A Guardian Angel (33 page)

“I don't know
for sure,” Barney answered. His tone of fear and defeat had
transitioned to one of frantic enthusiasm. “But there's only a
handful of places I can think of on this floor.”

“How do you
know?” one of the Knights asked.

Barney didn't reply
but instead directed them through a marked door. They stepped into a
cold and dry maintenance area with access to the ventilation system
and the electrical for the floor. When Barney stepped forward, one of
the lieutenants raised his gun, but Rosa stopped him. The merc-cop
hesitated at the sound, but continued with a reassuring nod from
Rosa.

“I'm not
entirely
sure what kind of explosives we're dealing with, but
– ” Barney's voice trailed off as he found the device, an
odd black box attached to the base of the wall. There were yellow
warning labels slapped all over the thing. A large padlock clung to
the bottom of it.

“That's it?”
Rosa asked.

Barney bent down to
take a look at it. “Yeah,” he groaned as he stood back
up. “That's it. Go ahead and disarm it.” He stepped back.

The Knights stood
in contemplating silence, staring at the bomb. Barney could tell that
none of them had any earthly idea how to remove the explosives. For
the first time that day, a grin appeared on his face. A soft chuckle
slipped out between his teeth.

“That's
okay,” Barney said to the stern looks he received. “I'll
walk you through it.”

“Time's
running out,” Rosa urged one of her lieutenants as she passed
him. They had found an abandoned janitor cart on the ninth floor,
which she pushed as fast as she could alongside Barney. The weight of
five clunky bombs was difficult to maneuver around the offices of the
fourteenth floor. Barney reached out to help guide the cart as he
ran.

“Ah, here it
is!” Barney exclaimed, looking back over his shoulder. He saw
the other two Knights returning with one of the bombs. After they
deposited it into the cart, Barney beckoned them over. “Get
this one.”

The two men knelt
down to the black box that the mercenary indicated. “That was
the only one we found,” one of them waved back to the cart.

“What?”
Barney gasped. “That doesn't make any sense.”

The Knight
shrugged, then turned around and began detaching the explosive.

“He can't
stay for much longer,” Rosa moaned. “How many more of
these do we need?”

“Well,”
Barney started, his forehead glistening with sweat, “these are
pretty small explosives. I had expected them to be much larger since
the floors are gigantic. I'm guessing that there must be a valve in
the gas pipes,” he pointed up into the ceiling. “They
probably seal the building, vent the gas out into the air, and then
ignite it with these explosives.”

Rosa glanced down
at the bombs in the cart as Barney explained. “So...”
Rosa signaled Barney to continue.

“We need at
least five more,” Barney concluded. “Eight to be safe.”

Rosa sighed,
turning to push the cart to the elevators.

Something different
was apparent once the four of them stepped out of the elevator onto
the top floor. It was just something about the atmosphere that seemed
much less empty than the rest of the floors. They rolled the cart up
and past the receptionist's desk, loaded with its thirteen black
bombs. The bronze letters that hung on the wall informed visitors
that they were now in the outer offices of the administrative
department of the tower. They turned down the left path from the desk
until they entered a large room with glass cubicles.

In the darkness,
something fell off of a desk somewhere. There was almost no pause
between the clatter of that object hitting the floor and the sudden
bursts of gunfire. Glass splintered and shattered as bullets cracked
through them. The cart kept rolling as the Knights and Barney all
dove behind a desk. The two lieutenants dashed over to an opposite
desk, dropping the safeties on their rifles. Someone shot at them.

Barney cowered
behind the wooden drawers. He shook with each crack of the guns. Rosa
had begun returning fire. The merc-cop felt a weird sensation of
respect for the Latina as he watched her shoot across the offices.
She didn't blink and she didn't flinch. Barney would have never been
able to guess that she was a school teacher.

Papers were shot
through, tossing sheets into the air. Wood splintered on impact. A
computer monitor split open and toppled off of the desk it had sat
upon. Barney slid his head upwards so that he could peek over the
edge. Dark shapes had started moving toward them, pushing from their
covers. The staccato of their guns continued as they advanced.

He ducked down and
squeezed his eyes closed. Over the noise, Barney could hear Rosa
gasp. “They're not Decree,” she said.

“What?”
Barney asked with panicked quivers.

“They aren't
Decree!” Rosa hollered at her men. Confused faces turned toward
her. “Hold fire!”

As soon as the
Knights stopped shooting, the other party ceased as well. In the
silence, Barney could tell that their attackers had stopped
advancing.

“Who are
you?” a southern man's voice called out from behind a desk.

“We're the
Knights of the Proletariat,” Rosa answered, turning her head
toward the voice. “We are not with Decree!”

Whispers could be
heard from the other group for several seconds. One of them sounded
upset. “You need to turn around and leave,” the voice
ordered them.

“Negative,”
Rosa replied. “We came here for Graves. We're going to get
Graves.”

Again, there was
another quiet pause. Barney's back twitched in discomfort as he held
himself in an awkward, frozen posture. The anticipation was murder.

“You are
interfering with a federal black op,” the voice yelled. “If
you don't leave, we WILL open fire.”

Rosa bowed her head
in frustration. “Look, we do not want to cause – ”
Gunfire interrupted her. She dropped down behind the desk. Her
breathing was rapid with a sudden wave of adrenaline. Barney watched
her with a terrified countenance.

The lieutenants
indicated to Rosa that they were running low on rounds. The shots
were more spaced out. “We need to push them,” Rosa
commanded them.

There was a small
window of silence while the attackers reloaded. In the blink of an
eye, all three of the Knights leapt around their desks and sprinted
to the next closest one. Barney froze in fear as he watched them. No
matter how much he demanded his muscles to react, they wouldn't. They
only quivered in response. The gunfire resumed.

Barney caught the
janitor's cart in his sight when he looked back for a way to flee.
His immediate instinct was to hide behind it as he wheeled his way
out the exit door. The gaps worried him, though. He glanced forward
at the militants. Rosa looked back at him. He couldn't just run.

With as little
hesitation as possible, Barney dove at the cart. He stumbled,
clinging onto the edge of the thing. Rosa stared back over her
shoulder at him with wide eyes. His hands shot into the cart and
pulled up one of the small black boxes. Bullets started crashing
around him when the operatives redirected their fire on him. Sweat
beaded out all over his face as he worked. He was aware of the gaps
in the janitor's cart behind him. He threw the little black door on
the bomb's case open and extracted two identical wires. Shifting to
the left after a round hit close to his hands, he stripped the rubber
off of the copper with his teeth. He stood up and displayed the
explosive to his attackers. He wielded it up to the Knights too as
they turned to watch him.

“Stop!”
Barney screamed. “Stop shooting right now or I'll kill us all!”

The noise froze.
Silence followed a cease fire as every face stared at him. Barney
watched them all with heavy breathing, terrified that they might call
his bluff. He side stepped next to the cart again, holding the wires
out like an exhibit. He had no idea if any of them knew that he
clutched onto the audio wires from the alarm's speaker. Either way,
he held them out toward them.

“No one
move!” Barney barked. He made fast glances behind him to watch
where he went as he walked backwards. He pulled the cart with him as
he moved. The elevator couldn't seem further from the mercenary. The
silence was thick, only penetrated by the creaking of the cart's
wheels.

“Sorry,”
he breathed once he arrived at the elevator. He tossed the bomb back
in the cart and disappeared behind the closing metal doors.

“Son of a
bitch,” Rosa muttered under her breath as she watched the
number above the elevator decrease.

There was an
awkward silence that followed. Everyone looked around at each other,
unsure of what to do with themselves. Enough time passed without
fighting that it did not resume. Instead, everyone looked up at the
ceiling when a slight whir began rumbling it.

“Graves isn't
going to stay any longer,” Rosa stated through the hum of the
propellers. “That's his helicopter. You want him and we want
him. We can't waste time anymore.” She stood out in the open,
her gun lowered and her tone strong.

One of the federal
operatives stood up as well, holding his weapon off to the side in a
nonthreatening manner. “Alright,” he said. He was the man
with the southern accent. “Put your guns down and we'll go.”

“God!”
Rosa cried, intimidated as much she was weak, which was little. “Shut
the fuck up and get moving!”

There were charges
already placed around the bolts of Leroy Graves' office door. The
government boys had prepped the breach and then had gotten
interrupted by the Knights' elevator opening. Barney's bombs still
sat abandoned by the receptionist's desk. All of the guns were loaded
and the tactics had been planned as they took their positions and
detonated the charges.

With a loud bang
and the tumbling of the thick metal door, they piled in. The marching
of their boots thundered over the plush red carpet. A light hissing
clicked on as the smoke cleared out. They jolted to a stop.

Balloons dropped
from the ceiling out of large bags that had been rigged to the door.
The colorful things fell all around the invaders' confused heads like
autumn leaves.

Leroy Graves was
not in the office.

“Hi there!”
Graves' voice greeted, emanating from a speaker on his desk. His
voice was a mocking friendly tone. “Looks like you managed to
get inside my office. Good work guys! But unfortunately, I was never
here today.”

The Knights shared
a look with the agents as a grin could be heard cracking in the
recording of Graves' voice.

“I understand
your rationale for this attempt, I do,” he continued. “You
are all a dying species. This world I'm making is not made for you.
Not hospitable. Like us all, your instinct is self preservation. You
do not want to live in a world built for the modern philosophies that
we're moving toward. Your archaic way of holding onto ancient
superstitions and inexplicable notions of right and wrong is harmful
to humanity. You have been misguided.

“Inferior
though you are, you can still threaten the advancement of man,”
the dry tone carried on, all warmth gone. “You're like a virus,
able to infect good and intelligent people. You threaten my empire. I
can not allow this to continue.”

Rosa started
sniffing. Something smelled wrong in the air, accumulating in
strength.

“Currently,
there is a heavy concentration of flammable gas flowing through this
entire top floor. About half of the tower's purging charges have been
hooked up to a battery ignition within the room. The electricity had
been cut when you intruded my office, so the exits' magnetic locks
are in place. The elevator will not work. There is no longer an
escape.

“My
grandfather built this tower and my father helped Decree become what
it is today, but that all means nothing if you succeed,” Graves
said. “I can rebuild my tower. But you cannot rebuild your
revolution.”

“No!”
Rosa cried out.

The tower exploded.

-Chapter Thirty-

Graves

“The
explosion in downtown Manhattan resulted in as many as sixty
confirmed casualties, including onlookers from the ground below.
Ambulances from all edges of the city have been hard at work since
late this morning when the Decree Tower bombing shook the nation,
rushing injured from the site to several emergency rooms. Firemen and
rescuers are still rummaging through the rubble in the street,
looking for more survivors. The death toll is predicted to be over
one-hundred,” the news anchor with silver highlights in her
hair reported into the camera. All of the talking heads on television
were squawking about the same thing, wearing the same expressions.
Images of the scorched tower danced along the screen. There were
tearful people covered in soot on the street.