“Well little lady, in the national security game there aren’t exactly cases,” John said. “There are certainly happenings that interest the NSA, but we don’t get issued cases like indolent children who need to be told what to do.”
For a second it seemed like John was going to tell them all about how the NSA worked but he stopped short and his face turned sour.
“You know what it doesn’t really matter if you understand how the NSA works or not, and quite frankly it would probably take way to long to explain. So here’s the deal,” John said. “I can’t call for backup yet because nothing really crazy has happened. I know that sounds a touch odd considering two men are now dead and one of them was sawed in half with a machine gun, but that’s how it works. The United States government isn’t particularly concerned with gang bangers killing each other. That’s not really where we decided to start meddling with things.”
“Well what does trip the trigger of the United States government,” Seth said with a sneer on his face.
“Organized crime,” John retorted. “That’s why I’m here. At some point Jen here said enough key words into her phone, or over texting, or on the internet, and she got flagged. So the exacts of her conversation got shot to some loser at a desk. And this loser at a desk read the inner workings of Jen’s conversations and thought ‘Well holy shit, this would seem to be illegal.’”
“What the fuck,” Jen said. “You guys are actually spying on us?”
“Is this news to you?” John said sarcastically. “Anyway. So I appear here because of Jen believing the mob was after her. And at first, I’ll be the first to admit, I kind of thought the mob or something like the mob might be running amok. But as it turns out these people are a lot more like terrorists and they want to score some quick funding from Lane Five, the construction company I mentioned earlier.”
A noise from outside the door silenced John. He sat up stiff as the door creaked open and one of his men whispered something to him. The door closed silently and John rose from his chair and donned his suit’s jacket.
“It would appear that the terrorists are outside in some kind of surveillance van,” John said. “And your friends are back from being interrogated by the police at their shop.”
“What?” Seth said.
“You two should leave out the front,” John said drawing a pistol from a holster at the small of his back. “Time for me to earn my keep.”
John pulled the door open and not but ten feet away both of his men were pressed against the wall on either side of the glass door to the outside world. Both of them had their guns drawn, and both of them looked scared.
“How many?” John asked as he walked out of the office.
“Not sure, boss,” one of the goons said. “They are all in the white van parked over by the back door of that bar.”
The other goon spoke up.
“There are probably five or six in there from the way it has been rocking around.”
“I can only imagine what kind of exact science led you to believe that there are five or six people in the van from how it was rocking,” John said with a wry smirk on his face. “Did they teach you that at the academy?”
“We’re hired mercenaries, boss,” goon number one said. “You know that.”
“What should we do?” asked goon number two.
“Well,” John said, drawing out the word and nuancing it at the end so it held all kind of question and intrigue in the higher note. “I think it might be time to start shooting at them.”
“What?” Seth said.
“Boss, the big guns are in the car,” goon number two said.
“Fuck,” John swore. “I knew we should have brought those in with us. The second we get lazy something happens that calls our shit on it. Fuck.”
John looked around the room to make sure he wasn’t missing anything while both of his goons peered out the glass door.
“Is my place going to get shot up?” Jen asked.
The front door chimed and everyone but John whirled to look and see who was walking in.
“It’s your friends Nate and Mike,” John said in a bored voice. “I just told you they would be coming in the front.”
“And the mother fucking Wizard,” Seth said with a huge smile on his face. “Damn, it’s good to see them.”
“Well,” John said. “If I were you I’d start making your way to the front. The terrorists just got out of the van.”
Jen darted to a place where she could see through the glass door out into the parking lot. Two men clad in body armor looked like they had just stepped out of the back of the van and stood waiting for their comrades to do the same—another, then another, then another; until a total of five men stood outside the back of the white van. All of the men wore body armor that Jen had seen the United States Marine Corps wear overseas, and had what appeared to be very serious machine guns in their hands.
A few of them wore metal helmets with horrible masks of grinning skulls or screaming demons, while the others just covered their faces with bandanas. The five men walked directly parallel to the wall of the dojang, evenly spreading themselves out.
“Hey,” Nate’s voice came from the front of the dojang. “Run towards us! Run this way!”
“Oh, shit,” John said.
Then things started going in slow motion. Holes started to appear on the wall in front of Jen, also in the mirrors and inside the dojang’s classroom. At first there were only a few but within what had to be seconds, though seeming like much longer, there were many holes. First a hole would appear, then it would shoot bits and pieces of whatever it had been before out of its center; so if a hole appeared in a mirror you could bet that it would shoot out bits of mirror and whatever had been behind the mirror the second before.
As soon as the holes started appearing John had thrown himself to the ground. One of the goons had managed to do the same as well, Jen couldn’t tell if it was goon one or goon two, but the other goon had started spinning when several holes appeared in his back. Blood and bones had burst out of them and he had made some kind of chortled screaming noise. At first Jen didn’t put together that the holes had something to do with the spinning and jerking the goon made, and she thought it an odd time to start dancing like a crazy person.
“We’ve got to go!” Seth yelled as he yanked her arm, hard, and pain shot down her side. His voice sounded like it was elongating and coming from somewhere far away.
“What’s going on?” Jen yelled as Seth pulled her toward the front of the dojang.
“They’re shooting!” Seth yelled.
Jen didn’t know what shooting had anything to do with it. She was in some kind of state of shock, or so she figured since the laws of physics no longer seemed to be applying to reality the way it should have been. One thing she was sure of was that her dojang was disintegrating. More and more holes appeared in the walls and sheet plaster poured out of them. Various work out machines started to spin and fall apart. Smoke filed the dojang quickly. Something was burning. Seth pulled her to the start of the hall that led to the front of the Dojang and turned to her.
“Run as fast as you can!” Seth screamed.
Jen slowly shook her head.
“No, you,” she said.
Seth looked at her in panic.
“Will you follow?” he asked.
“Of course,” Jen answered.
Seth took off down the hall as the wall fell apart and shot across his path. Behind her Jen turned to see one of the armored men walk through the door and execute the remaining goon who was on his knees begging for mercy. The armored man wasn’t wearing one of the scary skull masks, having instead only a bandana over his face. Just when the man in the bandana looked up his face opened up into a hole. Not far from him stood John with a large gun leveled at the open part of the other man’s face. The armored man fell heavily, making a dull sound much like a sack of potatoes when he hit the ground.
Without waiting to see who would walk through the
door next Jen turned and faced the hallway. Parts of the walls were flying through the air leaving trails of dust like party streamers. Jen started to run as fast as she could with both her arms up around her face to shield her. Somewhere in her brain she knew that she needed to be afraid of a hole opening up in her, but the knowledge wasn’t translating to the rest of her head like it should have been.
It was like Jen was a child again, of maybe six or seven. She kept reminding herself that she needed to run quickly and that she was in shock, and as soon as she would remind herself she would forget and wonder what was going on. Ahead of her down the hall Seth lay on the ground with his arms over his face and head, occasionally looking up to see if she was doing all right. Not far from Seth were the prone figures of Nate and Wiz.
Jen started to fall and her arms automatically came down from her head to help cushion the impact with the ground. Around her the smoke was getting thicker. The thought occurred to her that maybe one of the bullets had caused a fire somehow. She remembered maybe watching it in a movie. Jen hit the ground and remembered her father teaching her how to shoot; she remembered the look disapproval on her mother’s face when her father went on and on about what kind of shot Jen was; she remembered liking the feeling of power holding a weapon gave her and wanting to do it more.
Jen pushed herself up from the ground and looked down the hallway. She was having a hard time seeing through the smoke, though. Now there was a sound like crackling that she couldn’t place, and then she realized it was the fire. That’s where all the smoke was coming from, she reminded herself. Jen tried to stand up but her hands slipped as she pushed herself and she ended back on the ground facing the other way down the hall. At the end of the hall, where Seth had asked her if she would follow him, John stood with his back to her.
Jen could see that he was aiming at something though; John had the gun in his hand leveled at where the glass back door would have been. He took aim for a moment and the gun kicked upward and back. A scream came from the back of the dojang, the sound of a man dying in great agony. John turned and ran toward her with a smile on his face.
The floor pulled away from Jen as two people picked her up. The holes in the walls started appearing again. Not that they had ever completely stopped, but they had slowed their appearance somewhat when she fell. But now they were everywhere again, sending smoke and plaster and wood in all directions. Jen realized that it was still the men outside shooting into the building and that they were laying it on thick now that two of them had been killed.
Within seconds she was thrown in the back of a van and joined by John as he jumped in beside her, Nate and Seth. Nate was at the wheel screaming something that Jen couldn’t make out. Seth threw the side door of the van shut and Nate peeled out of the spot, pulling out on the main avenue of traffic just outside the dojang.
“These fucking assholes are amateurs,” John said.
His was the first voice to break the silence that ensued once the van was in traffic and it became apparent that they were going to get away with their lives.
“Bitch,” Nate said. “I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about, but two of your boys died back there.”
“Sometimes the hired help doesn’t make it,” John said. “Kind of the name of the game. It’s unfortunate because now I’ll have to get a few more stooges, but no big loss.”
“How many of them did you get?” Mike asked.
“Two,” John replied. “The first one walked in and shot one of my goons as he surrendered. Right in the guy’s head. So I returned the favor and shot the asshole right in the face. Then another one of those fucks walked through the door. This guy had on some weird skull mask. Well, big parts of his face were exposed so I shot him in the forehead and he dropped like a ton of bricks.”
“Good thing you are a good shot,” Nate said. “Or we might all be dead.”
“Good thing you were waiting in a van to help us make our escape,” John said. “Or we would for sure be dead.”
“How did that fire start?” Nate asked.
“At first I thought it had to be from one of the bullets but then I realized that they’d thrown pyrotechnics on the roof to start the fire,” John said.
“Who the fuck are you?” Nate asked as if seeing John for the first time.
“He’s with the NSA. The guys we are fighting against are terrorists,” Seth broke in, thinking it would be best if he summed up quickly what John would take the better part of five minutes to tell.
“Well isn’t that something,” Mike said as he pulled into a car wash and rolled down his window to pay. “We’ve got our very own secret fucking agent on our side.”
“It would be something if we weren’t completely out gunned right now,” John said. “Why the fuck are we stopping for a car wash? Do you really think this is the appropriate time?”
“Well, since I’m not sure who all is working with the ‘fucks,’ as you call them, or how any ‘fucks’ there are, yes,” Mike said. “It is the perfect time for us to sit in a private space and do nothing for a few minutes while we figure out what should be done next.”
“Nice thinking,” Nate said.
“I concur,” John said. Then he chuckled, “You know, I could use a few more goons, would you guys like to make a little money?”
Seth’s mouth fell open and the van went silent for a second.
“How much money?” Nate asked.
“Well, how about I give you ten grand a piece?” John proposed with a flourish of his hands.
“Done!” Mike said from the front seat.
The car wash kicked on and a giant machine with many nozzles sticking out of it circled the car, spraying it with water, soap and other cleaning agents. This went on for a minute or so and everyone sat looking at each other, not trying to speak over the loud sound of water hitting the car. After the machine made a few passes a mechanical arm swooped down from the ceiling to spray a coat of wax on the van. After about a minute the wax job was done and Mike pulled out of the car wash.
“So where to, boss,” Mike said. “Did your last goons call you boss?”
“Uh, yes,” John said. “Although I don’t see how that matter—”
Mike cut John off.
“Well I guess we should do the same, am I right, guys?” Mike said.
“Sure, I guess,” Seth said. “I kind of want my money now, though.”
“Let’s head back to the dojang,” John said. “I know it seems counter intuitive but I doubt the fire raged out of control enough to really burn the whole building, and anyway, my car was parked across the street outside so it wouldn’t matter. But if the building is still standing I would like to get inside and relieve my former goons of some of the stuff they have on their persons.”
“Like what?” Nate asked.
“Well, their cell phones, for one,” John said. “Even though I’m with the NSA I don’t want the regular cops to know I’m mucking about just yet. Regular cops are regular cops for a reason. God bless them, but sometimes they make bigger messes out of things then they know how to deal with.”
Mike spun the van around and headed back the way they came, toward the dojang. It became pretty clear that the fire had indeed taken off enough to engulf the whole building by the enormous column of smoke trailing up into the sky.
“Well, boss man,” Mike said with a tone of mocking. “It would appear the dojang is now a nojang.”
Mike was slowly rolling by the dojang on a side street. The building was little more than a smoking crater now. The frame of the building—the struts, rebar and beams—looked like the skeleton of a smoking beast. It made Jen think of the skeleton of a beached whale. Fire department was there and had one of their trucks spraying water into the husk of the building.
“Doesn’t look like much made it,” Nate said.
“We don’t know what the other guys ran in and grabbed,” John said. “I would bet anything they drug out the bodies of their fallen comrades and maybe even on
e or both of my former help.”
“Could be,” Mike said. “I don’t know what to tell you. Where did you say you parked?”
John pointed out a black Sedan and Mike parked the van behind it.
“The sun is about to set,” John said. “Let’s wait twenty minutes before we unload the Sedan into the van.”
“Why wait?” Seth asked.
“Well,” John said in a tired voice. “We’ll be unloading a bunch of really big guns and some money. I don’t really want anyone of authority to come over and ask what we are doing, because then I’m going to have to explain that I am, in fact, an NSA agent. The police, or whoever, may not believe me considering present company. No offense or anything.”
“None taken,” Nate said.
“I mean,” John continued. “If you haven’t noticed Seth and Jen both have cuts on their faces that are bleeding. That doesn’t look good because it isn’t normal. Within a few questions they’ll know that Jen used to own the dojang. And if they are cops they might be the same ones that spoke to both of you earlier.”
“So we’ll wait,” Wiz said. He’d been quiet the entire time until now and his voice broke the air like a spade turning up fresh ground. “But let’s wait in silence. I’m getting a little sick of hearing everyone talk. Sorry ‘boss’ if this ruffles your feathers.”
“Not at all,” John said.
The van fell silent. Nate sat at the wheel staring at the flashing lights of the fire trucks. Nate sat beside him in the passenger seat, playing with his phone. Wizard was in the back looking at his nails, which left Jen, Seth and John smashed in the broad, three person seat in the middle.
Jen didn’t exactly like the silence but wasn’t willing to break it. She was having a hard time choking back tears as they sat and watched her dojang smolder. Much of her adult life had been spent erecting the walls of that building, keeping the lights and water on, teaching the students that came there. It was always amazing to her that so many people turned to Tae Kwon Do as some kind of life mentor. Now it was all over, and her amazement had turned to disappointment.
Knights Templar (Sean) Page 11
