A Guardian Angel

by Williams, Phoenix

  “There is a Winestock,” the researching mercenary said to the others. “He's been posted close to New York, but he's been unaccounted for. Looks like it could be him.”

  The merc-cop at the intercom sighed. “Could be,” he muttered before opening the metal door.

  Barney stood hunched in an uncomfortable posture. He looked up at the mercenary who opened the door. “I'm so sorry,” Barney said.

  The Knights swarmed in, shooting down each of the guards. Bodies hit the floor in the blink of an eye. Barney braced himself for the moment, but still stood in the doorway with shock in his eyes.

  “Get in,” Rosa ordered him.

  Barney was pulled into the garage by Rosa's men. They kept guns on him once he was inside, peering into the dark room. A light switch was flipped on and a row of fluorescent tubes illuminated in succession. The garage floor they were on was an empty concrete room. Only three Decree vans remained parked in their spots. Metal rigs hung off the walls, unrecognizable to Barney. Rosa stepped up to him. She put her hand on her lieutenants' guns, lowering them away from Barney.

  “Why're we letting him go?” the lieutenant asked her in a wounded tone.

  “He got us in here,” Rosa started, her voice calmer than his. “We have nothing to gain by killing him.”

  The lieutenant looked frustrated. “We have nothing to gain by letting him live,” he argued.

  “Nothing to lose, either,” Rosa raised her voice.

  “When has it been a problem?” the Knight asked her. “We are tying up loose ends.”

  “Please,” Barney piped in. His body was flushed and cold, but he hadn't the energy to panic. Rosa and the other two Knights turned to him and stared into his eyes. “I can help you get around the building faster. I can help you gather the bombs.”

  Genuine sympathy pulled down on the skin around Rosa's eyes as she looked over the mercenary. Barney was unimpressive to behold. She couldn't imagine being intimidated by the frightened man before her. She felt none of the anger that she had for the Decree Nation when she looked at him. The two groups seemed difficult to associate in her mind, their only similarities being the uniform he wore. Even that didn't fit well.

  “What's your name?” the Latina questioned him.

  “Slechta,” Barney replied. His eyes bounced around on all of the rebels' faces. They were wide and ablaze with caution. His mouth hung slack with nerves.

  “What do your friends call you?” she specified.

  The mercenary was surprised. “Barney,” he answered without thinking on it too long.

  Rosa gave a decisive nod of affirmation to the merc-cop before stepping back among her followers. “Barney comes with us,” she stated. The other two Knights shared a look of surprise. The frightened mercenary winced at their looks. He knew they did not favor him.

  “That doesn't make sense,” the argumentative rebel commented. “That's a lot of risk. He's like all the other Decree dogs. He needs to be put down.”

  Ferocity burned in the Latina's irises. Barney himself tightened his muscles in a bracing manner upon viewing the look of seniority on Rosa's face. Her thick lips tightened until they turned pale. She looked back and forth between her two lieutenants' faces.

  “Why did you join the Knights?” Rosa interrogated the man. “To save people or to kill mercenaries?”

  With shame, the man took a step back to signal that he couldn't argue any longer. Rosa looked to the other Knight, who made an uncomfortable expression. He shook his head to signify that he had no objections.

  “We're going to keep an eye on him,” Rosa explained, turning to face Barney again. “He's not going to lead in front of us, but he'll direct us where to go. He's going to show us where the explosives are, but he will NOT touch them.” She walked up close to the mercenary, who sighed to himself in relief. “You get that? If you try to dupe us at all, I'm going to shoot you in the legs and leave you next to the bombs as they go off.”

  Barney swallowed hard, nodding.

  “Let's go,” Rosa ordered.

  “We're in the kitchen now?” one of the Knights asked as they made it up the stairs.

  “Cafeteria,” Barney replied, his boots squeaking on the polished tile. The large, cavernous room was empty, the gigantic ceiling lights dead. Not a soul occupied the gloom. The atmosphere echoed each footstep the four of them took as if they were mic'd. They moved with haste, following Barney's verbose directions. He hung back in the middle of the formation beside Rosa herself. Barney led the Knights through the sterile cafeteria and toward a backroom hallway.

  “When I was here, they mentioned the explosives, but they never told us where they were,” Barney began to explain. “However, I remember being told that they were in key points on every floor. Ten of them.”

  “What key points?” Rosa said, trying to keep up with the mercenary.

  “I don't know for sure,” Barney answered. His tone of fear and defeat had transitioned to one of frantic enthusiasm. “But there's only a handful of places I can think of on this floor.”

  “How do you know?” one of the Knights asked.

  Barney didn't reply but instead directed them through a marked door. They stepped into a cold and dry maintenance area with access to the ventilation system and the electrical for the floor. When Barney stepped forward, one of the lieutenants raised his gun, but Rosa stopped him. The merc-cop hesitated at the sound, but continued with a reassuring nod from Rosa.

  “I'm not entirely sure what kind of explosives we're dealing with, but – ” Barney's voice trailed off as he found the device, an odd black box attached to the base of the wall. There were yellow warning labels slapped all over the thing. A large padlock clung to the bottom of it.

  “That's it?” Rosa asked.

  Barney bent down to take a look at it. “Yeah,” he groaned as he stood back up. “That's it. Go ahead and disarm it.” He stepped back.

  The Knights stood in contemplating silence, staring at the bomb. Barney could tell that none of them had any earthly idea how to remove the explosives. For the first time that day, a grin appeared on his face. A soft chuckle slipped out between his teeth.

  “That's okay,” Barney said to the stern looks he received. “I'll walk you through it.”

  “Time's running out,” Rosa urged one of her lieutenants as she passed him. They had found an abandoned janitor cart on the ninth floor, which she pushed as fast as she could alongside Barney. The weight of five clunky bombs was difficult to maneuver around the offices of the fourteenth floor. Barney reached out to help guide the cart as he ran.

  “Ah, here it is!” Barney exclaimed, looking back over his shoulder. He saw the other two Knights returning with one of the bombs. After they deposited it into the cart, Barney beckoned them over. “Get this one.”

  The two men knelt down to the black box that the mercenary indicated. “That was the only one we found,” one of them waved back to the cart.

  “What?” Barney gasped. “That doesn't make any sense.”

  The Knight shrugged, then turned around and began detaching the explosive.

  “He can't stay for much longer,” Rosa moaned. “How many more of these do we need?”

  “Well,” Barney started, his forehead glistening with sweat, “these are pretty small explosives. I had expected them to be much larger since the floors are gigantic. I'm guessing that there must be a valve in the gas pipes,” he pointed up into the ceiling. “They probably seal the building, vent the gas out into the air, and then ignite it with these explosives.”

  Rosa glanced down at the bombs in the cart as Barney explained. “So...” Rosa signaled Barney to continue.

  “We need at least five more,” Barney concluded. “Eight to be safe.”

  Rosa sighed, turning to push the cart to the elevators.

  Something different was apparent once the four of them stepped out of the elevator onto the top floor. It was just something about the atmosphere tha
t seemed much less empty than the rest of the floors. They rolled the cart up and past the receptionist's desk, loaded with its thirteen black bombs. The bronze letters that hung on the wall informed visitors that they were now in the outer offices of the administrative department of the tower. They turned down the left path from the desk until they entered a large room with glass cubicles.

  In the darkness, something fell off of a desk somewhere. There was almost no pause between the clatter of that object hitting the floor and the sudden bursts of gunfire. Glass splintered and shattered as bullets cracked through them. The cart kept rolling as the Knights and Barney all dove behind a desk. The two lieutenants dashed over to an opposite desk, dropping the safeties on their rifles. Someone shot at them.

  Barney cowered behind the wooden drawers. He shook with each crack of the guns. Rosa had begun returning fire. The merc-cop felt a weird sensation of respect for the Latina as he watched her shoot across the offices. She didn't blink and she didn't flinch. Barney would have never been able to guess that she was a school teacher.

  Papers were shot through, tossing sheets into the air. Wood splintered on impact. A computer monitor split open and toppled off of the desk it had sat upon. Barney slid his head upwards so that he could peek over the edge. Dark shapes had started moving toward them, pushing from their covers. The staccato of their guns continued as they advanced.

  He ducked down and squeezed his eyes closed. Over the noise, Barney could hear Rosa gasp. “They're not Decree,” she said.

  “What?” Barney asked with panicked quivers.

  “They aren't Decree!” Rosa hollered at her men. Confused faces turned toward her. “Hold fire!”

  As soon as the Knights stopped shooting, the other party ceased as well. In the silence, Barney could tell that their attackers had stopped advancing.

  “Who are you?” a southern man's voice called out from behind a desk.

  “We're the Knights of the Proletariat,” Rosa answered, turning her head toward the voice. “We are not with Decree!”

  Whispers could be heard from the other group for several seconds. One of them sounded upset. “You need to turn around and leave,” the voice ordered them.

  “Negative,” Rosa replied. “We came here for Graves. We're going to get Graves.”

  Again, there was another quiet pause. Barney's back twitched in discomfort as he held himself in an awkward, frozen posture. The anticipation was murder.

  “You are interfering with a federal black op,” the voice yelled. “If you don't leave, we WILL open fire.”

  Rosa bowed her head in frustration. “Look, we do not want to cause – ” Gunfire interrupted her. She dropped down behind the desk. Her breathing was rapid with a sudden wave of adrenaline. Barney watched her with a terrified countenance.

  The lieutenants indicated to Rosa that they were running low on rounds. The shots were more spaced out. “We need to push them,” Rosa commanded them.

  There was a small window of silence while the attackers reloaded. In the blink of an eye, all three of the Knights leapt around their desks and sprinted to the next closest one. Barney froze in fear as he watched them. No matter how much he demanded his muscles to react, they wouldn't. They only quivered in response. The gunfire resumed.

  Barney caught the janitor's cart in his sight when he looked back for a way to flee. His immediate instinct was to hide behind it as he wheeled his way out the exit door. The gaps worried him, though. He glanced forward at the militants. Rosa looked back at him. He couldn't just run.

  With as little hesitation as possible, Barney dove at the cart. He stumbled, clinging onto the edge of the thing. Rosa stared back over her shoulder at him with wide eyes. His hands shot into the cart and pulled up one of the small black boxes. Bullets started crashing around him when the operatives redirected their fire on him. Sweat beaded out all over his face as he worked. He was aware of the gaps in the janitor's cart behind him. He threw the little black door on the bomb's case open and extracted two identical wires. Shifting to the left after a round hit close to his hands, he stripped the rubber off of the copper with his teeth. He stood up and displayed the explosive to his attackers. He wielded it up to the Knights too as they turned to watch him.

  “Stop!” Barney screamed. “Stop shooting right now or I'll kill us all!”

  The noise froze. Silence followed a cease fire as every face stared at him. Barney watched them all with heavy breathing, terrified that they might call his bluff. He side stepped next to the cart again, holding the wires out like an exhibit. He had no idea if any of them knew that he clutched onto the audio wires from the alarm's speaker. Either way, he held them out toward them.

  “No one move!” Barney barked. He made fast glances behind him to watch where he went as he walked backwards. He pulled the cart with him as he moved. The elevator couldn't seem further from the mercenary. The silence was thick, only penetrated by the creaking of the cart's wheels.

  “Sorry,” he breathed once he arrived at the elevator. He tossed the bomb back in the cart and disappeared behind the closing metal doors.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rosa muttered under her breath as she watched the number above the elevator decrease.

  There was an awkward silence that followed. Everyone looked around at each other, unsure of what to do with themselves. Enough time passed without fighting that it did not resume. Instead, everyone looked up at the ceiling when a slight whir began rumbling it.

  “Graves isn't going to stay any longer,” Rosa stated through the hum of the propellers. “That's his helicopter. You want him and we want him. We can't waste time anymore.” She stood out in the open, her gun lowered and her tone strong.

  One of the federal operatives stood up as well, holding his weapon off to the side in a nonthreatening manner. “Alright,” he said. He was the man with the southern accent. “Put your guns down and we'll go.”

  “God!” Rosa cried, intimidated as much she was weak, which was little. “Shut the fuck up and get moving!”

  There were charges already placed around the bolts of Leroy Graves' office door. The government boys had prepped the breach and then had gotten interrupted by the Knights' elevator opening. Barney's bombs still sat abandoned by the receptionist's desk. All of the guns were loaded and the tactics had been planned as they took their positions and detonated the charges.

  With a loud bang and the tumbling of the thick metal door, they piled in. The marching of their boots thundered over the plush red carpet. A light hissing clicked on as the smoke cleared out. They jolted to a stop.

  Balloons dropped from the ceiling out of large bags that had been rigged to the door. The colorful things fell all around the invaders' confused heads like autumn leaves.

  Leroy Graves was not in the office.

  “Hi there!” Graves' voice greeted, emanating from a speaker on his desk. His voice was a mocking friendly tone. “Looks like you managed to get inside my office. Good work guys! But unfortunately, I was never here today.”

  The Knights shared a look with the agents as a grin could be heard cracking in the recording of Graves' voice.

  “I understand your rationale for this attempt, I do,” he continued. “You are all a dying species. This world I'm making is not made for you. Not hospitable. Like us all, your instinct is self preservation. You do not want to live in a world built for the modern philosophies that we're moving toward. Your archaic way of holding onto ancient superstitions and inexplicable notions of right and wrong is harmful to humanity. You have been misguided.

  “Inferior though you are, you can still threaten the advancement of man,” the dry tone carried on, all warmth gone. “You're like a virus, able to infect good and intelligent people. You threaten my empire. I can not allow this to continue.”

  Rosa started sniffing. Something smelled wrong in the air, accumulating in strength.

  “Currently, there is a heavy concentration of flammable gas flowing through this
entire top floor. About half of the tower's purging charges have been hooked up to a battery ignition within the room. The electricity had been cut when you intruded my office, so the exits' magnetic locks are in place. The elevator will not work. There is no longer an escape.

  “My grandfather built this tower and my father helped Decree become what it is today, but that all means nothing if you succeed,” Graves said. “I can rebuild my tower. But you cannot rebuild your revolution.”

  “No!” Rosa cried out.

  The tower exploded.

  -Chapter Thirty-

  Graves

  “The explosion in downtown Manhattan resulted in as many as sixty confirmed casualties, including onlookers from the ground below. Ambulances from all edges of the city have been hard at work since late this morning when the Decree Tower bombing shook the nation, rushing injured from the site to several emergency rooms. Firemen and rescuers are still rummaging through the rubble in the street, looking for more survivors. The death toll is predicted to be over one-hundred,” the news anchor with silver highlights in her hair reported into the camera. All of the talking heads on television were squawking about the same thing, wearing the same expressions. Images of the scorched tower danced along the screen. There were tearful people covered in soot on the street.

  Leroy Graves smiled as he watched.

  “Among the dead is believed to be the CEO and president of the Decree Nation Leroy Graves himself,” the news woman continued. An image of Graves was put onto the display. “Graves was in his office at the time of the bombing, organizing personnel objectives. The bomber has been identified as Rosa Marina, the leader of the terrorist organization known as the Knights of the Proletariat. Marina was also killed in the explosion.”

  Leroy laughed out loud in celebration, clapping his hands together. He turned the TV off and started lumbering over to his personal bar.

  He hid out in an old family cabin, deep within the woods. There were no roads that led to it and the only other person in the world who knew it existed was his wife Loretta. It was decorated with exquisite furs and the such, warm and comforting. He had built the thing with his father when he was just a teenager. Nothing had changed in the dozens of years since he had last been here.