S Hunter - Longevity

This part of the city was full of mature trees and some of them, fortunately, were close to Bedford’s perimeter wall and probably cherished by neighbors who didn’t share his paranoia. If Bedford was obeying the strict privacy laws enacted at the beginning of the century, and she was counting on his powerful neighbors to compel him to do so, then he’d have no acueyes overlooking his neighbor’s property. On the other hand, Bruno had assured her that those same neighbors would respect her LLE sleeve insignia when they saw it glowing for their acueyes. They would certainly monitor her intrusion like an owl tracking a mouse, he’d said, but would know better than to interfere. She was LLE.

She crept along the outside of Bedford’s perimeter wall a short distance through the neighbor’s yard and approached the tree she had spotted earlier during her drive-by. Using it would allow her to avoid any early contact with the wall, which was probably touch-sensitive, or at least she had to assume so.

Tonight, getting into her first position would be the last time she would be able to hesitate. Once she left there, she couldn’t stop again until she found her partner. As she climbed up and settled into a good place to sit in the lower branches she thought briefly of Robert Maas, and experienced a bitter aftertaste of vulnerability. If there was after all a perimeter acueye capturing her every move, they were just waiting to find out if she was alone before starting to take shots at her, and she would have no chance at success.

Forcing herself to wait one more minute, she took her first good look at the house. As far as she could see Bedford’s house plans and the security plans for the neighbor’s were both precisely matching the plans she’d gotten from the city’s building permit files. She opened her expandable pack, and while she continued to survey the compound with half her attention, she took out the launcher piece by piece and she assembled it by touch. Now, she heard only the crickets, the soft rustling of the leaves surrounding her, and the incongruous clicks of the launcher pieces snapping together. Other than the guard at the gate, she saw no movement.

Here we go , she thought. With the launcher set to automatic fire and her entire supply of 30 Spritzer’n’Smokes, or Spritzers as Bruno called them, fit into the magazine, all she had to do was aim so that they landed, one every 2 seconds, in variable positions on the roof. The launcher made only a small puff when the bombs were fired, but they hit the roof and occasionally the side of the house with thumps and clanking that was surely enough to awaken everyone inside. The Spritzers that landed on the roof all rolled off onto the balconies and decks and terraces with which the mansion was generously outfitted, making rattling sounds as they rolled.

When she’d fired off the last Spritzer, she tossed the launcher over the wall into Bedford’s yard and lobed the Basebombs at the windows across the side of the house by hand. They exploded instantly with a louder pop, still quiet enough to keep the noise within the perimeter wall, and sprayed dangerous dissolving liquids over the glass, giving her a choice of entrances. Thirty seconds after landing, the Spritzers began going off with a soft hiss. They were as spectacular as Bruno had promised, sort of a combination of sustained low-key, sizzling fireworks that confounded infrared and motion detectors, and copious thick smoke that not only enclosed the entire two floors of the house, but billowed across the yard with the slight breeze.

It was time to move. She threw her armored tarp over the sharp hazards, tossed her pack after the launcher and jumped, briefly settling on top of the wall. From there, she grasped the lower edge of the tarp hanging inside the wall and swung down into Bedford’s home territory. Her grip on the tarp was enough to let her hang for a second and then she dropped with a soft thump, rolled, and got to her feet in one continuous, unforgiving move.

There was no phalanx of gunmen rushing like apparitions out of the engulfing smoke and the sustained flaring of the Spritzers, so she wouldn’t need to drop her pack, throw hands in the air and pretend she’d made a wrong turn. They hadn’t spotted her approach, and now, the acueyes had to be in a three-way daze. Cloaked in the sensory confusion, she should be essentially invisible.

First Louie. Since she was as blind as they were, it was a matter of vectors of planned movement, using the house for orientation. A 50 meter rush to the house through drifting smoke and the sparkling light show she’d created, then a turn towards the gate, tossing some pure Smokes through the dissolved windows as she picked up speed passing along the side of the house. Her advantage approaching the gate was that she knew where the gatekeeper had been standing. She ran towards that spot out of the smoke, already aiming, and hit him with two duoloads without slowing down. He went down like an axed tree.

Louie was there before her, bouncing on his forefeet with pent-up urgency. The lock plate for the pedestrian gate was conveniently labeled so she hit it with her Masterkey and had the satisfaction of watching Louie wiggle through while it was still opening. With her faceplate down, she couldn’t talk to him without shouting, but he fell in at her side and they ran back together into the smoke and erupting flares towards the house.

It was a strange sensation after so many years doing only investigative work, to have her world narrow down to her weapons and the house, with whatever remaining guards it held, and her firm objective. In Tactical, she’d been part of a team. Tonight, she had Louie.

She wanted no one at her back, so she chose the last set of French doors at the back of the house and paused only long enough on the outside to lean close to Louie’s ear and say distinctly “Find McGregor. Louie, find Chris.” He leapt in over the ruined glass and wood smoothly and disappeared into the smoke-filled room as Livvy scrambled through after him. Immediately, she sidestepped to brace up against the adjacent wall. A small table went over with the loud crash of what was probably a priceless Chinese vase. The smoke still made normal vision impossible so with her back now to the Spritzers, she toggled her faceplate to infrared and looked around. There was Louie, crouching with his head down on the other side of the room just as a human figure appeared at what had to be a door. It was embarrassingly easy to eliminate the man with two Stinger shots but she didn’t delude herself into thinking that they would all be so simple. Quickly groping her way through the room, she used her hips and knees to locate the obstacles so that she could have her hands free for her Stinger. She’d have bruises tomorrow.

Louie was waiting for her when she got to the door. She tossed one of her Smokes through but couldn’t wait for full dispersal because Louie was picking up speed as though he had picked up a scent and was half way down what was apparently a long, wide hall when she went through. There were two men running towards her at the other end of the hall, and she barely had time to scream “Louie, down” before she dropped and rolled, aiming and firing as she moved. She got the first man as she went down, before he got off a shot, but the second sent two missiles – silenced bullets she thought from the sound – that impacted a wall above and behind her before her duoloads caught him. Four. How many more guards did the old man have?

Louie was already up and moving again – a dog on a mission now – and Livvy pushed herself to her feet to follow. He stopped in front of a door under a stairway. Livvy had time to register that they were standing beside a grand stairway that lead up out of an impressively marbled and chandeliered entryway when the fifth man poked his gun around the corner of a doorway across the room and started spraying her with more bullets. Most of them ricocheted off the lovely oak balusters but one of them hit her shoulder, above her sore arm, before she could duck.