Reign of Evil

“Listen up,” Ian said, pulling down his balaclava to be clearly heard. “Jerry and Trev, you’re stacking at the rear door. I want you to breach at GO plus thirty seconds. Walker and I will be in the front and breach on GO. Shoot anything not human. Try not to kill our target. Ms. Moore will be behind us to take care of him.”

“There’s one thing I might have forgotten to mention,” the witch said with absolutely no apology in her eyes.

Ian’s head snapped around. “What?”

“He may not be alone. Scratch that. He probably won’t be alone.”

Ian glared at her, then in a steely voice said, “I’m two seconds away from canceling the op.”

She waved her hand. “No reason to do that. Walker’s handled these things before. It’s probably going to be a piece of cake.”

Walker felt worry bitch-slap the nervous butterflies in his stomach. He’d handled a lot of things he’d hoped he’d never see again, number one probably being that absolutely fucking unbelievable obsidian butterfly he’d fought beneath Mexico City.

“What is it?” A frown underscored Ian’s words.

“Remember when I mentioned that he needed the space for his experiments? Well, Van McKee specializes in creating simulacrums. In fact, he makes them and sells them. I know he has a contract with several members of the Chinese Mafia.”

Walker groaned. Not those.

Trev’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?

“Motherfucking homunculi,” Walker said. “Little fucking Freddy Krueger–Stretch Armstrong serial-killing fucking mini-golems. Okay, here’s the deal. They swarm. As long as we pair up and keep moving, they can’t hurt us, but I saw them chew through the neck of an FBI agent who insisted on doing things solo. They die like anything else. Put enough bullets into them and then put some more.”

Ian looked to Walker. “How much does this change things?”

Walker shrugged. “It changes a lot, but we can do this if we have fire and position discipline. But it’s going to be easy for this warlock to cast a spell or escape while we’re trying to survive his minions.”

“That’s where I come in.” Sassy gave a quick, mean smile. “I’m a far better witch than he is a warlock; I just couldn’t handle his creations.” She pointed at him. “That’s where you come in.”

Walker hated the feeling of being used. But if it got him one step closer to the killers of Jen, he’d let it happen. “What do you think, boys?”

Ian gave Trev and Jerry looks and in turn they nodded.

Ian turned to the witch. “Okay, mission is still on, but if you do this to us one more time we’re going to have a serious conversation.”

To give the witch credit, she looked appropriately scolded, but Walker could still detect a smile wrinkling a corner of her lipstick-painted lips. Then she looked at him and he saw the sparkle in her eyes. She’d known exactly what she was doing and how her ploy would turn out. Walker had no doubt that she’d be up to this again and probably soon, regardless of her promise to Ian.

They synced watches and left the van. It was almost midday and there was plenty of traffic on the street, so the chances of them being seen were pretty good. But Ian had coordinated the operation with the Home Office and local police were supposed to ignore any calls about four armed men assaulting an old bowling alley. Plus, unlike America, where any given city could face four men in assault gear ready to attack a bank, the illegality of weapons in Britain made this much less likely. So when people did see heavily armed men dressed uniformly, they tended to assume it was just the government about to do something they didn’t want to know about. Or at least so said Jerry.

Ian and Walker stacked toward the front doors, close enough that they were touching. Ian was first and Walker could tell the man knew his business. They covered the distance to the door in a matter of seconds, then flattened themselves on either side. Old fliers were taped to the doors advertising family bowling nights and a missing kitten. Brown paper had been taped to the windows behind the old fliers to keep anyone from seeing into the interior. The double doors were boarded from the inside. Also on the outside of the doors was an official-looking memo purportedly from the health department stating that this edifice has been condemned until appropriate biological defense measures can be employed. It was ambiguous enough to make anyone pause.

Since the doors had been boarded shut, their plan was to go through one of the wide side panel windows to the left or right. They chose the right-hand panel, and when the time came Ian used the butt of his rifle to shatter it.

When the glass was down, they surged into the entry only to find themselves in a vestibule standing before another set of glass doors, these completely covered in plywood.