She took out the one at the east side stairwell first. He was positioned almost directly below an access grill and she had it open and the sedative pumping into his neck in less than the space between heart beats. She left his body slumped where it was, nobody should be coming around there anytime soon and he wouldn't wake up for a couple of hours. The second guard was taken out just as easily, Sara used the massive cleaning bots, built for scaling and cleaning the outside of the statue, for cover and knocked him out with another sedative injection. She took a moment then to replace the three empty spaces in her injecting glove with fresh dosed of sedative. The glove contained four doses but Sara liked to have at least two ready for each target in case of unforeseen complications.
The terrorist in position outside the elevator was a trickier proposition. The area directly in front of where he stood was clear and devoid of cover. The doors to the elevator were directly behind him built into the wall so there was no cover from that angle. Sara watched him from her position crouched behind an old backup power generator and decided that the direct approach would be best under the circumstances. Getting a grip on the silenced pistol she carried just in case, she was supposed to be law enforcement and so killing had to be used as a last resort only, she broke cover and sprinted at the guard.
His eyes went wide as she rushed at him and he wasted precious moments. By the time he finally started trying to bring his weapon to bear Sara was right there in front of them. Taking hold of his assault rifle by the top of the barrel with her left hand she tugged it forward and the guard off balance. With her other hand she left the pistol where it was and delivered the sedative and this floor was cleared.
Sara used the tip of her combat knife to prize the doors to the elevator open and grunted with the effort of forcing them apart far enough for her to pass through, luckily the doors did not attempt to close back on her. She assumed the terrorists had locked the elevator down and that it would remain stationary wherever it was. If not she could either be crushed below or above it if the terrorists decided they wanted to take a look at the view and weren't willing to make the trip up the stairs.
Sara climbed inside and took hold of the maintenance ladder. She hadn't got into this line of work so that she could live a risk free life. Sometimes Sara found it difficult to believe that she was actually doing this for a living. But climbing down a ladder into a confrontation with an unknown number of terrorists, hoping to rescue hostages who could be held anywhere on the bottom two floors, with the risk of the terrorists blowing the statue up around her along with the usual risks of being shot, wasn't exactly the time for reminiscing about the past. Instead Sara calmed her mind, clearing it of distractions like concern for her own survival and the futility of sending in a single agent to take care of a situation as extreme as this, all that mattered was the mission.
She needed to get a look at the situation on both the lower floors. Her first priorities were to remove the threat of an explosion and to safeguard the hostages. Once that was taken care of she could call in for backup to finish mopping up the remaining terrorists.
Sara reached the inside of the lift doors on the second floor and prepared for the most dangerous moment of the mission thus far. She had no choice but to open those doors and pass inside. The problem was she had no idea what waited on the other side of those doors and she would be a sitting duck until she was out of this shaft.
Well hanging here on this ladder for any longer isn't going to change those facts. Sara again made sure her pistol was ready to be drawn and then, holding onto the maintenance ladder with her left hand, she took her combat knife in her right hand and stretched out to wedge it between the elevator doors. The doors on this level opened much more easily as soon as Sara started to prize them apart automatic systems took over and the doors glided open.
The terrorist posted outside the elevator began to turn around in the direction of the noise sweeping up the assault shotgun he carried as he did so.
Chapter Two
Sara swung off the ladder at the terrorist. Her rather petite frame, perfect for sneaking around but not a fighters build, was nonetheless sufficient to take the CDM terrorist off his feet. The split second she had had to recognize and react to the threat hadn't given her time to take stock of the rest of her surroundings. But at that moment in time they were not important. A hundred CDM terrorists could be closing down on her but if she didn't take care of this one man none of that would matter, she could deal with whatever was there after she was through with this.
Their arms were tangled together preventing either bringing a weapon in to play. The terrorist made sure to keep Sara's arm, in which she was still holding her knife, angled away from his body. She had to take him down and the terrorist struggled to do the same to her but the thing was he didn't have to take Sara out personally to ensure her mission failed. All he had to do was call out for help. Before he could realize that it would be that simple Sara twisted around in his grip and angled her elbow in at his throat.
She was released from his grip instantly while the terrorist brought his hands up to his ruined windpipe. He clawed at his neck with his fingers but his motions grew slower as lack of oxygen took its toll. Sara rolled up to one knee, her knife dropped to the floor and replaced by her silenced pistol, and surveyed her surroundings. Sara wasn't one to trust in luck if she could help it but she was more than willing to accept luck when it was dropped in her like this lap.
It appeared that the elevator was contained in its own small private room on this level. Meaning that no-one had seen her little tussle with the CDM man guarding it. Of course that didn't mean that nobody had heard it. While they had been doubly lucky in that they had not toppled any of the crates or boxes stacked up around the walls of this room the fight could still have been heard. Sara moved into the shadows of the crates on the right hand side of the door, where she would be behind it if it was opened. She waited with her pistol in her hands for a couple of minutes to see if anybody had been attracted by the brief commotion.
When nobody came to investigate Sara took another couple of minutes to pull the body out of direct sight and stuff it behind some crates. It wouldn't stop them knowing he was missing if they came to check up on him, but it would stop them being certain that he had been killed.
There was less danger for her exiting the elevator room because she could see out through the thin rectangle of glass in the door that there was nobody in the corridor ahead of her unless they were crouched down directly in front of or to the side of the door. Sara pulled the door towards her and rolled out through the gap rotating as she did so, so that when she came up after the roll she was facing back at the areas next to the door where she hadn't been able to see. There was nobody there so Sara proceeded deeper into the statue.
It took her over half an hour of snooping and sneaking around the almost labyrinthine corridors, backtracking repeatedly to avoid patrols, checking every room to see if it contained hostages or explosives, to discover that neither hostages nor explosives were located on this level. She did build a mental picture of the number and positions of the terrorists on this level and the threats they would pose. For a brief time she considered trying to take them out now to leave the terrorists on the next floor down without any reinforcements. But she had to stay focused on her main task if she slipped up just once on a single terrorist here the hostages, which had to be located below, wouldn't stand a chance. Even if she didn't slip up clearing the entire floor of terrorists silently would take more time than she was willing to believe the negotiators in contact with the CDM spokesperson could buy.
Instead Sara made her way back to the elevator room knowing she was going to have to go through the process of emerging from the elevator into a totally unknown hostile situation all over again.
She leaned out from the maintenance ladder and used the tip of her combat knife to start the doors opening. After she had them in motion the doors continued to open without further effort on her part.
There was no guard stationed immediately outside these doors but neither were they located in a little room all to themselves. These opened out into what appeared to be the main foyer of the statue. Sara saw three CDM terrorists in the first instant after the doors opened. Luckily for her they all had their attention focused on the main front entrance to the statue and didn't appear to have heard the doors opening. They kept their attention focused outwards through the thick glass doors of the entrance. They had the lights dimmed and Sara could make out the human guards and reprogrammed security mech they had outside. Sara could also see the reflections of the three terrorists in the foyer with her and knew that she would have to be careful when she moved to avoid giving herself away in them.
Sara wasted no time in taking advantage of the guards' inattentiveness and slipped from the ladder landing in a crouch next to the doors. She reached up on the inside edge and triggered the switch that caused the doors to slide back closed. As soon as she had pressed that switch she crawled into the cover provided by a nearby water fountain. She was out of sight of the three CDM terrorists but that also meant she couldn't see if they had heard her closing the doors. She strained her ears for sounds of them coming to investigate.
When there were none she slipped out of her hiding place and started her investigation of this floor. Unlike the floors above it the ground floor was divided into a series of sections surrounding a main area in the centre as a small hall. The sections surrounding this hall, starting with the foyer, were a series of interconnected rooms the largest of which was the gift shop located in the back of the statue and on the opposite side to the entrance foyer.
Sara made her way through the perimeter offices, checking the view from each one into the main area. That seemed to be where most of the terrorists were located but she had yet to see any sign of the hostages. There was a quartet of rusted brown barrels located against the inside corner wall on the other side of the hall from her current position that could contain the explosives and that Sara would try to get a better look at when she reached the offices behind that area.
Sara had no trouble making her way around the offices lining the perimeter of the hall, inside the outer wall of the statue, until she came to one that seemed to be the back office of the tourist gift shop. The door to the next room was locked, that wasn't the problem though the lock was a simple one only on the inside of the door she was at meant to keep people coming from the next room into this one. The problem was that she could hear voices coming from inside.
Sara flattened herself sideways to the door. She brushed the stray strands of her hair that had come loose from her ponytail back behind her ear and pressed it against the door.
The first voice that she could make out was male and spoke in a slow methodical manner. He was in control of the situation and he knew it.
"Your contact does not exist. There is no way out of this situation for you unless you cooperate with us. How much does she know about Project Brainstorm?"
There was a hesitation before the second voice put in and it began with a grunt of pain. This must have been one of the hostages being encouraged to speak up by a kick or a punch.
"She doesn't know anything except the name."
"We know she has been in contact with you on more than one occasion," the first voice said. "We have access to your computer terminals and will have reconstructed all of your communications within the hour. It will go better for you if you co-operate now."
The second speaker barked out a short laugh that ended in another groan of pain. "You will get nothing from my terminal I erased it fully and then replaced the memory core after every communication. I physically destroyed the discarded cores immediately."
There was another moment of almost silence broken by more grunts and groans of pain from the hostage.
"We tracked you here and you have had training. She cannot evade us for much longer. If you tell us where to find her it will stop the risk of her being injured when we find her."
"She may not have received any formal training but she knows enough to run rings around a bunch of bloody morons like you," the hostage spat through labored breaths. "And these fools you tricked into helping you," he raised his voice. "I'm sure they would love to know what's really going-"
He was cut off by the sound of his own air being forced out of his lungs.
"That's enough of that."
There was muffled shouting as though the hostage had been gagged.
"I'll leave you like that while you think about . . ." the questioner trailed off and then said, "Acknowledged, I will be on the alert."
Had he been warned about an intruder? Sara backed away from the door and held her weapon ready in case he came through to check things out. No-one did and Sara started backing away. She filed what she had heard away in the back of her mind, whatever was going on in there was only pertinent as far as it let her know that at least one terrorist and one hostage was located in that room. Anything else could wait until after the operation was complete. She had to back all the way to the foyer and then start her investigation again going through the perimeter rooms in the opposite direction. The first few rooms were just like those she had investigated on the other side and looking out though them only gave her a different angle out into the main hall and the half dozen terrorists in there. Then she came to a room located directly next to where the terrorists had stored their rusty barrels.
She kept watch on the terrorists out in the main hall and slowly moved out of sight whenever they turned or moved so that she was potentially in their line of sight. She had to move slowly rather than quickly ducking out of sight because rapid movements would attract more attention. She studied the barrels from this vantage point and could clearly see the detonation device sat on the top of one of the barrels with leads trailing from it down the lids and into the barrels.
Sara knew of at least six varieties of liquid explosive that could be used to make a device like that which was before her. Some of those types of explosive were perfectly safe unless triggered by a particular type of charge or device, others were so unstable that anything but the slightest shock would trigger an explosive reaction. Before she could make the bomb safe she had to find out what type of explosive these people were using. If it was any of the less stable varieties there was no way she could make the device safe, even if she removed the trigger the device could be set off physically by one of the terrorists.
Sara trailed back a couple of rooms so that she was in one where the door was hidden from all of the terrorists’ positions by a thick concrete support column. Sara unlocked the door from the inside using a universal lock pick to bypass the simple electronic lock. She slipped outside and gently closed the door behind her. She walked softly, placing her feet with delicate precision on the highly polished grey marble floor, up behind the column which had sheltered her exit from the room from the terrorists. She lowered herself down to the floor just as silently being sure to keep all of her limbs out of sight behind the column.
She twisted around and took a quick look at the terrorists. They still had their attention focused away from her. From here she could see they were looking at the front entrance to the gift shop. Once carefully ordered displays in the windows of the shop had been cast into disarray and dark blankets had been hung up inside the windows. That, along with the voices she had heard, strongly indicated to Sara that that was where the hostages were being held. But they could wait for now.
She crossed the gap between the column and the barrels in a crouch with her attention focused on the CDM terrorists. She came to a halt behind the barrels and ducked out of sight. She slipped the pack off her back, the specially constructed material of her clothes that was designed to make no noise still sounded loud to her nervous ears but there was no sign that she had been noticed. The pockets to the pack did open silently and Sara removed a small pen-sized object from one of them. Nothing more than a thin cylinder with a rectangular display running most of its length and a thi
n needle to collect samples, the device had the chemical makeup of many of the most common types of explosives stored in its memory ready to be compared to a sample. After checking the lead for any type of anti-tampering booby trap she inserted the needle end of the analyzer through the hole in the top of the barrel.
While she waited for the analysis to be completed Sara took a look at the initiation for the bomb. The detonator appeared to be a device that would send an electrical charge down the leads into each barrel. It would be initiated by a signal from a remote control device. There was no manual trigger on the bomb. The CDM operatives on this operation weren't willing to make themselves martyrs to their cause. At least not like that.
Sara could defeat the remote trigger easily but she still needed to know if the explosives could be set off by the terrorists shooting or setting fire to the explosives or by detonating a smaller explosive like a grenade nearby. Sara took a look at the display on the analyzer but it had yet to come up with anything. She took another device out of another pocket of her pack. This time it was a small ring that would fit onto the palm of her hand. The ring was actually two rings stuck together facing each other. Sara used separate hands to grip each of the rings and rotated them a quarter turn. That would start the jamming device up putting out a field of just a couple of meters. Not enough to interfere with any other signals the terrorists might be using but enough to create a bubble around the bomb that would stop the detonation signal getting through. She slipped the thin jammer through the gap in the nearest barrels so that it would be hidden in the middle of them all.
Brain Storm (US Edition) Page 2