Chapter 95: Attack
"What the hell are you idiots staring at! Why don't you shoot those damn things down?" Dean's furious shout echoed from his office. The bodyguards snapped out of their stupor and drew their weapons to target the flying devices overhead.
Unfortunately, they were a step too late.
"Let me tell you something, scumbag," Ron's commanding voice boomed again through the drone speakers.
"Art is..." Ron pressed the detonation button.
"BOOM!" Flames erupted from all six small drones simultaneously, engulfing the entire corridor in a massive explosion that nearly burst Arthur's eardrums.
"Hell yeah!" Ron slapped Arthur's shoulder enthusiastically. "See? Your tactics are outdated! This is maximum efficiency infiltration. Why waste time with all that fancy footwork when you can just blow the place to kingdom come?"
"Because dead men tell no tales? That's amateur hour thinking." Arthur, a career assassin, found this approach completely crude and inelegant. He tried to reassert his expertise. "But what if they're holed up in a massive warehouse, crawling with personnel, and every entrance is covered by overlapping fields of fire from at least five automatic weapons?"
Just as Arthur was about to elaborate on his sophisticated infiltration techniques, Ron casually provided his solution.
"In that scenario, I'd go with heavy artillery. I've got a 107mm rocket launcher—the twelve-tube variant. If needed, I can acquire two more and concentrate fire on the warehouse until it's nothing but a smoking crater."
Ron never lost a tactical debate, leaving Arthur completely speechless.
Would that even work?
"Cover the emergency exit! I hear movement. Hold this position while I head upstairs," Ron patted the mounted weapon in front of Arthur and vaulted over their makeshift barricade. "Don't let this welcome gift go to waste. I guarantee you'll enjoy using it."
In the stairwell leading to the emergency exit, a tripod-mounted steel monster sat behind an improvised fortress the two men had constructed from available materials, its barrel trained menacingly on the exit door.
It was the legendary M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, weighing just under twenty-two pounds unloaded, made even heavier by the drum magazine holding two hundred 5.56 NATO rounds. Ron was confident nothing could break through its devastating firepower.
Meanwhile, in the drone-devastated corridor, Dean's surviving bodyguards regrouped. Most had been in separate offices during the initial attack, saving them from the blast.
Ron hadn't expected the drones alone to finish the job.
"Damn it!" a burly bodyguard cursed after frantically pressing every elevator button. "None of these are working. What's our play now?"
"Has to be Arthur's doing. There's an emergency stairwell. Move it, that's our way out!" Dean took a few steps before stopping, remembering Arthur's reputation for tactical precision.
"Hold up, that bastard's definitely waiting in those stairs. Morrison, take your team and smoke that son of a bitch!"
"Roger that, Boss."
...
The thundering footsteps in the corridor grew closer, but just as they reached the door, they halted. A small periscope made from mirror fragments emerged from around the corner.
"Looks like these rats have some brains after all." Ron simultaneously pulled the pins from two grenades and, without waiting for the bodyguards to make their move, hurled them off the opposite wall.
The grenades ricocheted perfectly and landed directly among the clustered bodyguards near the entrance.
"BOOM! BOOM!" Two explosions erupted in rapid succession. The first blast sent a massive fireball racing through the corridor. Shrapnel and embedded steel bearings sprayed outward in a deadly fan pattern, instantly shredding the bodyguards like paper targets.
The second grenade detonated moments later, unleashing a blinding white flash accompanied by an ear-splitting roar. The surviving bodyguards were temporarily blinded, and several who were too close to the blast collapsed, retching violently.
Arthur, without waiting for Ron's command, immediately grabbed his machine gun and charged toward the exit.
"Brrrrrrap..."
Arthur's muzzle erupted in deadly fire, producing a bone-chilling buzz-saw sound. In the confined space, precision aiming was unnecessary, and he instantly turned the corridor into a hellscape of blood and dismembered bodies.
In twelve seconds, the 200-round belt was exhausted. The machine gun gave a sharp metallic "ping," and Arthur immediately dropped the weapon and rolled back into cover.
As he retreated, multiple gun barrels emerged from various positions throughout the corridor where the remaining bodyguards had taken shelter. A hail of bullets immediately peppered the area where Arthur had been standing with a dense pattern of bullet holes.
It was the bodyguards' FN P90s! These weapons held fifty-round magazines, and their alternating fire was enough to pin them down, allowing the survivors to provide covering fire and potentially break through Ron's chokepoint.
"Is this your brilliant plan? I've already lost my machine gun, what are we supposed to do now?" Arthur shouted angrily at Ron, who was whistling casually while carrying a case down the stairs.
Ron calmly pulled out another smoke grenade and lobbed it into the corridor. The disoriented bodyguards fell back to their improvised positions.
"Want to play some NASCAR?" Ron opened the case, revealing two remote-controlled race cars, and set them on the ground. He produced two controllers with built-in screens showing live feeds from the cars' cameras. With a wicked grin, he handed one to Arthur.
"Each car is packing two pounds of C4 with fifty steel ball bearings inside. Hit the red button to detonate. Want to take it for a spin?"
"Hell yes!" Arthur eagerly accepted the controller.
The bodyguards in the corridor had been hammered twice by Ron's assault, leaving fewer than twenty still combat-effective. They all nervously aimed their weapons at the smoke, ready to eliminate anything that emerged.
However, what came out of the smoke wasn't the sound of Arthur's boots, but the whining of remote-controlled engines, like mechanical death approaching through the haze, accompanied by various collision sounds.
Suddenly, two racing cars—one black, one white—burst from the smoke cloud.
"What the hell! Take those things out now!" The bodyguards, having learned their lesson from the drone attack, no longer underestimated anything and immediately opened fire on the two vehicles.
However, they only managed to destroy one, as the other used evasive maneuvers to dodge the incoming fire and slipped behind the cover where the bodyguards were positioned.
"BOOM!"
Ron hit the red detonator, and the bodyguards behind the barrier were obliterated in a spray of gore. Before the remaining guards could process what had happened to their teammates, Ron and Arthur emerged from the smoke wearing gas masks.
Ron's .44 Magnum was already cocked and ready to fire.
"High noon, boys."
(End of Chapter)
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P@atreon/Soulforger (45+ advanced chapters)