James Cameron and Charles Eglee own Dark Angel. My use is in no way meant to challenge their copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned (or any other) copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons (either real or fictional) is unintended.
IV
Men are seldom born brave but they acquire courage through training and discipline - a handful of men inured to war proceed to certain victory; while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter. – Vegetius
As Max gazed through her binoculars at Cameron Dean's warehouse, she focused her efforts on restraining any of the panic she knew most rational individuals would feel. She had already made out eight guards on the outside of the building – one on each corner of the warehouse's roof, and an additional four walking the perimeter. She was just about to begin moving toward the target when she caught sight of a new challenge – dogs. I hate guard dogs, she cursed silently. Max had always suspected that on some level, dogs knew she was not entirely human. Be it her scent, her attitude, or something more intangible, guard dogs had never been easy to avoid. They detected her immediately, and would always raise an alarm. While she also had an uncanny knack for intimidating dogs into silence as soon as she got up close, that would not help her keep them quiet until she closed the distance and got within arm's reach. A host of things could go wrong in the seconds that would take.
And of course each of the two dogs is being led by another sentry, she noted. That takes the total number of guards up to ten. I'm so not in the mood for this...
Clearing her mind of her discomfort, Max continued to watch the guards, trying to detect any particular routine to their movements. She quickly decided that the randomness of their behavior was either the product of years of experience, or its polar opposite – the absolute lack of discipline. Max could only hope it was the latter.
She began to move toward the structure, taking steps that did not make any sound to her superhumanly perceptive ears. She figured that would be enough to prevent the dogs from at least hearing her approach. Max knew that it would only be moments before guards would start realizing something was wrong. She simply needed to close the distance as quickly as possible, so that she would at least retain the advantage of surprise. Max spent none of her precious time reflecting on how this type of action was different than anything she had been doing for years. For so long she had only been breaking into buildings in order to steal. It was an entirely different type of activity, with the ultimate goal being to get in and back out before anyone knew she was there. This time she would not be leaving until the people inside had been punished for their crimes. More likely than not, she knew, several individuals were about to die. Serves them right, she decided callously. They had a choice, and they chose poorly. The underbelly of Seattle is gonna have to learn the price of working for Cameron Dean.
She ran as quickly as she could from the tree line that had been offering her cover, reaching the side of the building before anyone was the wiser. So far, so good. She kept her back against the exterior wall, sidestepping so as to keep herself as unnoticeable as possible. There was a guard leaning against a car only ten feet away, but he appeared to have no clue that he was not alone in the darkness. Max left the side of the building and stalked toward him, wrapping her right hand around his head as soon as she got within reach. A quick snap of the neck was all it took to remove one of the six guards on the perimeter.
Max then began to consider the situation, and reluctantly decided that her best chance lay in using the nine-millimeter handgun concealed in the small of her back. Her face grimaced with the realization, but Max shook off the thought. I came this far, she decided. If I do this half-ass, I'll probably get myself killed. A deep breath followed as she calmed her nerves, and a moment later she was pulling a small cube of C-4 from a pocket on her thigh. Within seconds she had attached a small primary explosive and a timer, which she set for one minute. She was then racing back toward the side of the building, and scaling the side by shimmying up a drainpipe.
Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, Max quietly counted off as she reached the roof. Timing was everything, and she knew she was right on schedule. All the guards on the roof every got as a warning that they were not alone was a blur of blackness moving against the dark background of the night sky. Each of the four sentries were dead, one with a snapped neck and the other three with gunshot wounds in the center of their foreheads. The silenced, subsonic rounds from the pistol had done their job, and Max was now one and a half seconds ahead of schedule. She could only smile at the result of her handiwork. She ran toward the opposite side of the building and jumped into the air just as the C-4 exploded behind her, igniting the car's fuel tank in a blaze of fire. With her diversion created on the opposite side of the warehouse, Max found it all too easy to incapacitate the one guard she encountered below and creep into the building unseen.
Upon entering she found exactly what she had been expecting. The large, open area was full of trays, beakers, Bunsen burners, and assorted bagfulls of pills. Three men in boxer shorts worked inside, with two men armed with AK-47's also present. Not surprisingly, everyone was facing the opposite direction when she entered.
"Well, what do we have here?" Max asked the group. Rather than wait for an answer, however, she dashed first at the armed guards, knocking one unconscious with a palm strike to the head, and killing the other painfully with a chop to his throat, crushing his trachea and causing him to slowly, but silently, suffocate.
The other three men were still standing dumbstruck, watching her do her work. The first offered no resistance as Max dashed up and caved in his sternum with a punch in his torso. The second had just seemed to realize what was going on when Max reached him, drawing a knife from beneath her tunic and leaving a paper-thin cut across the man's throat. She did not bother to wait, though, to see the look in the man's eyes that betrayed the knowledge that he was only moments from death, his life's blood flowing from the open wound. By that point, Max had already grabbed a hold of the final man.
"No, don't," he begged, collapsing to the floor in fear. "I'm just a chemist."
"A chemist?" Max asked with wry amusement. "The only chemistry you understand is how to make drugs. There are precious few chemists in this city making medicines, why not try out being one of them? No, you'd rather make stuff that kills people, wouldn't you? Do you honestly expect to get any sympathy from me?"
"Don't kill me," the man pleaded.
"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Max assured him. After all, it does no good for my reputation if I either kill all these people or knock them unconscious before they can see me. "I'll leave you alive, but you bring Cameron Dean a message for me," Max growled viciously.
"Sure, sure, anything," the man agreed.
"Tell him Justice has decided that his life is forfeit," Max stated evenly. Then, with one fluid motion, she sent her right foot into a powerful kick into the man's right leg, splintering his tibia and causing shards of bone to pierce his skin in a compound fracture. "There, you've received your sentence," Max said, ignoring the chemist's cry of pain and turning to finish off the guards. By the time she walked out of the warehouse, the sentries had all organized themselves again and were preparing to search for any intruders. Unfortunately for them, however, no one expected her to come from inside the building. Max was a trained soldier, and they were no more than thugs that served as hired muscle. They never stood a chance.
To be continued.............................