Northern California; the Shasta-Trinity National Forest: 0230 local time
Global Justice Senior Agent Will Du took a last look through the night binoculars at the false cliff- face in the fake hill that was some thirty meters away from his hide position. The hillside concealed an old bunker, built in the 1950s as part of a civil defense network for California's state government in the aftermath of a nuclear war. In the 1990s the bunker had been emptied out and forgotten; until one of Drakken's former henchmen had named it as a hideout as part of a plea-bargain deal.
It was time.
"Rainbow, Rainbow this is Rainbow Lead; Status report in sequence, over."
"Red teams all set and ready, Over"
"Orange team set. Outer perimeter is secure. Over"
"Yellow team set and inner cordon is secure. Over."
"Green team set and ready, over."
"Blue team, set and ready, over."
"Indigo team, set and ready, over"
"Violet team, set and ready, over."
"Roger, stand by…"
"Gold, Gold, this is Rainbow lead; All teams in position set and ready."
"Rainbow lead, Gold leader; stand by …"
Dr Betty Director turned and addressed the group of men and women clustered around the large holographic display map in the operations center. "Well ladies and gents, you heard him. It's kickoff time. Do we go or no?" The representative from the State of California's Attorney General's office spoke first; "Go" was all she said. The FBI liaison simply nodded, as did the Homeland Security man. The BATF representative looked undecided for a moment, but finally said "Yes". The California National Guard Colonel gave a nod, but the Air Force Major, who was listening intently to her radio held up her hand. "One second" she said. The second actually turned into about 90 seconds before she spoke to them again. "Sorry about that, there was private plane just a little to close. OK, we're all clear of air traffic in a 20 kilometer radius and the UAV operators say nothing's moving on the ground except us for 12 klicks around. I'd say go." Neither the local Sheriff's deputy nor the Park Ranger said anything; and they weren't asked. Their organizations had helped with logistics and had provided a wealth of local knowledge, but they both knew that now they were observers only. Best to stay out of the way, learn what they could, and see if they could make some useful contacts in the upper echelons of the law enforcement community.
"Rainbow lead, Rainbow lead, this is Gold leader; you are a go for Touchdown, acknowledge."
"Gold leader, Rainbow lead; I acknowledge Touchdown is a go, executing in 60 seconds, over.
"Roger, I copy 60 seconds. Good luck. Gold leader out."
"All Rainbow teams, Rainbow lead; Snapcount 40 seconds."
"Snapcount 10"
"Hut Hut Hut"
Before the second "Hut" was out of Will's mouth Indigo team was already sprinting across the open field toward the cliff. Indigo team was the initial breach element, four men from the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team. They moved with the speed and precision of hard training and long practice, each man totally confidant in his own skills and the skills of his teammates. The first two were the actual demolitions men; they slid to a stop at the base of the cliff and from a carrying bag on their chest each man pulled out a roll of what looked like the self-adhesive weather-stripping you could buy at any Smarty-Mart or home improvement warehouse store. The two trailing members of the team were security, they did half turns to face each other and dropped down into a kneeling position; each scanning the hillside for any threat, weapons at the ready.
The left hand demo man slapped the free end of his roll against the base of the cliff and started moving to the left, laying down material as he went. The right hand man took a second to make sure the free end of his roll touched his partners and then drove a small U shaped connector into the two strips before laying his own strip to the right. Each man went precisely five feet, and then started upward. Seven feet up the cliff face they turned inward and ran their strips together. Two snips with a pair of scissors and another U connector and a ten foot by seven foot rectangle of Uni-directional explosive tape was formed. Each man and the security element then retreated left and right. Once outside the edge of the rectangle each demo man pulled out a small, bullet like detonator and twisted the base a quarter turn counter-clockwise, priming the device and activating a small LED "ready light". The two detonators were then shoved into the explosive and two short range infra-red transmitters were pulled out.
Clearly visible through the Infra-Red night vision glasses everyone was wearing the appearance of the LED lights on the detonators was Red Team's "go" signal. The four men designated Red-1 broke cover and charged toward the cliff face followed closely by the other Red squads.
Two fingers hit two buttons and with a surprisingly soft WHOOMP the UNIDEX tape blew through the foot and a half thick concrete wall of the concealed bunker.
The men of Red-1 had spread out into a line and were sprinting for all they were worth. All four were big, well-fit, men who each weighed close to 300 lbs and had been specially chosen for this task. Their weapons were slung across their backs and each carried a large poly-carbon shield strapped to their left arm. Without breaking stride they brought the shields up and hit the fake cliff face at full speed. The over half a ton of human battering ram did the trick and the wall crashed inward into a large room. Red-1 hit the ground, sliding forward on their bellies and through the ten foot wide gap poured the rest of Red Team, weapons sweeping the room, searching for targets. From Will Du's first "Hut", the entire operation had taken less than 15 seconds.
The room was empty, but that was not wholly unexpected and had been planned for. The six four man squads of Red Team kept on moving, spreading out through the structure, as per the plan. Will Du came trotting up with Blue and Green Teams who each continued deeper into the complex, intent on their own missions. He noted with approval that one of the medics was already checking the members of Red-1 for injuries. He motioned to the Violet Team leader, "We'll set up the CP and aid station in this room, and start laying out markers for the extraction LZ. Notify Gold that we're on target, with no contact yet" he told her.
With that taken care of Will allowed himself a second to inspect the wall where the breach had been blown. UNIDEX tape was a new thing; it was something the British MI-6 had developed for their double-Oh people and this was the first time GJ had used it operationally. Pretty darned impressive he thought. All the explosive power goes in one direction; that tape's only about a half inch thick but it cut right through a foot and a half of reinforced concrete. And quiet too, I was only, what? 30 meters, about 100 feet, away and I didn't even hear it go off.
0240 local time
Will listened to the reports coming in over his headset; still no contact. Something's not right, he thought, there should be at least a couple of henchmen as caretakers. "If this turns into a dry hole I swear to God that little snitch is gonna spend the next 20 years in a supermax" he muttered to himself. He stared at the situation monitor which projected a 3D schematic of the bunker with little red, blue, and green dots moving slowly around, showing the locations of his teams. Already almost half of the display was shaded light green, representing areas already checked and cleared. Where the hell was everybody?
0245 local time
"Rainbow Lead, Rainbow Lead; Green Leader."
"Sendit Green Leader."
"Ah roger, we're in Greengirl's quarters, negative contact and I don't think she's around at all. Everything in here is covered with dust and there's a newspaper in here that's almost three months old. The energy detectors aren't picking her up either. I don't think she's been here for awhile, over."
"Roger Green Lead, keep looking. She could be masking her energy signature, until we can confirm otherwise assume she's in here, over."
"Roger, Green Lead out."
"Red, Blue..did you guys copy that?"
"Red Roger"
"Blue Roger"
"Rainbow Lead out"
Did I say 20 years? Will thought to himself, that little SOB's gonna do 30 if he does a day.
0305 local time
"Sir", the Violet team leader came up to him "Red-5 reports that they found a Bebe robot and, ah, a room full of liquor."
"Liquor?"
"Yes sir, you know, whiskey, gin, vodka…I'm sorry sir, did you say..35 years?"
"Never-mind, just thinking out loud; did the Bebe attack? Is anyone hurt?"
"No sir, it just stood there. They hit it with an EMP projector and it just collapsed. I sent a Tech-team down to collect it up."
"OK, thanks."
0307 local time
"Contact, Contact. Rainbow Control, this is Red-5. We got a reading on the motion detector. Moving toward us. Looks like one man sized target."
Will bit down on his first impulse to cut in and start asking questions. Better to let the man on the scene handle it. He glanced at the tracker display. "Send Red-2 to back them up and put Red-5 on the speaker. Make sure you're recording audio and video feed from Red-5" He'd get almost as much real-time information that way, and he wouldn't be getting in Red-5's way while they were in contact.
"just around the corner, getting close"
"It's Blueboy, say again Blueboy"
"Gun, he's got a gun"
"Global Justice, Drop the gun! Drop the gun now!"
Everybody flinched a little as the shots rang out, audible over the radio circuit and a second later echoing up through the hallways of the bunker.
"Rainbow Control, Rainbow Control this is Red Five. Shots fired my location. Blueboy is down, I say again Blueboy is down; we need a medic ASAP. No friendly casualties. Over."
Trinity County Sheriff's Office; Weaverville, CA . 0845 local time
Dr Director closed the folder and looked at the man sitting on the couch in front of her temporary desk in her borrowed office. "You know, Will, there's nothing earth-shattering here, it could have waited until you rested a bit." "I know ma'am", he replied, "I just wanted to get a preliminary report in while it was still fresh in my mind." He gave her a small lopsided grin, "I'll get the full, final report with all the bells and whistles and color graphs and a dozen appendices to you in a couple of days; but there is one thing I wanted to talk to you about."
Dr Director cocked her eyebrow and made a little "come on" motion with her hand. "You don't think there'll be a problem with the shoot do you?" Will asked. "Gibbons was a little worried about the inquiry and I'd like to get back to him before we all hit the sack."
"Not at all", Dr Director replied. "He was an internationally wanted terrorist, he had a gun which he raised in a threatening manner after being told to drop it by a law-enforcement officer who had identified himself as such. And it's all on video tape. You can tell Gibbons to sleep easy." She paused a second before continuing "It was a good clean shoot Will, not like Dementor."
"Not like Dementor at all" Will thought to himself later, when he had finished reassuring Agent Gibbons. Dementor had been asleep with his girlfriend when we busted in on him, and was begging like a baby when we shot him. Hell she went down with more guts than he did, Will thought with disgust. Then we had to spend God knows how many hours with actors and voice synthesizers so we could get decent video of "Dementor's last stand". Not to mention the fact we had to steal a Neuralizer from those MiB idiots to use on Dementor's henchmen so they'd tell the right story. A royal goat screw from start to finish, that's what Dementor was.
But that was the past, and done with. The future was what concerned him now. Drakken and Dementor were dead. Monkey Fist was next on the list. The small fry like Frugal Lucre and Motor Ed had been visited, late at night, by very intimidating men, and told very firmly to behave themselves or else. Senior Senior Senior had been able to buy his way out of the outstanding warrants against him, which bothered Will a little, but as long as the old man kept his nose clean he could live with it.
He thought briefly about Shego. It was disappointing that she hadn't been at the bunker, but he wasn't too worried about her. Once the Cyber-Tech teams finished rooting around in Drakken's computers they'd find out where she went. And if not, well when all was said and done she was just a thief and hired muscle. She'd turn up somewhere, sometime.
All in all he was very satisfied; it had been a good day's work.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Author's note: I'm new at this; this is my first posted story. I'm especially concerned about the rating. I gave it an M due to the language, alcohol use and character death. But now I'm having second thoughts. I can edit out the language, are the alcohol use and character death enough, by themselves, to rate the M? I'd like to hear some thoughts on this. Please?