They left the tan SUV up in the hills, near the shallow graves and headed back to town in the truck, making better time now that Marius was more familiar with the trail. As they approached the train station, Nadia sent a text message to Malik, calling him and his men to the train station. Once more Hunter and Aswon climbed the drainpipes and columns onto the roof and settled into overwatch positions, and Tads stood ready. Just like Azer's team, Malik and his crew arrived without suspicion, piling out of a white panel van and standing in an arc, looking around the darkened square. Tads waited for the driver and Malik to get out as well, and then released another blast of power – and just like the first squad, they dropped noiselessly to the floor with their brains shut down from the assault. Kai looked over at her, checking for nosebleeds, but she smiled and gave him a thumbs up.
"No problem, not this time."
Marius searched the vehicle for transponders, trackers or navigation devices, but found nothing like that at all – which was both good and bad. What he did find was a catalogue of minor faults, poor maintenance, rust and filth that had him chuntering and muttering to himself and casting dirty looks on the unconscious bodies that the rest of the team loaded into the back of the van. Aswon held their cred-reader in his hand, and one of the goons SINs in the other.
"Hey, Kai? We have sleeping goons, and valid thumbprints. We have a cred-reader. We have a certified stick to transfer the funds onto. Are we robbing them blind?" The team stopped what they were doing and looked at Kai, watching as he gazed into the distance for a moment, considering the options.
"No. Leave the in their account, all except the leader. Take the captain for everything he has." Aswon shrugged, and shoved most of the IDs into a bag and handed them to Nadia along with the subscriber chips from the phones and went to work on the Captains ID, pulling a thumb up onto the reader to authorise the transfer.
"Not that I think I have an issue with that decision – but I am curious as to why?"
"Well, the captains are in it up to their necks – they know what they're doing, they're guilty as sin, and they're all part of the ruling family. So no regrets there. But these goons – maybe they're pressganged into it. Maybe they've got no choice as to what they're doing, and it was join up or be preyed upon. And maybe some of them have wives and kids – and we'd be clearing out their accounts too. And I don't want to be the person that steals a kid's food money, or puts a family on the street because we raided their savings."
Aswon stopped what he was doing and stared at Kai.
"You know, I hadn't thought of that. You're right – we definitely shouldn't be taking money from their account. Besides, this guy had just over four thousand in his account, so I guess any more would be greedy!"
Hunter was busy cataloguing the weapons and ammo, and had a small stash to transfer over to their truck.
"What's the tally, Hunter?"
"Not great Kai, more cheap rubbish, not well looked after either. Lots of these lightweight pistols, and a lot of ammo for it – all cheap stuff, though. And some more of these shotguns – they seem like an import copy of a decent enough gun, but these are made of thin and weak material. Slow to operate and a bitch to maintain properly. But we do have plenty of ammo for them, so they're good to leave behind with people like Rusudan, I suppose – any gun is better than no gun."
"And I guess, if they're dirty and stuff, they're useful to teach how to clean a gun with…"
They piled up the bodies in the white van, and looked at them for a moment.
"So. Um… I'm guessing these are all bad guys, so we're not going to let them live?" Shimazu looked around at the others, raising the thought they were all having. Tads looked relieved that someone else was raising the point, and she didn't have to.
"Yep. But let's make it clean. Earlier was…. Well, let's not do that again." Kai stared at the unconscious bodies, and his mouth worked for a moment silently, as if he was working out how to say something else. The others stood silent and watchful – wondering if he was going to explain the unusual activities of the first interrogation. But, after a few moments, he closed his mouth, and his jaw set, the muscles tense on either side of his face. "Just make it clean."
Shimazu drew his knife, but then stopped, tilting his head to one side. He lowered the blade, and then turned away from the pile of bodies and headed to the truck instead, rooting around in the supplies there for a few minutes. When he returned, it was with a handful of large plastic bags and some medical tape. One by one he put the bags over the heads of the recumbent goons, and applied a quick orbit of tape, sealing the bag around their necks. As the bodies continued to breathe – driven by autonomic responses - the bags started to contract and expand, slowly misting up with the moist air from their lungs. He saw a quizzical look from Aswon as he passed and felt the need to explain. "Not quick, but painless – if they're knocked out still, they'll just fade away as the CO2 levels rise, and it won't leave any visible marks or wounds, and no forensic evidence either." Aswon saw the sense in it, but gave a little shudder anyway, and moved away.
With plastic bags sealed over all of their heads, the bodies were shoved into the van, and the team climbed aboard both vehicles, then started them up and headed north out of town again, leaving the square outside of the train station quiet, dark and cold, with no sign of the abduction visible. On the astral plane, all that could be seen was a fading aura of fear and tension given off by the goons in the split second they were ambushed – with not even a trace of the spell used to attack them after Tads' careful efforts to clear up her spell signature.
On the way up to the rocky defile, the team chatted over the radio, happy that even the basic encryption would be enough to keep them secure from any passing receivers.
"So, how are we going to deal with the last group – take them out near the supermarket they're guarding, with a direct assault?" From the tone of voice, it sounded like Hunter favoured a direct response, rather than another lure. "If Aswon and I can get into positions on the roof, we can easily drop half a dozen or more in the first couple of seconds of an assault."
"Certainly we have the range advantage over them, and they don't seem skilled. I would concur that an assault would be pretty devastating – but that means we have gunfire, even suppressed or silenced gunfire, in the middle of town. And I would not put it beyond these people to grab anyone nearby to use as a human shield." They could hear the disdain in Aswon's voice clearly over the digital radios. "I would not wish anyone else to be hurt as a result of our actions."
"No, I agree. If we do it, and it goes well – great. But I think there's too much chance of something going a little wrong or getting complicated. The last thing we need is say one of them managing to get into the supermarket, or another building, getting on the phone and calling for help. So far – well, let's look at it from their point of view." Kai paused for a moment, sitting back in his seat and counting off points on his fingers.
"First of all, the guys in the house all disappeared pretty cleanly, and the house was on fire – it didn't burn as much as we wanted, but that's gotta be confusing as hell to them. Nearly a dozen of them disappeared, with no idea what's going on. And they probably don't want to circumvent their boss, especially given how he treated them, it seems from the messages, and report in to Shirvan with a lot of unknowns. So they've been scrabbling round to find answers. The locals know that something is up – but mostly that a dozen of them and their boss is missing, and a house burnt out."
"Now we've got another half dozen or so, and another captain or capo, or whatever they want to call themselves – just disappeared. They might have told the other captain they had a call from the boss, which would reassure them, but then they've gone quiet. So whoever is left is just wondering why more and more of their organisation is going silent. Are they busy? Are they under attack? Is something going on they're not involved with? Are THEY the ones under suspicion? We have to think about it from their point of view, and add in a healthy dose of paranoia and distrust – these are criminals, and not too bright considering how they're treating people in the town."
"Overall, I think it's best to go with the same plan, one more time. We've seen it work, we know what we're doing. It's very low risk, high reward and there's no reason not to take advantage of that. Let's play it safe." As Kai finished speaking, they heard Nadia pipe up.
"I've been looking through their phones with Hunter, and adding their messages to the database, filling in blank spots. I would agree – they have been communicating between the captains, and when we sent the message from Ulvi's phone, there was a flurry of communications. They seemed reassured to have heard from him, there was some speculation about what was going on, and it seems they have assumed that Ulvi was out chasing whoever threw a firebomb through his window."
"Ok, let's take advantage of that. Can you drop a message from the captain of this lot, to the last remaining captain. Tell him 'wow, it's all got messy, we might need you and your boys for the cleanup. The boss is really mad, we're going to need cleaning materials', that kind of thing. But however he'd write it." Nadia and Hunter nodded at Kai, then got their heads together, pulling up the messages from Azer and examining his vocabulary and writing style, before Nadia wrote a message and sent it through to him. It was only a few seconds later that they heard the phone buzz and a snort from Nadia as she read the comment with amusement.
"Not a message, but an animated image. It's a turtle or something, pulling its head into its shell and hiding. Obviously understands the boss is very angry and that's more scary than anything else that could be happening."
They felt the truck slow, and looked around them, then realised they had arrived at the bottom of the trail. Marius pulled up at the side of the road, and Shimazu pulled in the white van behind him. There was no way the white van was ever going to make it up the rocky trail intact, so they cross-loaded the bodies to the trailer for the last half-kilometre, leaving the white van at the side of the road. It looked out of place, but the roads were so quiet around here, the chances of it being found were very slim.
As they moved the bodies over, they saw some evidence that one of them had thrashed around a little – the bodies desire for oxygen forcing the limbs to spasm and clench in a feeble attempt to remove the covering over their head. With their positioning though, there had been no chance of this happening, and as Shimazu had said there was no forensic evidence left or spilled. They shifted the cooling bodies quickly, and then mounted back up, Marius easily driving the heavy truck up the pitted and rocky defile. Boulders that would have gutted the underside of the panel van were barely noticed by the six by six wheeled truck with its metre of ground clearance and they made good time up the twisting canyon. As they emerged into the open space they'd used before, they saw the reflection of several sets of eyes from the scrubby bushes at the edge of the clearing, the carrion feeders having heard the roar of the diesel engine long before they arrived.
They quickly moved the bodies out, placing them near the rest.
"Bury them, or leave them out here Kai?"
"Leave them for now, Aswon – I'm sure the scavengers will just dig them up anyway as soon as we're gone, and it's probably easier to deal with them all later on and bury them properly – maybe with a spirit to help or something. Let's not waste time now, we need to take advantage of the situation to move fast on the last captain."
It didn't take long to lay out the bodies, and turn the truck around. After a quick discussion, they decided to take the tan SUV back down with them, and split up again at the bottom of the defile. They'd take all three vehicles back to town, and abandon the white van near a house somewhere, then proceed with the truck and the SUV. That way, they had a vehicle they could dump, and wouldn't have to crossload the bodies again to get them up to their grave site.
On the way back into town, another discussion started up, with Tads starting the ball rolling.
"Much as I don't want to do this, I'm guessing we're going to have to move on to Shirvan next and seek out the next people up the chain, to put an end to them as well?" They could hear the distaste in her voice clearly, as before the digital radios coming through crystal clear and with great fidelity. "If we don't, they're just going to chase us and come after us."
"Actually, no – I think you're dead wrong there." Hunter cut across swiftly, before anyone else had a chance to respond. "We don't. We should stay the hell away from Shirvan entirely. What Kai said earlier was spot on. We're approaching this with perfect knowledge, and they aren't. Hang on… do you know what I mean by that?"
"No – I don't a clue what you mean."
"Right, let me explain. It's something that comes up a lot in surveillance and such like. Um… ok – you ever seen a game like chess, or draughts?" There was a pause over the radio, as Hunter waited for Tads to agree. "Right – that's a game with perfect knowledge. You get to see where all of your pieces are, and all of their pieces are. You have perfect knowledge of the game board, and the situation. Provided you understand the rules and strategy, it's about how good you are as a player – that's where the surprise comes from. You can't be surprised by a piece suddenly appearing from off the board or something like that. It's not how the game works. Now compare that to poker – remember that guy teaching Aswon how to play, the one we got out of Batumi. When playing poker, you have knowledge of what you have in your hand – but you don't know what they have in their hand, and you don't know what cards are face down on the table, depending on what type of poker you're playing. So while you have to know the rules of the game and understand strategy, you also have to look at the players."
There was another pause, and Aswon and Shimazu, driving the white van and the SUV respectively both imagined Tads nodding in understanding, a smile on their faces as they listened to Hunter explain the theory to them.
"Right – so as far as we're involved tonight, we're more like playing poker. We sort of know the rules, but we're not sure what pieces are in play – that's why Nadia and I have spent so much time working on this database. Now we know almost all of the information about who is involved. But we have to remember that they know almost nothing. They've maybe seen the truck around, or had reports. They might have a really bad description of "some guys". But we have names, addresses, favourite foods, all sorts of stuff. We know exactly what we've done tonight – they've only seen bits and pieces, and have no idea why stuff is happening."
"In fact, it's worse for them – as we're inside their comms network, feeding them bad information, that sounds legit. They're now working on a very flawed logic tree, that is going to bite them in the ass really hard. What they think they know is all wrong. They think the boss is handling a situation, rather than being fertiliser. They think the other captains are helping the boss out – instead of being fertiliser. They think everyone else is alive – rather than them being the last ones alive that AREN'T fertiliser. Yet."
"Ok, I understand that. But then surely we still need to deal with Shirvan?"
"No – if we can get a clean sweep tonight, then all these people just… disappear. The guy's dad in Shirvan – let's say they talk a couple of times a week. After a few days, he's going to get curious, maybe come over – and everyone has just vanished, into thin air. The trail is getting cold by then, there's nothing to follow up. Just an absence of mafia dudes, a burnt-out house, and no information. Very hard to investigate, especially without proper resource. And it's during that time that we start investigating them – information is power. That's when we're scouting Shirvan, learning about their organisation – if that's the way we're going. Or we just disappear for a while ourselves, and leave them nothing to find."
The radio went quiet, as people digested what had been said, and Hunter sat back quietly, a grin on his face, as the vehicles closed in on the station. Nadia got a nod from Kai, and sent the next message, from Ulvi's account to Royal, the last surviving captain, telling him to get to the train station at once, with bleach and cleaning supplies.
They pulled up in the square, positioning the truck around the back of the good shed again and out of the way, and with the white van and tan SUV at the front of the station buildings as obvious lures. Once more Hunter and Aswon climbed up onto the roof of the buildings with their weapons, while Tads and Shimazu waited in the bait vehicles ready to spring the ambush. Kai, Nadia and Marius sat in the truck, with Marius watching the view of the area from the orbiting surveillance drone, with his Dalmation fuelled up and idling on the launch rail, ready to go at a moment's notice.
They waited, calm and collected. The cars would arrive, they'd get out, Tads would blast them, they'd collect the bodies, take them into the hills, bury them, and that would be the end of it. Clockwork. Deep calming breaths.
They heard the engines first, then saw the lights – two battered and old looking cars drove into the square on one side, pulling around in a gentle arc to stop a few metres away from the white panel van. As they stopped, the doors opened, and the occupants swung their legs out, pushing themselves upright and looking around them at the still and quiet square. There were four of them in the vehicle closest to the van, three in the one further away. By looks of things, Royal was the passenger in the car with four, with a total of six of his men.
Tads leant forward, while Shimazu leant back, making sure he wasn't in her field of view. She checked, making sure that she could see all of them, and took a deep breath, reaching for the power to gather into another stun ball that would lay them all low. Reached…. Reached…. And found nothing.
In front of her, a collection of dustmotes swam through the air, caught and highlighted by the beams of light from the two cars. They coalesced into a pattern, and then in front of her was the ghostly astral form of an elk, highlighted edges picked out in stars, the shadows formed by the inky blackness of the night. A large pair of liquid eyes looked at her, and she felt a wash of disapproval flood over her, her own eyes welling up in empathy as the astral being looked at her. Paralysed for a moment she just stared at the manifestation of her avatar, her spirit guide. And then, with a choking sound, she felt her magic drain away, leaving her feeling empty, hollow and bereft of power.
Struggling to hold back tears, she managed to hit the transmit button on her radio, a flood of conflicting emotions raging through her. Her voice wobbled, threatening to reveal tears of sadness and loneliness as she squeaked out a message.
"Plan B."
There was a heartbeat of stillness. Then Kai's voice came back, solid and clear.
"BANANA!"
With a whoosh the drone catapulted from the launch rail as commands issued with lightning speed flashed through the rigger interface to the waiting cybernetic systems. The engines rammed to the red line as fuel was dumped into the turbine and the drone vaulted into the air, the weapons already swivelling down and to the right to get a lock on the targets below. Barely a moment later, the rest of the team sprang into action.
Next to Tads, Shimazu sprang forward and pushed the door open, spinning through it and drawing his blade as he pirouetted around the obstruction. His arm extended out, the blade like a living extension of his hand and the tip of the sword arced down and into the flesh of the closest target. Slicing through the armoured clothing with so little effort as to be irrelevant, the sword cut deeper and deeper into the target as his momentum drove him forward. The shallow cut at the shoulder turned into a blow that almost cut through the whole body at the hip, spilling blood and guts out onto the cold cobblestones in a hot torrent that caused faint steam to rise.
Hunter fired a single shot, taking one of the men from the second car at the base of the neck with a clean and deadly precision, before twitching the gun barrel up and swapping targets to the second. His fingers stayed wrapped around the handgrip, steadying the weapon and keeping it under tight control – instead the firing command was a mental twitch as the targeting caret drifted over the centre of mass of the driver. Another silenced shot quietly barked from his weapon and another round punched through the spinal column with ease, dropping the body to the ground. On the other roof, Aswon aimed his Purdey at the third occupant, lining up his sights carefully. As the head started to twist towards the sound of combat, he gently squeezed the trigger, feeling it break at 700 grams. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder, but Aswon was already swivelling his head left, away from the sight and looking for the next target. He instinctively *felt* that the shot was good, and didn't wait to see the impact. The shot was indeed good, punching through the temple of the man as he turned to look at the other noise, and the round penetrated his skull and caused devastating damage.
The truck doors burst open as Nadia and Kai dropped to the ground, submachine gun and taser in hand, and started to run to the corner of the goods shed, ready to add their support to the combat, and Marius jumped into the Dalmation, his view swinging wildly from side to side as the drone rocketed through the air on thrusters operating at 105% of their rated maximums.
In the car, Tads shrank back from the astral presence, her voice stammering quietly – almost inaudibly, as she looked at her avatar in bemusement and confusion.
"But…. But they're evil. Bad men. They hurt for fun."
Outside, Shimazu continued his spin, the blade slicing through the air towards Royal's neck. The tip of the blade scythed through the darkness, droplets of blood exploding off the end in an arc as the force of the strike flung them away from the pivot point. Royal raised his pistol using the tip of the gun to intercept the blade. A shower of sparks erupted from the weapons as the steel scraped down the top slide, neatly cutting through the front slide, scraping off paint and then severing Royal's thumb as Shimazu twisted his wrist to raise the blade.
Aswon suddenly found himself without a clear target – Royal and Shimazu were a blur of melee as they twisted and dodged, swaying to try and gain advantage. The remaining two goons had ducked down between the cars, scrambling for cover and trying to work out what was going on. Hunter, further around the roof, had a clear shot at the front goon and took advantage of this, sending a rifle round through his shoulder and the guy flattened himself against the side of the car, and then Hunter followed up with a second shot through the crown of his skull, dropping him instantly.
Nadia ran around the corner and then threw herself into a skid, sliding across the ground on her hip, her submachine gun pointing towards the square. She squinted under the cars, and aimed the gun at a set of feet, then pulled the trigger. A long stream of fire spat from the gun, with the muzzle climbing uncontrollably. On her side, the exhaust gas which would normally eject out of the bottom of the gun and force the muzzle to climb instead pushed the barrel from side to side. Between her motion across the floor and her inexperience, she fluffed the shot completely – the stream of fire coming well clear of her intended target. She missed so badly in fact that the first of the ten rounds fire shot straight between Shimazu's feet. Rounds two, three and four impacted into Royal's left foot, tearing through flesh and bone alike and rupturing out of the other side of his boot in a series of massive exit wounds, while the remaining rounds punched into the wheel or beyond the car completely.
The Dalmatian banked hard, and the targeting cursor swung wildly over the scene, but Marius feathered one engine, slewing the cursor back over the last remaining mafia trooper, and then the twin assault rifles fired, sending two three-round bursts into his torso with precision and control, forming two parallel rows of three holes from his waist up to his chest.
Royal collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from his ruined foot and his pistol dropped. Both hands clutched at his ankle, squeezing and trying to compress the joint to stem the flow of blood, whilst he shouted in Azerbaijani. Hunter called over the radio.
"He says he surrenders, don't shoot, and he'll tell us anything. Last one left, by my count."
Kai continued to close on the scene, running around the edge of the square and catching up with Shimazu, who had his sword pointing down at Royal, who remained on the floor, pale and sweating from pain, clutching at his ruined foot.
"Tads, we could use some healing here. I think this guy is going into shock."
"GO AWAY. I'M BUSY!" came the snapped answer, in a voice most unlike her usual tone. When Shimazu turned back, he was just in time to see Kai pulling the combat knife out of Royal's throat, and to see the body flump to one side, blood pooling around the body.
"Never mind, doesn't matter…"
In the car, Tads continued to try and reason with her avatar, reminding it of the things they had seen, the information they had gathered about this group of thugs and bullies. The avatar still stared at her, but after thirty seconds, it drifted backwards out of the car, and over to one of the bodies on the floor. Tads followed it, and saw the avatar looking down at the body, then back up to her, repeating this several times. She saw the large eyes well up with tears, glimmering lights dancing in the darkness as the astral power shifted and moved in front of her. It dropped slightly, and as it descended lower, it faded and dissipated, until it was impossible to spot just at the point where it would have touched his chest. Tads stood over the body, looking around frantically for her totem. What did it mean? What did it want? Why couldn't it just tell her, mentally, what she had done wrong, or done to offend it?
With the coast clear, the rest of the team converged on the square, and started to clear up. Fortunately Royal's team had indeed bought cleaning supplies – so they went to work tipping bleach and cleaning fluid all over the pools of blood and spray of body parts that were the result of the short and very one-sided gun battle. Hunter spent a few minutes looking for his ejected cartridges, eventually finding them all – and scowling at Aswon who merely tapped the small bag that was attached over the ejection port of his rifle with a knowing smile.
They collected the weapons up, adding another set of seven pistols and seven shotguns to their collection – it appeared that Royal had the most heavily armed team, or he'd raided some kind of stash after being told there was 'trouble', as along with the guns there was a box with eighty shotgun cartridges and nearly two hundred rounds of pistol ammunition. All of this was added to their collection, and roughly sorted by grade or quality in Nadia's spreadsheet.
Shimazu and Aswon grabbed the pair of old Ladas, and drove over to the burnt-out house where they'd started the evening, dumping one of them to the side of the property and then spraying the inside over with bleach, before returning with the other to the train station. By the time they got back they found that Kai had raided Royal's account for another three thousand Nuyen, but again had left all the grunts' credsticks alone. Tads was still crouched over one particular body, studying it carefully, with a SIN held tightly in one hand.
Kai moved over to her, and lightly touched her on the shoulder. She pushed herself up from the crouch she'd been in, and turned to face him, holding the SIN up in her hand.
"This one is called Vusal Aliyeva. We will be investigating this one. I don't know why, but he's important. Important enough that my Avatar didn't want him dead. Important enough that my magic was taken away from me."
Kai's eyes went wide as she told him of her loss of power, and he nodded in agreement with her. He reached out and gently plucked the SIN from her fingers, and inserted it into their reader, pulling up the basic details, then calling for Hunter to grab his computer and a map of Shirvan. After some searching, they matched up the address on his SIN to a low class part of Shirvan, on the border of a heavy industrial area – what looked like the 'poor' end of town.
As the rest of the team finished with their cleaning tasks or piling bodies into the tan SUV, they drifted over to see what had upset Tads so much and listened in to her rambling explanation. It didn't help that *she* didn't know exactly what had happened or why, but she made it emphatically clear to them that for some unknown reason, this particular mafia goon was somehow important to her, or her magical avatar, and needed to be looked into.
"Can you still cast other spells, or is it your stun spell you can't cast anymore?"
"I don't know, Shimazu. All I know was that when I reached for the power, it wasn't there. All I could see was my avatar, before me, looking sad and disappointed." Her comment seemed to split the team in two – Aswon, Kai and Shimazu all changed expression to one that combined equal parts awe, fear, sadness and curiosity, whilst Hunter, Nadia and Marius all looked blank, not really having a reference point or understanding of what that actually meant.
"Maybe you could try casting an illusion, just a small one, to see if you can? You can work out what you can cast then, and what you can't?"
"No, Shimazu! This isn't some kind of science experiment. I've upset Elk in some way – I don't poke her, and try to work around her. It's rude and disrespectful, and I won't do it."
"Well how about spirits then, you could try summoning a new spirit, and see if that works?"
"You're not listening to me! No! NO! Until I can work out what is going on, and why, I'm not going to offend my totem!" Her voice rose and her accent became thicker, passion and emotion running through her and the occasional word came out in a strange language rather than English and she forgot to mentally translate. The rest of the group had gone silent, and now even the non-magic users could appreciate that she was really upset about something. More importantly, they'd cottoned on to the fact that at least for the moment she considered herself unable to use magic at all – no spirits to conceal the vehicle whilst they hid, no illusions to cloak them during a pursuit, no healing to repair damage after a fight. They exchanged sober glances with each other, not liking this at all.
They drove the second Lada off to another part of town to dump it, then met back at the train station again. Marius informed them that he'd been listening in for police radios, to see if any of the gunfire had been noticed or reported – but he wasn't even picking up a carrier wave any more, let alone any transmissions. Shimazu was now even more convinced that this meant there were only a few part-time cops on duty in the town – and they were probably in bed now, with their radios turned off and the batteries on charge.
As they were making preparations to leave. Shimazu had a quiet word with Nadia about the shooting incident earlier – finding out who she had been shooting at, and just how close he'd come to losing a foot. Once the chill had left his spine, he reasoned with her, explaining just how irresponsible she'd been and how close the rounds had come to taking him out, instead of the bad guy. Initially she seemed defiant and unapologetic, but after he continued to talk to her calmly and quietly, she gradually relaxed. When she realised he was trying to teach her, rather than punish her, her defiance evaporated and she listened carefully as he discussed tactics with her. Halfway through, Hunter joined the debate, adding his insights and discussing things like distraction and pinning fire, suppressive fire or sometimes even the wisdom of being prepared to wait in case backup really was needed. Nadia listened to them both, nodding and walking through the scene with them, gaining some insight.
They headed back up to the hills with the latest batch of bodies, dumping the white panel van at the side of the road and cleaning it, before taking the SUV to the top of the defile again – once more scaring off the scavengers that had been plucking and tearing at the corpses. Kai pulled Tads to one side of the clearing, away from the others.
"I want you to ask a spirit to come. I know, I know – hang on a minute and let me finish. Don't command, ask. Beseech. Beg if you have to. In a way, Shimazu is right – we need to know where we stand, though I'm totally with you in trying not to scientifically analyse how much you might have upset someone. So, ask, politely. And we'll take what we're given and learn from it – but I'm asking because we need it, not because we want to test."
Tads grumbled a little, but then concentrated. Kai's words made sense to her – she'd seen how much effort was involved in digging even shallow graves, and how easily the scavengers had uncovered bits of body anyway to ravage. To her pleasant surprise, a spirit appeared before her, the astral form of a small set of boulders piled into a cairn thrusting up out of the ground.
"Thank you. I'd ask you to take those bodies over there under the ground, into your domain. Let them feed the ground with their bodies and fluids, let the worms eat them, and grow strong. Let them be part of the natural cycle, and do some good. Take all of them, and draw them down into you, and hide them. By then we will be long gone from your domain, and I will have nothing more to ask of you."
She saw the figure slowly descend back into the earth, and a few moments later the ground quivered under the first body, the grains of sand and earth vibrating and quivering as if someone had just turned the bass all the way up. Slowly the body started to descend into the earth, lowering as the ground shook and reshaped underneath it and vanishing from sight. Tads breathed out a sigh of relief at the realisation that her magic was not gone after all, just affected to some degree, for some time.
"I'm gonna go sit in the lodge and talk to my avatar some more. I'll see you later." Kai nodded at her and watched her head for the trailer, and let out a sigh of relief himself. He'd been worried that she'd kick up more of a fuss than she had, and was primed to argue with her. He walked over to the bodies, watching as the second one started to descend into the earth, just like the first. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small collection of stones, and walked along the line, putting stones at the bottom of each grave. It wasn't much of a mark, but it seemed important to him, in some way.
In the trailer, Tads strapped herself in thoroughly, attaching the webbing harness to the lash down points to prevent her being flung around if the trailer bounced around or had to take hard corners. Once secure she sat in the middle of her lodge – in fact, she couldn't move from the middle of her lodge – and started talking, describing the activities of the goons to her avatar. She wasn't sure if the avatar was listening, or if it cared – but she realised as she talked that *she* felt like she was justified, based on their actions, and that gave her a small amount of comfort.
As Shimazu swung the SUV around, the front driver's wheel slipped off a rock and into a massive rut, dropping the vehicle a good 30cm. A loud crack could be heard, and the vehicle stopped suddenly, the engine dying almost immediately. Surveying the damage, they found the wheel almost disconnected from the chassis, the guillotine like edge of the rock having almost cut through the steering rods and drive shaft. Whilst technically salvageable, it would require a lot of time and effort, so they abandoned the SUV too, transferring everyone back into the truck except Tads who was in the trailer, and they set off, bouncing down the defile and then back onto the only marginally smoother road at the bottom, heading back to town.
By the time they had made it back to town, for the fourth time that night, Nadia and Hunter had finished working their way through the remaining phones, analysing the messages and links and adding the data to their chart.
"Kai – we've missed a couple. According to the records here, there's two remaining goons out there, one in Azer's team, one in Royal's. They're both sick apparently, and weren't up to being on shift tonight. What do you want to do about them?"
"Well, I think we ought to send them a message, tell them the boss is really angry, and they need to meet us at a certain location – then we do a drive by, taser their ass, and dump them with the rest. I don't want to leave any possible loose ends!"
They discussed a little more, checked the maps, and found a good location to use, then texted both of the numbers, and waited. After a few minutes, one of them responded – the man from Azer's group, whilst the other didn't. That's when they hit a stumbling block…
There was no way they could ask for directions to the safe house or location where the sick guys were hanging out – their captains should know that, and it wouldn't make sense to ask for it – in fact it would arouse suspicion. After a few minutes thinking, they came up with a plan. With much swapping of chips between burner phones, back and forth, they send a message to each of the sick guys saying they were sorting out a doctor, but the doctor was being sorted out by one of the other captains. Then they texted Azer's man from Royal's number – asking for the address, and vice-versa – gambling that while their own captain would know where they were, the other captains might not.
They waited a few minutes, anxiously, swapping the chips around in their burner phone. After a couple of minutes, they got an address come through, from the one in Azer's team. Still nothing from the one in Royal's team. They looked at the address, and found another large house in the south east part of the town, not far from one of the supermarkets the goons had staked out. Pressing the button on the intercom, they called Tads, asking her to come into the truck, where Kai showed her the map and quickly explained what they were after.
"So, if you're up to it – can you go down out of your body, and check the place out?" Tads nodded.
"I'll try." She made herself comfortable in the back, and then relaxed and tried to project. Her astral form shot out of her body, and she pirouetted and bounced with joy as the feelings of dread were left behind. It took her moments to get down to the house and identify it, then a few moments more to check it out. Ten seconds later she was back in her body, stirring to make her report.
"One person in the house, in a large room with several beds. No sign of magical alarms or defences at all. Person in bed actually looks ill, really quite ill – or he's a little bit ill and has lots of stuff in his body like Marius. Not sure which. But definitely on his own. Oh, and I've had an idea." She scrabbled to her feet and leant over to point at the map.
"Show me the first building, please, Hunter, the one we started at. Right, look here… see how big it is compared to all the rest of the buildings? Ok, now show me the one I've just been to. Great… see here, it's not quite as big, sure, but it still looks bigger than all the rest of the nearby houses. So how about we look near the third supermarket for big houses, to see if that's where they set up their base?"
They found three large houses near the supermarket, any of which could have been a contender – but then pulled out the sat-nav from the first stolen truck and checked the stops it had been to recently, and narrowed it down to a single house. Tads went for a fly past and Nadia gave it a count of ten and then sent another text message to the phone demanding an update, but this time it took longer – much longer. It was nearly a minute before she came back to the truck and sat upright again, and she looked a little uncomfortable with something. They waited for her to speak, five sets of eyes and a video camera watching her expectantly.
"Well, no wards, no alarms, no magical issues at all. Not just one person though, there's two of them in there. Both appear mostly healthy. At first I thought that one of them was attacking the other – but they were doing something else. I think they heard their phone buzzing though, because the man seemed annoyed about something while he was… finishing. Didn't answer it though."
The others looked confused, though one or two of them slowly realised what she meant.
"After he was done though, he almost shoved her out of bed, and told her to go and make him coffee and a sandwich, then lit up a cigarette. But I'm pretty sure that while he is our man, he's not sick. He does have a random woman in the house though."
"Ok, let's just confirm this then, just to be sure. We'll drive down, and drop you off somewhere nearby, Hunter. Use that laser mike of yours, and we'll send another message, and confirm this is our guy." The truck started up and moved south, dropping Hunter off and waiting for him to get into position where he had line of sight to the window and could lay in the infra-red laser on the middle of the pane of glass.
"Nadia, one more message to him please. Let's put him on edge a little. Um… let's see. Something along the lines of 'answer your phone you idiot, if we find out you've been getting your dick wet or something, the boss will shoot you'. Yeah, something like that." Nadia thought for a moment, then quickly typed out the message and hit send. A moment later they got a thumbs up from Hunter, confirming that he could hear the message arrival on the phone.
Whilst they waited for Hunter to return, Aswon got Kai's attention.
"Your intention for these two. Are we terrorising them, using them to send a message, killing them – what?"
"We've come this far, I think we have to finish the journey. Make them all disappear, and leave the enemy with no clue as to what is going on." Aswon nodded – he didn't look happy about it, but there was understanding and acceptance on his face. They headed back to the first house, with Kai and Tads getting dressed up in their medical outfits and grabbing a bag of supplies.
"Ok, we get in, pretend to be doctors, take him out quietly, cleanly and without fuss, and we get out, ok?" Tads nodded and followed him to the front door, waiting for Kai to knock on it loudly. She scanned around the neighbourhood, seeing very little in the darkness – without streetlights it was unlikely anyone would spot them, and there were no cameras or security devices anywhere she could see. The face masks and surgical caps might not have been necessary after all, she thought.
They heard a low pitched voice calling from inside and tried the door, which popped open easily. Tads pointed the way to the bedroom, and Kai walked in smartly, flicking the lights on to try and take advantage of the sudden glare.
The figure in the bed winced in the bright light, struggling to make out the features from the people who'd entered the room. Against the bright light, he could vaguely see the white coats and the bags with medical symbols on the side, and gave a wan smile, mumbling something in Azerbaijani, before raising his arm and throwing the bedclothes back.
The surprise threw them both off balance and they paused, then took in the scene with horror. Around the man's groin was a mass of putrescent flesh, with open sores and wounds weeping a yellowy green fluid. A rash spread all up his chest, with lesions making their way as far as his neck and down to his knees. The flesh was sloughing off in places, white macerated tissue forming a boundary around darker necrotic flesh. As they stood there, looking at the man, the smell slowly seeped through their face masks, making their gorge rise.
Kai crossed the room, and waved for the man to lie back, and flicked the covers back over him, covering up the horrible mass of infection, and then mimed for the man to close his eyes. The sick man seemed only too pleased to comply, and lay there obediently waiting. Looking around, Kai saw his pistol lying by the side of the bed, just sticking out and quietly bent to retrieve it, then grabbed a pillow off the neighbouring bed and in one smooth motion pushed it down over the sick man's face and fired a round through it from the light pistol. The gunshot was still loud and sudden, even from the lightweight weapon – but the pillow stopped any back splatter or scatter. They paused for a moment, but the shot did seem to have been immediately fatal, the body just lying still.
They called the rest of the team in, but advised them not to go into the bedroom. Instead they kept on their medical gear and put an extra layer of gloves on, before untucking the filthy bedlinen from the bed and pulling them and the body onto a plastic sheet laid on the floor, carefully wrapping it up to contain the body and any fluids. Just before they sealed the last part of the sheet, they stripped off the outer gloves and added them to the cocoon, before securing the last flap. As they dragged the body out into the main room, Hunter stood waiting for Tads, pointing at a filthy photo that he'd found under some rubbish.
"Look at this, Tads. Next time your magic beasty comes back, share with it this picture of the family that used to live here. Might change its mind." Tads started to respond hotly, but Hunter spoke over her. "I know – it's not you, it's not your choice, and you know. But this is the second place it's happened, and I'm not putting money on it not being the same at the third. We know what they're doing, and it's not got any upsides. Sure, we break the law, and walk in the shadows – but we don't do this. You wanna let your moose friend know that too."
"Elk."
"Yeah, that's what I said." Hunter smiled at her, deflecting her anger and moved on, looking for weapons and supplies with the others. Tads did have a look at the photo though, seeing an average looking family playing with their kids in some wooded area, and then looked down at the dead body at her feet. He may have been a sad sight whilst sick, and deserving of some compassion – but she reminded herself of what he would quite happily do to the people in town and their families.
It didn't take long to load the body and work through the house, establishing that there was very little worth looting. Nobody wanted to go into the bedroom they'd found the man in, given the smell and the description of the disease which Kai had been only too willing to share with people.
They drove on to the next house in silence, not feeling the need to talk during the short journey. Kai once again went with his medical disguise, but this time Shimazu flattened himself against the outside wall with his sword drawn, just in case. From what they'd seen, this guy wasn't actually sick or ill at all, and he didn't want to take any risks with Kai's safety.
Tads went in astrally and checked the place out. The man and the woman were both laid in bed, talking quietly. She flitted back and told Kai, then went back to observe. As Kai knocked, the man slapped the woman on the buttocks, and pointed her at the door. She raced back and told Kai, who readied his taser. As she opened the door a crack to ask who was knocking on the door at gone two in the morning, he shoved the door open firmly and raised the taser, shooting her firmly in the chest. She twitched and spasmed, collapsing to the floor where she continued to writhe in response to the massive electrical overload to her system. They could hear a questioning noise from the bedroom in response to the thump as her body hit the floor.
Shimazu took off like a shot, and had burst through the door before the man had sat up in bed with a quizzical look on his face, and he found himself looking down the blade of the sword as Shimazu skidded to a halt next to him.
"I'll give you a chance, scum," Shimazu spoke quietly in English, not really caring if he understood, and reached with his free hand for the knife he'd used to execute people with earlier, tossing it onto the bed. At the movement, the man freaked – thinking the knife throw was an attack and instead of grabbing it and standing up to fight one on one – where his chances were slim to none, instead made a lunge for the gun at the side of his bed. Shimazu waited for his fingers to touch the gun before he struck, neatly thrusting the sword in through the ribs and cutting his heart in half.
The rest of the team bundled in, searching the place thoroughly while Tads and Kai assessed the woman. She appeared to have been quite badly hurt during the attack – two large burn marks on her chest from the taser and a noticeable bruise on the back of the head where it had struck the floor as she collapsed. They worked to tend her wounds, and without thinking about it, Tads began her magical healing chant. As the golden glow filled the room, Tads looked up with a beaming smile, that vanished almost immediately as she lost control of the spell from the distraction. Her grin became a frown as the light dissipated, and the woman lay still before her.
"Well, at least I can still do that. But I've lost my chance to heal her properly. She's better than when we started, but she's not fixed. She may need a clinic or proper doctor." Kai nodded, fiddling with supplies from his bag, and then quickly pulled down the woman's trousers and knickers, before thrusting something into her groin. "What are you doing, Kai!"
"Testing. Want to make sure she's not carrying the same thing the other guy had, otherwise we could all be in trouble." He waved his hand at the rest of the team, working their way through the search with their normal clothes on. He sat back with his swab, dipping it into the analyser and watching the display intently. Moments later it beeped, several amber lights flashing. "Well, that's a relief. She's got a couple of STDs, but only known old-fashioned ones, and she may only be a carrier, not even symptomatic. So we should be fine, but she needs a strong course of antibiotics and some targeted taggants to eradicate the source infection lymph nodes."
"Well, I doubt she's going to get that, not in this town." Tads looked down at the unconscious body, whilst Kai stuffed her ears with filler and then bandaged her head, covering the bump first but then working down to cover her eyes as well. Once he was done, he grabbed her mobile phone, leaving a detailed set of instructions on what treatment she needed to get rid of the infection and a warning of what would happen if she didn't – which may have been significantly exaggerated or certainly portrayed the worst case scenario. Then he slid the certified credstick into her pocket alongside the phone, donating the money they'd found from one of the captains. He caught Tad's eye and winked at her, then stood and shouted to the rest of the team to finish up.
They pulled out of the house, not having found a stash of guns, drugs or ammo at this one either. The dead goon was slung into the back, the unconscious girl handled a little more carefully, and they headed over to the address contained in her phone, leaving her body slumped up against the front door. With the truck pulled halfway down the block, Shimazu hammered on the door loudly, then turned and sprinted, jumping up and into the cab before anyone had opened the front door and could see him.
One last time they made their way up into the hills, and added the last body onto the end of the row, watching as another one slowly was sucked into the earth, disappearing from view.
"Tads, go to the trailer please, do some more study on your spells or something." Aswon ushered Tads away, looking a little confused. The mercenary towered over her, and he used his arm to guide her politely but firmly away from the bodybag. Shimazu poured a small can of fuel over the body and the others added brushwood and scrubby vegetation to the pyre. As the faint smell of fuel reached Tads nose, understanding dawned on her face and she hurried out of sight, nodding her thanks to Aswon. Behind her they set fire to the fuel, standing back and ensuring that it was well alight and burning fiercely before they hurried away. Even up here, in relatively good cover, there was a much higher chance that people would see either the flames or smoke and investigate.
One the way back to the ranch, Kai asked Nadia to start looking back through Ulvi's phone over a much longer period – back as far as the messages went in fact, to try and determine how close he was to his father, and what type of relationship they had. She and Hunter went to work, having established a smooth and efficient protocol by now.
It was around 04:30 when they made it back to the ranch, but Rusudan was still up, waiting for them. He welcomed them into the house, and hurried to get the coffee pot on, checking that they were un-wounded and well.
"Say, Rusudan. These mafia goons, they've been around for a few months yes?"
"That's right"
"How much do you think you've given them altogether? In fees and payments and such like?" Rusudan lowered his head in shame, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Thousands probably. First it was just a little, and it seemed the best way to make them stop. But then it was more and more. And they threatened the children, my wife…."
"Well, first of all, don't worry about that – they're not going to threaten anyone anymore. Secondly, there was no way you could deal with thirty of them, all armed with pistols and shotguns, so don't be so hard on yourself. The seven of us took them out in small groups, trying not to be outnumbered – and we had armour, assault rifles and magical support. So go easy on yourself. And last of all, I think you're due for a refund."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the other certified credstick, flipping it towards Rusudan who caught it clumsily and looked at it uncertainly.
"We'll talk about it more tomorrow if you need to. But for now, it's bedtime, for everyone. It's been a long and rough night." Kai waved to everyone to go and hit the sack, and after the events of the day, they were happy to do so.
Rusudan looked at the credstick in his hands, not sure what to do with it – but deciding that it was a problem for the morning. He turned, and headed upstairs, following Kai's advice.
The lights went out, and the ranch grew quiet.
