“I was watching,” Peter said.
“How many people have we lost?” I dreaded asking that.
“Just Abe,” Peter answered.
“Where’s Tony?”
“With the others.” Peter pulled up the monitor. “This is a live feed.”
The video showed the dining area. Tony was in a chair with his hands tied behind his back to a chair, as was Skyler, Ben and Craig. Melissa and Duke were not tied, but had guns pointed at them.
It was hard to make out, but it looked to me like Birth Mark man, the Breast Feeding mother and another man held them hostage.
“How did this happen?” I asked. “I mean… how? And how did three of them get all of our people under control?”
“First,” Peter explained. “When Tony arrived up at the bay, Ben was at gun point so Tony dropped the weapon. They could have turned it. But these sickos have Baby John at knife point.”
I looked to where he pointed and sure enough, the one man without a weapon, held the baby. The kids were running around freely in the room as if nothing was going on.
“We’re missing two and Spencer.” I said.
“Level Five. Agriculture,” Peter explained. “They left him to chase you. He raced down there. They have him now. But he’s armed. Always is. The weapon is in the back waist of his pants. He just is waiting for a chance.”
I brought my hand to my face and ran my fingers down in frustration. I noticed something happening in the dining area. “What are they saying? Can we hear?”
“Yeah,” Peter turned up the volume.
“Pipe down!” Birth mark man yelled at Skyler. “All of your distraction tactics are not gonna change things.”
“Then what are you waiting for!” Skyler blasted.
I saw the look on Tony’s face, he was thinking and he kept tossing warning glances at Skyler.
“We’re waiting on Lenny.”
“Where is he anyhow?” Meagan asked. “What the hell. We’re doing all his work.”
“Let him go. He’ll be here,” Birthmark man said. “He wanted to have a little fun with that one’s girlfriend.” He pointed at Tony.
Tony lost his cool and, hands tied, he raged forward, chair and all toward birthmark man. Before he could reach him, Melissa cold cocked him with the butt of the rifle, sending Tony flying back.
Joie watched and screamed.
Quickly, I covered her face. “Oh my God. He’s okay, baby, he’s okay.”
Joie whimpered against my shoulder.
“Where is Lenny?” Peter asked. “I lost him.”
“So did they,” I replied, “He’s dead. Joie and I took him out.”
“Wow. Good job, and good psychological game on them. They have no clue.”
“Okay. Okay.” I held up my hand. “Listen. This has to stop. We can stop this. We outnumber them.”
“They’re armed.” Peter argued.
“We still outnumber them. Spencer is not down, not yet, he’s on his way up and they’re moving slowly. He’s waiting on something, I can see. That’s why he’s moving slow.”
“He’s moving slow because he can’t breathe,” Peter explained. “He has pneumonia. Anna.”
“There has got to be a way. And we have to do something before they find out Lenny is dead.”
“I agree. But what are our options?”
“We take them.”
“Yes. Sure.” Calmly, Peter nodded. “We take them.” He stated. “How? How? We have you. Who, by the way, is the most qualified because you took out Lenny. After you is a child. We have me. I’m a science guy. We also have an aging, depressed, ailing cop, and a chain smoking seventy-five year old woman. We are not the Avengers here, Anna.”
“There has to be some way. Something. If we just put our heads together and think.” I said.
“If you two don’t mind.” Nelly struck a match and lit up another cigarette. “I have a plan.”
38 – AVENGERS
“This is so crazy,” Peter said. “This actually may work.”
While Peter was busying being the narrator of the video feed, and while we were engaged in a conversation, Nelly, puffed on her cigarette, looked at the situation and came up with a plan.
Everyone was involved.
It hinged, though, on the first part working.
That involved Nelly.
It also involved the fact that the two with Spencer believed wholeheartedly that she was feeble and not a threat.
There wasn’t time to argue, she spewed forth the plan like General Patton. We listened, nodded and agreed. It was the only plan we had.
Taking the .38 handgun from the switch room drawer, along with Tom’s hidden bottle of bourbon, Nelly, extinguished her half smoked cigarette, warned us not to throw it away and left the switch room.
She knew they were moving slowly up the stairwell.
We didn’t have audio on the feeds from the stairs and we could only hope that Nelly was doing what she said.
“If they hear a non threatening sound, they won’t shoot first or get violent,” she said.
Nelly’s plan was to sing in a drunken manner, while making her approach before they saw her. She held the bottle in her hand. The small handgun was in her other hand, concealed under the long sleeve of her over sized sweater.
Was she singing?
We guessed she was, because the woman and man who escorted Spencer stopped in the stairwell. They even looked like they were laughing.
Spencer however, was more diligent in watching them.
Finally, we saw Nelly come into view and as planned, she stumbled down the steps.
“Oh, they aren’t buying this,” Peter said.
But he was wrong.
Stationary on the steps, Nelly swayed back and forth. The woman near her reaching to grab her arm. Holding the bottle in her left hand, Nelly took a drink, then instead of lowering it like she pretended to do, she did a back handed swing of the bottle smashing it into the face of the woman.
The woman tumbled back and before the man could even rush forward in reaction, Nelly extended her other arm and fired a single shot.
“Holy crap.” Peter commented. “She’s an elderly female John Wayne.”
I wanted to scream with joy when I saw it. The woman was down, the man was shot, and in youthful enthusiasm, I high-fived Peter and then Joie.
She did it. Nelly did it. When she first told us she was a good shot, I wasn’t too keen on believing her. However, she had just proved it to us.
Part one.
Sound traveled and echoed in the bunker and we knew it. Immediately we watched those in the dining area for a reaction to the shot.
Peter and I had talked about it.
There were only three of them there and six of us in that room.
There was no way they were going to take a chance and send someone to follow a single shot. Not when, to the best of their knowledge, there were still three of their people in the bunker.
We wagered on only their acknowledgment of the shot, and we were right. It was time for part two of the plan.
Nelly and Spencer arrived back at the switch room.
The man was shot in the chest and they left him to bleed out, while they had locked the unconscious woman in a storage closet on the third floor.
“That was amazing planning,” Spencer said. “Thank you. I was waiting until they brought me to the others, but this is much better.” He watched the monitor and studied. “Have they moved much at all?”
“No,” I answered and the kids seemed to be staying with the baby on the far side of the room.”
“Good,” Spencer stated. “We know what to do.”
I held up three fingers to Peter. “Three seconds. That’s all. That’s all you need to do.”
“I got it.”
I took a deep breath.
Nelly was also the brainchild of the second part. She reminded us that the exterior stairwell wasn’t the only way to get from the lower level of Hive Two to the dining level. The spiral fire escape staircase, east of the artificial window was also an entrance.