The Bleeding Sun

by Abhishek Roy

  Lucas slowly unwound the screws from the vent access using a Swiss knife that he always carried. He slowly lifted the access door and attached the grappling hook on the vent. Then he slowly moved into the room with body hanging vertically downwards. He could not afford to land on his feet since his boots could make enough noise to give away his presence. He landed on his palms without a sound and swiftly rolled behind one of the couches. He pulled down the grappling hook swiftly and silently. The guys were still stranded in the same positions. Lucas wondered what exactly they were waiting for. He rolled across the door and moved swiftly behind the man waiting at the main door. He took out the Swiss knife, rose up behind the man and like a silent assassin covered his victim’s mouth and jabbed the knife onto his neck. The poor guy didn’t even get a chance to blink.

  Lucas could hear the sound of the rest of the armed men outside the room. They were moving around trying to find him since he did not walk up onto their trap. The radios were crackling and from the conversation, it didn’t seem that their boss was too pleased. Lucas had to take out the next guy in order to search the room for any clue he could find and then he needed to vanish again before the other guys arrived. He could see his backpack lying near the bed. Apparently it had not been opened. He rolled again swiftly on the carpet trying to get near the second guy when his plans went wrong. The phone in the room started ringing and the guy looked back to stare straight at him. As he lifted his rifle, Lucas threw the knife straight at him and lunged forward. The knife struck his shoulder but he managed to fire a few rounds before Lucas landed on him. A brutal blow on his neck ended his misery.

  Lucas rushed towards Annie’s luggage and pulled out a silenced M9 along with a smoke grenade. As the door opened up he threw up the smoke grenade and jumped across the room away from the windows taking shelter behind a recliner. He got hold of his backpack as well. The men started firing their rounds as smoke filled up the room and the fire alarm started ringing. Lucas put on his glasses from the backpack and turned on the thermal imaging. As the bewildered men moved around the room firing haphazardly, he watched their every move and took them down one by one with his shots. All the four men were gunned down. As the sprinklers came to life, Lucas turned his attention to the room. There was no sign of Annie. He packed up his backpack with whatever he could from the accessories that Maria had provided. He needed to clear the place of every trace. He took out a round of C4 and placed it tactically in the room to ensure that all his traces were gone. He went on to the men who were guarding the room and searched for clues on their bodies. The only thing he found was that all of them had a patch on their shirts with the name of ‘Viper’. He would need to do some more research to find about them. He would need every single clue to track down and rescue Annie if she was still alive. One of the men had a cell phone and the last call was made to someone named Dimitri minutes before the men had rushed into the room. Lucas took the cell phone for analyzing later as he wired up the C4 and got ready to move on. He would work his way up the vent again and on reaching the stairs would detonate the bomb.

  While going through all these thoughts, Lucas did not realize that there was a sound of a rotor constantly getting louder. As the sound grew, Lucas moved on to the windows to take a look. What awaited him was no less than hell. A MI 24 gunship slowly rose up to the height of the room and the machine guns started firing. Lucas helplessly jumped across the room for cover as the window panes were shattered and the guns blazed through the entire room. Lucas jumped across the room onto the bed and then tried to reach for the ceiling. He grabbed hold of one of the sprinklers and latched onto it in his desperate bid for survival. With all the firing, the C4 got detonated and the entire room turned into a blast furnace. With the explosion, the sprinkler that he was holding on to, finally gave away and Lucas landed heavily on the floor. The firing had momentarily stopped. It seemed that the explosion had disoriented the pilot and the gunship was trying to steady itself before unleashing death once again.

  Lucas was hurt with the sudden fall. His left arm was on fire and he could barely hear anything due to the sudden explosion. He tried desperately to get his act together. He could not be bothered about the pain if he needed to complete his mission. He needed to cheat death and survive. He needed to eliminate the enemies. He rose up slowly and looked around. He could still see the gunship as it slowly was regaining control. He couldn’t lose any more time. The entire ceiling leading to the vent had come down and hence there was no escape route. He had to fight his way out. Lucas brought out his grappling hook and fastened the straps of his backpack tightly. He took out two grenades and pulled out the pins. He started running towards the windows with the grenades clutched in one hand and the grappling hook swinging from the other. The gunship had managed to regain its control and slowly started aiming the guns towards the room.

  Lucas leaped out of the window straight at the gunship and managed to get the grappling hook onto the sensors at nose of the helicopter. He jammed a grenade onto the sensor and swung ahead as the guns started blazing again. He tossed the second grenade just behind the primary gun, released the grappling hook and dived below. A fall from the seventh floor would be fatal and hence Lucas released the grappling hook again in search of anything he could probably latch on to. Just when every hope seemed to have been lost and he was getting too near to his death, the hook managed to latch onto an extended wire from a nearby building. Lucas came to a stop around thirty feet above the ground with a huge jerk before the rope finally broke off and he fell down heavily on his back. The grenades detonated and the Gunship came down on to the street as a ball of fire. Lucas had to move away quickly to ensure he didn’t get crushed by the fireball. He rose up slowly looking around to notice any suspicious behavior. He had surely bruised a rib or two due to his misadventures for the day. Lucas headed swiftly to the nearby alley before the cops and the authorities arrived. He would need to find himself a new hive and operate from there. His entire mission had been compromised.

  Princess in the Dungeon

  The Castillo De La Real Fuerza also known as the ‘Castle of The Royal Force’ located at the western side of the harbor in Havana was originally constructed to defend the city against the pirates. However owing to its inferior strategic position, it was eventually never used. The building, also considered as the oldest stone fortress of the Americas, was later listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Apart from being a tourist attraction owing to the small naval museum located inside, major parts of the fortress remains closed for visitors and hence provides an ideal hiding place for the shady activities of the mafia. The overall structure, made from limestone along with the thick sloping walls along the shore line, provides adequate fortification for the secret base of illegal operations that Rosmus carries out in the whole of Americas. The fort was adequately equipped with surveillance cameras, motion sensors, turrets and watch towers. Apart from these, the whole region was constantly patrolled by hundreds of mercenaries from Rosmus’s payroll. This was Rosmus’s dungeon, where he carefully held his secret dragon, waiting for the right time to unleash it on the world.

  Annie woke suddenly up as the cold water splashed or her face. As she slowly opened her eyes, she realized that her eyes had been covered so that she could not see what was going around her. She tried to stretch her body only to realize that her arms and legs were firmly tied together. She could hear the husky voice of two men briskly speaking in Russian. They were waiting for orders from their boss Rosmus. After a while when her veil was finally lifted, she looked around the place where she was held captive. It was a small stone cell meant for prisoners. Her feet were chained firmly to the ground while her hands were tied to the chain using a rope. Another rope was hanging from an iron hook in the ceiling which was attached to a pulley on the other end of the room. The room did not have any windows. The temperature and ventilation was controlled by vents on the ceiling. The iron door was guarded by two well built, vicious looking men.

  As
the walkie-talkies crackled, one of the men came towards her, pulled down a rope which was hanging from the ceiling, and tied a knot around her neck. He moved to the end of the room and slowly started to turn the pulley. Annie could feel the knot tighten on her neck as the rope was pulled farther causing her body to dangle between the iron chains on the ground and the rope from the ceiling. She could feel herself being suffocated as the rope tightened its grip around her neck. As she felt a sense of dizziness, a short man walked in the room and moved towards her. Although she could barely see the face owing to dizziness, owing to her initial research before the mission, she could recognize the man as Yuri Rosmus.

  Rosmus ordered the guard to loosen the rope. As soon as the lever was released, the rope loosened a bit and Annie fell onto the ground. She coughed out loud as she desperately gasped for breath. Rosmus bent down slightly, held her hair and pulled her up as she yelled in pain. ‘I don’t like insects crawling in my backyard. I love to watch them die as I burn them alive…..unless it’s of any use to me. You are going to tell me what Lucas was doing in my casino yesterday and what you both were up to.’ Annie stared at his face in utter disdain and Rosmus did not like that. He used his right knee to kick her twice in her abs. Annie cried out in pain. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. What did you come here for? What is your mission?’

  Annie looked around the room once again trying to identify any possible option she could use to free herself. ‘If you think you will escape and survive, then you are wrong. You are in the most secured facility in the entire country…. Castillo De La Real Fuerza. One more thing, that partner of yours, Roy Lucas…. He died a nasty death too.’ Annie could hardly believe what she had just heard. Lucas could not die. He was the absolute best of ANNT. ‘The last that I heard was, my gunship blew him up along with your hotel. The bastard is finally dead’. Rosmus laughed out loud as if to show off his achievement and satisfaction to Annie.

  ‘Since you haven’t spoken a word yet, you are of no use to me. My boys will treat you with a lot of care before disposing you off. Farewell ladybird.’ Rosmus headed out of the cell as the second guard entered the cell and locked the door. Annie started panicking. She did not have much more time; she had to do something to escape. She could feel the rope tightening the grip on her neck as one of the guards pulled the lever. The chains clanked harshly on the stone floor as they were drawn and she slowly was pulled up. One of the guards walked towards her while drawing out an army knife. ‘We will make it slow and painful for you bitch. And then we will rip you off in pieces and feed the sharks.’ The guards chuckled. Annie could only hope for a miracle now. As the rope tightened round her neck dizziness crept in; her entire world turned dark as she struggled desperately to breathe. She had reached her doom.

  Moments later, after an explosion, the darkness disappeared as the rope was slightly loosened. She could breathe again. She was not dead. As she opened up her eyes, she could see the face of Lucas leaning over her like a guardian angel. ‘It’s about time you woke up and helped me’, he smiled. She smiled back at him. Roy Lucas was not dead; he was back to rescue her and to teach Rosmus a lesson.

  The Clues

  Lucas tried to figure out the sequence of events that had occurred in the past six hours as the cab headed towards Marianao. He needed to reach Maria and get in touch with the serpent. He also needed to chalk out a plan to rescue Annie and figure out who the mercenaries from the hotel were working for. He needed to figure out who Dimitri was and how all of this was related to the agency Viper and to Rosmus and Suleiman. He had damaged his watch while trying out his acrobatic antics earlier in the day. So, he pulled out a spare from his backpack. As per the display module, Annie’s tracking beacon was still sending a weak signal from her current location. He needed to find the decryption code in order to find out her exact location. Lucas also noticed something really strange…..another beacon was emitting a signal at the same distress frequency. The signal was pretty strong and was being emitted from someone very near to his present location. He asked for the cab driver’s cell phone to make an emergency call.

  He dialed for the Indian embassy. At the automated interactive menu, Lucas entered his pass code to gain access to the ANNT system. After a few validations, he obtained his decryption code. By the time Lucas entered the decryption code, Annie’s signal was no longer being shown in the system. Annie had probably entered a radio free zone packed with signal jammers. Based on the last position, she was somewhere near the Maximo Gomez Monument at the heart of the city. The location of the second signal proved to be of a greater amount of surprise. It was coming from his cab. The cab could not have been bugged since he had picked one out randomly from the alley. His earlier watch was dead…hence it could not have been emitting anything.

  Lucas searched his back pack frantically in search of the source. He emptied the contents…a set of specialized goggles, a silenced M9, a few blocks of C4 with detonators, a smoke grenade, a spare grappling hook and few rounds of ammo. The bag had a secret compartment at the back, housing a hand glider. Lucas looked through external pockets…a Swiss knife, PDA, a few miniature tracking patches and his passports and credit cards. The PDA was nonfunctional as he did not get a chance to charge it up. He lifted the PDA and opened the cover housing the battery and external memory compartment. The battery was present…however Lucas noticed something plugged into the memory card slot. Lucas did not have a memory card, ANNT agents were not supposed to carry data with them; they accessed and uploaded data to their central servers for analysis. All their machines were self-destructible in case the same was misplaced or any of the ANNT agents were compromised.

  Lucas pulled out the stick attached to his memory card slot. It was a unique memory chip like device with a small led attached to it. He put the rest of his stuff back to the backpack and put on his goggles. With the heat vision turned on, he could see the presence of a tiny power source within the chip. He searched for the device in the ANNT database based on the digital signature of the beacon. It was a prototype of the Assassination Precision Targeting Systems (APTS) project which was developed by the DRDO as a joint venture with the Kremlin a few years back before the project was subsequently shut down owing to the possible misuse of the device. DRDO had planned to develop a device which could be attached to the highly secured assassination targets so that they could be tracked and subsequently destroyed. DRDO planned to strike them with laser tipped satellite guided ballistic missiles belonging to the nations or the neighboring countries where the targets would be present at that point of time. That would in turn ensure that no fingers would be pointed towards the Indian Government or the Kremlin for the assassination of these sensitive targets. The system could be used to eliminate high profile terrorist leaders as well as could be used for tactical nuclear strikes using the nuclear devices of the parent country itself if required. It would consist of a self-powered microchip which would emit a signal encrypted according to the ANNT distress frequency criteria.

  The device could hide itself from external scanners by adapting to the frequency of the electromagnetic waves that would be used for tracking it. Hence such a device could potentially be un-identifiable by the security scanners at the airports and government organizations. The device could be attached to any object and could even be injected into the body of the target if required. The initial prototype was designed as a small memory stick and the DRDO was working on reducing the form factor for the subsequent versions. The Indian Government decided to shut down the project after the first demonstration itself owing to concerns on security and how the system could be misused if it was ever compromised. All the prototypes were destroyed under joint supervision of the DRDO and the GRU when the project was subsequently shut down.

  It seemed like someone had managed to get hold of a few pieces of the prototype which had purposefully not been destroyed during the purge. Surely there were other pieces of the prototype in the market since Lucas was too small and unimportant a target to wast
e such a valuable weapon on. If there were other pieces of the APTS around, then Lucas needed to find and destroy them before they could be misused. He also needed to find out how these prototypes managed to stay intact after the purge. Someone from the Indian or the Russian side must have been involved and Lucas needed to find them out too. As the cab approached the road leading to Maria’s duplex in Marianao, he noticed the presence of the police and emergency vehicles. A plume of black smoke could be seen around the corner. He was shocked at the sight of the place when his cab turned around the corner.

  Maria’s house had been reduced to a heap of rubble and the entire neighborhood was burning in flames. As per the policemen and the medical teams, a series of explosions had rocked the neighborhood earlier in the day. The impact of the explosions had damaged the entire neighborhood and the old buildings nearby were beginning to collapse. While the police and the firemen tried frantically to rescue the residents from the nearby buildings Lucas sneaked into one of the police vans and grabbed hold of a laptop. The last logs showed the details of the distress call made from the area by one of the residents about a possible missile strike. The police headquarters had later played down the claims of a missile strike and treated it as a terrorist attack. Maria’s residence had been identified and marked as an Al Qaeda hideout which was destroyed by the terrorists as they tried to cover up their operations when neighbors had started suspecting their actions. All the terrorists were killed in the process when their bombs detonated before they could leave the place. The deceased list showed Maria Rosario Morales as a prime Al Qaeda operative among four others who were possibly killed in the incident.