Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
"You two will stay in the car and drive straight to the airport. We'll catch up a.s.a.p."
Chance's voice was no-nonsense, the expression on his face stern.
"Did I make myself clear?"
No reply, neither from Ilsa nor from Ames.
Chance stifled a sigh. Outside the car, only a few hundred yards away, at least one building was burning down and a very angry crowd of people was about to wreak havoc on the whole neighborhood.
"Now, I don't expect Ilsa to actually follow logical and well-founded advice from somebody far more experienced in the field than she'll ever be, but you, you know better. That's a powder keg ready to explode out there and I don't want you anywhere near it", he tried his luck with Ames.
Still no response. Just two very determined women with clenched jaws, dark eyes practically boring into him and arms crossed. They were practically trembling with anger about the boys' envisaged solo run. The air was still all but sizzling with the electricity from the shouting match they had had only moments before.
"Goddamn it, we're running out of time! Somebody out there is bound to need help and so far no sign at all of any kind of police or firefighters!", Winston yelled at them.
That did it. He was right. This was not the moment to challenge Chance's notorious protection instinct regarding his own team members. Grumbling, Ames and Ilsa both mumbled a barely audible "We'll wait at the airport."
But once you get home…
Chance and Winston jumped out of the car and headed towards the market place. The limousine driver quickly revved up the engine and shot away from the turmoil, as fast as possible.
He didn't get very far, though.
"Wait! Wait!", Ilsa shouted. "There are the fire trucks! But what are they doing? Why are they just standing there?"
The firemen were quite flabbergasted when a fancy limousine pulled up in front of them with two foreign ladies popping out of the back and questioning in an awful mixture of guide book Greek and English why the hell they weren't present at the marketplace – there was a building burning, for heaven's sake!
Now, the firefighters were proud men, they sure as hell were not willing to take crap from clueless womenfolk.
"We haven't been paid for two months! All of us are barely scraping by with side jobs, off the books!" – "The market place is full of mad people. The police can't protect us, those forces that are still left are at the railway station, there's another demonstration going on, it's threatening to spin out of control!" – "Our families can't afford losing us… who will win the bread if we don't?"
Their English was strange, but their worries were real.
They did have a point.
"Then give us the key to the truck!", Ames demanded. Her heart was galloping madly in her chest. The image of Chance running towards the heart of the madness was still haunting her. He and his goddamn stubbornness! "Just the keys – we'll deal with the rest!" Not that she had any idea how to operate a fire truck, but it couldn't be rocket science, could it?
"Take my necklace! And the ring!" Ilsa started taking her jewelry off, tried handing it to the firemen.
Now that struck a note. They were fire men. They had sworn to protect and to serve. Had they really sunk so low that they needed bribe to fulfill their duty?
A few seconds later the truck was racing towards the market place.
… … …
One thing was very clear to Chance and Winston from the very beginning. Although they were both armed, and not lightly, it would be impossible for them to actually use their guns in the crowd. They'd cause a veritable stampede, with the possibility of hundreds of people getting trampled to death.
The risk was already extremely high. Although the place was so tightly packed that they could barely make it to the burning building, there was no standstill, everyone was constantly moving, yelling, picking up things from the ground and throwing them against the walls of the buildings behind which the very decisions had been made that were now taking away everything they had worked for so hard, ruining their own future and that of their children.
Their fury was understandable.
But there were people behind those walls. Living, breathing, scared to death people.
One of them was breaking through the glass entrance doors of the burning bank just as Chance and Winston had finally made it to the front line of the attackers. The man wore the remnants of a business suit. No jacket, his tie a ridiculous piece of tattered cloth, his formerly white shirt blackened with soot. He was desperately gasping for air. The smoke inside the building had to be horrendous.
Now, the really dangerous thing about mobs is that nobody is responsible. The individual becomes part of a big, amorphous mass, the lizard part of the brain takes over, the most primitive instincts gain dominance, social inhibitions get shot to hell. As soon as the crowd caught sight of the banker a hail of stones came down on him, hitting his head, the hands he raised to protect his face… he toppled over and fell to the ground.
Chance and Winston tried to break through to him, but suddenly the people around them starting closing in on them, pushing against them, squashing them – they were preventing them from coming to the man's help! The force behind the shoves they received was unbelievable. Both Winston and Chance were not lightweights, but the crowd played with them like waves with a cork on water.
It was so goddamn tempting to just pull the guns and shoot their way through, but they couldn't, they just couldn't let their lizard parts of the brain take over, too. If they used their guns they'd cause a mass panic. With all those high walls enclosing the market place lots of people would be condemned to a terrible death.
Dealing punches left and right, Winston and Chance fought their way through the last line, deliberately breaking bones, especially noses – they had to hurt them, and significantly. Injured people are far more inclined to stop attacking while people that only feel a bit of pain often feel instigated.
The banker was writhing in pain when they finally got to him. Bloody foam was coming out of his mouth and nose.
"Third floor! The conference room on the right! They are trapped there!" He sounded like a drowning man, and he probably was, drowning from too much blood in his lungs.
Just as Chance desperately tried CPR while Winston fought with all his might to ward off the people still pressing in, the crowd parted like the red sea – a fire truck was plowing right through it, air horns blaring.
"Somebody named Ames and Ilsa sent us. They wanted me to point out that they did not set foot on the market place", a fire man told Chance.
… … …
The fire men rescued the banker's co-workers just in time before the smoke from the fire reached the conference room. Their bosses had locked the upper part of the building, thus they hadn't been able to get up on the roof. If their colleague hadn't bravely faced the fire and the mob, they'd all have suffocated.
Unfortunately he paid for his bravery with his life. The banker died in hospital, on a gurney in a corridor because they had no place else to stash him. The government had reduced funding for medical facilities, too.
As much as Ilsa had reveled in defying Chance's orders, the man's death hit her hard, and again she felt almost throttled by desperation. With all her money she couldn't help these people!
"Do you want to know what would cure all that? All that despair and hopelessness?", an elderly man suddenly asked her. She had been lost in thought, staring out of one of the hospital windows.
"I'll deliver a speech in London tomorrow. Maybe you want to attend." He handed her a card.