William Bernhardt - Capitol Betrayal

“Wait a minute!” a middle-aged man in striped Bermuda shorts said. “What the hell-”

And then the gunshots rang out. The man stopped talking.

Seamus saw the dents the bullets made in the door, but fortunately they closed before anyone was hurt. He pushed another button and the elevator began to rise. He could play it safe, ride all the way to the top, get out, and hope that help came quickly.

But there was that troubling matter of a nuclear device that they must have brought to this hallowed monument, this symbol of democracy, for a reason.

He pushed the button to stop the elevator midway up the shaft, then turned to face the eight people in the elevator. “What have you got?”

They looked at him as if he were out of his mind.

He grabbed an older woman by the shoulders. She had big beauty shop hair and a purse the size of a suitcase. That might be useful. “I’m asking what you’ve got! Answer me!”

She appeared to have difficulty speaking. “I-I don’t have… anything.”

He didn’t have time for this. He grabbed her purse and spilled the contents onto the floor. She didn’t say a word.

He sifted through the contents. A compact-useless. Wallet-useless. Kleenex-useless. Bobby pins, car keys, chewing gum-useless.

Hair spray. He tested it. Not a pump spray, but the old-school kind that used old-school fluorocarbons. An aerosol spray.

Useful.

And then he spotted what his mother used to call a rattail comb-a metal comb with a long, thin handle.

Also useful.

He crammed them into his pocket and barked at the others, “What have you got? Now!”

All at once, the two women and the teenage girl in the elevator dumped their purses on the floor. The men emptied their pockets. Seamus didn’t know if they thought he was insane or if they thought he was dangerous, and at the moment he didn’t much care, so long as they complied.

He sorted through all the junk on the floor. A Bic lighter. Absolutely useful. A rubber band. Well, you just never knew, did you? He didn’t see anything else of value. Was this really all there was?

“Anyone else have anything?”

The man in the Bermuda shorts shrugged-but Seamus noticed a bulge in his Windbreaker pocket. He helped himself.

A glass flask.

“Scotch?”

The man avoided his gaze. “How’d you know?”

“Smelled it on your breath.” Seamus shoved everything into his pockets. “Just stay here. It isn’t safe down there. When the coast is clear, the police will come and rescue you. Now, who can give me a boost?”

The man in the Bermuda shorts bent over, and Seamus stepped up onto his back. He pushed open the escape panel and, with arms conditioned by years of gymnastics and regular exercise, pulled himself through the opening.

He was inside the monument. He knew that, once upon a time, people had been able to walk down the steps, but the stairs had been closed due to concerns about safety and vandalism on the many commemorative plaques. These elevators had originally been constructed to haul materials to the top, then, after it was completed, converted to use for transporting visitors.

He was about to use them for something completely different.

He could see the other elevator shaft about ten feet away. The cage was below him at ground level, but the cables were right there waiting for him.

He should be able to jump the distance. He had jumped farther, though not in a long time, and in this instance, if he didn’t make it, he wouldn’t just lose a medal. He’d lose his life, after falling about two hundred feet and splatting down on the cage below.

Well, nothing ventured…

He felt confident, even if he wasn’t quite as light as he had been in younger years. He stepped toward the far edge of the elevator, then took a run at it. He flew through the open space between the elevators…

And overshot the mark and collided with the cables. His face burned against the main cable, which stung like hell. But he managed to get a grip on the cable and hold on to it.

He’d made it.

After that point, it was a simple matter of lowering himself to the elevator box below him. Simple until he arrived, anyway.

As quietly as possible, he opened the escape panel at the top. The doors were open.

He knew he would have no chance to survey the scene once he appeared in the opening. He had memorized the positions of the two men on the ground level just before the elevator doors closed. He hoped they hadn’t moved too much.

He gripped the edge of the escape hatch and took a deep breath.

Showtime. Five, four, three, two…

On one, Seamus flew through the opening, swinging outside the doors and several yards beyond. The terrorist on the far right had drifted, but not so far that Seamus couldn’t accommodate the difference with a quick course correction. The man brought his gun around, but Seamus was too fast for him. Seamus wrapped himself around the man’s legs and brought him down to the ground. He squatted on top of the man, pounding him in the face before he had a chance to resist. He pressed his gun down with one hand and grabbed the rattail comb in the other. In one swift, sure movement, he drove the long thin tail of the comb into the man’s temple.

The terrorist didn’t even have a chance to scream. He was dead in less than a second.

And a second after that, his friends reacted. Seamus grabbed the dead man’s gun and responded, which sent the others flying. It appeared the remaining man on the ground was not armed. That would make Seamus’s job simpler. He ran under the ledge so the man above couldn’t see him, then pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Out of ammunition. Could he never catch a break?

The other man had a knife, a big ugly one, almost a machete. He was running toward Seamus, a desperate expression on his face, the knife raised above his head. And Seamus had…

Hair spray.

He would have to make it work for him.

He waited until his attacker was most of the way to him, because he knew that if he stepped out from under the ledge he was a dead man. When the man was ten feet away, Seamus brought up the hair spray, pushed down the button, and ignited the spray with the Bic lighter.

A stream of fire blazed through the air, smacking the other man in the face. He screamed and dropped the knife as his hands reflexively went to his face. All at once, his features became liquid. The flesh of his face began to blacken and burn.

Seamus gave him two swift kicks to the kneecaps, just to make sure he didn’t go anywhere, not that there was much chance. This poor loser’s only concern would be his pain.

That left the man upstairs.

While the hotshot with the automatic rifle was still trying to figure out what had happened below, Seamus leaped up and grabbed the edge of the balcony ledge, pulled himself up into a crouch, then pushed off the bottom edge into the air. He found himself above the balcony and just in front of the man with the gun.

While still in midair, Seamus kicked out, knocking the gun from the man’s hands. On his way down, he brought his elbow into the man’s nose.

The cartilage shattered instantly. Blood spewed out in all directions. That had to hurt.

But it didn’t stop him. On his hands and feet, he crawled toward his gun. In less than a second, Seamus calculated what was going to happen and the likely result. No matter how fast he was, the other man would reach the gun first. He’d mow Seamus down before he got halfway there.

Unless Seamus did something to stop him.

Seamus removed the glass flask from his pocket and pitched it with his best Nolan Ryan speed at the man on the floor. The alcohol drenched his lower body.

Seamus had maybe two seconds before the man reached the gun. In that time, he pulled out the Bic, ignited it, used the rubber band to pin down the click switch, keeping it ignited, and threw it at the man crawling across the floor.