GWOT III - Breach

GWOT III - Breach


I am lying on the concrete bunk of my cell. I have not bothered to cover myself, even though I am still shivering.

I take stock automatically. My left hand is infected. I see streaks running up and down my arm. I have no soap, scrubbing does not help, and my one exposure to what Homeland calls an infirmary was enough.

I've lost weight. I've lost teeth. My gums are very sore.

I think my kidneys are starting to shut down. My last piss was bright yellow with tinges of red, something I hadn't experienced since childhood.

Pro tip - if you are ever tortured, try to arrange to have had a badly abusive childhood in advance. It really does help.

Even in this huge cavernous cold concrete facility, there are sounds. When they get the HVAC running, not all that often, it's colder. When a cell extraction team jounces down the halls, you hear the rattle and thump of boots on cheap concrete and cheaper rebar. Once a week on Fridays at noon, they run through the alarm sounds.

I call them the cheeps, the heeps and the beeps. I may be one of the few prisoners to know what they mean, due to prior surveillance of the building. The cheeps are the fire alarm. The heeps are the medical emergency. Note: prisoners don't have those. The beeps are the attack alarm.

I'm thirsty. All I need to do is get up, walk to the toilet and dip my right hand in. (I don't use the tap to drink from any more; my suspicions are confirmed, they have been drugging the tap.)

But it's easier to die here. It really is.

When I found myself hugging the toilet to avoid being taken to interrogation, I knew I had broken.

When they went through with the mock executions anyway, going so far as to roll me into the furnace with the blower and the gas running and the walls warm, but no spark, I had really honestly truly lost my mind. I'd raved, I'd screamed, I'd have pissed and shat myself if I'd had anything left. I'd have done anything to avoid burning. Anything at all, however obscene or horrific or immoral. Sold out my best friend. Any crime in the Penal Code. Betrayed my country. My soul. Anything.

And now they left me in this cell with that knowledge.

Actually burning me now would be doing me a favor.

I'd rather have died. I should never have submitted to arrest. I should have died horribly before I learned this truth about myself.

For all my bluster, for all my show of bravery, I was not one of the good people.

The good people, you see, all died. They shared their bread with others. They helped carry the load. They took the hit, distracted the overseer, gave ... and when the margin of survival is thin, that means you are DEAD.

Yet I remain, lying on this bed.

Lying so still, I heard the beeps.

It was not Friday. It was not noon.

The attack alarm.

I'd seen the defenses, first from the outside then from the inside. They were formidable. Not very breachable.

I had to make a decision.

If I got up and painstakingly hydrated myself, I would feel that much more, live that much longer, be that much more tortured.

Or I could continue slipping down that greasy slope. The attack would fail. There was no point.

So I told myself as I slowly slid off the bed and crawled to the toilet.

My last love.

I sipped from her.

It was my duty to resist. To not give up. To put the pieces together after being broken. To use up the enemy's resources in any way I could.

I did not have the luxury of surrender. It was my duty to resist unto death, and beyond if I could manage it.

That's when I knew.

Brooke is dead.

I couldn't explain how I knew. It fell in the category of mystical gobble gook which I don't believe in, especially after the haunted house tour of all the evil things that people can do to people.

But she'd died. She'd died clean. She'd died fighting.

You don't have to win.

You do have to fight.

So I drank the water, and it tasted of what you would think it would, and my head started to clear.

The floor shook and a puff of dust came from the ceiling.

Someone was using heavy metal.

Then I heard, distantly, crackling.

Gunfire. Short staccato bursts.

Someone's tac team.

Not Homeland's. They had ammo to burn.

The attackers were disciplined, frugal. Long wild bursts answered by short ones.

And they were getting louder.

I started rubbing my arms and my legs.

I might have to move.

I might yet get a chance to die clean.

A clear contralto voice shouted.

I wanted to weep.

It was too much.

The voice was Sharon. The gunfire pattern was as trained in our Kill House. And what she was shouting, in her distinctive raspy middle aged voice (smoke inhalation) clinched it.

"Fire In The Hole! Fire In The Hole!"

WHAM!

This was us. Client Security. We were leading the raid. And Homeland would take its revenge on all of us.

Not for me. Not for me. Please God, please, tell me they did not come for me.

"Echo 18!" Sharon screamed. The corridors rang with softer boots, and gunfire and grenade blasts.

Goddamn it, no! NO!

"I hear you! We're coming! Stand away from the door!"

I covered my head with my hands.

The door fell off its hinges with a CLANG and two heavily armed and armored men came into the door.

Mohammed, age 32. Mohammed Jr, age 14. Father and son, in helmets and armor, festooned with gear. A master of blasting, who did the thing he swore he would never, ever do. Brought his son to work.

They dragged me under the shoulders to the corridor.

Sharon was commanding, with an actual RTO - radiotelephone operator - backpack radio with phone, the whole deal. All in battle armor.

Unit patches, ours. But with a major gear upgrade.

"Goddamn it, no!" I roared again.

They kept lifting.

Of all people, Shane Shreve held the corridor end.

Steadycam stabilized medium machine gun. The kind of stuff you usually see only in bad science fiction movies, because the gear is delicate and too clumsy for close combat.

But he was doing the Rambo thing with a heavy barrel, and armored Homeland troops were doing the dance.

I was handed off to others and they did the dance. I was a helpless spectator, passed from team to team until I ended up draped over the shoulders of two of Janine's firefighters.

They were ripping the shit out of the building.

"Objective achieved! Permission to start rigging? Copy!"

And all of them were carrying little oily smelling bundles of joy. Demolitions. The Mos started rigging deto cord and pencil detonators.

They were rigging the building for a drop.

"Can't breach the command post. Stairwells holding hard. Going to drop early. Extracting in ten."

The unit medic looked me over. Gauze wrapped my hand and had someone else sling it to my chest. Then I looked again. Employee. Stretcher bearer. But wearing the red diamond arm bands of a Security medic, and armed with a pistol anyway.

Sharon came to me.

"Sir. Need downstairs layout. What other prisoners?"

I gave it, quickly. No cells downstairs. Only the furnace. Interrogation rooms.

"We got those. We've swept both sides of holding."

I saw someone begging for her life, a Homeland file clerk, and a THUNK as one of the invaders casually shot her in the back of the head.

"No time, we gotta go!"

I was swept up with the mass. Mo and Little Mo were towards the back, leading line behind them.

We made it out to the parking lot.

Burning MRAPs. Pandemonium. Screaming.

A powered drone flew into an upstairs window and blew up. Chunks of Homeland countersnipers flew back out the window.

"Go go go!"

We were loaded into our own vehicles. Some recognizably those of site.

I had to ask.

"What about retaliation? Enemy reaction?"

"Fuck 'em," Sharon explained casually as she used a laser pointer to highlight a knot of resistance upstairs, and Shreve caught the cue ... caught the cue! ... and laid into it with his machine gun, levered high up in his arms.

Not Shreve. Just a big guy who looked like him.

"This is it, Echo 18. This isn't a raid. This is the Revolution. This is not just here, not just now, not just us. This is all over, everywhere, and everyone. All over the world. This is just our objective. Pulling you out was a sideline."

A helicopter stuttered overhead, lancing the windows with more machine gun fire.

Not a Homeland helicopter.

A ... Resistance? ... helicopter?

"Mount up!"

They propped me in the back of one of our pickup trucks with a great view.

Mo was next to me with his blaster controller.

Ready to arm.

Arm.

Ready to fire.

Fire.

And ... there was fire.

I have never felt more satisfaction in my life.

The building did not collapse.

It fell over.

By design, to inflict more casualties.

Because Mo is not just a demo guy. He's a master blaster.

And even I could appreciate the wicked irony.

The Muslim domestic terrorist blows up the Federal building, and he's the good guy.

I wanted to laugh until I cried, but I was too weak.