Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty: The Best Offense is a Really Aggressive Defense

            The small, cramped space they were in smelled like the waiting room at a dingy criminal courthouse—a faint scent of desperation and fear-laced sweat, along with a fainter scent of aggression.

            The harsh feminine breathing of Fern was new to Wolfe’s experience, however. She was near to hyperventilating.

            “You’ll be fine,” Wolfe growled, reaching across the short distance between them and placing his hand on her forearm.

            Fern flinched away from him spastically, then looked at him guiltily and muttered, “Thanks.”

            Wolfe didn’t respond as he withdrew his hand.

            Wolfe, Shel, and Fern were all siting in their polyester seats, with Wolfe having turned his around to face the back. Fern had set up three laptops on the back seat next to Shel, and was now facing the back seat as well.

One of the laptops had cameras watching the front of the Hellmouth institute, and the other two had cameras along the interior, including the top, back room where Gopal was zip tied to a chair in just his gross tighty-whities. He was so covered in sweat that Wolfe could almost smell it as well.

A fourth laptop sat in Fern’s lap, and she glanced down at it from time to time. It was running multiple programs, but the main ones she was paying attention to were the drone footage watching the four black S.U.V.’s headed along the freeway, presumably to the Hellmouth Institute… and a second drone that was circling, silent, far above a huge mansion, one that had two more SUVs next to it. Three streets over, a van with dealer tags was idling.

“I count sixteen, but they could have four more,” Fern said. “I can’t see the middle of the seats.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Wolfe responded.

            The four vans took the exit at Juniper street with near military precision, then turned East and headed right for the Hellmouth Institute. There wasn’t much else out near Wolfe, and he had a fair degree of land around him, so it was almost positive they were trying to go get Gopal back.

            Just like Wolfe wanted. Now that he had cleared everyone out, he much preferred the fight take place on his home turf. There wasn’t anything there that he was worried about losing anymore, and the building itself was borderline indestructible.

            “There they go,” Shel muttered while tapping her leg, her cute face marred by a frown.

            Sure enough, and exactly as predicted, the four SUV’s pulled off Juniper and into the Hellmouth Institute parking lot, then drove to the front. Wolfe, Shel, and Fern all breathed quietly, as if they might be heard, as a full twenty men spilled from the four vehicles. They were all dressed in black and wearing ski masks, and…

            “Of course,” Wolfe muttered as he saw their armament.

While most of the men had the typical pistols one could find among gang enforcers—a collection of mostly half-rate ones that had been poorly maintained—four of the men were carrying automatic rifles.

And one had a rocket launcher, a twin to the ones Wolfe had stolen from Adam’s warehouse the other day.

“I think we pissed them off,” Wolfe said through a dark chuckle. “I haven’t seen the gangs of Noimoire using a rocket launcher since Damian, that little shit, hit the convoy with Bitg Man Grimm two years ago.

“Why do you find that funny?” Fern asked.

Shel just smiled. “He finds a lot of screwed up things funny. You get used to it.”

One of the men that had spilled from the SUVs in the Hellmouth parking lot ran up the steps of the Hellmouth Institute and yanked on the huge doors that led into the front room.

Fern made the camera in the front room the primary, allowing Wolfe to more clearly see the people invading his home. The camera had been placed in the leaves of a large potted plant, facing the front, with a microphone attached, since you couldn’t put anything into the walls of the Hellmouth Institute.

Wolfe and his two teammates leaned over a bit toward the monitor, eager to see and hear, the only sound they were making was Fern’s harsh breathing.

About half of them had swarthy hands and black hair, and Wolfe was pretty sure that they were members of the Singh family—not just their enforcers.

            “Should I start the defensive measures?” Fern asked.

            Wolfe shook his head. “Let them get deeper.”

            “That’s what she said?” Shel murmured, but no one laughed.

            The men filed into the front room, one holding the door for his fellow enforcers. Before all of them had even gotten into the foyer, two teams of four had started heading down the halls, one team to each side.

            Another four-person team moved into the room where Mrs. Timo had once handled clients, leaping around corners with his gun pointed and then spinning to the other side like a bad b-flick. The camera in this room was on top of a large filing cabinet that had once held client files.

            The last of the enforcers filed into the room, and the man holding the door let go. It fell shut with a click.

            “Now,” Wolfe whispered.

            Fern brought up a program with numerous .exe entries, each of tiny file size, but hesitated just a second as the men moved a tiny bit deeper into the room, all of them in front of Mrs. Timo’s desk.

            Shel turned away from the screen.

            One of the men glanced over at the file cabinet. “Is that a camera?” he asked, pointing.

            Fern activated one of the files.

            A fraction of a second later, the front of Mrs. Timo’s desk exploded outward. The sound was loud even through the speakers, and Wolfe grimaced. The camera fell over, but Wolfe heard shouts.

            But no screams—he assumed the four were gone in the directed blast he had built into the desk that morning with some of the explosives from Adam’s warehouse.

            Gopal, inside his chair almost directly above the explosion, pissed himself and squaled.

            “Turn the sound on his camera off,” Wolfe said irately. He didn’t need the fat bully interrupting what they were doing with his reeking cowardice.

            Wolfe turned his attention back to the lower floor cameras. On the one in the foyer, he could see dust and smoke coming from the entrance to Mrs. Timo’s room, as well as see a few splatters of… someone. Everyone was shouting and cussing, and one of the men touched his hand to his ear. “Report!”

            Wolfe couldn’t hear what was said, but the man rushed into Mrs. Timo’s room, and four more of his goons followed him.

            The camera was pointed wrong, so Wolfe couldn’t see what was happening, but he heard the same man say, “He was waiting for us—this is an ambush! He was prepared for what we would do if we didn’t pay him.”

            There was a brief pause. “Yes sir. I’ll make sure it happens.”

            Another pause, and then, “Everyone, search rapidly! Find and kill Wolfe and his bitch, then get Gopal. Go quickly!”

            In the foyer, one of the three remaining men touched his chest, and pulled a deck of cards.

            “Who’s that?” Wolfe asked Fern.

            Fern hesitated—everyone was wearing masks. But when the cards appeared, some glowed a deep crimson, and some glowed with a sickly yellow light. It was a giveaway.

            “It’s almost certainly Harjeet Singh, Gurgit’s youngest son,” Fern said. “He has an Infernal, Corruption, and Psychic deck that relies almost entirely on debuffs and creature stealing in Infernal and Psychic, and Corruption effects that make status effects dangerous to the deckbearer.”

            Her eyes narrowed. “Like much of the family, paying for girls wasn’t enough. He’s had a few unwillingly.

            Wolfe considered his options. While he would like to get Harjeet, both for moral and practical reasons, he needed to get as many as possible as soon as possible.

            “Fire Two,” Wolfe whispered. “They aren’t doing what we need yet.”

Shel was crying silently, but she didn’t object.

Fern, dry eyed, nodded sharply once. Wolfe noticed that her breathing had become regular, and wondered if her being the hand that was smiting her once-oppressers was helping with her anxiety. He didn’t know anything about trauma, but he knew it would help him with anxiety about abuse if he killed his abusers.

Fern touched another key, and the door to a closet inside Mrs. Timo’s room pushed open.

            Fern hit another button, and a drone, waiting inside the closet, took off. It wasn’t a quiet one, and even before it exited the closet, the same man screamed, “Run!!”

            The camera swiveled, and Wolfe got a brief view of the men trying to run back to the Foyer as the drone flew at them fast. Fern hit another button, and the drone detonated.

            Wolfe couldn’t tell how many had been killed, and the explosive package on the drone was far smaller than the one that had been in the desk. But two men crawled from the room into view of the Foyer camera, and each was bleeding profusely, although Wolfe was fairly sure non-fatally.

            Fern stabbed a button again, and another explosion rang through the Hellmouth Institute.

            Wolfe stared down, and she pointed to a now-black screen on one of the other laptops. “One of their teams reached the stair to the second floor. Only got one, I think, but they’ll hesitate now.”

            Harjeet summoned forth what could only be a succubus—at Wolfe’s eye level, he was staring at an incredibly shapely, red-skinned, bare rear end and back with bat wings—and then touched his own ear.

            “We’ve lost eight, and two more are wounded to bad to continue. Wolfe’s entire lair is one big trap, and we’re basically down half—and you can bet him and his bitch are at the top, waiting for us. If you want this done, I need more men.”

            There was a pause, then Harjeet said, “I’ll use my cards to clear the place, but they’ve got drones carrying explosives. I’m going to need more.”

            Another pause, then, “I’ll do what I can while I wait.”

            “I think we did it,” Wolfe muttered.

            Fern shook her head. “Maybe. We have to wait and see.”

            The next five minutes were fairly boring, with cards slowly clearing trap rooms. Fern managed to wound two more with a flying drone attack, leaving eight healthy men.

            Finally, on the last laptop, ten more men spilled from the mansion. They ran over to the remaining two SUV’s and got in, six in one and four in the other. They drove out of the parking lot and headed out onto the road toward the freeway.

            “Ten more headed to go and rescue Gopal,” Shel said.

            Wolfe laughed, but it was forced. His tension was rising. “I remember it like I was right there, because I was.”

            “Har har,” Shel said, her own voice tight.

            “Let’s go,” Wolfe said. He reached behind him and grabbed a large backpack, then grabbed the door handle next to him.

            On the same camera, off to the side, the doors to the dealer-plate van opened as Wolfe and Shel exited the vehicle.