Of the three of us I was the only one who had reached for my gun. A“rookie” move I would no doubt be lectured about later.
Molly, seemingly unconcerned by our presence, gave Schuller his mail and the day’s itinerary and left.
“Professor, we’ve been sent to ask you come with us.”
“Sent by whom may I ask? Am I in some sort of trouble?” The professor’s tone was a mix of condescension and lack of concern.
“No. You’re in a very specific type of trouble,” she quipped. “We’ve been sent here by the N.S.A. We believe that your life may be in danger.”
“Is that so? And how, pray tell, is it that my life is suddenly so important to national security?” Schuller asked condescendingly, brimming with arrogance.
I listened as Cougar explained to the Professor that several of his colleagues and prominent scientists in the Fields of Marine-Biology, Marine-Crypto-zoology, Cold –fusion Physics, Geneticists and even Medicine had gone missing or dead within the last few weeks; all under mysterious circumstances.
Behind me I could faintly hear Molly, as she played her role as Professor Schuller’s gate keeper, to a couple of overly persistent students.
Ox moved from the window and came towards me.
“What’s going on out there?” Ox whispered
“Students,” I responded. “Want me to check it out?”
“Nah. I’ll go, kid. Watch the window.”
As he stepped past me he paused for moment and half-whispered to me,
“Relax, kid. You’re making me nervous,” he joked. “You’re doing fine,” he added. And with that Ox left the room. And I took up position at the window.
For a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening. But a moment was all it took… for everything to go to hell.
As the Professor and Cougar spoke I saw the jelly stain on the professor’s shirt pocket shift a fraction of an inch to his right. At first I thought it was a trick of the light. . But Cougar had seen it too.
Without warning or word she launched herself over the desk and tackled the startled professor.
“Sniper!” she yelled dragging Schuller to the ground behind his desk.
At the opposite side of the room there were two quick explosions and the frosted-glass door to the professor’s office shattered into a million pieces, as Ox came flying through it backwards; with a hole through his back and chest the size of a basket ball.
Cougar pinned the confused Schuller to the ground behind his desk while the wall above their heads suddenly became riddled with jagged holes from silenced sniper-fire that shattered the windows to Schuller’s office.
Meanwhile two men came through the doorway to the office wielding sawn-off double-barrel shot-guns. Dressed like Janitors they fired wildly.
I took the first one down with two shots to the head. As he went down I dove toward the doorway, for a better angle on the second target. In the process I emptied the clip of my H&K USP46 into his chest of the second man causing him to stumble backward through the doorway.
I landed hard on my chest right at the feet of a third armed assailant. He pointed his shot-gun in my face at point-blank range. The assassin’s finger tightened around the trigger as he muttered incomprehensibly. I knew I was a dead man.
“…free will is an illusion…the maker’s will is all…”
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!!
He went down in a lifeless heap beside me. Cougar yelled at me. Smoke rose from the muzzle of Sabre’s Sig Sauer.
“Goddammit!! Rabbit, this isn’t a Hollywood movie,” She crawled over, closed the blind and checked Ox’s body. Without a word she then tossed me his gun. It was a USP46 just like mine.
“Cover the door. Stay low and clear of the window there’s a sniper out-there somewhere.”
While the learned professor cowered under his desk, Cougar crawled over to each of the three dead-men and pulled out a pocket- knife. Staying low, she straddled each of them, emptied their pockets and cut off their thumbs. Wrapping them in a handkerchief she shoved the blood-stained cloth in her jacket pocket and turned to me. I didn’t even realize that I had not moved.
“Re-load. I’ll take point. You bring the Professor.”
As I scanned the room my eyes became transfixed on Ox’s dead body. Threads of smoke rose from the gaping hole in his chest filling the room with the stench of burnt flesh. His dead eyes stared past me.
That could have been me. Oh God, by all rights, it should have been, I thought.
“Rabbit,” Cougar said calmly as she grabbed me roughly by my tie. “We will come back for him,” she said firmly. “But for the next few minutes I need you to focus right now. Okay?”
Swallowing hard all I could manage was a nod.
“Okay then,” she said letting go of me, “Let’s move out.”
Weapons in hand but concealed at our sides we moved quickly down the halls and past offices and the teachers lounge to the emergency staircase. On our way down Cougar activated a fire alarm and set off the building’s automatic sprinkler system. The school administration building went from utter chaos to total pandemonium as students and teachers ran to and fro in front of the administration building, soaked to the bone, trying to figure out what was going on. A crowd of onlookers began amassing around the front of the Administration Building as people tried to locate their emergency muster points.
We exited the building partially hidden by the multitude of students who, like everyone else, tried to cover their heads with papers, binders, sweaters and whatever was at hand, at first from the water from the sprinklers and then from the glaring heat of the noon-day sun. The throng of confused teachers and student were perfect cover against a sniper that was hunting for specific targets. We moved quickly through the thick throng of confused students and university staff. In no time we made it, with Schuller, to the parked Audi and got the hell outta dodge.
Chapter 2
Two and half months earlier.
Virginia Nebraska
WESTPOINT
…It was another day of freaking exercises at the USMA West-point. For the last seventeen days the other 19 selected recruits and I had done nothing but endured an endless onslaught of training exercises. Running, water exercises shooting-drills, endurance tests, combat drills and even written examinations on military doctrine and tactics.
At this point, like the other ‘invited’ recruits, I began to wonder if the invitations we received to ‘try out’ for a new elite division of the armed forces were a hoax. After-all I was thirty-two and been a Ranger for eight years before I transferred to the Marine Corps. I had “washed out” of SEAL training three times. The second time, I did so, with a broken leg and three cracked ribs. I was no stranger to training. Or failure. But even I wondered if there was a purpose to all this.
Our ‘hosts’ always looked on, taking notes. Today after ‘fast-roping’ from an old AH 60 Black-Hawk helicopter, we ran five miles in just under thirty-five minutes to a weapons range. Where a series of stationery and moving targets along with a selection of small arms and assault rifles waited for us. Four hours later we returned, after a ten mile run, to our temporary barracks for interviews. Since our arrival at West-point our ‘hosts’, as we called them, had never interacted with us. Until now.
“…file here says your call-sign is: ‘Rabbit.’ Are you gay or something? What’s that about?” asked the pretty-one. As much as