Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story) (21 page)

Face against the floor but turned towards the others. Ell saw Phil scooting on his butt over to her location. He leaned over her and whispered, “Ell! Are you OK?”

The concern in Phil’s voice gave Ell a warm feeling. She moaned and rolled a little away from him, turning her head slightly up toward him. When she could see him through the slitted eye that was closest to the floor she winked at him with it. His eyes opened wide, then he grinned. Then his face fell, “I’m so sorry you got dragged back into this, they shot one of your team mates!”

She turned her face back toward the floor and whispered, “I know, they broadcast it on the net.”

Thinking about Anna’s desperate struggles to avoid being shot, Ell found herself suddenly torn by conflicting emotions. She wondered what she had been thinking to have voluntarily entered the lion’s den? Yes, she was fast, but fast enough to take on
seven
armed terrorists? With handcuffs on?!

Ell gritted her teeth and took a couple of deep calming breaths. She
had
come to the lion’s den, best try to pull the lion’s claws, not whine about her poor decision making. She rolled her head back toward Phil, “Can you get your arms under your feet and around front?” Ell knew she could, but worried that Phil’s flexibility might be limited by his muscularity.

Phil, dismayed at the tremor he heard in Ell’s voice said, “I think so, but anyone who tries to do that gets a beating.”

“Shut up! No talking!” One of the Arabs had come up behind them and he kicked Ell painfully in the side to punctuate his command. Phil lunged violently toward the guard. He made no contact but adequately distracted the guard from Ell. The guard started kicking Phil viciously in the back.

Phil startled Ell by grinning and winking at her before rolling face down and yelling, “Sorry, sorry!” in a piteous tone that Ell had never thought she might hear from Phil Zabrisk.

The guard tired of kicking Phil who was making surprisingly realistic blubbering sounds. With one more warning to “Stay quiet.” The guard stalked away and Phil rolled back to give her another wink.

Ell pondered the situation. She wanted to wait a while before doing anything, just to allow the guards to lower their attention levels. But not so long that Hamid might sacrifice another victim! Without her AI to keep time she didn’t have a good feel for how much of an hour had passed since Hamid had shot Anna. Ell pulled her hands under her butt to the back of her knees and struggled up to a sitting position like most of the other athletes. Ell studied their captors hoping for inspiration. There were seven of them, five at the front of the room near the bus and the two in the corners near the entrances. Each of the seven had a Beretta.

Jamal made an eighth but didn’t appear to have a weapon. He sat dejectedly on the stairs in the door of the bus, shoulders sagging. Hamid must have successfully derailed Jamal’s plan to leave after delivering Ell. The guard on the storm drain did indeed have a Beretta in addition to his assault rifle. It was in a holster on his right hip and she just hadn’t been able to see it earlier. There were more assault rifles leaning against the bus but only the door guard and the drain guard actually carried rifles at present. All but one of the guards carried their pistols in hip holsters rigged for right handed draw.

Ell flexed her wrists and realized that if she could get her hands in front of her she’d be able to handle a Beretta in a two hand grip with the cuffs on. But, and this seemed to be a big ‘but’, how was she going to get near a guard with her hands in front of her? She pictured herself with the Beretta in her hands and then wondered if she would be able to bring herself to shoot a person, even someone who fully intended to kill
her
? She thought again about Anna struggling and crying piteously as Hamid lined up to shoot her.
Yes, I damn well could shoot these bastards!

Then one of the athletes struggled to his feet. Ell saw that it was Michael Fentis the sprinter! A guard pulled his gun and walked over near Fentis. Stopping about six feet away, he motioned with his pistol and then followed Fentis over to the portapotty. A second guard stepped up behind Fentis and undid the cuffs while the first guard kept the gun on him from a distance. The guard opened the portapotty door so Fentis could step inside. After a bit the portapotty door reopened. The guard re-cuffed Fentis’ hands behind him and the sprinter was walked back to where he’d been sitting.

Under the cover of this activity she whispered to Phil, “I’m going to head to the portapotty in a few minutes. Can you arrange a distraction after I’ve been in there a minute?”

Phil stared at her round eyed. “What are you going to do?” he whispered back.

Ell tried to grin confidently but felt her lip tremble a little. There would be no way that Phil would cooperate with what even she thought likely was a suicide mission. “I think I’ve got a way to get us some help. But I need a distraction for it to work. Something sexy by one of the girls would be better than one of the guys doing something threatening that got their guards up.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It would take too long to explain. Can you help?”

Phil studied her a moment then nodded and nudged the guy next to him. “Pass the word for one of the girls to do something sexy to distract the guards after Donsaii has been in the john for a minute.”

That guy stared at Phil like he was out of his mind. But after a moment he turned to his left and seemed to be whispering, hopefully to pass the message on. Ell could see the wheels turning,
seemed crazy but anything was better than sitting, waiting to die.
Ell could only hope that someone on the other side of the room would be willing to try to provide a distraction.

With great trepidation, Ell rolled to her stomach, put her hands behind her, then hunched up to her knees and slowly stood up, acting like it was much more of struggle than it was. She stood swaying a little until the guard who’d kicked her earlier came over, negligently pointed his Beretta at her and motioned her toward the portapotty. She looked around as she walked, noting an open toolbox a few feet from the toilet. As with Fentis, when she arrived at the portapotty a second guard stepped up and inserted a pin into the ratchet mechanism of the plasticuffs, releasing her right wrist and leaving the cuffs dangling from her left. She stepped into the foul smelling portapotty, glad she didn’t actually need to go bad enough to have to use it. She listened carefully, then leaned forward and peered out the crack in the door. The guard stood just outside the door as she hoped, but stared at something out of Ell’s field of view. Then he yelled in a thick accent, “Sit back down until this one is done!”

Ell shifted to look to her right out the crack and saw two of the girls standing, she recognized the swimmers who had asked for her autograph that first night! They’d shrugged their jackets back off their shoulders to expose their swim suits. They were both writhing in place and Ell had to admit they did look pretty sexy. She let the zone she’d been diligently holding off, start to crash back over her.

As she felt her pulse turn to a slow throb and the world decelerate, she twisted the latch, pushing the door open. Everything out there moved in slow motion, the door took forever to swing back but when it did, the guard by the potty hadn’t moved. She stepped across to him and pulled the Beretta out of his holster, she found the safety and flicked it off as she stepped away from him.

First order of business was the second portapotty guard whose weapon was already drawn. To Ell it almost seemed like someone else was directing her movements – the Beretta swung slowly up and bore vertically on the guard’s right arm so that the upward motion imparted to the muzzle by the gun’s kick would only move the aimpoint higher on the arm, not produce a complete miss – she squeezed the trigger resisting the kick; the muzzle began to swing to the right while her eyes tracked the bullet to the guards arm, she didn’t flinch as the bullet broke his humerus and grossly deformed the arm – buckling it hideously between the elbow and shoulder, she noted absently the guard’s pistol falling from nerveless fingers; now Ell’s Beretta tracked across the left handed guard who was just beginning to react, her finger pulled the trigger again as the muzzle passed the pistol seated in its holster on his left hip, she saw the bullet fly to strike the pistol, driving it into his hip, she noted that he would fall down from the unexpected impact; the gun now tracked across the guard by the door, her finger started pulling the trigger just before it crossed the assault rifle, yes the gun fired as it crossed the rifle but she saw that the bullet would miss the weapon, with regret she pulled again as the muzzle crossed center body mass, hoping it didn’t kill; she buckled her knees to lower her profile against return fire and leaned backward to present a moving target, her muzzle came up on Hamid, turning toward her, eyes widening, hand dropping toward his holster, his turning brought the holster on his right, opposite hip barely into view, she pulled the trigger again and saw the bullet was going to pass through his anterolateral thigh then strike the holster; as she continued spinning, the muzzle of her Beretta passed the bus and the portapotty that had been behind her, and Jamal in the door of the bus – she considered the two remaining guards who must be reacting by now, they appeared in her field of view, yes they were moving, the one with the assault rifle was bringing it up and, in his excitement, fired a shot into the floor, then another, he was going to spray the athletes on automatic! The Beretta in Ell’s hand fired three times as it crossed over his silhouette while his weapon also fired three times, still hitting the floor but each bullet tracking higher and about to point into the seated Olympians, her muzzle tracked backwards and fired a fourth time, this bullet she saw would strike his assault weapon and drive it back downward and to the side; she resumed turning to the right and the last guard with a weapon came into view, his hand had reached the butt of his Beretta and was pulling the weapon out of the holster, her muzzle crossed the pistol and flared, the bullet tracked true to hit the gun and drive it into his right hip. The guard she had taken her gun from was stepping toward her, as her muzzle passed his thigh it flared again, she noted his thigh deforming gruesomely as the bullet struck his femur,
he will fal,l
she thought; she continued turning, the first guard she’d shot was reaching down with his intact left arm for the weapon on the floor where he’d dropped it when Ell had first shot his right arm, the Beretta’s muzzle flashed again, the bullet tracking correctly to strike his left arm; the next guard was still falling from the impact of his pistol being driven into his hip, his pistol was obviously deformed from the impact and
he’s out of this fight
; Ell’s eyes tracked over the door guard still falling backward, yes,
he’s out of the fight too
; now she saw Hamid, gun indeed blown off his hip, Hamid was turning toward the assault rifles stacked against the bus behind him, Ell’s muzzle tracked over his thighs and barked twice; she continued tracking around the circle, the grate guard was flying backward, his assault rifle driven back down toward the floor, no longer firing but
had it hit someone?
The seventh guard was still falling from the impact of his Beretta against his thigh; Ell back counted her shots, fourteen, so she had one bullet left in the Beretta if it had had a full fifteen bullet magazine when she started; she quickly wiped it down against her pants, tossed it and stepped to pick up the undamaged Beretta the portapotty guard had dropped. She took it off safe. Ell resurveyed the terrorists to make sure none of them were in condition to do harm. She looked at the athletes; they had all “hit the floor” and were making themselves small. Phil suddenly stood up. His hands in front of him, he started her way. Ell stepped to the toolbox while calling Phil’s name, then grabbed a wire cutter and tossed it toward Phil, carefully pulling the throw to make it slow enough for him to catch. She stepped to Hamid who lay crumpled on the floor and pointed the Beretta’s muzzle at his face, speaking slowly so she would be understandable, “Turn on the video link to the outside. Now!” She repeated it in case he didn’t understand.

Hamid’s eyes were filled with disbelief. His faced turned grim, “No! Kill me.”

Ell couldn’t imagine trying to torture cooperation out of the terrorist leader. She looked over the terrorists once more to make sure none of them posed a threat, then let the zone go and felt exhaustion roll over her. Reaction trembled through her. Without a doubt she had just seriously mangled some other human beings, had she killed some of them? Questions avalanched through her consciousness. How would she get the police to break into the hideout to rescue them? Could she be charged with murder for killing terrorists? Should she go get her HUD and try using the net to contact the police? Go to the door and knock? Was killing terrorists “justifiable homicide”? Could she do anything to help Anna? Should she be doing anything for the wounded terrorists? Oh God! She needed to get help somehow! Suddenly it all seemed insurmountable and her vision blurred with tears.

The tech monitoring the audio turned, “Chief! Gunfire inside the room! Sounds like automatic weapon fire!”

Christ! They’re killing them all!
The chief thought to himself, “White! Swat is go! Rip that door off and get in there before the bastards kill
everyone
!”

The assault truck started up and roared toward the door, lance extended.

Phil heard Ell call his name and saw her throw something toward him. Reflexively he tried to catch it. HOLY HELL! It hit his bare palm like a full on baseball pitch and stung like hell! However, he did catch it and looked down to recognize a wire cutter,
Ah, to cut the cable tie plasticuffs.
He couldn’t turn it to cut his own cuffs though, so he knelt next to the closest athlete and cut her cuffs loose, then handed her the cutters so she could cut his loose.

He thought back over what he’d just witnessed. Everyone else in the big room had  been watching the two swimmers writhing and wondering
what the Hell?
Phil had been distracted momentarily but then turned his attention back to Ell in the portapotty wondering what in the world her plan was. The door of the portapotty had exploded out and completely off its hinges as Ell flew out. She blurred past the closest guard toward the one with the drawn pistol. Phil flinched then as an automatic weapon opened up, a muzzle flashing right in front of Ell. He expected her to be flung back but no! It was Ell who had somehow obtained a weapon and had fired that burst herself. Then, she seemed to fall, spinning, back to her left. Before he could think,
She’s been hit!
her spin had faced her the opposite direction and another a burst of muzzle flashes streaked to his right – just as he heard an automatic weapon start firing from over there.