= = = CHAPTER 11= = =
SEATTLE – METRO MEDICAL
MAY 5, 2020
The maintenance entrance came out into a long white hallway that –after Logan and Zack followed it to the end – came out into Metro's reception area. A TV – blaring news about another food riot on Seattle's East Side – was turned on beside a pile of papers a young woman dressed in blue scrubs was leafing through.
Zack immediately descended on the reception desk and switched off the Television. The lack of noise made the woman look up from her papers. "Can I help you gentlemen?" Her voice was polite enough but she was still clearly on alert for any reason to call hospital security.
"A woman was brought here this morning," Logan was the first one to speak up. "It was an MVA."
"What's the name?" the receptionist asked.
Before Logan could answer the front doors of the hospital burst open under the force of two soldiers dressed in Kevlar body armor.
"This is a military raid!" one of the soldiers barked to the receptionists and nurses milling around. All of them stopped their work at the sight of the heavily armed men and a few of them even screamed. But the veteran workers just sat in stunned silence because this was not an uncommon sight to them.
"In accordance with the Seattle Martial Law Mandate of 2015 any employee of this hospital who doesn't comply with our orders will be shot on sight." The soldier ordered and trooped over to the desk where the receptionist was cowering in her chair. He grabbed a hold of the woman's blue uniform and yanked her up to him. "I want the record of every Hispanic woman who was admitted here in the last five hours."
"I don't have that kind of capability," the receptionist said in a quivering voice.
The soldier lost his patience with her and cocked his loaded rifle in her face. "This loaded M-20 says otherwise."
The receptionist's eyes bulged in terror and she turned her attention to her computer scanning the hospital records recorded into the mainframe. She struggled with manipulating the search engine to initiate a command it normally didn't do. But the soldiers glaring down at her from the barrel of his weapon made her recall her old skills of computer formatting she had learned from her tech head exboyfriend in college. The search finally brought up the names of 50 women admitted the ER and general admit. Seattle – for all the lies preached by Mayor Steklar that it was recovering from the shock of the Pulse – was still an extremely violent city. Mass amounts of its citizens came to the hospital on a daily basis.
"Maria Fuentes," the soldier read the name on the computer screen of a female patient that had been admitted after a domestic abuse attack. He pulled away from the desk and switched on his radio. "Fuentes is in Room #200 Sir. Second floor."
"Maria Fuentes was just abused by her husband soldier," the receptionist growled. "What the hell are you planning to do to her?"
"Her husband is a high ranking diplomat and he says that she purposely injures herself in order to claim he abused her to smear his name. We have enough evidence against Mrs. Fuentes to warrant her immediate execution."
The receptionist's eyes grew with fear at the word 'execution' but then they changed from fear to fiery rage. "You fucking bastards; she's in a coma! You think that just because you wear a uniform that what you do isn't murder?"
The soldier backhanded her across the face and pressed the maw of his gun into her chest while she recovered from the blow. "If you don't shut up woman what I'll do to you will be murder." He turned back to his partner. "Take the stairs." He backed away from the desk and followed the other soldier out of the lobby and into the stairwell accessed behind a gray door.
As soon as he was out of sight the receptionist picked up the white phone on her desk and dialed a three number extension. "Some soldiers just came through here. They're wanting to execute a comatose patient in the second floor; be on ready." She hung up quickly having just called the hospital Anti-Military Resistance Movement that was made up of hospital employees that armed themselves against the corrupt enforcers of Martial Law.
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"I was wrong," Logan admitted to Zack in a voice just above a whisper. "Lydecker's not waiting for shift changes-"
"I figured that out a long time ago," Zack hissed from his vantage point in a darkly lit hallway. "They got sent in here as the decoy. Hospital security will be mounting a full weapons scale war on the wrong floor before they realize they were fucked. Max is in #312 I saw it on the screen before it faded out."
"All we need now is a plan to sneak past an Alpha Attack Team undetected."
"Get your head in the game Cale; I'm never without a plan." Zack said matter-of-factly.
"Fantastic G.I. Joe but shouldn't you start executing this plan?" Logan insisted.
Zack glowered at him and flipped him off sideways, pointing to a silver elevator a foot in front of them. "Take that elevator."
Logan sighed trying to keep his anger under control so it wouldn't blow their cover, but he was never good at swallowing something so huge. "Ladies first."
Zack didn't respond but fixed Logan with a look that would have made Adolph Hitler wet his pants.
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The concrete stairwell echoed with the footsteps of the two soldiers as they ascended them.
"Make your report Private," Deck's voice ordered through Private Collin's radio unit strapped to his ear.
"Everything went according to plan Sir," Collins responded reaching the first landing of the stairs. "The idiots called out their resistance movement to chorale on the second floor. By the time they realize they've safeguarded the wrong patient on the wrong floor we'll have her moved down to our trucks."
"I want visual conformation of X5-452 being loaded before returning back to base command."
"Copy that Sir. Are you on your way in?"
"Affirmative Private. But I want you and your SIC (Second In Command) to make the pick up and rendezvous with my by the rear ambulance bay."
"What about Agent Sondaval? He has my unit ready for deployment into the lobby."
"Alert your men to make a move for the third floor stairwell but Sondaval is to be kept out of the loop on this one understand?"
"But Agent Sondaval's going to be incredibly pissed off."
"I don't give a damn about what pisses off Agent Sondaval Private," Deck spoke as slow as a drunk but also did so with a quiet authoritativeness that canceled out any beliefs that he was wasted. "I'm still the CO of this operation."
"I know that Sir; but then how do you want me to deal with Sondaval?"
"You're training taught you how to fire a weapon correct?"
"Yes Sir."
"If Sondaval doesn't agree with the new coarse of the mission you deal with him the way you were taught to do."
The Private went quiet for a brief five seconds before responding in quick military precision. "Yes Sir."
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"Hey!" Sondaval shouted to the soldiers that were moving from their location on the stairwell. "What the hell are you men doing? There was no order given to deploy."
"Yes Sir there was," a soldier clarified to Sondaval who was watching him from the landing of the first fire escape stairwell. "The order was given by Colonel Lydecker."
Sondaval stared at him with a 'what-the-hell?' look plastered on his face. "When did Lydecker initiate this command?"
"I'm not obligated to answer to you Sir. It was a direct order given by the Commanding Officer of Manticore; I will follow it," the soldier responded in quiet anger waving the members of his unit up the flight of stairs.
Agent Sondaval couldn't take on four heavily armed soldiers by himself to make them stop their actions. They were a group that was fiercely loyal to Lydecker because of his military status. Sondaval, even with his higher rank at Manticore knew that all of the soldiers – despite their training to follow any commands given to them – were much more loyal to the former Delta class Army Ranger then a hired Manticore suit. So he could do nothing but watch with heated hostility as the men deliberately disobeyed his authority.
Son-of-a-bitch. Sondaval reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out his secure cell dialing a single dumber on the auto dialer. The rapid succession of numbers was heard punching out over the receiver before the call connected to its destination.
"Yes?" came Renfro's voice.
"We have a situation. Lydecker's diverted the Alpha Unit to a per his orders situation."
"He WHAT?" Renfro stood up from her cushy chair "How the hell could he disobey a direct order? He's supposed to be one to respect the chain-of-command at Manticore because if it wasn't for us he'd still be getting wasted at the VA bar."
"Director Renfro the situation can be rectified-"
"You're damn right it can be rectified otherwise you're going to have a very pissed off Director to deal with. And when I'm pissed off Agent Sondaval I tend to deal harshly with useless expendabilities like you and Colonel Lydecker." Renfro now paced around her minimally decorated gray toned office. "I want X5-452 brought back to Manticore without any more situations; is that understood?"
Sondaval could hear the blood lust in her voice. "Yes Ma'am."
"Contact me again only after you've done so," Renfro slammed the phone down in the cradle sighing at the idiocy she had been forced to hire.
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METRO MEDICAL – THIRD FLOOR
1: 05 AM
The two soldiers finally made it through the doorway that led into Metro's third floor. Private Collins signaled his partner to advance down the quiet white corridor and check the cross section where it connected with the open area where the nurses' station was erected. Neither one of them considered unarmed civilians nurses a dangerous threat – they just didn't want to run into someone that would scream like hell at the sight of their weapons and body armor.
The stark white halls were almost completely quiet except for the low hum of a television reporter prattling in a monotone voice on the late night news. All the late shift nurses had a tendency to leave the TV on to keep them company during their long hours.
Collins gave the all clear to his SIC and both men advanced slowly forward stopping at brief intervals to access their location. The SIC was crouched behind a plastic laundry bin used for discarding soiled sheets and gowns. Directly above his head a large square air vent panel choked out puffs off cooled air through its filthy system of aluminum ducts. The maintenance crews had gone on strike five times in the past year so may of Metro's utilities had suffered from the lack of repair. It was because of this fact that the SIC didn't think much about the creaking above his head become more pronounced. So he never noticed the vent pushing away from the hole it was recessed into until it had been completely removed.
"What the-?" the SIC stared up into the square hole. "This is Rollins," he spoke into his radio unit and aimed his M-20 in the blackness. "We've got a situation."
"What kind of situation?" Lydecker's voice came over the radio receiver. He sat inside his SUV that was parked behind an empty ambulance. The Paramedics assigned to the rig were busy inside with their transport so no one noticed the black Class Two armored SUV sitting in the ambulance bay.
"An air vent shook loose on the third floor ceiling," Rollins went on craning his neck to the side in order to get a better look inside the hole.
"Air vents don't just shake loose on their own Private," Deck corrected. "Someone had to have tampered with it."
Lydecker's words hit the SIC like a bucket of cold water. He tapped the inside of the hole with the muzzle of his rifle in a poised stance to squeeze it off.
A heavy object dropped down at rapid speed from the black hole By the time the SIC realized that it was a man he was thrown against the wall causing him to loose his grip on his weapon. He reached for it but a size ten black boot stomped on his hand crunching the bones under its traction bumps.
"Agghh!" the soldier reeled back in agony at the pain of his shattered hand. Above the visor end of his helmet he looked right up into the face of Zack.
"You might want to get that looked at while you're here." Before the SIC could retaliate Zack reached around the side of his head and lethality snapped his neck.
Collins saw the entire attack and revealed himself with his gun cocked at Zack.
Zack shot him with three rounds in his neck chest and head. The soldier coughed a spray of blood, his body remaining upright by an unknown force for five more second before he collapsed on his back.
"What the hell just happened Private?" Lydecker's voice boomed over the dead man's radio unit.
"You didn't have to kill them," Logan insisted stepping out from behind the Plexiglas wall of the nurses' station that he had ducked behind. Zack had climbed up the vent as soon as he heard the soldiers approaching. But the vent was a closed off section blocked by a Heppa filter –not large enough for two people. And Logan didn't want Zack to find a way to make it capacitate them both.
"Don't be so concerned," Zack insisted kneeling down to swipe the M-20 from the Alpha Leader's hand. "Lydecker's got a dozen more to replace them."
"They're just kids," Logan said. Both of the soldiers looked to be around Max's age. They should be going to college parties not be members of a military death squad.
"Would your rather I read them a damn bedtime story Cale? They're a Manticore Tactics Recon Unit and they're gonna be more just like them descending on this place once they figure out what happened to these two-"
"Is anyone around dammit?" Lydecker's voice still came over the radio frequency.
Zack snatched the radio up off the floor. "Welcome to 'All X5 Radio'"
"Who is this?" Deck's face screwed up in confusion because it wasn't the voice of either of his soldiers.
"I'm the fuckin' Tooth Fairy waiting to extract my payment."
"Zack-" Deck finally recognized the hostile voice.
Zack didn't respond to his name letting static play over the frequency.
"Zack your plan will never work." Deck informed ignoring the silence and kept talking. "Max is badly injured. You'll never get her out of there undetected. I can send in a unit to get her down."
"Yeah well if the rest of your unit is a shitty as the two I just disposed of then you've got one hell of a problem."
"I can help you Zack-"
"Like you helped Brin you walking dick job? I'm not going to let what happened to her happen to Max." Zack hissed. He had never forgiven himself for letting Brin go back to Mantciore. "If I find out where your transmitting this from I'll kill you."
The sound of a door opening down the hall made Zack and Logan turn their heads in quiet alarm.
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Ginny, the nurse who had the next shift with Ariel's patients, closed the door to the office supply closet after picking up a new box of ballpoint pens. A noise – a quiet but very distinct shuffle – reached hr ears. She looked up from the box and stared into the hallway lit only by floodlights welded into the very top seams of the wall. In order to conserve electricity Metro had taken to shutting down all of its transformers except those that supplied power to hospital equipment and floodlights so the patients and staff could maintain a level of visibility. But it was a very minimal level of visibility. After all the main lights were shut down for the night the long hallways were cast in eerie shadows that made them resemble the back alleys behind the crumbling businesses of Seattle. It was for this reason that Ginny hated working at this hour and tonight was no exception.
The members of the hospital resistance movement breaking out their stockade of small arms had already made her incredibly nervous and she really did not want to find out exactly what was making that noise. But there were critical patients on her floor and they could be hurt if there was someone down at the end of the hall. So she swallowed her fear and crept slowly down the tiled floor peaking into every crevice for signs of people. She passed no one and heard no more of the shuffling noise and for one brief moment she started to believe that it was her own overactive imagination. But then her sneakers squished in something wet puddled on the tile. She looked down and saw a brought trail of blood. Alarm took over her features as she realized that the trail continued to the closed door of a bathroom.
Ginny stepped around the bloodstain and cautiously walked towards the door. A 'whooshing' sound behind her made her turn – right into the face of a man dressed in Kevlar body armor and toting a loaded M-20 automatic rifle. She screamed at the sight of the gun but the man yanked her back to him and clamped his hand over her mouth effectively shutting her up.
"I will shoot you if you scream again understand?" Zack glared at the young woman with fierce insistence taking slanted aim at her with the rifle he'd lifted of the SIC. He was wearing the SIC armor in case he ran into any fire power and also as a way to get out of the hospital undectected.
Ginny nodded whimpering under Zack's hand.
Zack released her after a moment. Though 'released' did not accurately describe it. As soon as Ginny felt Zack's lessening grip she hurled away from him. "You fucking anarchist soldiers!"
"Fuck me on your own time lady," Zack deadpanned. "Right now you're going to tell me the location of Room #312."
"I'm not telling you anything you son-of-a-bitch!" Ginny spat "I don't know what you're after but I'm not going to let a bastard like you kill one of my patients!"
"We're not one of them," Logan interjected. He hadn't dressed out in the remaining soldier's uniform because the whole idea of wearing a dead man's clothing was both desecrating and disgusting to him.
"Oh then you two are just Trick Or Treating early this year?" Ginny hissed.
"A friend of mine is on this floor," Logan told her the truth. "Those men out there – they want to drag her away like a hunted animal. Now it may seem like a load of crap to you but we're not leaving until you tell us where the hell Room 312 is."
The facts of Logan's story sounded half-cocked to Ginny but she still believed him because there was a quiet pleading insistence in his voice. "It's down the hall; very last door on the right."
Logan didn't even bother to thank her because now was not the time to remember to be a gentleman.
Zack stared Ginny down in warning aiming the M-20 at her. "Don't even think about following."
Logan reached the end of the hallway first because Zack was still going commando on the young nurse. Nice to know his cocky attitude is still there in all situations. Room 312 stared at him from partially closed doorway. All the rooms were kept open this way as a precautionary measure because the old monitor alarms were often too quiet to hear. Logan pushed open the door preparing his mind for the sight he was about to see – but when he finally stepped inside and gazed at the woman on the bed none of his prepping did any good.
"Max-"