Struggle: Grip of steel - стр. 12
"Will blow himself up if so ordered," Raven heard within himself again. He couldn't believe that anyone around him had been able to control his subordinates to such a degree. He had worked so hard to keep discipline among his own people. He had been executed for almost nothing, and kept in pits for weeks, and socialized the families of the dead. But to get that kind of discipline…
No. It seems impossible. And yet there's a man alive who organized it right here. A hundred meters underground. If he's still alive, as they say.
But if you agreed to take it, you're alive. It can't be otherwise. Especially alive since he's determined that the meeting can be underground. You can't smoke him out now. If he survived an assassination attempt, you can't smoke him out. Actually, it's not the first assassination attempt.
He organized the past. Even though he knew it wasn't gonna work. And the guy was just a waste of time. He never made it past the entrance. I'm surprised he even got there. He was supposed to be shot on the way in and just report to the prefect about the weirdness. And he even went through the elevator… However, it wasn't too hard for such an unnecessary little thing to get through the elevator....
All we had to do was break up the Mountain and Cobra. It was immediately obvious that they were going to work too closely together. An experienced politician like Raven didn't need this strengthening of Cobra, especially from outside. He knows how important it is to make sure that the spikes are not out of the ordinary, but like everyone else. Which is more than can be said for Cobra. He's out of line. And the incident with the failed assassin didn't help matters much. But it worked pretty well for someone else. I don't know if the prefect is dead or alive.
No, I'm alive, of course. Otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to take me in. They would have found any reason and said that it was not the right time, that they couldn't do it now, and all the other things they usually make up when they are not supposed to give the right answer. So the Mountain is alive and waiting downstairs. After that damn elevator, where his man is like a zombie and everything can go off just on command.
Raven exhaled the air to relax a little. It had been a long time since he'd been so hesitant to do something, especially something he'd already decided to do. This demonic component of the Mountain's power was becoming all-consuming, all-encompassing, pervasive....
Who was it that said the days of the Kiwis were numbered since the Mounties got self-rule?