Read Metamorphosis for Free Online

MacKinnon to
carry for him. He had found it laying on the ground near their
vehicles and filled it before moving off to clear the approach to
the towers. He chuckled at the soldier’s confused expression.
“Dinna your maw teach you not to show up empty-handed?” He shifted
the bottle to his left hand so he could hold his C8 carbine in his
right. “Manners, laddie, manners.” With that, he simply strolled
around the corner and headed for the door as if he owned the
place.
    He reached out
his carbine and tapped the silencer on the glass windows of the red
door. One of the two guards in the vestibule opened the door and
frowned out at him. Simpson produced an heroic belch and sauntered
in, handing the bottle to the second guard, who, seeing no
hostility from the sudden visitor, lowered his handgun and reached
out for the bottle with a grin on his face.
    “I’m new,”
Simpson explained in a perfect local accent, to the surprise of his
mates, crouching out in the rain. “Thought I’d get here a bit early
for my watch and learn the way of things.”
    “I bloody knew
it,” whispered a voice on the net. “That manky Scots git has been
putting us on with that dodgey brogue all this time!”
    “Quiet,” Liam
cut through the chuckles just as the guard with the bottle sneezed
diesel fuel out his nose in shock. Simpson, who had been explaining
himself to the guard by the door brought his carbine butt up to
strike the man in the mouth, knocking him cold. “Shift yer arses,”
he growled into his headset, hanging inside his collar.
    The entry team
poured into the small vestibule where both guards were now
unconscious. “He said there were four guards on the second floor.”
The big man shrugged. “Could be pure blatherskite.”
    “You know your
job,” Liam told the group. “This building is hostile; if you see a
weapon, you pull the trigger. This is a meth lab so don’t lose any
sleep over the buggers.” He smiled at the men  who grinned
back at him. They were along to bring Tommy out but there wasn’t a
soldier alive, with the possible exception of the two guards at the
barricade, who didn’t relish the thought of going after drug
dealers.
    “Masks on.
Security detail to hold the lobby. The rest of you follow me.” He
turned to the stairwell door and headed for the second level. He
led his force onto the second floor hallway and turned for the
southwest corner. Two guards sat at a small table, playing cards.
Liam fired two rounds into the man who sat facing him while the
trooper behind him shot the second guard before he could react.
Though silenced, the breech mechanism of the C8 still made a loud
noise in the concrete hallway as it slammed back and forth, cycling
ammunition through the chamber, spitting brass cartridges onto the
concrete floor.
    It was one of
the reasons he had ordered his team to leave their weapons on
single shot rather than full automatic. The occasional shot would
sound like a guard cocking his weapon while a burst would be
unmistakable. His main reason, however, was that there were
children on this floor.
    And one of
them was his son.
    They formed up
at the doorway to the southeast apartment and one of the men
stepped up with another Halligan bar. Liam counted down on his
fingers. As the last finger curled down into a fist, the trooper
forced the door open and jumped back to allow the entry team space
to pour in. Liam was first through the door and it took him a
moment to assess what he was looking at.
    There were
eight boys, some perhaps as old as thirteen or fourteen, in the
parlor. Six were standing against the wall watching a seventh who
was tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruises. One man, breathing
heavily from the beating he had been administering, was thrown down
and secured by Liam’s men, none too gently. The second man in the
room had been holding the eighth boy by the scruff of his neck and
he let go in alarm, raising his hands as he backed against the
wall. He was also