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OMICRON REPORT
Seattle, WA. 010525 1030
Despite previous notions, something did happen on the 23rd and 24th of May. The team gathered reports that the Seattle Slayer had struck again. This time he killed 27 aerobisizers in their workout studio. MCI Worldcom bought out General Electric. Despite the news though, they continued moving into their new warehouse. Doctor Payne set up his new laboratory, Dodger hooked up a multi-media and communications center to a semi-circular table and named it the Super Genius Table. The Doctor also sent off a package of data through Michelle and mundane means to his "Friend" detailing the team and their operations in the city and what had happened with the Bugs. Masque had contacted all the people he knew at Ares locations around the world. In Berlin, Washington D.C., Moscow, and Tokyo, he squeezed their brains for all he could get. He was working on details to supplement what they knew about the company in Downtown Seattle. Ian went out and got real drunk, having announced that it was a "Day Off."
As ten thirty rolled around, Hart's team was just leaving after assisting in the set up, when Drake radioed.
Masque looked at Dodger as the phone was ringing, Dodger waved, and he picked up the receiver.
Again they traded lengthy authentification, but then Drake spoke. "I have a new team member for you, implement him fully. Though he is a recent graduate, he graduated highly and will prove very useful. His name is Taki and he should be at the Davis Street and 15th Ave pawnshop. Pick him up ASAP."
"I copy that. Will do." Masque didn't say anything else, then hung up. Drake was not to be argued with.
Everyone was looking at him, Dodger hadn't patched it through a speaker. Otter spoke first, "So what did the Boss say?"
"He said for you to go to the Davis Street and 15th Ave pawn shop and pick up an Agent named Taki. Get to it." Otter stood up and with the vim and vigor of a child out to please his father he was off in the Mercedes number two.
"Now let's get to our next job: getting into Ares."
Team 203 Warehouse 1200
Before Taki arrived shortly after noon Petyr, Kham and Ian had taken care of the Cynthia Rhoel job. After Blue Duck lifted them off the roof of her apartment he delivered her to Area 12; the agents went back to the Team warehouse. Taki had arrived and stood before them with Otter at his side. He was a five foot four, buck-fifty Asian man who was terribly average in appearance. That was good though for a modern day ninja. Brought up in the highlands of Japan in a Ninja clan he had been raised since birth to be a Demon-queller. He excelled at stalking the paranormal and in hand-to-hand combat. Now he was one more asset for Team 203. He joined right in with the planning of the mission to get inside Ares Headquarters Seattle. Ares was the world's largest Security provider. They concentrated on training and installation of systems for any site and then left the monotonous standing around to their contractor companies. They were known to hire the best and pay the best. Masque's contacts had turned up large numbers of hires by Ares in the relevant cities. Personnel included security, ex-law enforcement, military, engineering, and psychology. Their overseas operations were not reporting half of their incomes, and they dealt heavily with all manners of clients (reputable and disreputable.) After going over options, goals, methods, and risks for two and a half hours the discussion was at its peak.
"All I know is that there is N. O. T. H. I. N. G. on their company mainframes anywhere in the world." Dodger had given up the flourish in his speech and his haughty manner, showing that this clearly disturbed him.
"Are you sure you just didn't miss it geek?" Kham prodded mercilessly, and his gaze would make peoples souls rush from their bodies, but she had no soul. Silence followed for a brief moment.
"No, my dear Ice Lady. The Great Dodger does not miss IT!" He continued to glare at her, though she didn't seem amused. "Ares is running off an internal generator, that could be feeding a 100% stand-alone system that I am unable to piggy-back into. Thus spake the lord." Everyone continued to sit in silence, at least the old Dodger was back.
"Letsz get beck on track. Are ve goink in a group of four, or vill Masque go in halone?" Petyr spoke little and only when it was necessary to direct the conversation.
"I think we should send several agents in for security reasons," Otter said to Petyr's approving nod.
"Wouldn't just one or two agents going in have a lower chance of detection as well as a higher chance of success?" inquired Taki.
"True, but we've already decided I would be leading the entry team and Petyr is going with no matter what, because he is the Sec Op." Masque left out the unimplied, that then Taki wouldn't be going.
"On another vein, if ye are able to insert thyselves beyond their secure walls, dost thou think wiring up a gadget to give me access to any of their internal data links would be beyond your keen?"
"I don't see why it would be. Get it ready for me and I'll see it gets used." Dodger nodded to Masque then went off to his electronics bench to commence construction of afore mentioned gadget.
"Look at this!!" Beggay shouted as he ran into the room from the garage. He had declined participation in the planning and instead was working on some new robots as well as upgrading the Suburbans and Mercedes vehicles. Now he threw down a newspapers obituary section. He took a highlighter from his greasy overalls and inked in one name. Everyone leaned over to read the name of the deceased.
"You greasy fuk," Ian commented holding the u for too long. "Who the bluudy hell is Jeff Dallas??"
"Go get a beer and I'll explain." Just as Beggay finished and Ian was walking towards the freezer. "Just kidding. Sit your alky arse and I'll tell you." Ian looked at him unamused - You didn't kid around about beer.
"Like I was saying, Jeff Dallas was the Warehouse Supervisor at the Zeus Storage we raided last week."
"What does that have to do with either Grays, your primary mission; or Ares, our current mission." Beggay just looked at Taki, he had no good answer.
"I du not think dat the coincidence kan be over luked," Petyr said. "Excellent work Beggay." Beggay smiled and walked away from the Super Genius Table. Once he was out of Petyr's field of view he made a stick-out-tongue face at Taki.
"Back to the job at hand. Will three or four be going?" Masque asked.
Then to everyone's surprise Melissa spoke up. Deacon and crew had left her here because they were going to do some serious Demon hunting and didn't want to drag her along. She was a recent graduate of the Academy like Taki and Otter, but unlike them was ill equipped when it came to combat. Her forte' was Intelligence Analysis, and she was VERY gifted at this shadowy art. "I think four should go. Statistically that is still such a small percentage of the buildings overall occupancy that the combined chances of detection are still lower than unacceptable. Four allows for better team integrity and better job dispersion so no one is overworked, and no job is left undone. 95% of Agent penetrations carried out by Intelligence Department use four members. Not counting Deep Cover obviously. Four also allows me to come along so that I can look at any data that becomes available, and my speedy and timely analysis will be vital should Dodger's data link fail after a short time. Technology Department gadgets that haven't undergone refinement at The Workshop have a useful half of two minutes." She was referring to the Intelligence Department main base in Missouri.
"Dat soundz guut to me." Petyr ended the discussion there.
"Now, about what we are looking for." Masque left the question open ended. "This first raid might be best used to plant listening devices and observation devices to that we can collect what we need with a higher percentage of success and of getting what we on a later mission." There were nods all around, except for the Doctor.
"How many times do we have to pull up our pants before we get bit in the ass." He stared down every person at the table. Everyone else blinked first, yielding before his immense will. "My point is that, this is the Headquarters of the most powerful Security Organization on Earth outside the Company. And Melissa, correct me if I'm wrong--which I never am, but Intelligence Department has ranked them as Condition Red."
"You are 100% correct Doctor." Her desire to be accepted and operate with a clinical precision somehow made her less female, the Doctor thought. She wanted to be a part of the Boys Club, and to be accepted there meant she had to deal in hard facts, not feelings or intuition that the finer gender was often known for. In the time it took her to speak, the Doctor had made this quick psychological evaluation of her, then he got back on track.
"With that settled. We may only have one shot at this. The longer we stay in there the higher our chances of being detected are. But once we get Dodger's gadget hooked up, you will stay until you are detected. I know you guys. Then it will be my responsibility to barge in there with the cavalry as Ian raises hell to save your sorry posteriors. The bottom line is that we have to accomplish all we can in one shot."
"Exzelent point Doktor. Dankyou for your vision on dis matter." Petyr ended the second point of discussion.
"I'd like to ask one thing. What does any of this have to do with Grays?" Taki posed the question because he obviously was thinking about Drake's specific orders to eradicate the Gray presence in the Northwest.
"We don't know that is doesn't. The Grays have control of many powerful Human Corporations. Ares is a powerful Corporation. That they have a computer system that Dodger The Great cannot hack into warrants a Security Mission to requisition their technology and hamstring them for ten years. Petyr would agree to this." Petyr did indeed not his head.
"I thought out mission was to destroy the Gray presence in the Northwest. We might not get to kill a single Gray. I also know well that the Grays control many human corporations, I took the class at--"
Doctor Payne cut him off and retorted, "I think none of us here, including myself, can begin to fathom the depths of a Gray intellect. First they are known to have vastly superior intelligence, on average, than humans. Beyond that we don't know anything about them. What they value, how they think, what their priorities are, where they come from, what they were here for, how they crashed. And YOU," he pronounced YOU like he was saying cat, and the Doctor really hated cats, "who probably only scored a middle teens in Gray Psychology, should not speak on such things. I bet you only got a 15 in the class. When you know not what of you speak, your mouth is best used for chewing." Absolute silence reigned at the Super Genius Table, because everyone knew just who the Super Genius was. He had just burned an agent hard-core. "But that aside," he continued in a much more friendly tone, "has been bothering me for quite a while. The singular fact that we're fighting an enemy we know nothing about and have zero understanding of does not bode well for our war against them. It is akin to being a blind crossing guard, who the children yell at to have cross the street when traffic is at its peak, while they stay back and let us trapse out to our immediate death. Not good."
"Doktor, again you bringk much insight to out tabel." With that said, everything was settled except HOW they would be getting in.
"I've got a fool proof plan," Masque said, as Petyr rolled his eyes. "In the morning we case the building to get an idea of the exact security we'll be up against. We only do this through the morning, instead of the regular three to five days to minimize out exposure to counter-surveillance. We then collect Ares Photo ID's until we get four that match our general appearances. We do this as people are leaving for home, so they will not have time to report them lost. We then disguise ourselves as them, and kidnap them at their houses. That will give use a maximum of one day at Ares to investigate." Everyone nodded, and even the Doctor approved.
Kraus House, Seattle. 010526 0015
The house of Lawrence Kraus was a large sprawling white suburban dream, with five bedrooms, three and a half baths, and a total of six thousand square feet. For a Strategic Initiatives manager who made one hundred and twenty grand a year it was on the small side. He obviously loved his hobbies, and the sailboat in the garage with four wave runners and a gun collection numbering in the dozens was evidence to this fact. He and his wife were upstairs, tied up, and tranquilized on the bed as Masque finished the last of his disguise. When he walked back out to show off his handy work to Kham and Otter to check his disguise, Kham almost slashed out his throat. But by quickly switching back to his own voice he was able to avoid that unkind eventuality. Both of them, along with the Doctor and Beggay left shortly there after and were back at the Warehouse by two a.m.
It had been a busy afternoon and night for the team. By closing time at five p.m. they had cased the building and found it would be a tough egg to crack. The building itself was twenty stories tall of smoked glass and microwave sensors on all of them. It took up a quarter of a square block and the four-story wing of offices attached to it took up another half of the same block. The parking garage was three stories tall with three sub-levels, and it took up that remainder of the block. The Ares building was backed up against a frontage road to the west. It was one hundred yards behind it, and beyond that was a major highway: Interstate 72. To the north was a section of three or four blocks of small businesses and shops, not more than a story tall each. Across the street to the east was a large park, and beyond that was the rest of down town Seattle. The nearest tall building was fifteen stories and ranged about five hundred yards. To the south was a major bank, and larger three to five story office buildings.
The Team had taken a dozen IDs and then quickly but effectively duplicated them with the team's thumbprints on them. Their observation of the building had shown them one thing. It was as tight as Ebineezers' purse strings. Everyone came and went through the basement security tunnel connecting the two buildings to the parking garage or the main buildings main doors. There were ten pairs of revolving doors and the basement tunnel had five escalators across but this still generated a high level of traffic and was very inconvenient to the employees. But by making it inconvenient they had made it effective. Every walkway into and out of the building had magnetic imagine equipment to scan for weapons, ammunition, and detonation equipment in explosives. Every employee also had to pass a card swipe, voiceprint, and thumb print with DNA match as they exited the doors or escalators. The only way to move between floors was by using one of the four banks of four elevators located in each quadrant of the floor. Each quadrant of each floor was 100% separated from the others. It was only possible to change quadrants by passing through the guard door in the center of the floor or the guard station in the center of each wall dividing the quadrants. Only the north foursome of elevators went above the fifteenth floors, to access these floors from these elevators there were retina scans. These floors were upper-management and where Lawrence Kraus' boss was. Hopefully this man or someone on the floor would have access to the data jack Dodger needed. His boss was named Kirk Westcom. It was on the eighteenth floor.
The depth of the system impressed even Petyr, while Masque was not marveling over it. He was making silicon thumb print sleeves with inserts for tissue matches of their subjects. By 1600 they had collected all the intelligence they needed and proceeded to get the dozen ID's. They gave up at a dozen and decided to make Melissa look like someone else, instead of waiting around to find a five foot six tall redhead. The last piece of their plan was Dodger's Gadget. Before the Team went about casing the Ares building Dodger walked up to Masque, "Sir Faceless, allow your humble servant to present thee with a gadget of infinite cunning and usefulness." He handed Masque a roll of wire about twenty feet long. On one end there was an RS-232 23-pin adapter (for a COMM port) and on the other there was a three prong electrical plug. About six inches down from the COM port plug was a sleek black box about three inches long and half and inch square. It was aligned longways with the cord and had a small LED in its middle. Masque looked at it unimpressed. "No doubt you think it simple, but I The Great One have no doubt its operation escapes your simple unelectrical minded intellect. The operation is so simple that even our Lady with veins of cryogenic liquid could understand it. Plug one end into the wall outlet, and its brethren opposite into any COM port on the workstation of our enemy's computer. Henceforth do not use thy implant communicators, thy omicrons, or least of all thy cell phones. Whence of iffith the small green light illuminates to a shade or shadow of red, thy hath been compromised and would be wise to vacate the premesis forthwith." Masque nodded and walked off with the gadget.
After deciding on their unwilling accomplices, they cased their houses quickly and prepared to take them all hostage in quick succession between 2200 and 0000. First, Melissa became Devon Mills, and logistics security administrator. His office was on the eleventh floor, and Melissa would be him, he generally arrived at work between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. every morning. Second, Taki became Tim O'Brien who was an Electrical Engineer with a Masters in Bio-Medial Engineering. He worked in a Cybernetics laboratory in the basement. He arrived at work exactly 5 a.m. every day and had done so for the past three years. He was the manager of his department and quite accomplished in his area, Taki would have to be careful no to enter into conversations in that topic area or risk being exposed. Third, Petyr became one Mr. Marc Shapiro, who was an accountant who office was on the eleventh floor too. At each house, all the agents took part, in rear guard, street watch, window watch, and in entry. Then each agent was left at his or her respective house, alone, to prepare however they saw fit for the coming morning when they would take on their cover identity. Only Dodger and Ian weren't taking part, Ian was preparing a diversion to make their escape under, should the team need to make a quick escape. Dodger was preparing viruses and moles to use once he was inside and into their computer system. Having two such important roles they were exempt from inserting agents into covers. Last, came Masque taking on the identity of Lawrence Kraus. With just Otter, Kham and Beggay to assist him, it could get hairy. But five minutes after ringing the door bell and after Mr. Kraus foolishly answered it all the chess pieces were in place.
The next day would be eventful and like the Doctor had predicted he was head of the Extraction/Rescue Team. Doctor Payne asked Deacon to assist the Team by giving some outside support if they could. Deacon agreed since a Team member of his would be inside. With 202s four additional team members there would be plenty of people outside waiting in the rain in case things got crazy.
Ares Security. Basement Parking Garage. May 26, 0500.
Tim O'Brien drove his Dodge Neon past the guards at the garage entrance and swiped his card. The gate swung up and he got his regular parking spot right near the escalator doors down to the security tunnel. He got out of the rain-slicked car carrying his regular attaché case and stack of papers. Tim made his way down the escalators and up on the other side of the security check station. He had passes effortlessly through them as always. He was an honest engineer and had nothing to hide. Once he got to his office in the basement of Ares he started his dirty work. He took out a pocket DVD RAM drive and began copying the hard drive of Tim. He taped the three discs to his chest and quickly rebuttoned his jacket. Then he went to the bathroom. He wouldn't come back for forty-five minutes. Instead of using the facilities he crawled through the airshafts and looked around the other rooms on the floor. The one of particular interest to him was where men were on hospital beds and their auras were damped around their necks. Taki had the ability to see auras, and that was an advantage when hunting daemons. It proved to be one here too. He unbolted the vent screen with his ceramic tools he had snuck in and venture into the room. When he saw that they had cybernetic interface jacks, a technology well beyond the keen of he normal world, he exit from whence he came and went back to his desk to await Masque and the others. It was 0900 by the time he got there.
Ares Security. Parking Garage. May 26, 0700.
Mark Shapiro arrive exactly at seven a.m. in his shiny new Lincoln Continental and parked in his reserved spot on the third floor of the parking garage. Outside it was raining but in here it was dry. He loved the perfect parking conditions that the garage allowed. He took the underground security entrance also and proceeded directly to his cubicle like any good bean counter and began frantically doing accounting like a good gerbil on a running wheel.
But unknown the security dupes he'd sneaked past, Petyr was also downloading the contents of all the hard drives he could get access too and storing them on Company DVD RAMs.
Ares Security. Parking Garage. May 26, 0800.
Lawrence Kraus took the bus to work as normal. His wife needed the car to drive the kids to school, and his oldest daughter needed the Nissan Outback to get to high school and be cool like all the rest of the cool kids. She would probably barf in the bathroom after lunch too. But both cars were in the garage as he went walking to the bus stop. Lawrence got on the bus carrying just his attaché case full of his papers, his laptop, and his coil of wire attached to his modem. He got off in front of Dave's Brewpub. He was one block north of Ares. Security prohibited the busses from stopping in front of the office building so he walked past his favorite lunch spot in the rain, avoided getting a beer, but saw a big Irish guy getting plastered in there, and went on to work.
He passed the front door guards, collapsed his umbrella, and was in the elevator before he knew it. All his preparations were paying off dividends. Short seconds later he was in his window office and had set out his brief case on his desk. He immediately picked up his phone and called his secretary, "Good morning Ms. Gillson, could you set an appointment with Mr. Kirk for one in the afternoon, just after lunch." Pause. "Good, thank you." He then sent email to Devon Mills, Tim O'Brien, and Marc Shapiro. He told Devon Mills to continue her work on the Computer Program, for Marc to keep him up to date on the project, and for Tim to be at an important waste reduction, central planning, committee on forming a committee.
Ares Security. Main Door. May 26, 0815.
Devon Mills stepped out of his Jaguar sports car, shut the door and activated its security system. Carrying nothing he followed the flow of people under and through the security tunnel. Roughly five minutes later he was at his desk on the eleventh floor and checked his email. There was one important message: to continue work on her computer program.
To Melissa that meant to get everything she could off the systems hard drives.
Ares Security. Eighteenth Floor. May 26, 1200.
Tim and Lawrence both met at the elevator to the first floor as they got off to have a brief lunch at the Company Cafeteria. There they met in the mass of impersonality and spoke in obtuse terms about their mission. Soon an hour had passed and they both walked over to the elevator that went up to the eighteenth floor. The ride was short. They got off and walked confidently through the security by the elevators towards the receptionist's desk. There Lawrence said, "I'm Lawrence Kraus and have a one o'clock meeting with Mr. Kirk, could you tell him I'm waiting?"
"Certainly," the young pretty secretary said as she picked up the phone and phoned her boss. One minute later they were both in his office.
Tim opened the door for Lawrence, who strode in and shook hands with Mr. Kirk. He set his briefcase down at one of the chairs, then said, "Good morning Kirk, I'm glad you could meet with me. I've located a strong growth company with a new breakthrough lead in data storage." Lawrence was talking and not subduing him because he saw the secretary coming towards the room with a plate of sandwiches and coffee.
"Good work. Do you recommend absorption of destruction?" Kirk asked. His question itself interested Masque. But Lawrence stood there as the secretary came in and set the plate down. He looked over at Tim, which was the signal. Tim grabbed the plate from her as he grabbed her throat and suffocated her into unconsciousness as Lawrence drew a miniature dart gun and fired eight tranquilizer shots into Kirk's chest. Taki then laid down the secretary on the floor, set the plate down and walked to the windows of the glass walled office and shut them with a touch. They were LCD screens. Masque walked to the computer and plugged in the COM port into the computer and the power cord into the wall.
As the power cable fed power to the small black box, it made four calls out through Masque's and Taki's radios. The high frequency communications lines began feeding Dodger the computers Data. Gigabytes of Data flowed through the airwaves and Dodger, The Master of Computer Hacking, practiced his art. Fifteen seconds later the little green light went red. Masque unplugged it as sirens sounded, the floors lights went to full power, and the fit hit the shan.
Ares Building, 18th Floor. 1310.
Masque used one hand to pack the gadget in his bag and kept his dart gun ready in the other. Taki moved to the door to unlock it; it didn't budge. "It is locked. Stand back," he said to Masque. As Masque did so, he set his feet shoulder width apart, about one step in front of each other, lowered his center of gravity, and held his right arm straight out in front of him arrow straight, and with that hand pointing up at 90 degrees. His left arm circled wide and joined with the right. A millisecond later, in a blur, both struck out and knocked the door off its hinges. Taki bowed to the door and then pounced out into the hall like a cat. The lights were out except for the red emergency lights. Masque followed him out and they both heard the heavy booted feet running towards their office. That could only mean a SWAT or quick response team. Masque set Operation Ian into motion. He opened his implant communicator channel despite some heavy static, "Guinness. Execute Guinness."
Just after noon the city of Seattle was bustling with people as they were getting off of their lunchtime breaks. For Seattle it was overcast and rainy as usual. People's umbrellas were out and in use as they trudged through the rainy streets and the gray after noon. The large number of civilians outside had made Ian's job more difficult. To totally halt all activity in the downtown area was a large task and he had worked at it for nearly thirty-six hours straight. Now he sat in a parked Chevy Suburban next to Kham as he heard Masque's call over the radio. He looked over her, starting at her long smooth legs, then over her hips and ample bosom, then her gentle looking arms, lithe neck and her perfect face and almond eyes. Her sumptuous lips breathed one word to him, "Dammnit do your job." Of course she was wearing combat gear so all this he imagined, but he was in his own little world of destruction and women.
"Agh, dammit all to ell. Cummon babe let a bloke have a bit of fun," Ian said as he brought out the little sub-compact folding cell phone the size of a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it up and pressed the number one, initiating a speed dial, which passed through Company cells and opened the modem on the computer in an empty rented hotel room in the seedier part of Seattle. Tomorrow the maid would clean the room and find the computer, assume it was left behind by a businessmen who was there with one of the hotels "working women", and take it home with her to be pawned. But now the computer placed ten calls using direct digital satellite phone calls. Each call went to one of the following locations. Steel cans with explosives (only three ounces of C4) placed in the sub-street junction boxes for all the streetlights controlling downtown Seattle. Cardboard boxes housing three-pound block of C4 attached to every cell network tower around the Puget Sound. Eight-pound explosive blocks set outside the fences of all local radio stations whose pressure and concussion would be enough to topple the simple truss frame construction of the antennas. Local TV broadcasters and broadcast stations for national networks found their signal cut off, and a dull thump was felt in their offices. Tennis balls filled with explosives and covered in grease were thrown into their dishes and at their antennas. These detonated when a small satchel with a cell phone received a call and sent out a binary coed radio frequency that matched their detonator channels. Solenoids at the city pumping stations, which supplied the city with water pressure, had been sabotaged, the water towers would self-destruct in a closed position, denying fire fighters their most precious commodity. Electrical sub-stations which delivered AC power to the entire city were blown in grids not containing hospitals (and the Ares grid was not shared with any hospital) and the ensuing darkness would not become truly terrifying until sundown. The gas main, which went beneath the street south of the Ares building suddenly, sprung a leak when a heating element ruptured the flow control valve that was housed in the adjacent sewer tunnel. As it ruptured the sewer filled with volatile natural gas for the next five minutes. When the small bag with a satellite cell phone rang, the ringer circuit attached to a dozen blasting caps detonated them. The fireball burst up into the street, killing ten instantly and injuring a further thirty-seven. But it had the desired effect of shattering 90% of the windows on the first floor of the Ares building and another 75% of the second and third floor.
But the crowning achievement of Ian's genius was what he had done just three hours before. Using an ID of a janitorial engineer that the team had taken and discarded as useless, he gained access to the first sub-level of the Ares parking garage. Finding the exposed power lines to their internal generator was easy, it had to be because they weren't on the plans in the City Hall. That meant they could not have gotten a building permit and without that it would have been difficult to get a contractor to take on the job. With the power line attached to the ceiling he used a gadget with a titanium spike to affix himself to the ceiling also. Now out of sight of the guards he spliced in a huge capacitor he had constructed. As he spliced it in parallel with the circuit he also spliced in a parallel line with a control box. The control box closed the circuit as he cut the original line. The box allowed him to shut that branch and thus force all the current to the capacitor. That would push the three-phase power circuit so far out of phase that the engine would lag the capacitor and self-destruct. Hopefully before any breakers would open and save Ares. But either way they would be without power for the time it took them to restart the motor and find the capacitor or reset the breakers. His work here was finished. He used a mirror to check below him, and seeing it was clear he left as a mild mannered janitor.
So as Masque initiated Operation Ian and shouted Guinness into the radio, roughly one second later the radio, TV, cell phones, and traffic signals of Seattle and the surrounding communities all went inoperational. Traffic ground to a halt, the city lost water pressure and electrical power one second after that. Best of all even the impenetrable Ares Security lost its backup power for a term of thirty minutes as a backup backup generator was brought online. Then five minutes later there would be the May Day explosion outside of the Ares building. The FBI would call The 26th of May the single largest and most well coordinated terrorist attack in America. They would arrest and later execute seven Arabic Fundamentalists and sixteen Aryan Brotherhood member in connection with the bombings. All professed their innocence and their being the patsies of a government conspiracy until the switch was thrown on the chairs that would electrocute them. They were only half right about the conspiracy part. Dodger was the only one who helped Ian, mostly in planting the evidence to get the radicals to take the credit and thus the blame for his anarchist actions.
But inside on the eighteenth floor Masque and Taki were in no position to stand in awe at his work or to congratulate him. They headed out into the sea of cubicles to get away from the Office of Mr. Kirk. Turning in random directions they headed for the cubicles over the unused elevator shafts. As they reached them the men in black combat gear wielding MP-5s entered the floor from the one set of four elevator shafts and spread out. They were carrying a wand size device and shouting, "Everyone stay where you are to be identified. Stay seated. Do not move about." Repeating it over and over. One of them had a bullhorn. As they ran crouched and got to the location over the shafts they could hear the teams of paramilitary coming towards them. Masque hit the floor and waited. They were in a copy room. He looked around in the darkness of the interior of the building, only red hazard light illuminated anything. Taki was nowhere in sight; unbeknownst to Masque he had turned invisible and stood over him watching. Two guards stopped at the copying cubicle where the agents were. One pointed an MP-5 into the cube and the other held out a black box and said in a loud and commanding voice, "Identify yourself." He jabbed the box at Masque who knew nothing about it. Was it a DNA IDer? A voice print, or a thumbscanner? Before he could decide the guard decided he wasn't supposed to be here and lowered the detection unit and began raising his MP-5. The other guard was going to just open fire but four ceramic throwing darts laced his neck open and dropped him to the floor in an ever-widening pool of his own blood. The first agent had his weapon wrenched from his hand and got three shots from the dart gun in the face. That gave him long term residence on the floor. Masque turned and opened up an access panel on the floor and dropped down. He could hear more men running towards them. He shed his jacket, slung the MP-5 around his neck, and moved around and down the pulleys for the elevator until he was in a position to reach the cables. Taki stayed behind and disabled the first two para-mils to get to the copy machine with quick blows to the head but then had to make a getaway or risk being seen. The invisibility could only work on so many people, but he had bought Masque an extra couple seconds.
Masque wrapped the jacket around the cable and slid down the shaft. He hit the top of a car in the dark and he could feel pain in his hands and in his legs. The shaft was pick black and he was breaking out in a heavy sweat. He looked around and was hit by red light from above. The guards were up there. Time to move, he saw another elevator car two shafts over and several floors below. He jumped. They opened fire. He landed with a crash and grabbed for anything to keep from bouncing off the top of the car. He guessed he was down around floor five or six. He kicked open the elevator roofs access and dropped in. It was empty. He jimmied open the doors and looked out. The elevator bays were illuminated red and white from flashlights. Outside by the security desks at both end were about a dozen of Ares cops who manned the desk 24-7. He held up the MP-5 and let off a controlled burst in front of him as he headed for their desk. Three cops went down from wounds as he dove behind the desk. The cops on the other end were firing into the desk. One cop behind the desk was wounded and Masque slit his throat quickly with a ceramic blade. He took the three cops pistols and the readily available magazines. Holding one over the desk he fired wildly to keep their heads down. He heard a pair of tink-tink-bounce-tinks. A pair of tear gas grenades rolled behind the desk. He grabbed both and threw them back as he closed his eyes and held his breath against the smoke. Finding them in the dark was hard but he did it and continued to fire away. He stood and fired the last of the magazine in the SMG as he rounded the corner and saw a dead end. The glass doors of the ID station were closed and presumably locked (no doubt armored too.) As he stood in the hallway out of sight of the guards around the corner. Shit. What to do. Thought raced through his mind, then he settled on one. A cornered dog fights hardest. He walked down the hallway away from the glass enclosure and back towards the guards. One by one they started to come into his view and each received a double tap in the chest. Each cop went down. After dispatching four he heard his luck run out.
The elevator door opened and a para-mil. stepped out. He fired a full burst at Masque, the security desks papers and monitor exploded around him. Masque felt two rounds slap into his chest. He brought up the Sig Sauer pistol he'd taken from a cop and fired two shots. Both hit the para-mil in the face. Masque kept firing as more poured out of the elevator. They dodged back into the elevator. His shots sparked and ricocheted against the stainless steel of the elevator doors. Then he ducked behind the desk. More tear gas grenades. He didn't even bother to throw them back cuz the para-mils had gas masks. He didn't.
A powerful blast shook the building and a fireball rose into the mid-day sun. Thanks Ian.
Then he saw a button under the table, not a red button, it had to be to a break room behind the wall. The guards needed a way in and out without going through the security. He hit the button as the para-mils poured out in a rush. They doused the desk with fire. Masque was hit twice more: in the leg and the forearm. He switched weapon hands. Firing off handed over the desk he sent two to cover and two to the ground for good. Then he dove through the open door. Rolling on the floor he headed for the far end and slammed the door behind him. Shafts of light streaked the pitch-black room from all the bullet holes. Masque dashed to the far end with his muscles and wounds burning. Running through the bullets he was hit three more times. His monocrys vest was holding up well, but he couldn't take much more of this. Pressing his hand to his abdomen he winced in pain. Give up or die? He thought. Give up and fight another day. He got on the radio to all the teams, "I'm giving myself up. Too high a risk to get support here. I order radio silence now. Doctor the situation is yours. Over and Out."
As he stepped out of the guards secret room he saw red light coming around both hallways. Shit! They went around both sides to surround me. That's what I would have done though. He hurried into the nearest cubicle he could find and dropped his radio and dart gun in the garbage. He then limped back into the walkway and laid down with his arms and legs outstretched. "I surrender. I surrender. Don't shoot." He repeated it several times until they were on him.
"Silence!" was all one commanded. He could count a dozen surrounding him no doubt with their muzzles all trained on him. Taki was on the far side of the room watching them shoot him with an electrical stun gun. It took five long zaps to put Masque under, then they injected him with a chemical syringe. They carried him off to the elevator. Then Taki left. It was 1345.
Ares Building, 11th Floor. 1310.
Petyr was sitting at the desk of Marc Shapiro in the buildings north quadrant when the lights went out. Five minutes later he heard a blast from outside and a shockwave shook the building. The lights were out and whispers were flying. About twenty minutes later the elevator doors opened and a security team dressed in the same paramilitary garb from upstairs began searching the floor. Petyr stood up despite their shouted orders to "remain where you." When one made eye contact with him he made like he was going to sit but kept moving crouched over. He was going towards Melissa in the west quadrant. As he rounded the corner to the security booth that separated the quadrants four guards caught his eye. Each began racing for their sidearm, one had an MP-5. A snap kick relieved the first of his MP-5 and then a throat gouge sent him to the floor coughing. A spin kick knocked one to the ground then Petyr grabbed the other two in the chest and pushed them into and over their desk. He walked through the security booth as the guards behind him came running. He coolly looked back at them, Killing them would be a waste of time and energy. I must get to Melissa. He ignored their shouts and broke towards where her desk was. When he was within sight he saw that three guards had her cornered in her cubicle. One was waving a black box at her. Petyr couldn't hear their words but one looked mad.
When the guards behind him, got to the booth they opened fire at the fleeing Petyr. Rounds ploughed into him, but could not get past his powerful cybernetic armor. They bounced off him, stripping away pieces of his flesh, but he ran on. The guards at Melissa's cubicle turned and opened fire at Petyr. Melissa hamstrung one with a dagger, and got the other in the Kidney. His anguished look was so terrible he should have been screaming his guts out, but the pain cut even that off. The third turned and fired his Glock .45 sidearm twice into her gut. She doubled over and went down against the desk. Before he could turn around to shoot at Petyr who was original target, Petyr was on him. A tremendous punch to the face, coupled with the instantaneous locking out of his razor claws, cut the mans face off and snapped his neck. Petyr ducked don and grabbed Melissa. This is not looking good for our side.
"I'm giving myself up. Too high a risk to get support here. I order radio silence now. Doctor the situation is yours. Over and Out."
That is very bad. Goddamn these Ares bastards. They will pay for this dishonor. Melissa wrapped her arms around his shoulder and under his other arm clinging to the front of his suit. Petyr began making his way to the windows. Pulling down cubicles and throwing desks over to slow his pursuers. Glancing over his shoulder and staying crouched he moved quickly to the windows where it was now raining heavily. Looks as if Ian can even make it rain. HA! Every three or four seconds he would fire his dart gun at the pursuers and send one to the floor. The psychological effect of having a 100% effective weapon used against them, was not lost on them and they slowly pursued him. Once he was at the window he pushed a desk out it, sending shattering glass reigning down on the roof below. He looked out and they were above the four-story wing that took up half of the Ares block. Petyr didn't even hesitate with his escape route.
He jumped out. With the last impetus he generated from his heel he turned himself 180 degrees around to face the building as he fell. Melissa clamped onto him with an iron grip. He threw his hands out in front of him and extended his claws. Their mono-wire blades sliced through the window and produced a tremendous friction while cutting through the amorphous solid. Sliding down five floors to the roof of the next wing takes tremendous balance and skill. It is far harder than Petyr makes it look. Equalizing the resistance on both sides and distributing your weight (and that of your cargo) takes precision and split second timing. Plus dealing with the high altitude winds next to a buildings surface only adds to the difficult. When he hit the roof in a puddle he broke Masque's radio silence call. "Otter, give us cover. We're on the roof. Heading east to get off this thing." -- "Copy that," Otter said from the far towers to the west. He had spotted several snipers that rushed to the roof of the main building and set up overwatch positions to keep the intruders from escaping. Ares really was paranoid, he thought.
Not that that stopped him from opening fire with his 12.7mm XM-77HB Trebuchet sniper rifle. Scoping in on his target he breathed out and then when his breath began to run out he squeezed the trigger until the discharge of the rifle actually surprised him. But he didn't flinch and didn't jerk, so his foe would suffer. His aim was true and the armor-piercing slug lanced through the armored glass and punched through the snipers chest in a millisecond. The other four on the roof were given his location by the microwave scanners that tracked his bullets in like radar. They began to focus in on him. he switched targets and fired again. The next one died a death that matched his partners. Their spotters frantically indicated where Otter was to the snipers. This counter-sniper duel lasted for another four second. Only the last one alive got off a single shot, but it was enough to cripple Otters left arm and break a half-dozen of his ribs.
Petyr was running to the edge of the roof in the pouring rain when a access door further down to his right opened. Only ten yards to the edge of the roof. Less than a second to go. At the edge, already soaked to the bone, he jumped and heard a rifle crack. He felt Melissa's grip release as he cleared the edge. She fell away backwards from him with a yell. He felt the hot wetness of blood on his neck. He turned in the air and started to fall without her. She was crumpling on the roof edge, he couldn't risk grabbing her for fear she would just fall after him. He let her go and used his claws again to slide down the glass windows to the grass lawn below. A red Dodge Intrepid screeched up as guards were exiting through hidden doors in the glass walls. Petyr jumped in and the car spun out on the slick road and sped away down a street away from Ares. Petyr sat in silence the whole ride to the safe house in a car without a driver. Beggay was "Rigging" it.
On the far roof, Otter felt defeated. Bleeding heavily despite the slap-patch he rolled up his ground cover and broke down the rifle. He hadn't been able to get the sniper that had knocked Melissa off of Petyr. That sniper was on the far side of the roof, out of sight from Otters location. The ones on the roof had suffered heavily; he'd gotten five. But then they got titanium shields and were able to get Melissa before he could get all of them. The indignity of it all was boiling his blood in his veins. I was defeated by a Tactic older that Caesar. The damn Greek Hopolites used that tactic. Yelling into the night, AGHHHHHHH!!!! he tried to release his anger. God only knows where they took her.
Peterson Manufacturing, Seattle. May 26, 1410.
Petyr picked up the phone as it rang inside the office of their safe house. Doctor Payne and the rest of the teams had evacuated here after things had gone drastically wrong. Melissa and Masque were unaccounted for, and Otter was seriously wounded. He heard Drake's voice speaking in the phone as he brought it to his ear, "Petyr, you there!!" their controller shouted.
"Affirmative."
"God, don't take so long to get to the phone. I almost went through Dodger. Get your team down to the Mayfield Lake/River. That's south of the Mossy Rock Dam. Team 218 followed a delivery barge of Bayer product into a fog bank and lost it. They picked up the eight delivery vans east going into Yakima. Get down there immediately and pick up the material if you can. It is only 120 miles by air. Copy."
"I copy kommand."
Everyone in the room was looking at him expectantly. Deacon's Team was there too, chomping at the bit for Melissa. They all hung on his words, he'd only spoken four with Drake. That usually wasn't a good sign. "We have been orderet to recover material dat belongkted to Bayer. It iz on a river. Blue Duck vill be our transportation. Ve will goh now."
Doctor Payne new better than to argue and just threw his arms up in exasperation, fumed, and waited for the Helo. Deacon didn't do anything. Ian shouted at Petyr, "Argh!! Wut about ouur Mates? Uhhh??"
"He vill take any secrets to the grave before he talkz. Ov dat I have no dout." Outside the rain and thunder reflected his mood.
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