Chapter Thirteen: Matters of Duty

“The brave man inattentive to his duty is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.”

-Andrew Jackson

            Gidan watched his men attack the vault. They were making good progress; they’d be in within an hour or so.

            The wine of the tools and the glow of the torches seemed to him to create a contemplative mood. They reminded him of working in the mines. Back in the old days, when he had been weak. Before he had come.

            What had it been…six months? Was that really all?

            The man had found him in the hospital; hacking his lungs up as usual. That was what happened when you spent sixteen years in a stinking mine. The war had been going on for months, but he hadn’t even been able to do any fighting yet: he’d go to training, run through the drills, and before the day was over he was on his back, barely able to breathe. Finally, the military had made him a cook, and even then he had attacks once a week. He was a cook! It was infuriating. Finally, he was getting a chance to strike back against the world that had sent him, his father, and all his brothers down into those pits, and he was stuck making soup while everyone else went off and fought the Capitalists. 

            It was during one of his attacks that he had come.

            He was a big, muscular man, but his nice suit and fancy sunglasses showed that he was no laborer. He was Bantu and had an open, friendly face, at least from what Gidan could tell, what with the man’s eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. Since the man was obviously either rich, important, or both Gidan wondered what someone like that wanted with him.

            “How are you feeling?” the man asked. He spoke Swahili like a local.

            “Like shit,” Gidan had answered

            “You look like it,” the man had answered.

            Gidan glared up at him.

            “What do you want?”

            “First,” said the man. “ I need to know what you want.”

            “What do I want?” Gidan had answered. “I want to pay back the bastards who sent me into that hole. I want to help spread the revolution. And most of all, I want to be able to breathe again.”

            This outburst had sent into another fit of coughing. The man waited patiently for it to subside, and when it did, Gidan fixed him with a ferocious glare.

            “Can you give me that? If not, then leave me alone.”

            To his surprise, the man had smiled.

            “Yes,” he said. “I think we can give you that.”

            Gidan stared at him. The man stared back from behind his concealing glasses.

            “How?”

            In answer, the man did something strange. He began to roll up one sleeve, all the way up passed his elbow, demonstrating in the process that, though he looked like a rich bureaucrat, he had muscles that would have done any miner proud.

            “What are you doing?”

            “I am showing you something of what we can do for you.”

            He stretched out his arm, and in a flash it had transformed. It wasn’t a natural arm at all; it looked like hard, muscular flesh, but then the pieces began to flip over, like panels, revealing black, gleaming metal. In barely a second, the arm had instead become a wicked-looking blade.

            “How did…” Gidan gasped.

            “This is only the beginning,” the man had said. “I am looking for volunteers to take the next step. You struck me as a man with potential.”

            There had been no hesitation. Gidan wasn’t sure what this new technology was exactly, but he was sure of one thing; with that, no one would ever send him into the mines again.

            Two weeks of agony followed as his body was ripped apart and put back together over and over and over again. But he endured it all. He relished it all. This pain was merely the burning off of his impurities; the transformation into something more than a mere man. He felt like he was being born again, and when he came out of it, he didn’t cough anymore.

            Gidan never saw the strange man again. Nor did he ever learn his name. But he often thought about him. That man had saved him; he’d given him a chance to be something more than just another worker. It made him a little uncomfortable to think like that; it was Capitalists and Imperialists who liked to set themselves up above everyone else, but somehow it seemed…right in his case. He was one of the elite. It wasn’t just that he was more than a soldier; he was more than a man. He and his fellow cyborgs were superior beings.

            A chunk of metal tore off of the vault with a crash and Gidan shook himself free of his reverie. This was neither the time or the place to consider that idea, so he shoved it aside. It occurred to him that this wasn’t the first time that had happened either; the notion of superiority had been nagging at him rather often over the past few months. That was…troubling. 

            Antony came in and signaled that he was wanted, so Gidan left the vault room and closed the door, shutting out the noise.

            “He wants you,” said Antony. “He says he has a job for you.”

            Gidan scowled as he descended the stairs. He hated being ordered around like a lacky by that arrogant mzungu. Whatever he said, Strasser and the KGB seemed to him be just as imperialistic as the Americans. They treated the Tanzanians like servants or children, even cyborgs like him. He wondered idly what would happen if, after they found what they were looking for, he simply snapped Strasser’s neck and took it for himself. If it was as powerful as everyone was saying, then there wouldn’t be much the KGB could do about it. They’d have to respect him then.

            He tried to banish those thoughts from his mind. Those were imperialist ideas; he ought to be proud to be serving the revolution, not complaining that he wasn’t being appreciated enough.  

            Entering the dinning room, he found Strasser pacing angrily. Zaramo, one of Gidan’s men, was guarding the hostages, but was also eying the German nervously.

            “What is it?” Gidan demanded.

            “I have word,” said Strasser. “That Shija just toppled out of a thirtieth floor window.”

            “What?”

            “Our uninvited guest is proving more troublesome than I had thought,” Strasser growled. “I want you to find him and crush him.”

            Officer Dunn was dead, as was Officer Turpin, a police sharpshooter. Laura Lotus, by the great good fortune of having moved just in time, had escaped, though not unharmed.  

            “I’m alright,” she told the medic bandaging her arm. “Really.”

That was a downright lie: this was probably the worst she’d ever felt. She was running on the sick, sore-eyed nausea of a purely caffeine based awareness, she had just seen a man die right in front of her, and she herself had been shot through the arm with a high-powered rifle. It had been a glancing blow, but that had been enough.

“Ma’am, that bullet cracked your humerus. You really need to go to the hospital.”

“I’ll go later,” she said. “I’m not gonna die, right?”

“No, but I think…”

“Then that’s all I need.”

The pain was blinding; she had never experienced anything that hurt so much or that scared her so much in her entire life. But then, she had never left a job unfinished in her entire life either. The idea of giving up and going down to the ambulance was out of the question; she’d stay here, at this window, doing her part to help the mysterious George, until either this whole thing was resolved or she took a bullet in a more vital place.

“Ma’am…”

“Listen,” she said, more rudely than she had intended due to her pain and stress. “The only way you’re getting me to leave is if you taze me and drag me downstairs in handcuffs. Now just shut up and patch me up; I’ve got a job to do.”

            George couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the small flashlight shining out the window.

            “Are you alright?” he signed.

            “Be fine,” came the answer. “You?”

            “OK. Sniper is down.”

            “So I heard.”

            He picked up the sniper rifle and focused on the flickering light. The room was dark, but the reflection of the flashlight showed him a dark, slender form…a woman. That was a bit of a surprise.

            “What’s your name?” he asked.

            There was a brief pause, as though the other side was surprised by the question.

            “Laura.”

            “Stay safe, Laura.”

            “Be careful. Tried to tell you; one of the terrorists is a cyborg.”

            “A what?”

            “Cyborg. Half man, half machine. He destroyed the helicopters.”

            So that’s what happened to them. George hadn’t been able to see the attack too well from his position; he’d assumed that they’d come under fire. But this meant…

            “Can it be killed?”

            “Don’t try. Avoid him.”

            “And if I can’t?”

            There was a long pause. George guessed that Laura was asking someone’s advice.

            “Make sure you can,” she said. Then added “You still going to fight?”

            “I have no choice.”

            “Yes, you do.”

            George thought about that. Did he have a choice? He was facing a ruthless enemy that had already killed dozens of innocent people tonight. His two best friends in the world were in mortal danger. His country was under attack by infiltrators from her greatest foe. What kind of man would he be if he stood back and did nothing? 

            He tried to think of how he could put all that into something simple to tell Laura. Finally, he signaled her:

            “It’s my duty.”

           

            Ben Osborne had never felt worse in his life.

            This was supposed to have been his night of triumph. Instead, it was the night he discovered that he was a coward.

            First he fainted – actually fainted – when Strasser shot passed his face, then he panicked and started pushing people out of the way when the patio collapsed.

            It wasn’t my fault, he told himself. Anyone would have done the same. It was me or them; I had no choice.

            But no matter how many times he told himself that, the memory of the event, of the blinding terror that had swept all else from his mind, of the feel of the panicked bodies pressed about him, of his hands pushing them off to their doom remained vivid and would not abate.

            Ben and most of the other hostages were huddled on the floor, leaning against the wall. Martha had been made to sit at the dinning table, closer to where Strasser was pacing back and forth. Every so often he would stop and say something to her in a low voice, and each time he did so she looked a little closer to tears.

            Oh, how Ben hated that man. This whole disaster was his fault. If he, Ben, had failed tonight, that was Strasser’s fault, not his. He was the one who set him up and then turned on him. He was the one who had sent those people out there. It was all his fault. Ben wanted to run over and just pound the thin, dandyish German into jelly, and then throw his broken body out the ballroom wall. Gun or no gun, he was close to doing it.

            That made his thoughts drift to George and he shuddered with renewed shame. George was out there, whether alive or dead, he didn’t know, but he had at least done something; he’d called the police. Now who knows what he was doing, but he at least had some power to affect the situation, unlike Ben.

            It was infuriating: humiliating. Ben was the adventurous one. He was the one who made million dollar deals for breakfast, hunted lions and bears and had tried out for the Olympics. George was just some hick from nowheresville Iowa who couldn’t even make the military and whose greatest accomplishment to date had been going to college and meeting him. Not to mention that Ben was only there for some extra classes and George couldn’t even finish his degree. It didn’t make any sense for George to be the one out there playing the hero while Ben sat around being repeatedly humiliated.

            Hell, if George could do it, he certainly could. He was twice as tough as George was: he’d proven that a couple times in the ring. It was time George got a little help from the people up here, and Ben was eager to do it.

            Ben was sitting at the end of the row of hostages. Right next to him, sitting on a credenza, was the Tanzanian who was keeping them covered with an assault rifle. But the Tanzanian looked distracted. He kept watching Strasser and Martha nervously, as if he knew the operation was going badly and was hoping for reassurance.

            Slowly, casually, Ben brought his feet in closer. He carefully began to scootch his body up the wall, so that instead of sitting he was now in a crouch. He waited a moment longer, then while Strasser stood looking off in the direction of the ballroom, he struck.

            Ben rocketed to his feet and grabbed the gun with one hand. He forced the muzzle aside and drove his fist in the Tanzanian’s face with all his might, once, twice, the third time he dropped an elbow. His attack was so fast and so powerful that the stunned man crumpled without even getting off a shot. Ben snatched the assault rifle from his grip and aimed at Strasser.

            Strasser whipped around at the commotion, his face contorted with rage, but he was too late. Screaming out his fury, Ben squeezed the trigger. The gun barked and kicked, but Ben held it tight, focusing the spray of bullets on Strasser’s body. This bastard betrayed him and humiliated him and now Ben wanted to tear him to pieces. Martha, who had been almost in the line of fire herself, screamed and dove under the table, while Strasser rocked and staggered backwards as the rounds slammed into him, and Ben didn’t let up until the gun clicked dry.

            His ears were ringing with the roar of gunfire, and the room was full of smoke. Ben’s insides were still roaring with fury. But Otto Strasser was still standing. His clothes were shredded, but not a drop of blood was visible. On the floor at his feet lay a pile of flattened bullets.

            A second later, Strasser crossed the room, swept the gun from Ben’s grip and uppercutted him in the stomach so hard that he was lifted off his feet. He crashed back to the ground, gasping and moaning, unable to believe what had just happened.

            “You little bastard,” Strasser snarled, bending over and lifting Ben’s head off the ground by his hair. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

            He looked for a moment like he was about to pound Ben’s face into jelly. But he seemed to restrain himself with great effort.

            “I can’t afford to deal with you right now,” he hissed. “But I promise, Mr. Osborne, you will not leave this building alive!”

            He backhanded him, and Ben knew no more.

Next Week:

Chapter Fourteen: Inside the Vault