Chapter 11

Our first obstacle was finding a way into the gated community. There was a guard at the gate who called the host before allowing a visitor through the locked gate. The guard was not armed, but that was beside the point. He was just some security company employee doing his job. Actually, he could not release the lock on the gate, that had to be done by the host.

Bummer, we were not going through the gate! Judy had found this out by sweet-talking the guard and finding out how things worked. She came home with the bad news, so we had to find a way over or through the wall around the community. That night, we took Black Beauty, basically an ATV, and drove around the perimeter wall. Aha! There was one place where we could drive up to the wall and use Black Beauty itself as a ladder over the wall. We carried a folding ladder to come back outside.

We went over the wall and crept past three other houses to reach the one occupied by the gang boss. As promised to Mr. Higgins, we had left the AK-47s in Black Beauty, but we were all three armed with automatic pistols. We had not said so to Mr. Higgins, but we three knew that the only way to resolve the problem with the gang boss was to assassinate him. We felt no qualms about this because we felt that it was a fair judgment for all of the harm and pain that he had caused by selling drugs.

The house was a veritable castle with everything but the moat and drawbridge. All of the windows at ground level were too narrow for an adult human to pass through. However, the windows on the second and third floors were of normal size, so that had to be our point of entry. The doors were all guarded by laser beams that we saw when we threw clouds of talcum powder at them. Well, it looked like my grappling hook was going to get some use after all.

We were wearing our new night-vision goggles that Mr. Higgins had gotten for us. They were the latest design for military use, and I don't want to know what favors that he had called in for them to show up, but we had three pairs. We were also assured that we could have more if they were ever needed. Anyway, we found the darkest place at the castle wall to do our climbing. I had a spring-loaded launcher that could throw the grappling hook up 40 feet if that were necessary. I set it for 18 feet and aimed for the lintel above a selected window.

I knew that our luck had to change, and it did. The grappling hook set itself firmly on the first try. I led the way up the knotted rope fastened to the grappling hook and seated myself on the window sill. It was an easy job to cut away the entire window screen and expose the window glass to my cutter. This was a double-glazed window, so I had to cut through two pieces of glass before I could reach the latch. I opened the window and crawled into the room after checking the floor for obstacles. Once I was there, I signaled the women to climb in while I stood guard by the door with my gun in my right hand and my baton in my left.

The women quickly joined me and I used my tiny LED flashlight to provide all of the illumination that we needed. Judy joined me with her gun and baton while Marlene tested the door to see if it was locked. It wasn't, so she drew her gun and slowly opened the door. The hallway was lit sufficiently so that we did not need our special glasses or flashlight, so we shed them for the time being.

On the way to our rendezvous with the gang leader, we decided to kill him and sneak back out of his house undetected if that were possible. We figured that the mystery of who had killed him would add to our vigilante aura. It seemed likely to us that he would be in bed by now, even though he might not be asleep. We also thought that the master bedroom was probably on the top floor, so we started looking for stairs.

With that in mind, we followed the hall around a corner and found the stairs leading both up and down. The Lord of the Manor might use an elevator to reach his suite, but the stairs were still necessary for the peons who served him. Just as we turned that corner, we saw a woman coming down the stairs. She was carrying a tray of empty shot glasses and beer bottles, and that was absolutely all that she was wearing beyond some slippers.

The woman had a light brown skin and was a babe of the first water. Her pussy was shaved clean, and her D-cup breasts bounced enticingly as she made her way down the stairs. We figured that she must be a servant, so we stayed out of sight. Once she had passed us by, Marlene poked me in the ribs and grinned. I gave her a sheepish grin back. I figured to hear about this in bed tonight.

We waited a few seconds to see if the way were clear, and it was. We climbed the stairs silently and as quickly as we could. We stopped as our eyes cleared the next floor and looked all around for anyone else who might be in the hall. We saw no one, so we climbed the rest of the stairs. We were sure that the gang boss would not be sleeping close to the stairs because his slumber might be disturbed by the noise of peons and guards moving about. Therefore, we followed this hallway on the lookout for a likely door to the master suite.

Uh-oh, there was a man standing in front of a very ornate door. He had to be a guard, and that had to be the entrance to the master suite. Well, that was no problem because we had learned to become expert knife throwers as part of our training in the martial arts. I was the strongest and most accurate of our trio, so I was the natural one to take care of the guard. I pulled a throwing knife from its carrier and launched it at the guard's back. He happened at that moment to be facing the other way, so he never saw me throw the knife.

I only had to throw about 18 feet, so I was able to pick the most favorable target. Normally, at this distance I was deadly accurate, and this was no exception. I put the knife into the back of the guard's neck and sliced his spinal cord away from his brain. There was no better place than that for a silent kill, and the guard kind of drifted to the floor without making a sound of his own. There was a small thud as his head hit the floor, but it was so insignificant, most people would not even notice it.

We rushed to the dead guard and recovered my knife before we dragged his body into an alcove and prepared to enter the master suite. Again, Judy and I held our guns and batons at the ready while Marlene tested the door to determine if it happened to be locked. As expected, it wasn't, so she drew her gun and slowly pushed the door open. As we entered what was a vestibule, we noted how thick the walls and door were, so there was very little chance for sound to escape from the suite.

We faced another closed door, but this one had a peep-hole embedded in the wood. I looked through and saw another small room with two men, probably guards, sitting on a bench and smoking. I ordered Judy to stand back with her pistol ready to back us up. Marlene and I were going to try to take out the two guards with our batons. We made ready, and I flung the door open.

The two guards were relaxed because they did not know that there was anyone in the vestibule, and they were slow to react when Marlene and I burst into their room. We were able to attack the throat of each man as our first strike, and that ended the battle right then as the men struggled to breathe through a crushed windpipe.

Judy joined us, and we went through the next door into what appeared to be a classic sitting room. This room was empty, and we had not yet had to use our guns. We were quite happy with that because it almost insured that nobody could know that we had successfully invaded the castle.

For our coup de grace, I drew a throwing knife while my companions held their batons and their pistols. We could see through the crack at the bottom of the door that there were no lights on in the next room which logically had to be the bedroom. We moved our night-vision goggles into position and I turned on my tiny flashlight, but left it hanging from my belt.

We burst through the door, making no effort to be quiet. There were a man and a woman in the bed, and the woman screamed, though not very loud. The man sat up, and that gave me the target that I was looking for. The distance was about 20 feet, and I threw my knife right through the man's throat, severing his windpipe. My throw had been so hard that the knife knocked the man against the bed's headboard and left him pinned there as the knife point penetrated the wood. The woman fainted, so we heard no more from her. I doubt that she could even see us; certainly no more than vague shadows in the near darkness.