As Jason stood there, apparently unconcerned, rockets and mortar shells came raining down on the compound. Some struck watch towers, enveloping them in flaming shrapnel, sending the burning occupants screaming to the ground several floors below, igniting the stored ammunition, forming a ring of funeral pyres around the structure, and adding the sound of cooking off ammunition to the festivities.
Several impacted the warehouse roof; mostly the mortars, lacking the accuracy he was able to put on the rockets. Only two of them ended up passing through windows, igniting crates, trucks; causing even further chaos.
While a few others landed inside the compound, just scattered around at random, and a few fell among the trucks where they were parked... the rest were focused on the mansion itself. Shells went through windows, embedded in walls. The long chain of detonations resounded through the night; starting with just a loud roar only two seconds long; followed by the continued booming and cracking sounds of secondary explosions and falling towers. Screams of pain and terror.
He smiled, watching the cacophony, listening to the muted version playing through his helmet audio. He calmly took a step to the left, before a flying chunk of burning debris landed where he'd been standing; a vehicle tire that continued to roll off into the desert. There was one dark note to this; one of the rockets meant for a guard tower had been slightly re-directed, and landed at the base of the wall. It was still on fire, and the people inside climbing down the ladder to escape... but some of the shrapnel had lit a building in the village aflame.
Hopefully whoever was inside would get out.
The guard standing before him, who'd been confidently expecting to drag him inside in chains to be tortured to death, turned back to Jason... his friends near the gate had just been struck by a grenade, and those still alive were screaming as they burned.. and started to raise his rifle. A single shot; the crack barely perceptible across all the other noise.
Only one survivor rose from the rubble at the gateway; EH. The Iron Sword. His uniform was aflame, his dark grey skin apparently unharmed. Jason settled his tenner back in its holster, withdrew his revolver; and cycled the next chamber over, before looking up. "Hierro. Your old boss is either going to bend the knee or die today. I'm looking to expand. Interested?"
The iron giant let out a scream of rage, pushed his way out of the burning rubble, and started to charge towards Jason; each step an audible thud, sending gravel flying.. as Jason leveled his gun at the man's head... and pulled the trigger. A single 40mm grenade slammed into Hierro's face; the force not even close to enough to slow him down. He instinctively closed his eyes to protect them as he charged... and when he opened them... he stumbled. Rolled forward, skidding several feet along the gravel path, screaming in pain.
An audible hissing sounded as the acid worked its way through his eyes, through his ears, his nostrils; it didn't seem to impact his skin at all, or the gravel he lay on, but... when his eyes opened and he screamed they were already partially dissolved, hideous red-white masses leaking blood and acid onto the ground.
"I know you're already blind. And might already be deaf. But I want you to know, if you can hear me, that offer was legit. I've seen the files. You were damn impressive." He'd brought the two acid grenades specifically for Hierro. No sense in wasting the effort making them.
He waited for the next time the man screamed as he writhed on the ground, and pumped the next shell directly into his open mouth. A soft 'thunk' sound of the launching grenade. The hiss of escaping liquid. The movements, the writhing, would continue for a while... but the screaming stopped. Either he was dead, or the vocal chords were gone. Either way, problem solved for now.
He now had... two shroud, two cryo grenades loaded. And two of the larger, bulkier, sonic shroud grenades he'd built; too big to fit in a 40mm shell. This cartel had a couple of speedsters in its employ, and if either showed up today... Ahh. Speak of the devil.
Jason was... disappointed, however. The twins who emerged from the burning compound had clearly already been injured. Sure, they were much faster than any ordinary person, but they were supposed to be as good as Swiftblade; and he wanted a good test for his new gear. He wasn't sure just how badly the burns affected them, but they were moving maybe fifty, sixty miles an hour; and the files rated them at closer to eight hundred.
Just in case they were faking, trying to lull him into a false sense of security, he popped a single shroud grenade from the 40mm; and then shot twice with the tenner. Oooh. Was that the first missed shot of his professional career? Despite being able to predict their paths, his first few shots were all glancing hits; they were able to dodge just enough to keep him from getting a head or torso shot.
Until they hit the cloud from the shroud grenade. The Gonzales twins; they didn't have villain names like Hierro, they were just loyal servants of the cartel with triple-digit kill counts. They actually got close enough to worry him before he got a good shot in; the girl getting her left kneecap shot out, sending her careening off into the desert... while the boy was only ten meters away when the bullet impacted his face.
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Jason actually had to step to the side to let the body fly by. Couldn't let miss Gonzales suffer, could we, without her brother? A few steps over, to where the girl was trying to crawl, pull back to her feet. Her struggles abruptly ended with another round through the back of the head... before he turned back to the compound. The gate... was still intact. And he wasn't sure if it could even be opened, at this point; it may have warped from the heat, all the crates and gear stacked up nearby burning up.
Hmm. How to get inside. He looked along the walls, listening to the screaming, the crying... Oh. He stepped a few feet off the gravel road, pulling the pin on another grenade, tossing it into the air.,.... and a truck, still on fire, slammed through the gate, swerving wildly as it veered back and forth. The grenade crashed through the already-broken windshield, landed in the passenger seat... and what sounded like a minor pop compared to the rest of the action sent it veering off the road, to flip over on its side... and lie there, burning.
He couldn't let that go, no... Might be someone important in there.
Jason walked up to the back of the truck; a simple box truck, the same sort he'd used for robbing that Wayson complex, but with the name of some mexican food chain on the side; and shoved the back door open. Inside... there was a wounded man, bleeding onto the wall that had previously been the floor, and a fairly nice-looking hispanic girl; but he couldn't spend much time admiring her. She was hurt, maybe a broken arm, but she was pulling out a gun.
Another gunshot. The second girl he'd killed in what, thirty seconds? This... maybe he was going a bit far. After all, while these were a bunch of mass-murdering thugs, so was he at this point. And what did they do to him? Take some territory he'd never properly claimed. Yeah... this was a mistake. But then, he wasn't really planning to start an organization a month ago.
He muttered a few words into his helmet mike, studying the injured man, pulling up pictures from the newspapers and from Nicky's files. Ahh. "Capo Miguel! Good work on getting an escape together so fast. I thought you'd have a tunnel under the house that I'd need to be hunting through to track you down later."
The man had shrapnel wounds in his belly and legs. Not fatal... if he got to a hospital. "Just the man I came to see! You know, you'd think, given my reputation, that having me knocking on your door would convince you to just sit down and talk. That if someone could kill the most dangerous man on earth, that maybe, just maybe, your first impulse shouldn't be a fight."
Jason crouched down in front of him. "So... just what went through your head, hearing that Eyeball, the titanslayer, was coming down to chat... and you ordered your men to capture me?"
He looked... relatively strong. Healthy. If not for the injuries, he'd be a competent man, worth something in a fight... and was probably a meta. Nicky had no idea what kind; but probably something useful for taking over a crime family. The man gave a cough.
"You... american dog. Think you can come down here and burn down my house... and the other cartels won't come for you?"
Jason tilted his head for a moment. "I didn't even know you existed two weeks ago. If one of the other cartels interferes with my affairs, I'll destroy it as well... and a few others just to get the message across. If I have to wipe all of them out, it might take me a while, but eventually they'll be cowering and hiding underground for fear I'm coming for them."
He shook his head. "You... cowardly american. Using bombs, from a distance. Just like how you all work. You're not man enough to take off that helmet and look me in the eye before you kill me."
Did this idiot seriously think that he was going to convince him to take the helmet off? Obviously, whatever power he had needed the helmet off. "You cowardly little chickenshit, sending women to try to kill me when you can't do it yourself. Did they seriously call you the Salt Lord? Thats a hilarious title."
As he raised the gun, he heard a scraping sound behind him. Not sensing any immediate threat, he glanced back, to see... Hierro. Clearly blind, clearly in horrible agony... crawling through the gravel towards him, slowly pulling to his feet. How the hell was he still alive? That acid should be working on his brain by now. And how did he even know where Jason...
Jason glanced back at Miguel. "Huh. Interesting. I wonder how it works. Well. Not going to find out." He leveled his pistol; and fired one last shot.
When Miguel collapsed to the floor of the truck... Hierro fell as well. The body finally stopped moving; twitching a bit, clearly dying, but whatever was compelling it to move long past the point where it should have stopped moving had died with the Capo.
He started walking away from the compound; he was parked about a mile away, and needed to slag all the evidence at the spot he fired the mortars from on his way out. Ideally... this would be the last time he visited mexico as anything other than a tourist.
"Okay google. Call The Don."
He kept walking as the phone rang. After the fifth ring, a click.
"Who is this?"
"This is Eyeball. The Salt Lord is dead. His compound is in ruins, still burning, and metas who worked for him are either fleeing or dead. I just figured, considering our nice, friendly relationship, I'd give you a heads-up so you could take advantage of any opportunities this might offer."
There was silence on the other end for the moment.
"Eyeball. I'd like to talk to you when you're in town. I've spoken to a few others. So far, we've had a cooperative relationship. You've done me favors, I've done you favors. We help each other. I consider you a valued associate. I would like to invite you to make our relationship more formal."
For a moment, Jason considered making a joke about not swinging that way. He wasn't too familiar with the mafia; he'd seen a few movies, but how accurate could those be?
"...I think, at the very least, thats something we should talk about, Nicky. Once I get things setup out in colorado, we should sit down, have a chat."