Chapter 3

If there is one bright side about handling death threats from sinister authoritarian governments with rigid and inflexible bureaucracies, it is that their agents tend to stick to the playbook and not get too terribly creative, or even remotely creative whatsoever. If the field manual for dealing with a potentially hostile wizard says to set up snipers prepared with silver bullets at all four compass points surrounding the target, then that is exactly what they will do ... each and every time. Until eventually, someone with an ounce of sense and balls decides to rewrite the manual ... usually much, much later on.

This was strictly a textbook ambush, and I might have been rather lackadaisical about the situation under other circumstances, but I starting to get rather annoyed. Watching our would-be pilot being blown to bits across a mile or two of local real estate had pretty much pushed my last set of buttons and I was getting madder by the moment. I was well down the track past violent outrage and pulling into the station of malevolent fury.

An ordinary wizard might have been inconvenienced a bit, locating and dealing with each individual threat one at a time, but I'd done this dance before. Tonight in particular I had two additional useful assets that I'd not possessed while I was being blown up at the rail yard. First of all, Trixie was already up on aerial combat patrol right from the very start and secondly, the FBI van next to us was at least moderately armored. This gave us the very attractive option of hurling ourselves into the protective vehicle and just hauling ass away from the ambush site. Incandescent rage or not, I really wasn't in the mood for this proposed sort of mayhem tonight.

From the sudden burst of flame on top of one of the aircraft hangars, I could surmise that at least one shooter was just now discovering that Trixie was silver bullet proof and that she didn't take kindly to people pointing guns at either of us. That sniper also had the best and nearest vantage point to us, up until the moment that his burning body came hurtling down in an arc of flame from the hangar room and onto the tarmac in front. Either way, his or her sniping days were now over. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

I made sure that Miranda made it back into the van first, largely by the forceful expedient of grabbing her arm and pretty much bodily tossing her inside. Probably none too gently, but I didn't want her to develop a fatal silver allergy. We'd been shot up enough at the rail yard fiasco to suit us both indefinitely. Silver actually makes for fairly lousy ammunition; it's a pain in butt to hand-manufacture and it really has terrible ballistic qualities, even puncturing flesh the penetrating round won't mushroom and expand to do proper (or even adequate) soft tissue damage. It's strictly designed to penetrate magical shields and hopefully with a lot of luck then hit a vital organ; otherwise, the exit wound is indistinguishable from the entry point. As for penetrating armor ... forget about it. Silver is much too brittle for that sort of task, but what it could do, and was currently successfully doing was keeping us under cover and on the defensive. Maybe just hitting the gas pedal and getting the hell out of here wasn't the best play after all.

"Aye, Trixie has the shooters burning mad at the moment and they'll be no more threat to you, but now the second group has the road in blocked off, with prepared ground explosives and at least one machine gun and also a fellow with a really large jeep-mounted cannon and some rather peculiar rune-marked ammunition. Now that'll put a great big hole into this rolling death box ... and it won't be doing our dragon or your young local friend any kindnesses either!"

Ouch ... I didn't think there were many conventional weapons that could seriously annoy or inconvenience Trixie, however with given prior preparation and planning, I was willing to bet that the FBMR probably had some special Arc-Tec ammo that might have some penetrating power through Trixie's magical resistances ... and her armor scale hide. I wasn't sure that it was even a good idea to give them the chance to try.

"Ok Sean, get her to hang back once the last of the snipers around the field is toasted to crispy black ash. In fact, send her down to the woods where the airplane blew up to see if by any chance the pilot survived. It's not likely, but have her look around the area there anyway on principle, but I'm not optimistic."

"Drive on through?" Stan enquired, while turning the van around towards the entrance, ready to mash the gas pedal down to the floorboard.

"Don't even think about it, they've got it covered apparently with some heavy military hardware. In fact, just pop this crate into reverse, get our asses into that empty hanger behind us, and then shut the doors up tight. Let's not play into their next ambush but make them come out from concealment after us instead."

Stan didn't argue, but Miranda considered it for several moments until we were safely inside of the hanger and Stan and I had rolled the steel doors shut. The hanger was fairly large and entirely vacant and we had it all to ourselves, for now. Our attackers would have seen our retreat and they'd debate for a few minutes how to next handle the situation, but eventually they'd have to come after us. Just waiting us out wasn't going to be an option. Local police, county sheriffs and/or the fire department would be responding to the plane explosion and crash soon, not to mention at least one aircraft hangar was now burning from dragon fire and undoubtedly there were several other trees around the airfield now in flames as well. Dragon flame burns really, really hot ... even when Trixie isn't breathing it out full blast.

No, our attackers weren't going to wait ... but neither was I. In a conventional military grade shootout, Stan was absurdly outgunned and very liable to become another collateral damage casualty. I needed to engage them outside in wide-open ground, but that's what airports have in plenty. Having an extra bit of open real estate also gave me a few minutes to calm down and think, but already I didn't care for the conclusions that my thoughts were arriving at. Already I was beginning to suspect that this was no spur of the moment, ad hoc, cobbled together at the last moment ambush born of despiration.

Peaking outside through a crack in the steel shutter hanger door I slowly counted to one hundred and then onwards even slower for another hundred, but everything outside remained quiet. Our attackers were apparently content to wait us out, which likely meant that they also had most or all of the local yokels under control as well. Therefore, it would be unlikely that either the local sheriffs or even the fire brigades would be putting in a prompt appearance. This further suggested that this particular attack on us was rather well planned and coordinated. So be it ... it would be a shame then, to waste such a carefully composed effort. I was almost flattered.

"Miranda, stay put and keep a sharp eye on the back door of the hangar, I don't think there is another assault team out there behind us yet, but they might eventually think of trying that idea. Stan, keep her here and focused on watching our backs ... I'll go and deal with handling what's out in front, I won't be long!"

She didn't like that idea at all, any part of it – but I wasn't listening. I shoved the sliding door open about a foot or so and slid myself through sideways out into the darkness of the tarmac. A loud sharp metallic clang on the door nearly missing my head suggested that Miranda had thrown a wrench or something similar at me, but I'd made my escape and now I was outside striding purposefully towards the runway, angling towards the country road and our assailants at its end.

I wasn't quite trotting, but I kept up a fast walking pace. Ideally, I wanted to get the airport hangar where Miranda and Stan were hidden out of the direct line of fire, assuming that our attackers were froggy enough to fire off their vehicle mounted field gun at me from this distance. They were ... but I was more or less ready and prepared for it.

The gun flash gave me a fraction of a second's warning and with a sharp flick of my thumb the cover bezel was opened on Uncle Lester's railroad pocket watch and instantly time began to slow to a crawl. It was pleasantly surreal to watch the artillery shell come closer and closer to me, and dead-on accurately too. Their gunner deserved rather a good bit of commending for that first pinpoint accurate shot, but I needed my moment in time to show off too. For simplicity, I just grabbed the glowing rune-etched projectile with a hard body of air and sent it off about 90 degrees straight upwards, sparing just a moment or two to admire the glowing vapor trail that it left soaring straight up into the sky.

It was nicely done, if I didn't say so myself, but I'd never suffered much from a lack of self-confidence.

I kept moving onwards, trotting a bit faster now as I mentally counted how long it would take the rather expert field gunner to reload and aim (all too accurately) his vehicle mounted gun. I'd rather hoped that it would take a bit longer than ten seconds to reload, but I was overly optimistic. The fucker probably had a rather well trained loader or two with him as well helping out, because the next shot came down-range about eight seconds later. It would have missed me by about two feet but I sent it off on an extended tour of the upper troposphere anyway just on principle.

By the time the third artillery round was heading up-range towards me, I had a rather different reception for it planned.

Air is (for me) readily simple and quick to grasp onto in an emergency situation but even grasping onto rather strong atmospheric air ley's can take a few moments that while under direct fire I might be in a rather uncomfortable race for survival. Having the charm in Uncle Lester's watch for even those brief twenty seconds helped give me the extra moments I wanted to prepare more fully for battle.

First, I grabbed that rather strong nearby air ley and built up my shields to near maximum level. Then, a scant second or two before the next round headed my way I connected to a rather closer but weaker earth ley and began to focus my energies upon the end of the concrete runway, near the wooded roadway where my attackers were still concealed. It was time to send some trouble flying their direction for a change.

As the next shell fired from the mounted gun I exploded upwards the entire far section of the concrete runway sending up a cloud of shattered concrete and its internal rebar steel directly up into the path of the shell. It stuck something solid and exploded rather nicely ... and rather far too excessively. The rune-marked explosives were definitely Arc-Tec, and probably more suitable for blowing nice large holes in battleships or massive concrete fortresses than useful as an anti-personnel weapon. Still, if the round had detonated anywhere near me, it might have been rather more directed magical force than my shields could have handled. If they had been closer and had targeted the hanger building or our van instead, the results would have been undoubtedly fatal for Miranda and Stan.

As it was, even with the detonation occurring at least fifty yards away from me, the concussive force of the explosion was enough to knock me backwards several feet right onto my butt. The view of several tons of concrete runway flying in all directions, including a large chuck that missed my head and weakened shields by barely a yard, was fairly impressive too. This huge cloud of flying stone and shattered steel became even more impressive when a huge tornado now suddenly descended downwards from the clouds onto the ruins of the airfield and began sucking up the hailstorm of falling debris while headed directly towards me.

Color me impressed, the ambushers had brought a relatively competent air witch!

I could feel her grasp on the same air ley that I had connected to earlier and with a moment of concerted effort, I could get a pretty good feel of my opponent's talent level and abilities. She was a rather strong air sorceress and her mental touch suggested both considerable technical prowess and decent force of will. Feeling my contact upon the ley as well, she exerted her will to try to break my connection, all the while maintaining control over her rapidly growing tornado. That was a neat trick of subtlety that showed my very magical opponent had many long years of experience. Color me very, very impressed.

But still, I was the Zyphyr ... and after refirming my now stronger attachment upon the ley I began a rather practical demonstration that sometimes sheer raw power can out-do finesse as I firmly and calmly disconnected her attachment to the powerful air ley and began to exert my own control over her tornado. First stalling it stationary in-place, and then reversing its path back over the ruins of the runway and then across the short field and right into the woods by the airport county road where my attackers remained under cover. I didn't think that they could dig enough dirt or get under enough cover to have a prayer of salvation ... and I was mostly right. The jeep with the mounted recoilless rifle and a couple of other vehicles, not to mention a few dozen uprooted trees all added themselves to the flying storm of wreckage. The merely mortal occupants undoubtedly went along for the ride as well but probably didn't fare at all well, being pulverized and ground into paste by the timber, stone and metallic whirlwind.

Mercifully, the cyclonic winds were much too powerful for me to hear their dying screams. That would have been a memory I could well live without.

Still, one foe remained – the powerful air sorceress. She was frantically mentally scrambling to reattach herself to the air ley, but I had that connection blocked. She didn't even try to connect to the weaker earth ley, but that wasn't terribly surprising. Most very powerful magicians with a strong specialty in one field are often less than capable in others. My own talents seemed to be unusual and far from ordinary, a notion that still seemed rather disturbing and vaguely unnatural to me at times.

Now that this ill-assembled collection of governmental agents were done lobbing magically enhanced high explosives at me, I decided that it would be best to clear off the playing field and to get the parked tornado out of the way as well. It didn't take much effort to force the storm, along with its entire collected jetsam back up into the clouds where the upper winds could push the ensuing hailstorm of debris off towards the other end of the runway, well away from us. It would have been cruelly ironic to have a falling tree or jeep crash down onto my friends out of carelessness; now that most of the danger was over! What goes up does indeed come down, and I was occasionally remembering to show a little sense of caution. My old BMA boss back in Austin would be clutching his chest having a fake heart attack at just the thought!

Now that I had a clear pathway through the ground wreckage near and around the ambush site, I now had a fairly good understanding of exactly how my magical opponent was able to multitask her attack on me so effectively, if yet fruitlessly. She had a bit of help ... and apparently more than just a short bit of time to prepare herself for our confrontation.

Approaching her, I was outright flabbergasted at the multiple circles and levels of protections that she had prepared in advance. Rings and numerous layers of mystical defenses, fixed into the ground, etched into the air, focused with Arc-Tec, an assortment of other magical materiel, and the aggregate anchored by a not insignificant amount of will, not to mention the hulking presence of a major air elemental!

I was quite agog with wonder ... and a growing admiration and respect for my opponent. Defenses like these would have taken me quite a few hours, if not several days to layer into interlocking position, carefully, exactingly and with this degree of extreme technical precision. Yeah, at least a day, I calculated while test probing her outermost defensive layers. Certainly far more advance time than our calculated trap attempt should have provided them; apparently, the FBI's operational security was even more vulnerable than even Stan had suspected. This suggested high-level traitors ... why was I not surprised.

The massive air elemental didn't seem too surprised to see me and from within the security of the defensive circles he was peering down at me with obvious increasing interest. His mistress, an older woman with short-cut blond hair and long thin fingers was desperately trying not to display the increased panic that she was feeling. Cut off entirely from the air ley, she was safe for the moment but unable to conduct any attacks on me, at least for the moment. The looming elemental, who seemed increasingly likely to be at least a moderate Sylph lord, in my growing opinion, had now finished sizing me up and was hastily deciding how best to handle me. It was smart and powerful enough to know that intimidation is nearly always a good starter, especially when you're about twelve feet tall and mostly made of air, invulnerable to virtually any and all sorts of physical violence.

"I am the great Sylph-Lord Hanu'um and you may tremble before me!" It bellowed, giving me a short nod of respect appropriate to a skilled rival. The billowing diaphanous and semi-translucent loincloth of its glowing vaporous form more than hinted that the being was indeed male underneath, adding to my certainty that was indeed one of the more powerful elementals. Still, I'd been threatened by professionals before.

"Good for you ... I'm the goddamned Zyphyr." I replied looking him square in the face, our eyes making full contact daring him to focus his will against mine. A challenge he accepted, but after a full long pregnant moment of hesitation.

As a point of practical honesty, I can admit that I'd never ever before combated a major, or even a moderate elemental lord in a direct contest of magical will. It probably wasn't in retrospect an especially clever idea on my part. That was my ego and rambunctious self-confidence writing checks that I wasn't sure my powers could actually cash. Still confidence is the key to winning at least half of the battle, and it surprisingly didn't last long.

Still wired firmly into the air ley, I let my will go forth against Hanu'um's and was surprised to find that his own will was already flucuating, filled with uncertainty and once my power confronted his directly he was nearly at once mentally entirely on the defensive. If his immensity had also had some competing grasp upon the air ley along with mine, the mental struggle could have been more interesting, but his own force of will, alone and unaided, isolated from his home plane of existence was absolutely no match for mine.

All mental barriers broken I entered into his thoughts briefly, but just deep enough to extract his true magical name, the nexus and means by which he had been summoned by his mistress to this world. Then I made sure that he knew I knew it. Armed with it, I could certainly send his nasty visitor-ass packing back home with his tail between his legs and his brain burning, but I had a brief practical use for him first.

His now former mistress was now not at all looking particularly happy and when her summoned pet bowed himself before me in obedient supplication upon one knee, I'm fairly certain that she partially lost bladder control. She dropped down to her knees as well in pain and complete mental and physical exhaustion as I severed her magical connection to her summoned former servant, rather ungently. In growing despair, she covered her face with her hands to wait for the imminent messy end that she was certain was coming. However, I had slightly different ideas.

The problem was actually a rather straightforward one. I was still pretty darned angry about that second bomb in the plane. Angry enough to brute force my way through the dozen or so layers of magical protections that she'd so carefully prepared. I really wanted to know about a few of the 'how and whys' and that meant taking her alive, which was probably not possible if I had to turn the entire area of the protective circles into a gigantic smoking crater; that left just one other approach, which incurred another entire new set of problems.

"Bigionima T'lile Hanu'um, I release you in entirety from your former mistress's service without malice, provided that you deliver her safely into my hands before me here and now without harm or injury and you agree to abjure this world in peace, save by my command, for the term of at least one year and a day. How say you?"

"The terms are acceptable." He stated in a neutral tone, but with a much deeper bow than before, enough so that his head touched the ground before us. This more than suggested that the powerful elemental lord found the terms to be far more lenient than he would have normally expected to have received. Being a full dozen feet tall, the elemental being had no difficulty in seizing his former mistress and with four long strides bore her to my feet, well outside of the protective circles.

If you have doubts about breaking your way into a series of powerful protections, it never hurts to try to find a way to bring the protected object outside to you instead!

"My thanks for your assistance honorable Hanu'um and know that I bear you no ill-will, save that should you ever return in anger to my presence. Then you should know my utter enmity! Bear with my indulgence for yet a moment and then may take your release in peace."

"Witch!", I continued facing the defeated air sorceress trembling at my feet, "I don't even want to know your name ... I don't care. If you desire my mercy, tell me now, fully with evasion, how you came to be here this night and whom and how these preparations for this ambush were made?"

"I was part of a FBMR assault team with three other junior witches, whom you'd call minor adepts. They were all that could be spared tonight. Irene is by far our strongest, but she's gone after The Mole. Everyone else is at the glass factory. My office Chief-Witch Rose has a business operation there with the local FBI chief that they were certain that you'd come to interfere with. He sent five agents here with me tonight to help and he likely has another team, everyone else he can spare there at the glass factory as well. I'd had hours to prepare protections, we had a trained sniper team and also a heavy weapons crew with a jeep mounted 105mm recoilless rifle assisting us. We thought we could handle the situation." She shrugged.