12-Revolution

12

Revolution

Kim was not dead, though with the pain she was in, she wished she was.

Having ran the halls and walkways of the platform years earlier, she had become an expert on the layout of the water bound monoliths.  She had timed and aimed her jump based solely on memory.  The leap had taken her one floor down.  The trajectory of the fall took her onto the open catwalk below.  Upon impact she had rolled quickly behind a metal railing and let the guards believe she had fallen to her death.

She had not come out of it unscathed, however.

The guards had let fly with a barrage of machine gun fire as she had jumped and one of the bullets had gone through her right arm.  Blood ran down the arm like a faucet and dripped off her hand onto the metal cat walk.  She grimaced in pain as she tried to move.  She internally forced herself not to panic.  This was, after all, the first time she had ever been shot.

She tried to think.  She called up the Google in her head and searched her brain for any information that would be useful in this situation.  She centered on a course of action. She had to stop or slow the bleeding.

With that thought she suddenly got an image of Sylvester Stallone in the third Rambo movie.  He took gun powder and rammed it into his wound before lighting it on fire with an explosion.  She had asked her (then still alive) father and he had told her that he was cauterizing the wound to stop the bleeding.

 “Not a chance.” She said to herself shaking her head.

Kim was wearing jean shorts and a bikini top.  There wasn’t much with which to make a bandage or tourniquet.  She looked down and removed her right tennis shoe, then the sock under it.  Hopefully she wouldn’t have to do anymore running.  Then again, if it came to it, the shoulder would be more dangerous than the blisters incurred while running with a sockless foot in a shoe.

Kim picked a spot just above the wound and tied the sock around her arm as tight as she could.  Without the use of the right arm itself she had to use her teeth.  For a split second when she did, she felt like a badass.  That feeling was fleeting as the pain soon returned.

Now she had to find a place to hide and wait.  It was all in Ein’s hands now.

****

Chavez stared at the room and his lip curled in disgust.

The disgust was not at the two bodies on the floor, both his men killed in their own gruesome manners, nor was it with the pile of vomit toward the center of the room, its smell permeating the small room’s atmosphere.

The disgust was with the failure.

Cazador had escaped, most likely with the help of one of the unfound American tourists. They had allowed two college children, sheltered by American civilization with no military training of their own, to get the better of them, and a man with limitless dangerous potential was free to roam the platform.

Chavez pulled his .45 caliber automatic hand gun as the rage swelled within him.

“Back to the lunch room.  They are going there.”  He said in Spanish to the three men with him and they all moved into the hallway, guns at the ready.

They moved with killing intent.

****

Cazador, very carefully, glanced around the corner of the door, into the lunch room.  He took only a half second and the image of the room was centered in his mind like a snap shot before he recoiled back to cover.  Ein stood next to him, the anxiety building in his face and in his body language.

Cazador groaned.

Ein looked uneasy.  “What? …W… w… w… what’s going on in there?”

Ein staggered over his words again.  The stress of the situation and the violence he had witnessed were beginning to take a toll.  Cazador knew that he would need Ein, but was worried he would be useless in a fire fight.

“Gringo, your friends may be out of reach,” Cazador stated uneasily.  “The men are at the ready.  Four of them.  Something has them spooked and alert.  Four is too many for me to take by myself.”

Ein’s grip seemed to tighten on the machine gun Cazador had liberated from the guards.  “I… I… I… I will help.”

Cazador frowned.  “Don’t be stupid, Gringo.”

Ein’s face hardened.  “I will help my f…f…friends.”

Cazador rolled his eyes.  “This is not the movies.  You have no training and you have no will to kill.  These men have been doing this since birth.”

Ein began to think.  This was all his fault.  He had let Thad talk him into this insanity and now, here they were at gunpoint from ex-military drug lords and killers.  Their fate was left in the hands of an assassin who, until ten minutes ago, had been plotting their deaths.  If you believed in karma, the only one who should have to make this right was Eisenhower.  He was the only one who should have to kill.

There was more to it than that.

This rig, this platform, was everything his absentee father had left him.  It was the place Kim had lived out her childhood.  It was freedom, the likes of which Ein had never felt nor contemplated before.  It was a chance to make the world the way he wanted it to be.

This was his country.

It was worth fighting for.

“No.” Ein seemed to center himself right in front of Cazador.

Cazador raised his eyebrow.  Ein’s one spoken word had more power than the communist manifesto.  “No?”

Ein’s grip tightened on the stock and butt of the gun and he pulled it to his shoulder.  “No.”

Ein said the word one more time before springing into action.  Cazador was shocked and found himself unable to move quick enough to stop the little man as he barreled through the doorway at full speed.

“Santa mierda puta!”  Cazador cursed, as he shouldered his gun and followed.

“No!” Ein yelled, as he stepped into the room.

The four guards turned, surprised.

The hostages looked up, scared.

Harriet raised her head, confused.  “Ein?”

Ein took aim and jerked the trigger the AK-47, exploding into action, ammunition pouring out the front of the gun into one of the guards.  His body jerked and convulsed with rapid impacts, mists of blood exploding from the front of his body.

Ein screamed as a tear rolled down his cheek.  He watched the man slowly be torn apart by his gun.

By his finger on the trigger.

The gun’s recoil was too much for the inexperienced Eisenhower and the gun slowly rose till it was firing into the ceiling.  Ein’s eyes never left that of his victim, who lurched forward and fell.  His face held a look of absolute confusion.

The other soldiers raised their guns, but they were too late as Cazador moved into the room, took aim and put them down.  One after another, three quick round bursts and the guards dropped within the span of a second.

Ein’s gun went dead and he immediately dropped it to the ground.  A look of pain and shock were on his face as he continued to stare at the dead man on the ground in front of him.  The guard’s eyes still, lifeless, stared at Ein as if asking why.

“Ein!”  Harriet yelled and ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging tight.

Ein however, could barley feel the embrace.  He was lost in the eyes of the dead.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Thad questioned as he locked eyes with Cazador.

Cazador smiled.  “It looks as though I am saving you, Cobarde.”

Thad gritted his teeth.  “Screw you!”

Cazador shook his head.  “I don’t have time to deal with you, Cobarde.”

Cazador bent over one of the guards and grabbed his machine gun, slinging it over his back before dropping the clip in his current gun and slamming a new one home. Cazador racked the slide to chamber the first bullet.

The noise seemed to wake Ein from his death trance.  He took a deep breath and separated himself from Harriet.  “Leave him alone, Thad.  We are alive because of him.”

Thad seemed to back off and Ein looked to Cazador as he stood.  “What are you doing?”

Cazador turned.  “Chavez is still on the ship with at least three others.  He will, most likely, be falling back to regroup.”

“You're going after him?  What are you, nuts?” Harriet asked out of total confusion.

Cazador nodded.  “He and his brothers must die.  I am the weapon to make this happen.”

Cazador stepped to Ein.  “Stay with your friends, keep them safe.  You have done enough today.”

Cazador shouldered the weapon and moved out the door and down the hall.

Erin watched him walk out and then the women started to talk.  Harriet and Thad began to ask questions but Ein could no longer hear any of it.

Cazador had just left to die for Ein’s country.

Ein’s face became stone.

He saw clearly, now.

“Ein?” Harriet asked, noticing the change.

Ein did not respond.  Instead, he moved to one of the dead guards not looted by Cazador, and grabbed one of the machine guns.

“Have you lost it?!” Thad asked, as he realized what was happening.

Ein stood and Thad grabbed his arm.  Ein ripped himself free and gave them all a look.

Ein then turned and followed Cazador.

No one was going to die for Eisenhower Mills.

TO BE CONTINUED…