Late at night, at a villa outside Paris, several armed guards patrolled the area, their conversation a medley of Egyptian Arabic, Russian, and even Albanian. It was unclear how they managed to communicate normally.
A bullet silently sliced through the air. One guard turned to speak to his companions, only to miss a vital point.
The bullet whizzed past his ear, shattering the communicator hanging from his ear. The fragments stung slightly as they pierced his skin.
The guard uttered a soft "ouch," thinking it was an insect bite. He touched his hand, only to find it covered in blood. He cried out in terror.
"Enemy attack!"
"Be careful!"
"Take cover!"
"Where is he? Has anyone seen him?"
The guards patrolling the villa's forecourt appeared well-trained. Instead of firing back indiscriminately, they immediately sought cover and inquired about the shooter's location.
"Bang!" With the faint sound of distant gunfire, another bullet struck the flowerbed. The scattering gravel splattered another guard, who was struggling to peer out, leaving his face covered in blood. He fell to the ground, groaning in pain.
"Fire one, move on. Fire three, move on. Fire one, move on. Fire three, move on." Cassel kept muttering as he moved behind a pillar.
He'd been fine with the first shot, but by the second, his hands were shaking. Now, he was panicking, short of breath, and leg cramps—all the symptoms of stress. Only
then did Cassel understand the significance of Jack's two consecutive headshots, and he also deeply understood the importance of not using one's hobbies to challenge others' expertise.
He was actually a bit self-deprecating. If Jack had seen this, he would have patted his shoulder with satisfaction and told him that this level of shooting from 300 yards was good enough to be an assassin.
After taking several deep breaths, Cassel fired his third shot at another guard who was about to poke his head out. Without checking to see if he'd hit the target, he slung his L129A1 over his shoulder, turned around, and trotted off. He ducked into a Renault 5 electric scooter and vanished silently into the night.
The villa on the other side was in complete chaos. The two groups patrolling the back garden now hurried to the front courtyard, carefully using the flowerbed columns and other areas for cover to locate the attacker.
After a while, no more bullets were detected. A leader, seemingly in command, announced over the intercom, waved to several of his companions nearby, and barked orders in Russian.
"Go, a few people, two people, go around and search. Make sure you find the sniper."
As the guards shoved and jostled, reluctantly assigning this dangerous task, no one noticed that behind them, two dark figures silently climbed over the backyard wall and approached.
"Puff, puff, puff!" Jack's silenced Viper fired relentlessly as if recoilless.
The powerful 9x21mm armor-piercing pistol rounds, specially developed by the former Soviet Central Institute of Precision Mechanical Engineering, easily pierced the guards' soft body armor, leaving lethal holes in their fragile flesh.
"What's going on? Have you found the sniper?" Someone in the villa's lobby, sensing something was amiss, peeked out briefly, and mumbled a question.
"Hey!" A voice called out from behind, and the man turned back in shock. His last glimpse was a bald head, gleaming even at night.
Twisting the man's neck 180 degrees, Frank reached for his MP5, unsheathed, and unleashed a barrage of fire into the second-floor hallway.
A militant, sensing the situation, had left his room to investigate, screamed and tumbled over the railing, his body falling to the hallway floor.
"Bang!" A dull explosion echoed from underground, shaking the entire villa. The lights flickered out, plunging the area into darkness.
"Calling Team One!"
"Team Two."
The intercom suddenly rang. A militant, terrified and hiding behind the stairs, frantically tried to turn it off. When he looked up again, he was horrified to find the black muzzle of a gun pressed against his forehead.
"Where are the two girls?" Jack asked in Russian.
Seeing the other man shaking his head, he didn't know if he didn't understand or didn't know, so he asked again in Arabic.
In response, he continued to shake his head, mumbling something in Albanian that seemed to be a skill he hadn't yet mastered. Jack pulled the trigger without mercy, aiming the gun at a figure emerging from the basement.
"It's me," Brian said hoarsely.
"I know." Jack tilted his gun slightly, the bullet glancing past Brian's ear and hitting a man behind him who was struggling to stand.
"They're not in the basement," Brian said without turning back.
"Not on the first floor either." Frank's bald head flashed from the side hallway. In just a few minutes, he had swept through all the rooms on the first floor.
The three of them felt their hearts sink, their eyes all looking upstairs. Jack reloaded his Viper and picked up an MP5 from the corpse. "Let's find Volkov first."
—
A humming sound echoed, and the backup generator automatically started up, dimming the lights in the villa. Jack had just stepped into the hallway when he instinctively retreated.
"Ta-ta-ta! Ta-ta-ta!" A series of bullets sparked off the wall. A thin, sunken-cheeked old man suddenly appeared at the other end of the hallway, firing wildly at the other side with an AK.
"Sean, I know it's you! Come out! It's time to put an end to this!"
Jack tried to poke his head, but was instantly repelled by a barrage of bullets. Confused, he asked, "Who's Sean?"
"Sounds like a fake name," Frank, who was sitting across from him, grumbled.
Jack curled his lips, thinking that the name Frank Moses might be fake too. He reached behind his waist and pulled out a rusty M84 stun grenade, shaking it at him. "Are you sure it still works?"
The stun grenade was from Frank's safe house collection and was at least a decade old.
"We'll know if we try it," Frank said, replacing the magazine for his Beretta 92F.
Jack pulled the ring and swung his hand. The M84 ricocheted a few times before landing at the old man's feet with a mere puff. It was indeed a dud.
"Hahaha, Sean, you coward! Stand up like a man!" The old man shuddered in fear and, in revenge, fired another burst of rounds down the hallway.
"Puff puff!"
The sound of gunfire suppressed by the silencer rang out from behind him, and the two burly bodyguards beside the old man fell to the ground at the same time.
Brian, who had climbed in from the balcony, knocked down two people with two shots, and then fired four more shots in a row.
The scene in front of him was exactly the same as the one in the woods before. The old man had a bloody hole on his arm and knee, and he collapsed to the ground powerlessly.
"Where did you hide those two girls? Where is my granddaughter?" Frank stepped forward quickly and stepped on Volkov, who was still trying to struggle, making his ribs creak.
"You actually learned to find help? Are you really old? What should I call you, Sean, George, Roger or Timothy?" Blood was oozing from the corner of Volkov's mouth, but the expression on his face was an angry smile.
Frank shot him directly through the thigh.
"Frank, now I'm Frank. Where are the two girls you kidnapped? You know the rules. Tell me, and I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life in prison."
Volkov winced in pain, a sinister grin still playing on his face. "I've already given up on living. Send me to Anna, just like you did to her."
"You've got the wrong guy, bastard." A furious Brian leaned over, digging his fingers into the wound on Volkov's arm.
"Ah! I'll wait for you in hell, Frank!" Volkov screamed in agony, his face taking on a strange blue hue.
"Wait." Jack tried to pry open his clenched teeth, but failed. He simply smashed down with the butt of his gun.
But it was too late. A foul smell of bitter almonds, along with broken teeth and blood, emanated from his mouth, and the three of them paled.
"He prepared cyanide sacs beforehand." Jack instinctively nearly initiated a healing spell, but stopped abruptly.
"This bastard." Even Frank, who always appeared to be a tough guy, was broken down at this moment, tears welling up in his eyes.
(End of this chapter)