Chapter 17

"Damn it, Foole! Why the fuck did you have to Taser me?" I bellowed while punching my fist in livid rage into his upper arm.

"Well you did have a gun in your hand and were about to shoot me, not knowing it was me of course!" He replied in an all-too calm and excessively reasonable voice. I didn't want to hear reason right now! I'd been taken nearly completely by surprise by a semi-retired master thief who 'didn't use guns'. Any Watters two-bit gunsel behind that door could have done the exact same thing and with much more lethal results! Right now only my pride was hurt ... but it was stung pretty darned badly!

"Fine, you had the jump on me, knowing that I was there. But why couldn't you have just announced yourself first?"

"The door was bit too thick for you to have been certain about my voice, besides, I know you ... you're just a tad suspicious by nature and your first instinct would be to shoot first and ask questions or have regrets later. My way was much safer for everyone!"

I rather doubted that, but my brain was too foggy to make up a clever rebuttal. Getting Tasered didn't help my exhaustion due to lack of sleep and an hour of combat operations shooting people. It is mentally exhausting, even for me.

"Ok, just maybe I might have been a tad bit over trigger happy and probably would have shot anyone on the other side of that door just out of general principle, but that doesn't explain just what you were doing here in the first place! I thought you had a boat to catch?"

"Boats are small things with oars," he laughed, "but my ship actually isn't going to sail until sometime this evening apparently, or so the captain informed me a few minutes after you'd already run off. I'm not his only cargo, and before you ask the majority of his cargo is indeed quite legitimate. I have his services on retainer, but neither myself nor my insurance company is an owner of his vessel. This did allow me time to change my mind about providing some limited practical assistance to your current quest."

"Did Pete come with you? I don't see him here with you.'

"Yes, he did offer to come, just as he'd expressed his wish to join you earlier, but upon reflection I found a better use for his services, assuming of course that you would prefer to have a viable escape route out of here once your mission of wholesale slaughter is complete? Really, did you shoot everyone you ran into? I've been hearing gunfire for nearly half an hour and pretty soon things are going to get hairy down here! Just how many people did you shoot on the way here anyway? On second thought, I don't want to know!"

"Lots, but they all needed shooting, as they say back in Texas. But that's not the point, just how did you get here before me ... and without doing any shooting at all?"

"Easy. I just came back down the side entrance from the abandoned shop, just like last time and didn't run into a soul on the short trip over to here. The locked door wasn't much of a problem and I Tasered the lone guard. He's tied-up in a little armory alcove about twenty yards down where they keep extra guns and ammo. I set the video cameras to loop a recording back to the estate, so no one's seen you enter here either. Then it was just a matter of waiting for you to arrive! I knew you'd have to use a different entrance but you'd told me you knew of several so I just had to keep the door shut and sit tight until you eventually arrived."

That was the Foole ... making the impossible simple and even sound eminently practical!

While checking out the little stash of extra weaponry in the alcove just down the passage, I heard hard knocking on the steel door but the Foole sent them off tout de suite, fast with a bug in their ears.

"Fuck off!" The Foole loudly bellowed to the gunsels on the other side of the door. "This door stays shut! Watters orders, until the security breach is over! I don't care who the fuck you are! It's my ass if this door opens before I get orders to, so piss off!"

I had to admit that it worked!

I found a small stash of 10mm ammo and took the time to reload my empty mags for the MP-5. Same for my .45 M1911 ones. No grenades, or anything nearly resembling happy overkill like a wench-portable mini-gun or a heavy M249 machinegun. I did grab a pump-action Remington police riot-model shotgun, since scatterguns are a lot more effective in close quarters than even handguns are. Noisy? Sure ... but so was everything else! I was going to have to manually feed shells into the lower magazine so I filled up my jacket pockets with extra ammo, all double-00 gauge buckshot. Not bad for man-killing rounds but personally I'd have preferred a variation of alternating rounds of #1 buckshot and also a few 1 oz slugs added to the mix.

The 12 gauge shotgun is the most devastating and lethal weapon yet devised for inflicting wrack and ruin at close range. When in doubt, the safest bet for ammunition selection is to use a 00 buckshot load. The impact of one of these buckshot loads at relatively close range is essentially equivalent to getting hit with a nine round burst from a submachine gun.

Some shooters prefer #4 or #1 buckshot over 00 buck for manstopping, and I admit I've changed my mind back and forth over the years. Real world 'one shot stopping' success of the #4 buck is a respectable 81-83% 'lethality'. I haven't seen any data for testing the stopping power of #1 buck, but its performance should be even better in theory. The standard one ounce slug has a one shot stopping success of 98%, but a deer barrel with rifle sights is a much more appropriate platform for that round than a pump-action riot gun. It is also not the best choice for self defense, in my opinion, because aiming now becomes the critical factor in effective shot placement. The high probability of scoring hits, an advantage associated with buckshot loads, is lost. Slugs also have ferocious recoil and tend to over penetrate. Buckshot loads, on the other hand, will exhibit penetration on the order of 12 inches or so, a depth sufficient to intersect vital blood distribution structures and terminate aggression with extreme prejudice.

Although birdshot is not as lethal as buckshot, even at close range, out to a range of 30 feet or so, birdshot is essentially a solid column of lead pellets. Stopping power may not be sufficient, however, due to the lack of penetration potential. At close range, birdshot can destroy a great deal of tissue, producing gruesome (but not necessarily lethal) wounds. The depth of the injury will likely be six inches or less, too shallow to reliably affect an assailant's heart or major cardiovascular blood vessels. Because the wound trauma produced by birdshot is not decisively effective, a quick stop to deadly violence is not guaranteed.

Already I was regretting not bringing along my Benelli M4 Super 90 "Neptune" 12-gauge, but I'd left it back at our hotel room. I loved that gun and wanted to save it for home defense later on, and not have it compromised by taking it on this mission. With its laser targeting system, I'd have definitely alternated slugs with 00-buck in the magazine!

In short, similar to my dislike of 9mm handguns or NATO 5.56 FMJ rounds fired from an M4 assault rifle, don't waste your time or endanger your life with any weapon or ammo that won't reliably place your enemy flat back on his ass with an exit wound at least as large as your fist!

In other words, when in close quarters go smite thine enemies with heavy buckshot! Thus endeth the sermon

Next, just for an experiment, I reloaded my HushPuppy with some normal 9mm rounds, saving my last reduced powder load bullet for the top round. No, they wouldn't be silenced, but with the built-in suppressor as part of the upper register even these livelier 'normal' rounds might be somewhat noise suppressed. I'd still have to manually work the slide-lock, but I was getting used to that.

"What's up ahead at the estate?" I asked, as we started down the long passage, with myself a few feet in front to protect the (mostly) unarmed Foole, who was putting the finishing touches on setting a fresh electrical charge into his single-shot Taser.

"Bugger all if I know, but it's sure to be interesting! And it was!

For starters, the full powder charged 9mm rounds were a good deal louder and seemed to become even louder still with each shot as I 'fanned' the slidelock fast, gun-slinging down first the pair of guards we encountered about five minutes later during our passage down this long and fairly dark tunnel passage, and then the larger squad of five additional Watters goons. None of them got a shot off at us, so our lengthy passage to the final door leading into the Watters estate more than likely went without notice. At a distance of over ten minutes brisk walk from our final encounter with guards the somewhat muffled sound of the over-strained HushPuppy didn't appear to carry to the two remaining guards left there on casual watch.

Appearing to be unarmed, with the Foole carrying my MP-5 over his shoulder and also the shotgun carried at rest, I hailed the guardsmen open-handed and moved to point-blank range before giving a pair of rather non-hushed HushPuppy rounds to their faces.

I winced at the noise and the rather more excessive spray of blood and brain matter now decorating the secure door and rushed up to cover the doorway as the Foole tossed me back my shotgun. We hadn't been particularly subtle and I expecting the door to open fast with reinforcements and I wasn't disappointed when it did. Jamming the shotgun barrel in through the cracked doorway before the pair on inside guards could change their mind and slam the door, I started blasting away, unloading four shells as fast as I could fire and pump, with the cones of fire slightly staggered from left to right to sweep the area behind the doorway clear.

It was brutally noisy, but certainly the right choice! Both guards were down with large gaping 00-buck gut wounds. The impact force had also been enough to knock them backwards so I could fully open the door. They had both been carrying M4's but these assault rifles had fallen to the floor away from the direly wounded guards, giving us a safe uncontested entry.

For simplicity's sake, I finished the pair by crushing their skulls in with the butt of heavy wooden buttstock of the Remington. This was messier than I'd anticipated and gave the jeans of my legs a good coating of brain and blood splatter, not that they showed up especially well here in the gloom. I was going to have to burn this outfit away, but being sloppy always disturbed me. I was making a lot of mistakes this morning, probably due to exhaustion but similar screw-up's in combat could end up being fatal!

For the moment, we were alone. We were now in a narrow wood paneled hallway with good ceiling and wall lighting, enough so to clearly see the only other two doors. In fact our choices were rather slim as this was either a basement or more likely a sub-basement hallway. To the left there was an elevator that had an up button only and had a key security control, which more than likely led upstairs into the mansion proper. Ahead of us was door marked 'Pump Maintenance, and that's what it actually appeared to be once the Foole unlocked the door in a simple and fast motion. Nothing interesting here! To our right, down the other end of the short passage was another very secure steel door.

"We're going to have company in a few minutes," the Foole grunted while pressing both his hands against the side wall, next to the high security door to my right. "I've disabled both security cameras, the one here and the one by the elevator, but if they're on alert and actively watching, they've caught a quick glimpse of us, so get ready to cover both doors!"

Trouble came nearly immediately just a minute later down the elevator but I had the door covered with the Remington and by rapidly firing pumping three shells into such an enclosed space I'd made quite a mess of the three guards that had been there inside. Since my HushPuppy now put away more or less useless for the duration, and the need for a quiet passage had long since past, I gave each of the bloody heaps on the elevator floor a headshot with the .45 to make sure that they were all taken care of.

Finding a set of keys still inserted into the interior elevator control box, I turned the key into the 'stop' position and tried to relax my now shaking hands into reloading without spilling shotgun shells all over the floor. I was tingling all over with sexual excitement too but my nerves were too raw and exhausted with fatigue to allow the erotic sensations to overwhelm me.

"Ok, we're trapped down here now, at least for awhile. Please tell me there's something worthwhile on the other side of that damned door?"

"Very definitely!" The Foole replied, with a hint of some fatigue of his own. "This leads, or used to anyway, to the Watters secure Black Museum, where he privately kept all of his hidden stolen art. This would have been our original destination anyway, if we'd had to intrude to come collect these pieces, before he so kindly had them all packed up for shipment and ready for us to drive away! Most of these sorts of high security vaults only have one controlled entrance, but maybe we'll get lucky and find another way other than the elevator out of here!"

My sentiments as well. By now there was far too much trouble behind us to even think of returning that way. I wasn't at all sure what sort of escape the Foole had in mind, but it seemed to involve going right straight out the front door, and that meant getting upstairs somehow!

Getting inside this massively secured door was appallingly simple. The Foole did politely ask me to turn my back so he could work his special magic, but releasing the internal electronic locks took him less than a minute. When I heard a distinct metallic 'click' as the door unlocked itself and slightly swung free on its hinges I could tell that Foole was now nearly as exhausted as I was!

"That one was a bitch! Without a doubt the nastiest door lock I've ever opened! There are wired explosives behind the wood paneling all down this hallway, set to go off if any wrong access codes were used. To bypass these, I had three separate security command structures to trace and disarm before I could even start with the door controls! Whomever built this vault was paid a fortune, and then was probably buried inside to keep their silence like the workers who constructed any of the Egyptian pharaoh's tombs. Buried alive to keep their silence. What a bitch!" He repeatedly muttered in something of a whisper.

"Stay here, rest a second and let me go play Butch and Sundance, charging in with all guns blazing! It's time to see what's inside!" I was ready for a bit more madness now, and I'd taken a moment to duct-tape a pair of 10mm MP-5 mags together upside down to each other so that I could do a fast swap in the middle of combat now if needed. Heck, I should have done this much earlier but I was just too tired to think straight!

I left the shotgun with the Foole, who still needed a few moments of rest sitting on the floor and leaning up against the wall, but I was now ready to hose down everyone and everything in the room! With the MP-5 in my right hand and the M1911.45 in my left, I was ready to secure the vault!

The massive steel door didn't open easily, but it was heavily greased and decently enough balanced that with a little effort I could push my way though even using my injured left shoulder. Finally I squeezed through quickly and quietly without making much of an announcement of my entrance. Just as well.

I wasn't alone in the room, and this was most definitely not the time or the place to be firing spray and pray with either my submachine gun, or even worse my shotgun!

I hadn't been noticed quite yet so I had a moment to quickly rethink my original plan and I quickly drop both weapons to the ground, draw the .45 auto from where I'd tucked it in the front of my jeans, and then hit the floor and began to roll as fast as I could to the right of the entrance, to get myself to a spot where I'd have a clean shot at the lone armed guard. Unfortunately, he had just about the same idea that I had, and did pretty much the exact same thing!

We weren't alone in the now mostly empty cavernous art gallery inside the vault and each of us now had civilians in our way! He couldn't take the chance of shooting either of his employers who were pretty nearly exactly now in-between us, and while I had a slightly safer shot ... and didn't give a shit if I plunked either Edward Watters or his wife – but poor Kedra was there too and she just might get nailed in the resulting crossfire.

She couldn't run, being tied and strung up like a side of beef and being currently treated as such, as that pinnacle of Southern Florida society, Mrs. Watters (I never did get her first name), was exerting herself with a big heavy leather whip upon the helpless girl while a balding elderly man who must have been her husband Edward was seated in a chair close by enjoying the show. And from the looks of things, she was taking a good deal of pleasure in her exercise as well! The august matron, who undoubtedly had top fashion designers on her speed dial, was stripped down to just a pair of panties for her sport and she was quite bespattered with a good deal of Kedra's blood. There was a bit of a pool underneath her as well, but not quite enough to be life threatening yet.