When Jason pulled the van up to the top of the hill, Butch was looking anxious, bored; and relieved to see him approach. He had almost gotten on the bike and headed off to grab some food after the first hour... but ended up having half a dozen sandwiches instead. When he stopped before reaching the stone slab he'd originally parked on, Butch looked a touch confused... and even more so as the side door was kicked open and several spools of copper wire rolled out onto the ground.

"Alright. First things first. I got some cameras, an EMP, a cell phone jammer, and everything we need to make ourselves a faraday cage. Its gonna be like a thousand dollars worth of copper wire and other crap to do it, but we're gonna protect the van, and all the stuff I got in there. So. Know anything about a faraday cage?"

Butch dropped the half-eaten sandwich into the ice chest Jason had left behind. "No. Are they cool?"

"Sorta? When I set this thing off..." Jason pulled out a smooth, round cylinder of metal with projections on the top that looked vaguely akin to a water heater. "Everything electronic that isn't shielded right is gonna die. The alarm company that worked on this house sells a shielded alarm panel... that after 30 seconds of no power and an indicator it got shocked, sends out an alarm.. via a cell phone call and a phone line. So..."

He grins. "We need to do four things in thirty seconds. Seal all of the doors to that warehouse so nobody gets out. EMP the place so nobody's phones or anything work. Cut the phone line so that the alarm can't call out... and then jam the cell signal when it tries to call that way. So. How do we do it?"

Butch blinked, staring at him. "Uhhh... Hire more people? Maybe some of those homeless guys, they're only here for money anyway."

"Good answer! Some cheap, local help would be great. But if they're already bringing guys in, our VIPs are gonna show soon. So anything else?"

"...Maybe like... put bombs on the phone line and the doors, on a timer? And set the EMP off as soon as they blow?"

"There we go! Not bombs on the warehouse, though. Don't want to take out the warehouse, or burn everybody alive." He held up a small green cylinder. "Goo grenade. Ultra-compressed sticky foam. Wedges doors shut, renders people helpless. Generally not recommended for crowd control because there's too much risk of suffocation. You hate somebody, you blow one of these on their chest; they die bad."

He set a row of them on the ground. "So. Here's what we do. We set timers on these. All the same timer, all together; then we carry them out there. These four.." He tapped one of the Goo grenades. "To the warehouse doors. This one.." He taps a Burster grenade. "To the phone box. I'll put those in place. You pull the trigger on the EMP... and toss it over there at the warehouse, hard as you can, as soon as they go off. Works best if it goes off in midair. And..."

He nodded at the van. "The cell phone jammer sits safe and sound in the van til the EMP goes off, already running. Soon as the EMP is off... we take it out, and just walk right in. Me with my guns...."

He pulled out... an enormous, dark black-grey machete. The scoring of recent welds were visible on the blade, but it appeared fairly well-done; nice beaded path. "You with a gun and a sword. That one's Tungsten. Not as heavy as the one you had... but I bet you could chop a hole right through a wall easy enough. All of the guys in there are criminals, and the sort I don't give a fuck about, so kill anyone armed, and if they backtalk you, maim em. And if they keep backtalking you after getting maimed, kill em. Even the Lebowski guy; the payout requires him left alive, but I think I can stand to miss out on a hundred grand for this. I plan on giving whatever money these fucks have to the homeless guys they lured in here and making sure none of em leave alive"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Butch took the blade, examining it almost reverently. "...Wow. Thats..." He gave it a few experimental swings. "I like it. Feels too light, though."

"Less weight, more speed. I could probably still dodge a good swing from it without a problem, but once you get it down, most people won't be able to. So. Once we get inside, have everybody trapped in there with us, any security dealt with... I figured we could put on a little show of our own. Maybe make these rich assholes fight each other for a chance to get out alive."

"Sounds awesome! Mom would love that!"

"Me too, kid. But first... we gotta wrap this van in so much copper wire that you're gonna be sick of it before we get halfway through. I'm gonna start putting timers on the grenades and getting em set. I want you to just start wrapping; toss the spool over, roll it back under, and keep going; small gaps, we're gonna use the whole thing.. and then the next spool the other direction. Only rule is, keep it out of touch with the metal; either on the ground or on the polymer. Err... Plastic."

Butch looked at the grenades; the electronics that Jason had set aside. "Could you.... show me how to set the timers?"

Jason glanced at the boy. Valkyrie, from what he understood, was bright enough, but never cared about electronics aside from what made her motorcycle tick. Might have even discouraged him. "Sure. Come on over. There's cheaper ways to do it, but the quick and easy route is to take a burner phone... this way you can remote-detonate if you need to... and a modified egg-timer in case the EMP goes off early and you need a mechanical trigger."

For the next hour, Jason showed him how to disassemble the grenade without detonating it; and a quick course in how to turn a cheap burner phone into a detonator.

As the sun went down, and the first of the 'guests' showed up; a fancy sports-car pulling into the ranch; everything was ready, or close enough. Jason started pulling chest and arm pieces out of the fabricator to lay over the store-bought armor for Butch; and true to form, the shoulders and forearms had come out jagged and mishapen due to Jason's driving while the fabricator ran.

"Alright. Sun's down. Guests have started showing up. They've got a couple of guards there at the gate letting people in... when they leave and lock the gates, thats when we start placing grenades."

"...These are gonna be a bunch of rich assholes, right? Can we like... rob em? Shake em down while we're doing this?"

"Maybe. But financial transactions they make under duress... and on the day they were murdered... are probably gonna be reversed by the bank, and if its too big they're gonna put a hold on it until they confirm. Nice thinking though; can try it out."

***

It took three hours before all of the guests showed up; and the guards locked the gates, backed off... but kept an eye on the street. Apparently, being in the middle of nowhere wasn't enough.

"Eh. Well, fuck. The phone line heading in comes from right there by the road. Gonna need to cut it further out, probably cost the whole neighborhood phone service." Jason sighed... and turned to Butch. Both of them were fully armed, armored, and geared up at this point; Jason with his as-yet unused rifle and both handguns; and Butch with his new machete, a... 10 gauge shotgun pistol... and his own new armor. The tiny display LEDs were currently unhooked; they were purely for style anyway.

"Alright, Butcher. I want you to head over to that phone pole... right here." He pointed it out. "Set the grenade at the base of the pole, and then come on back. Doing it this way is gonna take a bit more force, so..." He pulled a second grenade from a tube; and set it by the first. "All timers are set. I'm gonna go in and place the rest, then come back here to the van. You do the same; if you get in trouble, just shoot and I'll be there, and we can burn the whole op.. and just call the cops to arrest all these assholes. Maybe we'll get the bounty if he's in jail and can't play, I'll need to check the wording on it. If you catch any of the guards alone, and have the drop on em... use the blade."

The two split off; the pre-teen and the soldier each taking their own path around the fence-line of the ranch in the darkness, to their own targets; setting the stage for the chaos that was to come.