Brain Storm (US Edition) (5 page)

There was a very female yelp and the first figure staggered into Sara's view. The young woman stumbled and barely managed to keep from falling to the floor. She was dressed in a light blue skirt and jacket, probably one of the staff unlucky enough to have been at work when the terrorists took the statue. She was sobbing now and didn't turn around unwilling to look at whoever would follow her through the door.

"I'll let you know if she's worth a go for the rest of you when I'm through with her."

The voice came from right beside Sara just on the other side of the door. Fingers curled around the door and the CDM man closed the door behind himself without looking. He stepped up to the young woman. She was still sobbing and now she was shaking uncontrollably. This seemed to spur the terrorist on.

"We're gonna have us some fun."

Sara moved from behind the door as soon as it was closed enough to conceal her from the other room. In less than a heartbeat she was up directly behind the terrorist. She brought her combat knife to his throat but at the last instant she shifted her hand to jab him with the sedative injector instead of slitting his throat.
It wasn't out of any real desire to preserve the would-be-rapist's worthless existence, but slitting his throat would have created noise and brought others to investigate.

Sara caught the unconscious body and lowered him to the floor soundlessly. This one wasn't armed, using his physical strength rather than the threat of a gun to
make his victim compliant then, and perhaps he was worried that she might try to use the weapon on him as he had his way with her if he presented the option.

Sara left him and moved over to the woman. She placed her hand on the others shoulder and felt her quaking increase. She gently applied pressure in an effort to turn the woman around and the woman gave another squeal.

Sara could no longer afford to be gentle. She turned the woman around quickly and planted her hand over her mouth to cut off the noise. She hoped the CDM operatives would take the noise for the man starting to have his fun and shutting her up to make it more enjoyable for him. Just in case they didn't she drew her pistol with the hand that wasn't keeping the woman quiet. When she judged that there wasn't going to be any follow up to the noise and that the woman had calmed herself she replaced her weapon and removed her hand.

Before the woman could speak Sara put her finger to her lips to indicate that she should stay silent, she moved up close to her and put her mouth to her ear and spoke in a voice so quiet that the woman could only just hear her.

"I'm here to get you out of this," Sara said. "Speak to me like this so that they don't hear. Do you understand?"

The woman gave a hesitant nod. She was still shaking with fear or shock. Sara had no time to comfort her properly just now so she pressed on bluntly.

"I need you to tell me about what is inside that room. I need to know how many hostages there are. How many terrorists and their positions and anything you can tell me about their weapons."

Sara waited for a response but the woman was just staring blankly. She reached up with her hand and took hold of the woman's face just under the chin. She turned it so that she was facing her. She stared at her eyes and waited until she saw signs of recognition.

"You are safe now," Sara said risking a slightly louder voice away from the woman's ear so that she didn't break the contact she had just made.

"You are safe now," she repeated. "No one is going to hurt you now but I need you to help me or the people that are left in there are going to be hurt. Will you help me?"

The blankness remained in the other woman's face but there was a spark of life there now as well. Sara decided to take a risk and push the woman harder this was no time for a softly softly approach.

"If there are people in there you care about I need you to help me help them or they are going to die."

The woman blinked and Sara could tell she had finally got through to her. She moved again and spoke into her ear. "I need you to tell 'em what is in that room."

The woman nodded again but more surely than before she took a couple of deep breathes and swallowed before
putting her mouth to Sara's ear.

"There . . . there were twelve of us being held and four or five of them."

"Was it four or five? It's important that I know exactly," Sara asked.

The other woman hesitated and closed her eyes, she nodded her head almost imperceptibly while she counted from memory. "It was five," she said after a moment.

"Good. Now what can you tell me about their positions and yours?"

"We were all told to kneel facing towards the back wall. When they first took us in there they moved all the units and made a wide open space but they forced us up against the wall. I think there was one of them at either side of our line but the others moved around, pacing," she hesitated as a thought came to her. "No, that's wrong. We were all put up against the wall but when the fifth terrorist came in someone was taken from there and they went up behind the counter. Then the others moved some of the shelves to block the counter from us and covered it in those blanket things."

"So how many terrorists and hostages are out in the open and how many are behind the counter?" Sara could see the tears rolling down the woman's cheeks after being questioned so hard after such an ordeal but it had to be done.

"Eleven of us against the wall with four of them watching," she looked at the unconscious body. "That would be ten and three now I guess. There was only one of each behind the counter, it sounded like whoever they took was being questioned about something but I couldn't make out what was being said."

Sara nodded her mind already considering the options. She had no choice but to go in but should she go in through this entrance and take out the bulk of the threat but risk the hostage being held alone or should she try to go in the other way assuming it opened out of view of the rest of the room? Tactically there was only one option. If she went in the other way and she made even the slightest sound ten hostages could be killed, by going in this way only one of them was at risk.

"That's been very helpful," Sara said taking a moment now to reassure the young woman. "I have to go in there and I want you to crouch down in this corner. Don't get up for anything there could be shooting and I don't want you to be hit by a stray bullet."

The look of terror came back to the other woman's face as Sara guided her down into the back corner. She should be protected there as it was back away from any of the walls that adjoined areas where terrorists could be shooting from.

Sara drew her pistol and held her combat knife in a reverse grip in her left hand. She needed this to be swift and deadly but also as quiet as possible. She had no hopes of taking the terrorists inside that room without the others in there noticing but she still hoped to keep it from being noticed by those outside. She closed up on the door and pulled it slowly towards her. She remembered that she hadn't pressed the hostage on what types of weapons she should expect to face but it was too late to go back now. She kept out of the opening until the door was open enough for her to pass inside and then exploded into action.

As the hostage had said the other hostages were down on their knees facing the back wall with their hands on top of their heads. There was a terrorist on either end of the row with an automatic rifle slung across their chests with one hand resting negligently on the top. The other terrorist was sitting on a chair that was half built into the shelving that was being used to cover the display windows of the gift shop. His weapon was resting up against the barricade. On the opposite end of the room was another chaotic pile of shelving and heavy black blankets. Strewn all over the floor were broken souvenirs and tacky gifts. Posters of the statue had footprints and tears in them. Miniature ceramic imitations of the statue and personalized mugs had shattered when the shelving was rearranged. Plastic ornaments had been cracked or deformed where they had been stepped on. The only gifts left intact were a display of gaudy plates on a high shelf on the wall above the hostages’ heads.

Sara took all of this in during her first step into the room. By the second step she had already adjusted her direction of travel to accommodate what she saw. Her right arm aimed her silence pistol and she put a bullet in the forehead of the seated terrorist before he had finished turning his head in her direction.

She was moving sideways now towards the terrorist on the near side of the hostages, that one was a butch looking woman with a shaved head. She was also bringing her pistol around to target the terrorist on the far side of the hostages. Her first shot at him hit on the body armor he wore and she adjusted to compensate, the next shot caught him below his right eye and carried on through into his brain and out of the back of his head in a splatter of blood and fragments of brain and skull.

At the same time as she fired those shots she had closed in enough on the female terrorist and without looking buried her combat knife to the hilt in her throat. When she saw the other terrorist go down she turned full on to the woman and twisted the knife before plunging it deeper and forcing it sideways. Blood fountained from her neck below the almost decapitated head and covered Sara and those hostages nearest her.

The confrontation had taken all of three or four seconds and none of the terrorists had had time to call out. All the same the terrorist behind the counter couldn't have failed to have heard something. And as soon as the hostages overcame their shock at seeing such violence they would start making noise. Sara rushed across the room but before she was halfway there she knew she would be too late. She heard the familiar
whump
of a round being fired from a silenced weapon.

A figure stepped out from behind the counter barricade and for an instant Sara mistook him for a hostage because he was dressed in a well tailored slate grey suit rather than the military surplus the rest of the CDM were kitted out in. Then he raised the pistol to point at her and she fired. The round took him in the left shoulder and knocked his aim off target Sara felt the change in air pressure as the round passed by her right ear. The man started to compensate for the change ignoring completely the hit he had taken. Sara fired two more rounds into the man one in the centre of the chest and the other in his throat.

Alert for an intrusion by the rest of the CDM in case they had heard anything she got on her communicator to her superiors outside as she walked around the barricade to see if what she feared had come to pass. It had, the hostage was slumped back in a chair with a single bloody and charred hole between his eyes. The back of his head had ballooned outwards where the skin contained exploded skull and brain.

"The explosives and hostages are secured send in a full team," she reported moving back out to where she could cover the hostages. There was no need. Sara heard a small explosion that would be the teams coming in the front door in force.
There was a short lived exchange of gunfire and then Sara's supervisor entered the gift shop followed closely by another pair of agents. All three carried small automatic weapons at the ready and only relaxed after seeing that Sara was the only person in the room who could pose a threat.

"Good work, Agent Fox," her supervisor said adjusting the strap on his weapon and releasing his grip on it so that it rested against his side.

He directed the agents who entered with him to start seeing to the hostages. Sara knew that once the area was declared safe medical teams would be brought in to give the hostages the once over. But there was one hostage who they would be unable to help.

"I didn't do well enough, sir," Sara said holstering her pistol and relaxing her stance. She nodded back to behind the counter. "There's a hostage back there that I wasn't good enough to save." She looked down at the suited terrorist that had executed the man. "I managed to get the one that killed him." She shrugged and looked back up. "But that doesn't help the man back there, does it?"

Her supervisor, his name was Marc Ash but Sara had only ever addressed him as Sir or Ash to the other agents, surveyed the room his eyes lingered on the oddly dressed terrorist but he made no mention of the anomaly. "You don't need to beat yourself up over this, Fox. You should never have been asked to take on a task of this magnitude alone. They should have waited to see if the negotiators could settle this and only when it was clear that they had failed should an incursion have been authorized. And it should have been a full on assault from the start, hit them hard and fast."

"In a full assault they could have detonated those explosives out there and taken out all of the hostages and everyone we sent in. Not to mention the destruction of an important symbol," Sara argued."

Ash shook his head. "We could have hit them fast enough so that they wouldn't have had a chance to press the button. And if they had set their bomb off it would have killed them as well. Most of these CDM freaks aren't willing to die for their cause."

"They don't all have to be, just the one holding the detonator."

"This conjecture doesn't matter now, what's done is done. Why don't you go outside and get yourself checked over by the medics? We'll get you transport back to ECSIS headquarters for debriefing."

Sara nodded and left the room. The outside area was filled with a light cloud of smoke that was just beginning to dissipate. Most of the terrorists had been killed in the assault and their bodies lay where they had fallen. A couple of the terrorists appeared to have surrendered and were being placed in restraints. A pair of medics were working frantically on an ECSIS agent who had taken a hit which appeared to have penetrated the body
armor she wore. The medics had cut the armor away and were pulling it off the agent's chest so that they could get to work. A pair of her colleagues stood watching anxiously nearby. The fact that the body armor tried to stick to the rest of her uniform because of the sheer amount of blood flowing didn't bode well for her. Sara could do nothing to help so she continued on past without slowing.