John O'Brien - Takedown

“Lynn, are you okay?” I ask. Shrieks permeate the building.

“Jack?”

“It’s me, hon. Stay put. I’ll be right there,” I say, walking quickly to the female night runner.

I nudge her over with my boot and am a little sickened to see her slightly extended belly. It also sends a shiver up my spine knowing they can reproduce. The night runner’s eyes are open and staring at the ceiling, seeing nothing. I swiftly go to Lynn’s side and put my hand on her shoulder.

She flinches at my touch and I realize she is completely in the dark. I take out the NVGs and place them in her hand. She quickly dons them.

“I love you,” I say into her ear. I pull her to me and we hug each other tightly.

“Thank you. I love you so much,” she responds.

With the escalating screams filling the passageways outside, I pull back, hand her my sidearm, and a coil of 550 cord.

“We’re not out of this yet. We need to hurry and seal these doors. Tie them like we did at the high school. You take that set of doors,” I say, pointing to the set I just came through, “I’ll take the other.”

She turns and shakily walks to the set of fire doors. I run to the other set and begin lacing the cord around the swing handles, tying the two together. I barely complete the knots when pressure is put on the doors as night runners on the other side try to pull them open. I turn to see that Lynn has hers tied off as well. I make additional loops to give added strength. Assured that the doors will hold for the time being, I walk over to Lynn. I want nothing more than to embrace her hard again. It felt so good to hold her once more and feel her body pressed against mine. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again and didn’t want to let her go. Warmth floods my heart at the sight of her. With the night runners trying vigorously to enter and shrieking ferociously, we’ll have to put that off until we get outside.

The doors rattle in their frames as the night runners, more than likely angered by the demise of their pack leader — at least I’m assuming the dead female was just that — try to gain entrance. We are far from being out of the fire and may very well have just stepped into it.

“Is everyone okay?” Lynn asks, clearly exhausted and spent from her ordeal.

I can’t even imagine what she must have gone through — first attacked, then kidnapped and held in a lair of night runners. That has to be anyone’s worst nightmare.

“Yeah, everyone is fine.”

“So, what now, Jack?” Lynn asks, eyeing the shaking doors.

“Yeeeeeah…about that?”

She just starts laughing. Hearing her laugh at a time like this makes me think that being held by the night runners made her lose her mind …wait, I hope that didn’t that come out loud? No…good.

“You didn’t think this all of the way through, did you?” she asks, still chuckling.

“Yeah, I did. It’s just that…well, did you have to be in the exact middle of the building. Couldn’t you have chosen an outside office? That would have been helpful on your part,” I joke.

The night runners go at the doors with a renewed frenzy. The combined noise of those gathered outside now makes it hard to even hear a shout. The cord wrapped around the handles, although strong, won’t hold forever. The night runners will eventually manage to rip the doors from their very hinges.

I radio the teams letting them know that I found Lynn and our current predicament. I’m going to have to come up with something soon or, instead of riding off into the sunset on a white horse, we’ll end up like a Shakespearian tragedy.

“What can we do to help, sir?” Gonzalez asks.

The noise from outside of the room prevents me from hearing all of what she said. After several tries, I finally hear the entire message.

“Prayer might help,” I reply.

“Copy that, sir, one prayer on the way.”

I glance up at the ceiling. The roof is only a few feet over our head but it might as well be a hundred miles. Even if the teams had explosives on hand, they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint Lynn and me well enough to blow an effective hole in the roof. I certainly don’t have anything that will blast through the concrete overhead. Besides, judging by the weakening doors, we wouldn’t have enough time to set up anything anyway.

However, the ceiling does give me an idea and one I should have thought about a while ago. The hard ceilings have crawl spaces between it and the concrete slab that house the piping and conduits necessary for building operations. The spaces aren’t large in most cases but they are navigable. The only problem is that fire walls could block our path. The good thing is that this type of ceiling is more structurally sound than a plain drop ceiling and will support our weight better. I just hope the night runners don’t discover the crawlways.

“Do you feel strong enough to crawl in the ceiling?” I ask Lynn, knowing she must be tired and her energy level low.

“I’ll manage,” she replies.

We head to the far corner of the room. With my selector switch on auto, I send bursts into the ceiling, angling them so any ricochets don’t come back our way. I stitch a large square pattern in the corner. I move one of the tables under the spot and place another on top of it. Moving a third table next to the stacked ones, I create a large stepping stool of sorts.

I climb up and bash next to the holes with the stock of my M-4. A square chunk of ceiling falls to the table showering me with white dust. The banging of the doors grows stronger and is barely heard over screams so loud that my ears begin to ring. The night runners are slowly but surely forcing the doors open through sheer strength, determination, and numbers.

I boost Lynn into the limited space above. Replacing my mag and strapping my M-4 tightly, I hoist myself though the hole. The space is large enough to get through at an almost doubled over crouch. Small diameter metal and plastic conduit hangs down from the concrete slab overhead sharing space with rectangular aluminum HVAC ducting. The path is blocked by a concrete fire wall to the east, toward the front of the building.

Keeping as quiet as we can, we wriggle through and over conduit to the wall on the other side of the hallway. We won’t get very far in any direction due to the fire walls but at least we can get out of the trapped room. Pipes and ducting heads from the main channels and bends ninety degrees down into rooms. It’s pretty easy to tell rooms from hallways because of the layout of the conduits.

The noise from below vibrates the ceiling causing dirt particles to jump up and down. The hallways were chilled but here, in the confined space above, it’s a lot warmer. I feel grit in my hair and on my exposed skin as we make our way slowly south. Soon we butt up against another fire wall. We have no choice but to go down.

I take out my heavy LMF knife and punch through the ceiling where I calculate a room to be based on the piping and by tapping. It wouldn’t do to escape from the room only to drop down into the same hall as the gathered horde. I imagine the night runners must stretch a considerable distance in the hall to either side of the room we were in. Even though the screeching of the night runners will most likely block out the noise of my suppressed M-4, the confined space makes using it a little unwieldy. I carve out another square, not quite finishing the opening. Grabbing a section, I lift it up, lay it beside me, and peer into the room.

We’ve come upon a small office. An elongated desk occupies one wall, with two rolling chairs next to it. Workstation monitors and a pile of folders sit on the desk’s surface.

“Are you okay?” I ask Lynn, to which, she nods.

I edge my legs into the hole, making sure I don’t knock anything over, and drop onto the desk. I then help Lynn down. We aren’t out of it yet but at least we have a little breathing space — hopefully.