“Please, don’t kill me,” Katya whined, raising her right hand slowly up to his dick. “I’ll be good. I won’t talk. Just don’t kill me.”
“Do me good and I’ll think about letting you live,” the man said, laughing and dropping his pants to settle around his ankles.
“I’ll do you good,” Katya said, calmly, and then raked her fingernails down the inside of his thigh.
The man let out a shout of pain, punching her in the face automatically and then clamping his hand over the wound. The fast acting neurotoxin, though, caused the muscles in his leg to spasm and he fell to the side, his leg thrashing.
“What did you do to me, bitch?” the man shouted, starting to thrash in the leaves of the forest floor.
Katya wasn’t listening. She had rolled with the expected blow and now was trying as hard as she could to get to the driver.
Gunther had been fully occupied in deep throating Natalya when he heard the shout and when he tried to withdraw, Natalya reached down and grabbed his pants, tripping him.
The driver rolled sideways, crashing into Katya for a moment and then driving an elbow into her gut.
Katya folded over at the blow but as the driver started to get to his knees she rolled over to him and dug her right hand into his butt, then fell across him, pressing down on the palm and pumping the neurotoxin into the muscle of his ass.
Cottontail finally pushed herself to her knees and looked over at Natalya.
“It’s finished,” she said. “Now to get out of these…”
“Behind you,” Natalya gasped. “The bad man.”
The poison either wasn’t as fast acting as she’d been promised or she hadn’t gotten enough in the “bad man.” The American had pulled a gun out of a shoulder holster and was waving it at her.
“I’m going to k-k-k-i…” he stammered, pulling back the hammer with difficulty. The pistol was waving like a branch in a high wind.
Katya turned away just as there was a shot and then flinched.
“I think he missed,” she said, looking at Natalya who was watching wide-eyed.
“Hardly, lass,” a British voice said from behind her. “I rarely do.”
Katya turned her head the other way and her eyes widened as much as Natalya’s.
“Tom?” she asked the man lowering the Walther PPK. “Tom?”
“Actually, the name is Charles,” the man drawled in pure Oxford tones as he put the pistol away and pulled out a set of handcuff keys. “Charles Calthrop, MI-6. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Cottontail. It is Cottontail, isn’t it?”
Chapter Forty-Two
“Vanner, what’s the status on the primary?” Mike asked as the helicopter banked around a hill; the highly paid Russian pilots were earning their pay.
“Temporarily sort of secure,” Vanner said.
“And what in the hell does that mean, exactly?” Mike snapped.
“You want the whole story, sir?” Vanner asked. “It’s a long one. She is out of the box. She is currently unthreatened. She and Katya are colocated. I am attempting pick-up at this time. It got very hairy, but the situation is stabilized, I think. You want more?”
“Negative,” Mike said.
“The bad news is that the club has been kicked over like an anthill,” Vanner continued. “We’ve had a three hundred percent increase in external guards and the full force appears to be up at this time. You want to abort?”
“Negative,” Mike said after a moment. “We’ll continue the mission. Support force?”
“Still moving, still out of the box,” Vanner said. “Boss, you do not, say again, do not have the element of surprise at the club. I’ve managed to insert some new surprises, but you are going in hot.”
“Understood,” Mike said, looking across the cargo hold at Creata. She was the youngest of the intelligence specialists, a tiny girl with birdlike bones and a narrow face framed by dark brown hair. She was so small and delicate that everyone in the Keldara called her “Mouse.” She was also surprisingly adept with mechanical devices and had tested out to be the fastest and most knowledgeable in opening safes. She was sitting very calmly, holding a bag of tools that appeared to be at least two thirds of her body weight in her lap with her eyes closed and seemed to be either praying or going over the steps to crack the safe. Call it a mantra. “We’ll still handle it. Out here.”
Mike reached down and changed his radio to the setting for “all force.”
“Listen up, troops,” Mike said. “Primary is out of the box. They know we’re coming. There is a heavy force coming in from the east. All the guards are up. We’re going in anyway. The FAAP team is going to delay the heavy force. Primary recovery team now is added to front door. Entry and mission as planned. But it’s going to be hot. Do the job and we’ll get the hell out of dodge. That is all, Kildar out.”
“Are you sure about this, boss?” Adams asked.
“I’m sure,” Mike said. “We’re going to get those DVDs and along the way we’re going to fuck them all.”
The fleet of birds banked over the last hill and then split, half the echelon heading down the main boulevard and the other half to the smaller rear street.
As they split, four Allouette helicopters increased speed and pulled away from the formation. Two braked to an out-of-ground hover five hundred meters from the club and pivoted sideways so that their troop doors pointed towards the club.
As soon as they were pointed, the two machine gunners in each of their doors opened fire.
The MG-240 was capable of spitting out over 1200 rounds per minute on continuous fire, but the machine gunners were, while newly trained, quite expert and held them to precise three- and five-round bursts. The combined fire tossed the guards on the front door of the club to their face, littering the sidewalk with bodies. This late at night, the only people on the street were the few remaining guards on the club so there were no complications from ladies of the evening.
The lead Allouette paused for a moment in an out of ground hover then, as the guards on the doors were reduced, slid forward in a deadly precise maneuver and paused opposite the club.
Intelligence had determined that the majority of the guards were barracked on the third floor. In each of the Allouettes were two RPG gunners, two assistant gunners and a sniper. As the Allouette slowly slid down the now nearly empty street, the RPG gunners began firing round after round into the barred windows of the third floor, filling the upper stories with deadly shrapnel. The backblast was directed out the other door of the stripped helicopter. In a few of the second and third storey windows, figures briefly appeared. Those that were not currently being targeted by the RPG gunners were engaged by the Keldara sniper, whose precise rounds removed the majority of the threats.
As the helicopter working the front of the building was just about done with its run, one guard got smart enough to hurry to an upper floor and open fire on the helicopter with his AK-47. The majority of the 7.62x39 rounds flew wide, but two cracked into the turbine housing of the French chopper.
The Russian pilot saw about half of his lights go red in less than a second.
“Yob Tvoyu mat” he shouted, killing the engine and dropping the hovering helicopter like a stone. “We’re going in!”
“Where’s Tanya?” Vanner asked.
“Second floor,” Lydia answered, calmly. “Room Seven. It’s interior.”
“Tell Team Sawn when they clear the second floor to find her and extract,” Patrick replied.
“We have response coming down Ordur Street,” Greznya said.
“Got it,” Vanner said, switching screens. “Blow det zones nine and nineteen…”