Monsters

by Daniel Greenwell

  Objective 1: Break down their defensive structures, Objective 2: trap as many of them in rubble as I can, Objective 3: During assault clear out guarding force of civilians. Probability of survival? 1-in-4? I have had worse odds.

  Mal was done trying to play the moderator. He’s going to kill all of them that he can.

  For real this time, No Mercy.

  Sticking the C-4 to the pillar of the wall before looking down the hallway and seeing it’s dead end.

  Good shit.

  Mal pulled a semtex explosive off of his belt and shook his head.

  I need fire, not explosions…

  Looking around Mal spotted bottles of alcohol in the hallway. He grabbed them and began duct taping them together, the explosion would burst the bottles from the ceiling making the a gigantic Molotov cocktail. Burning the trapped men in the fire. Mal wired the grenade and the bottles to the ceiling of the hallway, they would be so excited about the possibility of killing someone they won’t even think about it.

  They are incredibly aggressive, let’s use that against them.

  Mal turned around walked towards the opening before swinging his rifle around and clearing the hallway. Walking forward he heard another clap of a pistol from the gymnasium and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

  For a more junior operator, this would cause them to speed up their operations. For me, it caused me to go more slowly because I understand that they do this to speed me or others up.

  Mal cane to an entrance way to the court and peaked around the corner. Two operators were in the walkway, facing either direction.

  “Mal, it’s Wallis,” She said as she came over the radio in his ear, “I took control of a local drone. I can get them to the other side of the building. Do you want me to?”

  “Do it,” Mal said.

  The sound of a small explosion happened on the other side of the auditorium as the two men turned and ran across the auditorium. Mal took advantage of that time and walked up the stairs to behind him towards the building on the outside.

  I need to take out the shooters and make a hole that can’t be closed by explosives.

  “Mal, are you crazy?” Wallis asked.

  “A little, why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “You went into a building with over twenty-eight hostiles by yourself.”

  “Anymore people and we wouldn’t be able to hide.”

  Mal came to the top of the stairs and saw three men spaced out along the Gymnasium’s outer corridor. All looking outward, vests on their bodies.

  “Wallis, does BANS have a sniper outside?”

  “Yes, I will put him through.”

  “Sniper, this is Wolf-1 from inside Assembly Hall,” Mal said.

  “Send Traffic, Wolf-1,” The Sniper said.

  “You have a small caliber rifle on you?”

  “ I do, I have a modified Dragunov with a Suppressor but I am scoped with Barrett .50 cal, Wolf-1.”

  “Cool, I need you to shoot the man furthest from the staircase on the Northeast side with it,” Mal said, “I will get the other two.”

  “Wolf-1, I will go on your move,” the Sniper said, “I got you in my line of sight, god you are fucking old for this man.”

  “Just try to shoot through the open panel window when he walks towards me,” Mal said, “If we break the window that may just alarm some people.”

  “Jesus, you’re not what I was imagining. You’re ancient.” The sniper retorted.

  Mal rolled his eyes at the assertion that his age was somehow a problem.

  In my job if you live as long as I have, that just proves you are really fucking good at your job.

  Mal snuck up behind the first man as they pointed their rifles towards the BANS members out front. Mal slipped his legs into a way that he could drag the man to the ground on top of him. He pushed his legs forward and tripped the man down to Mal’s right. He gripped his pistol from his left leg and shot the second man in the head as the third ran forward and was dropped by a bullet that it took Mal a second to hear.

  Good shot.

  Mal placed his hand over the mouth of the Reds militia member and began to ask him a few questions.

  “If you make a sound I don’t like, I will kill you, do you understand?”

  The man nodded.

  “How many of you are in here?”

  Mal asked while slowly pulling his hand away, preparing for the possible scream that may come.

  “24,” He said motioning at the two dead bodies, “Now.”

  I didn’t expect the 28 number to be remotely . For those playing at home, getting shot really hurts. I don’t recommend it.

  “Who is in charge?”

  “General Quinn,” The man said, “Ares went back to the south of the border to prepare the invasion force.”

  That’s adorable.

  “What type of traps do you have set up in here?”

  “Daisy-chained the doors and any entrances have enough C-4 on them to make a couple of guys evaporate,” He said, “will you let me go now?”

  “Not exactly,” Mal said as he pulled a knife off of his plate carrier and another out of his boot, “You are probably going to want to bite down on something.”

  Mal sat the man down on the corner of the walkway and stood up next to the only solid wall in the area and walked to the left.

  This doesn’t look load-bearing? I am not an engineer but this should be good.

  Pushing C-4 in a shape charge formation all around the wall, making a doorway, Mal took a look at his handiwork.

  “Not bad for an old man,” Mal said.

  “You’re the Wolf they talk about,” The man said from the ground, “they say you are brutal murderer who only works for the elites. Why don’t you care about real Americans?”

  Mal thought this was a good time to take a second anyways.

  If there is too much going on at once, there’s a chance Quinn says ‘Fuck it’ and kills all the hostages.

  “When you look at these hostages, tell me: what makes them less American than you are?”

  “A lot of them came from somewhere else, I am 100 percent red blooded American.”

  “Oh, so your family never immigrated to here from somewhere else?”

  “No, we came from Germany,” he said, “Like you, you are 100 percent American. Why do you help these people?”

  “My dad, he was a farmer. One year, every plant that he planted died. The soil was just absent of nutrients, now I never understood much about my Dad’s farming but there’s one thing I have been good at and it’s making things grow. Do you know what helps things grow?”

  “Fertilizer?”

  “Kind of, see for me it was always dropping the evilest scum on the earth, the carbon in their bodies has always made the plants grow quite well. Blood makes the plants grow and let me tell you sir, I have a green thumb. What you mean by ‘100 percent American’ is white and let me tell you: you all bleed the same. I have killed a multitude of every ethnicity, race, religion and gender type. Everybody dies the same.”

  Let me just say, I have said many things that would be defined as badass in my life but that’s a new number one.

  “You’re a monster,” The young man said as he slumped back away from him.

  “Yes,” Mal said, “dear god, you guys need to text each other. I am a Monster, I hunt other Monsters, blah, blah,bah. You kill innocent people, women and children, good people who just want to be left alone: You aren’t an innocent and you aren’t a hero. You’re just another thing to make the plants grow better.”

  Mal stood up and pulled the belt off of one of the dead guys.

  “Well, unlike your cowering pathetic troops, we will die for our cause,” he said, “but I know you won’t kill an unarmed prisoner.”

  Mal’s neck hair stood up at that comment.

  “Why is that?”

  “It goes against the UCMJ and from what I have heard, you were trained to follow that,” The young man said with h
is country twang.

  Mal wrapped the belt around the Young Man’s mouth.

  “You’re absolutely right, I promise that I,” Mal emphasized, “won’t hurt you at all.”

  He would be right if there was still a UCMJ to follow and honestly at this point I have had it up to here with these motherfuckers. They are all going to die. One way or another.

  Mal’s ears perked up like his namesake as he had that thought with the sound of footsteps in the distance. Footstep to be exact, one man walking with a heavy load.

  “Hey assholes, I got the vests, if they come in we detonate and take down this whole,” The soldier said as he saw the blood from the two dead bodies.

  Mal’s tilted head, as the young man stared at the last thing he would ever see as Mal squeezed off a pistol round directly into his right eye, into his “Sniper’s Apple” or as SEALs called it “The Off Switch.” The young man with the belt in his mouth mumbled something.

  Twenty-three.

  “I would like to thank the Sons militia for playing,” Mal said as he pressed the hands of the man up against the wall, “Pray for me real quick.”

  The young man put his hands together like the small child that he remembered back in Coronado, his son. Mal punched a knife through both hands pinning the man to the wall. Grimacing as tears fell down his face

  “You stay right there,” Mal said.

  That could be a new number two on the “Bad-ass things” Malcolm Daniels has said list.

  Mal walked over to the man he had just shot and kicked his weapon away before seeing an old foe.

  “Suicide vests,” Mal said, “They are getting inventive. Must have gotten these from their friends in the middle east.”

  He recognized the architecture of the vest from several he had helped disarm in Fallujah.

  “ISIL,” Mal said, “We abandoned our allies and let them take over the region to stop the Chinese front so they thank us by making suicide vests that will go off in our country.”

  Mal had fought these guys on almost every continent, if they had found their way to Antarctica he was sure they would have gotten a foothold there too.

  The right-wing extremists are teaming up: if you think about it, there really isn’t much difference between the two. It comes down to religious fundamentalism and they are both those things.

  Mal saw the metal cage on the outside of them, a locking padlock and chain to prevent removal by suicide bombers who had seconds thoughts, innocent people or even dead bodies.

  Never thought I would say this but, Thank you ISIL.

  Tearing a long piece of clothe off the side of one of the men’s clothes, Mal made a blindfold and grabbed a suicide Vest, dragging it behind him. Kicking the bodies out of the way along the way.

  “Sniper, Wolf-1.”

  “Send traffic, Wolf-1.”

  “How many guys on the roof?”

  “Just one, they have checked in at ten minute intervals though,” He said.

  “Next time he checks in, let me know. Then hit his punch card.” Mal said.

  “You are going to take them down in ten minutes?” The Sniper asked with a questioning tone.

  “Or less.”

  “Where do I send the entry team?”

  “The solid wall to the right of the window,” Mal said, “I want Tye and Armas first through the door, remind ground.”

  “Check Rog, Wolf-1, Sniper out.”

  Mal buckled the IED vest around the Man’s chest, without locking the Metal bars. He wasn’t a big fan of those, if someone’s good enough to disarm this thing in a few seconds: so be it. Mal pulled his knife out as the man yelped in pain, cradling his hands as blood dripped down onto the floor.

  “Now, run down the hallway towards your friends,” Mal said as the man started running down the hallway.

  Mal gripped the IED trigger in his hand, realizing that it was a dead-man’s switch so it was now armed, he began walking fast in the opposite direction clearing corners before he found an area that had an open look towards the stadium. The men were mostly spread out on the opposite side as few ran out to the corridor.

  Boom.

  Mal released the suicide vests trigger.

  He wanted to die for his cause, I just obliged him.

  “They are breaching on the west corridor! Make it so hard that they don’t want to come in.”

  Four men left to go towards the suicide vest victim. That left seven including Quinn, Mal began doing the mental calculus of lining up shots.

  Too many, time to light up the visitors locker room.

  Mal grabbed one of the two detonators on his belt that he had marked with a V and pressed the button igniting the small explosion.

  “You two go check that out!” Quinn screamed at them until he realized that he was alone

  Mal waited for the boom as they would slowly walk up and check the sewer, breaking the line of wire just barely above ground: Setting off the detonator immediately and then the grenade.

  If I knew there was only going to be two of them I would have just…

  BOOM!

  Screams followed as the two men burnt alive. Mal scoped up the first of the last two men as they surrounded Quinn.

  “Malcolm Daniels! I know you are here!”

  Mal finally got a good look at the ground around them as he advanced up to the top of the stairs. Three kids with Suicide Vests on and Quinn has the same dead-man’s switch in his hand that Mal just did.

  “Come out Mal,” Quinn said, “You are good but I don’t think you are quite that good you see…”

  Blah, Blah, Blah…Quinn was always a talker. A sadistic talker whose voice cut through to the bone.

  Mal squeezed off the first round as it took out the first man to the right before swinging his rifle to the left of Quinn and taking out the other man.

  “Well, you are a legend,” Quinn said, “one of the few who lives up to it.”

  Mal stood up and approached Quinn as he stood at center court. He could hear the screams of the men who were just injured by the IED.

  “Mal, ignite the shape charge,” Tye said in Mal’s ear piece.

  “He’s got kids with Suicide vests on, Tye,” Mal asked while looking at the vests and seeing a cell phone.

  “Get a Cell phone Jammer down here, since our frequency is high burst it won’t be affected but it will be able to disable his dead-man’s switch,” Mal said with his gun pointed straight into Quinn’s left eye.

  Hitting the off-switch has never been so enticing.

  Mal stepped onto the court and leveled his rifle at Quinn’s head, he had imagined this confrontation for a while. Regretting that he let him go before, allowing his son to get in the way of the mission, was very much unlike Mal.

  “Malcolm Daniels, I am sure it is very tempting for you to just kill me but I am sure you see the dead-man’s switch in my hand,” Quinn said as he smiled, “I have imagined this confrontation for a while. I am sure you have, when I decided to leave, I was waiting for you at the border. I thought you would come to end it. We always hated each other because of your, naivety. See your little Monster? I like him, he’s a very red-blooded American but you…you disgust me. You hate what you are and I don’t get it. Whenever I stole your therapist notes, I learned so much about you. That was in preparation for the war though…I had never thought it would kick off while we were in San Diego.The crazy thing is: none of this would have ever happened if you hadn’t run your own son off.”

  Malcolm knew that, he drove David right into Quinn’s arms. He had also assumed that Quinn had some knowledge of the war because the night it started, he said “it started.” Instead of asking what was going on.

  That really doesn’t explain why David all of a sudden became a right-wing nut job.

  Quinn, like Mal, he had an abnormally high IQ for the jobs they were doing in the Navy. Even though Quinn wasn’t nearly as experienced as Mal: he was still as dangerous or more dangerous than Mal because there was no safety on the gun. He
circled around to where there were kids with hoods over their heads but he wanted to get his eyes on them,.

  “Don’t touch those devices now or the kids get spread all over the arena with us,” Quinn said.

  Mal reached down and pulled up the hood over one of their heads, Timothy Jr., Tim’s oldest son.

  “Uncle Malcolm,” He said with the noise canceling headphones over his ears, he couldn’t have heard any of what they were saying, “Thank god.”

  Dropping his rifle Mal signed to Timothy in American Sign Language:

  “I will take care of this, sit tight.”

  Mal had taught the kids ASL when they were young, his mom was deaf so he learned at a young age that American Sign Language was a valuable skill.

  “Do you know where your dad is?”

  Timothy shook his head and Mal nodded right back at him. Mal leveled the rifle back at Quinn.

  “You must be insane,” Mal said, “you did all of this to get back at me for some perceived slight? Is it because I minorly hazed you? Why?”

  Quinn laughed rambunctiously as Mal twitched with the Dead-man’s switch in his hands. Mal’s hands were sweaty and trembling, he couldn’t keep his rifle square at his head.

  I can’t die before I stop this and save David.

  “You’re wrong Mal,” Quinn said, “nothing about this is personal. You were just part of the puzzle, it’s nothing against your son, I needed him so I took him.”

  Took him?

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He came to stay with me for a few days to cool off but those days took years for him,” Quinn said, “I remember his screams very, very well. Mentally reconditioning a SEAL is tough but mentally reconditioning your son, that was really hard, Malcolm. When you guys have talked I am sure you can see the conflicting feelings but I promise you: he’s gone.”

  Mal felt a swirl of anger underneath himself.

  “That would be dumb luck though,” Quinn said, “So here’s the deal Mal: if you beat me in Hand-to-Hand combat you, the kids leave and I am your prisoner. If I win, I kill you and the kids. You just need to drop your weapon first.”

  Why would he so easily give up his advantage for a simple hand-to-hand fight with someone who is much better at hand-to-hand combat than him?