Raiding IS — Sicily, Revised

I watched the crystal orb's reading and kept correcting our course.

"Keep going straight."

"East. Turn wherever you can."

"We've come too far. Southeast again."

The truck carrying us wandered the night streets this way and that, but in the end we reached the place.

So this is where they're holed up.

Across the road, in the direction the orb's red glow was pointing, a mansion stood alone and stark. The money and the men would be in there together. If I meant to plan what came next, I needed to know who I was dealing with. The location was confirmed, so first I had the car pulled well back. Nothing good would come of us being spotted.

Once we'd put distance between us and the house and stopped, I left the slaves behind and got out alone. I walked toward the mansion, made sure the street was empty, and then—

With the activation word, my whole body turned transparent. Hidden, I climbed toward the mansion where they were.

Inside the mansion.

Little punks.

They must have decided the job was finished. They hadn't been back long, and already they had a drinking party going.

"Hey. Hand me the whiskey."

"Here. Anyway, Franco — you said Egyptian women are cheap and good. When are you gonna let us have a taste?"

"Obviously. Around here one twenty-euro note gets you as many fresh girls as you can hold."

"So when?"

"The job went fine. Ask Giovanni. We could use a little air — what do you say?"

"You think Giovanni's gonna allow it? He'll tell us not to cause trouble until we're back in Sicily. That's a sure thing."

"It's fine. Giovanni's probably been starving a few days himself. Deep down he'll be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tempted. Forget this — I'm gonna tell him we should at least hit a club tomorrow."

Pistols and luxury watches sat on the table, and their talk slid naturally into filthy stories.

No sign of the suit. He must be on the second floor.

I left them and went up. Unlike the racket on the first floor, the mansion's second story was quiet. I murmured under my breath.

With my hearing sharpened, I caught the small sounds and moved toward them. Behind a closed door, a faint conversation. I turned back out onto the terrace and cast flight magic, lifted off, and returned to where the room had been.

It was the master bedroom, and sure enough there was a small terrace with a floor-to-ceiling window opening onto it. I set down quietly and slipped inside. In the middle of the wide room, drug packets had been moved onto the table and stacked. The suit stood with his back to them, phone pressed to his ear.

He hung up, set the phone on the TV stand, turned, and peeled off his shirt. Before the screen went dark I snatched the phone up. He never noticed it was gone. He stripped at once and walked into the shower.

A moment later the water started, and I stepped up to the phone. I'd been tapping the screen the whole time so it wouldn't lock. I carried it into a corner, opened the call log, and photographed the numbers. Messenger history, bank transfers, card charges, the navigation app, map searches — I shot all of it, carefully.

Hacking the phone and cloning it like in a movie would have been easy. But that's a movie. I do what I can on my own. Of course, even that was only possible thanks to the invisibility item.

When the shower was about to end, I set the phone back where it had been and slipped out of the mansion. I left with a promise to myself: the next time I met them, it would not be like this.

With the work in Egypt finished, we passed back through the gate and moved to Damascus in Syria. After returning the vehicle we'd rented there, it was time to handle the job I'd put off in order to settle the Egypt matter.

Trainer One took the wheel and we drove deeper into Syria. As expected, we were near the Syrian-Iraqi border. The Toyota truck passed a small village on the southern frontier and entered a gorge walled in, layer upon layer, by rocky hills. It was only early evening, but the stone mountains darkened fast. A dim light still lingered, though, and we relied on it to push farther in.

After about an hour, Trainer One spoke.

"Past here is the security zone."

"Then stop here. One. The map."

He handed over the tablet with our current position already open. I confirmed where we were, and Trainer One laid out direction and distance.

"About three kilometers past that rocky hill, and you're there. The exact spot is around here. This is where recruits gathered mainly out of Iraq get brought in and trained."

If they'd joined IS, they weren't normal men — or they were only going to become a blight on the world. I could sell as many as I liked.

Once I'd fixed the location, I gave the order.

"You two wait here. If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, come to the training camp and kill every IS man you see."

I got out and rose into the sky. Levitation magic carried me lightly over the mountain. I hung in the air for a little more than ten minutes, scanning the ground, and found the cluster of buildings that had to be the camp. It was disguised as a farm, but details that oddly matched the camp I'd cleaned out last time caught my eye.

I killed my noise, kept invisibility up, and drew close. It was just past nine, but the trainees seemed to be asleep. From inside the building that looked like a barracks came the snoring of a dozen or more men. Along the camp's outer edge, riflemen stood watch — several times as many patrols as last time.

Because of me?

In truth, after the instructors' quarters at the northern camp were hit and every trainee vanished, IS never found the cause. In the end they could only guess the trainees had rebelled. This time would be different. Taking the last job as a lesson, I meant to handle this one quietly.

I went behind the trainers' building and found the kitchen. A large drinking-water barrel stood off to one side. I took out the packet I'd brought and poured a little of the crushed white powder into the barrel and into every water bottle in sight, then slipped back out of the kitchen.

Now I wait.

As expected, the patrols rotated in order. Men coming off a shift, men going on — without fail, they poured from the bottles in the dining room or the living room and drank. The drug in the water was a sleep inducer. Next to a strong sleeping pill the immediate effect was weaker, but once they closed their eyes, nothing ordinary would wake them. If they dropped unconscious the moment they drank, that might raise more suspicion than it was worth.

So I hid on the hill and waited at my ease until dawn. After several changes of the watch, just as I'd expected, no one else came out to stand guard.

They've all had their share and gone under.

I took to the air again and set down in the camp. I raised my hearing and checked carefully that no one was still awake. Sleep magic was low-level; it didn't take well on someone tense or alert. On men already asleep, though, the effect was a hundred and twenty percent certain. I moved through the buildings and laid the spell on each sleeper in turn. Once I was sure they were out, I took the radio from inside my coat.

"Load the goods. We're heading back."

We wrapped each piece of merchandise carefully in cable ties and hoods.

"Do it right, so they don't get loose and raise hell. If there's a problem, I'll cut an ear off each of you."

"Yes, Master."

"We'll do it properly."

While the slaves packaged the goods, I went into the quarters where the trainers had stayed. Drawing on last time, I searched the floor — and sure enough, found an empty space beneath it. I was about to open it when a bad feeling crawled over me for no clear reason. Men who'd already been hit once — would they really have prepared nothing?

Safety first.

I called Trainer One.

"Wake one of the trainees and bring him here."

"Yes, Master."

Trainer One woke an IS trainee and brought him over, a knife at the man's throat.

"Pull it back."

Terrified and understanding nothing, the man rolled up the carpet covering the floor. Boards of a different color showed underneath.

"Open it."

His eyes slid past Trainer One and found me. Smiling, I turned the muzzle of the AK-47 in my hands toward him. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trainee swallowed dry, fit his fingers into the recessed groove at the edge of the boards, and the instant he hauled up the flooring—

Boom!

The blast threw him backward. He hit the floor with a crash, his upper body torn to shreds, a mass of blood.

So they aren't complete idiots after all.

I waited for the dust to settle, then sent Trainer One down. The man who went below and checked the space signaled up.

"No problem, Master."

Only then did I descend. Underground, as expected, the firearms for training were stacked with RPG launchers, ammunition, and the rest — and heaps of the pills they fed the trainees.

"Bingo."

I took out the magic pouch and poured the lot in. Once the storehouse was cleaned out neat, I climbed back up. By then Trainer One had finished the packaging and come over.

"Master. Nine trainers, forty-four trainees. Fifty-three in all."

"Good. Let's go back."

We stuffed every piece of merchandise into the truck and headed for the outer gate of Drail, in the north.