Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1) (45 page)

The gantry wobbled slightly as it slowly made its way down the tower from the roof.  Barney stood to one side, gazing out at the view while Troll was busily preparing their explosives.  There were five different compounds.  Individually they wouldn’t trip the scanners unless in close proximity.  The Crew used their time well and smuggled them into the hotel over the last couple of days.

Two of the compounds were in liquid form and the other three were a soft putty.  Carefully Troll sliced an exact amount from each of the putties, placing them together in the permacrete fuser.  The very handy piece of equipment was just as capable of mixing explosives, as it was in creating the filler needed to re-fuse the permacrete.  The liquid elements were easier.  Their bottles measured the correct amount automatically.

Once everything was in, she set it to cook and checked the chrono on her wristcomp.

“Plenty of time,” Barney rumbled from his corner.

“Yeah, I know, but this Job is making me jumpy.” Troll told her partner as she stood up and joined him.  The gantry was a five metre wide, three metre high and two metre deep, five sided clear box.  The building side was open and the anti-grav generators held it aloft, while gently pushing it against the tower.  A set of wheels at each corner held it a few millimetres away from the wall, letting the wind in. 

“I haven’t felt like this since we took down Tumbler.  Valerie freaked me out back then and I thought she’d calmed down since, but after the last couple of weeks, I’m not so sure.  What do you think her deal is?”

Barney only shrugged.  Troll didn’t mind.  They fell into this pattern a long time ago.  Troll did all the talking for both of them.  She smiled at herself as she considered she probably did enough talking for four people.

“She’s a drunk that came seemingly from nowhere.  No one has ever heard of her and yet she beats our scores, pulls off a brilliant bit of work on the metals Job and then rips Tumbler’s entire organisation apart on her own.”

“We were there,” Barney pointed out.

“Yeah and the scar on my leg reminds me every time I get out of the shower.  The boys do like it though.  It makes them feel big when they get a real hard arse like me in their bed.” For as long as they worked together, Barney and Troll’s relationship never went beyond professional.  He was like her twin brother, not an older or younger siblings, as they worked as true partners.  Neither was more or less reliant on one than the other.

“You’ve got to admit that she could have done that whole thing on her own.”  A slight nod was all of Barney’s response.  “Why would she do it though?  She had barely met any of us and then she goes and kills dozens of people for Hanna.  I like the kid, but go into that hell hole?  No way.”

“Yes, you would.” 

Troll flung her arms into the air.  “Alright.  Maybe I would.  Hanna is part of the Crew and Sneaker was right.  We couldn’t leave her there.  Not if we wanted to be taken seriously.

“Now, it’s like Valerie has had a major breakdown.  She’s been in that bar every night since.  I’ve carried her back to her bed three times this week.  You would not believe how heavy she is.  Not a bit of fat on her either.  Her muscles must be so dense and I bet that’s where she gets her freaky strength from.”

“Not last night.”

“True.  She has got it together enough to be able to stand upright for the Job.  It must be extremely important to pull her away from the bottle.  I wonder if Hobbs managed to screw up enough courage to ask her what this is all about?  You couldn’t pay me enough to ask that question.  You need to be alive to enjoy it.”

“Almost there.”  Barney said, interrupting her and a beep from the fuser confirmed the explosives were ready.

All business, Troll removed the solid block from the fuser and started slicing it expertly with her knife.  In this state, without an igniter, it was safe enough as long as she didn’t use the thermal setting on her knife.  She passed each piece over to Barney who set it into the charge shaper.  A small device that reshaped the explosives to deliver whatever result you wanted.  In this case it was to focus the force of the blast into the wall in such a manner as to penetrate permacrete.

They worked quickly and efficiently in silence.  Troll glanced up to the gantry’s control panel.  It read 122, ten floors to go.  Two lines of finger sized strips of explosives lay on the floor in front of them.

“OK.  That’s all of it.  Let’s pack everything up.”  They couldn’t afford to leave anything behind that would let the police track them, or even worse Legion Intelligence. 

This would be the second kidnapping of an Orobello executive in a month.  That would get someone’s attention.  Quite possibly someone with the power and contacts to bring in L.I.  Troll considered that their best defence was that they were a criminal gang and not some resistance cell.  No one would expect this from one of the gangs.  There was no profit in it.

Everything neatly packed into two bags.  The bigger of the two held the permacrete fuser and Barney pulled this onto his back, while Troll took the other.  “We’re here.”  Troll said unnecessarily as she stopped the gantry at the one hundred and twelfth floor.  They aligned the gantry on the roof, so it was a straight descent down to the kitchen wall.  Troll double checked their position, while Barney put a thermal imager attached to his datapad against the wall. 

“This is the place,” Troll said.  “Is it all clear in there?”

Giving her the thumbs up, Barney bent down and began placing the explosives strips.  He followed a precise diagram from his datapad and Troll followed him round.  She inserted a tiny pinhead detonator into each one and synced it to her wristcomp.  They worked shoulder to shoulder in unison.  Barney laid the explosive strip and Troll pinned in the detonator.

With a final check of his datapad, Barney stepped back and Troll joined him.  She admired their handiwork for a moment.  The strips formed a three metre wide and two metre high box on the wall.  With a nod of satisfaction, Troll activated the gantry and moved it to the right, away from the explosives.  The edge of the gantry just cleared the explosives as it passed them. 

Now was the difficult bit.  The emergency exit from a gantry was meant to be via the building itself.  They were not designed to allow people to get out of them from the other side.  If you were two hundred floors up, why would you want to?  Barney set some explosives to the top edge of the gantry and Troll pulled apart the control panel.  It had all sorts of safety overrides to prevent them doing this.  Hanna’s clearly laid out instructions allowed Troll to bypass every single one. 

A nod from Barney confirmed he was ready and they both secured short tethers to the wall.

“All set here, Deni,” Troll said into her com.

“We’re on schedule.  Blow it in thirty seconds,” Deni replied.  Troll looked up into the sky and tried to pick out the incoming aircar.  “Twenty seconds.”  She still couldn’t see it among all the other traffic flying around the building.  “Ten seconds.”  Where was it?  “Five.”  Around the corner of the building it came.  It’s black shape hugging the wall and coming in fast straight towards them.

“Four, three, two, one,” Deni counted down.  “Now!” she called when the aircar was almost right in front of the entry point.  Precisely on cue, Troll triggered the explosives.

Dust blew out as they did their job.  Like a small landslide, the fifty centimetre thick piece of permacrete slid out.  It almost brushed the nose of the aircar as it passed, to tumble to the ground far below.  Hopefully it wouldn’t hit anyone.  They would get plenty of warning from the automatic sensors.  It took a relatively long time for something to drop one hundred and twelve floors.  There were systems put in place for just this reason.

The aircar braked hard in exactly the right spot.  Through the dust cloud, Troll could just make out the dark shadow of Valerie leaping through the air and into the hole.

“Our turn.”  Troll warned Barney and hit the second button on her wristcomp.  This one detonated the charges above them, blowing the gantry away from the wall.  A moment later, before it could automatically correct itself, it deactivated the anti-gravs.

The gantry leaned away from the building before dropping straight down.  No longer being held up by it, Trolls feet dropped out from under her and she was held up with a jerk by the tether. Troll gasped for breath and the engines whined.  Deni gunned the aircar and then it was there in front of them.  Reaching out, they both grabbed one side of the door, hit the release on the wall tethers and pulled themselves in. 

The aircar banked away and Troll looked back at the hole they had made.  She wondered how much carnage Valerie was causing in there.  Something shot backwards out it.

“Oh Shit!” she shouted as it tumbled towards the ground.  There was no mistaking the slim shape.  Not when it wore that distinctive coat, even as it receded behind the fast pulling away aircar.

***

The last of the permacrete was still dropping away when Valerie made her leap into the thick dust.  With it obscuring her vision, it was a true leap of faith, of trust in her troops.  Troll and Barney would have to make the hole to the exact specifications and Deni to place the aircar precisely in the right spot for this to work.  Valerie felt the heat of the melted permacrete on the top of her head as she passed by it, dropping down onto the floor of the small kitchen unit.  Deni had been just a little high.  It wasn’t enough to slow Valerie and her pistols came out of her holsters smoothly.  She stepped through the kitchen door.

It opened onto the suites main living area.  Three bodyguards stood there in plain clothes.  The two women and man held their hands up to protect themselves from the explosion.  Valerie’s guns were already targeted.  She fired a three round burst at the first two.  Her right hand pistol moved to the third, as her brain caught up with the fact neither of the first two were beginning to fall, nor was there any blood.  Helmets were even now snapping over their heads. 

They wore body armour underneath their clothes and Valerie ducked back into the cover of the kitchen without firing her third burst.  The Mag pistols would not be up to this task and Valerie cursed her complacency.  She should have thought of this.  These were fully trained and equipped bodyguards.  Not untrained goons or half trained security people.

Her Mag pistols went back into her thigh holsters as quickly as they came out.  She reached behind her.  There nestled at the small of her back, were her back up guns, two Pulse pistols more than capable of dealing with the guards personal body armour.  With fingers just beginning to curl around the grips, there was a movement directly in front of her.

It had been only seconds since the hole was blown in the wall.  The kitchen was still filled with dust.  Only now, as the wind flowed in from the outside was it beginning to clear. She saw the wall opposite was no longer intact.  The force of the explosion went further than they expected, through the much lighter and thinner inner wall.  Through a narrow hole, Valerie glimpsed a pistol being levelled at her.  Even for her, there was no time to react as the Pulse hit her squarely in the stomach.

Her armour held, but the force of it was enough to send her flying backward and out of the hole.  Fortune favoured her and she felt the high winds rebounding off the tower.  They sent her tumbling further away.  Old instincts born from countless high altitude, low opening combat drops, caused her to spread her arms and legs.  This allowed her to control her tumble, turning to face the ground in as wide a position as it was possible for her body to go.

Carefully, she pulled in one arm and touched the grav-belts controls.  What she found was a mess of burned circuitry and coils.  She wasn’t that fortunate.  The Pulse had destroyed her best chance of surviving the fall.

Valerie’s mind spun through her options and there weren’t many.  She didn’t bother with her com.  What would be the point?  No one could do anything.  Her coat flapped behind her and pulled at her shoulders.  Angling forward for a moment brought the ground rushing towards her even faster.  It caused her coat to stream behind her, where she could grab the ends.

Spreading her arms, she used it as an airbrake that slowed her somewhat, though it would do little good.  From this height, a water landing would be fatal, even for her.  Not that there was any water to be seen, only dark hard permacrete in all directions.

Aircars whipped by around her.  She glimpsed the dumbfounded expression of one.  He was the Marketing Director for the Blackley Foundation, spending all night and this morning coming up with their new campaign.  The energy drink in his hand was now forgotten as he stared at the woman plunging to her death.  Where did she come from and why did she do it?  These were questions he would never know the answers to.

The ground continued to come at her.  With no options available, Valerie felt there was a peace down below.  There was a rest from all the pain and sorrow.  Her only regret, she could not make them pay for what they did.  She knew Hanna would take care of Bjorn.  The girl would not let him walk away, but Valerie’s crusade would end here before it began.  She knew there were many more behind this.  There was too much money in Sandy Shores to be only a handful.

What about all the other families who knew the same suffering, their loved ones ground under the heels of the Privileged.  Lives destroyed just so a few could enjoy more power and more money, than they could spend even in their long lifetimes.  Was there no one who could stand up for these people?