Page 90 of Triple Threat

I cleaned and checked all the mechanisms and checked the ammunition belt. It almost seemed like overkill having six thousand rounds of 7.62 for it. In truth, it could empty that in a little under two minutes. But that would be aglorioustwo minutes of continuous flame from the barrels and the one noteBRRRRRRRthat gave me a little shiver just to think about it.

As much as I never wanted this thing toeverbe used, part of me longed to see what sort of carnage it could cause.

The checks done, I locked the cupola behind me and walked over to the rookery.

The rookery was a hot rack of quadrotor drones, six held in frames that they could drop out of and take flight. My time in Afghanistan had more than taught me the value of drones, and I had already made use of this knowledge working with Lach; being his eye in the sky. These were not spy drones, however. These were larger than the normal spy drone, but they had to be to carry something heavier than a camera. I opened the crate and one by one removed the Soviet surplus S-13 rocket warheads and attached them to the drones that would take them.

I could fly these beauties from the Bat Cave, and I could either trigger the warheads manually or fly the drone into a target, where the proximity switch would take over. The former would let me turn an open space into a bloodbath. The latter could blow a hole in the side of anything shy of a main battle tank, and pulp every bastard inside in the process.

I set all six of the drones, and their warheads toarmed.

I didn’t feel the same elation with these murder birds as I had with the gun. These were ugly things, and there was nothing glorious or elegant about them. I had no desire to see these actually work. Fragmentation weapons were dastardly things.

I retreated back into the house and went through the rest of the internal security. There were easily a dozen claymore mines hidden through the house, at doors and chokepoints. I had taken some of this inspiration from the movie Home Alone, but instead of paint cans and marbles, I had mines and grenades. These were smaller, and would cause significant damage, but wouldn't collapse the house. Lach didn’t know about half of these, they would make him nervous if he did.

I was working in the arsenal when the first other person in the house found me, and to my delight, it was Sadie. She stuck her head through the door that had always been locked and her eyes bulged. “Holy shit.”

“Good afternoon, Poppet,” I said with a smile. I sat the P90 down.

“My God, Iknowyou aren’t compensating for anything, but…holy shit.” She looked at rack after rack of weapons. “Where’s the war at?”

I chuckled.

“Some of these are trophies, guns we’ve taken off of contracts we completed. Some are just basic prep, there isn’t a single gun that’s right foreveryjob,” I said. “Plus, tastes change, and Lach’s are ever changing. He won’t use the same gun very long. He likes to chase whatever the new most popular gun is, and he’ll carry that. I don’t get rid of the old guns, sometimes he likes to fall back to a gun he used before, and sometimes it’s just a matter of controlling evidence.”

“Because they’ve been used to kill people,” she murmured solemnly, her lovely brown eyes sweeping the racks again.

“That’s true. They can’t be sold after they’ve been used on a job, because of ballistics. But there’s also something just sad about taking a fine made weapon and destroying it, melting it down, to prevent a trail of evidence from building up.” I said.

“That is pragmatic,” she said softly, and I could tell she was struggling.

“Some, well, some were just a deal, or guns we wanted for different reasons. Collecting is collecting.” I shrugged.

“Well.” She came over despite her misgivings and put her arms around me. The scent of lavender was both strong and enticing. “I enjoyed the bath bomb you left me, and I missed you while I was gone.” She looked up at me and went on her toes, kissing me. My breath caught, I certainly hadn’t expected that. She slipped from my grasp and turning, walked toward the door, a saucy little switch in her hips I don’t think she was even aware of. I didn’t remember buying her the sundress she wore, an emerald batik silk. Maybe Lach had gotten it for her down there. It was tasteful. She turned to look at me, half out of the armory’s door.

“I love you,” she murmured softly, and then she was gone, like a mouse.

“I love you too, Poppet,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

Stunning.

* * *

I satdown at the console in the Bat Cave and brought up the main screen. Six screens all synchronized and presented a single massive image. The facial recognition software pinged a screamer, and I was watching the system do the things I designed it to do.

Manuel ‘Black Manny’ Esposito, Giancarlo ‘El Diablo’ Lucasito, and Sophia ‘Santa Lucifera’ Rodriguez had been tagged at a checkpoint near BWI. There was no way they flew in, two of them were on the FBI’s most wanted list, all three were on the DEA’s wanted list, and El Diablo was wanted by the NSA and DHS, respectively. They were bad news, and all three of them in Maryland was an equally bad sign. They were all veritable nobility in the Central and South American cartels. Narcos, coyotes; cocaine lords… they had money, firepower, and we had done a number of jobs both for them and against them south of the border.

Each one of these bastards had a reason to have vendetta against us, even Santa Lucifera, who we had worked for after we took out one of her North American lieutenants.

There were a few phone calls to be made, but I needed more information. I could use one of the drones from the rookery, but it would be better to use a different drone, there were several I had that weren’t for home defense. I went out, hooked one of the big quadrotors up, connected the burner phone controller, and added two battery packs in its cargo bin. I wanted her to fly long and come home without incident.

I was piloting the drone across Indigo City when Lach finally wandered in. “It’s over, mate, we’ve lost her,” he said.

“This might not be the best time for jokes,” I answered.

“She found the library and your book collection,” he said. He then grabbed a chair and rolled over to look at the screen. “This looks like… this looks likehere, what are you doing?”

“Face Watch picked up some old friends, we’ve got at least three narco kings in Indigo City,” I told him their names and watched recognition cross his face.

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