The man left, gently closing the door behind him.
“I know of an elite special forces squad in Fort Benning, ready to be called up at any moment,” Owen suggested.
“Contact them immediately. This meeting is over; I will see you all later,” Johnson said without hesitation and swiftly walked towards the door.
The men stood up from their big, padded seats. Johnson shook their hands as they left, then closed the door behind him.
John awoke with a fright. It was the phone. He rolled over in his bed, the duvet was wrapped around his ankles and he was getting frustrated. He kicked it off completely and Susan moved restlessly and made a faint, feeble noise. He forced his eyes open and squinted at the large red LED numbers before him: 1:14am. Who was calling at this time in the morning? He reached over to grab the telephone but knocked the clock off in the process. He cursed loudly and threw the duvet back over the bed. He anxiously reached for the phone and held it up to his ear.
“Hello?!” he snapped.
“We need you at the Fort. This is not a drill,” the caller replied in a monotone voice.
The line went dead. John’s eyes widened. There was an emergency over at the Fort and he needed to get there, fast. He dropped the phone on to its holder and rushed over to the wardrobe. He had no time to mess around; he quickly grabbed some clothes and struggled to put them on as he scrambled over to the bathroom. He grabbed his toothbrush and thrashed it around in his mouth in an attempt to clean his teeth. He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. He grabbed the bottle of milk out of the fridge and furiously took gulps out of it. John searched the drawers for a pen and paper. After about 30 seconds of opening and shutting drawers at lightning speed, he found some. He slammed the paper on to the table and wrote,
“Have been called in to work.
I’ll call you as soon as I can.
Lots of love.”
He scribbled a few kisses on the bottom, grabbed the car keys and dashed out of the door.
After arriving at Fort Benning, he was ushered into the “briefing room”. He didn’t know why it was called this as it was just a huge hangar. A couple of fighter jets at one end, his usual partners at the other. All were present: Agent Green and Agent Smith. They were sitting on fold-away green chairs. The chairs looked like they had been shot and bombed, never mind the special agents who sat on them. He took a seat next to Green, as Director Walter Owen started talking.
“We have a pretty damn bad situation here, boys,” his eyes scanned the men before him. He had a deep and intimidating voice.
“We have reason to believe that an engineer who worked on a new nuclear bomb has been kidnapped. We assume that he will be forced to give the location of these nukes.
It’s of the upmost importance to get him out of there, before they get it out of him.
We have intelligence of their location. They are in Russia, at an abandoned submarine dock.
“You will be sent over there ASAP. Now... any questions?”
He looked over the agents one more time. None of them looked even the slightest scared or shocked, rather the opposite.
“You have 14 hours, starting from now. Good luck,” Owen said. He nodded towards John and he walked towards the exit.
“You know what to do, boys. Let’s get changed and be off,” John said, trying to motivate them.
John checked his watch; it was 2:45am. They needed to get the Professor out of there by 4:45pm, or he’d be a corpse in a pool of blood.
They stood at the end of a Chinook helicopter as its rear door slowly opened. Rows of ten seats laced the sides of the interior. They are wearing military-style snow camouflage clothes; their chests buried in bags of ammunition and various other items. Their backpacks seemed huge in comparison to their bodies. They weren’t taking any chances; they all had two pairs of pants, three shirts and a jacket under a thick coat. They also had deep grey padded gloves strapped to their hands, along with camouflage pads that are loosely fastened to their bulging joints. Huge black boots that stretched half-way up their calves were tightly fastened – the last thing they wanted was to get frostbite on their toes.
The first to enter the helicopter was John. He was the leader of the FBI agents and his appearance reflected his role. He looked extremely athletic; his huge muscles stretched the fibres of his clothes to their limits. He stood at a height of 6 foot 2. A small boom microphone was swung down the side of his face and hovered before his colourless lips. He never smiled; he was a very serious man with a lack of humour. He didn’t trust anyone either. His uniform looked like it had passed its expiry date. Threads hung loose from the arms and legs, and holes were present too.
Next to follow was Agent Green. He was slightly smaller than John, but no less well built. His head seemed miniscule in comparison to his enormous, broad shoulders. His sparkling, pale blue eyes had seen lots and remembered even more. Two pistols were strapped to each leg, along with a knife on his right, his more powerful side. Once he had been standing near a grenade when it exploded – shrapnel had cut his face, narrowly missing his eyes. Scars run across his face, the most prominent stretching from his ear right down to his lips; it looked like he had tried shaving with a cheese grater.
The last soldier to enter was Agent Smith. He was very young: in his early 30’s. He had a very short temper, not a very desirable thing to have in the FBI. If you lose control, you’re very likely to be careless and die – it’s a miracle he’s still alive. He went to the gym daily, and it showed. He was a little less built that the leader, but it was negligible. Beads of sweat rolled down his face under the numerous layers of clothing he was wearing. In his hands, he gripped a scratched, matt black M16A4 assault rifle covered with attachments: a small sight, a cylinder-shaped laser distance finder and a grenade launcher.
The door slammed shut and lights inside flickered on as Agent Smith took a seat and strapped himself in. No-one spoke, instead the just stared at the floor and polished their guns. It was going to be a long journey.
A few hours later John woke up to the sound of the pilot speaking over the tannoy.
“You’re gonna be dropped off in a few minutes, boys,” he said softly.
John yawned as the helicopter lost height. The other soldiers awoke suddenly, startled.
“Sorry about that, we’re experiencing a bit of turbul... WHAT THE?!” he shouted.
Lights flashed and sirens wailed all over the helicopter. The soldiers looked at each other confused. John unbuckled himself, frowning, and ran over to the cockpit. The pilots were taking quick, shallow breaths, frantically pressing any button they could find. No textbook could have prepared the pilot for this sort of situation.
“Incoming missile,” a computerised female voice repeated.
Everyone’s eyes widened. The pilot tried to do an evasive manoeuvre but he wasn’t quick enough. The RPG hit the underbelly of the helicopter with a deafening explosion. John consequently fell to the floor with a thud. The helicopter started to spin uncontrollably towards the ground. John picked himself back up and touched the side of his head and winced. He was bleeding, but it had to wait. He had more serious issues to deal with at the moment. He looked out of the front window. They were approaching the dock, and fast.
“Mayday, Mayday! This is Alpha, Delta, Zero, One, Niner, repeat, we are going down!” The pilot shouted into his boom mike.
“Brace position!” John screamed at the soldiers.
He sprinted towards the nearest available seat, buckled up, grasped on to the underside of his seat with one hand, and grabbed the top of the seat with the other. Agent Green started to pray just as the helicopter slammed in to the ground. The impact was spectacular. The helicopter split in to two—the cockpit continued on and fell into the ocean, and the cargo bay of which the agents were held, stayed where is was, slowly sliding on the wet concrete. Agent Smith’s seat shattered on impact and he had been thrown violently out of his seat, hit the other side of the helicopter and landed in the middle of the floor, with blood trickling out of his ears and side. His camouflage clothing was now a deep shade of red. Agent Green just stared at Smith and unbuckled. He dragged his legs towards him and dropped on his knees at his side. Smith’s eyes were lifeless – they stared blankly at the ceiling. Green gently placed his head on Smiths’ chest and whimpered. John got out of his seat and pulled the agent off him.
“C’mon Green! Get a hold of yourself!” He said. “We need to rescue the Professor, otherwise he will be dead, too!”
John talked in to his boom microphone, but received nothing but static. He kicked the side of the helicopter in anger. Ice cold wind was now blowing freely in the remains of the helicopter. They grabbed their guns and left. They looked around the crash site; they had landed in the dead centre of the dock. Huge waves crashed against the front of the dock and water spray blew across their faces. They turned away and faced a handful of primitive, crumbling concrete buildings and a car. Nothing of use. Then just out of the corner of his eye, John spotted a hole in the ground. They went over, intrigued. It was a deep, narrow manhole, the end wasn’t visible. Green passed John his flashlight and they started to descend down the ladder in to the embracing darkness.
At the bottom, there was a short corridor. One end led to nothing but a wall, the other had a door with a yellow sign with an exclamation mark and Russian written on it. John turned around to Green who nodded his head a few times in quick succession. John gulped and edged towards it. He placed his ear to the door but could heard nothing. He placed his hand on the handle and slowly turned it. They swung the door open and charged in, their guns held high. Green ran past him in to the room with John close behind.
They had entered a small room. It was damp and smelt like dead flesh. In the centre was Professor Peters, naked, strapped to a chair, bruises on his face and body – it was obvious he had been beaten and tortured. He was nearly dead. He hadn’t eaten in days and had been living in near darkness for 2 weeks. They quickly untied him and he put his arms around John and Greens’ shoulders as they dragged him to towards another set of doors. On their way there, a crackling noise came from John’s radio,
“Come in, Delta 1, this is Battleship Alabama, Come in, over,”
“This is Delta 1, requesting immediate backup to our location at...” John replied with a truckload of co-ordinates.
“Immediate air-support coming your way. Stand-by. Over and out,” the radio replied, and returned to static.
They carried on to the doors. John kicked it with all his might and the metal doors dropped to the floor with a metallic clang. Moments later alarms bells rang through the whole compound.
“We need to get out of here, and fast!” He shouted.
Agent Green and John grasped on to Peters’ hands as they dragged him up the sets of stairs before them. When they reached the top, they found themselves inside one of the concrete buildings near the crash site. They stepped out into the heavy rain and shielded their eyes with their spare arm. They looked around for an escape vehicle. Then John remembered about the car.
“The car!” He exclaimed.
They tried running as fast as they could towards the car. Luckily it was unlocked, but no keys were present. Peters was led across the back seats, with John and Green in the front.
“Gimme a moment while I hotwire it...” Green said, trying to keep calm.
A horde of soldiers burst out of the door that they had just came out of. John pulled out his gun and pressed the trigger. The gun did nothing but click. It was jammed! He cursed and pulled out both of his pistol and started firing alternate shots in to the mass of soldiers a few hundred metres away. They were getting closer, and closer, and closer, firing all the time. Their shots smashed the windows and deflected off the armoured exterior of the car.
Then the engine started, but the car didn’t move anywhere. John turned to Green. Blood was splattered over the window. A bullet had passed straight through his head just as he had finished hotwiring it. John had no time to mourn; he simply opened the driver door, pushed him out, swapped seats and slammed on the accelerator. The car sped away out of the dock. He ducked as the final bullets hit the car.
As they were escaping, Marine helicopters flew overhead towards the direction of the dock and John let out a sigh of relief. He jumped out of the car and waved his arms at them. One of them landed close by and a man ran out of the rear and towards the car. It was Director Owen.
“Time to come home, son. Good job,”
He looked past John and into the car, saw that the Professor was there, then asked anxiously, “Where’s Smith and Green?”
John bowed his head, holding back his tears and simply mumbled, “Dead.”
He looked behind him, at Peters, and spat out the words, “You’d better not have said anything about the nukes!”
