J Saint - Collateral Damage

When the driver rounded the bend, a collective gasp rose from Latimoor's crew. Jack had been semi-prepared for the massive size and space-aged architecture of Menendez's facilities from grainy satellite images. Still the scene was like driving up to a James Bond movie set. The look he shared with Weston and Beck said they thought the same thing.

Once the cars rolled to a stop the situation started moving fast. Outside humidity heavily weighed down everything. The muggy temperature was ninety-degrees and stayed that way year round in the Amazon Region, great for rainforest vegetation, hell for everything else.

Lauren found him in the chaos of unloading equipment. Their hands met and held as did their gazes. All their hopes and fears lay bare between them and he had to swallow hard and slice into his own gut to stop from tossing her back into the limo and send her to safety.

"No matter what happens from this point on, thank you," she whispered and brushed his lips with hers and left him. It was then that Jack finally realized the biggest determent in having a personal connection to the mission. It wasn't necessarily because emotion might cloud a decision. He'd trained for so many years that most of the right moves were instinctual and instantaneous. No, the reason any warrior should stay the hell away from a personal mission was because of what Jack was feeling at that moment. If he failed, he doubted he'd be able to live with himself.

Lauren went with the Latimoor crew and all of their equipment inside to set up for the show. Jack, Weston and Beck went to the supply van, pulled out an official-looking large HD video camera, one that had a few little features tapped onto it. One called the Big Easy, a listening device that picked up the faintest of sounds, displayed them on a screen, and identified them. The other was a Thermal Imaging Camera. All of them wore ear devices for communication and were armed to the max now that they had their camera bags in hand.

Beck wore the big camera on his shoulder. Hopefully they'd only use the non-lethal weapons, stun guns and tear gas. The bullet proof vests they wore beneath their oversized Ts would be their only tactical protection and it was weird as shit to be tackling a mission with nothing more on their side. So not their typical blast in and blast out style.

CNN press badges in hand, they set out on foot to give the perimeter of the facility and any outlying buildings a once over. Their plan was to check them first for Matt and Mitch, and Jack prayed, Angie and Rico, before moving to the main facility.

Even though it was strange walking into a situation without being fully decked out, it still was damn good to be active again. He didn't know what his future held, but he wasn't completely out of fighting the battle against the evils rampant within the world.

Pegging the security barracks was easy. Muscle sat on the porch smoking. The team moved on doing their best to attract as little attention as possible. Jack snapped pictures with a hand-held Sony and Beck used the monitoring equipment. The thermal camera enabled him to pick out guards in the shadows and in the foliage.

"What are you doing?" one armed guard shouted at them in Spanish.

Jack, Weston and Beck stopped but pretended not to understand. They showed them their CNN badges and mimed that they'd like to get the men's picture. Several nearby men posed.

Jack thought they were home free until the guard insisted they go to the main building. Change of plan, but they'd deal by doing inside first then move outside. Going in through the service entrance, they were placed in a waiting area until the guard could contact someone named Fidel. Damn. Jack would give the situation three minutes then they'd go rogue.

Lauren wanted to stand in the middle of the floor and scream to the world on live TV that the SOB smiling so benevolently and doting on his chimpanzee was a horrendous, mass-murdering terrorist who'd kidnapped her children.

Instead she bit her lip, clenched her jaw, and walked along with the Latimoor Live crew. She had to hand it to Candace, the woman was a master of maneuvering. Menendez/Miles had wanted to take everyone to the GXP plant that adjoined his private compound, but Candace had talked him into showing them his private quarters first, emphasizing just how much more human and real and empathetic the viewers would be if they got to know the real Andreas Miles before they learned about his ingenious biofuel invention, GXP.

Menendez had fluffed like a peacock and began leading them around, explaining all of the green technology built into his facilities. He rarely had to use a generator between solar, wind and hydraulic power.

He led them to his energy control panel room and the engineer in charge. The man began explaining how power for the entire compound was regulated. While they were being lectured to, Lauren saw a man approach Menendez. Menendez immediately left the room, looking alarmed.

Lauren hesitated only a split second before following. One of Latimoor's crewmen with a small video camera followed her.

"Want to tell me what's up?" the guy whispered. A partially opened door indicated the way Menendez and his man had gone.

"Just follow and film," she said. "And whatever you do don't let them hear us."

Once they passed through the door. Lauren heard Menendez. "This is an unacceptable failure, Fidel. How could they possibly escape?"

"You said the rooms would be a perfect prison. But they were not designed to be. The doors were locked, the windows barred but a design flaw was not seen."

"?Que?"

"The hinges were on the inside."

Menendez screeched loudly, as did the chimp in his arms. A loud ruckus followed by a man's scream.

"George will finish this later."

Lauren moved forward with caution. The sight of a man choking on his own blood as he tried to deal with the fact that his nose had been torn off his face turned her stomach and sent her heart wrenching with fear for her sons. The cameraman caught it all and Lauren hurried after Menendez, hopeful that the man would lead her to her children.

Beck paced the waiting room, messing with the toys attached to the camera and Jack was ready to scream with frustration. Weston wasn't handling the idle wait well either.

"Damn different than our usual takedown." Jack clenched his fists.

"Yeah." Weston exhaled hard. "Makes one feel as effective as a wet noodle."

Their usual method of lethal infiltration was solid, second to second action. In the two-minutes and forty-five seconds they'd been sitting they could have secured an entire building.

"Got something," Beck said. "It's chaos on the Big Easy with the number of people talking, but 'race car' came through."

Jack and Weston jumped to their feet. It was all they needed to roll. They exited the room and moved at a fast pace down a hallway. Beck had hoped to zero in on the race car voice and lead them to it via volume read outs. The next transmission was "monkeys, Aunt Angie" but after those two phrases, Beck heard nothing else.

Damn. Jack led the way and they kept up the pretense of filming as they moved through the rooms.

"I've got chimps."

"Let's go with it."

Beck led them opposite the service entrance and down a hallway. They passed a door that had been set off its hinges and Jack's pulsed raced. All three of them picked up their pace.

The sound of monkeys grew louder. The hallway opened up to a huge atrium where a domed ceiling of glass showed massively tall trees overhead and what seemed like hundreds of monkeys going wild, swinging from limb to limb, scrambling here and there.

Before Jack could step completely into the room, he was hit from the side by a chair. He managed to deflect it with an upper cut of his forearm as he slid out his p226 to shove in the oncoming man's face.