Page 109 of Triple Threat

“Bloody hell,” I said.

“There’s no storm,” Lach said, looking out the window.

“Five seconds, that’s the delay on the generator. The power has been cut,” I said. “It’s beginning.”

“Sadie, get to the Bat Cave,” Lach said. She nodded, and she beat me there. Lach stepped on the top of the coffee table, pressed down hard with his foot and I heard the latches release. I knew that once the top of the table was completely open, he would retrieve the rifle concealed inside it. There were easily a dozen caches like that throughout the house. I had checked the concealed top a week ago, the AR pattern rifle was cleaned and in good working order, the magazines had been inspected for broken springs, and the two pistols were likewise in good working order. The worrisome part had been bringing up the steel canister holding six of the 40mm grenade rounds that were for the launcher under the barrel.

Keeping bullets and guns in the main part of the house was one thing, having actual explosives was another. Most of the time, those, including the mines that were now packed in trap positions around the house, such things lived in an armored box in the arsenal. That armored shell was built into the wall, so that if anything went wrong and something went off, it would blow out the wall, and not collapse the house.

That armored box was empty.

It had never been empty.

Anxiety gnawed at my stomach. What had I forgotten? What had I not planned or prepared for?

“Oi House! Lights dim, red shift,” I shouted. The house responded, the LEDs switched from normal sunlight white-yellow to red and the intensity dropped. We could still see, but the chances of someone getting a line of sight on us through a window dramatically decreased.

In the Bat Cave, Sadie was sitting at one of the consoles, worry etched on her face. “In that locker there, grab two of the jackets, mine is extra-large, you should be able to wear one of Lach’s. I’ve two ordered for you, but the wait time for custom-made body armor is more than a few weeks.”

“So the measurements you took weren’t just for dresses, or a chance to hold me?” She gave a forced smile and laugh.

“Oh certainly, for all of those things,” I said. She handed me mine, and I slipped into it and zipped it up. Lach’s was oversized on her, and it wouldn’t offer optimal protection, but it would be better than nothing at all. There was movement on all of the cameras, vehicles swarming up the main road, men clustering ahead of the gate, and there were so fucking many of them, so many warm bodies on the IR. I sighed.

“How many?” Lach asked, the AR slung over his shoulder.

“A lot, like,a lot,” Sadie said.

“What was it that general guy said when he was surrounded?” Lach asked.

“That was Maverick from Top Gun, and we aren’t surrounded, looks like a target-rich environment to me, or something like that,” I said. I hit keys and the quadrotor drones in the rookery started warming up, and the explosive bolt on top of the gondola blew, dropping the plywood sides and revealing the M134 gun and in’s gimbal mount. “Bootlegger Airforce and artillery corps are online.”

“What about alerting the police and SWAT?” Lach asked.

“I’ve already triggered that call, but they’ve picked this time carefully. Dispatch has relayed that the chopper is on the ground and won’t be airworthy for another half hour, refuel and flight checks, and its shift change. The SWAT guys are halfway home, and the evening shift is just rolling in. We won’t have any local support for at least fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“Well that’s just fucking aces, isn’t it?” Lach growled.

“Are we in trouble?” Sadie bit her lip.

“I won’t lie, Poppet, maybe,” I said. “I wanted to give you some time at a gun range, get you familiar with maybe a pistol, but we haven’t had time. If things do go sideways, there is a full escape plan. That door over there, there is a tunnel behind it, goes about three hundred yards down to the boat pen, the boat we took out this afternoon is there. There are three bug-out bags, plenty of supplies, and the rest of that kit.”

“What about my things?” Sadie asked. I could see it in her face, she had until very recently had all but nothing, and now that she had nice things, she was afraid of losing it all.

“Your photos and other things I took the liberty of scanning and putting on a flash drive in your bag, along with duplicates of personal documents, both authentic and the forgeries,” I said softly.

The hammer fell seconds later when an explosion shook the house.

“What the fuck?” Lach shouted.

“That was a bloody fucking mortar,” I said. I had not prepared for the house to be shelled. The roof wasn’t armored or reinforced like the walls were, and one hit could splash the rookery or the gun very easily. I had only counted on an attack from the ground.

There were two more hard blasts. “We lost a camera, and a motion sensor, and it looks like the pool is full of glass,” Lach said, looking up from the bank of monitors on the wall. “Perimeter and wall are still up.”

“Good,” I said. I brought the M134 up and swept the designator across the wall looking for the mortar team, and offering a prayer of thanks that Russian mortars were absolute shite for hitting their targets. The front gate came down as a black SUV came crashing through. I gave it a buzz of 7.62mm from the gun, shredding the front, turning the windshield into white spiderwebs, and likely turning most of the men inside the vehicle into mince.

It veered off the driveway, into the grass, and hit one of the mines buried under a cluster of hosta. The blast flipped it over, blocking the driveway for other vehicles. They would have to ram it out of the way or take their chances in the grass. I wanted them in the grass, where the other mines were.

“I’m going to the door, make sure stragglers or recon doesn’t get close,” Lach said. He slipped an earpiece in. “Make sure you don’t turn thatHome Aloneshit on while I’m up there. I don't want a paint can in the balls or a claymore in the dick, okay?”

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