Chapter Forty-Two
"Hurry it up, will you, Boss?"
Burgess glared at his whining underling as best he could by the light of the pair of flashlights held by the man sitting in front of him. Jason had, naturally, radioed down to them for help after he had been handcuffed to the railing supports on the fiftieth floor by Lawson, but their task of locking up the floors below had delayed their arrival by some minutes. Of course, knowing this had not stopped him from complaining constantly throughout the time he had been obliged to wait for their arrival.
The big man was, at the moment, flipping through his keys in search of the one that would free Jason from the cuffs and himself from Jason's incessant noise. "And whose fault is it that you're in this bind in the first place, Jason?"
The beanpole of a man leaped to his own defence in his usual accusatory way. "That damned Lawson, that's who. How was I supposed to know she had a pair of handcuffs on her?"
A second, even more threatening, glare from Tyrone quieted his protests before he could dig himself any deeper into the hole he was already in. "Mine," he admitted reluctantly. "I should have tried to surprise her or called down to you guys and waited for help."
Murakami, keeping an eye on the hallway leading into the main portion of their present floor, smiled in quiet amusement at the awkward conversation unfolding behind her. Since she was not facing the correct direction, she had to imagine what the scene would look like; curiously, she kept picturing her superior as a large adolescent, helping a smaller boy up off the street and chiding him for his recklessness. She knew it was far too tender a rendition of Mr. Burgess, but that only seemed to make it harder to push from her mind.
She was brought out of her imaginings when Tyrone cleared his throat. "Murakami. I asked you if you saw anything."
"Oh," she managed, hoping that her hasty stall would buy her a moment's grace. Squinting her eyes to get the best impression she could of the poorly lit, remarkably orange, space ahead of them. "No, Sir, though I can't see too well with only the emergency lights on."
"Yeah, they aren't my first choice, either," her superior admitted, before his attention was brought back to the cuffs on their third member's wrists as he tried another key. With a small, almost demure click, the metal bands released Jason's wrists, prompting an annoyed, yet satisfied, grunt from Tyrone. Standing, the big man grabbed his subordinate by the front of his shirt and hauled him upright at the same time. Suddenly placed back on two feet, Jason staggered about for a moment before finding his balance, as well as his confidence. Grinning widely, he was halfway through the door into the half-lit level before he remembered what had gotten him into trouble in the first place and, sheepishly, waited for the giant and his second in command to precede him.
Hiding her smile behind a forced expression of seriousness, Murakami went first; pausing at the end of the hall to get the lay of the land. Around the corner, she saw the area between the elevators and security desk was empty. Stepping out into the open space, Tyrone followed, one giant hand automatically pressing itself over Jason's mouth as the man began opening it to say something. With the silence preserved, they stood there for a moment and simply listened for a minute or two. They heard nothing whatsoever to begin with, but as their ears adjusted, they caught the faint sound of a voice. It wasn't nearby, they couldn't make out anything it was saying, but it was definitely on the same floor as they were.
Giving Jason a stern look to ensure he knew to remain silent, Tyrone released the man's loosely hinged noisemaker from his grip and moved to the right-hand hallway. Having worked in the building for months already, Murakami already knew what Jason had to trust them on; specifically, that the CEO's office was on the corner at the end of this particular hallway. Moving as quickly as they could without making an undue amount of noise, they passed four executive offices on their right, while the three central boardrooms that occupied the floor's centre block went by on their left. Coming up on the corner office, they saw the door was already ajar, which concerned both of the three who were actually paying attention. Jason, demonstrating his usual focus, had opened the door to the boardroom they had just passed and was poking his head about inside.
Ignoring him, Tyrone strode out past the corner of the centre block and, glancing down the hallway to his left, found himself shoulder-to-faces with six armed individuals. Feeling his heart skip a beat, he took a deep breath and turned fully to face them. A quick look further down the hall confirmed that six others were just disappearing around the far corner; the teams from upstairs had begun their operations. They were outfitted for their work, too. Each wore a helmet with a chinstrap, though it left their faces exposed, as well as a bulletproof vest complete with a combat knife in a downward-facing shoulder sheathe. A belt completed their utilitarian ensemble, sporting a sidearm and several other pouches, likely full of miscellaneous tools of their trade. Burgess was no fool; he was big, but six armed men with rifles trained on his chest cavity were more than he could handle barehanded. He had no more time to spend evaluating the situation, however, as the moment of mutual surprise brought on by the two parties' suddenly coming across one another was rapidly ending.
Pointing their weapons at the big man, the soldiers took a step or two back, with every one of them shouting simultaneous orders at him. All in all, it was a very sudden, very loud display that essentially boiled down to the only word he could make out amidst the garbled din. This was, of course; "Freeze!" Looking down at the six men, Tyrone found his eyes repeatedly drawn to the barrels of their assault rifles. With his size no protection from that many bullets, particularly at close range, he took the first idea that popped into his head that, he hoped, would not result in his being riddled with holes and metal.
"Stand down, soldiers; I am Tyrone Burgess, Security Chief of this building and I am ordering you to put down your weapons! We are on the same side!"
What resulted from this attempt was, from Murakami's vantage point, half-hidden behind the corner with Jason behind her, rather akin to a shouting match. Mr. Burgess' noncompliance triggered another round of shouted orders from the six armed and armoured men, which led back to her superior reiterating his commands, though at a greater volume. She could tell, though, that the men were hesitating in making the call to shoot him; from the conversation she had overheard between their client and their commander, they likely thought that Mr. Burgess would be downstairs by now. They weren't sure whether they were meant to include him in their 'purge' or not, which was buying the big man precious seconds. Even more fortunately, the other six soldiers did not come back around the corner, clearly believing that the other team could handle the disturbance as they continued on their own sweep of the offices in their respective hallway.
The loud, verbal exchange continued for a minute or so, until everyone was essentially screaming at the top of their lungs, when something distracted them. A dark object flew past overhead, in much the same way that a Frisbee would; the emergency lights did not do a very good job of illuminating it, but a coloured band could be seen glinting a reddish-orange throughout its flight. The spinning object sailed by before colliding with the hard surface of the wall and bouncing harmlessly off of it, coming to rest on the floor. Much less harmlessly was that, in the space of time it took for the top hat, for that was what it was, to fly overhead, the man that had thrown it had been tending to other things. Walking up behind the armed individuals, he pulled the sidearm from the rearmost soldier's belt and, placing the weapon directly against its intended target, shot the second rearmost soldier in the left-hand side of his throat. Galvanized into motion by the sudden, barking retort of the firearm, the four soldiers ahead of the rear two had whirled about, firing reflexively. Unfortunately, they found that the man who had just had his pistol stolen was being used as a human shield by the thief; a fact that, much to their and his dismay, they realized only after having fired half a dozen rounds each into the poor fellow. Of course, his bulletproof vest was designed to stave off t
he bite of bullets not specifically made to pierce armour and the first shot or two merely knocked the wind from him, but the brief rain of steel he had been subjected to had quickly punched through the protective layer.
Letting his perforated human shield slump to the floor, the man was revealed to be wearing a business-like suit, though the soldiers only noted this because it meant he wore no protective vest of his own. Raising his pistol again, the man was prevented from firing by a second, less ally-impaired salvo of shots from the four remaining soldiers, all aimed squarely at his chest cavity. With several dozen grams of metal having passed through his lungs, heart and other vital organs, the suited thief promptly slumped to the ground as limply as a wet noodle. The wet thud of his collapse onto the, now rather stained, floor was the third body to collapse in a seven second interval. A much harder thud, with the faintest potential of being a crunch, caused the two soldiers that had been in the centre of the group to spin back around to face the giant they had nearly forgotten was behind them; the hulking fellow had taken the helmeted heads of the two soldiers nearest him, one in each hand, and brought the sides of their heads sharply together. Reeling from the impact, felt even through their protective headgear, the men swooned in individual fits of vertigo as their companions turned and raised their weapons.
With their comrades impeding their line of fire yet again, the two soldiers in the middle began to step backwards; deciding a retreat to put more distance between themselves and their opposition was a wiser move than risking the lives of their comrades. This decision, of course, was based on the idea that the only threat to them was the imposing figure of Tyrone Burgess. They had not noticed the supposedly dead man they had fired upon quietly removing the combat knives from their two fallen comrades on the ground beside him. They did, however, notice as he stuck one of the knives into the back of the left-hand soldier's leg, just above the knee, forcing him to come shrieking to the floor. The second knife was promptly buried in the man's neck, even as the bloodied, walking corpse of a man raised the pistol he had used before to the underside of the right-hand man's jaw. Pulling the trigger, the man's head jerked back violently, holding him perfectly upright for exactly two seconds before he crumpled to the floor to join the rest of his squad. Raising an eyebrow at the man in the bloodied business suit, Burgess seized the dazed guards once again and struck their heads together a second time, sending them crumpling to the floor, unconscious.
Coming around the corner, Murakami and Jason beheld the blood-stained stretch of hallway; it was only a few feet across, of course, but the space of time it had taken to end four lives had seemed entirely insufficient. Stooping down carefully, the woman of Asian descent gave the nearest soldier that had been shot a hesitant push, as if expecting him to stand up and take issue with the disturbance. The man that had come to their assistance had another method of testing the fallen for signs of life; he kicked each soldier sharply in the forehead. This practice quickly forced Murakami to stand to one side, simultaneously trying to hold in her indignation towards the man's disrespectful methods and her nausea at the moist crunching noises his actions elicited from the necks of the recently deceased. She was particularly disgusted when her internal count of the horrible noises climbed past four to include the two guards Burgess had left alive and found herself covering her mouth involuntarily.
Tyrone, less concerned about respect for the dead than he was the welfare of the living, grunted as the smaller man confirmed their opposition was down; he knew the other team would be here any minute now that the first had gone silent, but the last thing they wanted was someone playing possum to surprise them from behind. Satisfied that this was not going to be a problem, he nodded curtly at their surprise assistant. "Black."
The hazel-eyed man grinned up at him, his clothes already shifting to a fresh suit devoid of bullet holes, prompting the eyes of the three individuals before him to widen somewhat. "Burgess! What a nice surprise! What were the odds of seeing you here, huh?"
Quite unprepared for the mercenary's jovial mood, or blatant display of his unnatural ability, Tyrone was left without much of a response. "I work here."
Black, apparently quite relaxed about all of this, wiped his shoes clear of blood on a clean patch of floor. "Do you? Huh. I had forgotten that. Well, I would apologize for the mess, but let's face it; these guys were going to fill you with holes in a few seconds. You can hold your applause, by the way, the other six will be back before you know it now that they're missing men. You had best be getting to whatever you're up here for."
Snapping out of the haze the man's bizarre behaviour had put him in, Tyrone nodded. "Right, yeah. We're looking for Giselle Fitch, the CEO. You seen her?"
The wiry fellow shrugged. "No, not personally, but I've got a funny feeling that we'll find the lady I've been left to guard in the same place. I suppose that means we're going the same way."
"Left to guard?" Murakami repeated. "What does that mean? Left to guard her by whom?"
Black chuckled quietly, apparently enjoying whatever inside joke he was making. "Never you mind that, lady. Just to be sure, though, I take it you three are not going to force me to shoot you, too?"
Tyrone shrugged. "I can't see any reason to. Not at the moment, anyway. My employer's hired gunmen are stalking the halls and will be trying to kill all of us, now, so we stand a better chance of getting out of this in one piece if we work together."
More than satisfied with the big man's reasoning, Black gave an only slightly mocking bow and motioned towards the door to the CEO's office, set in the crook of the same corner they were presently standing in, smiling broadly. "Then, by all means, after you; Sir, Ma'am... and Pasta-Jacket."
His concern for Giselle's safety overriding his doubts surrounding Black's sanity, or trustworthiness, Tyrone strode to the door as quickly as his legs would carry him. Murakami, still disgusted by the man's disrespectful attitude and dissatisfied with his evasive answers, followed behind her superior with a disapproving glance thrown over her shoulder at Black. Jason, not one to be left behind, simply scowled at the use of Lawson's nickname for him as he tagged along. Black brought up the rear, idly tracing the places on his person where he had been shot, prior to whisking the injuries away by shifting his appearance and attire. All aimed at the vital organs in his chest, with not one, single bullet aimed at his head. And why should there have been? Anyone who had been properly trained to use a gun knew that a human being without some type of bulletproof armour on could be killed with a body shot just as easily as by a shot to the head; plus, it was a larger area to target and, consequently, easier to hit at a distance. And anyway, the chance that a prisoner might have information of value to you was worth more than a corpse, in most cases.
Finished with his self-inspection and grinning to himself with profound satisfaction, he followed the other three into Giselle Fitch's office, musing aloud to himself the thing that had him so utterly pleased with the situation. "I love fighting professionals."
In Icarus' Shadow Page 60