A tall man in a black uniform took a deep drag on his cigarette, looked into the depth of the room and shouted, “Come out. You have nowhere to run.”
Twelve soldiers were standing behind his back, holding rifles at the ready. Unlike them, the man didn’t wear a helmet with an armored visor or a bulletproof vest.
“Come out, or we will shower you with grenades. Personally, I don’t care, but the higher-ups are against undue destruction.”
At the opposite end of the hall, hiding behind the rows of boxes, Rettle kept quiet. His gun had run out of cartridges way back when he was going up the stairs, acting as a decoy to keep the guards away from his friends. Rettle knew it was a one-way ticket, yet he thought he would manage to drag at least half of the guards to the grave together with him. Their commander turned out to be smarter. He stopped his squad fifty feet away from the lurking enemy. Even Rettle, with his superhuman speed, wasn’t able to cross the open space faster than they could riddle his body with a hundred bullets.
Rettle decided that coming out toward the enemy would enable him to get rid of at least a couple more guards. He rose from his shelter and took a step forward, looking the commander in the eye. Despite his relatively small stature, Rettle looked menacing – his hair, face and whole suit were covered in black blood from those guards whose chopped-up bodies were scatted all over the first floor. There was no fear in the paladin’s eyes. There was no challenge, audacity or disgust either. In fact, he didn’t care where to look – in the enemy’s eyes or at the wall behind the opponent’s back. The enemy was not more than an element of the interior to him.
“Oh, no, no,” the commander shook his finger in the air. “Drop your blades first. And not in front of you, so that you can pick them up later and slaughter all my guys. Throw them behind your back.”
Rettle threw his wakizashi swords behind his back and stepped into the middle of the hall.
“Will you shoot me right here or is there at least one daredevil among you who’ll try to take me alive?”
There still wasn’t a challenge in the Rettle’s voice; it sounded infinitely calm as always. The commander nodded to the two nearest soldiers. They were about to take a step forward, but the tall man stopped them, “Leave your rifles. There’s no point in tempting this beast.”
The soldiers handed their weapons to their comrades. At the same time, the commander pulled out his SIG-Sauer P228 and aimed it at Rettle.
“Just a precaution,” he said and suddenly pulled the trigger twice. Two 9mm bullets pierced through the Rettle’s legs. He fell to his knees without uttering a single sound. The stony expression on his face didn’t change one bit. Rettle seemed to not notice terrible wounds from the bullets that smashed his shins and made his legs give way. The commander nodded to his soldiers again. Rettle was on his knees, with empty hands raised above his head. The guards approached him and bent down to pull his arms behind his back.
At that moment Rettle grabbed both of them by the necks, hit their heads against each other and brought them down to the floor in front of him. Using his fingers like a bird of prey uses its claws, the coach squeezed the guards’ throats and tore them out with frightening easiness. The soldiers went into death throes, uttering terrible bobbling sounds. The commander of the squad theatrically applauded the coach’s mastery. After that he waved his left hand, giving a signal to the rest of the guards.
Ten rifles simultaneously burst into a powerful military march of gunshots like a well-coordinated wind orchestra. Rettle’s heavily frayed bulletproof vest sustained the first dozen hits while his arms were flinging in the air, pierced by the rain of lead. In less than a second, his armor stopped resisting and bullets started to plunge into his body. Rettle closed his eyes and collapsed backward. The commander gave a signal again and the deadly shower stopped. At a leisurely pace, the man approached the prostrate enemy. The Rettle’s dead body, sprawled in the puddle of his own black blood, rapidly spreading over the snow-white tiled floor, now seemed so tiny and defenseless.
The commander dug Rettle in the side with his shoe several times, then turned to his people, “His head remained intact, well done! Now drag him into the lab.”
One of the guards approached the body, grabbed it by the foot and, without lifting it up, dragged it across the floor like a bag, drawing a blood-black trail after him.
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To Be Continued…
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