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5
“Hey guys,” Vipers laconic voice came across their comms. “We’ve got a little bit of a situation out here on the loading dock. Think you cold come give us a hand?”
“What’s going on, Viper?” Raptor replied. “There’s a bunch of assholes with automatic weapons shooting up the ballroom, so we’re a little busy.”
“Yeah, but they brought friends, and those friends just ran out of the loading dock, leaving a perfectly good van behind. Only one reason a bad guy does that,” Viper said.
Raptor and Lone Star shared a look, then moved in unison through the door and back out into the hall. They turned right and sprinted for the dock. “Did you—“ Raptor’s question was cut off as feedback screeched in her ear, the sudden pain in her head knocking her off-balance. She slapped off the comm and turned to Lone Star.
“Cover my six,” she said. “I’m faster airborne.” She took a running leap and deployed her wings. They clicked into place, and a pair of mini-jets fired from her back. She rocketed down the hall, slowing at the turn and using her legs to spring off the wall like an Olympic swimmer making the turn.
Lone Star watched her disappear around the corner, a small smile stretching across his face. “I’ll watch your six, lady, but the bad guys better watch their ass.”
Raptor literally burst through the big rollup door onto the loading dock, shredding the thin metal with her talons. She landed on the dock in front of a blue panel van marked “Capitol City Catering.” Tank stood at the front of the van, and waved her around. She hopped off the dock and ran to the back, where Viper stood with his eye pressed up against the rear window.
“What do you see?” She asked.
“There’s a lot of fucking Semtex in there. Enough to turn this convention center and everything within two blocks into a smoking hole. I can’t see a timer, so it’s either buried, or it’s set for a remote detonation.” The lanky man’s former snide humor and lazy demeanor were gone. He was all business, and his focus was razor-sharp.
“Can you defuse it?” Raptor asked.
“I doubt it. The best I can do is probably get the detonator out and contained into a smaller ball of explosive material. If we can separate the electronics from the bulk of the explosive, there’s a chance we don’t all get blown to bits.”
“Again,” Tank said.
“Excuse me, Beefstick?” Viper’s head snapped up at the larger man’s words.
“Blown up again,” Tank corrected once more. “Me and the Sarge already been blown up once. I can’t speak for her, but I didn’t enjoy it. If we can not have that happen again, it’d be great.”
“Well, I haven’t ever been blown up, and it’s not on my bucket list, so I’ll see what I can do to keep it from happening,” the trim man replied. “I’m going to open this back door now and climb into the cargo area. If the van doesn’t explode the second I do that, there’s a chance we live to see tomorrow.” He didn’t wait for Raptor’s approval, he just yanked the door open and slid inside.
Raptor squeezed her eyes closed against the blast, but nothing came. “Asshole,” she muttered, then hopped back up on the dock with Tank.
“What’s the plan?’ He asked.
“Viper’s going to try and cut enough of the plastic explosive out around the detonator so that we don’t all die when the bomb goes off. He doesn’t think he can defuse it—“
“That’s good,” Lone Star said, running up behind them. “That means he’s just a dick, not a complete moron. Defusing a device is way tougher than it looks on TV. Better to reduce the yield of the device as much as possible.”
“I’ll trust you guys,” Raptor said. “I don’t know dick about explosives.”
“My experience was real up-close, but it was only the one time,” Tank agreed. “What do we do while he’s in there, wait to see if we blow up or not?”
“No,” Lone Star said. “Even if he gets the detonator core out of the device, it’s still going to have enough explosive material around it to level this building. We’re going to need to find some way to contain that blast.”
“I’m on it,” Tank said, jogging down the dock to the huge dumpsters. Raptor watched as the big man grabbed a regular dumpster by one of the handles the garbage trucks use to lift it, hefted it over his head, and ran to the back of the van carrying it.
“Ho-lee shit,” Lone Star said, his voice low.
“Yeah,” Raptor said. “I’ve seen him in the weight room. There’s not really a point. They can’t make a machine that holds enough weight to make him strain. But it’s all servos. He powers down, and he’s back to a quad. Drives him nuts, ‘cause he used to be such an active guy.”
“Yeah, like I said, I used to watch him wrestle. He was always real agile for such a giant. I knew the tech made him strong, but I had no idea.”
“You should see Cap. He doesn’t look it, but he’s just as strong. And way faster.”
“I thought you hated Cap,” Lone Star said.
“I don’t hate him, I just don’t fall all over him like everybody else does. He needs more of that in his life,” she said with a grin. “Fuck me, is that his plan?”
“Seems like a good one to me,” Lone Star said, looking at where Tank was now dragging a giant construction dumpster to the back of the van. He flipped the first dumpster on its side and ripped the lid off, then set the bigger dumpster on its side behind it. Then he walked back over to the dock and looked up at Lone Star.
“Think if we put the device under two dumpsters, that’ll absorb enough of the explosive force to keep the building from coming down on us?”
“As long as the explosion isn’t big enough to trigger the remaining plastic explosive, or we get that shit out of here ASAP, we oughta be good,” Guerrero replied.
“Okay, I’ve got the detonator, anybody got any idea what I should do with it?” Viper said, stepping out of the back of the van holding a small orb of grey material. He saw the dumpsters and nodded. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever seen.” He set the bomb guts on the ground, then flipped the small dumpster over on it.
Viper looked at the construction dumpster and just shook his head. “That’s not what this body was rebuilt for. Sorry.” He walked over to the dock and looked at Tank. “I think this is your song.”
Tank nodded, then walked over to the dumpster. One small grunt, and he toppled it over onto the other metal container with a thunderous CLANG. “Got it.”
“Now we need to get the rest of the bomb material out of here,” Lone Star said. “I don’t suppose you noticed if the keys were still in that thing?”
“Who needs keys?” Viper asked.
“Who needs a van?” Raptor countered, locking her wings in place.
“Raptor, that’s about three hundred pounds of Semtex in there,” Lone Star said.
“Good thing most of me is still under warranty…what the hell are you doing?” She shouted at Tank, who was lumbering away from the dock, the van hoisted above his head.
“Keeping you from doing something stupid,” he yelled back.
“By doing something stupid!” She watched helplessly as the big man rumbled along, slowly licking up speed until he was about two hundred yards from the others. He then planted his feet, crouched down, and hurled the van along the wide corridor housing the loading dock. The van flew another fifty yards and smashed into a wall, tumbling to a stop in a mangle of broken glass and twisted metal.
Tank came running back to the others, a big silly grin across his wide face. “Think that’s far eno—“ an explosion ripped through the dock, rocketing the pair of dumpsters up to the ceiling and sending out a shockwave that knocked all four team members to the ground. Tank took the worst of it, being on the ground level with the blast. He slammed to the ground and slid along the concrete for several feet before stopping.
Lone Star, Viper, and Raptor were standing on the dock, partially shielded from the blast by the metal containers and the dock’s own elevation, and they still ended up in a tangle of arms and legs smashed into the nearest wall.
“Get off me, Viper, you’re heavier than you look,” Lone Star said, shoving the skinny man to the side. “You okay, Raptor?” He asked, reaching down to help her stand.
“Yeah, I’m good, even after having both you two idiots land on me,” she said, taking Lone Star’s hand. “Tank, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” he called back. “Guess I got the rest of the charge far enough away,” he said with a laugh.
“We’re not dead, so I guess so,” Viper grumbled. “Now what?”
“Now you and Lone Star secure the area, make sure nobody touches anything, and take as much video as you can store while Tank and I head up front to see if the other teams are done with mop up. The comms are still fucked, so if you need us…don’t.”
“Got you, boss,” Lone Star saluted, and turned to Viper. “I’ll cover the entrance to the dock, you go block the corridor by the van.”
Raptor thought for a second that Viper must have hit his head in the explosion, because he didn’t argue with either of them, then she watched him fish a narrow cigarette out of the leg pocket of his pants, and she saw how much his hands shook as he tried to light it. She reminded herself that, no matter what kind of enhancements they put in their bodies, Tank and Viper were still civilians. And untrained, in Viper’s case. This was supposed to be a babysitting mission, with nothing more dangerous than getting blinded by camera flash and tripping on the sidewalk. Suddenly, it was a serious deal, and she had a couple of greenies under her care.
Tank jogged up beside her. “Let’s go see if the other teams left us anybody to crush. I want to see some action!” Seemed like adrenaline hit different people in different ways, she thought as she pulled open the door and started back up the hallway to the main body of the convention center.
