Chapter 16
The Battle Begins
A trickle of sweat ran down Kate's neck as she heard the door handle turn. She'd been on pins and needles for hours – waiting, watching. She had tried to make her escape twice. After the first time, they'd placed a guard in the room with her. The second time had left her with a large bruise and a nearly broken wrist.
The eyes of the guard traveled to the door, but he didn't move from the point at which he'd stationed himself: back to the wall, across the room from her, baton sitting at the ready across his lap. He wasn't about to give her an inch. He darted his gaze back to her, to make sure she wasn't getting any ideas.
The door opened, and both of the room's occupants tensed. When more Wolfram and Hart security entered, the guard relaxed. Kate, however, suddenly found her heart in her throat. Was this it, then? Was this the end?
Then, Wesley and Cordelia entered behind them. Wesley was carrying her, which wasn't a good sign. She should've recovered from her vision by now, or at least Kate reasoned it so. Her first impulse was a burst of hope, but then it quickly sank. They were prisoners, too, just like her.
"Got a couple more for you to keep an eye on," one of the escorts said. The room guard merely grunted, and the others left.
Wesley spared the man only a passing glance as he carried Cordelia over to the couch that Kate was sitting on. Kate got up and stepped aside for them. Wes laid Cordy down gently and stayed bending over her.
Kate leaned down as well. "Is she all right?" she asked in hushed tones.
"Fine," Wesley replied in a whisper. Dropping his voice still further he added, "Don't worry, she's faking. We're here to rescue you."
"Huh," was Kate's only reply.
"Although I must say," Wesley continued, still keeping his voice low, "with only one guard in here I would've expected you to be free by now."
"I got as far as the fifth floor once," Kate responded. "That's when they put him in here with me. I think I could've gotten past him if he were human."
"But he's not?" Wes asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Nope. And I didn't expect that, and that's why I'm still here." Kate shook her head. "If I had known he wasn't human, I would've hit him with something a lot heavier than I did. I didn't want to kill him. Turns out I didn't even phase him."
"What did you hit him with?" Cordelia asked, trying to remain unconscious-looking, but her curiosity getting the better of the acting job.
"Vase," Kate replied. "Ming dynasty. Probably genuine and worth more than I make in a year."
"What happened then?" Wesley inquired. It was important that he get as much data as he could about the creature in the room with them. If it was one he recognized, he'd probably be able to pinpoint a weakness.
"His eyes turned green and glowed. Red welts erupted all over his face. And he hissed something at me. Sounded like a cross between a lizard and a bear." She shrugged. "Then he nearly broke my wrist and slugged me. He's been sitting there like that ever since."
"Tologra warrior," Wesley muttered. "Very tough. Probably the safest thing to do is to put a knife in the back of his skull, just at the base of it." He shrugged. "Unfortunately, we don't seem to be carrying one right at the moment."
"Speak for yourself," Cordelia whispered. "Look in my handbag."
Kate surreptitiously opened Cordelia's purse and drew out a long, thin ice pick. Carefully palming it, she passed it to Wesley, who slid it up the sleeve of his shirt.
"When did you grab my N'Tau knife," he asked curiously.
"The other night," Cordelia said. "I was running late for a date and needed to put my hair up. I mean, I can't wear my hair down with that red dress. It just doesn't look right. So anyway, I was looking for some hair pins or something, and I asked you, and you just waved at your desk and told me anything you had would be in there."
"So you took a four thousand year old ritual execution tool on a date?" It's tough to communicate wry disapproval through whispers, but Wesley was somehow able to do it. It was, however, completely lost on Cordelia.
"A girl's gotta look right," she said simply.
"Score one for vanity," Kate muttered. She looked back over at the guard, who watched them ceaselessly but made no move to break up the discussion. "Okay, how do we do this?" she asked.
"We wait," Wesley said.
"For what?" Kate was tired of waiting.
"I think we'll know it when it happens." Wesley replied, barely hiding his own nervousness over the setup.
* * *
"Here goes nothing," Gunn muttered. He revved the engine of his truck, nodded to the vehicles to the left and right of them, and then gave the signal. One flick of his lights, and across the parking lot another vehicle was on the move.
There were a lot of things folks could say about a Hummer. How they got to be so popular among people in cities, Gunn had no idea. They are very big, very expensive, and impossible to park. Unless you were headed into the jungle, they just weren't that practical. But folks with too much money and ego loved them. And if there's one thing that Wolfram & Hart had a lot of, it was people with too much money and ego.
With that in mind, Gunn and his gang had no problems finding three different ones in the parking lot to choose from. They chose the bright yellow one for three reasons. First, because it was the most offensive looking of the three. Second, because the back window had a Harvard Law School sticker in it. But mostly it was because the license plate read 'SLDMYSL'.
"I hope your soul was worth it, pal," Gunn said to no one in particular. "'Cause in another three seconds your Hummer's going to be totaled, and I'm pretty sure Nationwide ain't gonna reimburse you."
There are a couple of other things you could say about Hummer's as well. One, they're able to climb the big staircases in front of large office buildings with ease. Two, they plow through glass doorways like they weren't even there. And three, when you load them up with gas cans and a couple sticks of dynamite, they blow up really, really well.
The demolition of the lobby was not total. It was, however, enough to get the attention of absolutely everybody in the building. That included the demon guarding Wesley, Cordelia, and Kate. As the explosion reverberated through the building, he jumped up and headed for the window. The glow of flames could be seen, as well as the convergence of vehicles.
Alarms began to blare throughout the building. Most of the workers were gone this late at night. Of those that were still there, most made no attempt to leave. They didn't get paid to flee. Besides, they'd probably be killed if they did.
Extra security was called in, though. Within moments of the lobby sprinklers getting activated, more than twenty guards had stormed into the area, accompanied by two demons roughly the size and shape of bipedal rhinos. Standing in a ragged line across the wrecked entrance were Gunn, Spike, and an equal number of angry street youths.
"Let's rumble!" one of them yelled, and the forces clashed.
* * *
Johnson made his way quickly and quietly through the warehouse, back towards Sheffield's office. His wrists were raw and bleeding from where the cuffs had bitten into them during the struggle. His face was bruised, and he could hardly breathe. He suspected that he had a punctured lung, and most likely extensive internal bleeding. He didn't know how long he could survive – he only hoped it would be long enough.
After killing Cook, he had first retrieved the key to the handcuffs and let himself out. Then he had grabbed the gun and tucked it in back of his pants. He left the body and the knife where it had fallen. There wasn't time to hide it.
Moving alongside what had once been the foreman's office, he darted a glance through the glass. No one was there. He opened the door and entered. Moving with purpose, he began opening drawers. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for – Sheffield's field command module.
Sheffield had changed the encryption key and timing sequence of all of their transmitters. That meant that MacKenzie couldn't pick them up on his module. A good thing if he was the enemy. But Johnson knew now that it was the other way around, and Mac needed all the help he could get.
Resetting the communications sequence on the module and remote updating the individual transmitters was not a forthright task. Most of the men on the team wouldn't have been able to do it. But Johnson was the communications specialist. He knew the equipment backwards and forwards. In actuality, he had been the one to reset them to the new sequence on Sheffield's orders.
Given his expertise, then, Johnson was able to remote reset all of the individual transmitters to the original set of mission codes. Once that was done, he set Sheffield's module to an entirely different set. Now Mac would be able to see them, and Sheffield would be the one who was blind.
Carefully, he placed the module back, and exited the office.
* * *
As the guard stared down at the violence erupting below him, Wesley cautiously moved up behind him and drew out the N'Tau knife. He stepped silently up to the creature's back, prepared to strike. Just as he drew his arm back, Cordelia cried out in the grip of a vision from the Powers. A real one this time.
The demon whipped around at the sound and saw the weapon in Wesley's hand. Wesley never had a chance. The demon grabbed his wrist and gave it a twist. Wesley was thrown across the room.
Kate wasn't waiting for an invitation. She came in fast and hard and knocked the demon back into a wall. Off balance, but not phased by the attack, he snagged up the chair he had been sitting in and threw it at Kate. The throw was wild because of his balance problem. Kate dropped as it sailed past her, striking the thick glass window. The chair burst into a dozen pieces on impact, and a hundred fissures formed in the window.
The guard stalked back towards Wesley, retrieving the N'Tau knife in the process. He snagged the dazed Englishman and picked him up off the ground. "You were going to stick me with this?!" he growled, a mix of human and demon is his voice. His eyes glowed green, and red welts had erupted on his face. The demon half of him was asserting itself. "Let's see how you like it."
He pulled his arm to strike, but Kate came up behind him and struck him in the back with the wooden chair seat. The guard dropped Wesley and instead struck at her with the knife. Flipping the chair seat in front of her, Kate caught the weapon – or more precisely, it buried itself in the wood base of the seat. A quick twist tore it free from the demon's grasp. Unfortunately, it was embedded so far in the chair that neither she nor Wesley would be able to use it.
Wesley quickly rose and looked about him for a weapon to use. The only thing he could see was the phone, so he grabbed it. He smacked the demon in the side of the head with it to no effect. The creature seemed intent on retrieving the knife from Kate. Looking to his left, he saw Cordelia caught in the throes of a vision. She would be no help to him.
His hand grasped the phone cord, and inspiration hit. He jerked the wire from the wall and the phone, and in two strides wrapped it around the demon's throat. He twisted with all his strength, and suddenly the creature became more interested in him than in Kate.
It thrashed, trying to get its hands on the wire. Wesley held on for dear life. Kate picked up another piece of the broken chair and struck it several times. The thing dropped to one knee, appearing to weaken. Now if the could just figure out how to kill it.
* * *
Spike was covered in gore. He'd managed to rip the horn from one of the rhino demons and plunge it into the heart of the former owner. The keening death cry of the creature could even be heard above the rest of the fighting. Then the second creature had rushed to the aid of its sibling, and Spike was engaged again.
The fight was exhilarating, at least for Spike. The thing he fought was five times his size, but he wasn't about to give up. He traded blows with it repeatedly. He picked up broken pieces of lumber to hit it with. Eventually, he managed to impale it on a newly exposed tube of rebar.
Most of the human guards were out of commission, and about half the gang members had extracted themselves to safety. Gunn wasn't going to let them endanger themselves any more than necessary.
Spike, however, was just getting started. Which was a good thing, because the second wave of guards was coming through the doors. And these were all demons.
* * *
Wesley's hands were beginning to blister with the effort of holding the plastic coated wire tight across the creature's throat. He was at a loss for what they could possibly do to stop it with the K'Tau knife out of reach. Then Kate stopped hitting it. He looked up to see why, and she pointed at the cracked window.
"How are these things versus gravity?" she asked.
"Let's find out," Wesley said. He began to drag the creature towards the window. Kate grabbed its legs and lifted it up, and then began to swing it. One, two, three. Together, they hurled the thing through the already damaged window and watched it fall. An additional security patrol had just pulled its cruiser up to the door – exactly below the creature's drop path. The impact of the falling demon crushed the roof and bent the door frames to such a degree that the two guards were trapped inside. The Tologra warrior didn't move. Apparently they weren't that good versus fourteen stories worth of gravity.
"Let's go," Wesley said.
"Agreed," Kate replied. They turned to retrieve Cordelia, now whispering faintly. Another voice stopped them cold.
"I'm afraid I can't allow that," Mr. Gray said. Kate and Wesley whipped around to face him. He stood calmly in center of the room, having simply materialized there. "Until Faith is safe, I must continue to hold you hostage." His voice held no emotion. "However," he added, gesturing to Cordelia, "the message she has just received is of great importance to Angel and the Scotsman. I suggest you get it to them quickly."
* * *
Angel and Mac peered through the skylight window of the warehouse. From what they could tell, the coast was clear. Mac had, however, disarmed two sensors so far, and there was simply no way of knowing where more of them might be hidden, or where the other members of Sheffield's commando team were.
They were just about to open the window when Mac's secure communicator beeped. "MacKenzie," he said to it.
"This is Wesley," came the reply. Apparently Cordelia had kept the other one with her.
"Are you safe?" he inquired.
"Not quite," Wesley replied. "Look, there's no time. Cordy got a message for you, from the Powers. Faith is being held in a makeshift hospital surgery on the North side of the warehouse, about a third of the way from the Eastern wall. They've started the operation and you only have about ten minutes to get to her."
"Got it," Mac replied. "MacKenzie out."
"Wait," shouted Wesley. "She also says that one of the commandos reset the transmitters to the primary mission frequency."
Mac looked at Angel, who shrugged. There was never any telling what kind of message one could get from the powers. "One moment," he said to the communicator. He reached into his rucksack and took out the portable command module and set it to the primary mission frequency. Sure enough, all of the blips came up. He could tell where every one of his opponents was.
"Got it," he said. "MacKenzie out." He put the communicator back in his pocket. He showed the display to Angel. "This gives us an advantage," he muttered.
"Right," Angel said. "What about the alarms?"
"They'll show up here," Mac said. "The only one who'll know we've tripped them is us." Mac studied the display for a few seconds more.
"Who would've done this?" Angel asked.
"Johnson," Mac said with surety. He'd always believed that if Johnson had known what was really going on he'd have switched sides, too. Mac pointed to one of the moving blips. "Looks like he's headed for the surgery to stop them. Let's give him some help."
* * *
Gunn and Spike surveyed the carnage. Another twelve guards were dead or incapacitated. No more were awake and fighting, but it was just a matter of time. Gunn had taken a moment to dispatch the other gang members. It was just him and Spike now.
"How long are we going to keep this up?" Spike asked.
"Until my friends are free," Gunn replied.
"I was afraid you'd say something like that." Spike stretched. "All right, then, bring'em on."
* * *
Mr. Gray looked dispassionately at Kate and Wesley. Seeing the fear in Kate's eyes, Wesley was reluctant to attack. The creature was beyond what any of them had fought before. So they waited. Mr. Gray said nothing.
* * *
Johnson headed for the infirmary area. He had to find out if Cook was telling the truth. And if he was, he had to stop it. He couldn't allow them to do something so inhuman. He was so intent on his mission that he nearly collided with Sheffield at a corner, him going one way and Sheffield another.
The moment they saw one another they both knew the truth of the situation. Pure reflex drove them both to draw their guns and begin firing as they dove out of the way. Twelve bullets were fired in less than two seconds at close range.
One of them found Michael Johnson's heart.