Case 4: Masada, Part 7
Disclaimer: Same as before. The idea of Carmen thinking of Zack and Ivy as practically family has been toyed around with by fan fiction authors before, and I am merely using it. I did not intend to plagiarize.
C.J. Sandiego, the Diane flashback at the beginning is to illustrate Hal's worst fears with regard to Ivy's fate. Also, just out of curiosity, I wonder what songs you'd put into a CD that would best describe our favorite couple (Hal/Ivy).
~ ~ ~ ~
Hereford, UK
19 September 1999: Hal Olden sat in the left seat, the passenger seat, of Digger's Land Rover Defender. "Quit being so fidgety you wanker." Digger grumbled, "You're not the first bloke to have fallen in love."
"Eight months mate, I haven't seen her in eight months." Hal replied.
"You're gonna never see her again if you don't quit acting so bloody anxious." Digger replied, "I've been down that route before, you love the girl, you marry her, you two have a few years of the best sex you've ever had and then you punch out the 2.5 kids and then it becomes..."
"Digger, no matter how cynical you act, I can tell you and Beatrice are still 100% in love. Especially when you were moaning her name in the middle of the night in Belize." Hal replied.
"You wanker!" Digger replied, grinning, "Yep, Beatrice may have gained a few pounds but she's still as lovely as before and...You bloody wanker! Watch where you're going!"
"Digger, that was an ambulance, no reason to get emotional. But then not having seen your love for months at a time does that." Hal quipped.
"Remind me to give you and Diane a minging dead sheep for your wedding gift." Digger replied.
"Digger, if you don't shut up I'll drown you in the bloody river." Hal replied, "Besides we've just admitted our feelings for each other. We're still trying to start a relationship, we've not even considered marriage."
"I know how the story goes you wanker, so don't tell it. She sent you that picture a couple days ago and you've been staring at it ever since. What did she write on it by the way?" Digger said.
"Yes." Hal replied, with a thousand watt smile, "She said yes."
"Well here's the turn for Hereford's ACME Field Office. Time to pick you two up and then watch you start smothering each other." Digger said, "On display in five minutes, my lunch."
"You dickhead." Hal groaned, "What the hell?"
"There's a bloody ambulance in the parking lot." Digger said.
"I have eyes, Digger." Hal replied. The two men stopped the car outside the parking lot and ran towards the crowd of spectators.
Hal noticed a familiar automobile, and noticed the seat was splattered with blood. 'Oh dear God, let her be alright.' Hal thought.
The paramedics were moving a stretcher, and atop it was a body bag. Hal raced over to it and confirmed what his brain already knew. He was staring into the bloody face of the woman he loved...
~ ~ ~ ~
Tel Aviv, Israel, 0800 Local Time
"Olden, I can't approve of your plan. It's suicide." Wells said, "We're working on finding Detective Darren. You're to do nothing."
"Yes sir, I understand." Hal replied and hung the phone up, "Bollocks to it. I'm doing it anyway, just like I planned. I'll be damned if Ivy shares Diane's fate."
He checked to see the Beretta was loaded and the magazines were working properly. He was likely going to need every last round if this rescue operation went ass upwards, as it was liable to do. Murphy's Law was known to act on every combat operation. Demerest and Elsa he needed for the purpose of giving an anonymous tip to the moment he found the hideout and extracted Ivy safely.
"You'll need more than two Israeli soldiers to help you with your plan, Hal." Said a voice behind him.
He whirled to see Carmen Sandiego standing there. "Carmen, what are you doing here? Come to think of it, why were you in Britain on our last case?"
"I've always thought of Zack and Ivy as the son and daughter I never had in some ways." Carmen said, "I was helping Ivy make sure that you didn't do something you'd regret, namely murdering Holbarth."
"Right. But what about now?" Hal asked.
"The same reason and also because I'm no friend of Maelstrom." Carmen said.
"So I gathered." Hal replied, checking the Beretta again, making sure the magazines were working properly and that there was indeed a round in the chamber.
~ ~ ~ ~
"How did it feel to see the 'terrorist scum' lying dead at your feet?" Aziz asked Ivy. She was in the basement of a house somewhere in Ramala. She could have been in the middle of the Arabian Desert for all she knew, because of the blindfold covering her eyes. A length of chain wrapped around her wrists and padlocked and connected solidly to an eyebolt in the wall held her hands over her head. Ivy was on her knees, with a length of rope around her ankles.
"He tried to kill me, I had no other choice." Ivy replied.
"Foolish girl!" Parhouz said, backhanding her, splitting her lip, "I know that! But you now leave ME no other choice but to seek vengeance. You are fortunate Maelstrom wants you alive for now. Good. For it would be a pity for Detective Olden to miss seeing his partner die in front of him. Did you seduce him yet, I wonder? Did you manage to garner sympathy from him for your odious deed? Well, I know he will attempt to come to your rescue, and we're ready for him."
"You underestimate ACME, Parhouz." Ivy replied.
"I may underestimate ACME, but I don't underestimate the SAS. Britain's best counter-terrorist units if I'm not mistaken. If I'm not mistaken, First Lieutenant Harold Olden has been serving with 22 SAS for quite some time, six years if I'm not mistaken, after eight years as a boy soldier with the Royal Marines." Parhouz replied, "Now I will need to keep you quiet."
As he spoke he stuffed a rag into Ivy's mouth and undid the blindfold around her eyes. He then tied what was her blindfold around her mouth to keep the rag inside. Ivy almost choked on the gag, and her protests were reduced to barely articulate grunts as Parhouz reached a hand inside her shirt.
"You truly are a beautiful woman. I can see why he likes you." Parhouz said, cupping the same hand under her chin.
He walked off, leaving Ivy still fettered to the wall, in the basement of a house in Ramala. Outside she could hear gunfire as Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants traded shots.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Are you sure you know the location?" Hal asked as he and Carmen drove down the road towards Ramala. Carmen simply nodded.
Demerest's task was to alert his unit of the Palestinian stronghold where Ivy was being held. The moment Hal infiltrated and rescued Ivy, an Israeli bulldozer unit, supported by detachments from the Golani infantry brigade would literally send the structure crashing down around Parhouz's head.
Hal wrapped the shamag (what British soldiers call an Arab's head cover) around his head, obscuring his facial features. He made sure the pistol was accessible and there was a round in the chamber. If he had a silencer, he'd use it, but he didn't. The best SAS operations were ones where very few enemies were even seen, much less killed, and the objective was still accomplished. That didn't mean Hal wasn't prepared to kill, far from it, he wanted to avoid having to kill anyone if need be for the purposes of stealth. The moment that he extracted Ivy from the location, the Israelis were going to tear the place to pieces.
"How's your Arabic?" Carmen asked.
"I can pass for an Arab, I'm not expecting to be in there for more than ten minutes anyway." Hal said, then thought, 'If I'm in there for longer than ten, the Israeli snipers are gonna start engaging the Palestinians and then the assault begins.'
Hal pushed the thought from his brain and concentrated on the mission. He tried as best he could to blend in amongst a group of Palestinian civilians and as he neared the building he snuck inside.
He ducked inside a crevice as he saw a pair of Palestinians, carrying AK- 47 assault rifles in their hands. He could understand a few words of their conversation, and the words he understood indicated that Ivy was down in the basement. He made his way, covertly, down towards the basement, ducking out of sight whenever he saw a militiaman come by.
He had the pistol out, in case he had to shoot anybody, but he again hoped he'd be able to accomplish this without killing anyone. Murphy's Law decided to intervene at that moment because the moment he reached the basement he saw another guard stop at the entrance.
'Wanker, looks like I'm gonna have to kill this bloke.' Hal thought, 'And quietly too. Maybe if I sneak up on him and break his neck.'
Hal kept to the shadows, hugging the stone wall as he snuck silently towards the guard. He was already preparing on how he was going to snap the guard's neck and where he would hide the body as he made his escape when Murphy decided to intervene again.
The guard turned around and right when he did, he saw Hal. The guard raised his AK-47 and Hal instantly remembered his pistol drills. He pulled the Beretta free and squeezed off a double tap. He fired two shots in rapid succession into the guard's forehead. The operation had just gone from covert to overt in less than a second. Hal kicked the basement door open and saw Ivy as soon as he ran down a staircase. By the muffled grunts he heard, Ivy had obviously been gagged.
Hal saw Ivy was chained to the wall, and gagged for good measure. She looked up at him, her desperate eyes peering over the gag that muted her. Hal pulled the gag around Ivy's mouth away, pulling the rag free.
"Are you alright?" Hal asked.
"I'm fine," Ivy said, shaken, "can you get those chains off me?"
"Bloody hell!" Hal groaned and said, "I'll be back with the keys."
Hal ran up the stairs, and as he did, he saw another guard standing over the body of his fallen comrade. Without hesitating, Hal squeezed off another two rounds, hitting the terrorist in the head. He then took the AK- 47 and spare magazines from one of the guards just as another appeared.
'Wanker!' Hal thought, and squeezed the trigger, hoping that it wasn't rigged with the jarked ammo the Israelis had been inserting into Palestinian caches. The AK went off, a burst of fire hitting the terrorist in the chest. Hal yanked the keys off the first man he'd killed and ran downstairs.
"Hal, what's going on?" Ivy asked.
"They know I'm here." Hal replied, unlocking Ivy's restraints.
"Somebody's gonna be filling out a lot of paperwork when we get back to HQ." Ivy said, jokingly.
Hal untied her feet and handed her his pistol, "I don't suppose you know how to use this?" Hal joked back.
"Hal watch out!" Ivy shouted as the third terrorist, the one Hal had shot with the AK, staggered shakily to his feet and squeezed the trigger.
Hal expected to feel bullets tearing through his frame but didn't feel a thing. All he heard was an explosion as the bolt of the AK-47 in the terrorist's hands exploded outward and flew into his right eye. Hal picked up a grenade from one of the dead terrorists as he heard more of them coming down from the second floor. Hal lobbed it up the staircase and heard screams and an explosion shortly after.
"Run!" Hal shouted, "They're gonna blow this place down!"
"Who?" Ivy replied.
"The Israelis. I told them in ten minutes to blow this place down." Hal asked.
"When did you sneak in here?" Hal asked.
"At about 1400." Hal replied.
"That mean's we've got about thirty seconds to clear out." Ivy replied, apparently being tied up in a basement didn't mess up her flawless internal clock.
"Ivy, you've got to tell me one of these days how you manage to tell time without even glancing at a clock or your watch." Hal replied.
"Trade secrets, Hal." Ivy replied.
Hal discarded the AK-47 and shamag, so that he wouldn't be mistaken for a terrorist and ran outside just as two Palestinian gunmen that were lying in wait for them fell dead. Two Israeli snipers, one of them Demerest, had just begun the assault.
Hal immediately ushered Ivy to a nearby ambulance where a paramedic placed a blanket around her shoulders. Hal instinctively took her in his arms and Ivy welcomed the embrace. As they held each other tight a car pulled up, Chief Inspector Rosenthal stepped out with a cell phone.
"Hal, it's Wells, your boss, he wants to talk to you." Rosenthal said.
"Olden?" Hal replied.
"Olden, you're in deep trouble. I don't know whether to demote you from Senior Detective to Detective or put a commendation in your file. Is Darren alright?" Wells asked.
"She's fine, do you want to talk to her?" Hal asked.
"Not right now. Olden, I'll settle for you doing a ton of paperwork for this one." Wells said, "Good to have both of you back."
"Likewise, sir." Hal replied.
~ ~ ~ ~
TBC
Disclaimer: Same as before. The idea of Carmen thinking of Zack and Ivy as practically family has been toyed around with by fan fiction authors before, and I am merely using it. I did not intend to plagiarize.
C.J. Sandiego, the Diane flashback at the beginning is to illustrate Hal's worst fears with regard to Ivy's fate. Also, just out of curiosity, I wonder what songs you'd put into a CD that would best describe our favorite couple (Hal/Ivy).
~ ~ ~ ~
Hereford, UK
19 September 1999: Hal Olden sat in the left seat, the passenger seat, of Digger's Land Rover Defender. "Quit being so fidgety you wanker." Digger grumbled, "You're not the first bloke to have fallen in love."
"Eight months mate, I haven't seen her in eight months." Hal replied.
"You're gonna never see her again if you don't quit acting so bloody anxious." Digger replied, "I've been down that route before, you love the girl, you marry her, you two have a few years of the best sex you've ever had and then you punch out the 2.5 kids and then it becomes..."
"Digger, no matter how cynical you act, I can tell you and Beatrice are still 100% in love. Especially when you were moaning her name in the middle of the night in Belize." Hal replied.
"You wanker!" Digger replied, grinning, "Yep, Beatrice may have gained a few pounds but she's still as lovely as before and...You bloody wanker! Watch where you're going!"
"Digger, that was an ambulance, no reason to get emotional. But then not having seen your love for months at a time does that." Hal quipped.
"Remind me to give you and Diane a minging dead sheep for your wedding gift." Digger replied.
"Digger, if you don't shut up I'll drown you in the bloody river." Hal replied, "Besides we've just admitted our feelings for each other. We're still trying to start a relationship, we've not even considered marriage."
"I know how the story goes you wanker, so don't tell it. She sent you that picture a couple days ago and you've been staring at it ever since. What did she write on it by the way?" Digger said.
"Yes." Hal replied, with a thousand watt smile, "She said yes."
"Well here's the turn for Hereford's ACME Field Office. Time to pick you two up and then watch you start smothering each other." Digger said, "On display in five minutes, my lunch."
"You dickhead." Hal groaned, "What the hell?"
"There's a bloody ambulance in the parking lot." Digger said.
"I have eyes, Digger." Hal replied. The two men stopped the car outside the parking lot and ran towards the crowd of spectators.
Hal noticed a familiar automobile, and noticed the seat was splattered with blood. 'Oh dear God, let her be alright.' Hal thought.
The paramedics were moving a stretcher, and atop it was a body bag. Hal raced over to it and confirmed what his brain already knew. He was staring into the bloody face of the woman he loved...
~ ~ ~ ~
Tel Aviv, Israel, 0800 Local Time
"Olden, I can't approve of your plan. It's suicide." Wells said, "We're working on finding Detective Darren. You're to do nothing."
"Yes sir, I understand." Hal replied and hung the phone up, "Bollocks to it. I'm doing it anyway, just like I planned. I'll be damned if Ivy shares Diane's fate."
He checked to see the Beretta was loaded and the magazines were working properly. He was likely going to need every last round if this rescue operation went ass upwards, as it was liable to do. Murphy's Law was known to act on every combat operation. Demerest and Elsa he needed for the purpose of giving an anonymous tip to the moment he found the hideout and extracted Ivy safely.
"You'll need more than two Israeli soldiers to help you with your plan, Hal." Said a voice behind him.
He whirled to see Carmen Sandiego standing there. "Carmen, what are you doing here? Come to think of it, why were you in Britain on our last case?"
"I've always thought of Zack and Ivy as the son and daughter I never had in some ways." Carmen said, "I was helping Ivy make sure that you didn't do something you'd regret, namely murdering Holbarth."
"Right. But what about now?" Hal asked.
"The same reason and also because I'm no friend of Maelstrom." Carmen said.
"So I gathered." Hal replied, checking the Beretta again, making sure the magazines were working properly and that there was indeed a round in the chamber.
~ ~ ~ ~
"How did it feel to see the 'terrorist scum' lying dead at your feet?" Aziz asked Ivy. She was in the basement of a house somewhere in Ramala. She could have been in the middle of the Arabian Desert for all she knew, because of the blindfold covering her eyes. A length of chain wrapped around her wrists and padlocked and connected solidly to an eyebolt in the wall held her hands over her head. Ivy was on her knees, with a length of rope around her ankles.
"He tried to kill me, I had no other choice." Ivy replied.
"Foolish girl!" Parhouz said, backhanding her, splitting her lip, "I know that! But you now leave ME no other choice but to seek vengeance. You are fortunate Maelstrom wants you alive for now. Good. For it would be a pity for Detective Olden to miss seeing his partner die in front of him. Did you seduce him yet, I wonder? Did you manage to garner sympathy from him for your odious deed? Well, I know he will attempt to come to your rescue, and we're ready for him."
"You underestimate ACME, Parhouz." Ivy replied.
"I may underestimate ACME, but I don't underestimate the SAS. Britain's best counter-terrorist units if I'm not mistaken. If I'm not mistaken, First Lieutenant Harold Olden has been serving with 22 SAS for quite some time, six years if I'm not mistaken, after eight years as a boy soldier with the Royal Marines." Parhouz replied, "Now I will need to keep you quiet."
As he spoke he stuffed a rag into Ivy's mouth and undid the blindfold around her eyes. He then tied what was her blindfold around her mouth to keep the rag inside. Ivy almost choked on the gag, and her protests were reduced to barely articulate grunts as Parhouz reached a hand inside her shirt.
"You truly are a beautiful woman. I can see why he likes you." Parhouz said, cupping the same hand under her chin.
He walked off, leaving Ivy still fettered to the wall, in the basement of a house in Ramala. Outside she could hear gunfire as Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants traded shots.
~ ~ ~ ~
"Are you sure you know the location?" Hal asked as he and Carmen drove down the road towards Ramala. Carmen simply nodded.
Demerest's task was to alert his unit of the Palestinian stronghold where Ivy was being held. The moment Hal infiltrated and rescued Ivy, an Israeli bulldozer unit, supported by detachments from the Golani infantry brigade would literally send the structure crashing down around Parhouz's head.
Hal wrapped the shamag (what British soldiers call an Arab's head cover) around his head, obscuring his facial features. He made sure the pistol was accessible and there was a round in the chamber. If he had a silencer, he'd use it, but he didn't. The best SAS operations were ones where very few enemies were even seen, much less killed, and the objective was still accomplished. That didn't mean Hal wasn't prepared to kill, far from it, he wanted to avoid having to kill anyone if need be for the purposes of stealth. The moment that he extracted Ivy from the location, the Israelis were going to tear the place to pieces.
"How's your Arabic?" Carmen asked.
"I can pass for an Arab, I'm not expecting to be in there for more than ten minutes anyway." Hal said, then thought, 'If I'm in there for longer than ten, the Israeli snipers are gonna start engaging the Palestinians and then the assault begins.'
Hal pushed the thought from his brain and concentrated on the mission. He tried as best he could to blend in amongst a group of Palestinian civilians and as he neared the building he snuck inside.
He ducked inside a crevice as he saw a pair of Palestinians, carrying AK- 47 assault rifles in their hands. He could understand a few words of their conversation, and the words he understood indicated that Ivy was down in the basement. He made his way, covertly, down towards the basement, ducking out of sight whenever he saw a militiaman come by.
He had the pistol out, in case he had to shoot anybody, but he again hoped he'd be able to accomplish this without killing anyone. Murphy's Law decided to intervene at that moment because the moment he reached the basement he saw another guard stop at the entrance.
'Wanker, looks like I'm gonna have to kill this bloke.' Hal thought, 'And quietly too. Maybe if I sneak up on him and break his neck.'
Hal kept to the shadows, hugging the stone wall as he snuck silently towards the guard. He was already preparing on how he was going to snap the guard's neck and where he would hide the body as he made his escape when Murphy decided to intervene again.
The guard turned around and right when he did, he saw Hal. The guard raised his AK-47 and Hal instantly remembered his pistol drills. He pulled the Beretta free and squeezed off a double tap. He fired two shots in rapid succession into the guard's forehead. The operation had just gone from covert to overt in less than a second. Hal kicked the basement door open and saw Ivy as soon as he ran down a staircase. By the muffled grunts he heard, Ivy had obviously been gagged.
Hal saw Ivy was chained to the wall, and gagged for good measure. She looked up at him, her desperate eyes peering over the gag that muted her. Hal pulled the gag around Ivy's mouth away, pulling the rag free.
"Are you alright?" Hal asked.
"I'm fine," Ivy said, shaken, "can you get those chains off me?"
"Bloody hell!" Hal groaned and said, "I'll be back with the keys."
Hal ran up the stairs, and as he did, he saw another guard standing over the body of his fallen comrade. Without hesitating, Hal squeezed off another two rounds, hitting the terrorist in the head. He then took the AK- 47 and spare magazines from one of the guards just as another appeared.
'Wanker!' Hal thought, and squeezed the trigger, hoping that it wasn't rigged with the jarked ammo the Israelis had been inserting into Palestinian caches. The AK went off, a burst of fire hitting the terrorist in the chest. Hal yanked the keys off the first man he'd killed and ran downstairs.
"Hal, what's going on?" Ivy asked.
"They know I'm here." Hal replied, unlocking Ivy's restraints.
"Somebody's gonna be filling out a lot of paperwork when we get back to HQ." Ivy said, jokingly.
Hal untied her feet and handed her his pistol, "I don't suppose you know how to use this?" Hal joked back.
"Hal watch out!" Ivy shouted as the third terrorist, the one Hal had shot with the AK, staggered shakily to his feet and squeezed the trigger.
Hal expected to feel bullets tearing through his frame but didn't feel a thing. All he heard was an explosion as the bolt of the AK-47 in the terrorist's hands exploded outward and flew into his right eye. Hal picked up a grenade from one of the dead terrorists as he heard more of them coming down from the second floor. Hal lobbed it up the staircase and heard screams and an explosion shortly after.
"Run!" Hal shouted, "They're gonna blow this place down!"
"Who?" Ivy replied.
"The Israelis. I told them in ten minutes to blow this place down." Hal asked.
"When did you sneak in here?" Hal asked.
"At about 1400." Hal replied.
"That mean's we've got about thirty seconds to clear out." Ivy replied, apparently being tied up in a basement didn't mess up her flawless internal clock.
"Ivy, you've got to tell me one of these days how you manage to tell time without even glancing at a clock or your watch." Hal replied.
"Trade secrets, Hal." Ivy replied.
Hal discarded the AK-47 and shamag, so that he wouldn't be mistaken for a terrorist and ran outside just as two Palestinian gunmen that were lying in wait for them fell dead. Two Israeli snipers, one of them Demerest, had just begun the assault.
Hal immediately ushered Ivy to a nearby ambulance where a paramedic placed a blanket around her shoulders. Hal instinctively took her in his arms and Ivy welcomed the embrace. As they held each other tight a car pulled up, Chief Inspector Rosenthal stepped out with a cell phone.
"Hal, it's Wells, your boss, he wants to talk to you." Rosenthal said.
"Olden?" Hal replied.
"Olden, you're in deep trouble. I don't know whether to demote you from Senior Detective to Detective or put a commendation in your file. Is Darren alright?" Wells asked.
"She's fine, do you want to talk to her?" Hal asked.
"Not right now. Olden, I'll settle for you doing a ton of paperwork for this one." Wells said, "Good to have both of you back."
"Likewise, sir." Hal replied.
~ ~ ~ ~
TBC