Inhale. Exhale... Inhale. Exhale...
The heartbeat gradually calms, and the long barrel of the small-caliber sniper rifle stops trembling. Good. Combat augmentation provides near-perfect accuracy, but the physiological quirks of the human body haven't been canceled, and when shooting at long distances, you have to be clever. After all, two and a half kilometers is no joke—at such a distance, not every experienced sniper can hit a moving target, and Walrus, by his main specialty, is generally an assault scout. My business is "I'm a little cloud, not a bear at all!" and "For Zion! Tra-ta-ta-ta-ta!" and "My kung fu is stronger than your kung fu!"
It's just that real specialists in the right direction in the Syndicate number less than a dozen, and tonight all the fighters are tied up with business.
— Sir, they're coming out...
A quiet, emotionless voice of one of Han's fighters sounds in the earpiece, and a moment later, a family appears in the crosshairs of the scope: a couple who exited the main doors of the restaurant at the end of the street. A stern-looking father in a coat over a business suit and a sultry beauty of a wife in a fitted dress, holding the hands of two little twin girls, who are smiling and toddling after their mother... A textbook example of a happy, well-off family, not even spoiled by the dozen or so grim-faced thugs bustling around them.
Time to shatter this idyll.
The red dot of the collimator freezes on the forehead of the slightly swarthy man, the finger gently touches the trigger of the sniper rifle, and the influential representative of Maggia in New York begins to fall backward with a perfectly even through-and-through hole right in the middle of his forehead.
Thanks to the equipment from Latveria and a couple of upgrades from Cable (whose schematics I conscientiously copied and uploaded to my cranial microcomputer—just in case), an ordinary police sniper rifle turned into a truly impressive killer's tool. The small caliber of the weapon is compensated by magnetic coils located along the entire length of the barrel and an inertia suppressor tube, resembling a silencer, screwed onto the muzzle—the first accelerates the neodymium bullet to supersonic speeds, and the second modification reduces the roar of breaking the sound barrier to zero and focuses the shot's impulse along the line of fire.
As a result, a kind of mini-railgun was obtained. It shoots very quietly, with extreme precision, and damn far, and the penetrating power is so great that the bullet accelerated to the limit pierces almost all types of personal armored suits like cardboard. It won't handle Iron Man's armor or other ultra-heavy exoskeletons, though.
But there's a tiny spoonful of honey in this huge barrel of tar. Due to the hellish speed of the bullet, it doesn't have time to transfer the impulse to the target and flies right through the enemy's body. And since the rifle's caliber is quite small, the wound channel it leaves is very modest.
In short, it will pierce almost anything, but the hole will be tiny. Don't use this gun against freaks, especially regenerators. But against ordinary people, it's perfect. And speaking of them...
The red dot of the collimator moves to the frightened face of the woman clutching the children, the finger touches the trigger again, and the mafioso's wife collapses onto the asphalt next to her daughters, pale as chalk. The augmentation doesn't fail, and the second headshot ensures that another Maggia henchman is off the board.
She shouldn't have meddled in her husband's affairs and kept black books. It's fraught with an excess of lead in the body, you know.
At the sight of their mother's bloodied face, the twins try to break free, but the death spasm that twisted the deceased's fingers prevents them, and the terrified children begin to scream hysterically. They wail until the guards, stunned by the execution, finally come to their senses and drag the twins off the shooting street... Heh, the girls will remember this birthday for a long time.
— Sir, we confirm both targets are down. The enemy hasn't noticed us; we're moving to the designated extraction point.
— Roger that. — Receiving the signal from the spotters, I pull a metal case from under the table by the window and begin disassembling the wonder rifle.
These ninja-sorcerers are strange guys.
In terms of combat qualities, I have no questions about Han's guys: although they handle firearms exclusively as "you," their skills in silent infiltration and cold weapon mastery are honed to such a level that even the training of army special forces sometimes falls short. Mainly due to the versatility of scouts and the need to know everything at once, but in any case, the killers from the fans of slicing people with sharpened blades and throwing fireballs at the enemy turned out to be surprisingly solid—skilled, ruthless, and not asking unnecessary questions.
But the Asian mentality and the frozen detachment of these fanatics make me a little nervous. And while the quasi-religious fervor of the guests from distant Japan can be explained by banal loyalty to the demon (who, unlike most human religions, really helps his flock and grants some Hand fighters quite decent magical abilities), all these "Yes, sir," "Of course, sir," "As you wish, sir" really piss me off.
I have nothing against strict subordination and kissing the ass of higher management (if the boss is me, of course), but Walrus is from the Union! I have a reflexive hatred for feudalism, "noble gentlemen," and other useless anachronisms ingrained in me!
Well, it's time.
Having folded the disassembled rifle parts into the case, I approach the sofa covered with a blanket, on which lies the cooling body of an elderly woman, and removing the embroidered pillow from her face, I turn the kitchen gas stove burners to full power. In a few minutes, the triggered timer will create a spark, and the explosion with the subsequent collapse of the building will erase the few traces of my presence in this room.
I don't like killing for free, but this case is a pure necessity.
The windows of this old lady's apartment offered a wonderful view of the restaurant where the last boss of Maggia was dining, so the kind-hearted old woman had to get an early ticket to the nearest cemetery. But since my last name is definitely not Raskolnikov, and the granny, judging by the destitute state of the hut, is more likely to take loans than give them, we did without an axe in the skull and the accompanying unnecessary mess. Instead, Walrus infiltrated the premises under the guise of a gas service worker and then quietly and peacefully suffocated the feebly twitching witness with her own pillow.
As the classics said, the best girlfriend is a dead old lady. Sigh, the things you have to do to capture the financial flows of the city's shadow side...
— Walrus-sama, we're done. — As soon as I left the building and got into the tinted SUV, the earpiece came to life and began to speak in the voice of a shinobi from the village of Hidden P*ssies. That is, Han got in touch. — My people reported that you're done, and I'd like to congratulate you on your success. Alejandro Magise was the last on the list.
— So you've already dealt with the rest of the Maggia bosses. — Seventeen targets in one night isn't such a big number for a group with as many specialists as we have. But the problem is that these aren't office clerks, but bosses of the criminal world—most of our competitors' crime lords are well protected, and I find it hard to believe that everything went smoothly. — What are the losses?
— Two dead from the last batch of fighters, a couple of seriously wounded in Pers-san's and Wagon-san's squads, and seven more fighters from the ranks of the Beast's servants will be back on their feet in a couple of days. Tombstone turned out to be a rather unpleasant opponent... — The last time we saw the impenetrable albino Negro, Fisk's people were dragging him for a heart-to-heart talk with their boss. I have no idea how this bastard in white chocolate managed to negotiate with Kingpin, but as a result, he returned to his office, and to avoid risking my people, I ordered the graduates of the Japanese Hogwarts to go after the distant relative of Kimura's head. And it seems I didn't miscalculate. — But we dealt with him.
— Did you unleash the power of your dark sorcery on him?
— We chained his hands and feet with kusarigama, encased his legs in concrete in a basin of cement, and threw Boseki-san (Japanese: Tombstone-san) to the bottom of the deepest bay in New York. — The forbidden magic of the nineties' brothers? Does that mean half of our Syndicate's personnel are mighty sorcerers? I wonder, does Baton with his magical soldering iron qualify as an archmage? — Even if the white-skinned gaijin's skin is tougher than steel, he still needs to breathe somehow.
— So everything went clean and smooth?
Perhaps it's paranoia, but I don't believe in such a lucky coincidence. Yes, New York is in complete chaos right now, and the Syndicate has enough fighters and resources to take advantage of the opportunity, but... For everything to go off without a hitch? As Comrade Stanislavsky said: I don't believe it!
— With Maggia? Yes. But there's one small... Complication. — Well, as expected. It was clear without any intuition that some nastiness would definitely crawl out. — When one of our squads was finishing off their target, they encountered people presumably identified as Russian mafia fighters—they're the ones responsible for the deaths of the two Syndicate mercenaries we lost. We took several prisoners alive, and I'd like to know what to do with them.
Having driven a couple of blocks from the strangled old lady's hut, I hear a deafening explosion over the city, and after parking the SUV in one of the numerous alleys of New York, I take out a pack of cigarettes from the inner pocket of my cloak. While the patrol cars with blaring sirens rush past, I have a couple of minutes to think.
And there's plenty to think about...
The Russian mafia itself is much smaller than Maggia, and if necessary, we'll drive them out of the city even faster than the accomplices of the long-deceased Silvermane. But Viktor Palych himself and most of his people are "former" soldiers of the regular Russian army, which immediately raises two problems: First, despite their small numbers, they know which side of the machine gun to grab, and during the showdown, the Syndicate is almost guaranteed to suffer losses. And second, they're as "former" as I am "active," and the destruction of an intelligence cell in New York will certainly displease the potential employer in the form of the foreign intelligence of my former homeland.
However, the cons also lead to quite logical pros: It's a long way from New York to Moscow, and removing the "Evil Kremlin Agents!" from the city could earn us some gratitude from the American establishment. Especially if we present it with the right sauce and through the right people, like General Ross, whose information was "accidentally" deleted from the compromising material sent to Magneto, and whose war crimes I know enough about to put Thunderbolt far away for a long time.
After all, for the prosperity of any organized crime, it's necessary to have strong ties with the official authorities of one territory or another, and nothing reinforces true, sincere friendship better than knowledge of each other's dirty little secrets. In addition, at the moment, the Syndicate is "establishing" itself before the entire criminal world of the Big Apple, and the destruction of the Russian mafia will clearly demonstrate to all comers that we now sit at the top of the criminal food chain, and any idiot who dares to encroach on us will wash away in their own blood.
In short, as the song goes? My dear ones... I'll take everyone out. Or rather, Han's ninja-sorcerers will take everyone out—not only are my former colleagues unaccustomed to the fighting style of the Hand's headhunters, but their zombies also make for very resilient cannon fodder.
— Walrus-sama?
— Can your sorcerers extract information from the prisoners? — Taking out a cigarette, I flick the lighter and take a deep drag. Baton is a first-class executioner, but right now we're talking about foreign intelligence operatives, and there's a non-zero chance that my compatriots will die before they start talking.
— We have the necessary spells. But I want to warn you that the bandits won't survive such an interrogation, and it won't be possible to use them as hostages or for ransom anymore.
— I don't care. Do whatever you want, but in less than an hour, detailed and complete information about all enemy hideouts should be in our hands, and your fighters should be ready to take the enemy by the throat.
— Hai, Walrus-sama. — I'm starting to like working with this guy. Minimum questions, takes any task to heart immediately, and asked about the salary exactly once. Almost the perfect subordinate! I need to be careful with him, just in case...
Disconnecting the communication, I exhale a stream of bluish smoke into the cabin and, through the augmentation, command the portable radio to connect to Cable's improvised laboratory. Although the graduates of the Japanese branch of Hogwarts make the enemies sh*t themselves, betting solely on ninja-sorcerers isn't too wise, and a couple of technical gadgets in the future mix won't be superfluous at all.
— Cable, be a dear—cheer up the high command in my person with good news.
— What? — Judging by the tone of his voice, my comrade in disability has begun to suspect that his boss has finally gone off the deep end.
— Tell me you've figured out the arc reactor device and you already have several Iron Man suits ready with an extremely user-friendly control interface of the "Even a complete degenerate will become a death machine!" model. — The chances are slim... But what if? What wouldn't Mephisto joke about?
— Sorry, boss, but in such a short time, I can offer at most a couple of anti-oh-f*ck pills and a prototype of a lip-sealing machine. Non-functional. — The tired guest from the future chuckled quietly. — And what's with the sudden urgency? Have the Avengers attacked us?
— Praise the almighty dollar, no. It's just that my former colleagues have decided to join the pie division, and a couple of tech aces up our sleeve wouldn't hurt. Got anything in mind?
— There's "Party," but I'm not sure it's suitable for urban conditions. — I don't like the note of doubt in Cable's voice...
— I don't recall that name. New?
— Remember the rockets we used to take down War Machine? The kid who made them came up with a volley fire system based on them. — Oh, f*ck me! I almost repeated Gagarin's flight from one Holy Grenade, and Kiwi decided to load a "Katyusha" with them?! This system shouldn't be called "Party," but "Funeral"! And what's with the "not sure about urban conditions"?! We're fighting bandits, not planning to take Berlin!
— Let's try to avoid leveling residential areas if possible. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves right now, and a nuclear boom in the middle of New York is hard to call an inconspicuous thing. Plus, extensive destruction isn't the best for business... Give me something less large-scale. — And preferably not authored by one pyromaniac.
— Vobla will do?
— Only if it's dried and with cold beer.
— It's an acronym. — The sound of keys is heard in the speaker, and an image of a huge humanoid robot, somewhat resembling a pumped-up Terminator, appears on the wrist computer—not only does the iron itself look much more impressive than the old good T-800, but instead of a bare skeleton, the bruiser created by our breakers is covered with a f*cking thick layer of armor, making the hulk even more impressive. A solid thing. — Armed Guard Bot-Liquidator. Abbreviated as VOBLa. Assembled from the remains of several mediocre Stark bots into one more or less decent machine. It's also just a prototype, and we haven't had time to test it in real combat conditions.
— Then it's time to arrange a test drive for the iron lumberjack...