Courts and Cabals 6, page 39
Considering the source of the apocalyptic news, Vernon had his doubts about some uber-mean space boss coming to Earth and fucking shit up. Time would tell if Dupree’s warnings were real or not, but his love for Becky was one hundred percent authentic.
Due to the needs of the agency, they’d only been given a week off to do their whole wedding and honeymoon combo. The first part was easy enough. Becky wasn’t a white satin, mermaid dress, walking down the aisle kind of girl. A judge, a witness, and a clerk who blushed something fierce when the two shifters couldn’t keep their hands off each other was good enough for both of them. The honeymoon was what they wanted to devote the majority of their time to.
“And I hit that G spot plenty,” he tried not to think too much about the Caribbean resort they hadn’t seen nearly enough of. He’d known every inch of that bed, but it would have been nice to hit the beach or pool more and work on his tan.
No sooner had they returned to duty than his team Echelon 12 packed up and shipped out. The deployment rate for the teams over the last couple of years was insane. It was weeks on end on assignment with only a couple of days of R&R in between. Needless to say, it sucked balls. Retention had taken a hit, and over the last few years they’d lost the equivalent of two whole teams to attrition. Even worse in Vernon’s opinion, they’d lowered the standard for getting onto a team in the first place.
If he was being completely honest with himself a shifter, even a powerful one like him, barely made the cut. Sure, he was strong, fast, healed quick, and his hybrid forms were pretty kick-ass in a fight – he had brawled with a Fae and come out on top back at the Faerie Confluence – but they didn’t have the adaptability of other species. Team leader positions were meant for creatures like dragonspawn, and even with all the magical assistance the Response Division poured into their remaining teams, he could barely hold a dragonspawn’s jock strap.
Even worse, the reduced standards were affecting the reputation of the teams. Before, UN Echelon Teams struck fear into anything but the biggest players. Gangs of rogue shifters, outlaw vampire covens, and mages who wanted to use their magic to steal, rape, or kill all feared drawing the attention of the UN’s sharp tip of the spear. Now, several team members had died in incidents where operatives would have barely suffered a scratch under the old standards. That didn’t mean the newbies didn’t try hard. It just meant that from time to time, the new teams were biting off more than they could chew. Over the last few years, the pie of shit only seemed to get bigger and bigger.
“Speaking of taking a bite out of a too-big shit sandwich,” he didn’t let the defeatist thought work its way inside his mind as he refocused on the mission.
“Everyone, check in,” he voiced over their magically encrypted comms.
He was Alpha, and Becky was Bravo, so she didn’t need to use the radio to let him know she was five-by-five.
“Charlie here. I’m green.”
Charlie was Phil, the former SEAL-turned-UN combat mage. Phil had been with Vernon since they teamed up with the Venetians years ago. He was a seasoned professional and an ace with both magic and conventional weapons, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still human. It didn’t matter how talented of an Ignis mage he was, one stray bullet or a ten-pound chunk of concrete falling from high enough onto his head would make the fat lady sing. He’d already had a couple close calls, and the mage even told Vernon that if he survived what was coming, he would turn in his retirement paperwork.
As far as Vernon was concerned the man had stepped up way above his paygrade. He deserved some peace and quiet, even if the chances he’d get there were getting slimmer and slimmer.
“This is Delta, I’m green too. No movement to or from the target,” radioed their last member.
Kira had joined a little under a year ago. Unlike Phil, she didn’t have prior military experience. What she did have was a near-religious devotion to weapons of all varieties, and she’d scored impressively high on the Terra mage power scale. Despite also being very breakable, her earth-manipulation talents lent themselves to defense, and she’d been able to not only kick but save ass with her particular skill set.
One of the ways she was vital to the team was her ability to offer advanced recon without revealing his team’s presence. While Vernon and Becky were in a windowless bedroom of the rented home, and Phil was perched on the roof, Kira was in the basement. The first thing she’d done when they arrived was dig up part of the cement foundation and plop her ass directly on the ground. Then, she sent out tendrils of her magic to the target house across the street and three doors down. The one that had a subterranean tunnel dug into its basement.
The situation was simple and bloody. The Venetians and Tikals had been going at it since the end of the Confluence. Whether the shit the Nosferatus said was true or not, they’d started attacking each other covertly . . . and sometimes in broad daylight. The Venetians still had a major foothold in Tijuana, but it was a big city. The Tikals were regularly bypassing the other cabal’s areas of influence and using the cartels they controlled to funnel men, money, drugs, and weapons through tunnels under the border. Then, they used those resources to attack Venetian targets inside the US, thereby bypassing the frontlines of a more traditional battlefield. The Tikals had been in the smuggling game for a long time and now they’d repurposed it for war.
The UN, with the backing of the United States, wasn’t about to sit back and let a magical organized crime ring undermine an international border and put citizens of either nation in danger. Because of that, four of Echelon 12’s last five deployments had been to San Diego, California.
For this deployment, they’d gotten lucky. The Tikal safe house just over the border had been previously identified. When it was empty, the team slipped in, wired it for surveillance, and then set up down the street. The objective was to gain intel on what was being transported, tag it, and pass along the information to agencies that could get a proper response team in place to interdict without giving away that the safe house had been discovered. In some cases, the brass even decided to follow the tracking spells deeper into the nation to see where the Tikals were located within the greater US, as well as identify potential targets.
So far, no fewer than eight mass casualty events had been stopped by joint UN-US strike teams. Several were legit businesses with ties to the Venetian Cabal, and others were targets of opportunity. Either way, Vernon and teams like his had saved tens of thousands of lives in their fight against the cabals. That allowed him to sleep soundly at night . . . when he wasn’t fucking his new wife.
“Alpha, Charlie, we might have something,” Kira’s words interrupted his thoughts. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the monitors surrounding Becky and him. “We’ve got something incoming toward the target.”
“Threat?” his eyes scanned the various CCTV cameras they had access to in the area, as well as drone footage from above. An eighteen-wheeler rolling down a residential street was a little much, even for the Tikals, but he wasn’t about to take anything for granted.
“Tunnel,” she clarified. “I’m sensing,” she paused, “two tangos and they’re carrying something heavy.”
“Make sure we have audio,” he informed Becky as his fingers started to fly across the keyboard. “These bastards like to brag about what they’re about to torch.” It was how they’d stopped two of the eight mass casualty events.
They all went to work and waited for the newcomer’s arrival. Vernon toggled through the variety of feeds he had access to, plus the rental home’s security systems. It would be really embarrassing if the Tikals used some fat, juicy bait to fix Echelon 12’s attention on their computers only to raid the house and kill the entire team. As much as he was itching for a fight to show these terrorists not to screw with his home, he held back. That was one of the reasons this mission was recon only. There were six, about to be eight, Nosferatu in that house. When it came down to the nitty-gritty, he didn’t know if his team could take them.
“Here they come,” Kira gave them the final heads up.
Sure enough, two beautiful men in designer clothes complete with way too many rhinestones stepped out of the tunnel dug into their own basement floor. There was a tiny camera located directly over the tunnel entrance, so Vernon got a money shot of a golden pistol sticking out of one man’s waistband. Surprised surprise, the safety wasn’t even on. He was amazed the guy hadn’t shot his own ass off by now. Not that it mattered. A little blood and a Nosferatu would be as good as new.
Once he’d confirmed their weapon’s discipline was shit, Vernon focused on the large, green, rectangular case being hauled between them. They made the weight look inconsequential, but Vernon knew those things weighed a ton.
“Shit,” he cursed as the markings on the side of the box came into focus.
“What?” Becky asked. She hadn’t been on the job as long as him, but Phil had.
“Fuck,” he hissed from his sniper’s perch.
“Those are military markings,” Vernon explained. “And see that symbol,” he reached over her monitor and stabbed his finger into the pixilated screen. “That’s the symbol they’ve given to all of the new magically augmented weapons everyone has been mass producing.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Becky groaned.
“Yeah,” Vernon growled, now seriously pissed. “All those weapons are supposed to be in specialized bunkers in Mexico City waiting to be doled out when the monster from another universe pops in to start World War 3. They sure as shit shouldn’t be in the hands of the Tikals being transported across international borders into Southern California.”
This was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and Becky’s next word made it even worse.
“Airstrike?” she asked.
The US was forbidden from launching air strikes against their own territory unless under extreme circumstances. The UN didn’t have that ‘extreme circumstances’ legal language to deal with. They’d rope the local authorities into the situation and probably wait for their approval, but they didn’t need them to do it. That freed up a lot more offensive action than would otherwise be the case. That was great for Echelon 12, but not so great for the occupants of the residential neighborhood.
“Let’s see what’s in the box first,” he cautioned.
Vernon had a reputation with the brass for being trigger-happy, and when he finally made that phone call to those higher up the food chain, he wanted to be able to tell them what weapons the enemy was smuggling.
They didn’t need to wait long. Sure enough, the Nosferatu threw open the top of the container and gleefully told their compadres that they had twelve magically enhanced rocket-propelled grenades that they were going to use to strike a Venetian distribution center up in the Los Angeles area.
“Maybe an airstrike isn’t such a bad idea,” Vernon gulped as he got a good look at the RPGs.
A normal RPG was a serious threat to life, limb, and property that would cause some pretty extensive damage, but that was an old-school RPG. The new stuff coming off the defense industry’s assembly lines took the boom boom to a whole new level. After a proprietary spell was placed on them to augment their destructive potential, one of those RPGs could easily take down a small building. If they had twelve of them, that meant an entire city block was at risk, not just a distribution center.
“Okay,” he took a deep breath. “Becky, get local PD on the line. I want a perimeter established no closer than five blocks away. We can’t let them know we’re onto them. Phil, do you have any contacts in the area? Any quick response team is going to be too far away.”
“There’s a whole bunch of SEALs stationed over in Coronado. Give me the proper authorizations and I can have a team deployed to help us take them down,” he sounded confident.
“Do it,” Vernon ordered. “I’m going to let the local FBI field office know of the threat and radio back to HQ that . . .”
A screech erupted from his phone that had him wincing like a newborn pup.
“What the fuck!” he thought as he grabbed at his pocket.
He always kept his phone on silent when he was on an operation. The number of supernaturals with sensitive hearing was staggering. Doing something as stupid as leaving his phone’s volume on could get his entire team killed. Despite being sure he’d silenced the device over a week ago, he ripped it out of his pocket – tearing a hole in his pants in the process – and squinted at the red, white, and blue lights flashing.
It was only when Becky did the same with her phone, which made the bedroom look like they were in the center of a rave, did he realize it wasn’t just his phone acting weird. He was pretty sure the entire team’s cells were on the fritz. Then, he saw the message.
“Emergency recall!” he yelled, all thought of stealth gone.
“We’re evacing now. Go. Go. Go!” he yelled.
He jumped up from his seat by the monitors and dived for his tactical gear. Per his standing order, the whole team’s kit was to be within arm’s reach at all times. Half a second after seeing the emergency recall, he was pulling on his gear. Everyone on an Echelon team trained to get their whole kit on in less than thirty seconds. The tight body suit went on first. He wasn’t going to lie, he had to tuck his dick to fit into the tight fabric within the time hack and he hated that, but there was no other option. He’d adjust on the fly later. Next came the armored plates over the vital areas of his body, helmet, and the latest and greatest in augmented reality protective eyewear. AR was going to be the wave of the future, and every defense contractor worthy of the name was in the hunt to develop it.
After the defensive stuff was situated, he moved on to offense. A pair of diesel, heavy-caliber, rune-encrusted Colt Frontier six-shooters were holstered on his hip and in the tactical webbing covering his chestplate. Grenades of several different varieties filled in all the space that wasn’t covered in enough ammo that he could invade Paris by himself.
He looked over and saw that Becky was already outfitted and doing a quick weapons check on her AA-12 automatic combat shotgun. He could smell the silverbane in some of her rounds right alongside the cold iron, and a new development called dragonshot. It was basically magically augmented buckshot, and although he doubted it would scratch a real dragon’s scales, it could seriously fuck some shit up. The same held true of his M240 Bravo. The normally crew-served machine gun was a big motherfucker, but Vernon could handle it all by his lonesome. He hefted the weapon like it was a child’s toy, and now that he was completely armed and armored – in twenty-three seconds – he went to the safe behind him.
Once the Director bought into what Dupree was selling, she had something special developed for all of the echelon teams. When the moment came, there was no way they’d all be at HQ. When the emergency recall notice hit all of their phones and overrode all of their presets, what was in the safe was their ticket home. He spun the dial with practiced ease and pulled out an orb the size of a tennis ball. Colors swirled inside it not that different from what he’d seen at the rift back at the base in Ireland.
“Everyone, report!” he yelled.
“Good to go,” Phil’s heavy footsteps announced as he clambered down the stairs.
The combat mage had a custom MP5 attached to a quick-release strap at the low ready, but his baby was the heavy-caliber sniper rifles strapped to his back. The man was a wizard with that rifle on top of being a natural mage.
“Fucking tits . . . get . . . I’m here,” grumbled Kira as she kicked open the basement door.
Vernon noticed she hadn’t said she was good to go, and she wasn’t. Her chest plate wasn’t latched, and the rest of her gear was flapping in the wind because of it. It sounded like someone was pulling a string of tin cans behind an old jalopy after a hillbilly wedding. He opened his mouth to say something, but Becky stepped in front of him with a shake of her head.
“Take this as a lesson, boys,” she grasped the front and back of the armored contraption and compressed it on either side. Kira looked like someone had kicked her in the vag, but nodded her thanks. Becky turned back to look at the two men. “Sometimes big tits aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
Neither man argued as they spent the next five seconds patting each other down in a quick inspection to make sure they were good to go. Four “greens” were called out, and then they went about sanitizing the place. Computer hard drives were pulled, everything else was scrubbed, and then finally doused in magical acid. Spellwork that was put into place to destroy odors, fibers, fingerprints, DNA – the bed the happy newlywed couple shared was going to need an extra dose of it – and anything else that could reveal the identity of the echelon team was cast. The resulting magic was incredibly uncomfortable to the pair of shifters’ senses, but they powered through.
“Everyone ready?” Vernon asked as he took one last look at the crappy house that had been their home for the last eleven days.
“Good to go, sir,” his team echoed in a way that would give any drill sergeant a hard-on.
“Okay, I hoped no one had dinner yet,” he grinned as he held the orb high and then smashed it on the ground.
“I knew I shouldn’t have snuck that leftover spring roll,” Kira groaned as a kaleidoscope of color swallowed the team, spun them around like drunks in a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, and blasted them across the continental US back to NYC where the fight they’d all feared was about to begin.
About the Author
I know that’s a bit of a cliffhanger, but if you didn’t know already, Courts and Cabal 7 is already available for pre-order and will drop soon. I’ve got the link above and below for you to click in order to see the exciting conclusion to this ark of Courts and Cabals. Don’t worry. It isn’t the end of this motley crew.
I’ve got a ton of books now so look below for what you might be interested in. I’ve put their subgenre in parenthesis to help you choose. As I said above, I look forward to writing many more Courts and Cabals as well as other series. I don’t like to talk about myself a lot, so I’ll leave it at that.
