Wars Start with a Bang

The smell was pungent. I could barely stand it. I turned to smile towards the gentleman with me. “Are you certain about this?” I asked. I knew his answer. It was the same answer as I would’ve given when I was his age.

“Hells yeah,” he said, but his face betrayed a level of nervousness I’d never seen Jim express before. He generally wasn’t the nervous type. He was more the overconfident type. The fact that even a hint of nerves sprouted at the edges of his face spoke volumes.

I put a reaffirming hand on his shoulder. “You know,” I said, “If you don’t want to go through with it, now’s when we back out.”

“Oh, shove it up yours, old man,” he said, shaking my hand away. He couldn’t afford to show weakness, I thought, not when he thought he was so close. Jim took the explosives from my bag and layered them against the wall in front of them. This was to be a war, and what war shouldn’t start with a bang.

I looked at Jim, sadness welling behind my mask. He would die in this war. That was certain. He was too reckless not to. I would survive it. That was also certain. I was well prepared for this. “Three, two, one,” I said slowly, counting down the seconds for Jim.

A second after one, Jim depressed the button in his hand. The sewer wall we were standing beside blew inwards, causing a wave of hot air to wash over them. The stench from inside the room was even worse than the sewers. Jim smiled at me. “Told you we had enough to get through.”

He had been right. But why, I thought. This flaw in security was obvious, anyone with half a brain could’ve seen it from the plans. Why didn’t the organization reinforce the wall? As Jim stepped into the room filled with large vats, I realized the only logical answers. Either we were in the wrong place, which was unlikely. I trusted my source for this well enough, and she hadn’t led me astray before. Or, more likely, this was a trap. Creeping along the wall to flank whatever was coming, I texted my partner in this particular crime, ‘TRAP’. A few steps ahead of me, Jim checked his watch and gave me a somewhat confused look with a deeply furrowed brow. I nodded, hoping he’d understand to be careful, that we shouldn’t reveal our knowledge too obviously.

He did not. “But there’s no one here,” he blurted out, all too loudly for my liking. As his voice echoed through the room, so too did quiet footsteps. They would be hard to make out, if I wasn’t listening for them.

I pointed upwards to one of the rafters just as a bullet slammed into Jim’s leg. One advantage of Jim’s cluelessness was they were forced to spring the trap before the place they wished to. Jim ducked behind one of the vats, only for a bullet to come at hi from the opposite side, slamming into the vat next to his head. Seeing the man who’d just fired, I raised my arm towards him, and a small gun flipped out from my sleeve. From my vantage point pressed against the wall, both low and shadowed, I suspected seeing me from up there would be somewhat difficult. I wasn’t going to give him a chance to get a shot off, though. I pushed back the trigger once, twice, thrice. Three quiet pops, barely audible even as close as I was to the thing, were all that gave signal to my position, as three spots appeared on the masked man’s balaclava. The man tumbled over the edge.

Realizing it was go time, Jim drew out his silenced gun from his trench coat. Where mine was purely designed for being unnoticeable, his small submachinegun was a tool for combat, and while it was quiet enough to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious, anyone looking for him could easily determine where exactly he was. Poking just his hand out from behind the vat, he let loose a burst of fire generically towards the upper walkways. I figured, rather than try to hit anything, he was mostly trying to draw fire for me to find people. Unfortunately, my angle on the people above us was less than ideal, and I was currently crouched in an isolated shadow. Moving to a better position for hitting them would reveal myself to them as well. And, as much as I liked Jim, I liked me more. Instead of moving, I waited. It would be a stalemate until one of us got bored, and both me and Jim had patience in spades. It was just a matter of waiting for them to try sneaking around for a better shot. I watched the cross path, waiting for an impatient shadow to begin shifting its way across. It would be anytime now.

The waiting game payed off. After Jim’s second flushing-out volley, I saw some motion on that upper platform. It wasn’t human looking, just a darker shadow moving through the lighter shadows. I breathed, raised my arm, and let loose another three shots. This time, it wasn’t as quick a death. Rather than three in the head, I’d put one in the center of the neck, and two uselessly plinking off the vest. A man was now obvious up top, clenching at his neck as he stumbled backwards, and fell hard against the ground. Oops. That might give away my position. I looked up. The walkway above me could hold my weight. It would be a few seconds before they flooded my spot with gunfire. Pointing my left hand up towards the walkway, another, differently shaped gun flipped from my sleeve. With a smirk towards my compatriot, I shot my grappling hook up to latch onto the walkway. Knowing that smirk and gesture, he gave my shot some cover by letting loose another volley. Giving the rope a quick tug to make sure its grip was firm, I began to climb. Someday, I’d put a motor on this gun, I thought to myself, but the fluid motion of me scurrying up the rope went unnoticed by those on the walkway I was now clinging below. The masked men, noticing that their guy fell in the wrong direction for Jim to have shot him, moved to the opposite side of Jim’s vat to let loose a clip or two at the spot where, just moments before, I was crouching.

Flipping both guns back into their sleeve-holsters, I drew out my rather large and wicked looking knife. It was time to finish this, I thought. Flipping myself up to the walkway, I rushed, still crouched, to one of the reloading men. As I heard his new clip’s first bullet get chambered, I stabbed him in the throat and, grabbing his firing hand, let loose the gun at his own people. The shocked expression on their faces was satisfying. While the volley itself only caught a few, the more effective measure was the surprise. They didn’t see that coming. They all stumbled about, and the ones who weren’t grievously wounded fell to the ground. Jim would take care of those, I thought, as I heard the quiet vibrating whistle of his submachinegun going to work. Removing my knife from the man’s neck, I shook my head at the thought of this trap. They clearly hadn’t prepared for him to be here. That was a fact that they wouldn’t overlook in the future.

After finishing off the remaining stragglers, Jim made his way around the room to the stairs, then up to meet me. “How did you figure it was a trap?” he asked as he showed up.

I shrugged. “Because you were right,” I joked. It was close enough to the truth.

“Ha ha,” he said sarcastically, though his smile revealed the at he enjoyed the joke all the same. Then, looking around, he wondered aloud, “So I’m guessing these aren’t what we’re looking for?”

I shook my head. “They are,” I replied, “You need real bait to catch a shark.”

He once again furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about? I mean I like the comparison, sure, but I’m pretty certain that isn’t a saying and you’re just making stuff up at this point.”

I smiled. “Undoubtedly. But age and wisdom are relative dependent on the recipient of the aged wisdom. And as you do so enjoy pointing out, I am old.”

Jim groaned. “Alright, if this is really the stuff, how much do we need?”

I smiled. “Olivia should be able to recreate it from just a sample, so let’s get ourselves a barrel, just in case.”

“And the rest?”

My smile grew wider and more wicked. “Well, it says it’s rather flammable.”

He walked down to the ground level again, and while he filled a barrel from one of the vats, I went across the tops of all the vats, and after opening them, attached torches to chains across the scaffolding above, holding the unlit torches over or in the flammable concoctions. Then, I attached all the chains to a single larger chain, and a large metal brick weighed them down and lifted the torches aloft, up several meters above the vats. Going to each torch, I lit them aflame, then walked down to meet up with Jim.

Jim looked confused at me. “What’s all that for?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Wanted to get rid of the stuff and didn’t want to be in the room when I did,” I replied. After a judgmental look from my compatriot, I added, “And I thought a nice, over-complicated thing would be fun to make.”

He nodded. “I see. Wait until I am very far away to murder yourself, please.”

I shook my head at him. “I’m not the one who dies, Jim,” I said sternly. Together, we walked into the sewers through our makeshift doorway. I let him go around the first bend back towards our boat, as I picked up my bag and pulled out the rather large sniper rifle. Popping a single high explosive round into the chamber, I breathed in deeply, took aim at the gear I had connecting the smaller chains to the larger one, breathed out all the air in my lungs, held for a moment, and fired a single shot. The moment the round left the chamber, I took off running. I didn’t want to be that close to the fireball. I heard behind me as I turned the initial explosion. The gear creaked and then broke. I was around the corner when the first large boom happened. Even as far as we were from the hole, we could hear the explosions and feel the waves of heat as, one by one, each lit torch fell into the flammable vats below, causing massive explosions within that underground laboratory. I felt a little bad for the legitimate researchers who worked in the tower above. They’d go to work in a few hours, only to find their entire building had collapsed into the basement. But only a little bit, after all the building was owned by the organization.

Jim was waiting for me in our hover boat. “You sure its clean?” he asked. He was worried, it seemed. He may be cocky, but he realized what we just started.

I nodded. “As sure as I can be. I counted the explosions; all the tanks are gone. The building is too, given the rush of air I felt after the last burst of five. We should be good.”

He turned on the fan as I climbed in. “Well, that’s a relief. Maybe they won’t be prepared for you next time as well.”

I smiled. “Let’s hope. If they’re onto me, we’d need a miracle to win.”

Jim gestured towards the barrel. “Isn’t’ that what this is for?” he asked.

“True,” I said with a slight nod, “But I’d like our production line for it to be ready while they’re still on their back foot. If they gain advantage first, we risk losing before our miracle juice is fully complete.”

“Don’t tell Olivia that,” Jim joked.

I chuckled. “Never,” I said, “I like living.” The hover boat sped off down the river, towards another section of sewers, an older section. We’d won for the day, and that might just be enough, at least for now. Maybe not yet, I thought with a slight smile, but after my shower and a bit of rest, it should be enough. Jim let out a deep sigh as he though about something longingly. Probably a hot meal, I thought. Then, I added that to the list of things that I’d need before the mission was truly a success. Shower, rest, meal, then we could move on to the next phase of our planning.

#fiction #firstperson #story #modernity #ShadowWars