Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Vendetta Theory ❯ Chapter 4

 

He was surprised to see a guard wearing the C.G.A. uniform standing in the back corner. Act natural, He thought to himself. He stepped in checked his watch and pressed the top floor icon. The machine hummed to life and escalated upwards to his destination. He patiently waited hands folded behind his back watching as the numbers climbed on the electronic scale.

 

“What was that alarm all about?” He asked the guard.

 

“Dunno. Must have been a false alarm.” He replied shrugging his shoulders. “If their was a fire I would think I would have hurt about it.”

 

“Yeah that's it. Probably just a false alarm.” The boy agreed The elevator stopped and door slid open with a ding. The boy glanced up at the number on the screen. It wasn't his floor. That destroyed the complications that might have risen had the two found their destinations similar.

 

“Well, this is my stop.” The guard waved goodbye solemnly and stepped off of the elevator. As the doors closed the boy shook his head. The man seemed nice. It was a pity he'd probably have to kill him.

 

The elevator finally stopped humming as it eased to a stop. This was his stop he registered with another glance at the small monitor. The door glided in two revealing the top floor to the boy's field of vision. Two guards stood on either side off the door to Charles's office. They had sub machine guns in their hands which were cradled around their shoulders by a nylon strap attached to the top of the gun.

 

One of the men walked out and met the boy halfway to the office. “Hey there! Do you have clearance to be here?” The guard commanded

 

“Oh yeah, I have that in my pocket.” the boy responded. He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out his stolen I.D. card. The man studied the card for a moment before exclaiming “What a minute. You're not Frank!”

 

By the time this fact was realized the boy had pulled the pistol from his waistband and shoved the barrel into the guard's stomach forcefully. He pulled the trigger once. The crack and muzzle flare of the shot were nearly nonexistent due to the man's stomach blocking all of the muzzle. The blood resulting from the wound however was not so nonexistent. The boy rushed forward and heaved the man up before he collapsed. The other guard had begun shooting by now bullets whistled by his head.

 

The boy had propped the wounded man up in front of him and was going to use his body to shield him from the onslaught of gunshots, but no came. He slowly inched forward behind his temporary barrier. The guard refused to shoot through his wounded comrade to hit him. He then removed the coat off of the arms of the maimed man and kicked him into the guard in front of him. It took precious seconds for the man to untangle himself from his companion. The boy now threw the deep coat onto his head momentarily blinding him. As he thrashed to remove the layer from his head the boy disarmed him of his pistol ripping it from his hands by the barrel. He whipped him across the chin with the handle of the weapon.

 

This temporarily stunned the man. He staggered around groaning, holding his chin. The boy frowned, this wasn't how it worked in the movies. A blow to the chin with a gun always knocked the man out on the silver screen. He hit him again across the crest of his face. This time the man fell to the ground in a limp heap.

 

He looked away as he silently shot both men through the throat to ensue their deaths. The unconscious one's life ended peacefully, but the wounded man writhed and struggled as he died The boy was splattered with blood which gushed from the hole in the guard's throat. Finally the man's limbs stopped thrashing and he lay still.

 

The boy looked behind him and saw the elevator panel had been pierced by a stray gunshot. Crackling sparks let him know that he wasn't getting out of the building using the elevator. He hoped an investigation of the cause of the alarm being pulled would give him some time to plan. He pulled the two sub-machine guns off of the dead bodies and walked over to a nearby closet.

 

He vomited violently for half a minute before looking up and woozily examining the contents of the enclosure. Inside he found a mother lode of destructive potential. Four racks of guns of assorted sizes loomed in front of him. He grabbed as much as he could carry and entered the office.

 

Inside was a large oaken desk adjourned with a massive leather swivel chair. A great polar bear stood sentry fiercely. A life size portrait of his foe hung on the wall. His desk was covered in misplaced papers and a colossal computer. A massive bank of security monitors adjourned the right side of the room showing everything that was going on in the building. The boy dumped his cache of firearms onto the desk moving mountains of paper aside in the process. He picked a stylus up from its resting place on a beautifully carved fountain pen container and toyed with it waiting, biding his time till his moment of reckoning came.

 

 

Charles crawled into the building haggard, beaten, but alive. He'd outsmarted his opposition once again, but then to be head of the C.G.A.'s elite unit one had to be cunning, devious even. “Hey Ralph.” He said automatically in a greeting to the security guard on duty. But this time there was no return answer. “Ralph?” Charles beckoned. Still no answer. The guard wasn't at his station. He did a quick perimeter scan of the lobby searching for things that were out of place. His boots were wet from the two inches of water which had accumulated on the floor.

 

“What in the world?” He exclaimed wondering what had happened. He ran over to the computer monitor. A blinking message reported that the fire alarm had been pulled. Charles was puzzled. No reports of a fire had been noticed by him or reported to him since he had entered the building. He set to work trying to pull the video feed of the lobby from the past hour from the computer database. He typed in the command and pressed enter. The computer hard drive whirred and chirped as it searched the massive video files for the clip Charles wanted. He looked away to check the clock and had his attention jerked back to the computer as it dinged. An error message! He cursed aloud after he read the message's contents.

 

Error:

File not found.

DOS Folder LOBBY 5:32-6:32 DELETED from Databank.

 

He scanned the contents of the message once again before slamming his fist down on the table in frustration, this was a bad sign indeed. A cold cup of coffee was jarred of the table by the impact and half of it spilled onto the floor where the cup shattered into many different pieces. The other half of the coffee however landed spot on the crotch of his pants. Charles threw his hands up in the air and screamed, it was all he could do not to throw the computer end over end into the wall. Finally after mumbling and ranting about lazy security guards leaving there things about on their breaks, calmness prevailed. Charles walked over to an intercom installed in the wall. He pressed a button that linked him to the floor he desired. He waited for the voice on the other end to respond before speaking

 

“Hey there Frank! What can I do for ya.” A cheerful voice responded on the other end of the line.

 

“Actually this is Supervisor Christofferson. Frank is the reason I'm calling as the matter of fact. I can't find him and I'd like to request a forensics team down here ASAP.”

 

There was a long pause on the other line. Charles nearly turned away before the voice responded. “Yes sir. I'll get a team down there as fast as I can. The best we have to offer. They should be there in 2 minutes. 3 minutes tops.” Charles had a bad feeling that 2, 3 minutes tops it was going to be too late.

 

Charles paced around in front of the elevator doors becoming more and more stressed out. In the time it took for the team to reach the lobby he was close to ripping his hair out. This felt wrong, all wrong. At last the forensic squad arrived stepping out of the elevator and opening the black duffel bags they stuffed their equipment into. They pulled assorted tools out of the bags and set to work on random tasks. One of them walked over to the fire alarm and pulled out a small device more long than wide. A red beam scanned over the lever of the fire alarm. Charles questioned the technician performing the procedure. “Uh, David aren't you going to dust for prints?”

 

He looked at Charles like he was crazy and laughed throwing his head back. He thought he was joking. When he saw the stern look on Charles's face he knew he was entirely serious. He took a deep gulp, “Um, well sir… we have, um… machines that can do that for us now, sir.” David managed to stammer out.

 

Charles continued looking hardly at the cringing forensic team member. Then his face broke into a rare smile. He put his arm on the tech's shoulder. “You know why I like you David? You make me smile!” The man's tense shoulders relaxed when he heard this and he turned back to his work.

 

“Oh and David?”

 

“Sir?”

 

“Drop down and give me two hundred pushups.” Charles still had the wry grin on his face.

 

“You must be kidding sir.”

 

“I assure you I'm not joking. Hit the floor David.” The tech paused as he contemplated this. The smile on Charles's face disappeared.

 

“I said, hit-the-floor David!” He gave one last pleading, forlorn glance to his commanding officer. Charles snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground. David's face drooped.

 

“Yes, sir.” He said painfully.

 

Charles watched the young man's arms bend into a 90 degree angle and rise straight again. “I can't hear you. Sound off!” The forensic scientist began to rattle off the number of pushups achieved. “3...4...5...6...” Charles looked across the lobby and saw another member of the team taking a test tube sample of the water on the floor.

 

“You! Over there!” Charles barked gesturing to the man who was intently focused on his study of the liquid. The man looked up and saw the supervisor pointing in his direction. He pointed at his chest and mouthed `me sir?' Charles nodded and clapped his hands impatiently. The man threw down his work and rushed over. He saluted Charles rigidly.

 

“At ease. What's your name son?” He asked

 

“Scott, sir.” The scientist responded.

 

“Good, good. Say Scott, are you able to work this contraption that I'm holding in my hand here.” Charles extended the tool outwards in his clenched hand. It was the scanner he had confiscated from the first man.

 

“Yes sir, but shouldn't David be handling this operation sir?” Charles swept his arm behind him. “34...35...36...37...” David's face was turning red and he was panting heavily. “I see.” Scott noted, “Yeah I can do it.”

 

\“Excellent! Well tell me how the prints turn out on that fire alarm, will you?” He handed Scott the scanner.

 

“Yes sir!” He responded.

 

The small device whirred and whistled for a moment before a thin red light emitted from the sensor on the back. The light crawled up the handle of fire alarm. When it finished it snapped off and the wrench sized machine buzzed for a few seconds more. Finally two images came up side to side on the small screen across the front of the scanner.

 

“Looks like there's more than one set of prints on the handle sir. That's very good news. It should lead us to our criminal. The first image was of Frank Smith, the security guard. The second was-

 

“It can't be!” Charles exclaimed at the second image. The same boy he had fought with not hours earlier had infiltrated his way into his headquarters.

 

A low droning moan spread throughout the room and something splashed into the water. Charles swiveled his head around and found the dead body of the security guard lying face down in the water soaked floor. There was a gunshot wound in his leg, two in his back, and one through the back of his head. He was stripped of his utility belt. A tech remained moaning, his hands covering his mouth. Charles snarled and spat on the ground. Apparently Frank had gotten in his assailant's way. This had proved to be a deadly mistake on Frank's part.

 

“Listen,” Charles ordered one of the men, “Get the best Red Hand team we can spare, have them meet me the floor below my office. I want snipers on the rooftops and a helicopter in the air.”

 

“Yes, Sir.” The man jogged towards the elevators.

 

“Eldrick!”

 

The tech turned midway from his destination and looked over his shoulder at his commanding officer. “Sir?”

 

“Double time please.”

 

“Yes, sir!” He sprinted the rest of the way to the elevator and was particularly quick in following Charles's orders. Supervisor Christofferson was not tolerant of dawdlers.

 

 

Below his office, awaiting his squad Charles made sure his rifle was loaded for the 4th time in as many minutes and scowled. Frank was dead, shot. Perhaps mistakenly, but shot nonetheless. Now he'd really have to kill the little bastard.