Chapter 6
Detective John Munch had ascended the rickety metal scaffolding bracing on one of the walls to the main factory building, and was now peering through one of its opaque windows in the last rays of the sunset. The dirty window was almost impossible to see through but it had been cracked in one corner and Munch was able to make out the dim outline of a railing inside the building. Good, he thought, there seemed to be an inner deck to mirror the one he was standing on. Munch continued down the ledge, fortunately finding a window that had been completely shattered, probably by some vandal and never repaired. Munch crept in quietly.
"Cragen I'm inside, I'm going to set up a camera on the ceiling so you can have a clear view of the whole building," Munch said into his mouthpiece.
"Copy that," came Cragen's reply.
Munch covertly extended himself up above the railing and stuck a camera near the top base of a support pole, and then crouched down again to survey the area. Before Munch's eyes, spread out across the floor of the factory, was a very unexpected sight. Munch froze in his place, astounded that he had been able to make it this far without being detected. Moving as imperceptibly as possible he raised his right hand to his neck and clicked a button.
"Cragen," he whispered, "you may want to call for backup."
SVU SVU SVU
Elliot Stabler stood up hazardously on the top of a fifteen foot high tower of crates. He loomed up above the three ruffians who were inexpertly trying to disassemble Fin's car. They had only managed to take the hood off and extract a few of its innards. Elliot arranged his hands behind a large but loose box and gave a warlike cry.
"HAAHHHH!" he bellowed. With a shove the box came tumbling off its precipice and plummeted down upon the unsuspecting thugs who cried out in alarm. The box slammed into Fin's car, obliterating the windshield and bursting open at the same time. A plethora of stuffed animals exploded into the air. That's just wrong thought Elliot, watching as the thugs scrambled about bewildered, but not beaten.
Well, time for plan B.
With another warlike cry Elliot leapt off the supply stack in a very ungraceful maneuver and came crashing down among his adversaries. He smote one of the men with a stuffed gorilla he had picked up in his landing, and then turned like a berserker against the remaining two, pinning one of them against the stack of crates he had just leapt from.
"Listen, pal, you're gonna tell me where our partner is, or else you're answering to me!" The thug trembled against Elliot's threat, but he was soon freed as his comrade pummeled Elliot in the side with another box.
"Oh no you don't!" Elliot raged from a few feet away. He picked up the same crate that had been hurled at him and sent it flying above the man's hand and colliding with another precariously stacked sundry of boxes, which came toppling down to the unfortunate thug's demise.
"That's right!" Elliot shouted in jubilation. He could barely feel his injuries anymore, but perceived vividly an irritating hounding in his ears from Cragen, wanting to know what the hell had happened. He paused for a moment to update Cragen, the other troglodytes were too embroiled in their own turmoil to confront him again for a moment. "Sorry Cragen, just dispatching a few thugs, and hey before you get on to me it's not as bad as that time Olivia ruined that undercover bank job by crashing into us just as we were making our getaway!"
"Hey! Who the hell are you talking to?" jeered one of Elliot's enemies, his brutish face leering from afar.
"Yeah who are you speaking to?" spat the other.
"You'll get the pain for this!" came the muffled voice of the third, who was still smothered in boxes.
"The pain! Yeah, the pain!" said the other two. "You're going to pay for busting in on us like this! Say, who the hell are you anyway? And who were you talking to?" The thugs rapped their fists together and gnawed their teeth. Fortunately, Elliot had too much sangfoid to let these puerile taunts affect him.
"It's time to put an end to you pleonastic losers!" shouted Elliot as he sprang forward.
His sentence set the two standing thugs into a state of confusion over what Elliot meant, and as they stood trying to understand it Elliot sent one of them flying back with a move he had learned while playing football and then swept the legs out from the other, pinning him to the ground with his knee.
"God, I love my job," Elliot said smugly in victory. "Now," he said, leaning down too close to the thug's ears, "where the hell is our partner?"
"Man I don't know none of that shit," the man whimpered, "we're just hear to wreck this car!"
"Yeah and you know whose car that is? Our partners! Now, speak!" Elliot commanded, digging his knee painfully into the man's back.
"Err, hell, I don't know, but if I had to hide a hostage around here it would probably be in that main building, the large one in the center."
"Thanks," Elliot said, clocking the thug in the back of the head. "All right, Cragen, it looks like I'm heading for the main building now." Elliot departed from the warehouse but heard no reply from Cragen. "Cragen?" he questioned again, but still nothing.
Hm, that's strange. I should stick to our mission though, and worry about Cragen later. The old man probably fell asleep, poor guy.
Elliot didn't know it but Detective John Munch was also wondering why Cragen was not responding. Munch had been repeatedly trying to contact him for the last few minutes, not knowing what else to do in the meantime, but now he was convinced that Cragen, or at least their technology, had become compromised in some way.
"Damn it," he muttered silently, staring down again at the spectacle before him in fear and awe. Across the floor of the factory building lay a host of black clad figures, all of fastidious fitness. Munch did not want to say it, but they looked like ninjas. The phalanx was assembled in a tight grid, all of the ninjas standing at alert, as if waiting for a leader. The factory machinery had been crowded against the walls of the facility, a task that must have taken some time which meant that this ninja operation was no small matter, although that much could be ascertained simply by looking at the frightening men.
Munch heard a sound and his eyes shot up abruptly. A ninja had materialized seemingly out of thin air and had landed in front of the host, vaulting up onto a platform to address them all. Munch maintained his position in quiet stillness.
"You have all been gathered here tonight!" came the captain's imperious voice, in thick English. "You have travelled many paths to get here, but you all come from the same place, and with the same purpose! You know what our mission is tonight, we are going to commandeer a U.S. Military aircraft carrier. It's departure is scheduled for one hour! All of you, remember the training you received at Madame Ko's Academy, and don't forget the lessons you learned there!"
The ninjas stood austerely alert during this speech, but now they were joined by two other men, or, more properly, by one other man dragging a second. The first man was the superintendent, and the other was Elliot Stabler. Munch gasped. Elliot seemed to be unconscious. There was no possibility of this turning out to their advantage now.
"Oh, we have a guest do we?" entreated the ninja captain.
"Yes, Neji, we do," confirmed the superintendent, who had grown to look even more malicious. "We can dispose of him along with our other intruder."
Munch's eye widened in fear. Fin, and now Elliot too, and no news from Cragen. This IS NOT looking good. D'arvit.