----------
Dr Quantum watched down over the factory floor and didn’t like what she saw. While she was lacking in military knowledge, she didn’t have to be an expert to recognise the seriousness of terrorists handling materials that required hazmat suits.
“That’s a bad scene.” A voice startled her by whispering from behind.
She flinched and turned to find Crimson emerging from the shadows, although it always appeared that he was partly made of the shadows such were his abilities of stealth. She tried not to show that he’d startled her. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“No shit,” she hissed back. “Why aren’t you in position?”
“Why aren’t you?” Crimson fired back as he moved past her and leant on the upper-floor railings, staring down at the hive of activity.
She moved further away from the railings to make sure that they were not spotted or heard.
“How many you figure?” she asked.
“So far, 23,” a new voice offered, and she turned to see Six-Shooter.
“23?”
“17 on the floor, 5 guards and the boss lady herself in the office over there.” Six-Shooter pointed outwards from the shadows. “But I haven’t had the chance to scout the whole area yet.”
“22,” Crimson corrected him. “Boss lady already smoked her husband.”
“What sort of damage are we looking at?” she asked Six-Shooter. “I mean with that lot down there, whatever it is.”
“Phosgene oxime,” he answered. “Or at least a souped-up version of it from what I can see. It’s what they call a blister agent, but it looks to me like they’ve been combining it with something potent… maybe Sarin or Soman.”
“Sarin,” Crimson confirmed.
“It’s a killer,” Six-Shooter added. “ Aerosol-based, disperse it through maybe an air-conditioning unit in a confined space.”
“Tube station… maybe a hospital… office block?” Crimson pondered. “Hospital would be my choice, though; somewhere where the targets were already in a weakened state, a lot of bed-bound with an inability to properly fight off an infection.”
“Your choice. Lovely,” Dr Quantum scoffed. “You think they’d really use it?” She held up a hand before either of them could answer. “Yeah, I know. Of course they… she would.”
“She’s not going to get the chance,” Crimson stated. “Right, big man?” he asked as Bull finally joined them.
The short rotund man’s bald head was glistening with sweat given the hike up to the elevated position.
“We need to report in to God and get a plan. Firstly, we need to make sure that the whole area is scouted,” Six-Shooter said warningly.
“Ah, bullshit,” Crimson scoffed.
“We don’t know what’s down there. We don’t have a plan of the building, and we haven’t finished a complete sweep of the whole area,” Six-Shooter pressed.
Dr Quantum could see the two men already squaring up to each other. It seemed to be the same on almost every mission lately: two stags rutting for dominance.
“We don’t have time for this,” she hissed.
“There are trucks around the back,” Bull said, and the other three looked up at him with surprise. The man barely spoke at the best of times and even more rarely on missions. “They pulled in a few minutes ago. I’m guessing that means they’re getting ready to move the stuff?”
“There you go!” Crimson said excitedly. “We don’t have time for your bullshit plan, Marshall. We don’t have time for any of your bullshit, full stop. We have to move now. NOW!”
Six-Shooter turned to Dr Quantum for help but found none there.
“I’m sick of this crap, aren’t you?” she asked him. “Look, that bitch is here. She’s making chemical weapons, nasty shit that is going to kill God alone knows how many. We can end this, Marshall; we can end all of it here and now.”
Marshall wanted to argue, but in truth, he was simply too damn tired to. Doc was right. He was sick of it all: the war, the fighting, the death. He just wanted it to be finally over.
“What about CJ?” he asked the others.
“He’s not here,” Crimson hissed back. “And we don’t need his help or his bloody permission!”
“And what about God? Don’t we need his permission?”
“Ever the soldier, aren’t you? Always following orders,” Crimson sneered. “Don’t you have your own mind?”
“Stand down,” Marshall growled as Crimson moved into his personal space.
“Dammit, we don’t have time for this,” Doc muttered irritably.
“Oh, you wanna go?” Crimson asked, ignoring Doc and never taking his eyes off Marshall.
“Anytime you want to make a move, you just go ahead and feel free to try,” Marshall countered, his eyes unblinking.
The two men stood their ground, neither one backing off, their situation and the mission momentarily forgotten as years of bitter resentment bubbled to the surface. Both sets of fists were clenched and it would only take the tiniest spark to set them off.
“Enough,” Bull finally said as he stepped in between the two men.
He placed a small but meaty hand on each chest and effortlessly pushed them both backwards, breaking the moment.
“We’ve got bigger fish,” he added.
“Couple of bloody children,” Doc scolded, but only Six-Shooter had the good grace to look down at his feet in embarrassment; Crimson still looked like he had murder on his mind.
“Look, we go in and we finish this now,” Doc stressed to them all. “No fuss, no muss. We don’t tell God, and he’ll thank us afterwards.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Six-Shooter scoffed.
“Then screw him if he doesn’t like it because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m sick of this shit,” she retorted. “We’re out here while he’s sat in a van parked a nice safe distance away. This is our call. Ours!”
“Atta girl.” Crimson grinned.
Six-Shooter looked to Bull for some common sense, but the powerhouse merely shrugged.
“We’re family,” Bull said quietly. “We go together, all of us.”
Six-Shooter could see that further pleading was useless.
“Alright, dammit,” he finally sighed heavily. “How many trucks did you see round the rear?”
“Three,” Bull answered.
“Okay, then. First point of call is to neutralise them, seal off the rear, and prevent extraction. I don’t want that chemical shit going anywhere. What’s on the ground floor?”
“Kitchen area and canteen.” Crimson pointed off to the side.
“There’s also a large room between the factory floor and the loading bays out back,” Bull added.
“What’s in there?” Six-Shooter demanded.
“Couldn’t see from my position,” Bull shrugged in reply.
“Probably just storage,” Crimson offered.
“I don’t like not knowing,” Six-Shooter mused.
“We don’t have much choice. Look,” Doc said, motioning outwards towards the factory floor.
Most of the workers now seemed to be packing up and moving out. Boxes of canisters were being carefully crated out towards the exit door.
“Dammit!” Six-Shooter hissed. “Okay, Bull, get yourself round to the rear. Disable those trucks. No one leaves, clear?”
Bull nodded and retreated away from the group, his duties clear.
“Doc, I want to know where Cynthia Arrow is. She’s priority Alpha right now.”
“On it,” Doc said as she too moved off along the platform, one hand raised, and with two fingers touching her right temple, her face a mask of concentration.
“Okay then, boss man.” Crimson grinned without humour when the two of them were left alone.
His eyes were positively sparkling with eagerness as he peered out over the railing down at the factory floor and the terrorists below.
“Let’s do it.”
chapter 12
HAVENCREST PART THREE
Bull reached the rear of the building slowly. He didn’t move like Crimson or Six-Shooter – he didn’t have their stealth or their grace – but he got where he was going eventually.
There were three trucks but only one currently had a driver so he made that his priority.
His nerves were jangling a little now – not out of fear for the upcoming conflict but because it felt like they were off the script now. God was no longer in charge, their safety net was gone, and they were on their own.
He was concentrating so intently on approaching the truck without being seen by the driver that he comically walked straight into a man wearing overalls.
The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, the man’s expression slowly dawning into one of suspicion as Bull’s face wasn’t placed.
Bull reached out with a clenched fist and with a carefully practised motion, bumped the man on the top of the head. The man collapsed to the ground unconscious, and Bull dragged him one-handed into some wild scrub brush that surrounded the unkempt rear yard.
Once the man was hidden, Bull made for the truck again. He had just reached it, pleased with his unusual stealth, when all hell broke loose inside the factory, causing the driver to look up from his clipboard and stare down at him in shock and dawning anger. Bull knew that the time for covert action had passed. Now, he was in his element; this was where he belonged.
----------
Dr Quantum headed down into the throng of workers. She used her mental ability to project herself as one of them as she moved among them with the occasional head nod and smile.
All of the workers had now removed their face masks and the sophisticated air supply system had filtered out the harmful chemicals now that their work was done.
She moved among the people, concentrating hard to maintain her appearance in their eyes while scanning their minds for thoughts of their leader.
A large man came down the office stairs and she could feel the reverence held for him in the minds of the workers. They all thought of him as Number Three.
This man was closer to Cynthia Arrow; she could sense his elevated position within the organisation.
“You, you,” Number Three said, pointing at two of the workers. “Come with me.”
The three of them started back up the stairs and Doc followed, hoping that they were going to see the boss lady herself.
She was sweating now as she willed herself invisible in order to follow, positioning herself outside of their vision and beyond their detection.
Normally, she only did this in extreme circumstances as the amount of energy it stole from her could be crippling, but this was the endgame.
She followed them all into the office and almost had a mental stumble when they parted and she saw the dead body lying on the floor. The man’s throat had been slit open and there was a large pool of dry, spurted blood soaking into the carpeted floor.
Cynthia Arrow was sitting behind a large oak desk with a laptop facing her, and Doc felt her anger grow at the mere sight of the woman.
“Clean that mess up,” Cynthia ordered her men without looking up. They obeyed without a sound.
Doc moved slowly around the rear of the office, desperate to see what evil machinations the woman was looking at on her computer. She was perturbed to see that the woman was, in fact, playing Solitaire on the screen.
She stood behind the woman only inches away. While in a state just outside of visible human perception, it was almost impossible to make use of any of her other abilities. The sheer force of will it took to remain out of step used up all of her energy, but now she wanted nothing more than to reach into the terrorist’s head and dredge up the woman’s very worst fears.
Doc wondered if she could push herself a little further. Her ability to read minds worked better the closer she was to the person, and she had never been this close to Cynthia Arrow before. It seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up.
She knew that God would have already been in her ear, seemingly knowing what she was going to do, what they were all going to do before they did it, but now she was alone with only her own voice in her ears, and she knew that she was far more capable than God or any of the others gave her credit for. So she pushed the boundaries further than she ever had before.
As a result, when all hell broke out down below, she slipped; she slipped back into view and was now staring at three shocked male faces and one raging female one.
----------
2 minutes before all hell breaks loose
By the time that Marshall realised it was all about to go to hell, it was already too late.
He and Crimson had made their way down onto the factory floor without Doc’s talent for not being seen, but they reached the shadows without raising the alarm.
Crimson had always been a killer, long before he’d been plucked from a jail cell to join the team, but there was something different about the man now and Marshall could feel it. There was a personal stake to his actions and movements now and he cursed himself for not picking up on it earlier.
Once Marshall had secured himself at the nearside of the factory floor, Crimson headed for the far side with a promise to wait for Marshall’s sign; he was stupid to have trusted the man.
Marshall checked his energy revolvers and pulled them from his hip holsters. He had never been able to service the CJ-created weapons as the technology was far beyond him and, he guessed, every weapons’ manufacturer on the planet.
He hated not being able to take the revolvers apart like in the old days, and part of him always feared the day that they would fail and he would not be able to fix them. As a result, he carried a small Boberg XR9-S automatic pistol in a secret holster at the back of his trousers. Not even God knew about the weapon, but mercifully, he had never needed it… yet.
He wanted to get a look inside the room that lay in between the factory floor and the loading bays. He didn’t like having an unknown during a mission, but before he could make his way round there, Crimson had other ideas.
----------
Crimson had no interest right now in anything other than racking up a body count. These SOUL scumbags had gone on long enough. If the government insisted on putting men like God in charge of the unit, then more innocent people would continue to pay the price. He was done playing the game by their rules; today, he playing by his own.
He moved through the shadows as though he was a tangible part of them, an expert predator, one on top of the food chain in action.
A man was carrying what looked like a heavy box. Before he knew it, Crimson’s hand was clamped over his forehead from behind and a blade was expertly placed upwards in through the back of his neck.
Crimson caught the box effortlessly and lowered both it and the man to the ground, all without making a sound. He didn’t know if the man was an active soldier or a factory worker, and he didn’t care. Today, they were all fair game.
A door opened to the side, and a woman’s face appeared. Her look of confusion was soon halted when a sideways flick of Crimson’s hand sent a blade flying out, and it was embedded in her throat a split second later.
Crimson was on the move now, a jungle cat of fluid movement and razor claws.
He headed through the doorway from where the woman had emerged, pausing only briefly to retrieve his blade from her throat. He saw the look of fear in the dying woman’s eyes but felt nothing for her. As far as he was concerned, these people had built their own house: now, he was going to burn it to the ground.
He came to the canteen. Long tables with fitted seating were arranged with condiments laid out on them. There were several people in the room and all suddenly turned to look at his sudden appearance.
Crimson didn’t break stride as he rushed the nearest table. He was up and slid across the table in one fluid movement, his boot sliding into the first man’s face, and he felt the breaking of bones under his heel.
People started to move now in panic. Crimson�
�s instantly recognisable blood-red and black outfit, complete with face mask, identified him and brought with it the fear that he craved.
Two women broke for the nearest exit door but were met with a wave of thrown blades as Crimson’s hands moved with blurring speed. One of the women’s throats was cut by a flying knife, spraying the white door with a spurt of blood, while the other woman fell through the swing door. Crimson started to follow, his bloodlust high.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Six-Shooter’s roar caught him off guard, and then he was being pinned up against the wall by the taller man.
“Get your hands off me,” Crimson snarled back as he tried to push the man away.
Six-Shooter answered by slamming the man harder back into the wall hard enough to make a Crimson-sized dent in the plasterboard.
“You’re a goddamn animal! They weren’t even armed!”
“So what? You know what they are, same as me. They’re the animals. I’m just putting down the rabid dogs.”
“You’re done. Soon as we’re out of here, I’m having God send you back to your hole.”
“Screw you, man. Don’t think that you’re so much better than me. There’s just as much blood on your hands as there is on mine.”
“There’s a difference: I’m a soldier; you’re just a murderer killing unarmed civilians.”
“Do they look unarmed to you?” Crimson said with a grin as he nodded over Six-Shooter’s shoulder.
Marshall turned to see several new men burst through the doors, all of them holding automatic weapons.
“Go to hell” he said to Crimson, knowing what was about to happen and not wanting any part of it.
“You first.” Crimson grinned back.
Six-Shooter released his colleague and spun around to greet the newcomers. The energy revolvers were up in his hands, seemingly jumping there of their own free will and appearing like magic.
The guns fired instantly as Six-Shooter could already tell from the men’s body language that a warning would not do him any good here. He was right, of course.
Capes Page 16