravo One One."

Hit Girl grinned; everyone was in position and it was time to show Vito what hell he had brought down on his family the day he had allowed his daughter Angie to marry Frank fucking D'Amico! Was Hit Girl thinking straight? Oh yes, she was perfectly focussed with a clear mind. She had one task that night; just one simple task – she was to take down Vito Genovese while everyone else would wipe the Genovese name from the face of the planet. A stark order had gone out making Vito off limits to everyone but her – with the noted exception of Kick-Ass who knew to leave the man to his wife. First, though, a man with a gun was standing in her way.

"Ciao!" Hit Girl growled into the darkness.

"Chi è la?" the man ventured.

"Morte."

The man barely had time to process the word before his throat was severed by a Tanto blade in one fluid movement. The man dropped his weapon, an H&K MP5 A5, and he clawed at this throat even as he sank to the dirt beneath his feet. Hit Girl made to walk away, but then the man's radio barked.

"Confine, segnala!"

Hit Girl smirked as she grasped hold of the radio held in the man's dying hand and she squeezed the transmit button.

"Ciao da Chicago, fica!"

There was no immediate response from the radio, not that Hit Girl waited for one as she dropped the dead hand and triggered her own radio.

"Take the bastards down!" she growled.

Alpha One

01:00 GMT+2 (23:00 GMT June 15th)

Kick-Ass started everything off as he raised a Milkor MGL and triggered off six forty-millimetre smoke grenades all around the area occupied by parked vehicles beyond which was Vito's residence.

A guard panicked and triggered off several rounds from his machinegun as the smoke turned night into smoky night. While the defenders were blinded, the attackers were equipped with advanced infra-red night vision and everything was clear as a smoky day, the enemy registering as predator-esque targets. The system could even highlight heat blooms but without the snazzy triangular targeting system, much to the annoyance of some operators. Nevertheless, strike teams deployed to assault the area around the main building which they knew would be the most heavily defended. The plan was to mop up the perimeter and take out any guards who remained outside of the main building. The property was well defended, but they had been able to circumvent the early warning and they had been able to insert forces behind the property allowing a two-pronged assault. That still left four concealed machinegun positions and a hundred different places for an ambush. Hit Girl had had to assume that Vito was at least as paranoid as she was, so there was probably the threat of mines to contend with also. To counter any radio command detonated devices and to play hell with the enemy communications, enhanced jammers aboard the CALEDONIA and OCEAN VIGILANTE came into play, flooding the area and killing off any unwanted radio signals emanating from around the target property.

However, that was no help with wired command detonated devices such as Alpha One were to discover, almost to their cost.

..._...

The approach was a tricky one up a single road but Alpha One, led by Kick-Ass were scrambling up the steeply sloping side of the escarpment to reach the carpark without advancing up into a kill zone.

Trojan, Stormtide, and Jackal were leading, with six feet between each of them as they advanced in line abreast. Their eyes scanned the ground before them for trouble as they advanced. Stormtide, as was her forte, found trouble easily, and very quickly, she came across a tripwire.

"Halt!" she ordered causing Jackal and Trojan to drop to the ground.

Stormtide followed the tripwire to her right about two feet and then she felt ill as she found herself face-to-face with a Claymore mine; more importantly, on the wrong side of said Claymore mine. Calmly and coolly, ignoring the gunfire coming from above her, she set about disarming said Claymore mine. That did not take long, and something made her bring along said Claymore mine as they resumed their advance up the escarpment upon which Casa Genovese was built. Over to their left, coming up the track the WMIK was providing covering fire while several members of Bravo Two searched the road for mines.

After a few more minutes of scrambling, Stormtide reached the top of the escarpment only to find two men coming towards her, assault rifles pointed in her direction. Neither seemed to notice what she held in her hands as she plonked the device down at the top on its four spiky feet. Then both men saw the device and they . . . were vaporised as Stormtide triggered the device with her masked face buried in the dirt. The explosion was devastating to the men and the vehicle immediately behind which exploded in a sympathetic detonation taking out two more men as it flipped over.

"Alpha One is at Yankee One," Stormtide announced as she sidestepped a severed hand.

"Good job," Jackal said proudly.

"Yeah – I've been blown up once before," Trojan reminded them both.

Rapidly, the rest of Alpha One joined up and Kick-Ass led them forward through the misty, smoky darkness.

Alpha Two

A little over a hundred yards to the north of Alpha One, at the opposite end of the Genovese home, Alpha Two were advancing on one of the defensive machinegun positions.

At first the deadly weapon was silent as the operators had not identified any suitable targets. Petra led Stripe and Ajax up the slope leading towards an open area normally occupied by tables and chairs arranged to enjoy what was probably a stunning view during the evening hours out over the sea. However, the call to arms had meant that three men had appeared, and they had pulled up two very well-concealed covers for a pit which was four feet deep and which could hold two men. Swiftly, a dozen sandbags had been thrown out and around the pit creating another foot of protection. The third man had provided cover for his colleagues with an assault rifle while the Minimi machinegun had been mounted on a steel pole and loaded with a belt of ammunition. Then, once the machinegun was ready for use, the third man patrolled around to protect the machinegun crew's backs, a task which he did well for maybe four minutes.

However, as he was approached by Petra, his life span was suddenly measured in seconds. The veteran vigilante approached silently, not that that was necessary considering the gunfire at the opposite end of the Genovese property, but her training dictated she move silently, nonetheless. Petra crept up behind the Italian with the assault rifle and she dutifully slit his throat before savagely snapping his neck just to be sure. She allowed the body to drop to the ground as she turned towards the machinegun crew and she was rapidly joined by Ajax and Stripe. Together, the three vigilantes moved to outflank the machinegun crew while keeping well away from the muzzle of the deadly weapon.

During her time with Vengeance, ever since that first kill on the Isle of Man, so awfully long ago, Ajax had developed a liking for hurting people and causing them distress. It was probably not quite the persona required to be a vigilante, but it helped her to come to terms with what she had become and what she had endured. While there were many who did not like her style of killing, they were pleased with the end results. Ajax could be cruel beyond comprehension as some had found to their cost – one girl in particular. Stripe had learned to give Ajax her space when it came to killing as she did get the job done, even if she did get off on the killing. Indeed, he could sense the pleasure building up within her as she quite literally dove in for the kill. She was like a rabid bitch on heat as she landed atop the loader and she viciously rammed her blade into the back of his neck, savagely twisting the blade to severe the backbone and paralyse the man. The man lived long enough to see his partner's stomach ripped open and for the steaming entrails to wrap around his own face and body. He may have been paralysed from the neck down, but he felt the hot slimy entrails on his face and he tried to scream but to no avail as his body endured a massive heart attack brought on by Ajax's boots crushing his ribs inwards.

Ajax ignored the shaking heads from Petra and Stripe, simply savouring the buzz she had gained by killing two men in a barbaric manner.

..._...

Nox was not all that amused as she gazed down into the pit where two grotesque bodies lay beneath the spiked Minimi machinegun.

There were some stark differences between how the disciplined Predators operated and how the not-so-disciplined non-Predators fought and killed. To Nox, it seemed to be Ajax who was bloodthirsty, not the likes of her and her kind. However, the ends justified the means, at least for the moment.

"Come on, guys," Nox chided as she shepherded Glide and Rogue forward.

The young teenager knew full well what would happen to her should she allow Hit Girl's daughter, or Nemesis' daughter, for that matter, to do so much as graze a knee. But she had enjoyed the challenge and the trust, and she had seen Rogue training, and she had learnt how Rogue had killed two men in defence of Petra, just around a year or so before. The young girl had gained Nox's respect but that did not mean that Rogue could go off on her own. Therefore, Nox was keeping a wary eye on four youngsters as Tao Wu and Tao Tei caught up along with the rest of Alpha Two.

They advanced forward in pairs, watching for trouble as they went. Their movements were cloaked by the swirling smoke from grenades and burning vehicles. The stench of burning flesh tinted the warm breeze which blew in from the south.

The sounds of battle were all around them as a vigilante perimeter spread around the Casa Genovese.

Bravo One & Bravo Two

The twin machineguns of the WMIK pulverised the defensive machinegun position outside the security building which was only fitted with a single Minimi.

It was a simple enough maths equation. The WMIK could fire two 7.62-millimetre rounds for every 5.56-millimetre round the defenders could fire. The maths was most definitely on the side of Intrepid as she operated the fearsome ensemble with devastating effect. Bravo Two had successfully identified and defused six Claymore mines and the route had been declared safe allowing Nemesis in the WMIK to advance forward with Bravo One and Bravo Two following along behind.

Hit Girl and Shadow advanced up the curving stony roadway which led to a large flat car park and the final defences before the main building. To their left, a second machinegun barked out, the short but powerful bursts keeping their heads down as they hugged the ground, returning fire in equally short bursts to conserve their own ammunition. They had a distance to make up, but the best always got the harder missions, Hit Girl conceded with a grin beneath her mask. Over to their right, Alpha One was busy advancing on the right flank after a surprisingly large explosion which Hit Girl knew had come from a nasty Claymore mine. What other nasty tricks did that senile old bastard have up his geriatric Sicilian sleeve, she wondered as she fired off another burst from her P90 before she raced forward with Shadow while the pair were covered by Arbiter and Resolute with the WMIK-mounted twin Maximi machineguns making life very dangerous for the Sicilian defenders.

It was becoming increasingly obvious to all that Vito had many more men than they had originally anticipated, and things began to get very rough.

Within Casa Genovese

The old man was not pleased but he remained calm.

"What is going on, Emilio?"

"We are under attack, Don Genovese," Emilio Fanelli advised his boss, Vito Genovese.

"Then we will make them regret their attack on us," Vito's brother-in-law, Joseph Valachi spat.

"Who is attacking us?" Carlo Genovese, the forty-six-year-old eldest son of Vito, asked calmly.

"A woman with a weird voice," Emilio responded. "She spoke over a guard's radio; she said she was from Chicago."

"That fucking bitch!" Joseph roared.

"Calm yourselves," Vito cautioned the senior men of his family. "Frank?"

"Papa," Frank Genovese, Vito's thirty-eight-year-old son responded.

"Take Anna and the two children into the catacombs," Vito directed in a calm, steady tone. "Set up a defence there. Where are Anthony and Elena?"

"They are in Palermo, but they have been alerted to the attack and are even now assembling reinforcements."

"Will they have a nasty surprise for Hit Girl and her people?" Vito chuckled.

"Yes, Papa, four of them."

"Benissimo."

Alpha One

The security building was stout by design, and the doorway was built to resist any attack.

However, just because a doorway was there, did not mean that that was the only way in – at least, that was one of Hit Girl's many mottos which she had instilled in her teams. Therefore, Stormtide and Foxtail ran forward with handfuls of footlong lengths of steel. Around them, their colleagues were providing covering fire as they ran to the three-foot by two-foot window set into the stone wall a dozen feet to the right of the reinforced security door. A stream of bullets erupted out of a section of armoured window which had been opened to form a gun port. Again, they were going to bypass the armoured glass just as they had the reinforced door. The two girls ran up to the wall and squatted down beneath the window and they began to assemble their sections of steel. Each section of quarter-inch steel plate, about three inches wide and a foot long, was backed with an inch of C4 plastic explosive taped to the steel which in turn was attached to heavy duty adhesive. Each girl tore off the protective paper strip from the adhesive and they stuck each section to the stone wall around the window and flicked a switch on a radio detonator set into the end of each section. It took Foxtail to boost Stormtide high enough to arrange two of the strips over the top of the window but once they were done, they moved six feet away.

"Fire in the hole!" Foxtail warned over the radio as she pulled out a remote detonator trigger and she flipped up the safety switch, then she punched a red button.

There was an ear-shattering explosion and shards of stonework exploded out from around the window, but the majority of the explosion from the shaped charges had been directed inwards, and they had cut a vaguely rectangular shape around the armoured window frame which had fallen inside the building, crushing a security guard. With a yell, Foxtail and Stormtide leapt up and they lobbed a pair of flashbang grenades through the opening. As both grenades detonated with a loud double crump, a double flash illuminated the area like it was day, then the darkness returned as both girls dived through their hole and they came up with their MP5K submachine guns moving around the security office which was a bit of a mess, to be honest. Foxtail gunned down two men who crawled out from behind an overturned desk as Stormtide covered her friend.

The pair moved through a lockup area equipped with a single cell which was empty. Then came a barracks room with eight beds – all empty. It was in the final room that they found a surprise. Set into the floor beside the back wall, a steel trapdoor lay open, flat against the stone floor tiles. The tunnel was unexpected, but they figured that it led into the main house. Foxtail did not peek down the hole in case she got her head shot off; instead, she reported in.

"Hit Girl, Foxtail! I got something for you to see – in the security shack."

"Kinda busy, Foxy!"

"Get here, now!" Foxtail responded, not in the mood for fucking about as Piranha and Splinter joined her.

Hit Girl appeared two minutes later, leaping in through the gaping hole blasted through the wall.

"You couldn't have opened the door for me?" the veteran vigilante grumbled.

"Thought you liked the window?" Piranha shot back.

"Touché!" Hot Girl responded. "What have you got, Foxtail?"

Foxtail led Hit Girl along the inside of the building to where Splinter and Stormtide were covering the hole which vanished into the ground.

"I take back everything bad I've ever said about you, Foxtail," Hit Girl said. "You ready to go underground, Splinter?"

"Yes, ma'am!" the boy reported.

"Take Stormy with you and stay in touch."

As Hit Girl watched, Stormtide pulled out a steel mirror and she angled it so that she could see down the shaft which was about three feet to a side and which descended about twenty feet before it vanished off towards the main building some forty meters or so away to the north of where they stood. The shaft was lit by dim lighting from light fixtures spaced at three-foot intervals with light spilling into the foot of the shaft from the tunnel. Piranha deposited a radio repeater beside the hatch, and she gave Stormtide a second unit to place at the base of the shaft to ensure that they could keep in touch over their radios. Next, Splinter pulled out a small oval-shaped device which looked like a bar of soap. The boy dropped the device down the shaft, and it struck the concrete at the base of the steel ladder which was affixed to the side of the square concrete shaft. Next, he studied the image on the six-inch colour screen built into the left wrist of his combat suit. An image appeared of the base of the shaft and with a minor adjustment by touching the screen, the image turned to the right and he could see down the tunnel.

The tunnel was about five feet in height at the centre and two feet in width at the base. The floor was made up of stone slabs while the walls were bare rock, curving together to form the arched ceiling of the roughly hewn tunnel which had probably been there for decades. There was nobody in sight, but that did not mean that it would be safe. After a brief check of their equipment, Stormtide went first, descending the ladder swiftly but quietly and pausing six feet from the bottom to invert herself so that she could peer down the tunnel with her mirror before she silently dropped to the concrete floor and she covered the tunnel with her MP5K as Splinter followed her down the shaft. Splinter landed beside Stormtide and he pulled out a smoke grenade from his webbing. He pulled the pin and then gently rolled the device into the tunnel.

Two seconds passed and then copious amounts of smoke filled the tunnel, obliterating their movements as they lowered their NVGs and slowly moved into the tunnel.

Bravo One & Bravo Two

Hit Girl led her team onwards, leaving Stormtide and Splinter to investigate their tunnel.

They bypassed the shattered security building, taking a stone roadway behind the building and they moved onto the service building beyond which housed kitchens, the laundry, and staff accommodation. It was also the backdoor into the main building, which was just out of sight and down a slope, not too far away. Bullets flew in their direction, pinging off the ground and the walls of the security building, sending sharp shrapnel scything through the air making everyone very thankful for their body armour and combat suits which were tugged at by the deadly flying shrapnel. They returned fire with deadly accuracy, cutting down anybody who dared to expose themselves.

As they attacked from the left flank, Bravo Two attacked from the right. Nemesis had left the WMIK with most of her team, leaving just Termino and Tigercat manning the twin machineguns. She led her team around the front of the security building which was in the custody of Alpha One and they joined in the fight with Bravo One, confusing the Sicilian defenders as they came under fire from two distinct directions. Swiftly, the defenders were pushed back, enabling Arbiter and Psyche from Bravo One with Rage and Wildcat from Bravo Two, to reach the door to the building which was also an armoured door, but unlike the security building, they resorted to more direct action and each slapped a block of C4 to the door near to the hinges and the locks. Then they retreated, faces into the wall and they crouched down as Wildcat produced a detonator.

"Fire in the hole!" Wildcat called out over the radio as she flicked the safety switch and stabbed at the fire button.

The door was turned into a very fast-moving ram, even as it disintegrated. One man was turned to jelly as the door smashed into his body and then rammed him against a solid stone wall where his head was crushed. The four vigilantes jumped to their feet and they rushed through the doorway before the opposition could recover from the massive explosion. Psyche and Wildcat went first, side by side, their MP5K submachineguns raised to their shoulders. They found themselves standing in the remains of a commercial kitchen. Two men were struggling back to their feet, both of whom were armed – they never regained their feet as Psyche dropped them both with a single burst. Wildcat advanced past the once shiny aluminium work surfaces with Psyche beside her while Arbiter and Rage covered their backs. Then Wildcat yelled out a warning as an arm appeared through a tiled archway and lobbed something in their direction.

"Grenade!"

Everyone dived to the floor, including Arbiter who yelled out as something struck her on the head and then the grenade landed beside her left hand.

"Bloody hell!" the girl exclaimed as her wits kicked in and she swept up the grenade and swiftly threw it back from whence it had originated.

There was an almighty crash and a scream as human and masonry alike was torn asunder.

"Bet that knocked some sense into you, Arbiter," Rage grinned.

"Bloody hurt!" Arbiter responded.

"Good reflexes, though."

"Rage," Psyche growled. "When you've finished chatting up Arbiter, we have work to do."

"Yes, ma'am! Right away, ma'am!"

"Little shit!" Psyche groaned as she studied the newly decorated corridor leading out of the kitchens and she sidestepped some bloody goo which dropped from the ceiling. "Ewww!"

"Fire in the hole!" came a familiar voice over the radio and a side door to the laundry exploded inwards, a dozen feet or so over to their left.

"Love what you've done to the place," Hit Girl commented as she observed the bloody corridor.

"Don't look at me," Wildcat responded defensively. "It was Arbiter."

"Nice!" Hit Girl grinned at the slightly shaken Brit.

"She saved my life," Rage commented.

Hit Girl sighed. "We all make mistakes!"

Arbiter laughed as Rage sulked.

Alpha Two

Tempest and Nox were scanning the horizon out to the east, out over the Mediterranean Sea.

Each had a ninety-degree axis to monitor and both felt chills as they each detected targets inbound in their infra-red night vision binoculars and both yelled out a reserved warning within seconds of each other over the radio net.

"Rattler! One-zero-three degrees low!" Nox reported. "Rattler! One-zero-three degrees low!"

"Rattler! Zero-one-seven degrees low!" Tempest reported. "Rattler! Zero-one-seven degrees low!"

The 'rattler' code word indicated an attack helicopter inbound on their position. In their binoculars they could each make out two helicopters without lights inbound at speed, their engines radiated heat and were readily visible to their binoculars. More ominous were the two pods fitted to each machine, one per side.

Alpha One and Alpha Two were both in the open, so they rapidly moved into shelter while Jackal ran for the WMIK which mounted their only ground-based heavy weapons.

November One

NIGHTSHADE

At the warning codeword, all aboard the potent helicopter scanned the skies for the errant inbound aircraft.

Goshawk span up their four air-to-air missiles, two of which were carried on the tips of each weapons pylon. Chief was moving from side to side, staring out into the darkness. Then the FLIR turret mounted beneath the helicopter's nose detected heat, and the centre screen in the cockpit showed the enemy approaching.

"AS565 Panther attack helicopters," Scorpion confirmed. "I wonder where Vito got those beasts? Crew, we're going air-to-air, strap in!"

As Scorpion pulled the helicopter around to keep the enemy in sight, the closest helicopter began to descend just as green tracer fire erupted from the WMIK but the helicopter was descending too quick for the operator of the machineguns to correct quickly enough. The helicopter touched down on flat ground one hundred metres to the east of Casa Genovese at the bottom of the escarpment.

"Damn!" Scorpion exclaimed as she saw nine men jump out of the helicopter and she triggered the radio. "Hostile on the ground to the east, unloading."

"Laser on. Lasing. I have Brimstone lock on the helicopter," Goshawk reported as the laser targeting unit under the nose locked onto the grounded helicopter.

Scorpion triggered her radio again as she fired a Brimstone I missile from her right weapons pylon, advising those on the ground of a friendly air-to-surface missile launch.

"Nightshade: rifle!"

The missile flew off the rail and nosed downwards, accelerating hard before it struck and plastered the Panther attack helicopter across three acres of farmland in an expanding orange fireball.

"Target destroyed," Scorpion advised coldly as she went in search of the next helicopter.

Chief fired off a short burst from the port L20A1 machine gun as they came around, sending several men diving for cover as they ran from the destroyed helicopter.

Jackal, Termino & Tigercat

The WMIK was driving out from behind the security building with Jackal at the wheel and Termino at the twin Maximi machineguns mounted in the rear.

Tigercat was sighting for Termino and he directed the gunner to the northeast. The inbound helicopter had altered course the moment it had seen its partner come under fire from the green tracer rounds. Then it triggered off a salvo of five 2.75-inch unguided rockets from the port nineteen-round pod which streaked in and struck the ground all around the WMIK, explosive-charged shrapnel cutting through the lightly armoured vehicle and Tigercat screamed as white hot shrapnel ripped through his combat suit. Termino kept up a vicious stream of bullets focussing on the small helicopter which was not easy to see in the narrow front-on profile. The boy spun around, following the helicopter as it curved up and around to avoid the mountain. He could hear the twin turbines screaming as the helicopter came around for another strafing run. Jackal headed for cover behind the security building at a point where Termino could still see the helicopter coming but provided limited protection.

"Medic!" Termino yelled and Necis appeared from the darkness with Noxa and Custos.

While Custos watched the skies, Necis and Noxa wrestled Tigercat off the WMIK and onto the ground. It took precious seconds to calm the boy down and Necis yelled out as she pulled a piece of hot shrapnel from the combat suit which had only partly penetrated the boy's skin above the fourth rib on his left side. Thankfully, the hot metal had cauterised and sterilised the wound, but the wound was devastatingly painful for the eleven-year-old. A swift injection of morphine sulphate from an autoinjector, which every vigilante carried, and the boy swiftly passed out. Normally, the boy would have been airlifted out, but with three armed helicopters in the area, it would be suicide for NIGHTSHADE to risk a landing or even a winching. Instead, Necis made the boy comfortable behind the security building away from the WMIK and she covered him in additional body armour and a Kevlar blanket grabbed from the WMIK.

"Here he comes again!" Custos shouted and Termino turned his guns on the approaching gunship.

The AS565 Panther came straight in, ignoring the green tracer fire reaching up at it but then the tracers ceased as the twin Maximi machineguns went silent. Termino swore as he was joined by Noxa and the pair fought to reload the guns which had exhausted their two-hundred round belts. The Panther pilot was just seconds away from unleashing his rockets on the now-silent vehicle. Noxa could feel fear creeping into her movements as she knew that hell was about to be unleashed upon them.

"Nightshade: fox two!"

The warning call in their earpieces had Termino and Noxa feeling intense elation as they realised that they were not about to die in a hail of exploding rockets. Instead, they watched in morbid fascination as a fiery yellow streak raced through the darkened sky and struck the Panther which came apart in an explosively expanding cloud of orange fire, burning fuel, and burning bodies. Both could just make out the dull shape of a massive helicopter as it roared past the descending fiery wreckage of the Panther.

"Target splashed!"

Scorpion was two up!

November One

NIGHTSHADE

Scorpion was furious that while she had been messing around with the first pair of helicopters, the other pair had dropped off maybe eighteen people, all of whom appeared to be armed.

Goshawk was fully focussed on providing support to her pilot, watching the instruments, and ensuring that the next weapon was ready for instant launch. It was paramount to their continued survival that Scorpion was able to concentrate on flying, so Goshawk handled as much of the work as she could without becoming overloaded herself. There was no margin for error and those on the ground were depending on them getting it right and providing protection. They were also very aware that someone was injured on the ground, but they could not land to pick the injured person up without being destroyed, so the timely taking out of the remaining pair of helicopters was of increasingly paramount importance.

"I have a Panther coming in from the left, two hundred feet below us, range two thousand yards," Goshawk reported.

Scorpion turned NIGHTSHADE onto the same heading as indicated by the FLIR screen. She increased speed and then she dove directly for the incoming Panther which was less than half the size of the giant Merlin. To unnerve the incoming pilot, Goshawk was directed by Scorpion to switch on every external light and trigger off flares. Goshawk reached back to her right and she flicked six switches to switch on the navigation, anti-collision, and flood lights which all together would dazzle the other pilot. However, to add to his problems, Goshawk triggered off a pair of dazzlingly bright flares which added to the flood lights caused the pilot to misjudge his approach and he veered off, exposing his engine exhausts to Scorpion who triggered off her second AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missile of the night.

"Nightshade: fox two!" Goshawk radioed as she killed all the external lights, then a few seconds later, she added, "Target splashed!"

Scorpion turned the helicopter away from the expanding orange explosion which had once been an expensive helicopter in search of the final Panther.

Stormtide and Splinter

The two were very well matched.

Stormtide had an extra inch or so in height as she was a year older than the thirteen-year-old boy, however, she was very aware of the boy's otherwise hidden talents. She, like most of the other Predators had learned to their cost that Splinter fought to win without any rules and he was not averse to elbowing a girl in the breasts (if she had any) or the snatch if it would give him an edge. Stormtide had also learned to fight dirty as her only defence against the other Predators during her training, most of whom had disliked her. She had no problems being partnered with the boy as she could trust him, and she knew that their skills complimented one another's. As for Splinter, he had no problems working with a beautiful girl even if Shannon was off limits to everyone, both male and female.

The tunnel was an unknown, and neither liked unknowns. However, the owner of the tunnel was known which was a help. They knew that Vito Genovese was a sneaky old bastard who would not think twice about fitting boobytraps to any access routes into and out of his home. While the smoke covered their advance, it also covered up any signs of boobytraps which was a potential issue, but not an insurmountable one. The going was slow but methodical as Splinter crawled along, checking out the floor and the walls as he went. Stormtide kept a wary eye open for movement ahead or behind. Splinter paused as he studied a red splodge of paint which appeared to be just that, a splodge of red paint. But then he spied another directly across from it. The smoke hovered about eight inches above the stone floor which had allowed Splinter to see the red markings. He knew that they meant something, but what? Then he grinned as he identified a tiny trip wire six inches past the two twin red splodges. He also identified two further red splodges six inches beyond the trip wire – the red splodges were markers for the boobytrap.

"Hold!" he warned.

Very carefully, he traced the tripwire to the left and he found a nasty contraption derived from a spring-gun where a large-bore shotgun cartridge was fitted to detonate once the trip wire was released and a spring-loaded firing pin was triggered. The blast would have probably taken someone's foot off at the ankle. Splinter tenderly extracted the shotgun cartridge and then unhooked the tripwire allowing the mechanism to trip without anything more than a harmless metallic clack.

"We're clear," he muttered to Stormtide.

"Good to know."

They made it barely ten yards further on when bullets began to fly in their direction, or rather in a hose-like fashion being sprayed all over the tunnel in the hope of a strike. Instantly both moved into a crouched position together and they pulled shields off their backs and braced them together before them. The carbon fibre ceramic compound stopped every bullet fired in their direction – all hundred odd. Finally, the magazines of the submachine guns were empty and firing ceased.

"Sono morti; nessuno poteva sopravvivere a quello!"

Neither understood much Italian or Sicilian, but they both understood the first two words. Neither of them was dead, so the pair moved to make their attackers very aware of that fact. The gunfire had destroyed all the lighting for the final section, so both vigilantes lit off their eyes. The four gunmen at the end of the tunnel were appalled to see two sets of eyes materialise out of the smoky gloom. One set was a luminous green while the other set was orange. The sight unnerved the men who could not understand how anything earthly could possibly have survived the contents of four full thirty-round magazines.

"Siamo morte!" hissed a horribly distorted voice which echoed out of the stone tunnel and the four horrified men scrambled to insert full magazines into their submachine guns.

However, there was no time as each man felt intense pain in their necks and their hands dropped what they were holding and they each tried in vain to staunch the torrent of hot blood which flooded out of their carotid arteries. One man seized hold of what had impaled him, only to cause the blood in his neck to escape all the faster, thus hastening his death. But the last image the man had as he clumped to the floor was of the small titanium throwing knife he held in his hand.

"I think they got the point," Stormtide chuckled as they each stepped over the four bloody corpses.

Splinter simply shrugged as he followed Stormtide.

Bravo One

From the kitchens, entrance into the house proper was relatively easy, Hit Girl thought.

There was a curving stone staircase which led downwards into the ground a dozen feet before opening into a small pantry which in turn led into a dining room. The place was not exactly opulent, but it was comfortable, and the electronic devices were all up to date, mostly. A woman appeared in a doorway at the opposite end of the dining room and she was swiftly dispatched by a bullet from Shadow's weapon. Together, Hit Girl and Shadow moved on, both thinking the exact same thing as other members of Bravo One with elements of Bravo Two joined them.

"This is too damned easy," Shadow hissed.

"That bastard has something up his sleeve," Hit Girl agreed.

As they approached the very centre of the house where there was a large living area, Hit Girl knew that it was a trap, but not one she regretted walking into, not by a long shot. There were five people present in the room, all but one of whom was openly armed. Hit Girl recognised several generations of the same family. There was Anthony Genovese (who went by Geno when in America as he had done when Psyche had almost fallen off the Willis Tower during a fight with the bastard), standing next to his father, and Carlo Genovese. Also standing with Anthony was his wife, Elena Genovese and behind her was Joseph Valachi brother of Anna Genovese who had been the mother of Angie D'Amico nee Genovese, mother of that fucked up lunatic, Chris '...the-fucking-bastard-who-shot-me-three-fucking-times-in-the-fucking-chest-then-left-me-for-fucking-dead...' D'Amico. Yeah . . . she had still not got over that, almost eight fucking years later! Then there was one other who sat comfortably in a wicker chair surrounded by his family.

"Welcome, Hit Girl."

Hit Girl glared down at the old man as if she and he were the only two people within a hundred miles.

"Hello, Vito – care to dance?"

"You dare to tango with me, Hit Girl?"

"Oh, I dare."