GALAXY AT WAR - Book 3 - The Seeds Of Discord

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - November 2172 - Earth / Moon

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

November 2172

Earth / Moon

...Earth...

Double ess looked at the illuminated hands on his watch. It was two-thirty in the morning. Late enough for most people to be asleep and early enough to give him time to make it to his next target after his task here was done. He was on his own now. Making up his own assignments. That day at the doctors house had saw to that. He still couldn't understand why the General had sent triple ess after him.

Ah - the General, he thought as he looked at the house in front of him. He won't be a problem for much longer. Double ess shrugged off his backpack then spun it around and gently placed it in front of him on the soft grass. He unfastened the straps and flipped the canvas flap over. First he pulled out a 'codebreaker' which he attached to the brown plastic box on the side of the house. He let it do its magic while he pulled out the rest of his tools.

He placed a detonator on the concrete slab beneath the brown plastic box then pulled out some gelatine and put that next to the detonator. The 'codebreaker' beeped and double ess removed it from the plastic box before dropping it back in the backpack. He lifted the lid of the box to reveal the gas mains to his targets house. Double ess picked up the gelatine and moulded it around a pipe near the bottom then he switched on the detonator.

He typed in a code on his info-pad to make sure the detonator was working then he inserted it into the gelatine. That done he reached into his backpack again and pulled out a thin strip of brown plastic. He inserted it into the box to cover up his handiwork. Unless you looked closely you'd never know there was a false bottom inserted in the box. And who looked closely at their gas mains anyway.

Double ess refastened his backpack and swung it round onto his back again, Right, that's done. Now, onto the next, he thought. He was coming back later to deal with the General. He still had several other targets to prepare and didn't want to warn any of them by blowing up the General's house before he'd had the chance to place the rest of his explosives. He moved away; the flattened grass behind the only evidence of his presence.

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Twenty minutes had passed and double ess was stood across the street from the building of his nightmares. The Courtesan had been closed for fifty minutes and, according to his source, was a little light on security at the moment. Peter Brellio (the owner of the Courtesan) had sent five of his men up north to Nottingham on some sort of errand. That left him with a good opening in which to place his second and last bomb of the morning.

He had to get inside to place this one. He wanted Peter to know who brought the tidings of his own death before he was obliterated. So he had prepared a 30 second message for him. Once he switched on the screen behind the bar the message would be played then the signal to his detonator would be triggered. If he planned it right all of Peter's remaining men, and Peter himself, would be blown into thousands of tiny pieces.

The only stumbling block had been how to get inside without alerting them. Fortunately the high wind that had risen, and the fact that it was dustbin day, gave him just the chance he needed. He turned invisible, with only his backpack showing, and crossed the street as the wind buffeted him. He went round the back and looked around. There was no one there. He picked up one of the Courtesan's dustbins and threw it at the rear door then overturned the three remaining dustbins and flattened himself against the wall.