Once we were in the car, Sigurbjorn drove away quickly. Kat had come along too and was angry when she saw what Jennifer and I looked like. She called back to Rock that we were safely away and heading for the airport. Then she asked to talk with Kristina. Kat gave Kristina some orders and hung up. Kristina gave the phone back to Rock. “Well, do I get to go now or not?”, growled Brenda.

“You can go,” said Kristina, “though if it was up to me, you certainly would not be going back. However, I have been instructed to make sure you remember not to get in our way again.” Then she kicked Brenda in the stomach, then on her head, knocking her against the car. Brenda got up and Kristina kicked her on the leg, hard. That made her yell.

Then Rock stopped Kristina from any more action. He could see she was clearly quite angry and might have gone too far with Brenda. Rock told Brenda to get going and to stay away from us from now on. Once she drove away, the rest of the team left for the airport. We all met at the jet and headed back home where Jenny and I ended up in the clinic again.

Rock came to visit me the next day. “And what are you doing here Rock?” I asked, “you have a family to look after.” “I know that” he said, “they are here too. You trained me for this, and, well, I just could not say no to little Muffin.” Muffin was with me, I looked at her. She put her head down. “That is okay Muffin,” I said, “I am glad you called Rock. However, this is a dangerous case, we cannot let you stay on it.”

“Well,” he said smiling, “you will have to take that up with Kat, she said I am staying. And since you are in here, then she is in charge.” “Hmm, I think that only counts if I cannot make decisions myself,” I said, “but I am happy you are here, we have 2 enemies against us right now, so we need all the help we can get.” “Oh, and John is here too,” said Rock, “but Chung would only let one of us in at a time, he said you need rest, not excitement.”

I laughed. “Go tell John to come in too,” I said, “Chung will never know.” So, he did, and we all talked about our case for a while before Mriya came in and caught us. She then tossed my 2 visitors out and proceeded to scold me for disobeying Chung. After 2 weeks we were finally home, feeling great and since it was such a beautiful day, we decided to have a big picnic on the side lawn.

Krissy and the 3 cats were playing around the back of the house, which turned out to be a good thing. Our electrically controlled gates were not working, so we had them open that day. However, Baldwin had his security men all over the place. It was time to start with the food, which Rock was sure happy about. He had started to fill his plate when Baudry bumped his arm and knocked the plate on the ground.

Rock groaned and bent down behind the table to clean up the mess. Baudry helped him, since he felt bad about doing that, even though it was just an accident. Annelie and Jennifer went around back to get Krissy and the cats. No one noticed the 3 vans pull up to the house, that is, until it was too late. Several men got out of the vans and began shooting.

My team started falling to the ground one after the other. None of us were wearing our vests, it was a picnic after all, on a very nice day. A day that turned into horror for us. We all had our guns though, but few had a chance to use them. It was chaos. Rock, Baudry and I began to return fire, and we were just as accurate as they were. A couple others also shot back, I do not remember who.

The remaining men scrambled back into their vans and took off. The cats were in place with their mini rockets, which they shot at the vans tires, stopping 2 of them. The men came out with hands raised. I recognized one of them from the beating he gave me. These were Brenda’s men…

To Be Continued.

©2022 Steve McLeod.