"What?! Laura is dead?!"
Michael Miller couldn't help but bellow as he slammed his fist against his wall, his other hand clutching his smartphone that he pressed to his ear. He gritted his teeth.
"How?!"
There was a pause and he hung up, swiping the screen of his smartphone to read the report of the failed hit. He gnashed his teeth when he saw the details and shook his head in disbelief.
"Plasma shot? Seriously?"
It wasn't the target's possession of a plasma pistol that surprised Miller. He had always known that the target designed his own experimental weapons that he carried around with him or stored them at his home. However, he was astonished at the manner in which Laura was killed. The target didn't fall for her charms at all.
Instead, he was decisive, ruthlessly shooting her when she was unprepared. No, that was an injustice to Laura Lang. she was always prepared. But even she didn't anticipate the target to shoot her while she was seductively lounging on his bed.
Normally, the target would fall for her, jumping into her embrace. And in the middle of having sex, Laura would snap the target's neck or break his back or suffocate him. There were a myriad of ways for an assassin of her caliber to eliminate the target, even with just her bare hands.
Yet the target not only didn't give in to his lust, he shot her and utterly annihilated her existence with superheated matter.
"How? But he's straight. We know he's romantically involved with Lily Ling and doesn't have any sort of romantic interactions with men." Miller clutched his head as he tried to figure it out. "What's the difference between Lily Ling and Laura?"
Then he suddenly realized it, his eyes widening.
"Could it be…? Trevor Shen is the type of…nerd who prefers virgins? Innocent, pure virgins like Lily Ling are his type? We miscalculated by sending the mature, seductive and highly experienced Laura?"
Laura was what they called a virgin killer, someone who specialized in seducing virgins and stealing their innocence before taking their lives. And now she was killed by a virgin.
"Ugh!" Miller was unable to suppress his frustration. He kicked the wall, earning a reprimand from his neighbor from the next room. He ignored the sharp snap and continued to curse. "What do we do now?!"
Then he realized that he still had a few more assets.
"Queenie Qiang, Kevin Kan, prepare your sniper equipment. You should have gotten used to the target's traveling habits by now. Set up a spot outside his house or whatever, and prepare to snipe him when he returns home!"
"But there aren't any places for sniping outside his house. You do know the target's manor is in the middle of nowhere, in the rich residential estates. There are no buildings, nothing. And the grass is pruned, there's nowhere for us to hide, we'll be easily spotted."
"Just hide up a tree or something!"
"Come on, boss…you know that that's easier said than done. You can't just snipe from a treetop. You need a proper tree, one that affords cover. Otherwise people will spot us and our cover will be blown. And this being the rich area, they have plenty of security here. None of the trees are appropriate for sniping."
"Stop giving me excuses and just fucking do it!" Miller roared. "What do you think the government is paying you so much for? You are assassins, now do your damned job!"
Both Queenie and Kevin shut up and obeyed, realizing that Miller was right. They were assassins, not whiners. The government didn't care how difficult the mission was. They only cared whether the agents could complete the mission or not.
That didn't stop the two-man sniper team from grumbling between themselves, however.
"The boss ought to try sniping himself one day."
"Yeah, all he does is order us around. Why don't he try assassinating the target himself one day?"
If Michael Miller had heard their complaints, he would retort that it was his job to supervise them and give them orders – that was exactly what he was being paid by the government to do. Moreover, he also had to handle diplomatic matters, administrative arrangements and more – it was him who established connections with Justin Han in order to set up a base for his team of intelligence agents and assassins to work from.
Honestly, Miller's work was just as important as the actual assassins. They probably realized it, but they didn't like it.
Unfortunately, it wasn't their job to like or dislike their boss, and so they departed to find a camping position.
*
"Huh? What's that?"
I spotted a glint from far away as I drove along in my Toyota. Then there was a sudden bang and the window next to me splintered as cobwebs spread across its surface. I recoiled as powerful vibrations shook through my car, almost causing it to flip over to its side.
"Whoa!"
I instinctively spun the steering wheel about, my foot hitting the brakes. Good thing I modified my windows or that sniper round would have gone through it and punched through my head.
"Sir! Are you all right?"
Behind me, Brad Biao and Alan Shou were springing to action, drawing their guns and getting ready to leave the car.
"Sniper!" Alan snapped, already grabbing his smartphone and calling for reinforcements.
"Don't let them get away!" Brad agreed. "Did you see the direction of the sniper shot?"
"Yeah, I did! From the northeast! Range, estimated 1km!" I didn't know how Alan was able to estimate the distance, but I guessed that all bodyguards were equipped with high-tech sensors of some kind. Perhaps they calculated the distance from the impact of the sniper round against my car. "Provide me some cover fire while I pursue them!"
Both bodyguards were seated at the back of my Toyota, by the way. Right now, they were kicking the door open and rushing out, pointing their guns in the direction of the sniper and firing. They were wielding laser pistols, which wasn't good, to be honest.
While laser weapons possessed unparalleled killing power when compared to ballistic weapons, capable of easily slicing through armor that would block most solid projectiles, something as small as pistols or even a laser carbine would only be equipped with a tiny power pack. In other words, the power they were supplied with was limited, and thus the strength of the laser beams they emitted would sharply fall off over long ranges. Not to mention the refraction caused by atmospheric dust and other particles in the air.
The further the distance between the laser weapon and its target, the more drastically inefficient the laser beam would be…and much weaker.
On the other hand, the bodyguards' goal wasn't to kill the target with their laser beams. It was more meant to be a scare tactic, to keep the snipers' heads down. Additionally, even at such large ranges, the laser beams were still capable of blinding the target if they looked directly into them. And they would perhaps suffer minor burns, which might incapacitate them if we were lucky.
However, I was under no illusions that it would be so easy. Most likely these were professional assassins that we were dealing with. They would be familiar with the limitations of laser weapons. They would know better than to panic when under fire. The fact that they were equipped with a ballistic sniper rifle spoke volumes of how well armed and connected they were.
They might even remain calm and snipe both Alan and Brad from a distance while they approached. There was no cover, and as I said, it was likely they weren't afraid of the laser fire.
"Damn it!"
Fortunately, I had my own card to play. I scrambled to the back seat and reached for the device in the third row. My Toyota was a multipurpose vehicle or minivan, with the third row of rear seats being reconfigurable. Right now, I had them lying down to serve as a bigger boot.
That was because I had been transporting one new device I was working on as a side hobby. Pulling the sheet off my newest machine, I revealed my aerial drone to the open.
This strike drone, which I dubbed Falcon after my failed attempt to create a scout-type war walker that could fly, operated on the same antigravity technology that the techno-gangs in the scrapyard used to construct their hover boards. While the war walker – the eventual Hunter – was too heavy and big for the nascent antigravity tech to lift, the aerial drone wasn't that much larger than a hover board.
Consequently I could build a strike drone that would fly about in the air, conducting reconnaissance on the enemy. Assuming it didn't get shot out of the sky, of course.
For now, the snipers should be too busy dealing with the approaching Alan and Brad to care about my drone. I opened the back of my Toyota and allowed the Falcon to soar into the air. Shutting the ramp, I then pulled my smartphone out and linked it to my Falcon. Immediately, the holographic screen presented a bird's eye view of the outside world.
That was when I spotted the two-man sniper team in the open. They had to make do with the sparse cover, having made do with a large tree. However, the branches were spread out and the leaves were fairly sparse, which made it easy for me to discern their position.
A man and a woman making out the sniper team. The woman was the sniper, holding a long, sniper rifle and taking aim. The man was the spotter and probably the team leader. That was how Confederation Marines Force Recon operated, anyway.
Just as I suspected, the female sniper was taking aim and drawing a bead on one of the sprinting bodyguards. I didn't know who she was aiming at – either Alan or Brad – but I refused to allow her to hit either of them. I immediately used my smartphone to control my Falcon, having the strike drone swoop down upon their position. A targeting reticule flashed onto my screen and I tapped it.
In reality, a ruby beam of laser streaked out and incinerated the female sniper's head. Her headless corpse shuddered before toppling off the tree, the stump of her neck cauterized. The spotter glanced up in shock, but I was already lining up a second shot. He tried to dodge, but the laser beam caught him in the chest, punching a cauterized crater right below his heart. He gurgled and fell from the branch, clutching his chest.
Damn. I failed to kill him. But that was two down, and I had secured a live target for the military to interrogate. That was good. Of course, that was assuming he survived the next few minutes from his wounds.
Both Special Forces bodyguards reached the two bodies, keeping their weapons trained on them. Alan glanced up at my hovering Falcon in wonder while Brad updated the situation to whatever military superiors he reported to.
As for me, I crawled back to the driver's seat and waited. Staring at the half-broken glass of my Toyota, I grimaced.
I was going to need to call insurance and have that window replaced.