The Spy Devils by Joe Goldberg (top rated books of all time .TXT) 📕

friend in New York. She was a talented actress who turned her mind to the paralegal profession to pay the bills. She was twenty-eight and could be described by the term “a knock-out.” Short Audrey Hepburn dark hair. Dark wide eyes. A great smile and the nicest person on the team, they all knew. Bridger rescued her from a life in law so she could use her many talents in makeup, acting, and research for the Spy Devil’s benefit.

Some Newtonian force of nature he did not understand had bound Milton and Beatrice together. The thought of the combination—the beauty and the nerd—made Bridger smile. Milton, as Bridger reminded him, had out-kicked his coverage when it came to Beatrice.

“Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt your humorous banter, but can someone tell me where the Chinese assassins are?” Bridger asked.

“Alright,” Imp started as he raised his iPhone. It was controlling the Milton-modified DJI Mavic 2 Pro Quadcopter hovering at five hundred feet above the building. “I see three teams of two. Approaching from south, north, and west, as expected. Fifty yards out and closing. One team of two across the lane hiding in the grass. Two vans. Parked along the road at each end. One idiot each in the driver’s seat. Funny, isn’t it?”

“What?” Milton asked.

“The drones we are using to whack their asses are made in China.”

“Poetic-fucking justice.” The deep baritone voice of Beast joined the conversation.

“It is nice to know just how close they are. We are a little distracted and in the dark in here. The Devilbots are ready?” Bridger said.

“We have all four in the air targeting each of their teams. We don’t have a clear shot at the guys across the lane. Trees are in the way. We will have to get a little closer. We will send up one right after to help Snake if he has issues.”

“I ain’t having any issues,” Snake said.

Devilbots, as Milton named them, were customized off-the-shelf DJI Spark Quad Portable Mini Drones, and with his tinkering, he thought were pretty damned impressive. Compact. About the size of an open paperback book with four propellers coming out of it at forty-five-degree angles. 2-axis stabilized gimbal camera. Infra-red. 12MP still photos. 1080P/30 video. Gesture control. Flight autonomy. HD Wi-Fi video transmission. Obstacle detection. Subject tracking. GPS. Vision position-based navigation. Tactical sensors. Face recognition and tracking.

Milton was in love.

However, the improvement that gave Milton mini-orgasms and turned the ordinary drone into a Devilbot was the precision auto-firing gun mounts attached under the mini-drone chassis. From these, the Devilbot could target, site, and fire two 9mm rounds out to three hundred yards with near one hundred percent lethal accuracy.

If all else failed, each Devilbot had a shape charge on its top. It could be put in kamikaze mode, dive, and flip to slam the explosive into the target. The result was a quarter-sized hole into whatever it hit.

They were silent. They were invisible in the sky. They were deadly.

“Snake? You ready to play cowboy?”

“Yippee-ki-yah,” Snake replied in an exaggerated southern accent.

Snake’s solid tree-stump frame counted thirty-three years of rings. He looked like a cop. Acted like a cop. Talked like a cop. That made sense since he had spent ten years on the NYPD. The last few in the Intel and Counterterrorism Bureau—until he got shot. The seasoned street-wise investigator turned into a spy. He had the permanent look of mischief on his face under neat black hair. He wore blue jeans and a gray V-neck short sleeve t-shirt that was straining hard to hold in his biceps.

He was a block away, idling on a dented orange-and-white 150cc Kymco scooter.

“Alright. We go in thirty seconds,” Bridger told his team. “Tape them,” he said to Demon.

With a rrrippp rrrippp two pieces of duct tape covered their captives’ mouths.

Bridger bent over and put his face inches from Bai’s, who, for the first time, looked back with panic in his eyes. Beads of sweat on his face. His nostrils were sucking in air. His cheeks were billowing like gills on a fish.

Bai saw the instant change of expression on Bridger’s face—from nice guy to devil.

“If you would have talked, maybe you could have saved your buddies. More people are going to die. Hope you said good-bye to your family.” Bridger straightened and looked at his Shinola watch. “You didn’t think I would see this was a set-up? I don’t think you could have made it more obvious. What do they teach you at Dragon Fire school? Anything? Hell, the pimple-faced clerk at the 7-Eleven probably saw it coming.”

Bai rattled in his chair, straining to break free.

“No, sorry. You can’t warn your pals.” Bridger felt the anger rolling in his body. He didn’t try to stop it. Now, he didn’t want to. “You can watch and listen.”

“Um, guys.” Imp’s voice came over the comm. “They are coming out of the brush. Twenty yards and closing. I’m zooming on pistols and little machine gun thingies. I think this might be a good time to do something.”

Bridger checked the room. Beast had one hand on the door handle. Sig Sauer ready in the other. Demon was still behind Bai and Peng, with his suppressed 1911 pointed toward the door—ready for it to open.

Bridger took a last glance at his watch.

“In three, two, one…”

5

Greetings From the Devil

Taipei, Taiwan

Li Chu took a step out from the edge of the brush, paused, and scanned the fifteen yards of open space to the building. He checked one last time with his men. As untested as they were, he was pleased to see they all seemed focused and ready. The Spy Devils had eviscerated his Dragon Fire team. Li Chu hoped killing the Spy Devils would be the kind of success that could keep MSS leadership from killing him for his failure.

Li Chu looked at Fuhan. His neck was jammed into his shoulders. Tension. His hands were shaking.

“Stick with me,” he said with a smile.

He wasn’t sure what he heard over his comm earpiece. Grunts?