To Live Again
Weather the Storm
IDF forces began pouring through the front doors as Scar raced away and up the stairs. He would much rather work alone, and working with the military, even this one, left a bad taste in his mouth.
"Wait!" he heard someone shout. He ignored whoever it was. He had left Shoshana alone six floors up, and couldn't help but feel that something was wrong.
He trusted his intuition; it was usually correct.
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Crimson Commander was not pleased. He had just sent the fourth body tumbling out the window, when he got two urgent messages: One, the outside cameras had been shot out, and two, the discovery of the bodies of Bengazi and Hussein. The IDF was attacking, and they had some new device that could almost soundlessly demolish bodies and floors. He had sent Joe and Nata to find Bengazi and Hussein, and had come to see for himself when he heard their report over the radio.
"Start dropping gas and shrapnel bombs down there! Hold them back!" He began shouting into his radio, "Block the stairs! Sever the elevator cables! Each man grab five child hostages, and kill the rest! The IDF is coming in!"
Glass crashed in the next room. Nata and Joe began firing, killing the incoming soldiers. "We need to move!" They raced to the stairwell and headed up to the surgical level.
He looked at the woman they had found in this room. He considered killing her, but decided that having an older woman as a hostage would give him a better chance of escaping alive. She could be his mouthpiece, and she was big enough to use as a shield.
He had an escape route planned; he just needed time to put it in action.
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Ben-Aish and was in with the first wave of soldiers. He had seen the scarred man running to the stairs, and called for him to wait, but the man had either been unable to hear him or just ignoring him. It was too late to do anything, as gas and shrapnel grenades began tumbling down through the hole in the ceiling. "Gas masks!" he roared over the explosions. Those who were closest to the blasts had thrown themselves over the bombs to minimize casualties, but some explosives had escaped their grasps.
"You know the drill, get going!" Men began dispersing throughout the first level, seeking out booby traps and access to the upper levels.
"Don't worry about the bombs," said Sharid from behind him, voice muffled by his mask. "Mystery man somehow disarmed all of them. Take a look," and he held up a bomb casing. Opening it, ben-Aish could see that the C-4 had been turned to dust.
"Did he do this on all the levels?" wondering if there would be anything this man could not do.
"No sir, just this floor. He went through the ceiling, and took care of them all before we even got here."
"Alright, let's go up." A sudden thought struck him. "He doesn't have a mask!"
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Scar was racing up the stairs when a metallic egg came flying down at him. Recognizing the danger, he hurtled past it up the stairs, throwing himself across the steps as the grenade detonated on the flight below him. The stair were no longer usable. Remembering his first time, he crawled into the nearest vent, just as several canisters tumbled down, spewing gas. A trailing wisp of gas caught him, burning his throat and eyes. He scrambled farther into the shaft.
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The five men guarding the hostages got the message over their radios. They knew the drill. The children had already been separated from the older captives by room. Pulling on their gas masks, they radioed the countdown sequence to the gas bombs in the rooms, grabbed five children each, and marched up to the top levels, one man per floor.
They activated the booby traps and waited for the assault.
They also prepared the 'gifts'.
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Ben-Aish and his men were stuck. Each floor was rigged, but not enough to bring the building down. White gas obscured their vision, and the trip-wires, made of fishing line, were now totally obscured. C-4 explosives were tucked away in hard to reach crevices. Grenade clusters were strung across hallways. Blowing holes through the walls from the stairs to the hallways would trip booby traps; wires had been strung across the walls. Elevator shafts were blocked.
Further attempts to come in through the windows met with failure. Selecting a 'safe' window was playing a game of Russian Roulette; a good number of the windows had been rigged.
And the worst horrors were yet to come.
As he and his men raced through the hallways, ben-Aish kept his eyes peeled for the scarred man.
He was nowhere to be found.
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General Grumman sat in the command post, watching the carnage unfold on screen. The reporter from Kol Ha'am had been placed in isolation as a security measure. As each new report came in, Grumman cursed ben-Aish to the lowest portion of Gehinom for all eternity for creating this mess.
'The hostages are as good as dead. I'll recall the men inside and start firing missiles.'
And ben-Aish of course refused.
"Hostages may still be alive, and we need captives to interrogate! No way we leave the building!'
"I'm the one giving orders here, colonel! You get your men out of there before I start firing the missiles anyway!"
"Lech la-Azazel! We get out when we achieve our objective!"
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The terrorists had placed the hostages in rooms with no sharp objects, so they had no weapons, but the storage room had a large supply of plastic bags. When gas started pouring into the rooms, a quick-thinking doctor passed out the bags with theinstruction to tie them over their heads. "We either die from lack of air now, or in five minutes, or we don't die today," he said, before taking a bag for himself. "Remember to stay calm and breath slowly. Im yir'tza hashem, we will all survive."
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The soldiers finally reached a floor that was clear of gas. It was a mixed blessing.
When the first toddler came screaming around the corner, the soldiers barely restrained themselves from shooting. But when the girl lifted her arms to be picked up, the action pulled the pins from the grenades tucked into her armpits. The soldier and girl were both killed in the blast.
The next level up, a young boy walked around a corner, serious faced, with a noose around his neck. Blue light fizzled as the det-cord was ignited, and his head rolled off.
The Crimson Brigade soldiers knew they probablywould not get out alive. Their orders were to create as much horror as possible for the IDF before attempting to escape.
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Scar was hunting for the hostages from inside the vents. Almost all the rooms were clouded with gas, and were fortunately empty. The gas did not penetrate the vents so much due to the air flow. Some did get in, making Scar choke and his eyes water. Breathing was getting hard. He wouldn't be able to handle much more of the gas. Then he found the hostages. He almost missed them in the white swirls except that some of them were moving. How they were still alive was a mystery to him, until he saw the clear coverings over their heads.
But how to rescue them? He couldn't lead them out; the gas would kill him. Then he remembered how he had raced the soldiers to the ground level.
Scar dropped through the ceiling, startling the people in the room. Jumping to a clear area, he placed his hand on the floor, destroying part of it. He jumped down, moved a few feet over, and repeated the process. These rooms luckily had their doors closed, so the gas in the hallway had not seeped in so much.
"Jump down!" he called to the hole above him. A head appeared, looking at him in disbelief, then a pair of legs swung through as the man lowered his body, dropping lightly to the floor, where he removed th bag over his head.
"You're not IDF, but thanks all the same. We thought we would die up there!" The doctor looked around confused. "You don't seem to have any more explosive devices. How do we get out now?"
Scar glanced at him before turning his attention to the ceiling, where more people were dropping through. Soon, all the former captives were standing two levels down from the gas filled rooms. Some gas was beginning to seep in under the door and through the ceiling holes, but not enough to be worried about just then.
Turning his attention back to the doctor, Scar said, "I don't need explosives." He placed his hand on the floor.
Five minutes later, they were running out of a hole in the wall onto the hospital grounds, racing towards freedom and safety.
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"Colonel, the hostages are running out! They're all out!"
"How?"
"I don't know, sir. A hole appeared in the wall, and out they come."
"Is the scarred man with them?"
Nesher scanned the group, now being surrounded by soldiers and being led towards the medical truck. He was nowhere to be seen.
"That's a negative, sir. It appears to be just doctors and patients."
"All of them?"
Herres listened to the report coming in from Kahs.
"No sir. Each guard grabbed five children, then began gassing the rest." Herres listened some more. "There were five guards, so twenty-five children."
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Ben-Aish cursed. They still had two more levels to search for the remaining Crimson Brigade members and their hostages. They had managed to rescue nine of the fifteen from the other three Brigade members. There had been no gas on those floors, probably because the enemy did not want to kill valuable human shields, but the traps had been far more clever.
The entire scenario had probably been planned.
One thing that particularly worried him was their inability to locate the Brigade's commander. He at least would have an escape route planned. The Crimson Brigade was nothing if not meticulous in planning for every contingency, down to a suicidal last stand.
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RxR please.
I give credit to Rapp in 'Transfer of Power', Cheyort in 'Psychic Warrior', d'Anjou in 'The Bourne Supremacy' (the novel), and Jack in 'Time and Tide' for all the great ideas I gleaned for this chapter.
And thank you to all who reviewed. I am now done with my summer courses and work, so I can do a better job with this.