The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death Read online

  Without waiting for the negotiator to reply Argosi closed the link. Turning his two hostages towards the open roof access he pushed them forward.

  “Let’s go take a look-see, shall we boys?”

  ***

  The four-man SWAT element, standing two to a side of the aircraft on the air step bar running underneath each open hatch of the VTAL-11, acknowledged the go order. They’d been circling a few blocks out from the “Sky Tower Hotel” at tree top level on the side not visible from the Greshold penthouse. All four leaned in close to the fuselage as the pilot accelerated the aircraft racing above the streets startling the mid-afternoon traffic. The aircraft made nearly 100 knots as the stem of the building filled the windscreen. All four leaned forward as the VTAL-11 nosed up to almost vertical for what seemed like an eternity, at least to the SWAT members pancaked by the centrifugal force.

  As a group, they probably thought the pilot was overdoing it, or was genuinely frightened about getting shot. Either way, the team was going to be on the rooftop fast. As the aircraft crested the top of the hotel, it flared as the pilot expertly slowed it a few feet above an outer edge and rotated ninety degrees hovering just above the surface out of sight of the roof door. On cue, the assault team unfastened the quick release devices holding them and stepped off the air steps to the roof, each going to a prone position in one smooth well-rehearsed motion.

  The crew chief glanced at the black uniforms laying prone, counted four and yelled “clear” into his mic. The pilot then slid the aircraft sideways perhaps less than two feet above the two SWAT officers that egressed on the roof edge side. Once clear of the roof he flattened the rotor pitch causing the VTAL-11 to drop like a rock as it nosed down to the nearly vertical and raced away.

  The empty VTAL-11 seeing the team now in position then came in fast, requiring the pilot to apply maximum pitch to the large ducted rotors to slow the aircraft. This also increased the ambient noise level that he hoped would confuse the bad guy or bad guys. As he slowed to a hover, he rotated the aircraft with the tail towards the roof door. He looked down at a screen which allowed him to view behind him from a small backup camera above the open rear ramp. Through it, he was able to see the four-man SWAT element stacked up on one side of the open doorway. He was grateful that they had gotten into position. He did not want to become a hostage as well.

  Argosi cocked his head as the bird approached. The whine of the engines and the rotor noise did not seem consistent. Did he hear a second aircraft? If so was it an observation bird, news gathering one or something else? Looking up the roof stairs, he could see the VTAL-11 settling to the pad as it rotated.

  Argosi pushed the assistant through the hallway door to the base of the stairs leading to the roof as he held the butler in front of him with his left arm, releasing him a moment as he swung the CAR-20 down the stairwell.

  Clear. Argosi eyed the landing below. The door was out of sight but he knew from the blueprints that one was there.

  He was also certain a whole army was stacked up behind it ready to kill him.

  Just feet from where Argosi and his hostages were situated and out of sight Sgt. Dave Leonard was number three in a four-man stack. The fifteen-year Federal Bureau of Investigations Police Officer and five-year SWAT veteran confirmed by hand signals, lest the bad guys have monitors to alert them to the faint but still detectable inner-team communications system, that his element was ready to go.

  Stacked up to one side of the open roof door the four-man team had one simple mission. Two of the members would grab the hostages while the other two would be the shooters. Leonard knew that the time for talking was over. As one of the shooters, the moment the bad guy was in his sights he would squeeze off a pair of rounds into the bad guy’s center mass and a third one into his head for good measure. Although the Intel indicated one bad guy, Leonard’s teammate, and additional designated shooter would deal with a second adversary if one appeared.

  Argosi seeing that everything was going according to plan got nervous. Were they really just going to let him walk to the aircraft and fly off? The route to the pad was clear He turned to go back to get Caroline, his principal hostage.

  Argosi paused for a moment. A sniper could be aboard a circling VTAL a ways out. It would be a difficult shot. From a moving platform having to identify a target and make the kill quickly. Argosi knew capable men existed out there who could do that. He pushed the button on his rifle opening the link to the negotiator. This time, Argosi let him get out a hello before he spoke.

  “If I see, if I even hear a second aircraft, I will kill her, got it?” Argosi hit the switch closing the link.

  Rather than going back for Caroline, he pushed the assistant to the base of the stairs leading to the roof door.

  “Walk up the stairs, go out the door a few feet and then turn around. Think you can handle that? Because if you fuck up this simple task they will be cleaning up pieces of your body off the strip for days.”

  Before the assistant could answer, Argosi shoved him up the first couple steps. Then fell back pulling the butler out in front of him, his CAR-20 resting on the butler’s right shoulder and pointed towards the open roof doorway. The assistant moved up the last step and then stepped out into the sunlight.

  In the “old days,” the light outside would have been an advantage to someone like him now in the shadows. But modern optics and gun sights mostly had eliminated that as a tactic.

  The assistant reached the top of the steps then went a few feet before turning around. The expression on the face of the man changed as he spotted the four-man swat team to his left just outside the doorway. The man’s eyes bulged as the assistant began to shake his head and began to back away. Argosi knew in an instant that there was a rescue team on the roof. He had no time to ponder how they got there as black-clad officers rushed to the man. The figure of Sgt. Dave Leonard suddenly obliterated his view as the officer swung around into the stairway.

  Leonard already had two pounds of pressure on the four-pound trigger as he brought the sights up to the man’s head. But the man he was looking at was one of the hostages, identifiable from the picture he had studied at the mission brief.

  More ominously though was the helmeted figure just to the left of the Red Dot sight on the hostage’s forehead from Leonard’s assault rifle. Hunched over the butler’s right shoulder, which acted as a firing support for the barrel, Leonard peered down the sights. He moved his rifle slightly to the left to acquire the bad guy.

  It was too late.

  If Leonard saw anything, it may have been the flash of illumination in the barrel of Argosi’s weapon as the round fired. But before it would even register in his brain the .223 caliber bullet had already smashed through his facemask just above and to the right of his left eye. At four-thousand-feet per second, the round flattened out as it impacted the skull. The kinetic energy set in motion an electrical charge which instantly heated the lead and copper composite material to near melting point. These enhanced rounds expanded out in a wide, jagged fashion slowing the round and thus transferring energy via a shock wave that opened a wide wound channel while dissipating its energy on its intended victim. This murderous efficiency ensured that all its power was used up before what was left of the bullet exited out of the victim, in this case into the back of Leonard’s helmet driving before it brain, blood and skull fragments though a large exit wound. A second round followed the first drilling its own wound channel into Leonard’s head although it mattered little since the first one had been efficient at turning the lights out.

  Argosi moved his left index finger to the switch on his rifle pushing it, sending the signal to the explosive device strapped to Caroline’s assistant. In an instant, the assistant vanished in a flash. Murderously, the pressure-wave propelling the thousands of steel ball bearings raced outward at thousands of feet a second. The two SWAT members attempting to rescue the hostage only a second before were cut to pieces. Chunks of their bodies blew off the roof.


  Seated in the air-conditioned comfort of his command post, Commander Eddie Hewitt spun from the monitor displaying the VTAL-11’s camera link at the sound of the explosion. He bit down on the unlit cigar in his mouth, crushing it as the chaos on the roof top 1000 feet above the CP spilled onto a side street just off the Strip.

  Some cabbie taking a fare to their hotel gaped in horror as the helmeted head of one of the SWAT members slammed into the hood of his cab and bounced onto the street. Others who moments earlier were just taking in the sights found themselves being plastered by pieces of burnt flesh and blood after hearing the loud explosion far above.

  At the moment Argosi detonated the explosive vest, the second designated shooter followed in behind Sgt. Leonard’s limp body. Before Officer Chris Perez could fire on Argosi the force of the explosion blew him clear, shredding his body as it had his comrades. Argosi brought up his rifle to sight in on the pilot’s head through the aircraft’s open tail ramp still resting on the pad. As the air pad was elevated a few meters above the roof, the VTAL-11 did not suffer the brunt of the explosion. Before he could fire the aircraft leaped more than lifted off the pad and nosed over, giving the pilot cover just before it dropped out of sight nose down over the edge. Argosi knew that the cavalry would now be coming. He pulled the butler back into the hallway with him from the stairwell. Letting go of the butler, Argosi dropped as the explosive charge on the door one landing below detonated. Reaching down to the pouch on his left hip, Argosi retrieved a Second Generation Thermite Grenade. He yanked the pin and flung it down the stairwell.

  Seconds later, a portal to hell opened up below. The grenade was not designed so much for its explosive power but for its ability to burn like a flare, but with heat intense enough to melt the metal stairs and the landing now engulfed in the four-thousand-degree inferno that it was producing. Within three seconds the stairwell became a torch from one landing below to the roof. Argosi slammed shut the Hallway door to hold back the flames, grabbed the butler and dragged him running back to the penthouse where he slammed the double door shut.

  Lt. Raymond Stuart stared in frustration at the flames in the stairwell that prevented him and the dozen assault officers from racing up the stairs to engage the lunatic keeping him from the golf course. It was a simple but elegant plan. The rescue team on the roof was to take out the bad guy and grab the hostages there while his primary element raced from below to deny him the ability to retreat into the penthouse and secure any hostages still there. Insertion of the roof team had gone perfectly with the heroic flying of the pilots and the choreographed ruse that allowed two roof landings without tipping off the bad guy or guys.

  That plan had been blown to bits, literally. Stuart wondered if any of the roof element had survived the blast and made it a priority to get medics up there. In the meantime, he had to move to the alternate breach point.

  “Compromise! Compromise! Compromise! Moving to alternate breach point!” Lt. Stuart screamed over the radio net as if anyone of the dozens of SWAT Officers did not know that everything had just gone to shit.

  One of those officers, Sgt. Steve Keyton, was already in place with his alternate breach team of six officers. Positioned in the stairwell at the opposite end and one level above Lt. Stuart’s main force, Keyton and his team were already on the penthouse level. They were stacked up just behind the door leading to the hallway with the penthouse around the corner at the far end of the floor.

  The door, like the one on the floor below the roof stairwell, had been jammed. Keyton had already affixed the breaching charge and was preparing to detonate it when Stuart ordered him over the net to hold his position. Keyton punched the wall.

  As the alternate team leader, he had two missions. When the main force assaulted, he was to breach and hold, denying the enemy an escape route. Or secondly, in the case of a compromise like now, he was to lead a second assault team to the objective.

  Depressing the button on his assault rifle that opened the communication net, he stated “10-9?” Code for “repeat the order.” Stuart’s voice, huffing as he was racing down the hall one level below him, came over the net, telling him to standby for the primary element.

  Keyton Looked to his assistant team leader who came over the inner team net urging Keyton just to breach and go, Keyton shook his head.

  “No.”

  Sgt. Steve Keyton was a cop’s cop, but he was also a good soldier. He had to believe that Stuart knew something that he did not and that prompted the change in the rules of engagement or ROE. His team waited. He used the time to wonder if his buddy, Sgt. Leonard and the other officers he knew on the roof survived the blast.

  Argosi raced back into the room with the butler in tow. Caroline stared back at him expressionless.

  “I was hoping you’d be dead by now,” she said as she turned to look back out the window.

  “Well darling, it’s time for plan B, and there is little time left I’m afraid.”

  Leaving the butler standing in the foyer, Argosi raced to Caroline and grabbed the dining room chair she sat in, held by the industrial tape. He spun it forty-five degrees, so the back was towards the window. He then took his right foot and placing it between her legs at the edge of the seat he gave a strong push which caused her along with the chair to fall backward landing on the angled-out window with a thud.

  Shocked by falling back against the window she looked to her right and gasped for a second as she looked straight down to the street level 1000 feet below. Recovering her composure quickly she blurted out.

  “Is that supposed to frighten me? These windows are bullet proof, hell they’re rocket proof.” Caroline said recovering some of her composure.

  “Maybe so, but I bet the frames are not,” Argosi responded as he removed from a cargo pocket a roll of what looked like duct tape but was much thicker.

  Caroline squirmed as he unrolled the material and attached its adhesive side to the frames of the window. Completing the square he took a small black rectangular device identical to the one he’d attached to the bomb vest. Her eyes went wide.

  “No! Don’t do this! We can work something out!”

  The LED lights came to life on the black controller.

  “Take him!” she said motioning towards the butler who remained stoic. “Show them that you are serious!”

  Argosi ignored her as the artificial voice once again told him that the system was armed. He laughed at the frightened butler.

  “You really should find a better place to work.”

  The man nodded in quick agreement.

  Argosi stepped back. “Are you sure that you don’t want to have dinner and a drink later?”

  “Fuck you, Argosi!”

  Argosi chuckled as he depressed the button detonating the explosive strips that disintegrated the metal frame of the window and other fasteners holding it in place.

  The noise deafened Caroline. Worse was the fall. As she raced downward still strapped to the chair, she felt herself rotating over backward so that she lost sight of the ground below. Not knowing when she would hit, since she was only able to see the sky, was nerve racking as the seconds ticked by.

  Slowly, her body still strapped to the chair rotated backward until she was inverted. The horizon came back into view, then the ground... no longer so distant. It raced up to meet her. Her face impacted the street first. Not that it mattered if she felt anything it was over before her brain could process it. Still she had to endure the agony of the anticipation. The force splattered her body and shattered the fine wood chair into splinters over a few dozen meters.

  Lt. Stuart and his primary assault team dashed up to Sgt. Keyton’s position. The LT hissed over his raised rife. “Keyton, stay back now. No time for lone wolfs. We’ll breach and assault. You just follow us.”

  Keyton could not believe what he had just heard. Valuable, irreplaceable time lost so that Stuart could have the glory? Stuart’s reputation among the SWAT teams was tenuous at best. A desk jockey most of his career,
the LT only took this assignment because he was a perennial ticket puncher. A little combat action would look good on his resume.

  Stuart had big shoes to fill, and he was apparently trying to make an impression on both the men and his boss. The former SWAT commander was much loved and had proven himself time and again on hundreds of operations.

  Keyton took a knee. “What a cluster fuck!” He detonated the breaching device and ground his teeth as Stuart led the officers in a charge to the penthouse. Some small part of him wished that a bad guy would take Stuart out.

  Keyton did not even bother to trail the team. He just sat down with his guys and turned on some music. The explosion that Argosi used to take out the window told him that it was over. No one left to rescue; the bad guys had figured a way to escape or had killed themselves and the remaining hostages.

  Argosi heard the breaching of the stairwell door just before firing the explosive charge that sent Caroline to make what was now an indentation in the street. Argosi knew he had only moments to escape. He hoped everything worked as it was supposed to, as he had no time to go through a checklist.

  Argosi backed up to the foyer of the penthouse. Hearing the footsteps in the hall he wasted no time as he sprinted towards the blown-out window opening. As the double door of the penthouse blew open Stuart raced to bring his weapon to bear on the figure who leaped through the window, dropping from Stuart’s sight before he could fire his weapon.

  As Argosi reached the threshold of the window frame, he dove head first through the opening. He thrust his arms out in front of him clutching his CAR-20. Moving his left index finger to a switch on the weapon he pressed it and another in quick succession.

  The back of his black backpack popped off revealing two canisters that then swung out and away from his body. The canisters ignited, and he was accelerated forward and upward with a G-Force that he wasn’t quite ready for. The two gyroscopically controlled rockets shot him upward and forward in a shallow arc.