With all his men in place, he had them spread out across a thirty meter line. Two were sent scrambling for the side of the huge, modern-looking home while the others covered them. If dogs were present, they would have known by now, and to Damien’s relief, his men reached the house without incident and without the sound of an external alarm.
Taking a pair of small yet high-powered binoculars from his tac vest, Damien scanned the roofline of the house, looking for video surveillance. When none was seen, he actually grew more concerned. There had to be surveillance; one didn’t own a home like this without it. The fact that the cameras were so well hidden spoke of a higher level of technology than most other sites.
He sent another two men to the front entrance before he and Jacques St. Claire ran for the few shadows in the huge backyard. From there he was able to look around a corner of the large covered lanai and into the fully-illuminated living room. There was no one inside, yet there were several empty glasses sitting on end tables anchoring a horseshoe-shaped sofa.
He turned toward the backyard when the sounds of the night were interrupted by something new. He relaxed when he recognized it as the rat-tat-tat of sprinklers just coming on.
Damien was equipped with a tiny earpiece and throat microphone so he could communicate with his men. “Any activity out front?” he asked.
“Negative on the street,” was the report from the waiting vehicles.
“Same at the front door. It’s locked, and I can see around to the row of garage doors. They’re all closed.”
“Maintain your positions,” Winslow ordered. “We’re moving to the rear patio doors…”
Damien heard a strange noise through the earpiece, and a sudden groaning as if someone was in intense pain… and then nothing.
“What was that? Report.”
There was a momentary silence. “I heard it, too,” said Nick Daniels at the front door. “Owens, Burke, come in.”
When the two men sent to the side of the house didn’t respond, Damien pulled back the slide on his Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle and fell back against the wall of the patio. “Daniels… check on them. The rest of you, eyes open.”
Five seconds later, Daniels reported his findings. “Two down… Taser fire. They’re out for the duration.”
“Any sign of the attacker?”
“Negative. All’s quiet… except for that buzzing. Can you hear it?”
Damien couldn’t. All he could hear was the rhythmic snapping of the sprinklers… but then there was something. It was just a little off, an extra layer of sound lost in the mix.
“Listen up,” Damien said. “We’re dealing with drone people here, so be on alert for those little bastards. I believe we’re under surveillance and have been since entry. We’re going in, weapons hot. Take out anything that moves. On my count: Three, two, one… go!”
Daniels had returned to the front of the house by then, and now he and his partner opened fire, shattering the ornately-carved wooden door before lowering their shoulders and crashing through into the foyer. As they took up positions to each side of the room, a brilliant flash temporarily blinded them. As fingers tightened on triggers, a pair of high-pitched pops was heard, and sharp, double spikes struck both men on the skin of their unprotected necks. Fifty-thousand volts coursed through their bodies, stopping all voluntary movement and replacing it with spasms of excruciating pain.
Both men fell to the marble floor, writhing as two box-shaped drones moved up and hovered above them, the wires to the spikes still attached to the UAVs. The units remained on station, although the voltage was reduced. It would be enough to keep the men incapacitated until living beings could come and take possession of the intruders.
Damien, with St. Claire on his back shoulder, slid open one of the wide glass door panels between the lanai and the living room and entered. They came in low and with weapons glued to their cheeks, scanning all angles, looking for something to shoot. No targets were identified, not until four small UAVs entered from the direction of the garage, while another two zipped up from the backyard and shot in through the open patio door.
The two men lit off their weapons, spraying wild gunfire into the vast living room. Walls exploded, pictures fell, and the stone of the massive fireplace sent rock shrapnel cascading into the room and onto the cream-colored carpet. The drones scattered as automatic defensive programming took over.
When one of the hovering drones lined up on him, Damien dove for the leather sofa, just ahead of the pair of gold-colored darts that penetrated the back of the couch not six inches from his head. He fired, shattering the plastic and light-gauged metal drone to pieces.
Then he rolled to his left and rose up off the sofa just as the twitching body of Jacques St. Claire flew over the couch and hit him in the back. Damien fell over the large burl coffee table and onto the carpet, where he instinctively rolled to his side several times so as to avoid becoming a stationary target. It wasn’t enough. The Taser darts struck him in the buttocks.
The pain was excruciating, even if it was something he was vaguely familiar with. All Special Forces were required to experience a Taser hit as part of their training. But that was in a controlled environment while this was combat. Now the fear factor was added to the equation, making the pain seem even worse.
With his face contorted in a mask of gruesome agony, tears escaped from his eyes, and through his restricted vision all he could see was the mansion’s living room ceiling. He had no control over his limbs; it was all he could do to grit his teeth and issue guttural groans from burning lungs. It was as if his entire body was on fire…
Through whatever miracle of consciousness he still retained, Damien began to sense that the effects of the Taser were going on much too long, even if he did notice a slight lessening of the pain. He craned his neck in the direction of the crackling sound, only to see the blurred vision of an obedient and impersonal drone hovering above him. The bastard’s still feeding me voltage, he thought. This isn’t good. Not good at all.
Billy, Xander, and Tiffany left the office with Jenkins holding an elaborate controller in his hands. When they entered the living room, Billy’s mouth fell open in a display of unbridled shock. The place was a mess — punctured walls and a shattered fireplace. The once-impressive T.V. was in pieces, and the rest of his furniture lay in ruins. The roar of the propellers from the four surviving UAVs was deafening, especially as they were in hover mode, two of them still feeding a continual stream of crackling high voltage into the writhing bodies on the floor.
“Grab their weapons,” Billy ordered. His tone was tense and his eyes mere slits from the primal ferocity welling up inside.
Tiffany and Xander quickly moved throughout the room, and then to the front door, collecting weapons before placing them in a pile near Billy’s feet. They each retained one for themselves, with Tiffany giving Xander a quick lesson on how to fire an Uzi. When all the intruders were disarmed, Billy cut the power to the Tasers. Even then the men were still lost in the aftereffects of electroshock.
Billy walked over to an intercom on the wall. “Maria, it’s safe to come out. Open the front gate for the police, and then go in the garage and bring out a bale of wire.” He saw the confused look on Tiffany’s face. “Screw rope, we need to wrap these bastards up in wire.”
Fifteen minutes later, all six men in the assault group were sitting on the littered carpet, backs against the sofa and wrapped nearly from head to toe in heavy gauge silver wire. Security cameras showed that the two men in the SUVs had departed the scene posthaste when the ruckus started, leaving their companions to face the music inside the house without them, even as the wailing of approaching sirens signaled the end to a blown mission.