The Super Olympian- Bloodhound

by Laer Carroll

They were clear to normal dark-adapted sight, what with the light reflected off the side of the enemy tower and from starlight and light from a crescent moon sailing above the western horizon.

  Sasha stopped near a second duct, out of sight of the other tower and barely in the sight of the two men. She adjusted her throat so that she sounded like a feminine version of the Marine sergeant she had met months earlier at a gun show.

  "Gentlemen," she called quietly in English.

  The two men jerked and swung their assault rifles in her direction. She stepped behind the duct and crouched. If they fired at her it would likely be at her chest height.

  When no bullets flew she called out, just a bit louder. "I'm unarmed. I'm coming out."

  "Come out." The answer was in accented but clear English.

  Sasha stepped slowly back into view of the two men, hands out and up to show they were empty. She approached the two men.

  One glanced away to ensure there was no one else visible on the roof. He kept looking away. The other looked at her, rifle pointed at her.

  She came close to them. "Mind if I put my arms down? I think you can see I'm unarmed."

  The man watching her said, "Turn around. Slow."

  She did so. He deflected his rifle to the side and upward, asked who she was. She was back to her black-skinned tightly curled hair and black skin. She had adopted a stern Xulu warrior face with a knife-blade nose.

  "I'm part of the team that is going to parachute onto that—" She nodded toward the other tower. "—and secure the hostages. Then we'll call you and you can shoot Hell out of the terrorists."

  The second soldier glanced at her but kept his attention on the part of the rooftop he could see. Good training, Sasha decided.

  "Who are you? Why haven't we been told about this?"

  Sasha slowly lowered her hands to her sides. She smiled, as a tiger might.

  "Because none of your people know."

  He took a cell phone from his belt but before he could raise it Sasha had flashed forward and knocked it from his hand. He jerked his gun down to bear on her but could not. In an instant she had disarmed him, and had him in an unbreakable embrace shielding her from his companion with his body.

  "If you don't point that away from me I'm going to take it from you and stick it up your ass."

  He refused to comply. Sasha pushed his fellow into him so hard both fell. She took his rifle from him, tripped him, and pointed the rifle at the two lying before her. The two looked up her in shock, frozen.

  "Sleep tight." She brushed a hand over each man's face, putting them to a sleep she had calibrated to last an hour. Then she leaned the rifles against the closest duct and turned to her next task.

  She surveyed the longest path across the rooftop toward the east, then duck-walked it below the line of sight from the other tower. The surface was clear of all but a few nondescript pieces of debris. Those she tossed aside.

  At her starting point she slowly stood erect, waited. The two enemies after a few minutes strolled to another section of their tower and looked below. That was not a good move, but then she had already decided the terrorists might be good at terrorizing but not at soldiering. The bright lights below would have wiped away any dark adaptation they might have had.

  Sasha took a deep breath, turned the world into slow motion, and began her run. In a few steps she was moving faster than a cheetah.

  In one balletic motion she leaped up and forward. She flew in an arc toward the enemy tower, needing to windmill her arms and legs only a bit to keep her upright orientation.

  She came down on the parapet top just long enough to see what was ahead of her. She adjusted her motion minutely to land in a cleared area. Ran a short distance, bringing her speed quickly down. Fished two marbles out of the makeshift belt around her waist. Swung her head toward the two guards. Targeted their skulls. Protected not at all by two berets jauntily tilted. Whiplashed one arm then the other. Heard the crack as each marble crashed through skull into a brain.

  Sasha changed her motion into a run around the roof top. No one else was there.

  She examined the two guards. They had a uniform of sorts, but not a very uniform one. Each had an assault rifle and a pistol and a knife on a belt. She took the belts and slung them over a shoulder in bandoleer fashion, then slung the rifles over the other shoulder.

  She shrugged the weights into a balanced position, made sure she could easily reach the marbles in her belt, checked to make sure the belt was secure. With her abilities the marbles were as effective as pistols and much quieter.

  Carefully she entered the shed over the stairs. No one was about. The next floor was abandoned, so was the next, the rooftop restaurant .

  She moved cautiously but quickly. Silencing the two rooftop guards had started a countdown clock of unknowable duration.

  The executive level was occupied, but no one was in the hall and open reception area. The security room was occupied.

  Sasha unholstered a pistol, checked that it was loaded, jacked a round into its chamber. Repeated the process with the other pistol. Took one into each hand. Felt the knob of the security door. It was locked.

  She knocked hard once, twice. The door was quickly flung open, a man ready with hard words stood in it. He never had a chance to speak. She pistol-whipped him to the floor, leaped in, leveled a pistol at the two men sitting in the chairs. They froze.

  The pistol she had used as a club was undamaged by its rude use. Good. She loved a good weapon.

  She closed the door with a foot, moving like a ballet dancer.

  A side door to the room flew open. Sasha leaped, in mid-air killed him with a head shot. Landed. Re-examined the situation.

  A glance at the door to the room convinced her that it had swung shut and locked. But she double-checked, moved to it, lifted a bare foot waist height, tried the door, her foot as nimble as a hand.

  Then she relaxed to normal time and approached the nearest of the two men, still staring at her in shock. She must be an apparition, an African woman with the sharp hard face of a Xulu warrior, dressed skimpily in clothes matching her skin color and decorated with large dark orange flowers. She might have seemed to have come from a centuries-old savage tale. Except she was carrying and using modern weapons as if born to their use .

  THEIR modern weapons.

  Sasha scanned the checkerboard of TV screens. They showed two occupied rooms and a hall.

  In the hall a lone guard sprawled in what seemed a plastic reclining lawn chair outside a double-door, an assault rifle laid over his belly. He was drinking from a bottle, seemed to have been doing so for some time.

  In one large room, a meeting room apparently, a group of men were playing cards and chatting.

  In a third smaller room, two women were being raped on a double bed by two men. Two other men stood, naked and aroused, watching, laughing, making comments.

  "Shit!"

  The hostages had to come first though it shriveled her soul to decide that. But the two women seemed to be alive and she hoped would remain that way till she could get to them. The rapists were already dead, though they did not know it, and as horribly as she could arrange.

  "Hostages. Where?" She said it in English and French. The men pretended not to understand her. But she had seen the minute facial muscles change as she spoke French.

  She must have confirmation of her guess. She holstered one pistol, stepped close to the nearest seated man.

  "Which screen shows where the hostages are?"

  He stayed dumb, angrily looking back at her.

  She placed a hand on his shoulders, twisted in a fake squeeze, just like that character on TV who used a nerve pinch to render someone unconscious. She also sent microscopic messengers into him targeting every nerve in his body. He screamed, jolted, writhed as liquid fire seemed to pour over and through him.

  Then he collapsed. His heart had given out. Sasha fixed it, left him unconscious.

  The second man also resisted. But
he did not die, just fainted. Sasha glanced at the screen where the two women were screaming, woke the man. Repeated his pain. Twice.

  On the third awakening the man begged her to stop. He pointed to the screen showing the hallway, frantically showed her on an onscreen map how to get there, how to get to the two rooms, assured her that was all the men in the building, told her of the two guards on the roof, which he did not know she had dealt with.

  She gave his body a command to feel fullness in his belly. "That is a demon. If you have led me false it will consume you from the inside out. It will always be with you. When the French come tell them everything, truthfully, or it will eat you alive."

  She told him to tell his companion what she had done and gave the comatose man beside him a fake demon in the belly. Then she put him to sleep. It would take much effort for anyone but her to awaken him.

  Sasha looked at the rape scene. One man had finished. One of the naked men had taken his place.

  She quelled her disgust. Soon , she promised. Soon, I'll be there. I'll fix you. I'll fix THEM.

  The hostages were down in one of the conference rooms, one floor up from the level where the majority of the terrorists were playing cards and otherwise socializing.

  The power to the security room was protected by circuit breakers. She tripped the buttons, then with the butt of a gun broke the buttons off and with her steel grip bent the metal behind the buttons so that the circuit breakers could not be switched back on without repairs.

  Sasha left the security room, her senses turned up to high sensitivity. Quietly she entered the stair near the elevators, descended them quickly but cautiously, her time sense sped up so that she seemed to float.

  At the level of the hostages she took a deep breath, a bit nervous, deliberately so even though she could have turned her emotions off. It was unhealthy to go robotic for long. It could be hard to go back to being human.

  Sasha left the stair. Around a bend was the hall where the guard lounged.

  Just before the bend she placed all the weapons on the floor, six sets of them now. Then she stepped casually around the bend.

  It was long moments before the guard even noticed her walking toward her. He fumbled with his rifle but did not point it at her. A nearly naked woman (now a blond not unlike Sasha's birth appearance) did not impress him as scary.

  She smiled at him as she neared him. He goggled at her, did not even stand—though he might not be able to. Two empty bottles lay beside his chair.

  She reached down and plunged him into a deep sleep, nearly a coma. He would only awaken with much effort.

  She left him exactly as he was, to anyone looking at him still on guard. Quickly she retrieved her weapons horde and returned to the door. As she did so she was returning her look to that of the Xulu warrior woman.

  A key on a ring of keys was in the lock. She turned the key, opened the door, took the key, and entered, bringing all the weapons and ammunition with her except for the guard's rifle. She had all the ammunition the guard had on his person and in his weapon, now useful only as a bludgeon. Even if it were reloaded it would not fire. She had the firing pin with her.

  There was an internal lock. She locked the door with the key. Turned for a better examination of the room.

  Harsh odors permeated the air. The prisoners had been left to urinate and defecate in their clothes. They lay on the carpeted floor amidst chairs and tables, their hands behind their backs. They clustered together, having apparently crawled to their friends and acquaintances.

  The lights were on high. Sasha twisted a knob to bring it down to a more comfortable level.

  Heads craned uncomfortably to see her. Sasha spoke conversationally.

  "Speak normally and no one can hear your. I've knocked the guard out and the closest people are a floor away.

  "Now, is anyone missing besides two women, one with red hair and one with black?"

  She breathed with relief when an older grey-haired woman with a possessed air said, "There was a woman shot. Chinese, I think. They left someone with her."

  "She's Japanese. She's recovering well in the hospital."

  As she spoke she was moving quickly but without seeming to hurry among them. She went first to each of those unconscious, put her fingers on their throats and assessed them. Each of those in bad health she gave near-perfect health and left them to recover on their own.

  Those with lesser hurts would have to get fixed later.

  Of the ones awake and hurt or ill she also gave an esoteric treatment.

  Then she passed among them with a handful of knives. As she cut each plastic bracelet she left the knife behind with instructions to free others—carefully.

  "Your shoulders will be out of joint or nearly soon. Your circulation will hurt as you recover. Keep your screams quiet."

  She smiled when she said that. Wondrously to her, a few people chuckled.

  "Who knows how to use these weapons?"

  One tough-looking very young man came forward. He was rubbing his wrists and moving his shoulders and neck to ease them. Sasha assessed him. Israeli? Someone who knew weapons, from small clues she could perceive. She gave him an assault rifle. He quickly removed the ammunition clip and recycled the weapon. Sasha caught the cartridge flipped out and handed it to him.

  He raised an eyebrow at her quick reflexes, pushed the cartridge into the clip, slipped the clip into the weapon, and cycled the action to load it. Without a word he walked to the door and stood to the side of it, ready if anyone came through the door.

  Sasha handed out all the other weapons, the rifles to those who seemed most to know how to use them. Without more than a few sentences they went to the door, ready. No one was taking them prisoner again without a fight.

  By the time the pistols were handed out all the people awake were looking well. The readiness of the soldiers and near-soldiers heartened them. Already they had organized themselves around a few leaders and were taking care of each other.

  Sasha called for attention.

  "I'm going now for the two women. I should be back with them inside a half-hour. Can you not use these cell phones until I get back with them? If you break faith with me, you might cause their deaths, and mine."

  The grey-haired woman, who had passed on receiving any weapon, said they could, and she would guarantee it. Several women and men who had clustered around her nodded.

  "But in thirty minutes your time is up," their leader said.

  "Agreed. Make the first call to Emergency Services. Tell them all hostages are safe, and that the terrorists were all in the Grand Executive Suite at this moment. Tell them the hostage-rescue team has killed two rooftop guards, disabled or killed four terrorists inside the security center and disabled the surveillance system .

  "I'm going to kill the four rapists now as horribly as I can and bring back the two women."

  The leaders of the former hostages seemed to understand. Sasha went to the door.

  The young Israeli bit his lip as she approached and tried to offer his rifle and ammunition to her. She shook her head and smiled. He protested.

  "I have weapons better than this. You just can't see them."

  One of the other men with a rifle said in some heavy accent, "She didn't come in with one of these weapons. They were all just luggage to her. Trust her. She can probably bend steel with her bare hands."

  That was uncomfortably close to the truth. She laughed.

  "No. It's just that my weapons are well concealed."

  Some of those standing around looked at her dubiously. One or two speculatively eyed her makeshift weapon belt with its concealed marbles.

  The "guard" outside the door was still in a coma.

  The executive suite where the women were being raped—Sasha prayed they were still alive—was halfway up the tower. She took the stairs. Using the elevators might have alerted someone.

  No matter. Time slowed and with her powerful and precise muscles Sasha seemed to float upward.


  At the door into the hallway she put her ear to the crack between door and jamb, turned her hearing high.

  No sound. She slowly opened the door and peered out. There were no guards in the carpeted hall.

  Quickly and quietly she approached the door to the executive suite. An ear to the door revealed one woman crying and the other breathing in gasps. There was laughter and comments from the men .

  Sasha entered the room without haste but without delay. At first none of the men noticed. When the first one did all he saw was a bizarrely dressed African women throwing something. Very carefully. Sasha wanted the men alive.

  Each fell from a marble to the head. One was not quite out. Sasha quickly ensured he was.

  The women noticed her. The redhead was dull-eyed with shock. The black-haired woman stared, then pushed a man off her and began to claw his eyes out.

  Sasha let her. She went to the redhead and laid cool hands on the woman which instantly shut off her pain. She helped her sit up, said "You will not get pregnant. Or a disease. I have fixed that." Along with the verbal reassurance she sent messengers into the woman's body to soothe her emotions, give her perfect or near-perfect health, begin rapid healing of her hurts, and kill any sperm.

  She also administered a command which would soften the memories of what had been done to her. Not to make her forget, though. Worrying about lost memories would have only harmed the woman further.

  The black-haired woman had to be interrupted at her mutilation of a second man's genitals. Sasha though of the horrible harpies and Maenads of Greek legend.

  She treated the woman the same way and with the same reassurances.

  "Now we've got to go before someone comes to interrupt us. The rest of the hostages are free and worrying about you."

  "I want to kill them!"

  "They are dying already. I'll let you watch for just a minute. Then we have to go."

  The three women stopped at the door to the suite. Sasha listened at the crack in the door. The other two looked back.

  The muscles of the men were writhing, tightening and un-tightening. Each of them was screaming silently. Sasha had esoterically cut their vocal cords.

  "What's happening?" said the redhead.