No explanation Stanley offered Acting President Hollis mollified her. He insisted that the war had ended, that the Lord Admiral wished, in good faith, to aid the people of Earth. She called him a toady and a quisling, but he didn’t know what that meant. After an unfruitful argument, he was moved to another conference room where the Hrwang security detachment waited with Irina. They had been moved there under armed escort, provided food and water, but, as Stanley noticed, their weapons had been taken away.
“I don’t know what to say to these people to get them to see reason,” he complained.
“You must talk to Lord Admiral,” the Second Colonel suggested. He studied his tablet constantly and his English improved greatly. The other men used their time to study also.
“How?”
“On the ship. We have communications.”
“Let’s see if we can talk our hosts into letting us go back upstairs.”
Staff Sergeant John Cathey, Retired US Air Force, crawled into the apartment he’d been using, staying below the level of the window. The Stinger felt good on his back. He was finally going to be able to do something.
The woman who’d helped him up the last few flights of stairs to the fiftieth floor, the one in camo pants and a yoga shirt, crawled behind him and exclaimed in disgust, “What reeks?”
“Shhh!”
“Oh my goodness! How do men live this way?”
“Shhh!!”
She grumbled something else, but so quietly he didn’t hear it.
“I’m going to film it,” said one of the men who had climbed the stairs with them. He pulled out a phone.
“Keep it out of sight!” John commanded in a harsh whisper.
“Yes, sir,” the man whispered back.
John wanted to rejoin with the standard answer that all sergeants gave when called ‘sir’, that they couldn’t possibly be officers because their parents had been married when they were born, but he didn’t have time for that now. He let it go.
He crawled forward, and when he got to the window he leaned against the wall next to it, staying out of sight. He unslung the case containing the Stinger and sat it on the ground next to him. He picked up the binoculars he’d left there earlier and held them so only part of one side could see through the window. He looked through that one lens.
The target remained acquired.
“Absolutely not!” Acting President Hollis screamed over the guard’s phone. “Stop bothering me!”
“Why?” Stanley asked. What was wrong with these people?
“She’s already hung up,” the thick guard replied. The same two guards who had been in the corridor when Stanley first entered the United Nations Headquarters now guarded the conference room they were held in.
“Call her back,” Stanley insisted.
“No.”
“Incompetent fool.”
The man didn’t reply to Stanley’s insult, but he glared in anger a moment too long. One of the Hrwang soldiers came from behind Stanley, shoving him out of the way and grabbing the guard’s gun with one hand and using the other to break the guard’s nose.
The second guard, the slightly smaller one, tried to bring his gun down, but another Hrwang dove into him. The guard struck him on the head with the butt of his rifle, but the third Hrwang soldier leapt from behind, landing on top of the guard and used a tiny knife to jab him in the throat, silencing him.
Everything happened quickly and not a shot was fired. Stanley hadn’t even noticed the three leave their seats and sneak up behind him.
“No,” he cried when the first soldier killed the incapacitated guard with a long, thin blade with a narrow black hilt. “Why?”
“You are the Ambassador,” the Second Colonel Grenadier replied, standing behind him. Stanley turned to look at the man. The Colonel simply shrugged. “They should listen to you.”
“No killing without my permission,” Stanley said.
“That is not your authority,” the Colonel stated. “I will deem what is necessary for security.”
Stanley shook his head and looked to Irina for support. She stared at the first guard who had been killed, on his back, blood pooling underneath his neck, his eyes staring at the ceiling, wide in surprise.
“Follow me,” the Colonel said to Stanley and he stepped over the dead guard and headed up the corridor in the direction of the stairs they had used to come down off of the roof. One of the Hrwang soldiers led, a newly acquired rifle in his hands. The one who’d taken a blow to the head followed, woozy, his hand running along the wall for stability. Then the Colonel and Stanley following.
The last Hrwang soldier, with the second guard’s weapon, followed Stanley and as they got a few feet down the corridor, it became evident Irina wasn’t following. Stanley turned and called her name.
She still stood in the doorway of the conference room staring down at the dead guards.
“Irina!” Stanley repeated. She didn’t look up. “Commander Samovitch! We are leaving now. Come!”
She stared at him now. He couldn’t read her. It wasn’t hatred on her face, but something different. Something sinister, angry. Something he didn’t like.
“Commander, now!” he ordered.
She turned and ran the other way.
The guard behind Stanley raised his weapon and Stanley shoved the man’s arm. The shots missed Irina, pockmarking the wall beyond the corridor she dove down. The man tried to shrug off Stanley’s grip and follow, but Stanley yelled, “No,” and hung on.
The soldier pushed Stanley, knocking him back into a wall and the Second Colonel quickly intervened, separating the two and yelling at the soldier in a foreign tongue. When he finished, the Colonel turned to Stanley.
“I apologize,” he said. “He had no ill intent. It was excitement.”
Stanley stood stiffly, his shoulder sore where it had struck the wall, and glared. He would remember that soldier.
“He should have just let her go,” he growled.
The Colonel shrugged again and repeated, “I apologize.”
There was no use arguing with him, Stanley thought. He pushed past the officer and started following the woozy soldier, not looking back at the one who had shoved him or at the Colonel.
He calmed down as he walked, and he wondered what Irina would do next. She clearly wasn’t loyal to him. She wasn’t listening. He didn’t know how to convince her that what he was doing was right.
He had no idea how he was going to convince anyone.
John slowly opened his window. It wouldn’t open completely, but it would open enough.
“There’ll be back blast. Careful where you stand,” he hissed as two of the men crowded behind him, probably to watch over his shoulder.
“Oops. Thanks,” one of them whispered back and moved away. The other moved closer to the window and took a spot on its other side.
“Ready?” John asked no one in particular.
“Ready,” one of them replied.
Three were still in the room with him. The other two, the woman and the guy recording it on his phone, had moved to the room next door. He heard their window slide open.
The missile came pre-loaded in the Stinger, but John had to attach the rangefinder and eyepiece. He couldn’t remember how at first, but they only went on one way, and he finally got it to fit together.
He prayed it still worked. After all this effort, it had to work, right?
But what if the rangefinder battery had died? Was it even battery powered? John wasn’t sure.
Surely it would work. The military knew how to design things that would always work. Stuff had to survive battlefield conditions. It was built tough.
Then he grimly remembered the hundreds of things he had encountered during his military career that didn’t work as designed, and he resorted again to prayer.
Stanley and the Hr
wang climbed the stairs to the roof exit. The lead soldier opened the door and looked around. One of the pilots stood outside the Hrwang craft, smoking or chewing a long, thin brown stick. The pilot said something to the lead soldier who relaxed and held the door open.
John could see the Hrwang aircraft on top of the United Nations Headquarters through the eyepiece of the Stinger. It warbled softly and he felt a slight vibration. The surface to air missile had lock, even though the aircraft was parked and at a lower elevation than he was.
The Stinger was a marvel of technology; one of the simplest missiles in the world to fire, and one of the deadliest.
He held his breath and pulled the trigger.
Stanley followed the woozy soldier, who had achieved some sense of equilibrium, up the stairs. The soldier reached the top while Stanley lagged behind, about half way up the flight. The lead soldier still held the door open and spoke with the pilot. The Colonel and the soldier who had shoved him followed behind. There was no evidence of pursuit.
There was a satisfying whoosh as the missile left the Stinger, streaking through the air towards the parked Hrwang aircraft. The casing ejected also, tumbling and burning as it trailed the missile. It would fall to the streets below and John hoped people got out of the way.
He still held his breath.
The woozy soldier bumped into the soldier holding the door, and the door slipped out of his hand. It slammed shut in Stanley’s face, leaving the three men outside.
Idiots. He could have lost a finger.
He reached for the door knob.
There was an explosion, and cheering began all around him, but John continued to watch through the eyepiece. He didn’t celebrate. He didn’t take a breath until he took one to swear. He cursed and stood and threw the Stinger launcher to the ground, kicking it.
“What’s wrong, man?” one of the guys in the room asked. The celebrating stopped.
John couldn’t even speak. He just pointed out the window, not at the top of the roof, but about fifty feet in the air above it. The aircraft hung there, fifty feet above the flames from the missile burning on the rooftop below, fifty feet above the bodies of three dead Hrwang, torn, charred, and scattered, fifty feet above where John had fired.
The concussion from the blast, despite the dampening effect of the steel door between him and it, blew Stanley down the flight of stairs into the Colonel and the remaining Hrwang soldier. The three lay on the landing, ears ringing, head pounding. Stanley couldn’t hear and couldn’t think. He closed his eyes in pain.
The woman in the room next door screamed and someone shouted, “Run!”
John watched the Hrwang aircraft heading straight for them and he ran, following the others out of the apartment.
He got out of the apartment and followed the crowd to the stairs. They hindered each other in their panic, but John stayed in the back. He was responsible. If there were consequences for his actions, he would accept them. It was part of war, right?
His philosophical side also told him it was part of life. He got into the doorway of the lifesaving stairwell as the apartment door burst open and the hallway erupted into flames.
The six flew down the stairs, the camera that filmed the entire attack dropped and forgotten until later. When the owner finally retrieved it, weeks later, it had been charred beyond repair or recovery, the footage lost forever. The former Marine Gunnery Sergeant cursed himself for having been clumsy and losing something so valuable, an actual Hrwang aircraft in action, but when he looked around the charred remnant of the apartment, the burned out floors above and below, he counted himself lucky. Everyone had been ordered to stay out of the building due to the extensive structural damage caused by the Hrwang, but he sneaked back in anyway, to try to get the camera.
He realized at that moment just how lucky he’d been. How lucky they’d all been. The six had gotten out in the nick of time.
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