“You’re right.” Athan nodded. “We can’t take chances either. What are you doing?” he said watching Dempsey stripping off the guard’s uniform.
“It will give us an edge. It may not be more than a second before they realize, but like you said, we can’t take chances either. It’s an advantage, a small one, but an advantage.”
“I’m glad you lads are with me,” Athan said, trying not to think about what he’d just done.
Dempsey used his security tag to open the door just a little to see if the way was clear. It was, at least for the moment.
They slipped into the loading area and headed straight for the stairs that went up, but as they approached, the lights began to flicker.
“Is that ‘cause of us?” Steven said as he looked up at the flickering fluorescent globe on the next landing of the concrete stairs.
Athan watched the globe too, and doubted that it could be due to an alarm.
There was a thickness in the air, something wasn’t right.
“The machine!” Athan said. “They’ve started the machine.”
“Are we too late?” asked Dempsey, his eyes wide with concern.
“I doesn’t matter, we have to stop it, even if it’s started. There’s no too late. Faster!” Athan urged as he ran up the steps.
They ran up the stairs until they reached level 12. There was a locked steel grate door on the landing, with a sign that said No unauthorized personnel beyond this point.
“Shit.” Athan muttered. “We need to get inside.”
“Lucky we’ve got uniforms,” Steven said as he checked his belt and patted the gun holster.
Dempsey slid his tag through the reader and the door that led to 12 opened. He was as efficient as a soldier in his strategies and his movements.
The door swung open deliberately, and standing in the centre of the corridor was a guard.
He looked shocked at first, about to draw his gun, and then he relaxed.
The uniforms had worked.
The man had let his guard down for just long enough. Dempsey had his silenced pistol drawn and there was a hiss and a thump and the security guard sunk to the floor with a growing dark red mark staining his white shirt.
“Get him in here!” Dempsey barked, and Athan and Steven did as they were instructed and grabbed the man’s body, dragging him back into the stairwell. They closed the door.
“Ok, next floor, we’ll use the inside stairs. This is the first floor monitored by a private system. If they see us, they see us. We just need to be quick.”
All three men ran to the stairs at the other end of the ‘L’ shaped corridor that skirted the offices, and entered 13 running past a guard who was clearly distracted, and 14 then 15.
At level 16 they had to travel down a corridor to get to the next set of stairs.
At the end of this corridor Dempsey caught a bullet square in the chest.
The three men didn’t even see the guard before the shot was fired.
Dempsey was knocked to the floor and down a few of the steps and the others ducked back down to avoid more shots.
“Where did they come from?” Steven hissed, looking back at Dempsey.
“They were here the whole time. We got cocky.” Athan said holding Dempsey’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just hurts like hell. These vests were a really good idea.” Dempsey was pushing his finger through the hole in his shirt.
“Damn right. But the uniforms aren’t any good now. They know we’re here!” Steven said.
“I’m going to try it my way,” Athan declared, “but I need to really see them first. Stay down.”
Athan’s way was the same way that he defeated the guards outside. Using one of them as a conduit and taking them out once he was within the closer proximity.
He stood up and peeked over the rail. Two bullets whipped close to his head and he ducked. He then looked again at the closest guard.
Breathe.
Athan used Steven as a conduit again.
He jumped into Steven’s body while he squatted behind the stair rail and then stepped out of the closest security guard.
The further guard’s eyes were wide with surprise.
Athan grabbed this first guard by the wrists and turned the man’s gun on his further comrade.
BANG!
The guard pulled the trigger out of shock and the second guard dropped the floor.
The first guard turned to Athan with a look of horror on his face.
He was mouthing a word he couldn’t say.
Athan brought his elbow up under the man’s chin and knocked him backward.
Dempsey had composed himself now and approached the first guard and shot him in the chest and then he shot the second, a second time.
Athan faced Dempsey who was taking gun ammunition from the guard’s belts.
“I figure,” Dempsey began, “that with all the shooting, that they know we are here. We don’t want wounded guards shooting at our backs as we head upstairs.”
Athan nodded, understanding.
Steven crept out of the stairwell looking about for any other threat, but none was to be seen.
“You hurt?” Dempsey asked Athan as he handed his gun to Steven.
Athan shook his head and started for the next set of stairs.
There was a sound from below.
A low rumbling sound.
The pounding of feet.
“They’re coming!” Steven hissed. “From down stairs. We gotta go!”
Chapter 25
BRAD CHECKED THE safety on his Beretta.
He quietly screwed on the silencer, and waited for the other people in his team to catch up to him.
The facility in front of him was holding Furnace and possibly the Seeker girl. What worried Brad was that they could be using the girl as a detection system. So he didn’t want to charge forward, leading the pack and get everyone caught because the Seeker girl detected him amongst the rest.
He had sent two scouts ahead to take care of the guards.
“Another one down sir,” said a voice on his comm. It was Cleary; he had hunting experience growing up on a farm, so he was a pretty good shot.
The facility was an old brewery.
There was plenty of space in the driveways and courtyards for trucks to maneuver about when picking up loads, and for several guards to be patrolling between their different vehicles. From what Brad could see, they had about three enclosed trucks, two black vans, two suburban assault vehicles and several smaller cars and that meant there had to be something important going on inside.
The guards were a giveaway too.
“How are we going to get through the fence?” one of his team members whispered beside him. These were the people that would go in with Brad: two men and two women.
Brad and his people were dressed in black padded overalls with protective flack vests.
“We’re going to cut the wire, Shane. Cleary’s boys are going to drive a truck through the front gate to distract them, that’s when we cut the wire and slip in.”
“Gotcha,” Shane said, rubbing his nose. The boy was keen, but Brad wasn’t confident that he could handle himself in a real firefight.
There would have been a detailed plan to share with the group if they had collected more intel, but they didn’t have the time to survey the area first and they couldn’t run the risk of detection.
“We have to move quick. Run and keep your head down.”
“I know I’ve…I’ve seen it on movies,” Shane said shrugging.
“You can learn a lot from movies. Just don’t imagine you are the hero is all,” Brad advised. “We have two minutes. Get ready people!”
They waited amongst the wooden pallets and sheets of iron for the signal.
Each moment seemed to last for ages.
This was the first real battle of any kind that Brad had been part of, when he was part of The League they didn’t rush into gunfire and this kind of danger. Memories came fl
ooding back, of that last raid on a drug lab in North Melbourne, where everything went sour. Brad remembered looking out from a dark alley and seeing Ian being hit from behind by a car. He also remembered wanting to save him before seeing the man get out of back seat of the car and lift a gun to Ian’s head.
The look on Ian’s face was an expression he would never forget.
He knew he was going to die.
Brad looked at the four dark suited people squatting in the dark behind him, and hoped he didn’t have to feel responsible for another life, or see that same helpless expression again.
Then the diversion arrived.
The truck’s horn screamed from down one of the close streets in the small industrial area, and the guards at the facility began to look more wary than before.
Brad noticed that a couple of the uniformed guards were pulling large customized rifles from duffle bags near the side of the front entrance and from beside one of the trucks. He was sure now that they were in the right place, no normal security guards carry large firearms like that.
The horn sounded again, closer this time, and the guards towards the back turned on head lamps and rifle lights and begun flashing them about in all directions looking for a potential threat.
“Get ready. Got the cutters out?” Brad hissed.
“Yes sir.”
The horn began screaming again, continuously and Brad and his team could make out the black silhouette of the truck as it barreled towards the locked gate.
“On my mark…”
The truck’s engine was revving hard and the horn screamed like a banshee in the cold night air.
Inside the facility the guards were yelling into comms and running towards the gate to assist their comrades.
Then the truck headlights switched on and the glaring white light temporarily blinded the confused guards.
The monstrous vehicle smashed through the gate, tossing it high into the air. Guards began firing their rifles at the truck, as it ploughed up the driveway, but they were scattered by the vehicle’s wide bumper bar and thrown aside or underneath.
“Now!” Brad said as he rushed forward.
His team followed him through the fence.
At the gate the other half of Brad’s team followed the truck inside and aimed their pistols at guards caught in the headlights of the truck.
The truck swerved and swung, feigning this direction and that, keeping the guards distracted, even as more guards arrived from inside the facility.
Around the other side of the facility Brad’s group ran in single file to the side of a small white truck.
A semi-silenced rifle shot whizzed through the air and Brad ordered his team forward.
They had been spotted.
A single guard ran back toward them from the cacophony occurring at the front of the facility. His rifle was leveled at Brad’s team as they ran across the concrete courtyard.
Another guard appeared, obviously ordered to cover this area from inside, or security cameras were giving away their position.
The first guard cried out and dropped his rifle then collapsed to the concrete courtyard, and Brad noticed a dark figure running inward from the gate with a pistol pointed in their direction, it was one of Aadi’s people.
Good timing…
Esther, one of the women in Brad’s group stopped to fire a couple of shots in the direction of the second guard, enough to make him duck into cover, letting the rest of Brad’s team get to the truck, which was their target.
“Where’s the way in?” Shane hissed.
“There, other side of that van,” Brad said. “You get under this truck, and shoot from underneath. You will have maximum cover and they wont expect shots in the legs. Save your shots, make them count.” Brad looked at the others who stood ready, breathing heavily after the pressure of the run.
Brad addressed his small group. “Cleary and his group will take the front door, but they will be expecting a coordinated attack. We need to find the girl, Furnace. If she is up to it, she will be our ticket out of here. She’s five-four, Asian features, and probably contained. Understand me?”
They all nodded.
“Watch our back, Shane,” Brad said and began to pick his way through the vehicles to the van near the door.
A shot sounded to his left, and there was a clang as it bounced off a vehicle near by. The second guard and a third were cautiously approaching up the side of the building with bulletproof riot shields. Brad supposed that the custom weapons must be light enough to use with one hand, judging from the inaccuracy of the shot and the confidence of the their advance.
Brad leveled his silenced Beretta at the first of the three guards and fired. And the bullet glanced off the shield.
The guard in the centre seemed to be carrying the rifle, the other two were acting as mobile cover.
Brad fired at the shins of the front guard. There was a hiss then a thump, and the guard collapsed leaving an opening. The armed guard was exposed. Brad aimed at the top of the man’s rifle and fired twice.
There was a crack as the bullets smashed the accessory clip and dented the chamber. The torch clattered onto the concrete and, for the guard, everything went dark, and he panicked and leveled the rifle at Brad.
The firing mechanism only clicked.
The rifle was useless, damaged by Brad’s accurate shooting.
The two remaining guards realized that the situation was hopeless without a weapon and grabbed the wounded guard by the jacket and dragged him into cover. They wouldn’t be a threat for a little while.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Esther asked breathlessly.
“I can learn practical skills faster and more effectively than normal people,” Brad replied. “To the door!”
The four of them slipped between the vehicles till they reached a back entrance to the building.
Brad paused to analyse the situation by listening.
The semi-silenced gunfire at the front of the facility was still occurring and the truck’s engine was still roaring, hopefully they would keep sending security to that part of the facility.
Brad pulled the handle, hard and fast, but the latch was caught.
Locked.
They were exposed, and the door was locked.
Brad dropped to his knees and undid the pouch on his trouser leg that held a basic lock pick kit.
A bullet ricocheted off the steel surrounding the door, then another clipped Sam’s arm, causing her to drop to her knees hissing under her breath.
“They’ve got us pinned, get behind that van!” Brad called into his comm.
Brick was a big guy, and very fit, so it wasn’t a surprise seeing him grab Sam under his arm and run her over to the cover of the black van.
Brad pressed himself against it too hoping that there were still a few surprises they could spring on the security team.
Several shots whizzed over their heads and clanged off the roof and panels of the van.
Then there was a cry in the dark.
Brad strained to see from the side of the van, but he was sure one of the guards was hit.
Shane under the van was doing it, nice and slow, not giving away his position. Shooting at the guard’s legs.
Brad was impressed with the boy’s commitment and stamina.
Shane’s silenced pistol brought another of the guards down somewhere in the dark, Brad heard the woman cry out but he couldn’t see her clearly.
Brick raised his pistol and swung it about as he looked into the darkness.
Unfortunately at that moment their cover was blown.
Someone on the inside of the facility turned on the outside lights for the side entrance where Brad and his team were already pinned. The light flooded out over the vehicles in the loading bay, revealing the three of them cowering behind the black van.
“Not good!” Brick said ducking only just in time as a fresh volley of shots ricocheted off the back of the van where he had been previously standing.
A small silver plastic, blue tooth surveillance camera.
Not a cheap one Brad thought, and probably remote operated positioning.
“Get it.” Brad snapped.
“I’m not good enough. You do it,” Brick said.
Brad lifted his gun, aimed and put a bullet into the front of the camera, leaving it smoking and useless.
They needed to get inside the building and the door was locked. They would get shot if they tried to make a break for it.
Brad had a small homemade plastic explosive that was formed by mixing two chemical pastes. He grabbed the small packet out of his pocket and gauged the distance to the door: about twelve feet. He couldn’t mix the plastic explosive unless he was in front of it, because it only had a short time before detonation.
“I’ll do it.” Brick said nodding to the small package in the palm of Brad’s hand. “You cover me. I trust your shooting sir, and I remember what you told us about mixing the bomb putty.”
“Are you sure? You could get shot, you realize that?” Brad warned.
“Yeah, we need to get that Furnace girl out, you said she was our ticket out of here. It’s not going to happen while we’re trapped out here in the open. You take out those three lights fast. I get to the door and plant the putty and roll back. Job done. It’s our only shot, Sir. You know it is.”
Brad ran his hand through his hair and looked at Sam and Esther.
The two girls were looking anxiously around to determine where bullets were coming from. They would not be getting back to that hole in the fence. The only way was forward.
“Okay. You girls ready? Brick needs covering fire, but not till it’s dark.”
They both nodded and changed their positions, ready to return fire.
Brad looked at Brick who was taking deep breaths. “Here, good luck.” Brad handed him the little plastic bomb putty.
“No worries.” The big man said.
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 23
