by P. S. Power
That news wasn't the happiest she'd heard all day, "hurray. OK. I'll do what I can and try not to make a mess. I..." She didn't know what to say then, the words just catching in her mouth. She wasn't a real hero, was she? Brian did that kind of thing, but she was a pirate, a murderer, maybe a decent cat burglar or spy. She could do the job needed, but that didn't mean it was inside her comfort zone at all. Especially if it had a shit storm built-in the way Lancaster seemed to be indicating.
They hurried anyway, an IPB van waiting for them on the ground taking off before the sliding side door was even closed. It was clean and in good condition, and even had real seats, which the plane hadn't. The driver was a man in black, one who looked like he might have been Agent Darryl Lancaster's younger brother, if his dad had dated several different women on the side and dated from all races equally. He was hard looking, dressed in a plain black suit and tie, and had very short hair. He was dark skinned and black haired, but held the same general look on his face. It wasn't happy at all, and the man didn't seem to think that their being involved was a brilliant idea either. That made three of them.
"What the hell are we going to do that the feds can't? For that matter why is the Department of Homeland Security involved in this anyway? Is this some kind of terrorism thing? It sounds like pure ransom, but I'd guess that makes sense. These people have to know they aren't walking away, don't they? Not after killing kids." The driver had a smooth voice and didn't shout his words, speaking with the air of an ex-military something-or-other. Penny couldn't guess at the branch based on that, but it was a thing she was starting to be able to see pretty easily. There was a cadence that only a certain kind of person used. A way of clipping the words off and making everything sound just a little too hard when they spoke.
Lancaster did it too, so she'd had a lot of practice getting used to it.
"I don't know. The sit-rep has this as a 'for ransom kidnapping', but we have the DHS, FBI and a half dozen other agencies in on this. I'm sure the local police and the Boy Scouts are on site too. That doesn't sound like something that we'd be called in on though, does it? No, something in all this is going to be bigger than we think. No word that anyone involved is Infected however. They also refused any active help in dealing with this. Officially. We offered a strike team, but were told that wouldn't be needed. Since, by my watch two kids have had their throats slit in the time it's taken us to get here, I..."
There was silence then, for a long time. The things left unsaid probably holding a secret message that Penny was supposed to get, but if so she lacked context for it. She nearly mentioned that fact, but saw an array of cars with the news vans set up first, blocks away from the school building. The other vehicles were closer. Their driver waved at a regular police officer and held out a badge.
"Kimble, Lancaster and Cooper, IPB. We need Galley, DHS."
The officer didn't look at them overly, just checking the badge and waving toward a cluster of cars off in the distance. The man they wanted was off to one side, his skin ashen and dark at the same time. It was still light out, but he looked a bit gray, and even older than the one time she'd laid eyes on him before, a few months prior. They parked the vehicle and walked out, almost everyone around them incredibly tense and unsmiling, which was sane, but also just standing there and not doing anything at all in particular, which had to be less than perfect.
In general she would have felt better if someone was actually doing something at all, rather than just waiting for the next kid to be tossed out. She could see the five bodies on the ground by the building, near a single window, the ground a pool of red from their combined blood. Two girls and three boys. So whoever was doing this didn't care about gender it seemed. They were young, but not little kids. Fourteen or so at a guess. Old enough to know what was happening to them, too young to effectively fight back. Unless that's who these people had been. The fighters that had tried to do something? The ones that might be too hard to control, so were the first killed off, as a warning to the others? It made sense, but who knew? It was just as likely that they were chosen randomly based on whoever was closest to hand when the time came.
Lancaster raised a large hand, waving at the black man who held a cup of coffee and stared back.
"So, this looks like it's going well. We have Cooper with us. She's agreed to go in. Tell us what's needed first though." He sounded pissed, and the men around him that had stopped to listen didn't seem to be taking offense or anything.
That wasn't a great sign, Penny didn't think, since government agents pretty much loved to act like they knew what to do, and when they couldn't, well, acting like an ass was a good cover for lack of knowledge, wasn't it? That these men just seemed defeated already was not something to warm the center of her heart.
The words from the man were just as bad.
"The group inside claims to be the PLO. Palestinian Liberation Organization. The funds are supposed to go into a Swiss account, then be moved, before we get the kids. The problem there is that this particular group is known for planning and pulling off large suicide operations. The higher ups are not going to part with that kind of money for some kids, and even if we did there's almost no chance that we get any of the children out alive at all. We've seen it before. They won't even let us stall for more than ten hours. If we go in, they'll blow the place. If we do nothing, they do the same." The older man looked tired and like he was weary of life itself, not just the situation. "We can hit the place, but..."
Penny sighed.
"But anything that we do will probably have the place lit up like a candle. So they call in the invisible girl... Which makes sense. Fine. I'm going in." She didn't just run off toward the building, even though it probably meant letting another kid die. She had to get in without setting off any bombs, didn't she?
Smiling she realized that the window that they were tossing the kids from would work, when it opened back up. She explained that to Lancaster, who relayed it to Galley. One of the men in uniform, a local cop it seemed, dressed in light tan, grimaced.
"Fuck. That means letting some kid be killed to make it work, and more than that if the window is missed? They don't exactly hang out with it open. Can't we do something else? There have to be other places they left gaps."
That got a nod from Agent Kimble.
"Damn straight there do. No one is perfect and this is a large structure. If we knew where they were we could use one of them too. No one wants to do it this way. Got any idea where to start looking? Cooper, can you tell if a window has been rigged do you think?"
That... Penny knew she wasn't an explosives expert by any means. She might be able to tell if something was obviously wrong, or she might just trigger something that she was too stupid to even notice. In other words she didn't think it would work at all, if they were going to go on her say so. Their best bet was to sacrifice some boy or girl and for her to use that distraction to get inside. If she could manage it at all.
"No, I could learn, but we don't have time for that. Lancaster, I'm going to the entry point, try to keep anyone from shooting at random?" Then, not waiting for an answer, she walked to the building. It wasn't a tall structure, a single story, and she could probably have gotten to the roof, but odds were that they didn't have skylights up there, and any doors would be wired. She would have seen to that, if she were the crazy, suicidal zealot, so Penny had to assume they would too, right? Conroy had mentioned that in her training, every day. If she could think of something, she always needed to act is if other people would too. It was in the things she couldn't imagine, that others might, that the real danger lie. There was just no way to plan for that.
Kind of like the Feds sending in an invisible Operative to handle things. No one would plan for it. She had to assume they would though.
The window was a little high to get into, and the bodies were piling up a bit under it, but the blood was thick and dried enough that it wasn't getting all over her shoes yet. Looking at the whole thing she realized t
hat the best way in for her would be to stand on two of the kids, one a nerdy looking boy that had wire rimmed glasses half on his face, his blond hair and pale white skin contrasting with the red nicely. He was small, thin and had probably been a magnet for bullies his whole life. On top of him was a chubby girl that had been in possession of nice curly dark brown hair. It was still in a pony tail. Her head had nearly been removed before she was dumped, the cuts so deep that spine was showing through her throat.
They both wore jeans and t-shirts, like every kid, everywhere. The girl had one shoe off. It rested to the side, a brown and lonely thing, no longer useful at all. Like all of them.
Except they still had one task they could perform. They could help her save their friends inside. With a little careful pulling a third boy was moved into place, on top of the others. It made a pile nearly two feet high, which should be enough for her to be able to make a jump through the window, if she got a chance.
Was it creepy to use the bodies of the dead as a step stool? Highly. It also worked, and that had to come first. Penny needed to get through that window fast, as soon as it opened, and that meant leaping through, most likely. It probably wouldn't work, but she had to try something.
When they finally came the whole scene was a lot worse than she'd anticipated. The girl was small and Hispanic looking, and she begged for her life. There was crying too, but the man with the knife didn't hesitate, pushing her out, while pulling back with the blade. It was an efficient and practiced movement that was so fast the girl nearly lost her head, the blood spraying all over Penny as she tried to climb past the body. It was about as far from smooth as she could have gotten and she nearly tossed her cookies, but she struggled through the window, falling into the man bodily, which sent him stumbling back.
"What the hell?" He sounded confused, and he grabbed at his head, as if he were dizzy. That happened when she hit people sometimes. They assumed they were losing their balance for a reason that had nothing to do with her at all. Even people that knew she was in the room did it.
The blood from the tiny girl managed to make her foot slip out from under her, even though she couldn't for the life of her imagine how it had gotten on the floor. That part was a bit of a danger, since her footprints would show as she walked away. That meant she couldn't risk anyone having time to notice that.
There were three men in the room, all wearing masks. That was illegal, of course, but so was slaughtering children, so she didn't say anything about it overly. Looking around she saw that all the other windows really did have what looked like bombs on them, bundles of claylike substance with wires coming out, attached to the glass with strips that crossed at the bottom and attached to the wall below. There was no reason to think it might be fake either.
"Well, wonderful." She was inside at least. The ideal thing to do would be to find out how many people were there with her, but she probably didn't have time for that. Instead she pulled her nine... and then stopped.
That would make noise. Not in the room, but outside of it, at a distance. Shooting, even if it sounded muffled, would attract attention. She didn't have a knife on her either, having not really considered that before. The man that was still reeling from brushing against her had one though. Her new hero.
"You OK Tom?" The man that spoke, who wore the same red mask as the rest of them, heavy knit stocking things from the look of them, didn't sound Middle Eastern at all. If anything he sounded slightly southern.
"Yeah. Dizzy. I think it's passed. Something I ate, I guess." He wiped the blade in his hand off on a cloth that was on a desk near the window. After a bit she realized that it was a shirt. A girl's blouse. Since all the people that were outside had their clothing on still, that probably meant something, though she didn't know what yet.
She waited for the men to start out of the room, then stepped in behind the killer, Tom, and slid his knife from the sheath on his side. It was a nice, very long, blade. Almost twelve inches, like a machete, but the shape was different. Thick at the end, so that it would be heavier. Totally not him compensating for anything, she was sure. It had enough heft to be good for chopping and seemed sharp enough for slicing. Meant to behead little girls and boys, no doubt.
She tried it out, the feeling of the flesh under her right hand as it ran across the man walking in the rear of the group's neck making her shiver and want to get sick. It worked, but wasn't nearly as tidy as shooting people was. Blood got everywhere.
"Kenny!" This came from the man that hadn't given a name yet, who went down half a second later, first with a kick to the groin, then with a chop to the side of the neck. It wasn't elegant, but he gurgled rather than yelled, which was helpful of him.
Tom on the other hand started to try and raise a fuss. Jerk that he was, no doubt.
"Fuck! Something-" That ended when his lower jaw came off. Or, half off at least. It didn't stop him from screaming at all, but it made him a lot harder to understand. She finished the job, taking about ten seconds, hacking at him like he was a tree and she was a woodsman. She was covered in blood, but didn't bother to feel too bad about it. These creeps kind of deserved it, didn't they? It wasn't like she was the one murdering middle school students.
"So, that's the first three." She didn't know how she was going to find the rest, and if there were too many she doubted that they'd really let her kill them all one by one. Or even three at a time. On the handy side of things, two new targets ran down the hall, each carrying a rifle of some kind as they jogged. Kalashnikovs.
She knew how to use those, not that it was going to come up. Conroy had taught her how. She waited for the men to run past her, since it just made sense to take the one in the rear whenever possible.
"So, PLO? I was not at all aware they were recruiting from the mid west yet. Tom, Kenny... So who are you? Bill and Steve?" She got them both before either could even turn around, solid blows to the back of the neck.
The next ten minutes were a bit like that for her. They'd send a man to check on the others and she killed them. It was pretty efficient, but didn't last, since by the time she had the first eight down, they started yelling from the room down the shiny floored hallway. They were large metal doors, ones locked from the inside. The school's gym, she thought. No one fired through them, but she couldn't get in either, not unless someone else came out.
That was a problem.
After all, Agent Galley had told them that these people would probably blow the whole thing up, if they took too long. With eight men down and not reporting, they had to be at least a little worried about now, didn't they?
"Oops. Well, I guess I can try knocking..."
Smiling she shook her head. At this rate she was going to be blown up any minute now. They all were. That would make a mess too. Unfortunately, she didn't know what to do about it.
Chapter three
Ten minutes later there was a sound from inside the space behind the door. It wasn't good. Kids, mainly girls, screaming. Penny didn't have to really think too hard to understand that someone was being killed or at least had good reason to think they would be. Then it went silent, only the soft sounds of sobbing to be heard. It was frustrating, but there was no way in that she could see. No outside windows or anything even.
She paced for a bit and even considered trying to shoot the door open, but that wouldn't work. She didn't know where the lock mechanism was inside the door and while she had some weapons on her, it wouldn't help to risk shooting the kids inside, if they were mainly alive. Just when she was about to give up the thing opened.
"I'll go check, if I don't come back, set the timer and get out through the tunnels. The PLO has a plan for this kind of thing and we need to make it look good." The man that came through the door spoke textbook English, his accent better than Penny's even. He was tall, like Lancaster, so about six-four or so. He started to close the door carefully, his body still in the space she needed, almost as if he were trying to keep her out personally, using his own body as a shield.
It was a good trick, except that the man was nearly out the door before it had a chance to totally close.
Grabbing his left arm she pulled, hard enough to make him stumble and stepped inside. Then she turned and stabbed him in the back as hard as she could. Supposedly if you hit a man in the liver with a blade it was so painful they couldn't cry out. If that was the case she'd missed, because this man screamed like someone had stabbed him. It was annoying, and worse, attracted attention.
Penny slapped the back of his neck without great precision or art, and it took six blows to make him shut up. Unfortunately that meant everyone in the world had probably heard it. Her foot was in the door, so she opened it just a bit and darted in. That wasn't a great plan really, it seemed, since she was hit so hard in the vest that her feet left the ground and she smashed into the closed side of the double doors. It didn't do much damage either, but the man that shot was either very good, lucky, or could see her, since she was caught twice more before he stopped.
"Guh." It wasn't the best catch line she'd ever heard in a fight, but it was what these guys were getting. She couldn't really breathe and even though she managed to roll a bit before going unconscious, the darkness came for her as a buzzing wave of silver and blue sparkles, it was close. Crawling was painful, but doable, after the world cleared, and she was able to move toward the men with their large guns and red face masks. All identical. None of them hiding the fact that these guys looked hard and professional. That, and they were named things like Kenny.
That hardly said a lot about the Jihad, or whatever they called it. Not even "Kenny Mohammed". It was a bit of a cheat really. She'd signed on for terrorists, not these...