Pacific force, p.6
Pacific Force, page 6
Ought to be getting hard to breathe, as many punches as she had been throwing. Jake was gasping like a bellows from the effort.
She finally made a mistake. Small one, but one nonetheless. Two expert fighters, well matched.
The woman turned and reached for the gun, resting tantalizingly close on the step next to them as they fought.
Her right hand. Jake’s left side. She turned her chest that way to bring her left hand and arm in to protect, so he reared back a little and let her, just enough to throw a hard right cross into her ear.
In boxing, that’s a good stinger, because of all the nerves right there. Her head had nowhere to rebound to, so he drove her skull into the step instead.
Sounded painful from the dull, echoing thud. Her movements staggered, so he shifted down and began punishing her ribs again. They needed this woman alive, not curb-stomped.
But she was woozy, even as her hand closed on the weapon.
Jake reached over and wrapped his larger hand over hers and picked both up just enough to slam her hand and the gun into the step. A second time. A third, and she dropped it.
He was already leaned over that way with her, so Jake reared back again as her legs loosened, but only to backhand her across the center of her jaw with the back of his fist, knuckles first.
She went out like a light.
Jake finally grabbed the gun and heaved himself upright to study the woman.
Damn, she was tough.
“Maybe you two should get a room?” a voice asked.
Jake spun with the pistol ready to fire, but it was only Hollyanne, grinning as she crossed to him.
“Where’s Grant?” he gasped, finally able to draw a good breath in.
“Watching the apartment with Rik,” she said.
Jake moved to one side and collapsed his hurt ass onto the step. Hollyanne pulled out a pocketful of zip ties and proceeded to truss the woman up like a turkey.
“Now what?” he asked.
This was still her op. He’d put her in charge, so he’d listen.
“Now, you and Grant get her to the Rover and put her under that blanket in back after I frisk her for everything,” Hollyanne replied, pulling out a key ring with a wicked smile. “Then Grant watches her while you and I commit felony breaking and entering. Works?”
“Works,” Jake said.
He staggered upright, glad that he’d had the weight to hold the woman down. Mean and tough.
Almost too much to handle.
But only almost.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Hollyanne had relieved Grant and sent him down to help Jake get their supposed bombmaker out to the truck. Whoever she was, armed with a firearm and attacking on sight was a dead giveaway in this business. Now, Jake was back with her, and they were on either side of the target door, flat against the wall out of sight of the peephole.
No sounds around them, but it was late on a Saturday night. Not so late that people would be staggering home soon, but everyone going out had already left.
She nodded to Jake and moved quickly to the door, slipping the key in the lock. He still had the woman’s gun, but that was mostly a prop at this point. The last thing she wanted was gunfire around bombs or making materials.
“Making entry now,” she announced to the team over the tac comm.
Hollyanne opened the door in a smooth movement and went right through. Rik hadn’t seen the other target emerge from the back, so they’d need to get to whoever it was fast. Spencer had described the interior, so Hollyanne moved quickly.
Past the entry hallway and living space. By the kitchen and tiny dining nook that smelled of fried pork and rancid bacon grease. There was a hallway ahead that led to two bedrooms and a bath, if she had to guess.
“You back early?” a male voice called querulously from the last door on the left.
Hollyanne grunted something non-committal and moved faster. Almost running, but still quiet.
A hand closed on the handle from inside as she approached. Hollyanne watched it turn and start to open. Rather than ask, she just exploded into the door itself, knocking whoever it was on his ass and surging into the bedroom.
Not a bedroom. Shit. Full bomb laboratory. Man on his ass, stunned. Couple of what might be pipe bombs on the shelf nearby.
Hollyanne dropped her whole weight, what little of it there was, down onto the man, cracking him with a tight cross falling. Just to be sure, she punched him in the balls as hard as she could as well once she was on top of him.
Sounded almost like a rabbit she had heard once after it had been mauled by a coyote she had accidentally chased off, that high squeal that cut through everything.
“Other doors,” Hollyanne snapped back over her shoulder at Jake as she hit her target a third time.
He’d curled into a ball, so she went after his left mastoid process, all those nerves clustered behind his ear. He was out cold after that.
Hollyanne rolled the man over and zip tied his hands behind him and then his feet. A frisk revealed a folding knife she took and another pistol like the one Jake was holding.
“Clear,” Jake called a moment later.
Good. The one thing she’d feared was three people here instead of two, and Jake having to shoot someone. No way to keep this raid quiet at that point, even if the locals wouldn’t complain too loudly once they took a look in here.
Hollyanne grabbed the mutt by his feet and started dragging him into the front room, just to get him away from all these toys. Wasn’t that hard. The girl was built solid, but this guy was lanky and short. Younger, but just as rough, and you didn’t get tattoos like the one on his neck anywhere but a Russian prison.
In the living room, she spun him around so that Spencer could get a good picture and then added some ties to hook him to the coffee table. The man could still break it to get loose, but he wasn’t going to threaten Jake with a gun on him.
“He’s yours,” she told Jake.
Hollyanne returned to the bedroom studio and studied it.
“Spencer, I’m going to open some curtains so you can get pictures,” she announced. “Then I’m going to shoot some with my phone. How soon do we call someone about a place like this and blow it all over the news?”
“How bad is it?” Jake asked from the front room.
“Small,” she replied. “Pipe bombs. Briefcase-scale, maybe. Nothing truck-scale.”
“I probably need to look,” Spencer chimed in. “Gimme five minutes and I’ll knock three times.”
“See you shortly,” Hollyanne replied.
She didn’t want to touch anything in here. Spencer was the most versed on Explosives Ordinance, but none of them really dealt with bombs that much. Even Nathaniel had only used simple stuff and then mostly to threaten hostages.
Blowing up a building would have gotten all the intelligence agencies in the world coming after him. Nathaniel Hoestler was really an electronic con artist in the grand scheme of things. He didn’t want to make anyone’s Top 1000 Enemies of the State list.
That was a recipe for a sniper shooting him through a window someday.
However, chances were, he’d hired these two for something.
What was that man wanting to blow up?
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Spencer jogged across the dark street and into the front door of the apartment building. He’d left the monster camera with Rik and grabbed the one better suited for portraiture work, as he’d be in the well-lit indoors taking stills. Sounded like time to gather evidence and intelligence against the next part of the mission.
“Grant, how’s the girl?” he asked as he entered the foyer and started up the stairs.
“A little grumpy, but the BDSM scene seems to suit her,” Grant replied.
Good. Bound. Gagged. Blindfolded. She’d seen Jake, but Spencer doubted that the man Hollyanne had taken down could recognize her, from the sounds of things. They would just need to find out what she knew and then hand her off to one of Grant’s friends.
Up the stairs, Spencer was struck by both how empty it was, and how it managed to convey squalor without ever quite embracing it. If they would repaint the walls and scrub the floors really hard even once, the landlord could probably significantly raise the rents. Maybe attract a higher class of losers to live here, rather than folks building bombs and whatever else the locals might discover if they chose to just swarm the place one morning and inspect every flat simultaneously.
He got to the fourth floor and looked both ways, but the hallway was empty, so he emerged, took a quick photo just to anchor every shot after this, and approached the door. He knocked three times quietly and waited.
No steps approached, but Jake and Hollyanne moved like ghosts when they were on a mission. That was part of the reason Spencer was usually with Rik. In addition to being her spotter, he wasn’t that quiet. Only sort of clumsy.
The door opened and Jake stopped pointing a gun at him, which was a relief.
“Hey, who are you?” a voice on his right suddenly called out.
Spencer turned and made eye contact with a man who must have come up the back stairs. He gave the impression of tall and kind of beefy. Dark in a Slavic sort of way. Dressed like a bouncer maybe, in heavy pants and a baggy jacket.
“Shit,” the man grunted.
He turned and bolted back into the stairwell.
“We’ve got a runner,” Spencer announced.
“Move,” Jake ordered, blasting by him already at a dead run. “Keep up.”
That made sense. Jake hadn’t seen him, so he couldn’t identify the man.
Spencer started after Jake, trailing by a few steps already and falling farther behind.
“Eastern European male,” Spencer said calmly as he tried to keep up. “Dark clothes. Big boy but not fat. Going down the back stairs. Jake and I are in pursuit.”
Jake was a whole floor ahead when Spencer got to the stairwell and started down. He could hear the other man approaching the ground floor already, so that man must have leapt off every landing or something.
Spencer put his head down and ran.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Jake could hear the target. The man was obviously running for his life.
Jake considered the words of one of Nathaniel’s thugs, early in the life of Pacific Force.
“I only have to run scared faster than you can run angry, mate,” the man had said.
Fool had tried. Failed, but tried. Jake would give him that.
Jake started running scared. If this one got away, their cover would be blown, and Nathaniel would know he was in town with the whole team. Felt like they were already at a dangerous junction of the game right now, so he flew down the stairs, leaving Spencer way behind.
“Target running for the front door,” Jake called, hoping that maybe Grant could intercept him or at least slow the man down a little.
Jake got to the ground floor and gave chase. He was slowly gaining, as the runner was only now getting to the front door. Unless something happened, he ought to catch the man in two or three blocks.
But something always happened in a chase like this. A car turning. A dog lunging. Maybe even a couple staggering out of a bar.
“Turned right,” Jake said as he watched the man descend the outside step and run.
Jake exploded out of the front door and went down the six stairs in two steps, letting a parked car provide a parkour platform for him to deflect off.
The runner was half a block down when the night sky lit up with a flash that blinded Jake. The snap of an angry dragon slamming his tail onto the street hit a moment later.
Jake blinked and ran, unsure of what had just happened.
At least bad luck occasionally cut both ways.
He didn’t recognize the sound the first time, but that was the surprise of the small explosion.
The runner had been staggered to a ragged halt by the flash and the sound. Now, an arrow slammed into his shoulder and knocked him to one knee. A second arrow an eyeblink later knocked the man onto his face.
Jake had forgotten about Rik in his excitement. She hadn’t forgotten about him, just kept quiet as she concentrated.
Jake supposed that the man wasn’t any more dangerous than the deer she went and caught every fall.
“Grab my arrows,” she said as Jake got to the man.
Nasty ones, with the blunt tip made of rubber and backed with lead to give it heft. The flash had been her interpretation of a flash-bang grenade, but not as big. Still just right to surprise the hell out of everyone.
“Thank you,” Jake said as he grabbed the two.
The third shaft—the flash-bang—was just shards. If he needed everything to be utterly secret, he’d grab the feathers, but this had gotten too big to just sweep under the rug. Jake grabbed the man, rolled him over, and zip tied him. Wallet and another gun got confiscated.
Why are you people armed? This isn’t the US.
But he’d need to interrogate them off-site.
Spencer was just emerging as Jake got the runner in a fireman carry.
“You go help Hollyanne and get pictures,” Jake said. “I’ll add this one to Grant’s menagerie.”
“Got it,” Spencer replied, turning and moving immediately.
“Grant, call your buddy,” Hollyanne broke in on the line now. “Get him here now but tell him only two people total until they talk to us.”
Jake wanted to say something, but he’d put her in charge, so he shut up and trudged.
At least nobody questioned a man carrying another down the street, but London had a reputation for drunks. A real buddy was the guy who could carry a bloke home when you got blackout drunk.
Jake hauled his latest catch to the Rover and put him in the back seat. The girl was probably going with them, but the two men could be handed over to the authorities for fun when this was all done.
Grant hung up his call and smiled.
“So apparently we have a rep.” Grant laughed. “They were standing by closer to the City with several teams handy, but Steve and his partner will be here in twenty minutes.”
Jake smiled. Pacific Force was back, in town, and hunting. Of course, the smart money would be prepared.
Jake just wondered what anthill they had kicked over.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Spencer really needed a bomb expert, but he’d learned enough over the years to agree with Hollyanne’s assessment. Provocations and maybe assassinations, but not wholesale terrorism events. A little meaner than the old Quebecois separatists, but not much.
Back home, it was the sort of thing you used to blow up stumps or lose hands in the wrong neighborhoods. But this was England. Even the Irish Republican Army had built bigger things, to say nothing of splinter groups like those Provisional IRA lunatics. Not counting personality squabbles, at least the war was largely over, assuming that Brexit didn’t screw it all up by introducing a hard border around Northern Ireland.
That would just undo everything pretty quickly.
Spencer took pictures of things without touching. You never knew with folks like this when they might have a booby-trap that they didn’t mention to outsiders. He did make a note to recruit an on-call expert. Since Pacific Force was back in business, they’d probably need one. Best if you could actually send live video to someone who knew what they were talking about.
“Anything?” Hollyanne asked from the door.
“No, but I don’t know what I’m looking for, either,” he replied, clicking and zooming.
It would all go into evidence somewhere, but they would need records as well.
“Hey, what’s that?” Spencer muttered to himself as he saw what looked like blueprints.
“What have you got?” Hollyanne asked.
Spencer zoomed rather than stepped in, but he couldn’t make it out. Instead, he had to walk over there, careful not to touch anything. He let the camera settle on the strap and studied the paper. Bombmakers didn’t usually work with plans of their bombs. If you were that good, you did all the math and wiring in your head and just assembled things.
Blueprints suggested a building they were wanting to blow up, but nothing in this room suggested that scale.
“Grant, talk to me about the woman,” Spencer spoke into the mic now. “What’s her rep on the streets?”
“Pro,” Grant replied instantly. “Not Irish but a sympathizer who got radicalized by parents who were fans of the Baader–Meinhof Group in the old days. What are you looking for?”
“She blow up buildings?” Spencer asked. “Like Oklahoma or the World Trade Center the first time?”
“Not that I heard,” Grant replied. “Someone would have mentioned. She did small things. Why?”
“I’ve got blueprints to a place that looks like Birmingham,” Spencer said.
“Where?” Jake asked
“One Chamberlain Square,” Spencer replied.
“Still under construction, but they are getting close to done,” Jake said. “Maybe a distraction?”
“For what?” Hollyanne chimed in now.
“You set off a small bomb in Birmingham, you’ll have everyone looking that way,” Jake said. “This is Nathaniel we’re talking about. He never does anything by direct action. Always gets you looking at the wrong hand. What are we missing?”
“Guys, car pulling up,” Grant called. “Looks like Steve. I assume several more back a few blocks, ready to swoop. What’s the play?”
“Jake?” Hollyanne asked.
Like her, Spencer understood that this had just passed out of tactical control, so Jake should be the one making decisions now. Spencer snapped another fast round of pictures from close up.
“I’m going to bring Steve up,” Jake announced. “The other one can stay down here with Grant and guard things. See you in a few.”
