Page 110 of Triple Threat

“You’re solid, mate, go on.” I said. I hooked my end of the comm on my collar. I would be able to talk to him the entire time. He went up, and I heard him hit the arsenal door. He would likely be grabbing his favorite toys for this. I looked at Sadie, and I knew I would do anything to protect her, keep her safe.

I sent the big gun into action again, raking the top of the wall, tearing men apart with a hailstorm of bullets. I saw the black-and-white striped flash of track suits, and black leather, and AK-47s, these were Russian Mafia. I swung the gun camera down and zoomed in on the first SUV that wasn’t burning furiously and made out the New Jersey tags. Had Chauvignon gone and recruited all of the groups we had done work against? Was the guy in St. Henri not a coincidence, but one of those first strike wankers? The thought was chilling, we had a lot of enemies.

It would also explain the appearance of the Narcos a week before.

The cartel was going to drop everything on us, just because we told them no? It didn’t make sense, that level of response.

I queued up the first drone and sent it on an arc across the property and over the wall I wanted eyes to see what was on that side. My heart stopped. There were so many, so fucking many of them. More than a dozen, more than two dozen big sedans and SUVs, guys kept coming out of them, with masks and striped track pants, gleaming AKs and other cheap easy to get guns.

We had carried out a lot of jobs taking down rogue Slavs and violent lord of war ex-Soviets and had made way more enemies that I had guessed. I didn’t see any of the Escadrille cartel types, which was annoying. I dropped the drone down into the middle of what looked like their command center and detonated it.

The gun buzzed as I found it targets, and there were more house shaking explosions, some were poorly aimed mortars, others were mines on the lawn going off. It was looking like the Normandy landings, but with fewer Nazis and more azaleas.

I launched another drone to sweep the wall from the other direction. All I had found were the Russians, and I knew the Cartel Escadrille would be here somewhere. They had to be here. Lacking any other targets, I aimed the drone for the largest cluster of men and vehicles and set it off higher above the ground. The damage to the cars would be less, but the wider field would hit more of the attackers with shrapnel. I didn’t let myself think about it too much, I knew what the other side of this sort of combat looked like.

I burped several more bursts out of the gun, chewing up two more vehicles that tried to force the gate. The third had enough steel in front of it that it avoided the worst of the gun. They made a hard turn, shot out across the lawn and the front of the sedan promptly exploded. It wasn’t a mine, but a 40-mil grenade. Mark up a kill or six for Lach.

There was another explosion, much larger than the mortars or the mines. The house shuddered with the force of it. I searched for it, had they brought an honest to God artillery piece? How would they have gotten it into the country?

They hadn’t. A section of the wall at the base of the head was gone, blasted away. A pair of heavy SUVs rolled through the rubble, followed by men on foot. These were dressed in tactical black with ARs and what looked like Uzis. The Escadrille men were here. They were avoiding the main field of fire from the gun and avoiding most of the minefield laid out in the yard.

“Lach, we’ve got a breach in the wall, north-west section, by the waterline.” I keyed my mic. “Escadrille forces.”

“Can you handle the gate?” Lach asked.

“I can, can you give them a reason to get down?” I asked. The Escadrille men made a good deal of progress across the lawn, heading toward the north side of the house. Then they weren’t making any progress. The walls of the house were thick and absorbed a lot of sound. We couldn’t hear Lach’s AR, but we could hear him firing suppressing fire with the grenade launcher.

The French Heroin Legion grabbed turf and started shooting toward the house from prone positions. Sadie gave a sobbing noise, and we started hearing the staccato rapping of bullets hitting the walls. There was no shattering glass, but that was expected, it was all bullet resistant.

I saw the gun was starting to run low on ammo. I set the barrel speed lower, to conserve rounds, but kept it busy. Splitting my attention between two fronts was taxing. I could fly a drone, or I could guide the gun, but not both. I ran a spray across the front of the gate, sending Russians into protected positions. I grabbed another drone from the rookery and sent it skyward and was preparing to go over the wall when the entire house shook.

“The fuck was that?” Lach barked in my ear.

“The sensors at the front door are offline, and so is the door camera, I’ve got static,” I said.

“They’ve got RPGs,” Lach said, then there was another house rocking explosion. They were close enough to start hitting us with rounds made to knock out tanks. The armored walls weren’t strong enough for that.

“Are you there?” I asked, my voice strained.

“Yeah, just a little dusty,” he responded. There was more rattling of gunfire across the mic.

I grabbed the hovering drone and banked it around the front of the house and toward the north side. The front door was gone, there was only a gaping hole into the foyer. There was more damage, the upper story had been holed like a pirate ship in an old action movie. The greenhouse pool area was pure carnage, and half of the water had drained from a crack in the bottom and side.

Then the feed on the drone went out. A sharpshooter had taken it out. Apparently, they realized what the drones were. That was fine, I was almost out of them.

“Lach, you need to fall back,” I said.

“You’re only saying that because of…” His response trailed off into a clatter of machine gun fire, judging from the sound, it was coming from his gun.

“Sadie, I need you to close the door, but don’t lock it yet. We want Lach to get in before going into lockdown.” She nodded, fear in her eyes. She grabbed the heavy hinges of the door and pushed it shut, her hand on the locking lever. I engaged the gun again, and after a second, the buzz cut off and there was only silence. The ammo load indicator had clicked all the way from four thousand to zero.

I reached for another drone, and the green lights were gone, my drones were offline. They must have been still lobbing mortars at us, or one of the RPGs that hit upstairs broke the rookery. This was going from bad to worse. I got up from the chair and limped to the gun rack. This was bringing back all sorts of shite memories.

Mazar-i-Sharif was ugly. Well before I lost my leg, my first action with Lach and the rest of his Yanks. There were RPGs, half of the vehicles were blown to hell, pinned down by what seemed like half the Taliban army. They still had a few tanks left in their forces, and they had put more than a few 120mil cannon rounds through our armored vehicles.

You’ll be fine, they don't have tanks, so you lads not having any isn’t a big deal.They told us that the storm would keep air support grounded for a while, so no gunships, no ugly warthogs flying over with their big guns, not even air evac.

All of that would have been very useful.

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