Chapter 7: Beat It!

Rush

We climbed into the helicopter and found Ramloja sitting inside with a pilot and a henchman. It seemed as if the henchman was highly trained, with the most advanced weapons, including a D.A.D System that was just given to him.

"Use it wisely." Ramloja ordered. "We don't want this helicopter blowing up."

Alex climbed in from the other side. He took off some of his guns, and only had a P99 strapped to his waist, sitting perfectly in the holster.

He nodded and proceeded to the back first, checking what was at the back.

I followed suit and trailed behind him. I saw numerous henchmen sleeping in the double-decker beds above, so I tried not to wake them up. Instead, I silently knocked them out with a punch. Alex also did the same.

We arrived at the boot and found guns. There was a Hutchinson A3 (Shotgun), a Saf 5', a P99, and a D.A.D System. Alex took a D.A.D System and clipped it on his belt.

I had everything I needed, so I just assumed a position of over watch.

"Block! Tackle! Where are you!? I need those spanners!" Ramloja shouted from the cockpit.

Uh oh.

I walked quickly to the cockpit, and saw Artemis with Ramloja. Ramloja seemed to be torturing Artemis with a gun, but maybe perhaps not giving him the spanner would help Artemis. The pilot was conversing with his co-pilot, navigating to what seemed like a fortified base, from the picture attached to the map of Singapore. I could hear pieces of dialogue from them.

"... Maybe we should take this way..."

"... No, this way! Stealth..."

"... The reservoir is too deep..."

"...Trust me..."

"... Are you sure that it is the MacRitchie reservoir that you want to go to?"

Ah, now that was a valuable piece of information.

"Where is my spanner!?" Ramloja shouted, breaking my trance.

I quickly took a spanner and walked towards him.

Now this will be fun.

"Here's your spanner," I said. "But it won't land on your hand."

Ramloja looked up and stared at me, wide-eyed.

"It'll land on your head."

I took the spanner and knocked it on Ramloja's head, making him howl in pain and fall down. Ouch. That must have hurt. Ramloja got up quickly, recovering from his knockdown. He retaliated by landing a punch in the stomach and then grabbing my head, knocking it several times against the chair. Alex joined in, shooting Ramloja's leg two times, and then holstering his gun while he charged. Ramloja was rammed into the co-pilot's chair, making the co-pilot ram into the controls in front. The helicopter suddenly spun uncontrollably: the pilot accidentally pressed the MANUAL PILOT button.

The henchman got up and started attacking Alex. I got up from my dizziness, telling myself that I did not get up; Alex would be dead by now. I started by taking out my hand gun and shot the henchman until my clip was out. I reloaded it, filling the hand gun with 16 fresh bullets. The henchman lay motionless on the floor, obviously dead. I shot Ramloja in the other leg, making Ramloja fall to the floor, vulnerable to any punch or kicks from anyone. Alex did the final blow kicking Ramloja in the stomach.

"Steer!" I ordered.

The two pilots dutifully turned around and switched the settings back to its original state.

"Go back."

They steered back towards the base, wanting to talk to each other, but remained quiet.

I left them and went to where the unconscious Ramloja was sitting.

"What am I going to do with you?"

. . . . .

"Over here!" Giorgio shouted.

We landed with a smooth landing as the helicopter touched down right in front of them.

"We need to get out of here and into Ramloja's base." Alex briefed the others. "It's our only chance of finishing this once and for all."

"But we don't even know where it is." Chris shouted over the roar of the engines starting.

"Trust me."

Alex went over to where the two pilots were.

"Go. Go to your boss' base." Alex ordered the two pilots.

"But we don't know where it is." The pilot said, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

"Look," Alex impatiently answered. "I know you know where the base is, so stop fooling around. I know you said something about passing through the MacRitchie reservoir, right? So stop giving me all this tomfoolery and go."

The two pilots were in a state of shock when he heard this statement. They obviously didn't know someone would actually listen to their conversations.

The two pilots recovered from their shock and steered.

. . . . .

"This is the furthest we can go if you don't want to be caught by radar." The co-pilot said, landing in the middle of the jungle. The pilot was not driving because he was accidentally knocked out by Tom. So much for tomfoolery.

"The base is over there." He continued, pointing at the behemoth structure.

"Thanks." Chris said and used a silenced P99 to shoot the co-pilot two times in the head.

"Why did you do that!?" Artemis said, unusually surprised by the violence going on.

"So that he won't go back and report." Alex said as he was putting blocks of C4 on the helicopter.

Before anyone could ask why he was doing that, he said, "You'll see."

SWISH!!! SWISH!!!

The bushes were nosily being pushed aside by everyone as they passed through. We were near the giant base. Just by a little bit. Everyone was given a silenced P99, just in case we needed to take them by stealth.

"Hey, you!" One of the guards pointed at Alex and ran.

Or maybe not.

Alex pulled out a tiny detonator, flipped the safety cache, and pressed the big, red button.

From far away, a big explosion came.

BOOM!!!

All of the guards rushed to the fallen helicopter, forgetting that there were intruders in the compound. Everyone took out the silencers from their guns and kept moving. Most of them switched guns. Only Butler didn't.

We ran inside the base before the garage doors closed shut. I did a head count. Seven of them. Strange, there should be one more.

Butler!

A ran to the small window at the garage doors and found Butler banging on the door. Obviously, he was not heard by anyone, because the garage doors were made of steel, and not even a gunshot could be heard, much less a knock.

I looked again to see Butler being pulverized by a D.A.D System shot.

SPLAT!!!

Blood was covering the window.

"Okay," I announced. "Artemis, you are the last survivor of the Fowl family in this group."

Artemis was shocked to hear this. He understood right at that time that Butler was gone from this world. Gone. Nonexistent.

He sank to the floor. He found a Big Sauer, Butler's Big Sauer, and shoved it into his pocket. He grabbed a lot of clips from the rack forcefully. For the first time, he actually felt angry and guilty at the same time.

"All right," Artemis said, filled with rage.

"Let's get to work."