Disclaimer: Characters from the wildly popular CBS drama "numb3rs" are respectfully, and without personal profit, borrowed.

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How Did This Happen? Chapter 25

When Cortez cut Charlie down, he left the rope dangling from the rafter. He sliced through the rough circles of hemp on Charlie's wrists, carelessly and viciously. On the second one, he continued to drag the blade of the knife downward, opening a 6-inch-long gash along the forearm. Charlie hit the floor in a heap. Cortez commanded him to rise, and he honestly tried, but his legs would not hold him. Cortez began to kick him in the ribs, and Charlie rolled a few times, finally making it to his hands and knees. Blood dripped down his arm, and he crawled through the puddles until Cortez told him to stop. Charlie could see a tire of the van in front of him.

Manuel slammed his foot into Charlie's back, making contact with the bleeding cuts from the whip, and Charlie groaned and flipped so that he sat on the floor, facing Cortez and the van. Bringing his wounded arm up to cradle it against his stomach, he breathed rapidly and saw Martinez and the ever-present, ever-silent medical aide, repositioned in the back of the open-doored van. They stared at him, ready for Act II.

Cortez looked at him as if he was something he had just scraped off his shoe, and shouted, "AUZINO!" His voice was loud, to be heard over the noise of those who prepared the aircraft, and soon one of the men broke away and jogged over to Cortez. Without taking his eye away from Charlie, he snarled his order. "Pliers."

Auzino disappeared, and Charlie swallowed convulsively. He had not been 100 percent when the battering had started. Now, between the whip lashes, the knife wound and the kicking, he was afraid he would lose consciousness from the pain. Something warned him he did not want to do that. He could feel himself sweating, and he was losing his connection with reality. It seemed as if before Auzino left, he was back again, handing Cortez the pliers…and then Cortez was on the cement in front of him, pulling his injured arm away from his chest. Charlie tried to resist, but Cortez was much bigger, and stronger, and he held the blood-slick arm firmly. He looked directly into Charlie's eyes then, his own black ones cold, and oddly mesmerizing.

Charlie wondered if Cortez was somehow hypnotizing him, as Manuel secured the pliers around his little finger. When he cracked it as if it were a walnut, Charlie barely reacted. Cortez repositioned and secured his grip on the pliers, and prepared to twist the finger off Charlie's hand.

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It was an unfortunate bit of timing.

As the large hangar door swung open, Sanchez, the pilot, was crossing to climb into the aircraft and taxi to the fuel station. He glanced outside, intending to check the weather, and saw instead at least two dozen black-clad federal agents, spilling out of two FBI SWAT vans. Immediately he yelled and pulled out his pistol. The yell alerted the others within the hangar – but it also alerted the agents. Sanchez did not so much as get a shot off before he was hit with three himself. He dropped, mute and dead, to the ground.

Cortez raised his eyes from Charlie long enough to assess the threat. The pliers dropped, bouncing off Charlie's leg, soon to be replaced by the Glock. With one glance back at Martinez in the back of the open van, Cortez took off in a running crouch to join the firefight.

Martinez had not arrived in his position without a certain predeliction toward survival, and assorted talents. He could pilot the aircraft himself, if he had to. The old man receded, and the terrorist emerged, as he judged the open distance between the van and the aircraft. Leaving the cane behind and trusting his aide to hang onto the oxygen tubing as if it was a leash connecting them, Martinez slid out of the van and buried his fingers in the gash on Charlie's arm, twisting, and pulling the mathematician to a stand. Charlie's protests of discomfort could not be heard over the gunfire – not that they would have mattered.

When he was standing, Martinez hooked an arm around Charlie's neck. With surprising strength, he positioned Charlie with his back to his own chest, directly in front of him. "We go to the aircraft," he hissed in Charlie's ear. Sticking as close to the back wall as possible, with the medical aide slightly behind him, Martinez began to drag Charlie across the space to the jet.

Slightly behind the vans on the tarmac, the command vehicle had skidded to a sideways stop, passenger side facing the hangar. The Directors and Don all slid out the driver's side. Merrick peered cautiously through the windows and watched agents position themselves in clumps behind riot shields. There was little other cover to be had, on the airfield. A bullet whizzed over the command vehicle, and he dropped quickly, muttering. "Damn." He held onto Don's arm, afraid the agent was going to make a move to join the assault.

Tompkins, earpiece in place, scooted closer to them. He handed Don a pair of binoculars, and Merrick let go of his arm. "I have confirmation snipers were in place before the door opened," he panted. Martinez is against the back wall, approaching the aircraft. Eppes – he's using your brother as a shield."

Don raised the binoculars cautiously over the front bumper and looked for a long moment before all-but collapsing to the ground. "Son of a bitch," he complained, not even noticing when Merrick took the binoculars to get his own look. "That old man is Martinez? Who's the guy behind him?"

"His medical aide," answered Tompkins. "He carries the portable oxygen, sees to other…" His hand went to his ear, adjusting the earpiece, and he spoke into his collar. "Repeat. Position 4, repeat." Tompkins listened intently for a few seconds, and then looked at Director Merrick, who had finished with the binoculars and was back in the huddle. "I have a sniper with a clear shot at the oxygen tank."

Don stared at him, and began shaking his head. "No. No. It will explode."

Tompkins looked at him, then back toward the hangar. "Does anyone have a clear shot at the hostage?", he asked his collar. "Drop shot, only."

Don half-stood, growling, and Merrick pulled him back down. He jerked his arm away from his boss, and glared at them both. "What the hell are you talking about? You're going to shoot Charlie?"

Tompkins refused to meet his eyes, looking instead at Merrick. "A drop shot. If we can drop Charlie a millisecond before we hit the tank, Martinez and his aide will take the blunt of the oxygen explosion. There's a possibility Charlie won't be killed." He looked at Don, then, with serious, sad eyes. He spoke with regret. "We cannot allow Martinez to get to that jet."

Don stared at him in silent horror, then appealed to Director Merrick. "My God, Richard, they're going to sacrifice Charlie. You have to stop this! This is insane!"

Merrick couldn't hold his gaze for long. "There must be some other way," he started, looking at Tompkins.

The NSA Director didn't answer, speaking again into his collar, instead. "Positions 4 and 1, coordinate. One, you are to drop Dr. Eppes. Do not, I repeat, do not shoot to kill. Four, take out the canister, one second later.

On my mark, Position 1."

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Don did not decide to deck Director Merrick and run onto the airfield, screaming Charlie's name, but somehow that is what happened. He made no decisions to usurp authority. He only decided to save his brother. His injured ribs protested and were ignored, as Don charged toward the hangar, yelling at the top of his lungs.

In the hangar, Charlie could not hear Don's voice over the gunfire, and the blood rushing in his ears – but movement on the tarmac caught his eye. As he tried to focus, tried to understand what was happening out there, he recognized Don's running style. He had spent most of his childhood watching Don run in various baseball games, and he was sure it was him. Besides, he reasoned, who else would stand up in the middle of a firefight and hurtle toward him?

If Don wanted to talk to him this badly, the least Charlie could do was meet him halfway. His right arm, with its knife wound and crushed finger, had been cradled protectively against his chest while his left hand clawed ineffectively at Martinez' grip on his neck. Now, he increased the clawing activity, distracting Martinez, and brought his right elbow up hard and fast, backwards, until he felt it connect with flesh, tooth, and bone.

Martinez gurgled through a broken nose and his grip loosened. Together with Charlie's frantic clawing, enough slack was created for him to slip to the cement. He took off in an odd, running crab-crawl back toward the van, waiting to be hit in the back with a bullet, trying to zig and zag and keep close to the ground. His goal was the van. If he could get in the open back of the van, he could use it for cover, and slip out the driver's door on the other side.

He had just launched himself for it, a bullet humming through his hair, when the world exploded.