Fatal Attraction Ch. 07

Zelderman looked at the man curiously. Obviously, he was aware of the situation and had come prepared with men at such a forsaken time. She wondered what he had in mind.

"And what do you intend to do?"

"Oh we'll play a little game with them. They are locked up inside that black cave of a bar ain't they? So we'll just send a few men of mine down there and play around with them a little before we finally extirpate them!"

Zelderman thought for a few seconds about what was being proposed. The lads had caused her enough trouble already. And on top of it all, there was no saying how much more damage they could cause to her men in a fight for life and death type confrontation in the bar, especially with someone like Christian around. It certainly seemed a better idea to let Stevenson's men do the job; especially since he seemed to be harboring a grudge that dragged him to Salvia in the middle of the night.

"Ok, favi, you can ask your men to go ahead. But ask them not too cause too much damage to the bar, the repairs ain't coming out of your pockets now are they?"

Stevenson smiled. The first phase of his plan was over. Pretty soon everything he had planned would come into motion. And his greatest adversary would soon be sleeping in a coffin.

"So you do have those special goods that came last week don't you? The one from that Turkish smuggler."

Zelderman raised her eyebrows. It seemed Raphael Stevenson's knowledge about her own dealings were good.

"Yes, but what would you want with those now?"

"Oh, I just thought it would be fun to equip my men with some of those night vision goggles and all. Just for the thrill of it. It'll be like a hunt in the dark then."

Zelderman scowled and contorted her face. The old geezer was a sick twisted man indeed. She nodded apprehensively as she gave instructions to one of her own men to lead Stevenson's men to the 'special' goods that had come in the previous week.

A bustling noise by the door informed the people inside that someone else had just arrived. "Lemme in, one sec!" someone called out from behind the mass of men.

Zelderman shrugged helplessly as she realized that Randy Rodriguez had arrived too.

~~~

13 men slowly made their way downwards, descending the staircase that led to the bar; 13 men that were under strict instructions; their mission was to annihilate the thief, and capture the nerd unharmed; 13 men under rigid instructions of Raphael Stevenson himself. And equipped with state of the art Night Vision Devices, they descended cautiously down the steps.

The large scuba-gear styled goggles they had on were the so called NVD's; Night vision devices comprising an IR image intensifier tube in a rigid casing; A dual type utilizing a separate image intensifier tube for each eye. The state of the art goggles were the 'special' goods that would enable them to see clearly in the sinister lack of light the bar was plunged into, as opposed to their prey that would be rendered defenseless. And it would make their rather complicated scenario of taking one hostage simpler, and obviously slaughtering whoever else would come in the way.

They descend warily, their guns in their hands, treading lightly with their polished black suits; a perfect match to the pristine white shirts and black suits that Stevenson's men were always known to dress in. Their prey had probably been alerted of their presence as a few steps of the wooden staircase creaked, but then too, it was obviously going to be an easy task. Each member of the gang had an earpiece attached to his ear, one that doled out instructions at regular intervals, giving the men orders; orders that were being given by a squad coordinator of sorts; another of Stevenson's men who sat watching the monitors in the surveillance room.

Christian's breathing was heavy. He hated being in situations which went beyond his control. And this certainly was one of the most extreme cases; one of certain death. Armed with just a double-action Beretta, he squatted behind a sofa, clutching the gun close to his chest. He wondered if it would be of any use.

He closed his eyes as he recalled the calmness and conviction in Duke's voice when he stated he would fight his way out of there. And even in the darkness, he had been able to spot a glint of determination in his mate's eyes. That determination was the only thing he could pin his hopes on.

Duke knelt in the dark, his eyes closed. There was hardly any point in keeping them open. He couldn't see a darned thing anyways. And now he would have to rely on other senses to achieve his goals.

His heart was thumping nonstop. He could hear the damn thing throbbing; pulsating into his brain, throbbing in his chest. And in those moments of adrenaline he felt powerful, inexorable and insuperable. A rush of excitement fuelled by chemical reactions in his head, giving him the high he always sought out. And in those very moments, he knew he would be able to penetrate the veil of darkness with his ears; a serpent of sorts. He set his colt in single in 'Condition 1'. A mode better known as cocked and locked, only setting the thumb safety off.

Two stories up, almost exactly above where he was crouched, the remote squad coordinator of the men in suits was affirming orders, under scrutiny of Zelderman, Stevenson and a few of Zelderman's men, along with the notorious Randy Rodriguez. The man with the headset and microphone knew there was not much need of coordinating the men in this situation, given the overwhelming unfair advantage his men had, but there was no need to cross the dangerous bridge.

He could clearly make out the crouched shape of one of the quarries, the squatting figure behind a sofa, with what seemed like a gun in his hand in the hazy green images, and informed his accomplices of his position. He chuckled as he wondered how long he would last in the blackness of the bar.

He breathed the final order.

"Rush in now!"

All hell broke loose.

Thirteen men crouched at the base of the staircase raced towards the bar, a snake of black suits trailing behind, moving forward as the black assassins took the steps two at a time.

Two men took the lead and broke into the bar, their vision enriched by the infrared NVD's they had been accoutered with, looking around everywhere for a sign of their prey.

It would be easy, like a barn owl hunting a rat.

"This is it!" Duke whispered to himself in the dark.

Crunching and clinking noises were heard and Duke reacted instantly. He rose up with lightning speed.

Bam! Bang!

Two seconds later two bodies fell to the floor, thumping loudly as they did, making weird scrunching noises.

"Two down", a calm voice counted in the dark.

Two other suited men watched their infrared vision in horror as their partners took vital hits and fell to the floor, dead. And they looked up to find a dash of a red figure running and jumping to the floor. They fired in his direction, the figure tumbling and skidding before it got concealed behind tables and chairs. Several other men were now behind them, crowding the bottom of the wooden staircase, blindly trying to contemplate what had just happened.

The two live men ahead thought quickly and decided to rush everyone in. Remaining standing out there, they were like sitting ducks. Clomping and clinking noises were heard as eleven living men rushed into the bar and concealed themselves behind tables, chairs, barstools and whatever furniture or obstacles were accessible.

"What the fuck just happened?" Stevenson bellowed in the surveillance room above, the terminology he used belying his vernacular.

Stevenson's coordinator on the headset was straining to hear the whispers of one of his men. "Two of our men are down! The bastards! They spilled glass on the floor. There's broken glass everywhere!"

The shocked coordinator conveyed the same to his boss who stared at him like a madman.

"And they've spread something else on the floor.... wait." The coordinator waited as the man speaking from the other end presumably lifted a chunk of whatever was on the floor.

"Popcorn?!"

"What?" Stevenson bellowed once more, sticking his ear right next to the headset on his man on the monitors. He couldn't believe he had just lost two of his able bodied men. And the reason was popcorn?

"Get those bastards now!" He hollered into the microphone.

Silence reigned in the bar underneath. The men crouched in bundles signaled each other, gestures clearly visible in the dark through infrared vision. They could no see the floor clearly, a mess of broken glass shards and popcorn. There was no avoiding it, but they could see certain areas that had lesser quantities nevertheless.

One arose bravely, standing up ever so slowly, looking all around frantically, his vision in shades of crimson. He stepped forward with mincing steps, inching towards the bar counter area; he knew their quarry was there somewhere.

Crunch.

Bang!

He fell to the floor; a bullet through his head.

Chaos resulted. A flurry of movements as glass shattered and footsteps pounded everywhere. Disorder and chaos highlighted by the firing of bullets in every conceivable direction. A series of gunshots echoed through the darkness. Bang, Bam!

Two more bodies thumped to the floor as figures scurried about in befuddlement.

Christian's heart was racing. He hadn't the slightest inkling of what was taking place. All he knew was that he was still alive. He still clutched his gun in his hand, and he hadn't yet fired a single shot. And yet the sounds around informed him that people around were falling to the floor like bowling pins; knocked out dead for good. He had raised himself to try to add his own to the situation but had failed miserably. All he saw were flashes of gunshots and the madness of hunters and the hunted and immediately ducked back behind the sofa.

"Five down!" Duke breathed silently. His temperament exactly opposite to his mate whose heart was riding rollercoasters; wondering if Duke was still alive.

He was a stalker of the night now; his ears and reflexes making him a terrifying force. His brain had closed in, thinking of nothing but his gun and the sounds around. The very lightest sound that was made, be it the clinking of glass pieces or the crunching of popcorn on the floor was captured by his ears; and he shot his gun in that exact direction with pinpoint accuracy.

He was unscathed. But the silence this time was brief. He reacted speedily as he heard a few noises behind him and lurched ahead, jumping and diving through the air, raising his gun as he flew.

Two more shots were fired by him as he sailed through the air, Bang, Bang!

Duke landed on his arms as two more men fell to the floor. Two who had snuck up behind him. Duke tumbled across the floor, his arms and legs intertwining before he speedily unentangled himself and ducked behind a table. Various men reassembled themselves across the hide-n-seek arena.

Duke felt a twinge of pain as slivers of glass lay embedded in his arms, but only for a moment. His mind refused to acknowledge the pain after that.

"Seven."

Duke breathed softly as he cocked the hammer of his gun manually, reloading the cartridge. The gun ching-ed as he reloaded it.

"What the fuck is happening?" It was Stevenson two stories above, his face red as he tried to understand what was taking place in the blurry green screens ahead of him. His teeth were gritted as contortions appeared on his forehead.

"Sir, we've confirmed that at least six of our men are dead."

"WHAT?!"

Zelderman's jaw was hanging low as Randy Rodriguez face acquired a puzzled expression. What exactly was going on down there?

"How can my bloody men be dead?"

"Sir, they have some sort of an elite marksman with them. He took all six of them down single handedly."

"What the fuck do you mean marksman? A fucking fairy? Against all my men with those NVD's? Are you fucking crazy?"

The poor coordinator on the headset wiped the spit from his face. Zelderman's spit, who was growling a mere two centimeters from his face now.

His face took on a puzzled expression as he strained to hear a voice cackling through the earphones. He paused before adding timidly. "Sir, one more of our men has been confirmed dead."

Stevenson lost all his sanity at that.

"Shoot them all fucking dead!" His voice carried through the entire hall. "Kill them all. I don't care what orders I gave before, just kill all those fucking queers down there! Find each one of those rats and riddle them with bullets beyond recognition!"

Stevenson looked like he was breathing fire.

The so called assassins waited patiently as the howling of their boss through the microphone was translated into their new order by their coordinator. So now they were to show now mercy; just shoot whichever enemy that moved.

A man in the bar below looked around, his red vision highlighting the tables and chairs in saturated crimsons and scarlets. Suddenly he spotted a shape amidst all the furniture and squinted his eyes to concentrate on it as he nudged himself forwards, still squatting. A chair touched his shoulder and creaked as it shifted slightly on the floor.

The shape changed positions with Godlike speed. And even before he could raise his gun, his head snapped backwards as the bullet went through his goggles and went straight through. His heart stopped beating a second later.

"Eight!"

Christian was feeling like an ignorant frog, stuck in a well. What in the world was happening all around? The last minute and a half had passed without him hardly moving from his position. Was Duke still alive?

Suddenly he heard the crunching of glass pieces around him. Unknown to him and unlike Duke, he was visible on the night vision cameras that their hunting party's coordinator was monitoring. And in his state of helplessness, the man behind the monitors was directing his men towards the only visible victim on the cameras.

Christian looked about frantically, desperately trying to predict where the noise had come from. He felt the danger he was in and intuitively knew that he was being stalked in the dark. But where would his hunters strike from.

Hearing another shifting of bodyweight, he suddenly lurched forward and pointed his Beretta to the darkness. False Alarm!

"Behind!" he though to himself as he swung around to notice the metallic glint of a gun in his peripheral vision. He knew he was dead.

Bang!

Christian felt the man ahead of him collapse as his body fell forward on him, slumping.

His assailant had just been shot by someone!

"Nine."

Christian fell to the floor, the corpse falling slack and collapsing on him as he did. Had Duke shot this man through this fog of war?

Christian felt a strange plastic object rubbing against his shoulder, an accoutrement that the dead man had on him, the man who had died in an instant. He immediately felt it up and yanked it off, pulling a cord over the man's head.

"NVD's!" Christian stated, a bit too loudly as he fumbled with the device and put it on. Their attackers had been fighting them with these on?

The red graphics in his vision immediately put into perspective all his surroundings. Every damn object around him was clearly visible; the furniture, the barstools, cardboard boxes and even the glass shards and popcorn on the floor. And then he peered over the edge of the bar to find Duke crouching behind a table.

It took him just a second to realize that Duke hadn't one of the devices on. And then it hit him. He was shooting on raw instinct and precision, judging the enemy's positions simply by concentrating on the noises they made when they moved.

Would popcorn and broken glass take them all the way to victory?

Clattering noises informed Christian that someone was on the move again. And before he could turn his head to see what movement had taken places, Duke arose like a demonic force, aiming towards the well equipped assailants.

Bang! Bang!

Fire was exchanged in flurries after that, as Duke veered left and right and took his turn as the hunter in the dark in the deathly game of hide and seek. Christian swallowed as he saw him zigzagging across the floor and then diving on the floor firing rounds one after the other. Bullets ricochet off countless surfaces, and bodies collapsed on the floor in several directions before the noises ceased.

Christian held his breath as he saw Duke's form on the floor, lying motionless. Was he hit?

He breathed a sigh of relief as Duke raised himself and crouched low once more. And he knew that instant that Duke had still not been touched by the enemies' bullets. He was a demon; the aura that he was emanating was the stuff of legends. An aura of sheer invulnerability; one that mere mortals simply do not possess; an aura that amalgamated divinity and demonic forces alike.

And no mortal could even get near that aura.

And at the same time Christian felt fear; a queasy feeling in his stomach that asked him to stay away from this monster, lest he be shot dead too.

"Ten, Eleven, Twelve."

Duke arose calmly, standing tall in the middle of the bar for the first time. Pointing the Colt towards the popcorn vending machine.

Bang!

A body thumped to the floor.

"Thirteen."

And with that, Duke knew it was over. Even though there was no way to confirm it, he knew intuitively that they were all dead. The whole charade had been played out and there was not a single enemy left. And as much as he had steeled himself for it, it was all sinking in now. He had just killed thirteen men.

He fell to the floor, his arms falling slack, his fingers now loosely grasping the gun as Christian slowly made his way towards him. The shootout at `Crazy Mongers' would be one to remember. Sadly there were just a handful of people who would even hear of it. Nevertheless, the skirmish that ensued at the bar, and the god-like skill that was unleashed would be etched as the last image into the brains of all those that had taken a bullet before they fell to the floor. Christian stared at his mate in wonder and shock. It was still to dark to see but he could make out Duke's slumped kneeling posture as the latter breathed heavily. He was clutching his prized gun in his palms tightly. The gun that had just taken more than a dozen lives. Christian scrambled to his feet as he slowly crept up to Duke and reassuringly put his hands on his companion's shoulders. "You ok buddy?" He asked in a gentle voice. Duke lifted his face slowly, finally peeling his eyes away from the semi-automatic pistol in his hand. "Yeah, I think so." Then Christian whistled in a low voice before he added, "What the hell was that BadgerKing? Are you some kind of a monster or something?" Duke did not reply. The almost supernatural sleight of gun that Duke had just displayed would brand him a legend forever. Sadly there were not many who had witnessed the scene or would ever know about it. Christian heaved himself up from the floor. He knew Duke's avatar had just ended and the realization of what he had done was sinking in. But it was not all over yet. He made his way towards the bartender's counter, knocking on the wooden cabinet below the liquor pipes. "You ok there?" Damien hummed in response. "Stay in there buddy, for just a little while longer."

~~~

"What do you mean you can't contact them?"

The rage boiling over was evident in Stevenson's voice. His face was black with rage.

"I can't get through to any of them. Either they were all killed or everyone down there killed each other."

"Confirm it!" Stevenson bellowed. "Switch on the damn power down there!"

The images everyone had been watching on screen had hardly given them glimpses of what had happened beneath. Mad firing and suited men falling to the floor one after the other in flashes were all they had seen.