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B.U.Z.Z
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The elevator sped downwards. Even though I was inside, I could hear a loud hum and it was starting to get on my nerves. I let my eyes travel around the cage we were in. Stainless steel, probably imported from America. If not, Pohang Iron & Steel probably supplied it. After all, it is one of the leading stainless steel producers in the world. A couple of pictures were here too: one of Shing (he really was an egomaniac, wasn’t he?) and another of a tropical island, probably Fiji or some other island in the Pacific.
Suddenly, a heard a cough behind me. Before I could think, I had my gun out and was scanning the elevator. Then it hit me: the girl.
Another cough. Weaker, this time. Putting my empty gun away, I helped the newly-freed captive into a sitting position. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was faint, but normal. I looked her over and noticed some blood on her head.
Oops. I think she might’ve banged the wall a bit hard after I unceremoniously pushed her into the elevator while trying to get away from the sonic wave aftershocks.
I searched my pockets frantically and sighed. My full first-aid kit was in my knapsack outside, but I at least had the foresight to bring at least one band-aid. Taking it out of my rear pocket, I put it over her wound and stood back to examine my handiwork. I hadn’t disinfected it or anything but the bleeding stopped at least, but she should definitely see a doctor after we got out.
Just then the girl stirred and opened her eyes. “Ugh…where am I?” she muttered, holding the injured area of her head.
“In the elevator” I replied. “We’re heading down to the ammunition room to grab some things and then I’ve got to look for something.” I wasn’t going to tell her what that something was. She hadn’t earned my trust yet.
The girl tried to stand, but I pushed her down. “Stay there. You banged your head pretty hard coming into here. You might be too dizzy to stand.”
“I can take care of myself” she snapped and she stood up again. But a second later she was holding her head and leaning against me for support.
I sighed and sat her back down again. “Now will you listen?”
She glared at me, but said nothing. I continued. “I think I should at least know who I rescued from the clutches of an evil murderer”
The girl sighed. “I’m Rachael Laura Bush, daughter of the President of the United States and second-in-command of the CIA.”
My eyebrows shot up. “And why, pray tell, is a high-ranking CIA agent in Bu Shing’s stronghold?”
“Why did France send its best secret agent to rescue me?” Rachael shot back.
“You know who I am?!” I asked incredulously, all the while thinking hard. Did I say something without realizing it?
“I recognize you from your file. Leonardo Napoleon, French Special Agent, most decorated agent since Caspar Leone” she recited.
Oh. I didn’t realize I was that famous. “My mission wasn’t to rescue you,” I said slowly, “and I’m the one asking the questions here, so answer mine.” It wasn’t a request.
Rachael sighed. “The President sent me to investigate Bu Shing’s possible links to Al Qaeda. I was supposed to be a maid so I could get around here without attracting too much attention. Yesterday night I got caught in the office belonging to the Head of Security. They tortured me for a bit and then came today’s excitement.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not surprisingly, no. Terrorist groups don’t usually work well in alliances.”
Just then, the elevator dinged. “We’re here” I announced. “Can you stand?”
She nodded and got to her feet just as the doors opened. Together we walked through the opening.
We stepped into a seemingly normal hallway: Fake potted plants posted at intervals down the corridor, doors lining both walls, and pictures in the empty spaces. That is, it was seemingly normal until something started shooting at us. I pushed Rachael behind a plant before diving behind my own.
“What do we do now?” called Rachael as the furious rat-tat-tat continued.
“Find a way to get through the hallway without getting our heads shot off!” I yelled back. “Do you know where we are?”
“The fifth floor, home of the Head of Security”
“Obviously someone doesn’t want us here”
“Do you think…?”
“Nah. Shing may have been a terrorist leader, but he wasn’t Einstein.” I tried edging around the plant, but ducked behind it again as a bullet flew past my nose. “Can you see the guards from where you are?”
“They aren’t guards. Well, they are, but they aren’t…”
“Just get to the point!” I didn’t have time for beating around the bush.
“Alright! They’re automatic machine gun turrets. Happy?”
“No, I can’t say that I am.” Terrific. We were stuck in a hallway, hiding behind plants, and behind shot by automatic guns. I couldn’t see how we could go around them. The only way we would get out of this situation was in a body bag.
Suddenly, the guns stopped. “I know you’re here!” called out a man in a clear voice. “Come out with your hands up!”
Even someone like me knows when the odds are against them. I stood up with my hands at shoulder height. Rachael did the same. Standing at the other end of the hallway was a man in his early thirties with a balding head. He had ice-colored eyes and the little hair that was left on his head was grayish. He was wearing tan-colored slacks, a white dress shirt with a white tuxedo, and a white belt with a silver buckle. In his right hand was a gun and in his left, a walkie-talkie.
Rachael gasped. “Napoleon!” she hissed before I could stop her. “That man is the Head of Security, John Shoto!”
I raised my eyebrows at this. John Shoto was one of the fake names supplied by the French Secret Service. Everyone in the service had one. It helped protect our true identity. Even my own name, Leonardo Napoleon, is a fake. So what was one of Shing’s men doing with it?
The Head of Security didn’t flinch to his name. “Come on!” he called out. “To my office. Now!”
Grudgingly, we made our way down the corridor. At the end of it, Shoto muttered “In here”, jerking his head to the door on our right. I stepped through the threshold and looked around.
At first glance, John Shoto’s office looked like any other one. A wooden desk, probably cedar, was in the center of the room, accompanied by a black leather chair. A phone and a lamp sat on the corner of the desk closest to us. File cabinets lined the left wall while the right had a large satellite view of a city. The floor was carpeted and prevented one’s feet from making any noise.
But my trained eyes spotted clues right away. First—and most obvious—there was the fact that there weren’t any plaques or name plates or name tags with John Shoto’s name on them. Secondly, the picture on the wall was of Paris, France. I know because you can distinctly recognize the tip of the Eifel Tower. And thirdly, one of the papers on Shoto’s desk had the seal of the French government on it. So unless he was reading the latest brochure from the Department of Propaganda, he obviously was doing something Shing wouldn’t have liked
I turned around to look at Shoto; he had just closed the door and he was locking it. “Alright, what’s your name?”
Shoto flinched but hurriedly tried to cover it. “Miss Bush told you. It’s John Shoto.”
“Funny, but I don’t remember anybody calling her ‘Miss Bush’ or anything that related her to the President of the United States” I shot back.
“Who else could it be?” Shoto demanded.
“Marylyn Monroe?” I cracked.
“Leonardo, get serious!” Shoto said in frustration. “You know that there’s only one girl in the faculty and it’s Bush’s daughter, and she’s supposed to be locked up! Who else could this girl be?” But then he closed his mouth and I smiled triumphantly. He called me ‘Leonardo’. Not ‘Napoleon’, but ‘Leonardo’. Rachael has only called me that once, and it wasn’t in front of him.
Still grinning, I repeated, “What is your name?”
Shoto glared back at me. “You know I can’t give you that information.”
I sighed dramatically. “Oh well. Can you at least give us a map of the place? We need to find the ammunition room”
Shoto nodded. “I can do that.” He strode over to a filing cabinet, opened it, and started flicking through the folders. He selected one, closed the cabinet, and walked back to me and handed me a folder labeled “Shing”. “Here. Everything you need is in there.”
I opened the folder and whistled. Inside was a least 50 pages describing every floor, every room, and every security station in the building. I flicked through the pages until I found the one that showed the ammunition room. “We’re close!” I called to Rachael, who was leaning against the door with her arms folded over her chest. “The room’s two floors above our heads!”
Shoto took the folder back, closed it, and said, “But you’re going to need a plan”
* * *
About 15 minutes later, Rachael and I stepped out of Shoto’s office with both a copy of the map of the ammunition room and a general battle plan. We were on our way to the elevator when suddenly it dinged. Thinking quickly, I graded Rachael and dragged her into a deserted office to our left and left the door partially opened. We leaned against the wall on either side of the door, listening with baited breath.
Sounds of footsteps echoes in the empty room. Judging by the noise, I guess there was at least 4 people standing outside our hiding place. They were in the middle of a conversation.
“…all set?” a man finished asking.
“Yeah, we’re just waiting for the signal” replied another.
“Why is Bin Laden interested in Shing?” asked another. “He’s the leader of the largest terrorist network in the world!”
My mouth fell open. I looked at Rachael, who was also wearing an expression of shock. Osama Bin Laden, Public Enemy Number 1, was interested in Shing’s network?
One of the men—the one that hadn’t spoken—sighed. “Listen you dunderhead, it’s all about the balance of power. Sure Bin Laden’s got the biggest, most efficient terrorist network in the world, but Shing’s a close second. In fact, the boss is concerned about Shing’s growing power. Eliminate the head honcho, and Bin Laden can swallow this network whole and not worry about anyone.”
Obviously they haven’t heard about the incident in the computer lab, I mused. Interesting…
Outside, the man was finishing his rant. “…you just listen to my orders and carry them out. Understand?”
The others murmured something incoherent. And then the group walked away again. Even after the four had left, we waited inside that room for a whole minute before emerging.
“Interesting…” I murmured, rubbing my chin in thought. So, Osama Bin Laden was going for a big and scary global terror network. I had to admit, Shing’s organization would help Al Qaeda’s cause immensely.
Rachael was looking at me again. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head. “Well?” she asked. “What are we going to do?”
We. She’d been saying that a lot lately. I turned around to face her. “Let’s worry about the coup later. Right now, let’s just find the ammunition room.”
* * *
The elevator dinged and came to a halt. The doors hissed open and I rolled out into the hallway, taking a kneeling position and holding my gun ahead of me and I scanned the corridor. Sure, my gun was empty…but nobody else knew that.
The seventh-floor corridor was deserted. “All clear!” I called over my shoulder, putting my gun away.
Rachael walked out of the elevator and brushed passed me. I thought I heard her mutter something that sounded like “show-off”, but I probably imagined it.
“Right, if Shoto’s map is correct, the ammunition room should be just around this corner” I said in a low voice, pointing ahead to it. “But there’s probably going to be a guard on duty so…”
I never got to finish my sentence because there was a loud bang from around the corner. Looking around I noticed that Rachael was gone. Swearing under my breath I dashed down the corridor, pausing to lean against the space of wall that was right before the corner. I listened carefully. Aside from my beating heart, there was no sound.
I rolled back into the open and landed in a crouch, holding my arms protectively over my face. But after surveying the scene, I straightened: Rachael was leaning against the wall calmly with a security guard lying at her feet, unconscious.
“What kept you?” Rachael asked innocently as I came up to her.
I shot the President’s daughter a nasty look. “I was making a plan” I replied peevishly. I then crouched down and began frisking the guard, taking his gun and ammunition. But where was that…?
Rachael tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and saw her waving a card key in my face. “Looking for this?” she asked sweetly.
Grudgingly, I took the key and swiped it through the electronic lock. The light glowed green and the huge metal door opened with a clang.
I took a good look around the room. You’d think Shing was preparing an invasion of America or something: Every square inch of the room was covered with either weapons or ammunition. Many different types of guns hung from the wall. Barrels of grenades stood on the right wall. The rest of the room was a maze of shelves that were holding boxes of ammunition.
After checking that there wasn’t security hiding in the room, Rachael and I entered, closing the door behind us carefully. I walked towards the left wall and examined the guns. I picked up two small handguns and put my olds one on the empty pegs. After putting my second gun in my holster, I paid a quick to stop the grenades and filled my pockets with them. I then heading inside the maze of shelves and took some the ammunition. I filled the clip of each gun, put the spare cartridges on my waist, and went off to find Rachael.
She wasn’t hard to find. She was standing in the back of the room holding an Uzi submachine gun—complete with a sling—in one hand. She was wearing two loops of cartridges like you would a sash. And she was staring a bunch of barrels. “What’s up?” I asked her.
She just pointed to the barrels, apparently too stunned to talk. I crouched down to get a better look. They were caked with dirt, but I could discern a letter… ‘U’.
Suddenly I wished I wasn’t so curious.
I looked up at Rachael, my throat constricted. “U-Uranium?” I choked out.
She nodded. “If my calculations are correct, he had enough to make a uranium bomb.” I didn’t have to ask who she was referring to.
Suddenly, the door to the room opened. I heard a deep voice say “Search the room”
Blast. Security Guards.
I motioned to Rachael and we silently tiptoed across the room. Of course, I wasn’t looking where I was going, so I walked straight into a shelf, knocking it to the floor with a resounding crash. To make matters worse, it revealed our presence to security.
Blast.
“It’s them! Shoot them!” yelled a guard. I barely had enough time to grab Rachael and drag her out of the way before they started firing.
“So what do we do now?” Rachael asked quietly as we made our way to the back of the room.
“We split up. You distract the guards, and I’ll pick them off.” With that, I darted right, leaving Rachael to her own devices.
I came to a corner and stopped: I heard a faint breathing on the other side along with footsteps. Judging by the sound, I’d say at least two guards were just ahead of me.
Why don’t they just throw a grenade around the corner? I wondered. That’s what I’d do…then I’d start running…
But then it hit me: they couldn’t throw grenades in here because if they did blow up, the whole ammunition stock would blow up as well!
But that didn’t really help me with my predicament. I was still alone at least two guards right around the corner ready to blow my head off. As I considered this, I heard Rachael opening fire with her sub-machine gun. I distinctly heard the guards around the corner saying “What?”
This was my chance. I threw myself into a roll and unfolded behind the guards , who were busy looking the other way. Rachael’s gun covered the noise of my entrance.
I straightened. I raised my gun. The guards never looked back.
Two shots. Two thuds.
Stepping over the dead guards, I darted down the passage towards the gunfire.
* * *
It took me a while to navigate the shelf maze, but I eventually met up with Rachael just in time to bail her out of trouble. As one we forced the guards out of the room. While Rachael held them back, I dragged barrels of ammunition in front of the door. Once the guards noticed this, they stopped shooting. I guess they didn’t want to be blown up.
“Now what do we do??” demanded Rachael as we reloaded our weapons.
I was about to answer when a bullet whipped by my head. For a split second I thought the guards were dumber than I thought and were trying to shoot through the stacked barrels. But logic took over and I realized the bullet came from behind me. With a sinking feeling, I turned around and my mouth dropped open: In front of a group of twenty-odd security guards, wearing a bullet-proof vest and holding a gun, was Bu Shing.
Without even thinking I fired 3 shots at Shing, grabbed Rachael, and ran back inside the maze.
As we ran, my mind was working furiously. How could have Shing escaped? I wondered. Those grenades should’ve torn the room—and everyone in it—apart! He should be dead!
I felt cheated, lied to. According to all logic, Shing should be dead. Yet here he was, standing tall, waving a gun around, and ordering his cronies to kill us!
I was so absorbed in my angry thoughts that I didn’t realize that Rachael had stopped until I ran into her. Picking myself off the floor, I was about to ask her why she stopped but two cracks sounded close by. Lifting my gun, I went around the corner and saw Rachael standing over two dead guards, holstering her smoking gun and picking up her sub-machine gun
I heard the clatter of running footsteps. “Next time use a silencer” I scolded. With that, we began running once more.
For the next 10 minutes we ran around that room, killing every guard that we ran into. Unfortunately, the remaining guards started throwing grenades, but oddly they were all shot down (“Someone has good aim” remarked Rachael after this happened for the fifth time). At one point I threw Rachael’s sub-machine gun, which was overheated, at two guards. The gun hit them and exploded, setting off a chain reaction. As explosions roared around us, Rachael and I sprinted to the door, throwing all our extra ammunition and grenades back towards the inferno raging behind us.
Just as a massive explosion rocked the building, we bust out of the room and back into the hallway…right into waiting masked terrorists, their guns pointing straight at us.
I gritted my teeth and was about to lift my gun when a cool, all-too-familiar voice behind me said “I hope you aren’t thinking of fighting back.”
I nearly dropped my gun in amazement. Surely, after that explosion, he must be dead! I slowly turned around. There, standing in front of the demolished ammunition room, was Bu Shing.
“What the-? How did you-? Surely you must-!” My shock and indignation robbed me of my ability to speak. Once again, fate cheated me of my revenge.
Shing walked towards me, as cool as you please. When he stopped in front of me, he held up his hand. “Your weapons.”
I gave him a glare. I didn’t move. Shing’s gaze hardened. “Mr. Napoleon, you’re a French Special Agent. Surely, even you must realize that there’s no use fighting.”
My brain struggled to comprehend what was going on as Shing took our weapons. How did he know who I was?
Shing must’ve known what was going through my head, for he said, “You can thank your friend John Shoto. Actually, you can’t because he has been terminated. But before his death he confessed about everything.”
He began circling us. “Mr. Napoleon, I know you’re here to reclaim the computer chip. But frankly, I must say that you have failed. You have been betrayed by a fellow agent. You have been captured by me. There is no way you can get the chip now. Once I have dealt with the two of you, I will be free to launch my master plan.”
“Which is what?” I spat out. “To drop a uranium bomb on France, using the defense chip to get around the anti-terrorist security?”
Shing slowly smirked. “Who said anything about a defense chip, Mr. Napoleon?”
I was confused again. “You did.”
Shing replied, “I said computer chip, not defense chip.”
I immediately reverted back to my tough-guy attitude. “I know you have the defense chip, Shing. You won’t get away with this.”
Shing began laughing. “They told you that? Your mockery of a government told you that the item you had to retrieve was a defense chip? My dear Mr. Napoleon, you must learn not to always believe what you are told.” Shing snapped his fingers. Two terrorists grabbed Rachael and I. “Take them to the interrogation room.” Then, with one last mocking smile, Bu Shing walked away.