Free Brothers In Arms by Marcus Wynne Page B

dime.
    This was a pretty good gig. A real world threat, which helped to keep everything in focus and get a bit of the old adrenaline flowing. The pay was very good. Harrison and Ford were pulling down one thousand dollars a day each plus their minimal expenses, and Miller was a good team leader. Harrison and Ford, in their private conversations, had given him a thumbs-up and another for the second in command, Charley Payne. They thought that there should be more BGs on the detail, but agreed that whoever was footing the bill had hired the very best, and having four of the best beat having eight of the second team.
    He paused to look up at the little hill. All in all, it was a good gig.

    Marie Garvais studied the man walking the perimeter. She wore night-vision goggles that dropped down over her eyes and rendered everything she saw in shades of green. The ambient light from the stars and the nearby streetlights was sufficient to illuminate her target brightly. The MP-5 submachine gun she carried had three illumination sources mounted beneath the barrel: a high-powered flashlight, a laser designator, and an infrared light. She could choose which one she wanted by sliding the fingers of her support hand along the forearm stock of the MP-5 and pushing one of three pressure switches.
    Marie noted that the man wasn’t wearing night vision or carrying a long gun. She’d have been surprised if he had, as he was a civilian providing protection, or so her intelligence briefing had told her. She looked over at the rest of her team. Isabelle lay flat on the grass with herpartner, a Frenchman named Andre, and Marie’s partner, a Belgian named Dougard, lay beside her within arm’s reach. Marie was the planner, and she figured four operators with submachine guns, striking at night, were sufficient. So far they had only seen two bodyguards working, and the surveillance team had confirmed that they had only seen two bodyguards as well. A ratio of two-to-one was close; she would have preferred three-to-one, but chose to rely on speed and violence of action, like any good special operator.
    And of course, surprise.
    Marie watched the man stroll along the grounds and go around the back of the Victorian house. She waited till she saw the flare of light as he opened the back door to go back in, then signaled silently to her team. The assassins drew up on line, shoulder to shoulder with five meters between them, and began their stealthy approach to the house. They approached from the side of the house, skirting the little hill that provided them some cover from observation, and moved carefully from shadow to shadow, submachine guns at the ready, fingers hovering over their infrared illumination switches. They moved like deadly shadows, figures of the night stalking carefully forward, the muzzles of their weapons tracking each possible location for an opponent.
    The team came on line at the side of the house, where the shadows came together from the lights on the front and rear of the house.
    They were ready.

    Harrison took a bottle of water out of the kitchen refrigerator and walked down the hallway to where Ford sat outside Uday’s room.
    “Here you go, bro,” he said, handing his partner the bottle of water. “You got to take a leak?”
    “Yeah,” Ford said. “Thanks.”
    Ford took the bottle of water and set it down beside the chair, stood and stretched the kinks out, then walked down the hallway to the handicap-accessible bathroom. He went in and turned on the light.

    The light from the bathroom window washed over Isabelle and Andre; the sudden brightness caused a flare in their night-vision optics, causing Andre to stumble for a moment and catch himself with one hand against the wall of the house.

    Ford felt rather than heard the contact outside the bathroom. He zipped up his fly and turned off the light, then slipped back into the hallway.
    “There’s someone outside,” he hissed to Harrison. “Right outside the bathroom