Charlie let the first attackers filter through the front gate. They were quiet enough for thugs trained in raw violence. They held to the shadows on the side away from the gatehouse and moved up the main drive, aiming for the front door. Charlie doubted Julio saw them at all.
There was a space after the first four invaders. Charlie noted how the two teams did not move in tight cohesion. The point of infiltration was vital, particularly when entering unknown terrain. This group had just made a mistake. One was all Charlie needed.
The second team of five men entered. He watched the last man approach the gatehouse, only to confront their secret weapon.
Charlie knew his almost-invisible friend would handle the second team. He slipped in behind the last man in the first group and made a standard triple strike. First punch to the left kidney, the unexpected blow delivering enough pain to stun the assailant. Second to the spine at heart level, breaking off the air needed to call out. Third to the carotid artery. Three strikes in one fluid action, just under a second from start to finish. Charlie lifted the man’s legs free of the earth, pulled him into the shadows, and slammed him into a tree. Hard. Charlie followed this with a final chop to the nerve center where the jaw met the neck.
Charlie silently lowered the unconscious man to the ground and made a quick search. He tossed the thug’s silenced pistol into the darkness. Ditto for the knife. Then Charlie hit pay dirt, a collapsible baton. Primo quality, so light he figured it for titanium and carbon steel.
As he headed back toward the gravel path leading to the villa, a voice ahead and to the right hissed, “Paolo?”
Charlie moved in at a slight crouch, his body angled as though he were headed in parallel to the path. Charlie’s first instructor had called it a hyena’s walk, how the animal never attacked straight on but rather loped in at an angle. The beast could change direction more swiftly and also masked precisely where the attack would happen. Ahead of him the trio clustered close enough to whisper.
Better and better.
One of the men finally spotted Charlie’s shadow. Charlie knew because he hissed and turned and raised his pistol, all in one professional motion.
But by then it was too late.
Charlie flicked the baton out like a metal whip and lashed at the pistol hand, then backhanded the second man’s eyes. He then stabbed the baton into the shooter’s face, breaking the man’s nose. He swung the baton up high enough for it to lift over the second man’s face and attacked the third thug’s eyes. But this man was fast enough to block the baton with his arm. He grunted with pain as it struck his wrist. The baton made a whirring sound through the air and smacked flesh and bone with sounds so swift, it was impossible to associate them with the damage Charlie knew he was inflicting.
All three men were shouting now, and two of them were trying to draw weapons clear of each other.
Charlie fell to the ground, covering the second man’s dropped pistol with his body. He went to work on their legs. There were two things most baton wielders did not realize. Cops were the worst—they often took a baseball-style windup like they were going to hit the bad guys out of the park. Which was fine, as long as there was just one assailant who was going to go down and stay down. In a situation like this, the important thing to realize was how the baton, even with the slightest twitch, delivered pain. The person being struck often had no idea how hard he had been struck and whether he had received serious damage.
The other thing most people did not realize was, once the baton was locked into full extension, it made an excellent stabbing weapon.
Charlie whacked an ankle and thought he heard a bone break, but he couldn’t be certain, what with the three men screaming and cursing overhead. He caught a glimpse of metal in the light and flicked the weapon upward, snapping the assailant on the chin and causing him to drop his pistol into the mud. Charlie rolled away.
The entire attack took less than five seconds.
He kept rolling until he was off the gravel and in the trees. Behind him the howls were more pain than rage, which was very good. The night became filled with the explosive coughs of silenced weapons and tight bursts of flame. The shots were all wide, since Charlie was nowhere near where he had rolled into the shadows. As he raced through the trees he saw that two of the shooters were down on their knees. He scouted the rain-swept shadows but could not find the third man.
Charlie kept to a crouch as he filtered back through the trees paralleling the path, keeping clear of the direction of shots, searching with each flame burst for the missing assailant.
He sensed the attack before it came.
He dropped and rolled just as the night erupted.
A silenced weapon was not silent, particularly in the dead of a rainy night. The gun whuffed and the flash illuminated a bullish man with both hands holding the weapon in a professional grip. As Charlie scrambled for the shelter of the closest tree, the attacker crouched and took aim.
Which was when Charlie slipped in the mud.
Charlie kept scrambling, but the rain-wet earth gave him no purchase. The trees might as well have been on the other side of the moon.
It had to come sometime. The final opponent. The fraction of breath he would not live long enough to draw.
Then Charlie heard a meaty thud. The shooter cried in agony. A shot drilled the wet earth over to his right. Then another thud, and this time the man only grunted.
Charlie turned and watched Irma chop the man a final time with her crowbar. The thug fell hard. She stood over him, the rain plastering her hair to her skull. “I guess this one didn’t get the memo about no guns.”
Benny Calfo emerged from the trees. He surveyed the man at Irma’s feet and said, “You got three guys in some serious hurt down the path. There are nine attackers, right?”
“Roger that. Nine.”
Irma said, “And you are precisely who?”
“Hazard knows. Don’t you, Eltee.” To Charlie he went on, “We’re missing two attackers.”
Charlie said, “Julio is isolated.”
“I’m on it.” He vanished.
Irma’s crowbar clanked on the gravel. “Am I seeing things?”
“You heard him, there are two assailants still unaccounted for. Go guard the front door.” Charlie bent over the inert form. “I’ll get these guys strapped before they come around.”