CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Recollection
PART TWO…Enlightenment…
Sweat stung her eyes within the heavy helmet, and her impatience mounted. They were telling her to stay in the armored vehicle, but they'd arrived several hours ago. It NEVER took this long. Bureaucracy, she thought to herself, this is surely just some stupid bureaucratic matter.
When she stood and exited the vehicle, no one stopped her. Only higher-ups attempted communication with Agent Peace.
Three men were pointing wildly at little holo-screens and arguing, but stopped as she walked past. One chased after her a few paces and called out something about surveillance. But she was becoming perturbed. Even if these soldiers couldn't see her face to see this aggravation they were still afraid of Agent Peace.
Their squadron was a great distance from the enemy encampment – twice the distance in usual missions. At a casual pace, she strolled across the grassland in her hot, black disguise armor.
Behind her, everyone informed of 'the problem' gritted their teeth.
When she assumed her position, kneeling just outside of gunfire range, facing the encampment, she let her arms go limp and began to summon up her angel arm. The skin of her back began to tingle and burn, and the overall effect of this and the African sun was miserable. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon…"
Finally, the loudspeaker far behind her boomed the conditions of surrender. As the requests repeated, the angel arm grew into a writhing mass, wrapping from her back over her shoulders and facing the enemy in twirling hornlike projections. From the two main horns, a series of tendrils grew and pulsed with energy.
With a large boom things went to chaos. Gunfire began and soldiers yelled to each other in high-pitched, nervous pleas for information. A woman with scope glasses shouted, "ground explosives, land mines!" as the smoke began to clear from the four, possibly five, large explosions in Agent Peace's vicinity. Planes above released guided missiles and anti-aircraft fire thickened the sky.
Whistling sounds erupted, like hundreds of whips flying through the air, followed by crashes and, finally, booming explosives from fuel. The whistling and destruction increased in speed and volume until reaching a crescendo and stopping suddenly. Dust, fire, and smoke lingered in the still air. Wounded soldiers moaned, and no sound was heard from the enemy line. Their flesh no longer existed.
A team of officers rushed to Agent Peace through the fog of combat as soon as this end was reached. They thrashed their arms before them to see something, anything, but dared not clear the smoke completely for fear that enemy intelligence might sight whatever of Agent Peace there was to see. They buzzed to each other on tiny walkie-talkies built into their helmets until they were standing in a crater, surrounding a black lump. Quickly and precisely they wrapped this lump in black, opaque plastic. With the go-ahead, a hover plane landed beside this crew, clearing away the smoke and carrying the black-wrapped mass and two of the clean-up officers back to base.
The remaining officers carefully scooped scorched earth into large steel canisters. They made sure none of the secret Agent Peace's blood fell into enemy hands.
"They've sealed off the wounds and stopped the bleeding for now, but couldn't check vitals without compromising AP's identity," explained the debriefing sergeant to the leading medical officer as they rushed through the halls, up stairs, and onto the roof to accept the patient. "An unknown number of foreign objects are lodged within the body in various areas and have not yet been removed. We think it was a series of simultaneous landmines laced with shrapnel. Simple, primitive, cowardly…"
The black lump of plastic was carried off the plane upon landing and loaded clumsily onto a stretcher. The stretcher was taken to an elevator and only the two clean-up officers and the medical officer allowed to enter with it.
The medical officer, Dr. Hatake, squirmed nervously, impatient. He couldn't unwrap Agent Peace until reaching the emergency medical bay, where only himself and two cleared medical assistants could view the face of the legendary Agent Peace. Of course, he'd met her before, for routine exams. Like 99.9% of the Agency's personnel, his assistants had no idea who Agent Peace was.
Hatake noticed the round helmet under the plastic. Glancing at his watch he calculated that she had approximately 7 hours of oxygen left. A reflection to his left caught his eye. He pointed to the metal canisters the two men were carrying. "DNA is supposed to go to the labs; you missed your floor."
"This isn't that kind of evidence," explained the stern woman's voice, muffled by her helmet filter. "We're refrigerating his-"
"Agent Peace is supposed to be invincible!" her male colleague moaned pitifully. "How can this happen!?" He slumped against the wall.
"Hold it together," Hatake sneered. He turned again to the calm female officer. "What are in those?" he asked, staring at the metal canister in her gloved hands, afraid of the anwer.
"Agent Peace's legs, sir."
After handing the canisters off to the assistants, the clean-up officers watched the clean, white door slide closed. They took off their helmets and walked solemnly to the debriefing room. There, they and the other members of their crew would be told to never disclose the details of what they'd seen, for fear of death. Assassination was of little worry at the moment, however, as the all sat in silence, wondering what life with war would be like. Without Agent Peace, who would save them all?