"Clayton's Request" Author: Hugo "Animal" Chikamori E-mail: hchikamori@yahoo.com Rating: PG-13 Classification: Animal/Liandra; Harm/Mac Spoilers: Summary: Clayton requests Animal's presence at a government function and things go completely insane. Disclaimers: WHITE HOUSE 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE WASHINGTON DC "Thanks for coming..." Clayton said as Liandra and I entered the time-honored building that many knew so well. Clayton had requested my presence at this government shindig. Lia had not wanted to go and had complained at the thought of having to deal with snotty Senators and ill-tempered Congressmen. However Clay had mentioned to Lia that Meg Austin (my ex- girlfriend) would be making an appearance there. That did it. My wife's eyes had glazed over and she was about two seconds from killing Clayton Webb in cold blood when I, at the risk of life and limb, intervened. Come to think of it, it would have been an interesting sight to see. Lia, my beloved, now stood beside me as we entered the building where this whole blasted event was to take place. She was in a shimmery electric blue evening gown that set off the highlights in her shoulder-length hair, let down because she knew I loved it that way. My Lia looked absolutely stunning as she smiled a brilliant smile at me. Whoever said good things come in small packages was right. She was my fiery southern belle and the love of my life. She had called this meeting a gathering of snobs and by the time two hours had gone by, I had come to agree with her. I had grown tired of seeing cranky old geriatric goats try to come on to my wife. I was about to suggest to her that we take our leave of this entire event when a slap on my back caused me to turn around with dire mayhem in mind for the slapper. It was Clay. I muttered, "The next time you want me to come to one of these State Department shin-digs, at least have some food that I can actually swallow." Then grabbed his lapel and yanked him closer. "And keep those bastards away from my wife. The last time I had a chance to be with Lia this evening, she told me she had two propositions from an eighty-two year old senator from the state of New Jersey, let alone half the officers at this shin-dig." I growled. "She nearly had to peel him off her arm with a salad fork!" As per decorum, I was in dinner dress whites, the tuxedo like cut of the uniform highlighting the four gold lace stripes, on the navy blue shoulder-boards, of a United States Navy Captain. As the carrier air wing commander (CAG) of CVW-8, I was required to be there. I hadn't wanted to be noticed, as there were other worthy individuals, more highly famous ones to be exact. Like Senator John S. McCain of the State of Arizona who had been a POW in Viet Nam, who was worthy of the praise and adulation heaped upon him, of all the members of this august assemblage. But the medal hanging around my neck, which I had worn at Clay's insistence and Lia's subtle urgings, prevented me from blending incognito into the crowd. The pale blue ribbon, the octagonal matching pale blue crest encrusted with white stars hiding the top of the small gold anchor holding the medallion, an upside-down gold star, inscribed in the middle with an engraving of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and justice, repulsing Discord. The nation's highest military award for bravery, acknowledging courage under fire, of actions above and beyond the call of duty. The medal presidents would forsake their presidency for; the Medal of Honor. But that didn't matter to me. One of my best friends had died that night on a SEAL extract helo out of North Korea on a hush-hush, tell-no-one mission. Me; I was just lucky to be alive. "Is Harm around." I asked, rather wishing that one of my friends was around to talk to, rather than having to trade comments on the state of the union with some bombastic Congressman Whosis from the Yippie-Ki- Yay State of Kansas. No such luck... "Actually he had other pressing concerns, Animal" Clayton Webb replied. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clay's wife, Sandy coming over to rescue my sweetheart from another relentless round of congressional B.S. "Is anyone around here, that I actually know?" I asked Clay pointedly. Just as I had asked that question, guess who would show up, but Metalman? "Howdy, Commander." Metalman grinned as he peered over at me. "I love the food here...it's absolutely great." Clay shot me an I- told-you-so look as he wandered off. By this time, my wife had come back over, thereby deterring several senators from making their approach. "I really want to get out of here...I'm so bored, I think I'm starting to melt into the background." Grumbled Lia as she leaned into my embrace. I chuckled, nuzzling her hair as she pushed her head against my uniform. "Clay..." I stated. "When can I actually disappear?" Clay muttered something, which Sandy interpreted. "I take it you can go someplace private, if you feel so inclined." She winked at Lia who blushed. "I know, it's extremely boring. I'm getting bored myself." It was just about at that point that my beautiful wife and I decided to take our leave and were both headed for the door, when shots rang out. Two Secret Servicemen ushering the President out the door slumped to the ground. Regrettably, I had to knock my wife to the ground to keep her out of the line of fire that was headed in our direction. "Keep your head down." Was all that I could say when the muzzle of a 9mm was pointed directly in my face. A Middle-Eastern accented voice was saying something in Farsi. I remembered from Mac's introductory quickie course in Farsi. Lia looked frightened and it was all that I could do to keep my own heart from racing. Staring down the barrel of a loaded gun was not my choice of fun things to do. The terrorist gestured with the muzzle of his gun. and shoved my wife back against another officer who was nearby. My captor yanked me away from my wife as my wife said, feelingly "I LOVE YOU." "I know..." I replied putting as much love as I could into those two words. She knew that I was up to something and that she should be ready for action if necessary. It was our favorite line from our favorite movie. "I have a bad feeling about this..." I muttered quoting another line, as I was led away from the company of my wife, reluctantly under gunpoint. The terrorist and I got to the staircase leading down into the bowels of the White House...into the situation room, where the terrorists had evidently taken a hold of. It was a situation that required tact. I was led into the situation room. < "Ahmad...you have returned with a captain..."> the leader of the terrorists gloated. < "Good work...Allah will reward you in Paradise"> 'That's exactly where you're going to end up...' I thought to myself. < "Take him outside and execute him."> The leader said. < "He will be our first statement"> I could not understand what the leader was saying, but I knew instinctively that it wasn't good. 'If the Secret Service shooters get him, I can get back in and try to do something about this entire mess.' I thought, thinking of my wife in these captors' hands and feeling a red-hot rage come over me like a wave of lava. As Ahmad took me up the staircase to the back door, which evidently was covered... I ducked under his gun hand, yanked his body towards me, as I slammed my elbow into his face. Slamming his head into the banister, he bounced back dazed. He had dropped the gun that he was covering me with, so we were about equally armed, or so I thought, when the creep pulled a wickedly long knife out of his pocket. Knives I could deal with. He slashed at me, as I dodged out of the way. Lunging at me, the terrorist made one fatal mistake. His momentum, as I dodged, I grabbed his arm, twisting him a one-quarter turn as he went screaming over the railing and impacted with a sick thud on one of the steps below. His neck was bent at an impossible angle so I knew he was dead. Picking up his semi-auto 9mm, I checked it to see that it was loaded. Now my next move was to see if I could free the hostages. My thought was 'Get to Metalman.' If I could find him, then the two of us could make life HELL for these terrorists. < "AHMAD!"> the voice of another terrorist said as he stepped out into the hallway. 'Oh...damn...' there went that element of surprise. Now these bastards knew exactly whom they were up against. There was a flurry of yelling in Farsi, which indicated that they knew that I was on the loose. They were sending two more creeps after me, so I knew that my time here was very limited. I headed up the stairs. Hiding my captured 9mm into my cummerbund, I reached the top door, looking out and slipped out, running right into Metalman. "Damn...am I glad to see you." I said. "So, what the heck have they done with Lia?" "She's still with the crowd. I just mentioned to them that my eyeballs were floating and that I was heading to the washroom." Metalman stated. "OK...think...buddy... I got one of them." I said looking down the stairs. "How many are there." "Easily, thirty...in the ballroom," "There was ten down in the situation room." I said to Metalman as he looked at me. "Including the bastard that took me downstairs to meet their high Caliph." "Was?" was Metalman's curious enquiry. "Yeah... 'Was'..." I said. "There's nine now. What are their weapons?" Metalman looked past my shoulder "They must've gotten into the weapons lockers. They've got HK MP5K's...silenced too." "Did the President get away?" I asked. "Yeah...three of his secret service guys bought it though, but they got him out." Was Metalman's short reply. By this time, we both heard the two men behind us in the stair well. From the sounds of it, they were carrying heavy ammunition. MP5s from the sound of it. "Seems like we're overmatched." I said sarcastically to Metalman. "But how're we going to get anything to fight with?" Metalman grinned. "Besides...who wants to live forever?" "Me for one..." I retorted sarcastically... "But you're right, we do need weapons. Ever fired an MP5 before?" "Once...when I was playing duty security officer on base...Had to qualify with one of those nice little toys." Metalman said as he scanned the staircase. I drew my captured weapon and sighted it on the first head that popped around the corner of the bottom of the stairs...blowing his brains out the back of his head. He slumped back, knocking his buddy off-balance. Then Metalman charged them, grabbing up his MP5 and hosing the second terrorist. I grabbed up the second. "Feel like playing SEAL?" I quipped as I jacked back the slide of the MP 5 jacking a round into the firing chamber. "Time for some payback." "Shall we free the captives first, or shall we take the fight to the head honchos first." Metalman said. "Let's free the captives." I decided. If I took the fight to the head honchos, they might be able to get a message out that might tell the rest of the motherless savages to kill the rest of their hostages. But how to lure them into a confrontation? Metalman and I slipped out into the ballroom. We traveled along the wall until we found another hostage-taker. I came up behind him, wrapped my arms around his neck and snapped it. He slumped back without a sound and we had a third MP-5 as a weapon. My eyes scanned for my wife. I saw that one of my weapons had a nice ugly black silencer. I heard a scream, looking up to see my wife being dragged over to a table. My mind instinctively saw red. Lia was going to be raped if I didn't do something. When my eyes saw the terrorist's hand going for my wife's dress covered breast, I grabbed my silenced MP-5 bringing it up automatically to my eye, sighted and fired. The silenced round struck the terrorist in the forehead, as my wife screamed, as the terrorist clutched at her dress and slumped dead to the ground. The brain and cranial matter had decorated a wall as that 9mm slug fired at subsonic speed entered the terrorist's face. It also decorated Lia's dress. It was a write-off. 'Oh well', but at least Lia was safe. Now the terrorists were in a quandary, they didn't know where the bullet was coming from. I grinned a nasty grin as I got ready to find my next target. Metalman whispered "Hey...that was a good shot, but what if they start shooting hostages now. We're not Rainbow, y'know." "Well, then..." I stated sarcastically, "Then we'll just have to do it real quiet-like." I said. Then I noticed that Senator John S. McCain was standing there quietly beside me. "Sir..." I said. "I need your help." "Certainly, Captain." Sen. McCain replied. "These bastards need to know that they can't do this without retaliation in kind." I passed him one of the MP-5s. "Ever fired one of these before, sir?" I asked him, grinning a feral grin. "No...son, but I can certainly learn how in a hurry." We cleared out the ballroom, as quickly as possible. Each of the terrorists succumbed with barely a grunt of surprise as a 9mm silenced round brought them face to face with Allah. But one of the last two terrorists brought a woman up to the front of the room and said. "I have Senator McCain's wife up here. I will kill her if the people who have been killing our people do not show themselves." Sen. McCain gasped. His wife was in deadly danger. I grunted to Metalman and to the other twenty-six people in the group we had assembled. "Find the other terrorist." "I've got him." Said Metalman, "He's at my ten o'clock, checking out the crowd. I'll take him." "I've got the shooter holding the Senator's wife." I caught Lia's eye. She looked at me in surprise as I mouthed the word "SCREAM." She let out a banshee-shriek...as both Metalman and I stepped out of the crowd. Metalman fired one round into the terrorist scanning the crowd and I slammed one round directly into the forehead of the terrorist holding Sen. McCain's wife. "Room's clear." I grunted. Lia came up to me and kissed me passionately. I put the terrorist's weapon in her hand and said. "Metalman, Lia, Senator. We're going to go rub those bastards out at the source." Senator McCain nodded agreement as he jacked a 9mm round into his weapon. MUCH LATER Harm and Mac had arrived on the scene right after all the hostages that had been released had been taken away to the hospital. All that remained was the morgue van coming to take away all those terrorists who had made their final meeting with Allah. "Any idea on what happened here?" I asked tensely as I gathered Lia who was now dressed in a hospital orderly's smock and pants as her evening gown was now completely a mess and would probably be tossed in the trash or incinerated. "The terrorists tried to make it their ultimate statement in trying to capture as many of the top leaders as possible in the United States Government. If they wanted to do that, they succeeded." RADM AJ Chegwidden said. "I don't know..." I said out loud. "Could they have had something more in mind? Maybe they tied something into the computer system... could they have done that?" I asked a question that many people couldn't answer. Except one. "If I can get to a computer system, I can find out what they did." Lia glared at me, as I turned around, jaw dropping open in shock. "Meg?" I said. "Yes...Hugo...it's been a long time." Meg said, her eyes still showing a faint trace of affection. Lia was staring daggers in my direction and my back felt like it was the widest archery target in the world. "Not long enough..." My beautiful wife said sarcastically as she stared daggers at Meg. "We'll have time for reunions later...right now, we have to find out what these terrorists have done to the situation room." One of the soldiers, a US Army Master Sergeant brought over a Macintosh G4, one of the most powerful portable note-book computers, so powerful, the US State Department put a 'don't sell it to anyone not a friendly country.' Meg sat down to look at the computer system. "OK...I need a T7 Link to the situation room." "Done, ma'am." Said the Master Sergeant. "It's ready for you to work on it. We have all the schematics of the building and the wiring, so all you have to do is call up each floor." About fifteen minutes later, they found out what had happened. The terrorists had wired 200 tonnes of C4 into the building's wiring. Meg had found the timers...which were wired into the C4 and linked to a computer. These bums had really worked this building over. I looked at Meg, "Can you stop the timer?" "Not without getting a closer look at it." Meg said. "We have to see what the wires are..." She said to the Colonel. "I need to get a bomb squad and some bomb defusing gear plus another bit of protective clothing...I'm going down to take a look." "You're risking your life...Meg." I said. "That thing could go off and you'll be standing at ground zero." "I know I will..." Meg said. "But it's the only chance we have, sir." "Meg...are you sure...that it's the only way?" Mac asked. Meg nodded soberly, pointing at the black box at the very corner of the screen. A read out showed what the fuse was for. It grew very silent in that van. The device was a fuse for a thermonuclear weapon. All that C-4, we noticed was shaped inward towards a little box...a little box of plutonium. They had wired the entire situation room into a gigantic thermonuclear warhead with ground zero being in the heart of Washington DC. And the timer clicking down to zero. If someone didn't do something soon, we would all be seeing a mushroom cloud over Washington DC. The only problem with this was the fact that the box of plutonium was sitting on top of a C-4 trigger, which would explode, if the box was moved. And if the wires were cut, the rest of the C-4 would explode causing the chain reaction to set off the thermonuclear explosion. And it was all set to a computer-linked trigger. And computers ran on electricity. "Meg...tell the city to shut off the electrical power." Lia said, all of a sudden. I stared at her. "What?" Meg stammered. "What do you mean by that?" You said the wiring was hitched to the computer, right?" Lia snapped. "Tell the city to turn off all the electricity so that there is no electricity anywhere in the city. Trust me on this. Just do it." Meg shrugged her shoulders and made the call. Then we all watched the timer. If Lia was wrong in her bet, we'd all be vaporized. The timer went through its minutes, fifteen to be exact, but to all of us, it seemed like an eternity. As the final second ticked off, we all said a quick prayer. It would be a bright light and an overwhelming heat. It would all be over for twenty million people in the city of Washington DC. But nothing. It worked. The cool calm star-lit night was still visible, the hustle and bustle of the city streets unabated. We all stood there for a immeasurable moment and then we all breathed a sigh of relief. Lia sank into my arms shaking like a leaf. I kissed her hair. Meg looked over, an expression of sadness on her face, but she knew that she had lost me a long time ago. Clay came over...unaware of the drama that had just taken place. "Well... that proved to be one heck of an evening." I just said to the rest of them. "Lia and I are going home to a nice warm bath and a good night's rest." Lia leaned into my embrace and we departed. A normal end to what had been a heck of an abnormal day. THE END.