Chapter 15

“They headed down to, ooh, old El Paso.
That’s where they ran into a great big hassle.
Billy Joe shot a man while robbing his castle.
Bobbie Sue took the money and run.”
-Steve Miller Band, “Take The Money And Run”

The Byrna SD XL is classified as a non-lethal weapon and delivers a .68 caliber projectile via CO2 propellant. This projectile travels at approximately 107 mps, impacting with a force higher than that of a typical paintball gun, but below that of a bullet from a .22 caliber pistol. Enough impact to cause bruising and potentially break skin, but little more. It can fire solid rubber rounds but is meant to hold a different projectile.

This projectile bursts on impact, releasing a cloud containing Oleoresin Capsaicin; for a few bucks more, combined with Ortho-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, into an area roughly two meters around the target. This combination of pepper spray and CS gas enters the target’s mouth, nose, and eyes. Resulting in intense coughing, wheezing, gasping, gagging, nausea, vomiting, and skin and eye irritation. It was two of these projectiles that struck Contessa Helena de San Finzione and Nigel Mander.

Helen’s troubles with law enforcement throughout her life never escalated to the use of pepper spray or tear gas. The shock of the impact caused her to blink, allowing the chemicals to go to work in earnest. She dropped to the ground, unable to continue speaking the command she’d been giving and fighting for breath. Mander had some experience with both tear gas and pepper spray in his youth as a rebellious punk on the streets of London and later in his career as a mercenary. However, he hadn’t been prepared for the combo of both here in the enclosed corridor of the secret passage to La Contessa’s Study, where the two of them had been laying in wait for the pair of thieves who’d broken in. The John Lennon sunglasses he habitually wore protected him from some of the pepper spray, but the gas was doing its work.

Morris Sinclair stepped back out of the cloud. The gas masks he and Gordon Walker had put on moments before La Contessa sprang her trap had done their jobs, and the two men were able to move freely through the cloud spreading out of the passage and into the room.

Behind them, the heavy oaken doors thudded as members of La Squadra de Ultimados pounded furiously against them. A fast-acting epoxy that Gordon had applied to the doors held them shut, and a surprise was waiting for them when they got it open.

Looking down, Morris spotted the item they’d infiltrated the castle to steal. The emerald pendant around La Contessa’s neck. The gift from her late husband that had saved her life from an assassin. He reached down and snatched it from around her neck. Helen was too busy dealing with the effects of the pepper and the gas to stop him from yanking the chain and stuffing it in his pocket.

“I’ve got it! Let’s go!” He shouted to Gordon. Mander couldn’t see to fire a shot. He blindly took hold of Helen and dragged her upwards, trying to back up the stairs and out of the cloud that was now fading away. The two men ran into the tunnel.

“We’ve been gassed!” Mander coughed to his earpiece. “I’ve got Her Countessness, we’re retreating upstairs. They’re getting away.”

“La Contessa is clear.” Generalissimo Hernando Ramirez ordered over the line. “Get those doors open NOW!”

On the other side of the glued entrance, one of the Ultimados shouted for everyone to get back and leveled his shotgun where the top hinge would be on the other side of the left door. The blast thundered through the Palace Wing. A second took out the bottom hinge and the door fell over.

The canister Gordon had placed between the doors that Alice Mei prepared for their job fell to the ground and went off. A flashbang grenade that she’d rigged to the CS gas grenade detonated on impact. Everyone’s ears were already ringing from the shotgun blasts, but the flash blinded them while more tear gas streamed out of the grenade and into the room and hallway.

The two Ultimados in the rear each took hold of one of Troy Equals’ arms and dragged him, coughing, backwards out of the spreading cloud. The remaining two charged into the gas. One went for the stairwell to assist Mander in removing La Contessa from the area. The other sprinted down the tunnel after Sinclair and Walker.

The shotgun blasts echoed through the Palace Wing, reaching the guest chambers. In the room closest to the Nursery and La Contessa’s chambers, Susan Bailey picked up the two princes who’d been startled awake and were now screaming at the sound.

“Go help her!” She told the two Ultimados that were guarding her and the Royal Twins. “They’re just scared. We’ll be fine. She needs you!”

They refused. La Contessa used her power of mind control to enhance the training of her Ultimados and their loyalty to La Familia Royale was unquestionable. La Contessa had told them that protecting the children and Susan was their priority. They would remain by their side.

Susan wrestled with using her own power on the two to make them go assist Helen and the others. She held a twin in each arm, and it was their parents and her family that were in danger. She leaned over her phone and tried to watch the video, but the room was now filled with gas.

“Dammit!” She called out. “Someone tell me what’s going on in there!”

Morris and Gordon ran down a flight of stairs. Behind them could be heard the footsteps of the approaching Primo Tenente Gabriel Rossi. There was no place in the now brightly lit tunnel to hide. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Walker stopped and waved for Sinclair to keep running.

“Keep going!” Gordon told his friend. He turned around and waited for the Ultimado to come into view. One of the two collapsible metal batons he preferred to fight with slid into his left hand, and he extended it with a flick of his wrists. His right still held the Byrna. When Rossi got far enough down the stairs that his chest was visible, Walker fired, emptying the remaining three shots into his target.

Another facet of the extra mind control-based training that Helen gave the Ultimados was the ability to mentally deaden their pain receptors. That combined with the fact that he had been trained not to blink and to fight through the effects of tear gas caused Rossi to ignore the pain and keep coming at Gordon. Gordon dropped the Byrna and took out the other baton, swinging his left one at the approaching Ultimado.

Rossi sidestepped the blow and grabbed hold of Gordon’s arm. He spun around, swinging the other baton and hitting Rossi in the stomach. The Ultimado kept going and tried to sweep Gordon’s feet out from under him. Gordon jumped over it and turned the jump into a jump kick, catching Rossi in the chest.

Rossi’s orders were to take the two men alive, so he grabbed Walker by each wrist, shaking them and trying to get him to drop the batons. Walker headbutted Rossi and kneed him in the abdomen. The Ultimado staggered back, then all of his muscles seized, and he let out a scream. Gordon followed the taser wires to the pistol Morris was holding behind him and flashed him a bad look.

“We don’t have time for this!” Morris reminded his friend. “More are coming!”

The two continued running down the passage.

“Dammit, Tracy, can you hear me?” Morris shouted into the comms. They were still within range of the castle’s signal jammer, so no response came yet. They continued down toward the Denti house, the sounds of more footsteps entering the tunnel above and behind them.

A few years earlier, when an assassin had nearly killed Helen, her life had been saved by his glass blade getting caught in the chain of her pendant and breaking when the man tried to cut her throat. This left Helen with a tiny scar on her neck that was too close to vital arteries to risk removing completely.

Another factor which saved her life that day was that one of the two Ultimados who’d dispatched the assassin was a field medic and was able to see to her wounds immediately. The Generalissimo had pulled some strings with the Ministry of Medicine and got the Ultimado’s medical license application rushed through the process so that he could be one of the doctors assisting with her surgery. That Ultimado was now La Familia Royale’s personal physician and part of the Equals’ discreet security detail in Federal Way, Washington.

Capitan Gregario Ortega, commander of La Squadra de Ultimados, had people engaged in covert operations around the world who needed his attention. He wasn’t able to take time away from them to take charge of the ones he’d assigned to La Contessa’s request for an enhanced security detail at the castle that evening. But he had time to select them.

And after the assassination attempt, it became standard procedure to include a field medic in all of La Familia Royale’s security teams. When he heard that they’d be dealing with what the Ultimados called “An Equals Situation,” meaning La Contessa’s dearest friends who shared her strange power over the minds of men were involved, and that the Royal Twins would remain in the castle during the expected incident, he assigned a second.

Because of this, two medics were on hand to tend to La Contessa and her friends right away. Mander and one of the medics had carried Helen up the passage to her bedroom and private lavatory, where they were flushing her eyes with a glass of water in the sink. Mander went to the bathtub, turned on the faucet, and rinsed his own eyes before running back to chase after the two thieves. One floor below them, in the hall outside her study, the other medic was assisting Troy out of the breaching gear he’d been wearing and into another lavatory so he could do the same.

“What the fuck is going on in there?” The voice of Julie Equals demanded over the earpiece Helen was still wearing. “Dammit, Troilus, where are you?”

“It’s tear gas.” Helen tried to sputter assuringly in-between pouring glasses of water onto her face and having recovered enough to speak. “They’re seeing to him; he’ll be ok. Stick to the plan.”

She muted her earpiece, ran to the toilet, and vomited. Helen returned to the sink, grabbed another glass of water, rinsed her mouth out, and poured the rest into her eyes. A couple more glasses and she unmuted it.

“Hernando.” She said to the Generalissimo. “Keep her on task. Order JE1!”

Order JE1 was a special order for the Ultimados in the event that someone harmed Troy. It consisted of three words: Stop Julie Equals.

“Si, Contessa. Senora Equals, you can deal with this later.”

Over on their end, Julie fumed and got back to the part of the plan she’d been assigned.

Tracy Baker sat behind the wheel of an idling van. She’d parked in front of a house that was a block away from the Denti house. Death metal came from it at a volume that felt like a compromise the occupant had reached with the neighbors for playing at this hour. It seemed a good place to stop and wait. The sort of place where the neighbors might not think an idling van parked outside would be amiss.

And waiting had been what she had done. She looked at her phone. She was far enough down the hill to get a signal and it had been eighteen minutes since Gordon and Morris’ comms had cut off from inside the castle. How long would she wait for them?

She knew the answer. As long as it took. They were her people and they needed her. She’d stay here until the cops showed up.

Not that they seemed to be a problem. Tracy hadn’t noticed a police presence anywhere since they’d gone up La Collina. La Contessa seemed to be keeping up her end of the challenge: not involving La Policia. Tracy knew she wouldn’t. She’d win if she did, of course. But Tracy’s gamble that she was too good a criminal to want to beat her that way had paid off. Still, with the cops out of the picture, it was a good night to be a criminal on the hill where all the rich people live. The Ultimados were another matter. Rich people and powerful criminals had guards, it stood to reason that the greatest criminal would have the best.

Tracy looked down at the second magazine she’d bought with La Contessa on the cover. She was smoking in the candid shot that headed the article As she was in almost every candid picture the media took of her. The woman certainly seemed to have an oral fixation. That gave Tracy a glimmer of hope that her fantasies weren’t completely invalid.

“-FUCKING HEAR ME YET???” Morris Sinclair’s voice burst forth from the earpiece she wore. “Dammit, Tracy, we need out now!”

Tracy tossed the magazine aside and put the truck in gear.

The sound of a gunshot came over the comms. Tracy didn’t hear it coming from the direction of the house as well, so they must still be in the tunnel.