Agent for a Cause (The Agents for Good) (20 page)

The loud gunshots of the men from the catwalk had dimly registered on the youth and now some of them near to me gazed at me, befuddled as to what was going on. I pulled the trigger of my rifle and a spray of bullets shot into the air towards the ceiling of the place.

Come on, stupid kids, get out of here! Instead the kids actually cheered! They were so high and tripped out on drugs and alcohol that they thought this was some kind of spectacle put on for their entertainment! Bullets hammered off the stairs behind me. Well so be it then. I moved into the packed crowd that parted energetically before me.

The sound of the crazed heated music that pervaded the place abruptly stopped. I gritted my teeth as I darkly acknowledged to myself what was to come next. Galloway’s awful twisted rendition of what he thought to be music blared forth into the rave hall with loud enough intensity to be heard by all for several miles.

“Black rock, ice and snow in a land of volcanoes!”

The floor bouncers were shoving their way through the packed house to get to me. Unlike the armed men in the galleries above the floor, the bouncers didn’t have guns for fear of some whacked out over sexed kid making a grab for one and going postal on everyone in a drug induced haze.

They did have knives and batons though. If this was how they wanted to play it was fine by me. I could do knives to. I slung the rifle over my shoulder even as a knife slipped out into my left hand from up my sleeve.

I pulled a collapsing baton from my waistband and with a flick of the wrist the baton snapped out to full extension as a bouncer leaped from the crowd at me. His wild swinging baton met mine in an overhead smash even as my knife plunged deeply three times. As the man slumped away I continued my progression on into the hall as a way opened up before me.

“Molten lava sizzling over bare black rock!”

At first the crowd hadn’t been sure what to make of the new beat that was in English, but now they swung right back into their former groove without a hitch as their voices raised uproariously in approval, as they watched the scene of my attack unfold on multiple jumbotrons situated throughout the room.

I even had spotlights tracing my path through the shifting maze of packed sweaty bodies. I came to a spot directed as I was by the crowd’s shifting movements, where the floor was lit up in a way reminiscent of the disco era.

I wasn’t a fan of the 70’s. There just hadn’t been practically any good movies made during that time period in my opinion. Twenty some bouncers crowded at the edges of the lit up space and I could see that they only hesitated for fear of me using a gun on them if they separated away from the shielding influences of the surrounding crowd.

I left the gun where it was on my back and boldly stepped into the space, as the floor rippled in an array of colored patterns designed to drive dancers wild in their rhythmic movements.

“Icy winds begin to blow and molten lava cools as in comes the man from the land of ice!”

The bouncers came at me then in a bulrush of motion intent on pounding me into a bloody pulp on the psychedelic colored light grid of the floor beneath us.

I was no stranger to mobs. Growing up as a kid in the Russian slums we kids were little better than packs of roving dogs in search of scraps of food to eat.

I had been both a victim of such mob attacks as well as a participant. The same rule applied which either side you were on and that was, anything goes. The name of the game was survival after all.

“He’s come to break your bones, because you took one of his own!”

I picked out a big mean looking ruffian and headed straight at him for several reasons. He looked like the big he-bull of the group. Take him out and the confidence of the others would dim no matter how many they outnumbered me by. Being the capable looking monster type that he was it was also a sure bet that those near him would hold back a little from him in deference to his powerful capabilities, which could give me the opening I needed to take him out without worrying about interference by the others.

He swung at my head ponderously and I ducked under the swing, my knife plunging deep. He was already dead he just didn’t know it yet. I swung around him and propelled myself upwards with my momentum in a heave of effort to his shoulders. With a heaved push off of his head I bolted up to my feet on his shoulders, even as he began to topple over forward. I aided his final journey to the floor by pushing off in a backward somersault.

The mob reacted in stunned confusion. Their leader was dead and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. It was time to divide and conquer. Five more fell bleeding before the group began to reassemble as a fighting unit.

“Explosions!”

They thought they had me once and a pile up ensued, but I slipped out from it to the side and began to hack away at them as they still fought each other within the pileup.

The survivors broke away, their breath coming hard to them. Over half their number were gone permanently and fearful doubt was plainly evident in their shaken faces.

They had thought to make short work of me, but instead I was making short work of them.

“Hot ash fills the sky, but where will you hide from the man with the gray blue eyes!”

My suit was no longer spotless white, but instead it was stained crimson with blood, their blood. The chanting ring formed about us by the godless youth as they soaked in the sight of the bloodsport, even as they cried out for more reminded one of how the Roman citizens in Nero’s time had cried out for more as they watched the Christians being fed to the lions.

My faith in God had become a real thing and I now identified myself as a believer in His Son, but in this arena I was the lion as my enemies sought now not to be devoured by my fury.

“Death in his ice chipped eyes, with fire in his hand he’s the Iceman!”

I took out two more in a fast attack and the remaining four combatants fled into the crowd leaving the body strewn dance floor behind. Shots smashed into my back bruising my bones and pummeling my organs as the bullets connected with the armor of my clothes that danced and shimmied as they absorbed the energy of the shots.

I wasn’t dead, but it was painful to be alive! Some coward had found a gun. I turned and found a man my own height clutching a pistol in a shaking clasp.

He stared at me in terror and I acknowledged that I must look a fright, drenched as I was in the blood of other men.

What would his reaction be I wondered if he could but glimpse a sight of the battles from antiquities’ past where men had fought each other for days in pools of blood waist deep in height.

“He seeks no gain, but he’s come to deal out the pain!”

The man wouldn’t have to worry about it any longer I acknowledged as he fell over backward with my knife buried to the hilt within his heart, as his fingers still briefly fumbled with the pistol that had jammed on him.

I stooped to pick up my hat from where it had fallen earlier, as I slung my rifle free again. It was time for guns again, apparently. That was okay by me. I was flexible.

“Explosions!”

Maria’s thigh muscles had begun to ache from where they gripped the poll holding her above the heads of the surrounding crowd that paid her no attention. She didn’t mind. Everyone’s attention was rooted on the main show on center stage, which suited her purposes precisely.

All the boys that had gazed at her in lustful wonder the past few hours now stood staring slack-jawed at the big screens as they saw what being a real man was all about. Tyre certainly was putting on a show for them to the tune of that awful song she had to acknowledge.

“It’s time for you to die and be consumed by the volcano’s fire!”

Maria cradled the tiny pistol in her hand that had been hidden in her up swept hair all evening. It was small, but accurate enough. She had taken out seventeen potential shooters with shots to the head, as Tyre had enacted his own version of the paso doble on the central dance floor Rambo style.

Tyre was clear of the open exposure of the lit up floor now and he had his guns back in action. He’d be okay alone, for a while. Her eyes focused in on a man by the bar closest to her.

She let her clasp on the stripper pole relax as she slid down gracefully to the stage. Her bare feet touched the carpet and she made her way off of the stage to the ground floor. Her high heels had gone by the wayside as she had needed the bullets housed within each heel.

She made her way toward the bar. The stupid flashing lights and the place in general, especially the song were beginning to give her a headache.

“Ashes you will be, after the Iceman visits thee!”

The man at the bar reached up with a hand toward his ear, but halted as he felt the muzzle of the small pistol press against his throat.

His eyes drifted over to Maria’s coldly smiling face, “Allow me.” She said in a falsely seductive tone.

She reached up to his ear and pulled the ear bud out of it and laid it on the bar. Picking up a shot glass laying there she brutally smashed the bud into splintered debris with the butt end of the glass.

The man’s eyes completely serious drifted back to her as she shook her head, “This just ain’t your show CIA man. Understand?”

He nodded not doubting what he saw in her eyes.

She smiled coldly again, “Good boy! Now you just relax here and enjoy the show.”

She turned away and he stared after her unable to look away from what her mother had given to her in full measure.

She could have been the top centerfold for any man’s magazine, but the prospect of that had never appealed to Maria. She liked to be in control too much to allow herself to be subjugated like that and besides she had no interest in men.

She only took advantage of her beauty with men as a means of controlling them and as a means of motivating them to do her bidding. She had to admit even to herself that she was a very cold self-centered woman.

Somebody else most definitely had been at work in the place. There were bodies where I had not yet been before. Maria and her team were being as savage as I was it would appear and I had to admit that I was grateful for the help.

This charade couldn’t go on much longer before it would be the time to get the heck out of here!

A voice in my ear spoke and I recognized it as Flint, “Tyre the boys not here! As far as I can make out there holding him somewhere in the dance hall itself!”

My mind seized up on the knowledge that they hadn’t found Kevin yet. Being held here? I spun around taking in the mad scene of the rave hall.

Where?

I spun back to where I had been headed during my entire sojourn across the hall, which was the stage area at the opposite side of the old warehouse.

What set the upraised stage area apart and made it stand out was its peculiar oddity from the rest of the hall or anything I had ever seen before.

A mammoth fish tank rose up behind the stage to tower over it. Going with the hard edge theme of the place the wall of the aquarium that formed the backdrop of the stage was almost entirely populated by sharks.

It had to be there!

I climbed the stairs two at a time towards the stage as shots hammered off the stairs all around me even as a few shots landed with painful impact. It was an agony to keep moving and it was only a matter of time before a lucky shot found my head and took me out for good.

It was a pity that they didn’t make stylish body armor for the head, at least I didn’t think they did. I cleared the top of the stairs and stopped as a solid wall of at least thirty or so guns pointed at me from as many henchmen, who were ringed across the front of the aquarium’s glass wall.

There were two side doors to either side of the aquarium, which is where they must’ve come from and now they had me dead to rights. I didn’t have any more bullets left anyway.

They didn’t fire as they were confident in that they finally had me. I dropped my rifle and with a rueful smile I took off my hat to await the inevitable. They weren’t going to be nice to me for crashing their house like this.

I turned to see that the surviving gunmen from the crowd side were making their way up the stairs below me. I turned back to those coming from the stage side, but as I did so I let the hat spin from my hands like a frisbee. It sailed over the heads of the approaching men to thunk heavily into the aquarium’s glass wall as the steel brim of the hat bit into the glass.

It hung there poised in the air and the approaching men, who had stopped looked back to me from the stuck hat as the absurd words of the song trailed out for what must be the third or fourth time now through the crummy lyrics,
“……he’s the Iceman!”

The approaching men snickered and I shrugged. As the hard rocker singer in the background, who sounded as if he’d had a few too many cigarettes in his time, fought his way into his final high pitched screech of “Explosions!” there really was an explosion!

I ducked to the floor and grabbed for the rifle. Glass shards shot off everywhere as the hat exploded and in the midst of the delusion of water spilling out of the shattered aquarium onto the stage screams rang out.

I could well imagine why, but my focus was on my rifle. I quickly jammed half its length into a slot on the stage floor and then slipped an arm through its strap. I had barely just grasped onto it securely when the wave of water hit me. If it hadn’t been for my anchor and the strap around me I would have been swept away like the rest of the men on the stage were.

A six foot long tiger shark shot by me and made a snap at my legs, which he thankfully missed. Others weren’t so lucky though. Predatory sharks succeeded where wild flying bullets and gritty bloodletting had failed.

The unruly youth stampeded in screaming droves out the main entrance of the hall in panicked fear of the unbounded sharks. That was not my concern.