The sound of the shot roared over his head as the rifle slammed back into Mackenzie’s shoulder, and he worked the bolt quickly in a practiced motion. He didn’t even hear it as his mind focused on what he was going to be doing in another few seconds. The second man was already in his scope, as the rifle vibrated with the power of its last shot, and Trooper Mackenzie of the Australian SAS wrapped his finger around the trigger again.
In the back of his mind he heard the second roar come from Givens position, the sound washing over him and being filed away. In his peripheral vision he could see the other four members of the team moving in up ahead, while the terrorists and hostages began to blur in the general chaotic confusion resulting from his shots.
Then his rifle roared again, and Mackenzie was moving to the next target on his mental list.
“The power disruption must be coming from the central circuits, we’ve traced all the other systems.” Saman Sol, electrical engineer trained at CalState said to the other members of the group as they moved through the facility toward the central tower.
“You’d better find it soon,” One of the guards ordered to accompany him growled. “Or Amir will have your hide, and ours as well.”
Saman nodded grimly, ignoring the half grumbled threats that came from some of the others.
Knuckle draggers.
He had no respect for the fools who had to resort to such crude forms of violence to get their points across. Gun wielding fools of their sort were idealized in too many places already, including the so called terrorist subculture that Saman belonged to. Those fools weren’t the ones who got things done, it was his type.
“Just through here,” He said aloud, leading them through the last of the black heat sinks that drew warmth in from the surroundings and stored it in power `cells’ filled with water. At night that heat would function in reverse, powering the turbines in the absence of the sun, and stabalizing the Tower’s power output.
“What’s that noise”
Saman frowned, “Noise”
Then he heard it too and paused in midstep.
“It sounds like.thunder” He said, confused.
“Too steady.more like water falling.”
Saman shook his head, “That’s impossible. Condensation is channeled along the inside of the tower, water is reclaimed silently.”
The guard shrugged, hefting his Chinese made assault rifle. “Whatever. It’s coming from the tower, though.”
“Come on,” Saman growled, breaking into a run.
The `security’ people hurried to catch up to him as he burst through the last of the heat `cells’ and into the cone shaped base of the tower. Huge concrete sections marked the change, but it was the sound that was out of place. It kept growing louder as they approached.
Saman skidded to a stop as he ran out into the central cavern that made up the base of the tower, and was promptly drenched in near freezing water. He stared up, his glasses covered instantly in the water and couldn’t see more than a dozen feet above him. He ripped them off, but still the visibility was such that none of them could see more than a few dozen feet in any direction as they tried to move through the four hundred foot diameter room.
“What the hell is going on, Saman!”
“I.I don’t know.” The self-professed `thinker’ admitted, “This is meteorologically impossible.”
“Apparently not. Is this what’s screwed up the power”
“Huh What” Saman blinked, surprised, then immediately noted that the air was going the wrong direction.
Why hadn’t he noticed that before
“Yes.” He hissed slowly, shaking his head. “The Down-welling design.”
“In English, Saman!”
Saman started to explain, but a sudden crack of sound and fury exploded around him, cutting him off. In seconds the air itself seemed to come alive, flaying skin from his body and driving Saman to the ground as the men around him yelled and screamed something he couldn’t make out.
There were popping sounds as he fell, gunshots he supposed, but they seemed far off.
As Saman Sol hit the ground, the rest of his group came under redoubled fire from the depths of the rain soaked tower room, explosions of black smoke detonating in the air right in their midst, spraying them all with lethal shrapnel until the last man hit the ground.
A moment later, four black garbed men appeared from the rain like ghosts and carefully checked each man and their equipment. When they were all confirmed dead, the leader nodded and straightened up, “Alright, let’s get these bodies out of here. The sprinklers will clear away the blood for us.”
The SAS men nodded, getting quickly to work as they cleared the men and weapons away, leaving only a rapidly lightening stain on the tower floor.
Lieutenant James Guffrey of His Majesty’s Australian Special Air Service Regiment broke from cover when the first explosive booms of the sniper shots rolled over his position. They had agreed to let the two long guns be the signal that started the assault, so as soon as the sound hit them, Guffrey led his team out and around the corner of the plaza.
The hostiles were only a few meters away from the position they’d managed to work their way up to, but there were unfortunately more of them than there were on the SAS assault team.
Guffrey’s MP7 stuttered briefly, the five round burst stitching one of the terrorists from pelvis to shoulder as he ran, dropping the man where he stood and attracting somewhat more attention than he’d have liked. Behind him the others had their own assault weapons, a mix of MX-90 rifles and MP7 submachine guns, pressed tightly to their shoulders as they quick stepped behind him.
The smell of powder and sound of gunfire quickly overtook the general screaming that had erupted after the first sniper shots had dropped the initial terrorists, and as they moved it all came down to training for the members of the SAS force.
Hundreds, even thousands of hours of Close Quarters Battle (CQB) training had left it’s mark on the assault team, and they didn’t even flinch as the opposition began to return fire in a sporadic, almost random fashion. The team kept moving forward, occasionally pivoting at the hip without changing their direction of travel to drop another Tango in his tracks.
Guffrey’s target was three men wearing Hazardous Material (Hazmat) suits, standing out in brilliant canary yellow they made pretty targets against the general foray of chaos and excitement surrounding the attack. He didn’t dare open up on them, however, because they were tinkering with an ominous looking container that he would rather didn’t get to divulge it’s contents.
As the Lieutenant made tracks toward the trio of Hazmat garbed Tangos, he noted a spray of red gore erupt from one of their heads as a sniper round from either Mac or Givens took the man down. The others dropped to the ground almost instantly, taking cover behind the tank they were working on.
“Get the canaries!” Guffrey yelled over his shoulder as he saw one of them reach again for the tank, “Get the.Ooof!”
He went down hard as something caught his leg, turning over in a fluid motion to look down along his body. Guffrey’s eyes widened as he saw the blood streaked face of one of the Tangos he’d counted as out for the count glaring up at him, the man’s meaty fist enveloping his ankle like a manacle.
“Son of a.!” Guffrey cursed, kicking at the man’s hand as he tried to get loose. “Let go of me you bastard!”
The bloodied terrorist didn’t seem to understand, or care, that Guffrey was speaking. He just fisted his way up, hauling himself to his knees, as Guffrey swung the MP7 around to target him.