“Maybe so John”, Devon replied, “But we’re talking about a well-armed group here, with food, water, power, these guys aren’t amateurs”.
“Didn’t you see how they reacted to the lights turning off on the court?”, John asked, the smaller of the cable ties splitting open with the immense heat generated by the sawing motion of the shoelace, “Their power’s running out”.
Suddenly things were starting to make sense for Devon. The stadium wasn’t the well organised machine it pretended to be, in reality it was a bunch of armed civilians being ruled by an organised leader. The guards who were stood on duty in the wing weren’t just any old soldiers, they were the best the camp had to offer, put in place in order to put on a big show for the captives. Their entire visit so far had been orchestrated to make things look very different to how they actually were.
“Well let’s not get too ahead of ourselves”, Devon said, attempting to shape John’s sudden burst of enthusiasm into something a little more calm and collected, “These guys are still well armed, there’s still a lot more of them than us, and we’re not exactly well armed here”.
“Yeah, I’m still working on that part”, John admitted, the turning cogs in his head almost visible in amongst the strained expressions on his face.
Suddenly it occurred to Devon that he ought to get himself ready. Following suit, he pulled his restrained hands over his feet and then began untying his right shoelace. In all honesty, he hadn’t anticipated that such a trick would work, but as he watched John slowly but surely burn his way through even the thicker of the two cable ties wrapped around his wrist, it became clear that he knew what he was doing.
John was used to thinking in high stress situations, and had a long and well decorated history of doing so. In addition, he was more than accustomed to coming up with tried and tested plans of attack, as well as plans to retreat, escape, spy, and do just about everything else the military had trained him for. But the one thing that had always stuck out better than anything with John Parker, was his ability to come up with some of the most incredible, most intricate and most flawless plans anybody had ever heard of, all whilst in the middle of a messed up situation like this one.
Granted however, in this particular circumstance, John didn’t have much to work with. Unarmed, trapped in a locked room with a fairly heavy duty door, and in the middle of a complex that was guarded on all four corners, were not the best starting points. In addition, John had no idea how they’d get out of the area even if they did escape, and with no means of calling home, he wasn’t sure how far they’d make it on the outside on their own before someone or something caught up with them.
Despite these negativities, John knew that the best course of action was to at least try and escape, and that the current distraction – whatever it may be – was more than likely their best shot. John knew how people like this worked, he knew there was more than likely going to be no happy ending for either of them, and that no matter what was promised, nobody was going to be allowed to leave alive. The sad fact was, John knew these things to be true, because he himself would do exactly the same thing if the tables were turned.
Upon finally breaking free of the thicker set of cable ties, John began looking around the room, familiarising himself once more with what was on offer. With no furniture or loose items to make anything close to a weapon out of, his options were incredibly limited. Looking up, he diverted his attention to the dropped ceiling, and then moved over to the entrance. Standing up as straight as he could, John reached up high and pressed gently against the nearest fiberglass tile. Much to his delight, the tile moved happily upwards and out of place, but much less happily, in doing so, it exposed an early flaw in John’s plan.
Thanks to the large amount of light bouncing around inside of the box, John’s opening up of the ceiling had quickly lit up the innards of the crawlspace, revealing a labyrinth of cables running across in multiple directions. The bigger problem however, came in the form of a wall that appeared to run right above the door, sealing off the area above the box from the rest of the rooms. John had hoped that their escape might be as simple as getting themselves up into the roof and heading for the nearest exit, dropping down at the last second and making a break for it, but now it was clear something a little more ingenious was required.
“Okay”, he said, turning to Devon who in an almost perfect display of timing managed also to break free of his restraints, “Here’s the plan”.
Chapter 33: Occam’s razor
Two corners and one long hallway away from the box, standing bolt upright in front of a door of no real significance, stood Jane. Jane was one of only a few female guards at the stadium, and had been brought in during a mass recruitment drive that had occurred just a few weeks prior, in an attempt to bolster the numbers on site. Standing at around five foot six inches, Jane was of neither slim nor large build, and was so covered up in armour that her face was almost completely obscured, a good thing, given she was just about falling asleep.
That was of course, until the sound of gunfire had begun off in the distance.
“North-west side!”, she’d just about managed to make out from some distant yelling, “All of you, get over there NOW!”, someone barked, presumably addressing the large group of guards that had been brought over as a show of force for the prisoner’s tour earlier in the day, a strange affair that just about nobody in the camp really understood, but nobody was willing to question.
Jane had opted to hold her position, partly out of devotion to her current responsibility, but mostly out of fear for what might happen if she headed over to the sound of gunfire. She had barely had to demonstrate an ability to cock back the handle of a pistol before she’d been accepted into the stadium’s crew, she was far from experienced with a firearm, and had no desire to get involved.
As it turned out however, she’d been right to stay where she was, something that was confirmed just a few seconds later as a series of large bangs thudded along the corridor in her direction.
“Stay here, keep an eye on the prisoners”, her fellow guard yelled in an incredibly deep tone as his massive body thundered past, appearing to shake just about everything in his vicinity with every step.
Jane was almost thankful of the instruction. It felt in a way as if she’d been promoted, now in charge of one of the most valuable assets the stadium had its hands on, or so she was told. Better still, her new responsibility meant that instead of heading over to what was beginning to sound like a sizable gun battle on the far side of the building, she was now in charge of guarding three – in fact, two, though she didn’t know it yet – unarmed men who had already been restrained. Frankly, Jane wondered if she may in fact have the best job going right then and there, a sense that she continued to feel for the next five or so minutes, right up until the first loud bang rang out along the corridor.
“Cut it out!”, she barked in the direction of the box, hoping her instruction would bounce its way around the corner and down to the holding room.
Within a few seconds, another bang sounded out.
“God damn it”, she said to nobody in particular, before holding up her HK416 rifle and walking down along the corridor, “I said cut that shit out!”, she yelled again, before reaching the final turn and then making her way down the long corridor towards the final door on the right, where yet another bang soon originated from. “Last chance, cut it out or I’m coming in guns blazing!”, she ordered.
Over the next few seconds, Jane prepared herself for entry. Withdrawing her key in her left hand, she held it in mid-air right in front of the lock, and made sure to check each and every part of her body armour to ensure she was fully protected. But much to her surprise – and relief – the banging didn’t return, and so after a few seconds, she relaxed her shoulders, and thanked her lucky stars that she could return to simply standing on duty.
That was of course, until another bang eventually came through, this time the loudest of them all.
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sp; “STAND THE FUCK BACK!”, Jane yelled, summoning every ounce of rage in her body in order to sound as intimidating as possible, before shoving the key into the door and twisting the lock open, and then holding up her rifle in preparation for entry. “AWAY FROM THE DOOR!”, she yelled one final time, before throwing the door open with her left hand, which she promptly returned to the fore grip of her rifle.
As the door slowly swung open, Jane stepped as far away from it as possible, knowing that if she got too close, she’d present the perfect opportunity for someone to ambush her. But what she saw was quite the opposite. At the far end of the room, sitting with their back against the wall and their blood-covered head lulled to one side, was an older man who appeared to be either unconscious, or dead. Moving her eyes across the back wall, Jane then spotted another man, this one certainly dead, and in an incredibly similar pose, with even more blood spread across every part of his body, from the top of the head where what looked like a gunshot wound was placed, to the very bottom of his feet.
What was most troubling to Jane however, was the lack of a third man. Thanks to the amount the door had swung open, she knew nobody was hiding behind it, waiting to ambush her. In fact, from a few sweeping glances to each side, it appeared nobody was to be found along the wall nearest to her at all, and with a few brief peeks inside doorway, it seemed nobody but the two dead men were left in the room at all.
This raised two important questions. The first – and arguably most obvious – was just what on earth had happened here that had led to this much bloodshed. Jane had heard a single gunshot earlier, shortly after RP had gone marching past her post, but she hadn’t been told just what exactly had happened. In any case, it would have been an impressive feat for that single shot to have made its way through two people.
The second question however was arguably more current, and thus more pressing. With two men slumped against the rear wall and coated in blood, there was no clear explanation as to what had caused the banging, and no obvious signs as to just how exactly it had been caused. That was of course, until another bang sounded out, and it became clear that something untoward was going on.
“Show yourself!”, Jane ordered, moving into the room now that she was certain the two deceased occupants were all that was left inside, though that only begged the question of where the third man had gone.
A bang surfaced once more, this time from the far end of the room.
“WHERE ARE YOU!?”, she yelped, beginning to sound more desperate as she moved through the room towards the far end, following the source of the noise just as three bangs roared through the room in quick succession.
Suddenly the origin was unmistakable. Raising her rifle to the ceiling, Jane hesitantly flipped the switch from safety to fully automatic, and prepared to utterly decimate the ceiling and everything above it until she was certain she’d covered every square inch of where someone might be hiding. If this asshole thought they could drop down right onto her head, they had another think coming.
But before she could pull the trigger, it was instead the older man sat crumpled against the wall just a metre or so away from her that moved first. Launching himself up off the ground – exposing the fact his hands were evidently no longer tied up – he seemed to move with an almost inhuman pace. Barely a few milliseconds appeared to pass by between him starting his manoeuvre, and his face lining up right in front of Jane’s, their eyes meeting for one brief instant before things all began to get a little hectic.
But much to Jane’s surprise, there was no piercing feeling of a knife entering some unarmoured portion of her body, or the sound and flash of a gunshot ripping through her from close range. Instead, the man was far more interested in her own weapon, and before Jane even knew what to do, had managed to get one hand on the barrel of the gun in order to steer its aim away from the ceiling, and another on the side of the receiver.
Not giving it a great deal of thought, Jane’s first instinct was simply to fire. With her finger already on the trigger, there wasn’t much more she could think of doing, and despite the fact that at this point all it would do was make a significant mess of the wall in front, she at least knew it would make enough noise to hopefully draw some attention to what was going on. So with all of that in mind, Jane simply squeezed hard on the firing mechanism, and prepared for the loud, hot flash of automatic gunfire to envelop the room.
Instead however, her finger failed to pull back the trigger more than a millimetre, far from activating the weapon’s various mechanics due to the now engaged safety mechanism, itself so recently enabled by the nearby standing man. Seemingly in slow motion, all Jane could do was watch as the man ejected the magazine and forced back the charging handle at a lightning-like pace, sending the one chambered round flying off to the side and rendering the once deadly weapon now utterly useless. Suddenly it became clear that the man Jane was dealing with wasn’t just your average survivor.
Furthermore, in the past second – the tiny unit of time that had only barely passed by despite the numerous things that had happened – another key change was occurring in the room. From above where Jane was currently stood, the ceiling appeared to quite literally open up, as a set of feet punched clean through one of the tiles and replaced its flimsy presence with a large mass, descending with incredible pace down towards the ground.
Still reeling from the series of events that had led up to that moment, Jane could barely fathom what was happening as she was forced to look away from the falling debris for fear of anything catching her eyes. Instead, she only knew what was happening when she felt an incredible amount of force get applied to her shoulders, as whoever had suddenly appeared from inside the crawlspace made an attempt to grapple onto her much smaller frame in order to slow his descent.
Completely involuntarily, Jane was ripped backwards with this new pressure, as it forced her back with such a huge amount of speed that it quite literally tore her hands away from the rifle, which remained firmly gripped in the grasp of the other man. Suddenly Jane was beginning to realise just how easy she’d made the situation for her would-be captives, as she managed to look forwards long enough to see the first man happily taking hold of her weapon, while she instead descended down to the ground, the as of yet unseen man latched onto each of her shoulders.
Despite her not particularly tall height, the journey down to the floor below seemed like a long one. Jane wasn’t sure if it was because of the slow-motion nature of everything that had preceded this moment, or whether it was simply due to the shame she felt over having been played so perfectly by her opponents, but whatever the reason was, it all culminated in one large thud as she hit the ground – her fall partly cushioned by the man behind her – and immediately sprawled out in every direction.
Struggling to regain focus on what was going on, Jane lay on the ground for at least a full second – a measure of time that at present felt like an age – before eventually deciding on her next move. Of course, she could have simply surrendered, and hoped for mercy from prisoners who she actually knew nothing about, but that hardly seemed like the mentality she was expected to conform to. RP had been clear on how to act in such situations, and had very plainly explained that he expected nothing but a hundred percent from everyone, right until their dying breath. With that in mind, Jane finally managed to focus on some semblance of a plan, and then began a quick forward push back towards her feet.
Jane knew that while her rifle was of course her most important weapon, it was not the only one she had with her. In fact, as she now recalled the presence of a sidearm attached to her hip, she realised where her first mistake had been. Something as big as an assault rifle was never going to be the smart choice for a woman of her size in a space as close quartered as this one. At a push, a shotgun might have been a more logical option, but realistically, her pistol should have been her go to weapon.
Realising this a little late, she lunged her right hand forwards towards her hip-holster, hoping and praying it too hadn’t
been removed and disarmed before she’d even had a chance to grab it. Mercifully, it remained in place, and so she quickly grasped it by as much of the slider as she could reach, and yanked it cleanly out of its sheath, just as her body began to right itself, and it began to seem like she might be about to sort this whole mess out.
Managing finally to ascend into a standing position, and now armed with a weapon much more suitable for the current situation, Jane quickly drew the pistol upwards, hoping to get a clean line of sight on the man in front. She wasn’t sure whether she’d be willing to end the life of one of these strangers, but she was damn sure willing to do it if it meant her living in their place, so she placed her finger back in the trigger.
The man in front however, had been much quicker to initiate his next move. Before Jane could even come close to locking on to her target, the hard metal stock of what was previously her very own HK416 assault rifle came charging forwards. Propelled by rage, anger and hatred, the black mass headed directly towards her face, sailing through the flimsy glass section of her mask and making contact right between the eyes, knocking her out cold before she even knew what had hit her.
Chapter 34: Something to remember me by
“She out?”, John asked, looking down at the recently fallen woman who had tried and failed to shoot them with two different weapons.
“Like a light”, Devon confirmed, helping himself out from under her now limp body before clambering back up onto his feet, his leg now sorer than ever having ripped it back open during the fall.
“You alright?”, John asked, noticing his companion’s reaction to putting pressure onto it.
“I’m good”, Devon replied confidently, “Little sore but, no problem”, he said.
John’s plan had worked perfectly. Not only had they managed to bait someone into opening up the door, but they’d even managed to subdue them without resorting to deadly force, and best of all, had done so without firing a single shot. John had been prepared to go to much greater extremes in order to get out, but was incredibly grateful he hadn’t had to. Never likely to change too much, John couldn’t help but clamber down onto the ground alongside the woman and place his ear to her mouth.
Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series Page 28