Chapter XXXV: Empty Quiver

0030hrs, 16 December 2013, Orange, Virginia, United States.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin.

"How is everything back home?"

Mina and Amy were sitting in the car, examining the processing plant through a pair of binoculars. The heat was turned up, of course, and they were observing comfortably the movements of the people in the facility. They were parked significantly further back than where Representative Clemens and O'Conner had parked while observing the facility. If they were going in, they were going to do this right and use violence of action to surprise those inside.

"They took care of Iwasaki," Amy said with a smile. "Luna said you should have seen the look on his face when Lita tackled him in the hallway and held him down so that Serena could administer the sedative."

"Did they get it on tape?" Mina smirked. She looked at the facility through her eyepiece HUD, her night vision picking up several people moving in the buildings and around the perimeter.

"Yep. But they're not doing to send it over now," Amy replied. "We've got more important things to do. Luna said that she and Artemis were going offline to take care of the Nakanishi HQ, so we're on our own for a bit."

"Of course." Mina continued to scan the area, picking out different targets as she went. "I have five guys on the perimeter, armed with pistols and hunting rifles."

"Not too bad of a fight," Amy said, taking down some notes on her computer. "I'm switching to infrared."

Amy switched her HUD over to the infrared view, and scanned for more targets.

"Looks like we have ten more guys inside the processing plant, armed with assault rifles and shotguns. That's probably where the nuclear weapon is located." She continued to look around. "And ten or so guys inside the office building over there as well, also armed with assault rifles and shotguns."

Mina frowned at that statement. "Okay, that's going to be more of a challenge. What's the best route into this place?"

"That's the problem," Amy said. She brought up a satellite image of the plant. "It's completely flat on all sides, and completely exposed as well. There's no stealthy approach unless we can crawl or do something like that."

"Shit. What about the approach to the plant?"

Amy focused in on the entrance. "It's a gravel road, with a chain link fence and a gate at the entrance." Mina continued to look around at the facility, examining the entrance, the sides of the plant, and the surrounding forest. Finally, she spotted a weakness.

"Okay, do you see this piece of forest on the east side of the plant?" she said, pointing to the right side of the facility.

"Yeah, I see it there. It looks closer to the place than everywhere else. There's not too much in the way of fencing there as well. It only looks like a small wood fence on that side."

Mina nodded at Amy's observation.

"Here's my plan. I drive up to the entrance, and cause a huge commotion, get everyone's attention."

"Right…" Amy could see where this was going though. "And I slip in behind and start taking people out from the rear."

"Precisely."

"But I only have this short carbine that fires pistol bullets," Amy noted. Maybe not getting that weapon was a bad idea.

"Well, you should have gone with the Mini-Ruger," Mina replied, somewhat sarcastically. "I'm just kidding," she said with a smile, sensing Amy's irritation at that last statement. "We can switch weapons, I'll be fine here…"

Amy shot down that statement though. If not getting a more powerful weapon was her fault, she wasn't going to let someone else pay for it.

"No, you'll be going up against more opposition than I will, without the advantage of surprise. I'll be just fine with what I have."

"Okay then." Mina looked up at the plant again and make sure that she had accounted for everyone. "I'll drop you off when we approach from the south, here," she said, pointing at a cluster of woods that surrounded the plant. "And I'll continue my route until I enter the plant. When you hear lots of shooting…"

"That's my cue to start," Amy said. "I got it. We need to secure the facility fast or else the police will be all over us, and I don't want to have to explain to the local authorities why we took out everyone here. Five minutes, tops. It'll take the police ten minutes to respond at the minimum, since this is a rural area."

Mina nodded at Amy's statement. "You got it. What time should we start this?" she asked.

"I observed that they change the guard out every two hours or so. At about 0200, we should commence the operation. Plus, they'll be more tired as the night wears on."

"Fine. Do you want to get some sleep or something…?" Mina looked at Amy, partly out of the necessity of the question; they had been driving for about seven hours straight (thanks to Mina's speeding) and another couple observing the place. But she was concerned as well. Amy looked disturbed and sometimes, even frail. The past couple of months had aged them beyond all belief, and Mina knew it. The other three in the group had completely fallen apart, only held together by drugs and some major counseling, but she and Amy had managed to keep it together somehow.

"Yeah…I could do with a bit of shuteye," Amy yawned, not knowing what Mina was thinking. "I can get up in about thirty minutes and wake…"

"No, no, you go ahead," Mina said, waving her off her hand. "It's okay. Sleep."

"Whatever you say." Amy reclined her chair back, and closed her eyes. She was asleep within a minute.

For the next hour or so, Mina looked out at the facility, still keeping tabs on everyone there, but occasionally, she stole a look at Amy laying there in the passenger's seat. She looked so cute, with her blue hair, her short but slim figure, her small bust…

Mina shook that from her head. "Gotta stay focused," she mumbled to herself, putting the binoculars to her eyes once more time to do another sweep of the area.

But she couldn't stay focused for long. Mina stole another look at her. Amy breathed in, her chest heaving slightly upward, then coming back down as she exhaled.

"You're so beautiful," Mina said to her softly. "I know you don't feel the way that I do toward you, but that's okay. Some things…some things were never meant to be."

She leaned over and kissed Amy on the forehead, very gently. "Thanks for everything." Mina leaned back and wiped away a couple of tears that came to her eyes. "I hope we make it through all this," she sniffed.

Amy stirred, forcing Mina to get back to watching the facility.

"Mmm…Mina…?" she asked, very sleepily.

"Yeah?"

"I felt something warm…was that you?"

"Sorry, I was trying to get something," Mina cheerfully replied, her heart thumping in her chest.

"Oh, okay. How much longer?"

"Uh…" Mina checked her HUD. "It's 0130 now. We should start getting ready for this."

"Alright." Amy reclined the chair back up. "I really needed that. Thanks for letting me sleep like that."

"No problem," Mina said.

"You've been a great person to work with," she smiled weakly at Mina. "Trying to take care of Lita or Raye is difficult, but Serena…"

"Heh, that would be a real pain in the ass," Mina replied, loading a magazine with a stripper clip of .223 rounds, pushing them down. "Did you get all of your magazines loaded on the drive up?"

"Yep." Amy pulled the Cx4 Storm from the backseat and checked it, retracting the charging handle and looking down the barrel. "I hope that this holds up in the cold weather."

"It should." Mina checked that iron sight that had been somewhat loose back at the store. She had Amy fix that, and it was nice and straight now.

"Okay, I'll drop you off at the starting point."

"Let's get this done," Amy said. "A lot is riding on us."

"Tell me about it…" Mina put the car in drive and pulled out to the road, covered in snow and glistening in the moonlight. About five minutes later, she drove up to the drop off point, a small road leading toward the woods.

"Here's your spot," she said to Amy, smiling at her, her teeth almost matching the snow on the ground. "Good luck, SAILOR Mercury."

Amy smiled back. They hadn't used those in a little bit. "Thanks, SAILOR Venus." With that, Amy hopped out into the cold, closing the door behind her, patting on the door so that Mina knew to take off. The SUV drove away, leaving her standing in the picturesque landscape, holding her black carbine, dressed in winter clothes and a tactical vest. Her Glock was holster on her hip, and the extra Colt Python was strapped to her right leg, just in case. The Beretta Cx4 Storm glistened in the night air, as the moon shown down upon the pathetic Earth, with all of its petty squabbles, power plays and stupidity.

She watched as her breath misted in the frigid air, rising for a couple of inches and then disappearing.

"Alright," she said to herself. "This is it."

Amy walked along, following the path on her HUD as it guided her through the patch of woods in the distance. She made sure to keep low and to make as little noise as possible; with the foliage gone and with the air dry, noise could carry very, very far. Which is why they had to hit the place quickly and find the nuclear weapon before the police arrived.

Amy thought about Mina, ever since Hong Kong, she had been looking at her funny, trying to cheer her up, acting different that the almost comical Mina that they had come to know in high school and early on in the SAILOR program. And the kiss…well, Amy didn't like being played with like that, even if it was for the mission. She didn't swing that way anyhow. But maybe Mina…

She shook those thoughts from her head and continued on her path, the snow crunching beneath her feet.

Fifteen minutes of crouched walking later, she arrived at the jump off point. Going into a prone position, she scanned the area with her HUD, picking out different targets that popped up. Along the fence, there patrolled a single man, completely bored out of his mind and not paying attention at all. If he got close enough, she could probably take him out with the KA-Bar knife that had been previously purchased at the gun store. Amy brought up the time; it read 0155. Almost time to go.

The man turned around and started to walk along the fence, looking at the tree line instead of looking at the ground, where Amy was laying on her stomach. He came closer…ten meters…five meters…four…three…two…

She leapt up and stabbed him in the jugular, killing him in a few seconds. The man didn't even have time to cry out, only taking a final breath before collapsing to the ground, his blood staining the white snow.

"Now what do we have here…?" Amy said to herself. The man was also carrying a tactical vest, but had a Remington 700 hunting rifle with a detachable magazine. A quick check revealed it to be in the .308 Winchester caliber, and he was carrying about fifteen rounds on him. Not a lot, but then again, they weren't expecting much out here. More searching revealed a radio, a Ruger P95, and some family photos. Amy gulped upon seeing those; it took her back to her first interrogation. She quickly put them away and took the Remington 700, slinging the Cx4 on her back and taking the extra ammo for the hunting rifle with her.

"Mina…SAILOR Venus," she said over her own radio. "Are you in position?"

"Almost," Mina replied. She was driving up the road approaching the plant. "Get ready."

"Okay." Amy crawled forward, and sighted the rifle in on the facility. There were two more targets, one on top of the meat processing building, and one patrolling what seemed to be the offices of the place. The other two were by the gate, unaware of the fate of their comrade. Suddenly, they saw a SUV come driving down the road and made a right hand turn onto their gravel pathway, toward the gate, stopping at it. One of the men walked forward, suspicious of course, and flipped the safety off his Mossburg 500.

Mina rolled down her window. "Hey…um…" she started to say, but the guard cut her off.

"This is a private facility, Ma'am," he said. "Please turn around and leave this area at once."

"But, I'm really lost!" she protested.

"I'm sorry, but you have to leave." The guard brought up his shotgun to hip level, making sure that she got the message.

"Fine." Mina snapped up her Glock 26 and pulled the trigger, blasting a hole in the guard's head. He fell back, tumbling off of the road.

"What the…" the other guard said, but he had no time to react to Mina's vehicle, who barreled through the gate and ran over him, crushing his spine and neck.

"There's a problem at the front gate!" Amy heard over the radio. "All units, move in, move in!"

"Showtime." She aimed the rifle downrange and picked out the person standing on the roof. He was about 100 meters away, an easy target. She exhaled, then took a breath back in, then depressed the trigger sending the bullet into the chest of the man. He fell down, dead. The other guard meanwhile, was running toward the direction of Amy, bringing up his radio to report the sniper, but she had already retracted the bolt and chambered a new round firing it into his head and blowing it up, brains, skull and blood spraying everywhere. Predictably, his radio message never got out.

Five guards burst out from the office building on Amy's left, running toward Mina's SUV. Amy fired a shot, hitting the last one to come out of the door. The others didn't notice, as they were too preoccupied with shooting at Mina.

At this point, Mina had exited her vehicle and opened fire with her AR-15, squeezing off round after round at targets that presented themselves to her. She saw the man that Amy had shot go down.

"Mercury!" she yelled into her radio, ducking behind her car door reload. "Keep it up!"

"Will do!" was the reply. Amy jacked another round into the chamber and fired it off at some more men that were firing wildly at Mina. Another target went down, but that was the last of the ammo.

"I'm out!" Amy yelled to no one in particular. She unslung the Cx4 from her back and started to fire off more shots.

Mina had defeated most of the guards in front of her, and she moved up to the offices. Keeping her back to the wall, she started toward one of the doors. She started to open it, but a burst of gunfire caused her to snap her hand back.

"Damn. SAILOR Mercury, I need a thermal scan of the office, over!"

"Roger, standby." Amy scanned the office with her HUD, and several more targets popped up, hidden behind desks and tables.

"I see them," Venus muttered to herself. She kicked the halfway destroyed door open and snapped a shot off at a man crouching behind a desk. He went down.

Shifting her attention right, Mina dashed right and slid next to a desk, avoiding the gunfire from the rest of the guards in the room. Bullets whizzed by her, destroying phones, computers and causing the occasional stack of paper to be blown up in a spectacular fashion.

"I got this." Venus continued her assault, she rose up and fired off three more rounds at a target less than ten meters away from her. Another one went down.

"We can't stop them!" was the shout over the radio. Amy had effectively picked off everyone who had come outside, and now ten bodies lay on the ground just from both Mina and Amy's handiwork, excluding the five from before.

"They're in the offices! They're…!" The radio went dead after that. Amy assumed that Mina had gotten the job done in there.

"Mercury, I'm done in here," she said coolly.

"I can see that, Venus," Amy replied. "I'm moving up to the processing plant. I'll meet you there."

"Got it."

Amy got up from her position and ran forward toward the facility, breathing extremely hard. The adrenaline of the situation prevented her from feeling the cold and helped her blaze through the layer of snow that would have made it difficult to get over to the buildings. In about thirty seconds, she had crossed over to where Mina was standing by the entrance to the processing plant.

"Ready for this?" Mina asked her as she approached.

"I am. The nuclear weapon should be here…I hope."

The moderately large building loomed in front of them, giving a very creepy sensation as Amy did another thermal scan of the building.

"I have five more targets in the building. Looks like they're trying to move something." She kept looking around.

"They're all on the first floor of the plant. No one is on the catwalks and such."

"Then we can end this right now," Mina said, ejecting her magazine from the AR-15 and putting a fresh one in. "How far away are they?"

"Ten meters."

"Okay, when we go in, I'll take the three on the left, you take the two on the right."

"Alright then. Let's go. Oh, and make sure not to shoot at the thermonuclear device." Mina rolled her eyes at Amy, who cracked a slight smile.

Mercury and Venus took up positions by the door. Mina checked it to make sure that it was open. It was.

"On three." Venus said. "One. Two. Three."

Amy opened the door. Venus went in first, double tapping a guard on the far left. She noted that they were about to move a very heavy case into a truck. Well, they were going to move it, if she hadn't shot the other two people trying to move it.

Mercury went in after Venus, snapping a shot off at the guard in front of her, then double tapping another on the right.

In less than three seconds, all of the guards had been neutralized. In four minutes, the entire facility had been secured.

"Is…is that all?" Mina panted, the exertion of the event now just catching up to her.

"Yeah…yeah…that's it." Amy scanned around, but there was nothing to see. All targets had been eliminated. "I'm going to check the police radio."

There was nothing though. No calls…yet.

"We got real lucky on that one," Amy said, looking around at the carnage. "Let's make sure that it was worth it."

She and Mina walked over to the heavy case that the guards had been hefting towards a U-Haul truck. They knelt down next to it. Amy placed her hands over the latches, looked at Mina, took a deep breath and undid the latches. She then opened the case up.

There sat a nuclear warhead. Not a bomb, not a missile, but the actual warhead itself, the business end of what had spurred the Cold War on for so long.

"Is that it?" Mina asked anxiously. "It looks so small." She was right; the device only measured 31 inches in length and maybe 12 inches in diameter. It was coated in a white paint, coving up the steel casing that surrounded the small fissile material inside of it.

"Yeah. That's it." Amy did a search on what it could be. "It's American," she said, frowning at that. "The W80 nuclear warhead, variable yield, 5 to 150 kiloton explosive device…"

"Why hasn't it been reported missing?" Mina wondered. "You'd think that if they knew if something like this was missing, they'd throw a fit. Especially after Russia."

"I don't know." Amy stood up after finishing her analysis. "It looks like it has been modified for remote detonation."

"Wait, so someone could blow this thing up right now?!" Mina gulped. Being vaporized in a mushroom cloud was not her idea of going out with a bang.

"Possibly. I'm going to cut off the remote part."

"Uh…" Mina didn't like where this was going. "You know what you're doing?"

"Maybe."

"Dammit."

Amy knelt down again, this time pulling out her knife (still stained with blood) and looked for the remote transmitter that had popped up in her scan of the device. There was a small transmitter near one of the head of the weapon, and there were several jury-rigged wires leading into the warhead itself. Amy calculated that the bomb had only been set up for remote detonation, and so cutting the wires wouldn't lead to a massive hole in the ground where they were standing. Well, at least that's what the calculations said.

She took a breath in, and then snipped all the wires leading into the bomb. Nothing happened.

After a couple seconds of holding their breath in, Mina and Amy exhaled.

"Oh my god," Mina muttered. "That…that was unbelievable."

"Tell me about it," Amy replied. "Alright, let's look around for more intel on where the second bomb is located."

The two of them split up and started looking around the plant for anything on the second bomb.

Mina covered her nose at the smell of death that many slaughterhouses gave off; even though this one hadn't been used in years, it still had that smell. She was looking around on the first floor, but really wasn't coming up with anything.

"Amy, how's your search coming?" she yelled to her.

"Nothing so far." Amy was on the catwalks, which lead to a small office overhanging the plant. She walked toward it, her boots clanging on the forged steel that made up the catwalk. After a couple seconds of brisk walking, she arrived at the door and found it unlocked. Slowly, she pushed the door open, keeping her weapon at the ready.

The office was a mess, with several destroyed laptops lying about, presumably dismantled by the guards as they tried to leave. Chairs were flipped over, papers scattered everywhere, several shotguns and assorted shells lay about, and some AR15s were propped up against the wall.

Amy bent down and inspected one of the laptops. It was unsurprisingly, a Nakanishi T800, and it's screen was completely busted in. But the hard drive was still intact. Whoever tried to destroy it, didn't realize that destroying the screen didn't mean that the computer itself was destroyed. Amy picked it up and laid it on a desk, and hit the power button to turn it on. It did so, but without the screen giving the GUI input; thankfully, Amy could remote access the computer via her tablet computer by utilizing the MAC address that the computer gave off and routing a remote access command that way.

"What have we here…" she muttered to herself, looking at her computer. The internet browser predictably, had porn on it, but there was an email server open as well. She accessed it.

There, she found exactly what she was looking for; proof of the WMDs and the location of the second one.

"To: CMD at ORANGE.

Subject: Special package.

I trust that you will deliver the truck to the capitol on time. The catering service that we have provided for the government officials, coupled with our security services will be sufficient cover."

There was also a second email, concerning the location of the other WMD.

"Re: Special Package.

The second package, in case of secondary team neutralization and/or mission failure, is at Ana Meat Processing Plant in Paterson, New Jersey. I trust that this information will not be misused."

"Gotcha," she said. Amy made sure to save it on the small amount of HD space she carried on her computer. She then transferred that data to her eyepiece HUD and sent it to back to Luna.

But nothing happened.

"PC Load letter? The fuck?" Amy tapped her HUD again. It refreshed, and displayed the proper error message, saying that the data couldn't be transmitted. In fact, nothing on her HUD or tablet computer was working properly; it was completely scrambled.

"Amy…Amy!" Mina yelled from downstairs.

"I'm coming!" Amy ran outside the office and looked to see what was going on.

"Oh shit."

Fifteen Suburbans and Yukons were parked outside, and soldiers in white, winter fatigues, armed with MP5s, M4A1s, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons were fanning out on the perimeter, surrounding the facility.

"Who…who are they?" Mina asked Amy, obviously a bit scared.

"I don't know…maybe they're the local SWAT team?" she said, but both of them knew that wasn't true at all. More than likely, it was a team from Nakanishi Security Solutions, the PMC that had been created to enforce Nakanishi's policies on its underlings.

"Mina, you still have those binoculars?"

"Yeah, I have them right here." Mina hustled herself up to the catwalk.

"Let me see those." Amy took the binoculars and looked at the gaggle of SUVs clustered on the road.

Out of all the white-clad soldiers, she saw someone stand out completely; he had long, brown hair, had a slightly pointed nose, and carried himself confidently. He was dressed in US Army ACUs, and was carrying a rare Calico M960 submachine gun, identifiable by the cylindrical magazine it had on the top of it and the general Sci-fi look that it possessed.

"Nephrite."