“What?” “What’s hooyah?” “Who? Us?”
“HOO-YAH!”
“Ah, now there was one solid hooyah out there. You all heard it. Now, all of you, give me one great big fucking hooyah, or I’m walking out the door!”
“HOO-YAH!”
“There were some wimpy ones in there,” Mike admitted. “But, overall, I’ll give you a sixty, with the curve that comes up to eighty.” He stepped off the dais and applied the key to the first rank on both sides and then stepped down the aisle.
“Where was that solid hooyah?” he asked, looking at the girls.
“Here,” Amy said, lifting her chin. “What are you, Ranger?”
“Bite your tongue,” Mike said. He unchained that rank and looked at the girl on the far end. “Pull it through, honey. I needs this girl. I wants her and I needs her.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back up on the dais. “Get this girl loose, do what you can for her. I have some errands I need to run. I’d like most of you to stay in your seats or sitting down at least. Do not open that door until I tell you. Some of you bigger girls, drag the bodies over by the door, we might need them later. Waste not, want not.”
“What are you going to need bodies for?” a short-coupled blonde who had sidled past him to get to the girl on the table asked.
“Barricades,” Mike said. “Other than sandbags, there’s not much better than a fresh dead body to use as cover.”
“That is gross,” another girl snapped. “Could you quit being so…”
“Mean?” Mike asked, angrily. “Hard? Macho? Male? Conservative? Overbearing? I just tracked you god damned wenches from the States by getting the bends in the unpressurized nose wheel of an airplane, getting busted up holding onto the underside of a damned truck, getting stuck in holes and getting touched by mustard gas! Not to mention killing about twenty of the fuckers that kidnapped you and were torturing you! Do NOT give me any of your whining PC liberal bullshit! This is why guys like me hate you fucking whiners! We don’t have time for you to go all weepy! Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” the girl said, meekly.
“You,” Mike said, pointing at the solid hooyah. “Name.”
“Amy,” the girl said. “Private Amy Townsend, Army ROTC.”
“Amy will do,” Mike replied. “Call me Ghost. AKs,” he said, turning and pointing to the weapons with two fingers. “Can you use one?”
“Yes, sir,” Amy replied, crossing to the weapons and picking one up. Then she suddenly bent over and gagged. “Sorry.”
“Dead bodies do that,” Mike said, picking up some sort of big bone saw off the floor. “Cover the door.”
He walked out and looked up and down the corridor. Still no sign of reaction. Good. He grabbed the second AK off the guard along with their web gear and slung one of the latter on. They not only had six magazines of ammo, the grenade pouches had fragmentation grenades in them. He shook his head at that. Frags were a good way to frag yourself; he hated the damned things.
He put his mask back on and went in the viewing room. The tall man had quit twitching as had the rest. He pulled the rest of the “samples” out of the bag, and the Semtek, then took the knife to the terrorist’s neck, cutting off the head. It was still pretty drippy when he dropped it in the bag.
He left the two AKs in the room, but took the ammo and went down the corridor to the door that had been a broom closet in the other one. Sure enough, there was a sink. He rinsed off the outside of the sample case, the AK he’d been using, the gas weapons, his gloves, and finally unmasked. The air had a faint tinge of mustard that made him gag, as much from his clothes he suspected as anything, but it was survivable.
He walked back to the torture room and tried the room across from it. It was being used as a storeroom as well. Not much useable except more railroad flares. He realized that they must be used for emergency lighting if there was a power outage in the building.
He put the case of them by the door, putting a few in his back pocket, and left it open. After that he walked back to the torture room. When he got back the room had, remarkably, organized itself. The girl had been taken off the table and was on the floor with two girls trying to staunch her wounds with more or less clean cloth taken from the bodies. The rest of the girls had mostly huddled by the walls, although a couple were puzzling over the video and computer equipment.
“I’m the only one with any firearms experience,” Amy said. She’d put on one of the assault vests and Mike found the sight very fetching.
“That look really suits you,” Mike said. “Really really suits you. Probably too well for my present lackanookie condition.”
“Thanks,” Amy said dryly. “I don’t suppose there are any clothes around?”
“Nope. Okay, ladies, listen up,” he continued, looking at the room. Most of the girls had seated themselves along the walls, as being more comfortable than the seats. “The good guys should be on their way soon. We have to hold this position for a few hours until they get here. We’re just going to hang out here and wait for the good guys. Of course, the bad guys are closer, so we’re going to have to engage them for a time. I need two girls who can run and one more that has guts and has played softball.”
Some of the girls stood up and started forward but most sat down when there were other volunteers.
“Who’s the runners?” Mike asked. “Amy, get the door open and cover down the corridor that way,” he said pointing behind him.
“I can run, and I played softball,” one of the girls said. She was a strongly built brunette with a nice set of hooters that even without a bra stood high and firm. “And my eyes are up here.”
“I’ve made my decision,” Mike said, continuing to stare at the tits for a second, then reaching into his harness and extracting a grenade. “Ever seen one of these?”
“Grenade?” the girl asked.
“Just like a baseball, with some differences,” Mike replied. “Safety pin. Actuating spoon. Place the web of your right thumb over the spoon, maintaining a firm grip,” he said, shoving the grenade into the girl’s hand in the correct manner. “Keep squeezing the spoon. Straighten the pin. Pull pin. Throw grenade. Remember, once the pin is out of Mr. Grenade, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend. Got it?”
“Got it,” the girl said nervously.
“Runners?” Mike asked the other two.
“Yesss,” a slim blonde said.
“Well, we’re probably going to be killing a few bad guys,” he said, pointing to the two dead guards on the floor. “And we’re going to need ammo to do it. Your job will be, when I tell you, to run to the bodies and retrieve ammo.”
“Okay,” the brunette next to her said, looking at the bodies. “That’s not going to be fun, is it?”
“Nope,” Mike said, looking at the three. “You’ve all probably got names like Jenny or Ashley or Chelsea or something. But I can’t keep track. So you’re getting team nicknames.” He looked at the thrower and nodded. “You’re Babe. For Babe Ruth. Blondie is Bambi and brownie is Thumper.”