“Do it, Kevin.”
Permission granted, the technician moved forward with the strip as Jacob turned around and placed his wrists together. Anselm kept the shotgun ready as his eyes roved the scene, watching each person in the room as closely as possible. He should have brought help, even an extra man or two, but any person with him was one less trying to rescue the hostages or prevent the release of the virus into the upper atmosphere.
Twisted as it seemed, arresting Abdallah was secondary.
It was, however, his mission in Tower City.
The man, Kevin, Anselm presumed, approached Jacob hesitantly with the flexi-cuffs. He was obviously caught between fear of the shotgun in Anselm’s hands, and the fear of the man he was approaching. Fear, or respect. Kalindon had a reputation as a man who inspired others to follow him, and Anselm supposed that made his decision to follow Abdallah all the more striking.
“S.sorry Director.”
The man reached forward with the cuffs as Anselm watched, but Jacob seemed to have other plans. The big man twisted as soon as the younger man touched his wrist, pulling him around and then shoving him hard across the floor at Anselm.
The Interpol agent reacted quickly, sidestepping the thrown man and clubbing him across the skull as he passed to ensure that he didn’t get up and cause trouble from behind as he brought the shotgun to bear on Jacob.
Jacob was already coming across the room as he did though, so Anselm squeezed the trigger. The roar of the assault twelve gage was deafening in the small room, leaving a ringing sound in Gunnar’s ears even as the momentum of Kalindon continued to drive his heavy body right into the Interpol agent.
They went down in a crumpled pile, the Daewoo shotgun clattering off across the floor as Anselm struggled to get his hands under the heavy body. He finally managed to throw off the dead weight of Jacob Kalindon’s corpse, the smell of blood assaulting Anselm’s nose even as it soaked into his clothing and covered his hands. He rolled clear, letting the body thump over, and came up with the tacky grips of his Fabrique Nationale Five-Seven Extended filling his fist.
“Freeze!” He screamed as one of the men reached for an assault rifle propped against a table.
When the man didn’t stop instantly, he pivoted and fired a single shot. The five point seven millimeter bullet snapped across the room, briefly connecting Anselm to his target, and bored right into the man’s shoulder. It’s lightweight tungsten tip cored through bone like an icepick through cardboard, bursting through the shoulder and into the chest cavity where it encountered soft tissue.
The heavier slug of aluminum wrapped around the base of the bullet lost energy slower in that medium than the lighterweight tip, causing the slug to try to `pass’ the point and the bullet tumbled through the terrorists body cavity, dumping all of its energy in a split second. When it finally came to rest against his rib cage, the powerful bullet had cored a path from one side of his body to the other, and the terrorist simply slumped to the ground where he was and didn’t move again.
“Down on the ground!” Anselm yelled, coming up to his feet and moving forward.
He grabbed the flexi-cuff restraints from the desk where the man had set them and screamed at the remaining terrorist while his eyes roved the room.
Abdallah!
The man was gone!
“Get down! Down on the ground! On your stomach, put your hands behind your back!” Anselm ordered, his voice booming as he tried to shaking the ringing of the shotgun out of his ears.
The man complied, slumping to the ground and moved his hands behind his back while Anselm quickly tied them together with the nearly unbreakable plastic strips. When he was done with that, he went back and did the same to the man he’d clubbed with the shotgun, and then he quickly confirmed that Jacob and the other man were dead. They were.
“Damn.” the Interpol agent whispered, looking over the equipment for a moment before hauling the single conscious man to his feet.
“Which one controls the jamming and radar! Which one!”
Anselm shook him a couple times, until the man pointed to a system, then he pushed the man into a chair and ordered him to stay point as he examined the system.
“I’m no good with this crap.” He growled, drawing out the American Consulate issue portable from his pocket. He casually flipped it open and tapped on the highlighted `last contact’ name on the buddy list.
“Agent,” Natalie Cyr’s face appeared only seconds later, telling Anselm that while her day may not be quite as bad as his, she wasn’t straying too far from her work either. “I’m glad to see that you’re alright.”
“I’m in the control room,” He said without preamble, “I’ve got a lot of systems here, and I’m looking at the one that controls the jamming and radar systems. Have anyone that can help me shut this crap down”
“Of course,” She smiled confidently, “One moment.”
Colonel Pierson growled as he had to duck low under a sporadic burst of automatic fire that raked his position.
“God damn it, Son, get that son of a bitch!”
“Yes Sir!”
The Soldier he’d given the task too shifted control on the American made Objective Crew Served Weapon (OCSW) and gave the onboard systems a brief instant to calculate range to the target before opening fire.
The twenty five millimeter weapon opened up with a staccato beat as the barrel jerked back with each shot to absorb recoil. Across the battlefield that had once been a school clouds of black smoke appeared in midair over the target, sending killing shrapnel behind the barricade that enemy gunner had been using.
“I think I got him sir!” The trooper shouted over the sound of fighting.
“Good man, now do it again!”
Pierson turned back to where one of his scouts had just returned, sliding in behind the hastily erected barrier in a move that would do a rugby player proud.
“Talk to me Son.”
“Three more groups, Sir.come around from the south!” The younger man panted.
Pierson nodded, kicking three pebbles over to the young man and nodding to a rough scale model of the surrounding terrain he’d built with the help of the local fire fighters. “Show me.”
“Here.here.and here, Sir.” The young man said, dropping the pebbles in place.
“Alright, good. Go out and find me, Carson. He’s down that way,” Pierson pointed, “And tell him to get his people around to.”
They were interrupted by a sound entirely unexpected in the furor of this battle.
The Colonel’s radio chirped.
For a moment no one moved, and it almost seemed like the furor of the gunfighting abated to near silence, as they all looked down at the radio. Then the moment was gone and the Colonel grabbed for the electronic device like it was mana from heaven.
“Pierson here!” He growled into the system.
“Colonel, this is Brigadier Genalde. I understand that you’re in a bit of a pinch”
“Damn Sir, good to hear your voice!” Pierson said, waving signals to his men, telling them to put their eyes and ears back on.
The general chuckled at that, “Doubt that Colonel, but I do have some good news for you.”
“If you mean the Jamming is down, I’d just figured it out, Sir,” Pierson said, grinning ear to ear.
“More than that, Son. The Radar is down, and we’ve got a flight of American Comanche Recon/Assault Gunships heading your way. They’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
Pierson raised his eyebrow at that, but refrained from asking the obvious questions. Given the situation he was in, he didn’t care where the help came from. “I’ll take em, Sir!”
“I thought you might,” Genalde replied with a hint of humor almost hidden by the tension in his voice.