Part 3
Lights flickered on overhead as motion detectors built into the wall, a stark contrast to the slimy walls and the rusty, metal. It looked like it had been around for a long time, but had been renovated recently.
Ryan took point, Braxton a few steps behind, and the rest of the team trailing by a story. The lights coming on would mean surprising any enemies would be impossible, but that couldn’t be helped.
Two stories from the bottom, the lights above flickered on, then burnt out, plunging the two into darkness. Ryan smoothly continued, avoiding missing a step, as Braxton pulled out a flashlight.
However, it was a bit too late for Braxton, as he missed the next step, and tumbled down the stairs, catching Ryan in the back and taking them both down to the next landing to end up in a tangled pile.
Cursing quietly, they got up, dusted themselves, and continued down to the bottom, eight stories below the surface of the street.
The place looked like an old, sealed off area of the sewers, probably built over during the fifties. They were in a small room, with just a single, rusted iron door.
Ryan stepped forward, and started checking the door. “Reminds me of all those old buildings I looked through back in Iraq,” he muttered, as he found that the door was unlocked and hadn’t been booby trapped.
“Going to squeak, anybody got some oil?” he said aloud.
A quick check of the various toolkits owned by the group revealed no oil was present. With no other choice, they aimed their guns at the door while Giles opened it.
The corridor beyond was empty, and it like an old sewer tunnel. Distant sounds of hip-hop music were heard as the team advanced into the tunnel
“I hate hip-hop,” muttered Braxton, and Steve nodded in agreement.
Continuing in the same formation, the team slowly advanced through the maze of tunnels, guns out and ready for trouble. Braxton, Steve and Ryan’s feet glided over the rough floor of the tunnel quietly, while Giles wasn’t so nimble.
Eventually, they reached an intersection in the corridor. The room at the other end was where the music was coming from, and the thrumming of a gas generator could be heard down the other branch of the intersection.
“Steve, you and Giles go check out the music, Braxton and I are going to go check out that generator,” Ryan ordered. “If run into trouble, just shoot your gun and we’ll be along shortly.”
“Got it,” nodded Steve, slipping a metal baton out from under his jacket. “But I won’t be using a gun.”
“Jesus, Steve, when are you going to give up on that baton and get a gun?” Ryan asked rhetorically, shaking his head before he headed off towards the generator.
A minute later
“Hold up,” whispered Steve, looking into the room at the end of the hall.
“What have we got?” replied Giles, quietly.
“Two guys,” Steve reported, scanning the room. It was a living area, less of a mess than the halls. Clean, a bit, with some tables, chairs, a minifridge, and a fax machine and telephone with the wires running into a hole in the wall. The two men Steve referred two were standing in front of a CD player listening to the music. They had pistols in holsters. Neither of them were facing the door.
“What’s the plan?”
“Cover me, I’m gonna sneak up on ‘em,” Steve said, and started quietly moving into the room.
Meanwhile…
Ryan and Braxton reached the entrance to another room, from which the sounds of the generator were coming. Braxton looked first, poking his head into the room, and locking eyes with a man there.
“What the-” the man shouted, and then pulled a gun, and started shooting.
Braxton replied with a booming shot from his desert eagle, which richotched off the far wall. Ryan leaned around, and opened up on full auto with his mini-uzi, with a similar lack of effect.
Meanwhile, back in the living quarters
“What the hell?” shouted one of the men as Steve crept up on the two. They both spun around, reaching for their guns, and saw Steve.
“They must be cops!” he screamed, aiming his gun, the other thug following suit. “Kill ‘em quick and let’s get out of here!”
Damnit, thought Steve, swooping in low on the first one. With a quick hook of his leg, he knocked the man off his feet, and smashed his baton into the man’s chest on his way down. Giles, guessing what had happened, stepped into the room, and started popping off shots with his revolver, but missing each time.
Back in his fight, Braxton let fly with another missed shot, and ducked back around the corner as the return fire from the thug’s Sites pistol bounced off the wall. Ryan leaned around the corner again, and fired again, this time hitting home, and putting a nine-milimeter hole in the forehead of the thug.
The man slowly collapsed to the floor, dropping his gun as went down. Ryan and Braxton quickly scanned the room, noting the generator that was most likely powering the lights down here.
“I must have knocked the sights on this thing when I took that fall,” noted Braxton, as he examined his Desert Eagle.
The pair then heard the shots coming from the living area. Without a word, they both turned and ran back down the corridor towards their teammates.
Meanwhile, Steve was fending off one of the upright thugs as he brought his baton down on the prone one again, shattering his skull. Giles was circling the combat, firing shots with his revolver whenever he got an opening, but was missing, shooting holes in the furniture and the fax machine, but not much else.
Screaming with rage, as his companion died, the second thug blindly fired at Steve, only to find his feet no longer on the floor, and an instant later, was lying on his back. The last thing he saw was a metal baton rapidly descending towards his face.
Ryan and Braxton arrived just in time to catch the end of the fight.
“Son of a bitch,” Ryan said. “You use to work for the LAPD or something?” he asked, half-jokingly.
“Bet ya these guys have something to do with the disappearance the guy we’re looking for,” Giles said, holstering his gun. Death was something you had to become accustomed to in this business. It was kill or be killed, and not a single man felt guilty about gunning down a group of thugs who fired first.
The team quickly spread out, searching the room, some of the team members the dead men’s guns. None of them were carrying any ID or cash, and not much was of interest in the room. The fridge just had some canned food and bottles of water.
Slamming fresh magazines into their guns, the team headed back out into the hallway, sticking together this time, in case they ran into more opposition.
Five minutes later, the team piled up against another door in the tunnels, and burst in, rapidly covering the entire room with their weapons.
It was empty.
Except for one man.
A blonde man.
Wearing what used to be a nice suit before it got taken into the old sewer network.
Green eyes too.
Also nearly unconscious and tied to a chair.
Giles whipped out the photo he had been given. “This is him,” he announced, after comparing the picture to the man’s face.
“How bad is he?” asked Steve.
“Doesn’t look to good,” replied Ryan as he inspected Nieulor, who was barely conscious. “But he’s not dead. Go get some of that water in the fridge.”
Steve nodded and jogged off. Braxton went with him, just in case.
A few minutes later, and after a bit of amateur first aid, Nieulor seemed to be looking better, but still not completely aware of what was happening.
“Give it a half-hour,” observed Ryan. “Let’s get him out of here and call Alana.”
“Back up the front entrance?” asked Giles.
“Hell no, the restaurant’s going to be crawling with cops for hours. Let’s see if we can find another way out, otherwise, we’re going to have to wait.”
“There’s a couple of tunnels we haven’t checked out, let’s take a look at them,” said Giles, and the team moved out, Ryan carrying Nieulor.
The team moved through the tunnels, anxious to get out. Steve called for a halt a minute later.
“Voices up ahead,” he said. Ryan set Nieulor down, who was looking much better, and they moved.
“You gotta send help! They’ve wiped out half of us. I just checked the rec room, they’re all dead! I don’t know who they are,” came a frantic voice, which then paused, listening to someone the team couln’t here.
“Telephone,” Ryan said. “He’s calling for help. Let’s take ‘em out, quick.”
“Let me handle this,” said Giles, moving up to the door into the cavern. He peaked inside, saw the two thugs on a phone whose wire ran up into the ceiling, and then he pulled out a small object from under his suit.
It was a tube shaped object, from which Giles pulled a small pin, and then tossed it inside the room. Giles may have been a smooth talker, but to think that meant he was a poor a fighter would be a serious mistake for anybody to make. He may not have been such a great shot with a gun, but he had no qualms about killing with the grenade.
“Oh sh-” one of the thugs said, and they both started to run.
It was too late; the white phosphorous grenade caught them both in its blast radius.
Two screaming, flaming figures ran out of the room. The team sent them hurling back in with a barrage of gunfire.
Once the fire died down, guns were holstered, and our heroes moved in.
The room looked like it was used by the goons to stole stolen goods. A chain fence in the back divided the room into two sections, and a significant number of crates and suitcases were located behind it.
Ryan went to work with a pair of boltcutters, and opened up the fence, revealing the goods. The team quickly went to work, searching through the remains, and grabbing some PDAs for themselves, and a set of military quality headset radios. Just what the doctor ordered, something they’d been planning on getting for a while.
“Interesting suitcase,” Braxton commented, finding one, and starting to pry it open.
“That would be mine,” said an unfamiliar voice. The team turned and saw Nieulor standing in the door. A remarkable recovery.
“Its yours?” queried Ryan.
“Yes. I’d like to thank you for your rescue, provided this is a rescue, of course,” Nieulor stated.
“It is,” confirmed Ryan.
“Excellent. We can discuss this further at my residence. Please, take me there quickly, so that I can explain some things, and compensate you for your assistance.”
(To be continued)