The Lost Twins chapter 46 - Body Count

The skier steadied her ski and slipped one boot between the toe irons. She felt for the cable loop and positioned it around her heel. Then she snapped the forward throw closed, a familiar, comforting sound, locking her boot to the ski. Kneeling she repeated the process with the other boot and binding. Then she flexed her knees, gave herself a little shake. A little smile curled her lips.

These fate-forsaken Italian mountains might be cold - according to her watch, which recorded not just time, but temperature - it was eight degrees Fahrenheit, but to her that didn't matter. She was well prepared. Foremost it was about what she wore. From inside to outside, bottom to top: a pair of wicking Cascade socks; a Duofold union suit (wicking and two-layered, cotton against the skin, wool off, and in one piece so snow would never get down her backside and onto bare skin); Mountain Hardwear ski pants made of double strength Gore-Tex; a wicking Cascade turtleneck shirt, a wool sweater, a Mountain Hardwear vest and a ditto double-lined ski jacket. Cocooning her hands were Cascade double-lined gloves. On her head was a Kevlar composite helmet and covering her eyes were a pair of solar-powered, fan-driven Smith goggles (antifogging).

Her dual .45 Colt Commanders rested securely in an ankle holster. One of her mottos - never go on a mission without at least one Colt. If the first one didn't stop the enemy, the second one would. In addition she carried carabineers, spring-locking and screw-locking, which hung from her beacon belt. In her fanny pack she got first-aid tape, gauze, triangular bandages, six blood stoppers, glucose, a multifunction pliers/cutter, latex gloves, an extra pair of leather gloves for rough work and plastic airways in three sizes. From her neck hung a small GPS, connected to her ear through an iPhone cord.

On her feet were Tecnica Diablos - racing boots that off skis were so rigid even with the upper cuffs unbuckled, that they'd make her walk like a Frankenstein's monster. And most of all the skis on her feet, Swedish Borealis probably the best skis in the world.

The mountains surrounding her were phantasmagorical blue-black and white teeth in all that snow and the sky was so blue it felt almost impossible that anything real could hold this colour. The air was so cold, so rarefied, she felt as if she was getting oxygen high in spite of the altitude. Looking around herself in awe, she realized that it was a strange kind of extreme pleasure being here. The kind that wrote itself into her mind and on her body. It occurred to her in that very moment that she loved this place, its face a carnival of snow arabesques, snow-laden pines, ledges, chutes and at the very top, since the snow had come in from the north, a heavy cornice of snow rolling the length of the ridge like a windblown wave in arrested motion.

Fortified thus, she began her trip through sunlit stands of leafless oak and chestnut trees. Warm days and freezing nights had left an icy crust on the snow surface. It supported the skier's weight most of the time. Now and then the crust collapsed and her skis broke through, knee-deep into the sugary hollow below. Without skis it would not have been possible to go even a hundred yards, she knew. A person on foot would simply flounder.

"Five hours," she said to herself. It'd take her five hours to get there if she had calculated her trip accordingly. She really hoped that would be enough.

***

Apollo felt his body freeze, his eyes widening. The rat-faced man with the Milan accent had him dead to rights, the barrel of his MAC 10 gun just inches from the Olympian's left eye. Apollo quickly realized that the distance between them was too close to roll away or dodge the shots yet too far away for Apollo to attack with close quarters. He would have to rely on his coercive brain powers. He had never done this before, but there was always a first time for everything – and if it didn't work it might very well be the last time too. Apollo concentrated.  
"All right," he began with a quizzical look at the man. "Kill me, you bastard. Be quick about it. And rather with the gun than with poor jokes."

The coolness at which the young man was accepting death made rat-face unsure; the words were not what he had anticipated. He wanted the other guy to beg for his life, plead for him not to squeeze the trigger. Just like the truck drivers had done earlier. Otherwise there seemed no fun in killing this young punk, just joyless duty. If he did that, what made him any different from a regular Joe who worked a punch hole for six hours in a factory? Noting at all really. No panache, no excitement. Just garbage in garbage out.

The rat-face's internal ramblings came to him at the most inopportune moment. He was so busy contemplating that he didn't hear the soft crunch of gravel behind him. Nor did he get the chance to feel Athena's sleek and strong hands on his head before it became too late. There was a snap as she sharply twisted his head sideways, breaking his neck in one quick movement and the Milanese crumpled to the ground, his dying body jerking in the last stages of cerebral shutdown. In the same instance Artemis sneaked up behind Athena, taking only one glance at rat-face on the ground.

"Thanks, Athena," said Apollo.
"You're welcome," Athena replied. "However it seems as if you had him under pretty much control at the moment. What was that? Hypnosis?"
"Sort of," Apollo shrugged. "I had no idea if it would work or not, I just took a mad chance. And lucky me, it did work, or he'd filled me with lead."
"What did you put into his mind?" Artemis wondered, glancing down at the body on the ground.
"I don't know, I just triggered confusion, I had no idea what thoughts I really did provoke. Basic stuff I imagine. The simple man's philosophy."

"Who knows," Athena shrugged it off before picking the MAC-10 off the ground and ejecting the clip. "Different things go through people's heads when they must pull a trigger." She paused as she took on a thoughtful look, the slanted rays of afternoon sun giving her stunning face a mystery look, like a statue of one of those nameless ancient deities which were found in digs all over the Mediterranean area.
"I'm glad it worked at least," Artemis said.

"Yes," Athena answered after a few seconds of thoughtful silence. "We still don't know all the implications to our enhanced bodies, the things we can perform under dire circumstances. Like our father told me once, we're still learning. Perhaps you, Apollo, with your powerful brain have the possibility to make your adversary freeze and their brain spin out of control."

Freezing up had never been a problem Apollo himself encountered so far. Even when faced with having to kill a woman he thought he loved, had he pulled the trigger with almost no hesitation. It may have made him a better SIS agent, but did it make him a better human being? That question wasn't his to answer. And it was probably why he had reacted so hard upon hearing Athena's confession about killing Medusa earlier in the day. His older sister had a conscience, which he feared he had lost somewhere along the walk of life. She wasn't as comfortable as him with killing in cold blood.

"You hear that?" Artemis hissed as she held up a hand. Apollo broke from his philosophical thoughts and listened hard for any unusual ambient noises. First there was nothing but the wind in the trees, then he heard it too. Crunching thuds of footfalls in the snow, two different pair of feet from the sound of it. They had started distant, but were now growing louder as they closed in. Apollo made eye contact with his sisters and motioned under the lorry behind them. The girls both nodded before they quickly slipped underneath the vehicle bed. Apollo followed, sliding through the mixed gravel and snow as they made it towards the other side of the vehicle.

Sneaking out from under the lorry Athena stood up while Apollo stopped when his head was flush with the right side tires. Artemis stopped almost at the same time, becoming almost unnaturally still where she laid on her belly. Athena then took cover behind one of the big wheels and craned her neck to gaze back at the other side of the car. With her gun at the ready, she watched and waited for the feet to come into view. Soon, two pairs of boots appeared around the front of the lorry and approached the dead killer. The tang of cigarette smoke came into her nostrils. Athena heard two men speaking rapidly while one of them bent to examine the dead body. The other one dropped his fag, stomping it out against the snow with the heal of his boot.

Holding her gun tightly, Athena drew a bead on the crouched man's left ankle. She took a silent breath and squeezed the trigger. A scream accompanied the gunshot and he collapsed to the ground, clutching his wounded ankle and cursing out loudly as blood flew from his gun wound. Now, Athena aimed for the other man, who was running back where they had come from in an attempt to flee the unseen gun slinger. She got another shot off, missing his ankle but taking a chuck out the back of his right calve instead.

From underneath the lorry, Artemis saw Athena's feet crunching through the snow on the opposite side, running towards the front of the vehicle. She was on a collision course with the now limping man.
"Look out," Artemis yelled to her sister.

Too far away, Artemis' plea fell on deaf ears. Athena came around the truck and crashed into the running man. Their two bodies fell into the snow, and Athena's smaller form landed with the Italian on top of her. With horror, the twins watched Athena's gun slip from her fingers. The wounded man had held on to his gun, as he quickly rolled to the side and from his backside he aimed for Athena's prone body. However, before he could get a shot off, Apollo fired three times. His first shot winged the shooter in the shoulder, the second pierced his neck, and the third shot drove the 7.65 millimeter bullet through the man's right temple. There was no exit wound with the head shot, the bullet just burying itself deep inside the man's skull and he was jolting on the ground by the impact. This time it was Athena's time to thank Apollo.

"You okay?" Apollo called out to Athena as he and Artemis crawled towards the front of the car.
"Yes," she grumbled. "Artemis, are there any more here right now?"
"Negative," she replied quickly. "Just the bastard you just shot."

The twins came out from under the lorry while Athena stood and brushed snow and dirt from her jeans. She picked her pistol from the ground and cleaned it off as well. While she checked that the barrel was free of any obstructions, Apollo walked towards the man with the bullet in his ankle. He kept his gun out as he came around the truck, aiming it at the wounded man who was clutching his wound and moaning against the pain as he rocked to and from.

"Hi there," Apollo barked. "You and I are to have a little chat."
"Go to hell," the Italian snarled back.
"Speaking of hell," he returned, facing the remaining of the foe trio. "Want to end up together with your friends? Refuse to talk and you will."
"What do you want?" the man whimpered. His large, obsidian eyes were brimming with tears and his unshaven chin was shivering. That was how chaps like him acted when the end came. Full of piss and vinegar when they were behind a gun, they could never fully comprehend what it would be like being the one on the business end of another gun.
"Where was this shipment heading?" Athena barked.
"There's a," he began to stagger, and Apollo kicked him in the side to make him stop. The man caught his breath again and then he gave them the information they wanted, including how to reach it using the 'back door'. Apollo reassured he was telling the truth by reading his mind at the same time.

"Thank you," said Apollo when the man was done. Then he flipped his Beretta and turned it butt first. He struck down, hitting the man in the temple with the gun's handle. The Italian fell backwards to the ground, groggy and rapidly losing consciousness.

While they had interrogated the wounded man, Artemis had scouted the area telepathically, finding no more armed people. Instead, she had found plenty of bodies. The remains of the workers who had unloaded the Afghani cocaine earlier down in Padova were now all lying face first in the snow, a single bullet in the back of each head. The body count felt excessive even for a mafia shootout, apparently Chermount had no scruples at all. The Olympians turned away from the horrible site of the dead bodies and trudged through the snow towards the highway.

"I should've killed that bastard," Apollo said softly as they returned to their vehicle. "What they did to those people, it would have been more than fair."
"You're right," Artemis agreed. "And he'll probably die anyhow. Either the cold or the blood loss will get him. Let's instead concentrate on the people he works for. Chermount and his posse. They are the ones really worthy of a bullet each."

¤*¤*¤*¤*¤

Madelena Giacobi exhaled the cigarette's smoke and felt one of her rare smiles tug at the corner of her ruby lips as she regarded the items in the trunk of the car. Two leather bags filled with plastic ditto, well packed ones and tied together with feet of silver tape. Cocaine, the pure real thing, worth millions on the street as it was today. She had made sure to squirrel this pair away during the re-packing in Padova, and she was certain no one would really miss them, after all this was less than a percentage of the complete delivery. One tenth of a percentage as a matter of fact.

If Chermount should get the idea of counting the packages, Madelena was more or less certain that he wouldn't really care, after all he was more interested in the Main Project. The Neo Genesis. The cocaine was just a mean to the end, a way of financing it. If he found that there were missing items, she could always blame the Camorra people, tell him that one of them must have got greedy and stolen some of the shipment. And soon they would all be dead and couldn't contradict such an accusation. Very convenient indeed.

In fact, this cocaine was a part of her pension plan. She knew that this was a dangerous business with high stakes but she intended to stay alive in it. And when you stayed alive, you got old and grey and then money became worth more than anything else. So what better way to make it fast and big than selling drugs? Now, she would only make sure to store it in a safe place while slowly distributing it to the consumer end. And for that she needed help, her newfound ally would take care of that for a not so small chard of the gain.

Her ears perked up as she heard that characteristic whine of a snowmobile engine in the distance and she spotted a headlight, the light jerking and swooping as the snowmobile was going by in the canyon below them - a thousand feet or so. The snowmobile roared up the length of the canyon to the east, then took a cat track, climbing the canyon wall opposite them, up the summit. The snowmobile's roar thinned to a whine again and was gone. Moments later she heard the faint sound of repetitive gunshots off in the distance, and she knew now that the plan had moved into the next phase. Chermount's people were taking care of the mafia grunts, getting rid of the last traces that would connect the cocaine delivery to the Unicorn business. And she had to get going, taking care of the rest of her plan.

After one last glance at her fortune in the trunk, she closed it and turned to the Enforcer, who was standing posed by the side of the car. The enormous black man was valuable, worth his heavy weight in gold! Or even cocaine! She would pay him well when all this was gone, to ensure of further cooperation from his side. He might be less interested in money, then again, she had other means to pay him with. Poor Apollo, he had sure missed out.
"I want you to take over the wheel now, and drive the last leg to the laboratory," she told the Enforcer before she threw her cigarette to the ground, grinding it out with the sole of her boot. "I have a few phone calls to make."

As soon as the car was on the move again, she picked up her iPhone and called the answering machine of Giancarlo Serreti.
"Hello, darling," her voice syrupy. "I've got your medicine. See you soon." That was the coded message that she had successfully finished her part of their little deal.

¤*¤*¤*¤*¤

Less than five minutes later Apollo popped the trunk of the car and looked down inside. His SIS contact had equipped them with two large cases. Opening up one of the cases, he brought out the gunmetal grey assault rifle. An American M4 carbine with a grenade launcher attachment and night vision scope. He checked the rifle while Athena opened the other case. Inside were a pair of nine millimeter Glock 26s, and three pairs of  black bodysuits with utility belts.

"Fancy dresses," said Artemis playfully as Athena threw her one. "Hope it'll fit even over my curvy ass."
"It will, it's the latest in nano technology, it adapts to your body shapes, becomes almost like a second skin," Athena said solemnly before beaming up at her sister. "Besides you have an ass other women would kill for."
"Hope they don't have this kind of hardware then," Artemis shot back and lifted one of the rifles, only to move it to the side and reaching further down in the bag. "I hope they packed what I ordered as well."

"Which is...?" Athena began, then beholding how her younger sister produced a state of the art composite fibre crossbow.  
"Great!" Artemis grinned. "This is more my kind of stuff, doesn't make half as much noise as the firearms. Gives me certain advantages in sneaky operations."
"Wow!" Apollo's eyes grew big. "You can use that stuff?"
"No, I just brought it to decorate my hair with," Artemis huffed. "You're forgetting I also took education for SIS. I might have quit but I still remember how to do this. So you guys just keep your thundersticks."

"Fair enough," Apollo replied as he drove the M4's clip home and chambered a round into the weapon. "I'll take a three-round burst of full metal jacket bullets any day."
"So let's go," Athena ordered.

With their new equipment and weapons, Apollo, Artemis and Athena began their trek up the mountain to where Eugene Chermount, Madelena Giacobi and the end of the whole bloody affair waited.