Page 307 of The Black Trilogy

“It’s also her other house. There’s a tunnel leading over there and another that goes to the guesthouse, which means we can move around without being seen. Emmy wants teams to come out of the other buildings and attack Blanco’s men from behind. Carmen will be on the roof backing them up as a sniper. It’s three hundred yards away, which is a walk in the park for Carmen.”

Luke recalled seeing another large house close by, but he’d never paid much attention to it. The roof was just visible through the trees that bordered Emmy’s lawn. That belonged to Emmy too? She had a serious problem with sharing.

Then again, did the strange setup really surprise him? He’d already worked out that she was certifiable.

Briefing over, the teams filed out, followed by a few last words from Emmy.

“Guys, if you could avoid shooting people in the back, that’d be helpful. The cops get upset about it, and I’m sick of dealing with their questions. Oh, and if we can get one or two alive that would be good.” Her eyes and her voice both hardened. “I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask.”

CHAPTER 4

THE NINE OF us who would be going up top exited the control room and headed through to the armoury. I pulled on a black turtleneck over my “bad girl” T-shirt as I walked. There was no sense in sticking out like a sore thumb if I had to go outside.

Now to pick up my toys.

Bradley handed me my custom-made thigh holster, and I strapped it on, selecting a Glock 9mm for the right-hand side and a silenced .22 for the left. Extra magazines clipped onto the back of the belt, then I added a knife to each side. Those slotted in neatly next to the guns.

Blanco’s team may have been more heavily armed than us, but I didn’t plan on getting into a “my gun’s bigger than your gun” contest with them. There was simply no point in weighing myself down with half a ton of lead when one bullet to the head would do the job. Two if I wanted to be really sure. In situations like this, I preferred to keep the manoeuvrability.

“Now you look like the Black Widow,” Bradley said, the queen of inappropriate comments. “I’m not sure about those boots, though.”

“I don’t need fancy boots to shoot people.”

“Just try not to get blood everywhere, okay?”

I checked the laces on my rubber-soled combat boots one last time then clipped on a headset for communications. We tended to run with open channels most of the time rather than messing around with push-to-talk buttons, and Mack’s specially modified software automatically reduced the volume of anything noisy like gunshots.

All our earpieces were custom moulded, so they fitted closely with little sound escaping. As I turned my radio on, Mack’s running commentary came through loud and clear, and I learned Blanco’s men had breached through the back and sides of my home. Apparently, they’d tried to blast through the front door as well but got defeated by the reinforced steel. Score one for Team Blackwood.

Carmen, Jack, and Alex took off through the tunnel for Riverley Hall. I should probably mention that as well as being my personal trainer, Alex used to be a major in Spetsnaz GRU, a series of special forces units controlled by Russian military intelligence. I’d worked with him on a few jobs over the years, and he scared the poop out of me. In terms of unarmed combat, he was the best I’d ever seen, although I was in two minds over whether I wanted him to use those particular skills today. Like Bradley said, blood was a nightmare to clean up.

Black’s basement housed a second, smaller control room so Jack, Alex, and Carmen could take another look at what was going on before they went upstairs. Once they’d confirmed it was clear, a hidden staircase would take Carmen all the way to the roof.

I’d considered the possibility Team Blanco might also have a sniper, but it seemed unlikely. The only position with a good line of sight and enough elevation was Black’s roof, and the pressure sensors said nobody was up there yet. There was no point in reminding Carmen to be careful—I’d only be insulting her intelligence if I did. She’d been doing this for enough years and with enough success to know how to operate safely.

In the gloom on the monitors, Team Blanco prowled through the house, and I forced myself to tuck away my anger at violation of my home and replace it with the cold detachment I was famous for. Squinting at the screen, I noted they were wearing headsets too.

“Luke, could you try and listen into whatever frequency they’re using? It’ll probably be secure, but Mack’s got software that’ll help.”

“Sure thing, I’m on it.”

At least Luke hadn’t flipped out. I’d been worried he might—I mean, having pizza and a ball game interrupted by a fourteen-man assault team had to be unsettling for anyone—but he seemed remarkably calm, all things considered.

I watched for a bit longer, learning more about our enemy with every passing second. The pair who killed Black had been freelance, hired in for the job, but seeing these men glide around the house, I could tell they weren’t just a team of mercenaries thrown together at the last minute. No, they were far more polished, moving in pairs, each man interacting with his teammate in a way that indicated they’d done this many times before.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

Then again, nothing in my life had ever been easy.

And far from shying away from the difficulties, I’d learned to embrace them, using each nightmare I lived through to grow stronger. For me, the outcome tonight was never in any doubt. No matter what Team Blanco slung at us, Team Blackwood would throw it back tenfold, plus we had the advantage of being on home turf.

Team Blanco cleared the ground floor and split, with four men heading to the basement and eight upstairs. The remaining two stayed in the kitchen, no doubt ready to assist wherever they were needed. Their initial body language showed confidence, no doubt bolstered by our lack of retaliation, but that soon turned to confusion when they couldn’t find us. Anywhere.

Luke managed to patch into their radio channel. Their communications were brief and, interestingly, in Spanish. The fact they’d chosen that dialect in such a pressured situation indicated it was their first language. But no matter. All of our team, with the exception of Luke, spoke fluent Español. Even Bradley, although he was more likely to ask si esos zapatos vienen en púrpura at Madrid Fashion Week.

“Hay alguna señal de ellos?” one of them asked. Any sign of them?

There was a burst of static, then, “Nada.”

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