For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
I had chosen to go down last to make sure our two rescued girls are well protected. There had been no noise on the second floor where we were, so I thought it would be safe. However, 3 men had come into the room, I shot the first one, which was okay since I was using a silencer on my gun. But, they were not using silencers and one of them shot and I could feel the sudden stinging pain in my arm and I dropped my gun.
The shot from that man could be heard echoing through the house. Sky was back up quickly and killed the remaining two men. Then she grabbed me and jumped out the window. Sienna and Kitty were on Courage, so Sky helped me. Unfortunately I was bleeding a lot so I was quickly getting weaker and the ground in that field was rough, which made it hard to run.
Sky communicated with Kat and told her what was happening. I was going to call our pilot, but my phone let me know we were being monitored. I told everyone to turn off their phones right away, and Sky relayed this to Kat as well. She also said to call off the attack and rejoin us. But how can we contact our pilots now?
For safety reasons on this trip our jet was hidden in a different country, known only to the pilots and Jennifer. I tried to communicate with Jennifer, but was not getting through to her. Sky tried too, but with no success. That was very worrying indeed. If we can’t contact our pilots or Jennifer, then we have no way to get out of the country.
We could try driving, but that would be too dangerous. The men from the house were following, but there were not too many of them, so some of the girls stayed further behind us and attacked those men, killing them. Then they ran to catch up with us again. But, another problem arrived once we were within sight of our vans. There were a lot of men surrounding them. But how?
That would mean that Rico had a lot more men than we realized, but how could our information be so far off? “There’s a woman with them Steve,” said Katresa. “A woman?” I questioned, “Perhaps that is Manuela and her men. She didn’t help Aari in the attack on Rico, and that would have given her time to get here. How many men does she have?”
“More than we do,” said Katresa, “I would say about 3 to 1, so we can take them.” Katresa is one of the original bad girls from Montreal and they never looked at the problems, just the solutions. To them, there was only winning, but they always had a plan for the fight. Well, we do too, it’s called Plan C. Plan A was doing everything ourselves, Plan B was using Manuela to start a fight with Rico, now Plan C to get out of the country safely with Sienna, and now Kitty too.
We may lose people, but we will try not to do so. I have lost a lot of blood and I’m getting weaker too fast. I also have a somewhat rare blood type though 3 of our team members share it. Two are at home and one here. Sky also had the same blood type, but now that she is a ghost we can’t use her blood, if she has any, something we still don’t know.
But perhaps Kat can help heal me enough that a blood transfusion won’t be necessary. But Kat is not here, and we have a fight on our hands. “Amerie, how would you Bad Girls handle this situation?” I asked her rather weakly. “We split into smaller groups,” she said, “and send the cats in first to hit and run. Rascal has larger flares than the other cats, he should light up the night for us first.”
I told everyone that Amerie was now in charge for this attack. Sky had told me to do it that way, rather than her leading things, she wanted to stay with me, Sienna and Kitty, while the other girls did the fighting. Amerie said that Angel should also stay with us, just in case. So, she split our little team of 15 into three groups, plus the cats. “Sky, you go too,” I said quietly, “I can always call you back.”
She looked at me, but she did go. Rascal shot two flares which lit up the area very nicely. I think Katresa needs to upgrade her math skills, that looked more like 5 to 1. Rascal came running back. Meowrrr.= Maybe me try send message to Muffin? Then I remembered something that Kat did before and I looked up. “Looking for something Steve?” asked Sienna.
“A satellite,” I said, “to bounce the message from Rascal to Muffin.” “There is one right there,” she said, “it’s a stationary one.” “Angel, come here,” I asked, “Rascal needs a boost of energy to reach that satellite.” She knew what to do and soon, back home. Eeeeeek! Eeeeek! cried Muffin and ran to find Jennifer. “What’s wrong little Muffin?” asked Misty.
Meow, meow!= Need human Jennifer, emergency! Misty scooped her up and brought to Jennifer in the upstairs library. “She said it’s an emergency,” said Misty quickly. Muffin quickly told her the problems. “Oh my, how will we do this?” said Jennifer. “Cynthia will know!” exclaimed Misty and they all ran downstairs looking for Cynthia who was busy in the kitchen.
Cynthia quickly figured out which satellite we had used, so they could aim for the same one and get a message to us more quickly. While she was doing this, Jennifer contacted our pilots. “Al, we need you to get going right away,” said Jennifer, “there is big trouble. They got Sienna, but they are being hunted by Manuela, and probably Rico by now too.”
“We are already in the air heading back to our first choice for airports,” he said, “they had cleared the runway for us finally, but we are still an hour and a half away from the airport in Panama.” “Well, keep going and keep me updated,” she said, “but don’t try to contact Steve or anyone, just me.” “Shall do Jennifer,” he said, “and don’t worry, Steve will be okay.” “I just wish Kat was with him,” she said. “I thought she was,” replied Al.
“There had to be a change in plans,” said Jennifer. “He’ll still be okay,” he said. Meow, meow.= My human also say he bringing a kitten home too. “Now why would he tell us that right now?” Jennifer asked, “Are you sure about that one?” Meow,meow.= Yep, me sure for sure. He say, bringing kitty home. “That is kind of strange,” said Misty. “A kitty doesn’t always have 4 legs and a tail,” said Cynthia…
To Be Continued.
©2025 Steve McLeod.
Rodrigo, one of Manuela’s top men had just come to her to let her know that Aari and his men had begun to move against Rico’s hideout. Manuela had just seen Rusty again and he gave her a message, letting her know that Rico, and this meeting, was making plans to destroy her and her cartel. Rusty had disappeared again by the time Rodrigo had arrived beside Manuela.
“By the way, who were you talking with?” he asked her. “That orange cat, the one I saw in my dream the other night,” she replied, “remember I told you about it?” “Yeah, I remember,” he said, “but I never saw any cat over here with you and I have been watching you closely.” Manuela just looked at him. “He was glowing, an orange glow,” she said, “you didn’t see that?”
“Nope, I didn’t see anything Manuela,” he said again. Aari couldn’t wait any longer for Manuela to make a move, so he took his team down to the building. It was a fairly large, abandoned, warehouse of some kind. Everyone that came to the meeting went in through a small door at the front, located beside two large sliding doors that would have been used for trucks to drive through.
They had already disabled the security alarm system for the building, but there are likely many guards inside the building they will need to deal with, and that is going to be the dangerous part. There’s a good chance that some of his team will be killed in this attack.
Meanwhile, back to us. We had to use this time to attack Rico’s mansion while he is distracted with fighting elsewhere. Our plans were made already, so off we went, driving as close as we dared, so we wouldn’t be noticed. Kat and her Wildcats were off helping Aari right now and Sky, with her Bad Girls, were with me. Angel was with us too and all the cats.
Angel turned into Courage to carry me, while everyone else walked along with us. It was a dark night, with just a sliver of the moon shining almost directly overhead. Sky, along with 2 cats, went on ahead to deal with the first guard tower and Melanie went with them too, though she stopped before getting to the tower.
Melanie has been practicing and is now an excellent sniper, she will take the guard in the tower on the mansion roof. Sky, Azura and Storm arrived at the guard tower and up the ladder they went. There was a large spotlight in the tower too which they kept shining in the field that we needed to use. “Hi guys!” said Sky as she reached the top of the ladder, “May I join you?”
“Hey, where did she come from?” asked one guard. Sky shot some electricity at the spotlight, effectively destroying it. Then, “Thwock! Thwock!”, and both men were dead. “Good job you cats,” said Sky, “now, down we go and to the house.” While going down Sky heard a bullet whiz past, hitting the guard in the tower on the house. “Hey, Melanie is good!” she said to herself.
The rest of us soon joined Sky and her cats along the east side of the house. There were no windows on this wall, not on the main floor anyway, there were some on the second floor. The third floor was really part of the attic and I imagine it is probably quite hot up there where Sienna is being kept, unless that room is air conditioned, somehow I doubt that it is.
There were no windows in that room, just a couple of air vents. Sky jumped up to a second floor window which, surprisingly, was open just a bit, but she couldn’t open it all the way either. She did get it open enough to get inside, so she went around to another bedroom and opened that window. Some of her girls already had a rope ladder up to the first window and were going in that way.
We soon had a ladder up to this window too and everyone was quickly climbing up. Sky grabbed me and jumped up to the window with me so I wouldn’t have to climb. Some of the girls, and most of the cats, stayed outside as guards. That was a good thing since 2 men came along to go replace the two tower guards, not knowing they had been killed.
As they came around the corner of the house, “Thwock! Thwock!”, and they were dead. Inside we looked for a way up to that room, but there was no stairs or any other way up there. We then went into a bedroom and there was a woman sleeping in a bed. Amerie woke her up and quickly put her hand over the woman’s mouth before she could scream.
I pointed my gun at her briefly, then lowered my hand. I could not believe who it was in that bed. “Please don’t shoot me Steve, please!” she pleaded, “I didn’t betray you, really I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, I thought I had died, then I woke up in a prison and a man named Rico bought me to be his, his…slave. Please take me with you, please take me away from that cruel man.”
She was crying so hard now that she could barely speak. “We will take you away from here,” I said calmly to her, “do you know how to get upstairs to where he’s keeping Sienna?” “Oh, the woman in the hot room,” she said, “that’s the door, but it’s always locked, some kind of electric lock. It hinges on that side, but it’s steel, heavy steel.” “Okay, Sky, can you open it?” I asked.
“Should be able to,” she said, and she did have it open quickly. I told Kitty to get up and get dressed quickly. “There are no clothes for me or that other woman,” she said. “Girls, look around and see what you can find,” I told them. Sky had gone up and brought Sienna down to us and when she saw me, she came over and gave me a big hug.
“I knew you could do it Steve, and this woman has been very kind to me,” said Sienna, pointing to Kitty, “can we please take her with us?” “Yes, I already decided to do that Sienna,” I replied, smiling. “All we could find are these big shirts,” said Amerie, “but they are better than nothing.” Soon we were going out the windows again.
Sky took Sienna and jumped down with her, then she took Kitty down. I was the last one to go down, which was my decision, but before Sky could get back up to take me down I heard a noise and turned around. Three men were coming into the room so I shot the first one. I had a silencer on my gun, they did not. The second man shot, hitting me…
To Be Continued.
©2025 Steve McLeod.