Marius kept an eye on the drone – fortunately it never went more than five kilometres from the ranch, so it was well within active control range. The truck toured around the town, stopping at various houses where the occupants would get out, enter the house, stay for a minute, then return to the truck. Sometimes they had food, or clothing in their hands, sometimes nothing. The truck toured the town making a dozen stops, then headed towards the railway and stopped at a larger than average house and the two men parked up by the side of the house, entered, and did not emerge. After ten minutes of monitoring, the spirit followed its instructions and reported back to Tads, confirming what Marius could see from the drone.
"Kai – we think we've found their base or headquarters. It's a large house on the further side of town, a little way from the railway. It's in a residential area… well, actually, the whole town looks mostly residential – we've hardly seen any industry worthy of the name, and other than a couple of shops, it's mostly a sprawling suburb. But anyway, the two men we encountered there have returned and spent a significant amount of time there now, and show no sign of coming out."
"Good work, Marius, and you too, Tads. Can you pull up a map, and show us the area?" Hunter got to work with his computer, and Marius shunted the picture from the drone over to him, so he could sync up his long distance satellite shot of the area with what the drone was seeing. Once he'd got the location mapped out, Hunter started highlighting areas of the map, detailing what he had found out.
"Ok, this town is Hajigabul, population about fifteen thousand or so. It's apparently named after the lake to the south. Main thing to note is the rail station, which is on the Baku-Tbilisi line, so they get a fair few trains running through the area, including some heavy freight by the looks of things. Very little industry, as Marius said, most of what there is seems to be light manufacturing of local items. Not much commercial activity either – small rural town type stuff, like a post office and a branch of a bank. Seems to be a good bus link to Shirvan, and along with the railroad I suspect there's a large amount of traffic into the main city twice a day. The main highway curves around the town, and by the looks of things the main road used to run straight through the middle, so it looks like that's drawn a lot of traffic away from the place, and probably killed a lot of trade." Hunter zoomed in a little, then continued his speech.
"The house they've gone into is here, between Hamidoc and Vahid roads or streets – the map isn't clear on the names, and it looks like it's not been updated for years. The general area is fully residential until you reach the railroad, and most of the houses look to be the same – set on open plots of ground, some small gardens or patches of green stuff. Houses tend to be single story and simple construction – nearly all of them are straight designs, boxes with simple pitched rooves. Means they're probably cheap and all made of the same materials, probably local bricks and clay tiles. So, not likely to be armoured or heavily reinforced. If we kick in the front door of one of these, be careful, the door frame may give way as much as the door…" That was enough to get a smile out of several of them, along with some muttering from Marius about third-world construction. They knew better than to poke him by now, as that would only start a long lecture on the advantages of superior construction using traditional German techniques and materials.
"I've had a good look around, and I can't see a police station anywhere in the town. Definitely found the one in Shirvan, but nothing here. So, I suspect that they have a converted house, or they've got some of the locals deputised to act as local law-enforcement. Either way, there's no more than a couple, probably, or if it comes to a fight, they'll be poorly-trained and equipped, and if we hit them fast and hard, they'll not even have a chance to call for help. No sign of fire service here either, and only one tiny clinic I can see."
Tads leaned back in her seat, made herself comfortable and then astrally projected, her spirit crossing the kilometres between the ranch and the house in a few seconds. She slowed, and looked down at the area, looking at it carefully. It was a strange mix – the area wasn't that badly polluted, compared to a lot of places, and the carefully-tended gardens from a lot of the houses were actually quite pleasant – the love and care of the people tending their little vegetable patches bringing little spots of welcome joy to the astral plane. Despite that though, the town overall seemed depressed and a little sad, feeling much like the off-season seaside towns they had driven through. Slowly she circled and descended, zeroing in on the target property, keeping a careful eye open.
Detecting not a single magical presence anywhere, she flitted into the house, preparing herself to stop suddenly if she found a ward, lodge or magical circle of any kind, or any kind of defences. There was nothing, though – just a completely normal house. She pressed on, quickly scouting through the house and then flitted back to her body, carefully checking for astral pursuit as she did so, before diving back into her own body. She opened her eyes, and found the others watching her, all staring in silence.
"No wards, no spirit, no defences of any kind – which seemed odd, but maybe they just don't have anyone available. Either way, the house feels normal, as does the area around it. In the house at the moment, there's six people, all clustered together into one room, that one there, the one that looks like a separate building – it's not, it's joined onto the main house by a narrow corridor, next to this doorway." She gestured at the map, and Hunter used his controls to annotate the map, building up an interior picture as she described what she'd seen."
"What are they doing in there? The six of them," asked Kai. He watched as her body slumped again, and sighed, wishing she'd waited before going back to scout again. She was only gone for about twenty seconds though, before her body stirred again.
"I think they're playing a card game. They're all sat around a round table, and they're doing things with small things on the table, pushing things around. It looked just like when you and that guy we transported were playing cards anyway," she said as she looked at Aswon. He mimed dealing, shuffling and then flipping cards, and Tads nodded emphatically at him. "I can't really make out what they're saying, and I'm not sure if I can remember the noises they were making, but they sounded like a couple of guys just sitting round at the end of the work day relaxing. No hostility or alarm, or anything like that. A few of them had tiny amounts of cyberware when I looked, but nothing major – I think just things like datajacks, or replacement fingers or joints – medical stuff, rather than enhancements."
They considered that for a moment, then Kai looked around the team, nodding in satisfaction.
"Ok, good work so far. Now, I think we need to get a bit closer, and do some more recon work. Problem is of course, that Tads doesn't speak the language, so that's a bit more difficult, and you don't either, do you, Shimazu?" He watched him shake his head. "No matter, we know that Hunter is pretty sneaky, so it sounds like you're up again. I'm thinking if we head into the area in the truck, do a drive by and drop you off to find a covert perch and then you can monitor again, and we'll check the area out and be close by in case we need to come back you up, or you find something interesting?" He looked around, seeing agreement from their faces. "Right – let's go find out some stuff, and then kick the crap out of this organisation, and put an end to this." For a moment, there was a change in his voice, a visceral, emotional quality that they'd not heard before. They weren't sure if they'd really heard it, or if it was imagined – but he actually sounded personally involved for some reason.
The team broke up and got organised, checking and preparing weapons and body armour, restocking medkits and checking charge levels of radios and communications gear. Kai had a quick chat with Rusudan, telling him they were heading off into the town to go and investigate.
"So, Rusudan – you said earlier that you could get us into Shirvan to go shopping. So I'd like to borrow your farm vehicle, rather than taking the truck into town – much less conspicuous."
"I shall get the horses ready and bring the trap out of the barn at once!"
"What?"
"The horses, I shall prepare them at once. It will only take a few minutes."
"Horse and cart? Um. I thought you had a truck of some kind.
"We did, but it was taken. Mafia scum." Rusudan frowned and his fists clenched by his side. His eyes dropped and he stared down at Kai's feet, feeling shame at being unable to defend himself and his family from the depredations of the mafia. Kai reached over and patted his shoulder.
"No, no, leave the horses where they are. We'll take the truck, and we'll deal with this problem. I think we need now perhaps not to be so subtle any more, and send a message. A very clear message." He patted Rusudan again, and then went and found each of the team members, letting them know about the slight change in plans. Tads in particular he spoke to, asking for some more information.
She curled up on the settee again, and once more vaulted into the evening air, flying across the distance in the blink of an eye. This time instead of studying the target house, she probed each of the buildings around it in a two-plot radius, sampling the auras of the people she found there and checking out the buildings. It took her twenty minutes to complete her search, but then she returned and reported in.
"Everyone surrounding the house is a normal family, as far as I can see. A mix, some old people, some young, some houses more cramped than others, some with just a widow in them. Nothing unusual or worrying, no defences or magical threats. The only thing I did pick up was a sense of fear from one of them, as he was looking at the target house. I think they know who lives there, and they don't like them, at all." Kai nodded, and smiled grimly at the end of her report.
The team saddled up, and got on the road. As they pulled out of the ranch, Tads took a deep breath and reached out to touch Hunter lightly on the shoulder, pulling in mana and shaping it to her will. With a suddenness and silence that made it quite surreal, he vanished completely. Aswon, and Shimazu extended their sight into the astral for a moment, and saw his form sitting exactly where it should be, surrounded by a powerful magical field. Dropping back into the physical plane, the seat was empty – even "knowing" he was there, they couldn't see through Tads' powerful illusion.
With a look of concentration, Tads raised her hand and touched the truck, then concentrated once more. In the wing mirrors, the shape and style rippled for a moment, before settling to look like a badly rusted and battered heavy agricultural lorry, of indeterminate age. Again, the illusion was thoroughly convincing and compelling. With both cast, Tads sat back in her chair, breathing quietly and with her eyes closed.
"Alright everyone, I can keep those up without a problem, but don't expect much else from me while I am." She laid her head back against the headrest with her eyes closed, concentrating on keeping the spells intact and at full effectiveness.
Marius drove with his normal skill and threaded the heavy truck through the narrow streets with a grace that defied expectations. It helped that perhaps only one in five houses had a car or vehicle of their own, and even with the atrocious parking that was common here, that wasn't enough to impede their path. Most of the houses had glows of light emanating from the windows, and they realised that most of the houses here used old fashioned glass, rather than the polarized stuff seen in more modern buildings. Curtains were firmly shut, blocking line of sight into them, though that could be as much to keep the warmth in as to prevent spying.
Now they were on the ground, rather than relying on overhead satellite shots, they could see there were actually a lot more businesses than originally thought, operating out of sheds and garages, lean-to shacks or even the front part of the houses. The industries were of the low-tech varieties, pottery, painting and basic metalworking, but it appeared that a lot more of the people were probably employed locally than they originally thought – not that it really made much of a difference to their plans. They worked their way to the far side of the town, and slowed as they passed the end of the block. The back left door of the truck opened quietly for a few seconds, and then closed again. Watching in astral, Aswon confirmed when he saw Hunter dismount safely, and Marius picked up speed a little.
Hunter moved quickly out of the road and to the shadows – he had faith in Tads' magic to keep him hidden, but he also had no desire to tempt fate. Padding quietly down the edge of the building, he started to work his way through to the corner of the house, from which he should have a good view of the target property. Around the back he found a crazy quilt pattern of small vegetable plots, tin huts, outbuildings and broken and rusty old equipment abandoned in the middle of the plot. As he passed one of the outbuildings, he head the quiet noises of chickens roosting and made an effort to move even slower and more quietly – the last thing he needed was a chicken coop thinking there was a predator nearby and kicking up a fuss. Soon enough though, he was in position, and settled down in the deep shadows at the rear of the building, playing his laser microphone over the window of the target house.
The rest of the team drove further away, circling the area and getting a good look around them. Their experience entering town had reinforced that overhead views were one thing, but that sometimes things looked very different on the ground. As they reached the end of one plot, they saw a supermarket down the street to the side, with a small queue at the door – it looked sufficiently unusual that Kai got Marius to go around the next block and drive past for a closer look.
The supermarket looked to be built along similar styles to the houses, a single low structure with a pitched roof – but instead of a front wall, there were larger windows on either side of brick piers. Inside the lights illuminated the shelves, showing a variety of products, mostly of budget brands and simple goods. A number of people were inside with baskets or trollies, shopping as normal. But, there was still a small queue at the door. As they drove past they could see two large and burly men, one with a simple dataslate who was checking details of some kind, and the other standing with his hands on his hips, staring at the queue. Nobody in the queue met his gaze, instead standing sullenly with their attention on the floor – but they all held their ID in hand. With the man's hands on his hips, his jacket was rucked slightly, and they caught a glimpse of a pistol of some kind in a shoulder holster. As they were pulling away, they saw the person at the front of the queue being pushed away from the door, out of the queue – refused entry for some reason.
They found a secluded place to pull over, a couple of blocks away from the Mafia house, and powered down the truck, sitting in silence for a moment and wondering what the hell they had just seen at the supermarket. Marius broke the silence first, activating the drone rack and beginning flight preparations. In the roof space of the truck, the lifting balloon of the Condor drone inflated and the drone body disconnected from the internal power. Small robotic arms attached it to the launch mechanism, and it was fired up the launching rail and into the night air, quickly rising to become invisible in the darkness above. The second drone took a little longer to prepare – at least going by the book, which was always his favoured option – as the fuel tanks were charged and the weapons loaded. But, a minute later, the gun drone was prepped on the launch rail, ready to join the surveillance drone. Marius held the launch though – it was nowhere near as quiet, or fuel efficient as the Condor, and they didn't have a huge stockpile of jet fuel to refill the tanks. Besides, with the speed of the small jet turbines, it wouldn't take long to get into position.
Back at the corner of the house, Hunter had been sat in the shadows listening to the take from his laser-microphone. With a single pane of thin glass to act as a resonator, he was getting perfect audio reception, and could easily listen to the conversation, easily distinguishing different voices. In his head he started to assign random names to the voices, building up a picture of what they were up to. Bill and Ben were crude, and seemed to come back to the number of women they'd had sex with, or the number of women they were going to have sex with as their favourite conversations. Unless they were real studs, the implication was that they'd perhaps accepted services in lieu of payments for some of their 'work'. Tom and Bob seemed more financially motivated, talking about who was the richest in town, or who paid them the most on collection day – and also seemed to be the most fiscally conservative when it came to whatever gambling game they were playing. Fred and Jack seemed to tell tales of the looks on the faces of those they threatened most, and appeared to be bullies plain and simple, enjoying the spread of fear and the exercise of power. He listened to them play for a while, getting a little idea on them, but nothing really of interest.
Then he heard a noise – the sound of a door being pulled open, and somebody entering the room. There was a general murmur of greetings, and someone asked how he was doing that day. The new person seemed disappointed – not really angry, but definitely not happy with the low returns on his efforts that day, bemoaning how poor the people of the town were, and how little money he'd gained from them. He was invited to pull up a chair and join the game, and Hunter heard the scrape of chair legs as they shuffled around the table to make room for the newcomer. As he listened to the audio feed his eyes were flitting around the area, taking in details and plotting routes to and from the doorway and various windows that would avoid debris and animal enclosures and he noticed something odd – he couldn't see any telephone cables anywhere. Not on the target house, not on the house he was hiding by – not anywhere on the street – no phone lines or data lines at all.
He waited, listening to the conversation flow back and forth, gathering data. Every few minutes he sent a brief message to the team, giving them an all clear and a few details. The team in turn waited quietly, watching the streets which were quiet and mostly empty, the odd car or pedestrian heading home to the warmth, out of the cold and bitter night air.
It was 19:17 when Hunter heard a car drive past the house slowly, then stop and reverse in by the side, pulling back until the passenger door was level with the back of the house. He couldn't see the ID plate from the angle that he was at, but the vehicle was an old land cruiser type – an extended cab and then a large flat-bed load area. It looked like it had done a lot of miles, and the bodywork was very old fashioned – but after touring the area as they had done over the last month, he knew these vehicles could run for decades with a bit of ingenuity. He sent a brief heads up to the team, and changed position slightly, making sure his legs were tucked under him in case he needed to move.
He heard the door open, and saw three people get out of the truck, slamming the doors behind them, and then the driver getting out, following along. The four of them walked along the back of the house, entering via the back door – making Hunter realise that the last guy to join must have come through the front, on the other side of the building. A second later he also realised they'd used no key or maglock swipe card – the door was simply unlocked. He shook his head at them, thinking about how complacent they must be to take security that laxly.
When they entered the back room, the game stopped immediately, and he heard chair legs scrape across the floor as the occupants all stood up. A moment later he heard the one he had named 'Jack' speak.
"Good evening Mr. Mammadova. Would you like a seat?"
"No, you play on, we're just going to relax a little. So, how is everyone doing today?"
He heard people sitting, chairs moving back under the table, and one by one they reported in on their activities. Hunter listened carefully, as they described their actions going door to door around the town, extorting money from people, getting 'fire insurance' premiums, or various bullshit taxes on everyday things. This seemed to irritate the newcomer somewhat, and there was a grunt of effort as he rose from a low seat somewhere in the back of the room.
"These people! PAH! We will teach them. We will make them understand. WE are in control here, this is OUR town. These tiny little people with their dull and dreary lives. They are like ants to us, puny and worthless. We will squeeze them until they have acknowledged that we are their masters, and that their very lives are in our hands. We will make them understand that they are nothing, worthless peons and they live, or die, at our whim. We will own this fucking town, and make it clear to them that WE are the only ones that matter!"
There were murmurs of approval and quiet little cheers – Hunter wasn't sure if they were actual full blooded approval or people just kissing ass, but the speaker, the Mr. Mammadova, seemed entirely serious in his little speech. He got the audio file of his little speech, compressed it and slugged it over his commlink to the team for them to listen to.
In the truck, Marius played back the file over the speakers, letting them all hear the man ranting. When the clip finished, there was a moment of quiet as they exchanged looks. The sound quality was top notch, and they could almost see the flecks of spittle on his lips and the flushing of his cheeks as he addressed his men.
"We should strike now. This man is obviously the leader, and there are nearly a dozen of them in the place, where they consider themselves safe, but that is actually very vulnerable. We should take advantage of their concentration." Aswon spoke quietly but firmly and with authority. "In the merc community, this would be seen as a golden opportunity to take out a cell or an enemy stronghold. We should not lose this chance."
"I agree. It was something we were constantly warned against, as bodyguards, as it is so easy to do. You cannot afford to become complacent back at your base of operations. To do so invites failure from a suitably determined opponent." The others nodded at Shimazu's words, and as Kai looked around he saw Marius launching the vector thrust gun platform, hearing the little rumble from the engines as it vaulted into the night air.
Kai sent back a brief message to Hunter – 'stand by to assault'. A moment later Aswon got an alert on his comm from Hunter – 'bring my rifle with you, please'. Aswon grinned, and grabbed both Ares assault rifles. He wasn't sure which one Hunter meant, and if he took both, he could use the other one, then – after all, it would be a shame not to use it if it was there….
Shimazu slipped out of the door, scabbard in hand, and then started to jog down the street, closing on the building with surprising quietness for such a heavily-built man. Aswon and Kai followed in his wake at a more sedate pace, weapons tucked under jackets to obscure them.
Hunter wasted no time in looking around him, and found an old sack lying by the side of the building, half buried under some rubbish. He carefully pulled this out, rolling it into a tube and stealthily worked his way over to the land cruiser, shoving the impromptu bung up the exhaust pipe in a hope that it would stop anyone getting far in the vehicle if they managed to escape the assault.
As Kai approached, he concentrated on his appearance, using his strange gifts to subtly alter the shape of his face, shifting the shape of his eyes and roundness of his face to make him appear more Japanese and less Mongolian. He checked his appearance in his commlink whilst Aswon handed over one of the assault rifles to Hunter, along with a handful of grenades, then checked that everyone was ready.
"Marius, situation please?"
"Kai, I have you, Shimazu and Aswon on the south west side, in the lee of the house there. Tads and Hunter are moving around to the north east now. No sign of hostiles, no sign of activity. Surrounding area is quiet for a two block radius."
"Excellent. Tads, can you stun everyone in the room?"
"I will have to drop the spells I'm carrying to do that well, and I need to see them to affect them."
"Don't worry, I can arrange that," came the distinctive English voice over the comms.
"Ok, standby, we're heading to the door. Two clicks, and we go in."
Kai and his group approached the back door, Shimazu leading the way with his sword held in a high guard position, Kai following and Aswon bringing up the rear with the assault rifle nestled into his shoulder and held tightly into his body. On the far side of the house, Hunter and Tads eased closer to the building. Hunter led the way, and Tads mostly concentrated in walking in his footsteps, trusting him to find a quiet path for her. As they reached position, they got a further status report from Marius – still all clear. Outside the team could hear the faint throaty roar of the gun platform orbiting on high, ready to swoop down and support them. Unknown to the rest of the team, back at the truck Marius had prepared the third drone ready to deploy, the squat tracked ground drone sat at the top of the ramp he'd attached to the back door, ready to tip over and half drive, half slide down to ground level, and race to support them with the heavy grenade launcher atop its armoured chassis. Back at the house, Tads dropped her spells, Hunter suddenly appearing in front of her, crouched by the window in shadow, and the truck resuming its normal appearance. She took a deep breath, and then summoned a city spirit to her side, just in case.
Kai took a deep breath and clicked the transmit button on his radio, twice.
The second that Hunter got the signal, he pulled a pin on the smoke grenade in his hand, carefully putting the pin in his top pocket and releasing the arming lever. Very quietly, he counted, reaching four before he exploded into action, his powerful leg muscles flexing and raising him from a crouch to a standing position. Five. His arm shot out like a piston, driving his fist through the thin glass of the window with a loud shattering sound. Six. Inside his fingers opened and the grenade continued its forward moment imparted from his punch. Seven. His fingers closed again, grabbing at the heavy curtain with his strong stubby fingers. Eight. He pulled, the arm withdrawing through the window almost as fast as his biceps reversing the action of his triceps. Nine. The heavy curtains were ripped off the curtain rings, as the first cries of alarm were shouted from inside the room and the sounds of chairs being knocked over started to fill the air. As the curtains were pulled through the window, they caught on the glass, pulling out large shards with them, and enlarging the hole considerably.
Ten. The smoke grenade exploded with a "woomf" noise, belching thick acrid smoke into the room and filling the space in moments. A plume of smoke started to drift out of the open window, but the view into the room was sill completely obscured by the rolling bank of hot particulates. Tads stood, and looked through the window into the room, seeing nothing but the mass of smoke swirling around as the grenade skittered around the floor in accordance with Newton's laws. She let her vision slide into the astral, and the smoke vanished, revealing the room and the dozen or so people staggering about, coughing and spluttering, trying to draw weapons and work out just what the hell was happening.
It was harder to focus – her vision on the astral, her body on the physical. Trying to draw the mana and shape it at something her body couldn't see, but her mind could – it was distracting. But she threw power into the stunbolt, drawing in mana from around her and focussing it on a figure in the centre of the room.
"Hoynose," she exclaimed, and the bolt of power exploded into the room in a torrent of magic. Hunter winced slightly, curled up in a crouch at her feet, hoping to hell he was out of her line of sight this time. He didn't pass out, so it seemed all good, but he did hear a collection of loud thumps from inside the room. Tads staggered back a step, looking slightly boss-eyed for a moment, and he reached out a hand to grab her waist and stop her falling over the debris in the garden. A moment later he rose a little and peered into the room, seeing only bodies on the floor.
"Clear, Go!"
Shimazu lifted the latch, and the other team entered, moving swiftly into the house and piling through the door into a long kitchen, with several doors leading out. It was dirty and unkempt, but they ignored that for the moment, piling through the door to their left and into the corridor, then the second door leading into the back room. The bank of smoke engulfed them, but they were ready for it, and were looking either astrally themselves, or had goggles on to protect their eyes. A few seconds later it became clear that there was no rush, and that everything in the room was flat out unconscious.
"All clear, securing the area. Hunter, Tads, come on in and get under cover." Kai released the transmit button and moved to open a few windows, leaving the curtains shut to block line of sight mostly but letting air flush the smoke out of the room with a through draft. The temperature plummeted, the oil filled radiator in the room no match for the cold winter air flooding through the windows. As the smoke cleared, though, they saw that the assault could have been nigh-on flawless – only two or three of the goons had managed to draw their weapons, and nobody had managed to fire a single shot off.
The team split up, dragging bodies into a row on the floor and stripping them of weapons and ID, throwing them into piles at their feet. They quickly identified the likely "Mr. Mammadova" – positioned in a comfy armchair that he'd only half-managed to get out of before being struck unconscious. Not only did it have pride of place in front of the old TV and next to the radiator, but his rather tacky gold watch and gold-plated phone seemed to indicate some level of penis insecurity.
His three goons were the ones who had managed to draw weapons, whilst the ones at the table had been milling around in confusion. Kai looked at the scene, and made a snap judgement.
"Shimazu, all those by the table, finish them off. We'll take these four, and interrogate them. Strip 'em, tie 'em up, and let's find their car keys and head out of here."
Shimazu shrugged, sheathed his sword and pulled out his hunting knife. He wasn't going to use his honoured blade for this work, he was certain of that. He worked down the row, turning their heads to expose their jugular veins and striking once at each with precision. Blood pumped out of the wounds, soaking into the carpet beneath them and the figures slowly turned an ashen grey as the blood oozed from them, the bodies cooling rapidly in the night air.
Aswon studied the IDs and grunted, then showed Kai the results – it appeared that all four of the second group were called Mammadova, indicating either a clan or extended family. Kai shrugged and just held out a bag, letting Aswon dump all the credsticks and IDs into it. Whilst Aswon continued to swiftly truss up the bodies using their belts and shoelaces, Kai searched the room, finding a small computer and a credstick sitting by a table in the back corner. Both of these were put to one side, and he turned to check on progress, finding Tads sorting through some keys and Hunter standing with a burlap sack covered in soot.
"Had to get this out of the exhaust, if we're going to steal their ride." Kai looked at him in confusion, then decided he didn't really need to know, and carried on checking over the room for evidence or loot.
"Achtung, lone walker approaching, walking down the front of the block, ETA two minutes"
They froze as they listened, then sprang into action. Kai and Shimazu ran into the kitchen, and worked their way to the front door, whilst Hunter and Aswon staked out the back, ready just in case. Tads wondered who she should go with, still somewhat befuddled from the effort of casting the spell, and ended up standing in the kitchen looking around. As she did, she spied several photographs on the wall, showing a family in this room, having some kind of celebration. She stepped closer, examining the picture carefully – seeing the happy smiling faces, three generations of family gathered together for some occasion, with a table covered in tasty looking food. A spotlessly clean table – actually a clean and tidy room, with everything neatly arranged and well looked after. She looked around now, comparing the dirt and squalor and general level of filth present, and wondered what had happened to the family who had originally lived here, before these people had turned up.
Marius gave a commentary as the figure closed, heading to the front door of the house. He warned them, to the second when the figure would arrive, and as the mafia goon entered the house, Kai shot him at point blank range with his taser. He didn't manage to even fall completely to the floor before Shimazu had grabbed his collar and yanked him inside the house, dragging him through to the back room, while Kai looked out of the door, left and right, before closing the door behind him. By the time he'd gotten back, Shimazu had stripped the ID and added it to the bag, and had finished him off, just like the rest.
A bit more searching revealed nothing further in the room, or the house, so Kai fired up the pocket secretary. It appeared to be a census of the town, and next to each of the names were a number of symbols or notations. He flicked the secretary off, and added it to the bag for further study later. When they inserted the certified cred-stick, they got a bit of a shock – it had nearly twenty thousand Nuyen on it. That was quickly transferred over to their own stick, and then the one they found was wiped clean, electronically as well as physically and thrown onto the bodies.
Marius called over the comm-link to the team.
"I have done a data search on Mammadova – just to let you know, there are hundreds of people in Shirvan with that last name. Hundreds and hundreds. Also, a large number of Mammadovs, and possibly some more depending on the spelling. We may have annoyed a lot of people here tonight."
"Right, let's get out of here. Load up the four Mammadova chumps into the car, and we'll take them with us somewhere else to have a word. Shimazu – is that a bottle of spirits on the table? Shimazu grabbed the bottle of clear liquid, opened the top and sniffed, then nodded to Kai. "Ok, lets sprinkle that around then, Aswon can you set something up to catch fire about ten minutes after we leave?" Aswon nodded, hunting around in the kitchen drawers until he found a candle. Setting this at an angle in the gap between two cushions, he lit the wick and made a final change in the position, then moved to help the others drag the bodies out to the land cruiser. Each of the bodies was piled into the back, wedged into the footwells in ascending order of perceived importance, then they climbed up into the load bed or the front seats. Shimazu fired up the engine and turned to Kai.
"Ok, where to?"
"Back to the ranch?"
Various remarks came back, some of them very strongly negative – the most vocal being from Tads.
"No killing where we're going to live. You'll pollute astral space horribly." That, and the prospect that one or more of them may have some kind of implanted health monitor or tracking device made it clear that the ranch was not a good idea at all. Hunter scrolled over the map, struggling with the size of the screen on his commlink, but finding something after a minute of looking.
"Head north out of town, on Meliyev, about seven kilcks. Straight road, but shouldn't be busy, takes us to some uphills. I'm sure we can find somewhere quiet and out of the way to deal with them.
"Sounds good, let's go. Marius, bring up the rear please!"
Shimazu put the truck into gear and pulled out into the street, driving slowly and carefully as he tested the car to ensure it worked correctly. Overhead the two drones headed back to the truck and started their docking manoeuvres while Marius wrestled with the loading ramps and shoved the tracked drone out of the way. Once the truck was sealed up, he set to following the rest of the team, catching them up as they left the northern side of town.
They drove carefully on the narrow road. Although it was clearly marked on the map, it was clearly not a main road or one in constant use, and featured some spectacular potholes. Shimazu had to slew the four by four around the worst of them whilst Marius could just ignore them in the bigger military truck. Slower going than expected, it was nearly half past eight by the time they had pulled off the road onto an old livestock trail and made their way up into the broken uplands, finding themselves in a narrow defile shielded from view from most of the surrounding area.
They pulled the four by four around, and arranged the four bodies so they were laid out in the intersection of the two sets of headlights, semi naked bodies covered in goosebumps in the cold night air. Even with the brisk coldness, they still didn't show any signs of stirring yet, so completely had they been stunned by Tads.
Kai stood in front of them, backlit by the lights from the trucks, and slowly pulled out a long survival knife from a scabbard hung from his belt. Hunter moved around behind the prostate forms, facing towards Kai, with a blank expression on his face. The rest of the team looked at the set of Kai's body, and the unconscious forms on the floor, and a growing sense of unease came over them.
"This. This is not soldiers' work." Aswon shouldered his rifle and turned away from Kai, marching up into the darkness looking for a vantage point. He made no move to stop Kai, but his shoulders were set and his movements indicated that he wasn't going to take part in whatever was happening.
Shimazu looked between Kai and Aswon, his head swivelling back and forth a few times, then he turned and headed back into the truck. He grabbed his earplugs, and slowly worked them into his ears.
Tads watched Aswon heading off, then she too turned and climbed into the truck, past Shimazu, and into the back. She grabbed a thick pair of gloves and a jacket, then a poncho to go over the top.
"Where are you going?" came Shimazu's voice from the doorway, where he stood with one earplug held between thumb and forefinger.
"Out. Away. Up there somewhere." Tads' voice came out brittle and choppy, and she seemed on the verge of tears for some reason. Shimazu watched her for a few more seconds, then replaced the ear plug back in the container, reaching up to his other ear and pulling out the one already inserted. He put the case into his pocket, grabbed a jacket himself, and then followed Tads out of the back door of the truck, and into the darkness.
Marius meanwhile unjacked from the truck and grabbed a toolkit, heading over to the land cruiser and squirming underneath. Once there he began a careful check over the chassis from the rear, moving inch by inch and evaluating the condition.
Hunter watched the others leave the area, one by one, dim shapes moving in his peripheral vision. His attention remained focussed on the bodies though, and the team leader standing there with a drawn knife and a cold expression on his face.
"You going through with this?" he asked.
"Yep. Just need to work out which one to wake up first."
"Give me a minute, I'll fix that for you.
Hunter moved back to the truck, and grabbed a marker pen, and was just about to leave when he had a second thought, and reached in for a set of overalls. He pulled them on over the top of his normal clothes, and then jumped down and headed back to the bodies. He moved from one to another, and worked down the line, writing their names on their foreheads in indelible ink.
Ulvi, Subhan, Vagif, Vusal.
Kai grabbed the smelling salts from the medkit, and waved them under Subhan's nose until he stirred. Subhan snorted and pulled his head away by reflex as the ammonia triggered his respiratory functions. He struggled to sit upright, hands writhing against the belt and shoelaces that bound them together, but then froze as Kai stepped forwards, placing the knife under his chin.
"Do you want to tell me what I want to know?"
"Fuck you! Who the fuck are…." The heavily-accented English cut off as Kai thrust the knife up into the flesh under his chin, driving the knife up into the brain, killing him with a twist of the blade. The body flumped back, voiding itself in death, and Kai wrestled to get the blade free. He moved on to Vagif, waving the salts under his nose.
The salts didn't seem to rouse him, so he moved on to Vusal, rousing him to consciousness, too. Vusal stayed quiet, wide eyed in fear rather than mouthing off, but at his recalcitrance to speak, Kai executed him too. Hunter stood behind the bodies, unmoving, face still emotionless, watching the Mongolian work. He tried to wake Vagif again, but the body didn't rouse, so Kai finished him with a quick thrust of the knife. Finally he moved to Ulvi, waving the salts under his nose and watching as the boss spluttered his way into consciousness.
"Sən kimsən? Mən haradayam?" He struggled to speak, breath coming in short bursts.
"Who are you, where am I" Hunter subvocalised, sending over his commlink to Kai. "I'm not sure he speak English."
"Tell him, we're the Yakuza" Kai responded, waiting for Hunter to translate for him.
"Biz Yakuza deyilik." Ulvi's eyes opened wide and a stream of rapid fire Azerbaijani spat out at Kai.
"He says you're dirty slit-eyed fucks and he'll skullfuck you in front of your mother and then rape your sister." There was a pause, then Hunter added "I'm not sure he realises what situation he's in."
Kai stepped forwards and poke Ulvi in the shoulder with the tip of the knife, watching as the blade slipped in to the skin. It was so cold up on the mountain that the wound barely bled, at least while the knife was in there. Ulvi tried to pull back, flinching against the blade, but Hunter moved behind him, adding his own knife to the base of his skull, and resting a large knee at the top of his back. Ulvi let rip with another long stream of injective, cursing him, his family, his dog and making several comments that would be anatomically impossible, let alone unwise.
Kai waited for him to stop, and listened to the tail end of Hunter's translation, then moved the blade down and stabbed him again. More blood started to ooze down the chest, but instead of cowing him into submission or compliance, it just seemed to further enrage him. Ulvi's hands squirmed and thrashed as he struggled against the bonds that held his arms behind his waist, his hands struggling against the thin laces that bound his fingers together.
Kai stepped back and moved to one of the other corpses.
"Make him watch." He waited for Hunter to grab his head and twist it in his direction, then ritually disembowelled Subhan, before cutting away at his clothing and severing his genitals. Tearing away at the flesh, he forced them into the mouth of the corpse, pushing the jaw closed with bits of ligament hanging out of the corner. He moved down the line, visiting the same treatment on each of them in turn.
"Tell him the Yakuza own this town now." He waited for the translation, but it seemed to push Ulvi even further into a rage. He spat at Kai, and the string of injective was hurled at him with furious force and contempt. Ulvi seemed to have no fear, no sense of reality, and absolutely no sense of his own mortality – a white hot fury seemed to drive him and there was not an ounce of give in him. He seemed to get himself so wound up that his insults took on a strange high-pitched cadence as he continued to swear on inward breaths as well as outwards.
Realising that he wasn't getting through, Kai stepped forwards and thrust the knife into Ulvi's body, driving the blade into his trachea and cutting through the windpipe. Even then, as the death throes and rattles of the dying body eeked out, they still sounded like a string of four-letter words.
Hunter let the body slump to the ground, and Kai stood over him, feet shoulder width apart and with the blade still held tightly his right hand, the blood of the men he had slain dripping from the point of the blade as it ran down the blood grove. Kai stared, unmoving for twenty seconds or so, then blinked and looked up at Hunter, stared at him for a moment, then turned away without comment and headed to the rear of the truck.
"Everyone, it's all over. Think we're done here." Hunter waited until Aswon, Tads and Shimazu acknowledged his radio call, then wandered around the back of the truck after Kai. He found him standing just outside the shower, his arms thrust into the small cubicle and cold water squirting from the shower head down over his blood stained arms. He headed back to the front, watching as Marius climbed out from under the land cruiser, pronouncing it "acceptable, considering the age, but needs some remedial work." The German avoided looking at the corpses, and gathered his tools, heading back to the truck.
Tads and Shimazu arrived at the same time, and Tads also tried to avoid looking at the area. She turned her back on the corpses, standing at their feet, and cast her spell, sterilising the area of forensic traces. Without a word, she climbed into the land cruiser, belting in and looking down at her feet. Shimazu looked at the mutilated bodies for a moment, studying them, then climbed into the driver's seat and started the vehicle, slowly reversing away and heading down the trail, back towards the road. Just as they were pulling away, they saw Aswon climbing down from some rocks, heading to the truck, with a look of distaste upon his face. A minute later, the truck started up and headed down the trail after them, leaving four mutilated corpses to finish freezing high upon the hillside. As the truck descended, rocks and soil shifted behind it, obscuring their tyre marks and hiding the fact that they'd been there, as a mountain spirit obeyed Tads request.
In the truck, Aswon cast an eye back at Kai, who was sat in the back, slowly towelling his arms dry whilst he stared unseeing at the wall of the truck, then turned his attention to the bag of IDs. He flipped on the comm switch, and alerted Marius.
"I'm thinking we should forward these identities onto your friend Milo in Constantinople? If they're legit, he might be able to use them to help someone else with new papers. May earn you a discount in the future?"
"Ja, good idea." Aswon busied himself with scanning the ID sticks, and forwarded on the details to the number Marius reeled off, then settled back in his seat, staring out into the countryside as they worked their way back towards the town. The journey back was quiet, Aswon, Hunter and Marius all thinking about what had happened, and Kai sat slumped in the back.
It was about ten o'clock when they got back to the ranch, the truck following the land cruiser down the dirt track from the main road towards the house. Alerted by the lights, Rusudan and Naena came to the front door, looking with concern as the pickup truck arrived, then with relief as they spied the team's truck.
Neana waved them all inside, gesturing towards the dining area where some food was waiting for them, but her arm froze in mid-air as the icy chill atmosphere given off by the team washed over her. She and Rusudan watched as they entered the house, closing the door quietly behind them, and their eyes widened a little as they saw the flecks of blood and occasional stain on their clothing. Nadia appeared from around the corner, SMG on a sling and ready to fire, until she saw it was just the team that had come back. She carefully put the weapon on safe, and moved to hug Marius, eyes flitting from one of the team to another as they still said nothing.
They settled down at the long dining table, an eerie silence filling the room as they stared at one another over the selection of bread, meat and cheese, all except Kai who stared at his hands.
