by Reed Sprague
“In other words, the basic rights and privileges contained in the Constitution that you swear to protect may not even extend to you at the conclusion of today’s operation. You need to know that. The question you must each ask yourself, then, is, ‘Am I willing to defend the basic rights granted in the U.S. Constitution, even though those rights may not actually exist in fact?’
“All of us, including myself, will swear our allegiance to the United States Constitution by reciting a simple oath to uphold, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, and that we will, if necessary, give our lives in so doing. Additionally, we must each renounce Tyler Peterson, the WWCA and the United Nations. As soon as we’ve all taken our oath and made our renouncement, I will say a few more words and then we will proceed with our operation.”
Each participant recited the oath and made the renouncement. Each did so individually, not as a group. The process took forty–five minutes.
“I am thankful to each of you for voluntarily proclaiming your oath and your renouncement. I have a few more comments, and then we’ll get on with it all.
“You are not here today to exact vengeance. That is not today’s charge for you. You are here to round up suspects who will be taken to a court and tried for crimes that we suspect they have committed. Two million people are dead. A beautiful young mother has been murdered. Twin six–year–olds are hidden somewhere, scared and worried, having been kidnaped by madmen. And, of course, our duly–elected president and vice president have been captured. These are the evils we will make right today. But I repeat: You are not here today to exact vengeance.
“We are not judges, and we are not members of a jury. The Constitution that you just swore to uphold, protect and defend with your life guarantees that suspects are innocent until proven guilty. I cannot and will not allow you to swear with one hand to uphold this Constitution and swear with the other to kill the suspects you capture today. It can’t work that way. I am asking you — no, I am ordering you — to make every effort to bring all suspects in, alive and unharmed, for questioning.
“Finally, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Carr are to be our top priorities. We must get them from Peterson’s men, bring them back to Washington, D.C., and restore them to their positions as U.S. president and vice president.
“Thank you. Be brave. God bless you all.”
Each member of the group had his specific duties. Al Qatari was in charge of getting the twins safely out of the building. Albert and Briggs were in charge of capturing Peterson, Hall and Samuel. Legions of other USFIA agents had been given their various assignments, right down to the most minute details. Peterson was the main target. He was to be taken, and he was to be taken alive.
The escape elevators had been sabotaged earlier in the morning. The elevators were going nowhere. Under the cover of the noise that had been part of a bogus office renovation project begun days before, the work proceeded smoothly and without raising suspicion.
The room suspected by the group to be the nursery was not guarded to the extent Peterson’s office was. The operation there would be straight–forward, they believed. Al Qatari and five other USFIA agents rushed the nursery door, forcing their way in, and discovered… nothing. The room was empty.
The USFIA agents scrambled out of the room and into the fire escape stairwell. Agents from Samuel’s security team stormed the area and trapped the USFIA agents in the stairwell. Sensing that something serious was going down, and without any hesitation, Samuel ordered Peterson and Hall’s evacuation. USFIA agents rushed up the stairwell, exited onto the eighth floor and got lucky. Hernandez was there, on his way up to the roof. He quietly directed them down a hall, up a secret flight of stairs, out an exit door to a hidden platform with a single door off to the side. He pointed and said, simply, “the kids are in there.” Then he disappeared.
The USFIA agents stormed into the room. There, off to the side, sat a female security agent. She did not know of the security breech. She assumed that the agents, guns drawn, were from her security force. They approached her with a request. “There’s been an attack, and the building is under siege,” al Qatari called out to her. Then he gambled that she was responsible for the twins’ well being. “Get the kids out now! Right now!” he yelled.
The female agent did not ask questions. She took the bait, ran into the adjoining room, gathered up the twins and ran down the stairs. Al Qatari ran down behind her. Samuel’s agents were on their way up the stairs and saw the female agent running down. One of them recognized her and assumed that she initiated the evacuation of the twins on her own, or according to specific instructions from one of Samuel’s agents. “Go quickly, run, run, get those two out of here and on down to the car,” Samuel instructed, referring to the car that was to be waiting a few feet from the building.
Al Qatari and his men heard the conversation and darted out an exit door on the floor above where the female agent encountered Samuel and his agents. They listened for Samuel and his crew to go up a few flights of stairs, then gambled that the stairwell from that floor to the ground was clear.
They lost the gamble. They entered the stairwell and began to run down, but a split second after they began their descent, shots rang out and several of them fell to the floor, dead. Others were wounded. Al Qatari was the only one of the five who was not hit.
The female agent exited the building directly onto the sidewalk. Al Qatari and four other USFIA agents were not far behind, although al Qatari was assisting the injured agents.
Al Qatari ordered a driver of a USFIA car to drive the car onto the sidewalk and block the exit door with it. The driver did it, then jumped out and joined al Qatari and the others. Just then the female agent realized what was happening and began to run with the twins in her arms. Another car sped up next to her and stayed with her.
The injured agents collapsed on the sidewalk. They could go no farther. The other agents ran to the female agent, ripped the twins from her, subdued her with handcuffs, and placed her into the back seat of the car. Two of them ran back to get al Qatari and bring him and the other agents with him back to the car. Al Qatari was nowhere to be found. All who were there got into the car and it sped away while being sprayed with a hail of gunfire from pursuing U.N. Leader Protection Agency agents. The USFIA agents inside the car laid their bodies over the twins to protect them from the gunfire.
Briggs and Albert were in serious trouble. Samuel hadn’t been so stupid after all. What he had withheld from Briggs was the fact that a backup to the backup plan had been practiced many times. It involved simply walking up flights of stairs ten floors to another elevator that then provided access to the floor just under the helicopter’s landing pad. Hernandez and just five other agents ascended the stairs with Peterson and Hall. Hall panicked. He didn’t believe that the escape plan would work. At the first opportunity he disappeared down a flight of stairs, searching for a more secure way out of the building. The disciple had abandoned his lord.
Peterson’s agents’ assignments were clear: Protect Peterson at all costs. Get him to safety. Forget all others. Hernandez had a hunch, though. What if Hall was right? If the roof were doomed, Hernandez could die protecting Peterson. Death for protecting a man who was summarily hated by nearly all in the world? Hernandez took his chances. He followed after Hall.
Hall raised his hands, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll go back up. I’ll, I’ll cooperate. I’ll—” He stopped, and was lost for words.
“Shut up. I’m not after you, I’m going with you. Let’s go. We’ve got to get out of here. Do you have your gun with you? Hernandez said.”
“Yes. It’s right here.”
“You better keep it out. You’ll need it.”
Albert’s computer geeks had broken into the security system and permanently locked all personnel inside their offices. Peterson’s agents were unable to exit their offices and go to the roof to save Peterson.
As far as Briggs and Albert knew, they would be able to ca
pture Peterson and Hall on the roof. Briggs and Albert reached the roof first. The helicopter was waiting there. Albert approached the pilot. “Mr. Peterson will be here shortly. You know the drill. Get that thing ready to go now. As soon as he arrives you’ll have to get him out of here.”
Except that Briggs had a surprise for the pilot. If Peterson did make it to the helicopter, it would go nowhere. The helicopter had been rigged. Briggs had thought to bring a simple eighty–foot chain and a padlock. Earlier that day, he had wrapped the chain around the leg of the helicopter and locked it securely to a steel guide beam on the roof. The copter would ascend up — the pilot would presume he was home free — then the chain would tighten and jolt the copter, it would plummet back to its pad soon after it rose from it, and crash to the roof. Hopefully the crash would cause a large fire, so the backup helicopter could not land. By the time the backup helicopter arrived, Briggs and Albert would be long gone, down to the bottom of the building and into yet another waiting car.
It worked. As soon as the door to the roof opened, the helicopter revved up. Briggs drew his Smith & Wesson, pointed it at the remaining agents who were escorting Peterson, demanded to know the whereabouts of Hall, was told he bailed out, grabbed Peterson and ducked into the door, back into the building. Albert remained on the roof, holding his gun on the agents to give Briggs a head start.
Albert forced all the agents to remove their guns from their coats, using only their index finger and thumb, and throw them off of the roof. Then, just to be sure, each one removed his coat and threw it off the roof as well. Albert bolted through the door, but before he could close and lock it, a wayward U.N. Leader Protection Agency agent who had been hiding in a maintenance room on the roof shot at Albert several times. Albert dove inside the door and bolted it shut. He then ran after Briggs and Peterson.
The agents on the roof realized that they had just allowed Peterson to be captured by the USFIA, and they realized that they would either be killed for having allowed that to happen or be captured by the USFIA and tried for participation in the U.N. Leader Protection Agency. Believing that they could escape either fate, they boarded the helicopter. The pilot pushed the acceleration arm of the helicopter forward, rose up rapidly to a height of forty feet, jolted violently, then slammed back down onto the roof and exploded into a ball of fire.
Briggs was hustling Peterson down the stairs with his Smith & Wesson held tightly against Peterson’s right temple. As they descended, Briggs stopped and said to Peterson, “So, Mr. Peterson, I understand that you don’t like the United States of America. It that right?”
Peterson didn’t respond.
“My Smith & Wesson was made in a factory, here in the U.S. On behalf of all of the hard–working factory workers in that factory, and on behalf of all other Americans, I am honored to introduce you to seven of these factory workers’ children. These children were bred just for someone like you.”
Briggs’ eyes were wild. Every muscle in his body tightened and flexed. The only muscle that hadn’t contracted fully was the one in his trigger finger. He was prepared to change that, though, as he began to jamb the end of the gun’s barrel into Peterson’s right eye and then his left.
“These seven little children can and will change your mind about America. Look, here, inside this barrel, and you’ll see these seven little people,” Briggs said.
Briggs then realized that his baby sister and Eddy were watching him from far off. He could feel their presence and their disapproval of his planned sadistic act. He stared into Peterson’s eyes. Both men were in a trance, although for vastly different reasons. Briggs moved the gun barrel as close to Peterson’s right eyeball as possible without actually touching the it. He held the barrel there for seven seconds, as he counted aloud in a harsh whisper, “one… two… three… four… five… six… seven.” Briggs pulled back the gun, moved it around to Peterson’s right temple, pressed it tight against his flesh there, and pushed Peterson forward, forcing his strides to match Briggs’ exactly as they proceeded down the stairs.
“Do we now have an understanding, Mr. Peterson, that you are no longer in charge of the world, and that we Americans are now fully in charge of you?” Briggs asked, as the two proceeded on.
Peterson didn’t respond.
Albert felt a piercing pain in his right side. Something had blown a hole in his side. He had been hit by one of the bullets fired by the UN Leader Protection agent on the roof.
Albert stumbled and caught up with Briggs and Peterson. The plan called for them to exit the stairwell at the sixty–fourth floor, proceed to the express elevator, enter the bypass code, go straight to the bottom floor, exit the building, get into the car and leave. They exited the stairwell, as planned, on the sixty–fourth floor, turned right, then left, then headed to the elevator.
Briggs held his gun to Peterson’s head, Albert held his to Peterson’s heart. Guard dogs smelled Albert’s blood and barked incessantly until their masters, agents stuck on the floor because of the permanently locked doors, followed them to the elevator landing. There, in front of them, stood Peterson, a loaded gun pointed to the left side of his head by Briggs and a loaded gun pressing into his heart, held by Albert.
There would be no standoff. Peterson’s agents were not allowed to ever increase the danger to Peterson’s life. They had no idea that Albert and his group had decided that no harm should come to Peterson. There was no need for them to find that out. Without a word from anyone on the landing, Albert entered the code onto the elevator access keypad, the three boarded the elevator. Albert entered the command code, instructing the elevator to proceed directly to the bottom level without stopping.
The elevator opened on the ground floor. Briggs and Albert held the guns against Peterson, walked from the elevator, and proceeded to the waiting car, a large black foreign SUV. The driver, one of Albert’s agents, identified himself using a code that only he and Albert knew. The three were to enter the car and drive off. But there was a problem that only mattered to Briggs, and it mattered a great deal to him.
“Get that damn foreign piece of junk out of here,” Briggs barked to the driver, referring to the car he was driving. Then, motioning his head back to a Ford Explorer that was parked off to the side — a car that was also to be used for the escape — Briggs said, “I believe that Mr. Peterson should be run out of town in an American made car. I believe that it would be a better lesson for him if he were hauled out of here in one of Henry Ford’s finest.” Briggs turned his head toward Peterson, “Once again, Mr. Peterson, you are being well served by the proud factory workers of America. Today’s your lucky day.”
Samuel believed that he was on his way to save Peterson and Hall on the roof of the building. He thrust open the roof door, saw the crippled helicopter engulfed in flames, its backup hovering above the building. Samuel believed that Peterson didn’t make it, that he was among the dead in the fire. Samuel was overcome with grief and fear. He stumbled around the roof, looking frantically for Peterson and Hall. Realizing his fate for the failure he had accomplished, Samuel ran back to the door, propped it open so the fire would spread inside the building from the roof, rushed to the edge of the building, rose up on the parapet, stood awkwardly for a second or so, then leaned outward and fell one–eighth of a mile to the sidewalk below.
Hall made his way down to the ground floor, slipped out of the building and waited in the courtyard between the Peterson Building and the adjoining office building, hidden in the bushes. He cowered there, remaining quiet as the chaos continued around him.
Briggs thought he saw Hall running down a corridor, between the headquarters building and an adjoining building. As soon as he turned over Peterson to al Qatari, he began to chase after Hall. The two men ran between the buildings. Briggs stopped, pulled his Smith & Wesson, and took aim at Hall’s back. He had a clear shot, and he would try to convince himself to take full advantage of a chance to issue long overdue payback to Hall.
But Briggs held his
fire. He needed fresh thinking, and he certainly wouldn’t get it from his own mind. The only answer he had for himself was to empty all rounds from his Smith & Wesson into the back of a seemingly defenseless Dante Hall. Rather than shoot, he began to rifle through his categories to search for answers.
The first category he focused on was the compartment he kept the people in who confused him. Perhaps he had missed something throughout the years about those in this category. Maybe those in this category could provide answers to life’s most important decisions after all. Maybe they would come through for him this time. They had all let him down before, yet they were supposed to have been good to him and for him. So he was confused throughout the years by their actions. Briggs’ reasoning during his lifetime was that people were supposed to support one another, so why would people let each other down? Why had those in this category let Briggs down?
The category was labeled, “Those I Never Really Understood.” He searched frantically for answers there. His father was there, but offered little advice and even less encouragement for whatever decision Briggs was to make. He asked his childhood priest for counsel and was told by him to trust God, that God would do His perfect will. This was the same advice the priest gave him when Briggs was a child and his only sibling, his baby sister, lay critically ill in the hospital. God was not there at the time to defend himself from the priest’s accusations, so little Mark couldn’t check with God about the priest’s charge that God would will a little baby girl into such a state. Besides that, his priest had taught him that only priests have access to God. Little boys were to trust the priest to explain God’s thoughts, actions and reasons. His priest had few answers then, and he had fewer now.