Chapter 5 is here, as promised. I'll also publish the next chapter.
Chapter 5: Fear Factor
We decide to call our plan Fear Factor. Its been several days since we created the plan, and we're all ready to go.
"Are you ready?" I ask Anton. He's about to head off and plant the bomb.
"Yes,' he replies simply.
"Good luck," John says. Anton gives him a slight nod. Then he leaves.
We wait patiently; it should only take an hour or so. After about an hour of waiting, my cell phone rings.
"Hello?" I answer it.
"It's planted. Now all we have to do is wait," he says. We're planning it so that we can watch from our house as the bomb goes off. Anton placed it inside the gas tank; he said it would cause the most damage there. I take his computer and we gather around it. I turn on the camera; its focused on the car. Then we wait. After around 30 minutes, Nikolei comes out of the warehouse. He's about 100 yards away when it goes off.
There's a big fireball that blasts the car apart. It didn't stand a chance. Nikolei reels back, staring at it in shock. Immediately, guards start swarming around, trying to get the fire out, and making sure Nikolei is all right.
"time to get out of there, Anton," I say.
The camera turns off and he says, "roger that," before hanging up.
About 30 minutes later, he returns to the house.
"You weren't followed, right?" I ask. I know he's smart enough to be able to lose a tail, but I want to make sure.
"No, I wasn't" he replies, not sounding offended in the least. He knows I'm just being careful.
The phone rings; we stop talking instantly. Slowly, I pick it up and put it on speaker so we can all hear.
"It was you, wasn't it?" an angry voice says. Nikolei. "You blew up my car! What are you playing at? Are you trying to scare me into not killing you? Is that the idea? Cuz it's not working. I'm still coming after you. Now more then ever, in fact. You fail," he says, and hangs up.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," I say, putting the phone away.
"Couldn't he track you with that phone?" Anton asks cautiously.
"No. The signal is being bounced, the number changed…it's a gift from Scorpia," I reply confidently.
"Well, now we need to start planning our next move," John says, changing the subject.
"What's our next target? "Alex asks.
"The warehouse," Anton and I both say at the same time.
"How? He'll have stepped up security," Alex says.
"Who says we're going to break inside again?" I say mysteriously.
"What are you suggesting? An air strike?" John says.
"Precisely," I exclaim. "We fly over in a helicopter, dropping bombs on the compound. We could also pour gasoline on it, then light it on fire. Again, our main goal is to do as much damage as possible," I say.
"What about the people? There will be people there. I'm all right with destroying his property, but I don't want to kill anyone," Anton says.
"There aren't any guards there at night, are there?" I ask.
"No, there aren't. that's the only time they aren't there," he replies. "That's when your going to burn it, then?"
"Yes," I say.
"Good," he replies. "This way, we don't have to worry about the security being stepped up. Has MI6 agreed?"
"Yes, I already asked them to support us through this whole thing," I respond.
"Wonderful. Now, is it just going to be bombs and fire?" he asks.
"Yes, I think so," I say.
"When are we going to do it?" John asks.
"As soon as possible," I reply.
"Do we have all the resources?" Alex asks.
"yes," I say, nodding. "Whenever we're ready, MI6 will give us everything we need,"
"So..tonight?" John says.
"Sure, why not?" I reply, smiling slightly.
Several hours later, we're ready to go. Anton and I have decided to go while John watches the kids.
"Ready?" I yell above the noise of the helicopter. Anton nods his head. I lift one of the bombs, and throw it at one of the buildings. Suddenly I hear a muffled bang. I also see a flash of light out of the corner of my eye.
"Fly up! Get higher!" I yell at the pilot who's helping us. He pulls the controls to make the helicopter go higher.
"Why? Why are we going up?" Anton yells, confused.
"There are guards. They're shooting at us," I reply, slightly mad. He said there wouldn't be any! I don't understand….
"Are you sure" he asks. He turns to the pilot. "Do you have thermal binoculars?"
The pilot silently hands him a pair of binoculars. He peers through them for a few seconds, swinging them around and scanning the area below. He hands them to me. I look through them, expecting to see small red dots. Instead, there's only one dot. I realize what he's done. He wanted us to believe there were more of them, he used darkness to his advantage.
"Keep throwing the bombs, I don't want this to fail." I call. He obeys, and soon the whole place is on fire. I know its practically useless, but I lift the binoculars and search the compound. I'm surprised when I spot Nikolei running away.
"Did he survive?" Anton asks.
"Yes, he's escaping now. Let's go back," I say. The pilot turns around and starts to head back.
We finally get home, but only after driving around for about an hour making sure we aren't followed. We walk inside to find John, Alex and Jeremy waiting for us.
"So? Did it work?" John asks as we enter.
"Well, yeah but…" I trail off.
"But what? What happened?" he asks, looking worried.
"Well, Nikolei was there, and when we started throwing the bombs he started shooting at us. we had to fly higher, but we still managed to light the place up," I reply.
"Did he see Anton?" Alex asks.
"No, he didn't luckily," Anton replies.
"What's our next course of action?" Alex asks, sounding eager.
"Our next task is to go to bed," I reply.
"What?! But we have to plan!" Alex exclaims.
"Its almost midnight," John points out. Alex mutters something about me always staying up late, but he heads off to bed anyway, with Jeremy following close behind.
The next morning, after Anton comes over and we eat breakfast, we gather around the table. I've asked Anton to bring a layout of his dad's house with him, and now it's in front of us. its quite large, which in my opinion is both good and bad. Its good because that means he'll be losing a lot of stuff he probably cares about. Also, he'll have trouble protecting every inch of it. The down side is that it will take more effort to destroy it.
"So how are we going to destroy this place?" John asks, leaning over the paper to examine it.
"Are we going to torch it?" Alex asks.
"I think we should bomb it, like we did with the warehouse. I think we should put bombs around it and blow it up," I reply.
"We could nuke it!" Alex exclaims, and receives a kick from Jeremy under the table. "Ow!" he yells, glaring at Jeremy. "It was a joke!"
"Hold on. Alex, you might be on to something. If we launched a small drone at the house, we could destroy the whole place. The question is, would it work?" John says.
"Yes, it would. The house is well protected, but only to a certain point. its definitely not protected against drones, though." Anton replies.
"I have two questions. First, drones are illegal, aren't they? And second, how are we going to get a hold of one in the first place?" Jeremy asks.
"Those questions can both be answered by one thing: MI6. they agreed to help us, and they have resources. All they have to do is tell the government that Nikolei is threatening one of their agents, and so this is what they're doing to prevent that from happening.," I explain.
"So were relying on them yet again?" Alex says.
"Mrs. Jones told us she would help us as much as possible. I've asked for her help, and she agreed. They owe us for everything we've done for them," I say.
"They'd better leave us alone after this," Alex mutters.
"They will Alex, don't worry," I say.
"So, when are we going to do this?" John asks. Anton clears his throat and looks at me as if to say we need to talk alone.
"What's up?" I ask, but he shakes his head and glances at John. He wants to talk with me, and me alone.
"Do you speak Arabic?" he asks in Arabic. I nod.
"Good. I want to talk to you about something without ay of the others understanding. I am not like you, or John, or even Alex. I'm also not like my father. I do not like killing people. With my father…as a last resort, that's different. but this…there will be people around the house. Day and night. if we launch a drone at them, they will die. there are always guards there. it doesn't matter that they work for him. they have families, lives, people who will be grief-stricken if they die in such a horrible manner." he says, looking at me intently. "I do not want them to die,"
"So what do you propose we do? Warn them that we're going to send a drone to the house?" I ask.
"No, they would tell Nikolei," he says.
"So what are we supposed to do?" I ask. We stare at each other, and I know what he's thinking.
"No, we can't just not do this. There has to be a way!" I exclaim.
"What is it, then?" he asks desperately.
"I…MI6 could tell them that there's some kind of disease or something. we could poison one of the guards, then tell them that there's some kind of highly contagious, deadly disease and they have to evacuate so we can decontaminate it and then we explode his house," I think quickly.
"That could work. My dad is a very careful person though. Are you sure we could convince him?" he asks.
"MI6 can," I say confidently.
"No one gets hurt?" he says, staring at me.
"The guard we poison might, but I'll make sure MI6 doesn't let any permanent damage happen," I reassure him. he nods, seemingly satisfied.
"Good, then we can do this, he says, switching back to English.
'What was that about?" John asks.
"We were just discussing the plan. We've changed it a bit. We're going to poison a guard, to make it seem like there's a disease and they all need to evacuate. Anton doesn't want anyone innocent dying. We don't really want anyone dying at all." I explain John looks from Anton to me, and I know his respect for Anton has grown slightly.
"This will take a bit more time to get together. I think it'll be a few days before we're ready for this," I say. Everyone nods in agreement. It's getting to the point where I'm hoping Nikolei gives up soon. I have one more course of action that might push him past the breaking point, but if not…I shudder to have to think about what will have to happen then.