The Bleeding Sun (4 page)

While going through all these
thoughts, Lucas did not realize that there was a sound of a rotor
constantly getting louder. As the sound grew
,
Lucas moved on to the windows to
take a look. What awaited him was no less than hell. A MI 24
gunship slowly rose up to the height of the room and the machine
guns started firing. Lucas helplessly jumped across the room for
cover as the window panes were shattered and the guns blazed
through the entire room. Lucas jumped across the room onto the bed
and then tried to reach for the ceiling. He grabbed hold of one of
the sprinklers and latched onto it in his desperate bid for
survival. With all the firing, the C4 got detonated and the entire
room turned into a blast furnace. With the explosion, the sprinkler
that he was holding on to, finally gave away and Lucas landed
heavily on the floor. The firing had momentarily stopped. It seemed
that the explosion had disoriented the pilot and the gunship was
trying to steady itself before unleashing death once
again.

Lucas was hurt with the sudden fall. His left arm
was on fire and he could barely hear anything due to the sudden
explosion. He tried desperately to get his act together. He could
not be bothered about the pain if he needed to complete his
mission. He needed to cheat death and survive. He needed to
eliminate the enemies. He rose up slowly and looked around. He
could still see the gunship as it slowly was regaining control. He
couldn’t lose any more time. The entire ceiling leading to the vent
had come down and hence there was no escape route. He had to fight
his way out. Lucas brought out his grappling hook and fastened the
straps of his backpack tightly. He took out two grenades and pulled
out the pins. He started running towards the windows with the
grenades clutched in one hand and the grappling hook swinging from
the other. The gunship had managed to regain its control and slowly
started aiming the guns towards the room.

Lucas leaped out of the window straight at the
gunship and managed to get the grappling hook onto the sensors at
nose of the helicopter. He jammed a grenade onto the sensor and
swung ahead as the guns started blazing again. He tossed the second
grenade just behind the primary gun, released the grappling hook
and dived below. A fall from the seventh floor would be fatal and
hence Lucas released the grappling hook again in search of anything
he could probably latch on to. Just when every hope seemed to have
been lost and he was getting too near to his death, the hook
managed to latch onto an extended wire from a nearby building.
Lucas came to a stop around thirty feet above the ground with a
huge jerk before the rope finally broke off and he fell down
heavily on his back. The grenades detonated and the Gunship came
down on to the street as a ball of fire. Lucas had to move away
quickly to ensure he didn’t get crushed by the fireball. He rose up
slowly looking around to notice any suspicious behavior. He had
surely bruised a rib or two due to his misadventures for the day.
Lucas headed swiftly to the nearby alley before the cops and the
authorities arrived. He would need to find himself a new hive and
operate from there. His entire mission had been compromised.

Princess in the Dungeon

The Castillo De La Real Fuerza also known as the
‘Castle of The Royal Force’ located at the western side of the
harbor in Havana was originally constructed to defend the city
against the pirates. However owing to its inferior strategic
position, it was eventually never used. The building, also
considered as the oldest stone fortress of the Americas, was later
listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Apart from being a tourist
attraction owing to the small naval museum located inside, major
parts of the fortress remains closed for visitors and hence
provides an ideal hiding place for the shady activities of the
mafia. The overall structure, made from limestone along with the
thick sloping walls along the shore line, provides adequate
fortification for the secret base of illegal operations that Rosmus
carries out in the whole of Americas. The fort was adequately
equipped with surveillance cameras, motion sensors, turrets and
watch towers. Apart from these, the whole region was constantly
patrolled by hundreds of mercenaries from Rosmus’s payroll. This
was Rosmus’s dungeon, where he carefully held his secret dragon,
waiting for the right time to unleash it on the world.

Annie woke suddenly up as the cold water splashed or
her face. As she slowly opened her eyes, she realized that her eyes
had been covered so that she could not see what was going around
her. She tried to stretch her body only to realize that her arms
and legs were firmly tied together. She could hear the husky voice
of two men briskly speaking in Russian. They were waiting for
orders from their boss Rosmus. After a while when her veil was
finally lifted, she looked around the place where she was held
captive. It was a small stone cell meant for prisoners. Her feet
were chained firmly to the ground while her hands were tied to the
chain using a rope. Another rope was hanging from an iron hook in
the ceiling which was attached to a pulley on the other end of the
room. The room did not have any windows. The temperature and
ventilation was controlled by vents on the ceiling. The iron door
was guarded by two well built, vicious looking men.

As the walkie-talkies crackled, one of the men came
towards her, pulled down a rope which was hanging from the ceiling,
and tied a knot around her neck. He moved to the end of the room
and slowly started to turn the pulley. Annie could feel the knot
tighten on her neck as the rope was pulled farther causing her body
to dangle between the iron chains on the ground and the rope from
the ceiling. She could feel herself being suffocated as the rope
tightened its grip around her neck. As she felt a sense of
dizziness, a short man walked in the room and moved towards her.
Although she could barely see the face owing to dizziness, owing to
her initial research before the mission, she could recognize the
man as Yuri Rosmus.

Rosmus ordered the guard to loosen the rope. As soon
as the lever was released, the rope loosened a bit and Annie fell
onto the ground. She coughed out loud as she desperately gasped for
breath. Rosmus bent down slightly, held her hair and pulled her up
as she yelled in pain. ‘I don’t like insects crawling in my
backyard. I love to watch them die as I burn them alive…..unless
it’s of any use to me. You are going to tell me what Lucas was
doing in my casino yesterday and what you both were up to.’ Annie
stared at his face in utter disdain and Rosmus did not like that.
He used his right knee to kick her twice in her abs. Annie cried
out in pain. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. What did you come here
for? What is your mission?’

Annie looked around the room once again trying to
identify any possible option she could use to free herself. ‘If you
think you will escape and survive, then you are wrong. You are in
the most secured facility in the entire country…. Castillo De La
Real Fuerza. One more thing, that partner of yours, Roy Lucas…. He
died a nasty death too.’ Annie could hardly believe what she had
just heard. Lucas could not die. He was the absolute best of ANNT.
‘The last that I heard was, my gunship blew him up along with your
hotel. The bastard is finally dead’. Rosmus laughed out loud as if
to show off his achievement and satisfaction to Annie.

‘
Since you haven’t spoken a word
yet, you are of no use to me. My boys will treat you with a lot of
care before disposing you off. Farewell ladybird.’ Rosmus headed
out of the cell as the second guard entered the cell and locked the
door. Annie started panicking. She did not have much more time; she
had to do something to escape. She could feel the rope tightening
the grip on her neck as one of the guards pulled the lever. The
chains clanked harshly on the stone floor as they were drawn and
she slowly was pulled up. One of the guards walked towards her
while drawing out an army knife. ‘We will make it slow and painful
for you bitch. And then we will rip you off in pieces and feed the
sharks.’ The guards chuckled. Annie could only hope for a miracle
now. As the rope tightened round her neck dizziness crept in; her
entire world turned dark as she struggled desperately to breathe.
She had reached her doom.

Moments later, after an explosion, the darkness
disappeared as the rope was slightly loosened. She could breathe
again. She was not dead. As she opened up her eyes, she could see
the face of Lucas leaning over her like a guardian angel. ‘It’s
about time you woke up and helped me’, he smiled. She smiled back
at him. Roy Lucas was not dead; he was back to rescue her and to
teach Rosmus a lesson.

The Clues

Lucas tried to figure out the sequence of events
that had occurred in the past six hours as the cab headed towards
Marianao. He needed to reach Maria and get in touch with the
serpent. He also needed to chalk out a plan to rescue Annie and
figure out who the mercenaries from the hotel were working for. He
needed to figure out who Dimitri was and how all of this was
related to the agency Viper and to Rosmus and Suleiman. He had
damaged his watch while trying out his acrobatic antics earlier in
the day. So, he pulled out a spare from his backpack. As per the
display module, Annie’s tracking beacon was still sending a weak
signal from her current location. He needed to find the decryption
code in order to find out her exact location. Lucas also noticed
something really strange…..another beacon was emitting a signal at
the same distress frequency. The signal was pretty strong and was
being emitted from someone very near to his present location. He
asked for the cab driver’s cell phone to make an emergency
call.

He dialed for the Indian embassy. At the automated
interactive menu, Lucas entered his pass code to gain access to the
ANNT system. After a few validations, he obtained his decryption
code. By the time Lucas entered the decryption code, Annie’s signal
was no longer being shown in the system. Annie had probably entered
a radio free zone packed with signal jammers. Based on the last
position, she was somewhere near the Maximo Gomez Monument at the
heart of the city. The location of the second signal proved to be
of a greater amount of surprise. It was coming from his cab. The
cab could not have been bugged since he had picked one out randomly
from the alley. His earlier watch was dead…hence it could not have
been emitting anything.

Lucas searched his back pack frantically in search
of the source. He emptied the contents…a set of specialized
goggles, a silenced M9, a few blocks of C4 with detonators, a smoke
grenade, a spare grappling hook and few rounds of ammo. The bag had
a secret compartment at the back, housing a hand glider. Lucas
looked through external pockets…a Swiss knife, PDA, a few miniature
tracking patches and his passports and credit cards. The PDA was
nonfunctional as he did not get a chance to charge it up. He lifted
the PDA and opened the cover housing the battery and external
memory compartment. The battery was present…however Lucas noticed
something plugged into the memory card slot. Lucas did not have a
memory card, ANNT agents were not supposed to carry data with them;
they accessed and uploaded data to their central servers for
analysis. All their machines were self-destructible in case the
same was misplaced or any of the ANNT agents were compromised.

Lucas pulled out the stick attached to his
memory card slot. It was a unique memory chip like device with a
small led attached to it. He put the rest of his stuff back to the
backpack and put on his goggles. With the heat vision turned on, he
could see the presence of a tiny power source within the chip. He
searched for the device in the ANNT database based on the digital
signature of the beacon. It was a prototype of the Assassination
Precision Targeting Systems (APTS) project which was developed by
the DRDO as a joint venture with the Kremlin a few years back
before the project was subsequently shut down owing to the possible
misuse of the device. DRDO had planned to develop a device which
could be attached to the highly secured assassination targets so
that they could be tracked and subsequently destroyed. DRDO planned
to strike them with laser tipped satellite guided ballistic
missiles belonging to the nations or the neighboring countries
where the targets would be present at that point of time. That
would in turn ensure that no fingers would be pointed towards the
Indian Government or the Kremlin for the assassination of these
sensitive targets. The system could be used to eliminate high
profile terrorist leaders as well as could be used for tactical
nuclear strikes using the nuclear devices of the parent country
itself if required. It would consist of a self-powered microchip
which would emit a signal encrypted according to the ANNT distress
frequency criteria.

The device could hide itself from external
scanners by adapting to the frequency of the electromagnetic waves
that would be used for tracking it. Hence such a device could
potentially be un-identifiable by the security scanners at the
airports and government organizations. The device could be attached
to any object and could even be injected into the body of the
target if required. The initial prototype was designed as a small
memory stick and the DRDO was working on reducing the form factor
for the subsequent versions. The Indian Government decided to shut
down the project after the first demonstration itself owing to
concerns on security and how the system could be misused if it was
ever compromised. All the prototypes were destroyed under joint
supervision of the DRDO and the GRU when the project was
subsequently shut down.