Sunspritz

1

The man both parties were watching was a man named Ralph.
‘Ralph what?’ People would ask him.
‘Ralph none-of-your-fucking-business.’ he would reply, a name may get you killed, but a surname kills your family.
Ralph didn’t like this, he didn’t like this at all. He didn’t like the rain. He didn’t like who he was going to meet, didn’t like what he was doing it for, didn’t like the risk his life was in, and he didn’t like the whole goddamn operation.
But cooperate was the only thing Ralph could do, it was this or picking up soap at the county jail for the next 10 years. And at least this way had a reward.
And it was a nice reward.
Fifty thousand dollars,
And a new name, house, and maybe even a dog.
He would have all the protection he needed for as long as he wanted.
Life would be sweet.
His nerves jumped him out of his day-dream when he heard the engine of a car coming closer. Usually this wouldn’t worry him, but this car was moving slowly, it was searching.
For Him.
Act cool Ralph, just act real cool.

*

The man in the window smiled as he watched, through the sights of his silenced Barrett M82A1A all-powerful sniper rifle, the two men stop the car, and his target smile and step forward. The rain was beating harder now, and in the distance, lightning lit up the sky, with a twelve second delay before the thunder came…
BLLAAMM!
It was loud and furious.
Another flash.

“Every second between the lightning and the thunder is how many miles away the storm is…does that make you feel any better?”

BLAAAMM!
The sound took the assassins mind off the words
A dead mans words…
With his mind back on work, now all that the assassin needed was the signal. And through his scope he could see his targets smile waiver ever so slightly, his nerves were obviously shot to shit. He was almost as obvious as the policemen around him. The assassin contemplated what must be going through his preys mind… just before it came.
The signal.
The only sound the rifle made was a small spit, before Ralph’s head exploded


*


It was stunning.
One minute, Moore had been observing the informants posture for tell-tale signs of anxiety before- POP! The guys head was gone, replace by a bleeding stump, his neck.
But Moore reacted quicker than the rest, and within seconds he was spluttering down the radio, barking orders.
“This is Unit One! Call in! Did anyone get a visual?! Over.”
“Unit Two, negative. Over.”
“Unit Three, negative. Over.”
“Unit Four, affirmative, visual on sniper on third floor of the ‘Sunrise’, repeat, sniper on the third floor of the ‘Sunrise’ over.”
“Copy that Unit Four, take Unit Three and cover front and back exits then call Backup, make sure they send a S.W.A.T Team. Unit Two, cover us, these guys may be armed. Over and out.”
Immediately his words went into action, as a man an a woman by a bus stop went straight for the hotel, quickly accompanied by a couple of bums by a burning barrel, passing an elderly couple supposedly “window-shopping”, who, in turn, took up defensive positions on either side of the suspects car.
The rookie turned to him, wide-eyed with a mixture of wide-eyed fear and excitement.
Jesus, I don’t have the time for this, thought Moore.
“Ok kid, standard procedure. We go in, book ‘em, check the car for weapons or a possible third party, and then move to the hotel, got it?”
“Think so..”
“Ok lets go!”
Moore got out first, his gun ahead of him as soon as he was out the door. The rookie did the same, but his hands shook as he held it in front of him. They rushed toward the two men, guns raised through the rain. As soon as they were noticed, Moore yelled.
“FREEZE! L.A.P.D! GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND KEEP YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!”
The two men did so just as the officers arrived. Moore aimed his gun up at the third floor window, ready for the sniper whilst the rookie rubbed-and-cuffed the suspects.
“Done Sir!” the rookie piped up.
“Good.” Said Moore, his eyes never leaving the window. “Now check the car, do it slowly, bonnet first, move down the left side, to the trunk, then back up the right side. Okay?”
“Uh.. Yeah, think so Sir…”
“For fucks sake stop “thinking so” and start “knowing so”. Doubt will get you killed.”
“Understood, thank you sir.”
The newbie moved slowly, his gun raised in front of him with one hand and his flashlight in the other, from the bonnet to the front-passenger door, then the back door, then to the trunk.
“Sir! Is it wise to pop the trunk?”
“Whaddya mean ‘Is it wise’?”
“Well, I mean.. what if there’s a bomb?”
“FOR FUCKS SAKE JUST OPEN THE GODDAMN THING! THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME TO ASK ME QUESTIONS!!!”
“Yessir, sorry.”
The rookie opened the trunk, and after a brief moment closed it. And came back down the other side of the car.
“All clear sir!”
“Great.” Moore grabbed his radio. “Unit two, all clear, will maintain cover position until you have apprehended the suspects…”
Within five minutes they were running towards the hotel.
*
When they entered, Unit Four was waiting outside. It consisted of two men, Richards and Evans, good cops. And currently both men, guns aimed at the floor, were gently calming an old woman and a mother of one by informing them that everything was under control, but unfortunately they couldn’t leave the hotel. Moore swept past them, not even pausing when he shot Evans a question.
“Where’s the manager?”
“We don’t know sir, we were hoping he’d come down when the receptionist called him but she didn’t get through.”
“How many rooms on each floor?”
“Fifteen altogether, five on each floor.”
Sirens flared up in the distance.
“Did you call for a S.W.A.T?”
“’Course, but there’s been a crash on Elevoret Boulevard, big mess, some kid rode his bike into a tanker, which of course tried to brake, and upturned, igniting the-“
“Yeah ok I get the picture. Well what’s the E.T.A?”
“Twelve minutes, with luck.”
Shit…
“What about helicopters?” said the rookie
“In this weather? Not a chance in hell. No we’re gonna have to evacuate the building and isolate the threat… here’s what I suggest, move everyone to the diner across the street, put the blinds down and keep them in the kitchen. Bring the suspects to the same area, wait, no, leave them. They’ll probably provoke a panic. Ok, so Unit Two will maintain its position, Unit three will do the same, Evans will usher people to the diner where Richards will keep guard. The rookie and I will move door to door and evacuate people while searching for the killer, is that clear?”
“But what happens if the Sniper comes downstairs and says you evacuated him?” asked Richards.
“That wont happen, because I’ll clear every room by number, and tell the occupants to bring the key, if the occupant has a key which matches their description and room number then they can leave. Agreed?”

*

Six minutes later they were on the second floor, second room, a hispanic couple with a child. A further two minutes later they were on the fifth room, an old white male, alone. Within Eight minutes since starting the ascent, they were on the top floor.
Here they slowed, they had to be quieter, so that if the Sniper was still planning his escape, they could fool him into thinking he still had time.
They approached the first door, and Moore quietly picked the lock. Took a step back, and kicked it open, catching the handle in one hand before it hit the wall, and his gun raised in the other.
The two stoned Chinese teens were sent downstairs, they hadn’t made a sound, probably because they were too stoned and scared to scream.
The second door was empty. An entirely vacant room.
They rounded on the third.
Using the same tactic as before, they burst in. the half naked man jumped backwards in shock. His trousers were on, but it was obvious from the inflatable doll on his bed that he’d been spending some prime time by himself. He was cleared, and he left quietly, as both the rookie and Moore came to the last door.
Outside they heard the noises from within… a hushed whisper. A silent prayer, or a psychos rambles.
“I’ll kill ‘em… I swear it I’ll kill em all.. all for you baby yeh…”
“This is the L.A.P.D, we have you surrounded and we are about to enter. Throw down your weapons and put your hands on your head, failure to comply will result in us having to open fire. Is that understood?”
A pause.
Then, a sing-song voice called out two words.
“Cooome iiiiin”
Moore stepped back and kicked the door in, smashing the lock, immediately he rolled, and, upon seeing the killer with his rifle aimed at the door, fired two shots to his chest which blew him off his seat.
They stood there for a second… frozen… the rookie in the doorway, and him on the floor, both guns still raised, before the rookie started advancing forward.

*

The rookie crept forward cautiously, his eyes glued on the body. He moved around slowly, and then, when he had a full view of the body, his eyes suddenly widened with shock.
They didn’t widen because of any sort of fear of corpses, nor at the two bullet holes which were stained red on the killers chest. They didn’t widen at the old bullet hole, which rested firmly in the killers, wait, no, the managers head, nor at the speaker which fell out of his pocket, connected to a microphone somewhere which had beckoned them in.
No, they widened at the sound of a bullet passing through a mans skull, just before the sound of Moore’s body hitting the floor.
He spun around and he saw him, the man next door, the assassin, now in a black t-shirt and Kevlar breastplate with more holsters than Rambo…
and his gun levelled at the rookies face.
“Jesus Christ...” The rookie whispered…




2






“YOU SCARED THE HELL OUTTA ME!!!”
The assassin smiled, and quickly slipped his silenced SIG Sauer into one of his waist holsters.
“That was the plan. How much time do we have?” he said as he went over the dead cops body, taking the magazines for his 9mm..
“Approximately 15 Minutes before the C-4 in the trunk explodes and about 30 seconds before the S.W.A.T teams arrive.”
The assassin paused.
“What the fuck? Dynamo gave you C-4? In 15 minutes?! Jesus-”
“- Would probably love it if we both died now so lets piss the grumpy fart off and get going.
“…. Fine. You’ve got the valuables?”
“Oops, no I left the bomb with them… oh well.”
The assassin didn’t laugh, he just picked up his gear from the dead hotel manager, and walked over to the window.
“Shit… did you really need to do this to them?” said the ‘rookie’ looking at the to dead men.
The assassin answered the question with a question.
“Are you done?”
The assassin picked up his quadruple-layered suitcase in one hand, and a silenced MP5 in the other, and they left the room.
“Hey Magnum” The assassin addressed the ‘rookie’.
“What?”
“For a minute there you acted as though you enjoyed having a gun in your hands.”
“I swear Angel, in a minute your gonna have one up yo-“
But they both froze at the same moment, upon hearing the same sound. It was the sound of a van pulling up, opening its doors, and a voice repeating something.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Angel and Magnum looked at each other, as if both assessing their situation. Then, before Angel could say anything, Magnum, whilst putting on his metal-studded gloves, turned to him smiling, and said:
“Race ya!”
And with that he disappeared.
Angel was left alone, so he reconsidered his situation.
It took him three seconds to reach a conclusion.

*

Magnum ran.
He sped down the stairs and hopped the banister, landing on the first floor, which he regretted instantly as soon as he came to a stop at the feet of three L.A.P.D officers. Thankfully they weren’t S.W.A.T hence they had no Kevlar or armor, and he quickly brought two down with a sweep of his heel. As he came up, still spinning he delivered a strong uppercut to the third guy’s gut, knocking him out on impact. When the other two officers managed to get to their feet they were alone. Magnum was gone.

*

The S.W.A.T team rushed up the stairs all armed with Sig-SWAT 551A assault rifles, but were immediately stopped on the first floor by some beaten up guards. At this point they split up. Six men went upstairs, Alpha Team.
The other six search the first floor for the assailant of the officers, Bravo team.
*

Alpha team ascended to the second floor slowly, guns raised and eye’s peeled.
He followed their movement across the hall slowly; the laser-sightings on the bottom of each of their guns drew beads everywhere, like a disco.
Angel watched through the thermal scope of his Steyr AUG high-velocity rifle, he was facing them at a slanted angle, but it didn’t matter, they couldn’t see him. Alpha team picked up speed as three of them moved down the small corridor, whilst the other three secured the stairs.
The three on the corridor cleared each room quickly, tactically covering each others back at all times while never leaving one place unchecked. They slowed when they reached the last room, so that they were hunched on their knees but just before they got there they froze.
The leader looked downwards at the wire below him, it was stretched, taut, and on either end was a-
The mans eyes went wide as he looked at the porcelain container, which he knew was full of ball-bearings imbedded in a 16 pound wad of C4.
Both plates were facing him.
“HOLY SHIT! This guys got Claym-”
His head snapped back as three bullets drove right through a nearby wall and straight into his skull, causing him to slump forward onto the wire.
Neither of the other men saw the M18A1 “Claymore” directed mines detonate.
But they both felt it, and were killed instantly, their bodies reduced to writhing bloody messes within milliseconds as hundreds of ball bearings ripped through them.

Angel was already behind an up-turned table and breaking down the Steyr as soon as the first S.W.A.T fell.
About ten seconds after the Claymores exploded Angel was up on his feet with his .357 Magnum in one hand and an IMI “Desert Eagle” in the other and, leaving the briefcase on the floor, he ran out the room firing.



Bravo unit went quietly to the first room.
They had done this kind of thing many times before, a simple procedure, enter, sweep, then exit. Each man immediately sighting a side of the room as they entered. Nothing too complicated so it was done quickly. But when they looked across the third room, the rock posters, the pool table, the huge T.V,
They didn’t expect to hear an explosion upstairs.
And that’s where Magnum had the advantage.
He stepped out of the darkness when they all turned to the door, and quickly bore down on the first man with a snooker cue, smacking him over the back, then with one arm behind the S.W.A.T’S back to support him, he quickly span the Assault rifle with the other, and brought the barrel under the gap of his helmet, pointing at his neck.
The other members of the team didn’t notice the swift movement as they’re ear pieces were filled with the screams of Alpha unit. So it took a while for them to hear the soft yet scared voice of their point-man saying:
“Bravo unit, turn around, do it slowly, lets not scare this guy…”
The team turned around as one man, and were met by the sight of the suspect, with one of their own machine-guns pointed at the point-man’s neck.
No-one said anything for 5 seconds, then Magnum spoke.
“If you want him to live, then throw your weapons to the floor on your far right, do it now.”
They all hesitated, with most situations like this, a quick shot through the chin will take out cerebral cortex through the back of the head, ceasing any involuntary movement such as the pulling of a trigger, with a small fatal side-effect.
But no-one could get a clear shot without risk to their partner.
They had no choice.
As one, their machine guns and pistols were thrown to the far right wall.
Magnum smiled.
And that was a mistake…
The SWAT he had on the ground sent his left hand to the magazine release of his rifle, and in two seconds the magazine clattered to the floor
He smiled at his victory but then noticed that only one of the guys hands held the M16, the other one held the officers own Sig Sauer P228 to his left ear.
“Nice try.” Magnum said pushing the handgun under the helmet and bringing it over his head, then standing him up and walking him over to the nearest team member.
He span him around and it was then, while in mid-spin, the SWAT member delivered a left hook to the guys face.
Well… that’s what he aimed for…
It actually hit the man’s gun, sending it spinning to the floor, and as one of them went to get it, he started attacking.
The first two went down the same way, a flurry of punches that took off their helmets and broke their noses, before grabbing something from their chests.
The third man wanted to give his colleague’s enough time to secure the weapon, so he sent a well-aimed kick at the assailant.
But Magnum was too fast.
The kick hit air as Magnum side-stepped it and caught the SWAT’s leg.
Putting one hand on the man’s chest, and another wrapped around his leg, keeping it in the air, Magnum swung the man with such force that he lifted off the ground and crashed into another of his men.
Magnum had successfully put 4 men down to the floor.
But it wasn’t enough. The other two swat members were scrabbling for their weapons.
And that was when the first grenade went.
The first man to go down suddenly buckled from his position on the floor as the smoke grenade attached to a pouch on his body armour exploded in a violent plume of grey smoke.
A milisecond later and the second victim did the same.
Magnum had taken the pins while they were sinking to the floor, and now the room was filling with smoke at such a rate the men fought frantically for their mask’s before the gas made them choke.
In two seconds they had lost all visibility except for what was directly in front of them. And when the smoke cleared, Magnum had gone.

Alpha team was in a nightmare.
Or what remained of it.
The two soldiers had barely got down as the metal whizzed overhead, killing the three in the corridor and wounding another on the stairs, who finally got up and then was mowed down again by this lunatic.
It was only them left.
Two men from a team of six.
They looked at each other in wide-eyed horror.
The two Alpha men were called Dillok and Walowski, and neither of them had ever seen such carnage in their lives.
Dillok immediately turned on his helmet microphone and screamed for more backup. But all he got was static and, strangely, feedback.
“Bravo, Bravo, come in now! We have some serious fucking casualties, four men are down! This guy has explosives and firearms, and he sure as hell knows how to use them.”
…
Nothing.
“Fuck it!” said Walowski, he moved over to the stairwell that led downstairs and yelled.
“Bravo we need you! We have men down!”
…
Still nothing.
“Mike, its not going to-” Dillok started over the helmet mike.
But he was cut short by the sound of two explosions and the yells of men, before silence.
The men looked at each other again, Dilloks shaking gun was still pointed at the stairwell leading up, and he could see his buddie’s bullet-ridden body just lying at the top of the stairs.
And for all the chaos and death that surrounded them, the thing they both hated most was the silence.
“Ok, this is it, that motherfucker has run down the corridor and gone in to one of the two rooms on the left, I’ll take the first, you take the second, focus all the time and.. uhh…-”
“-Tread carefully.” Said Dillok gravely as he spun round and aimed his Sig-SWAT up the corridor to the second room, Walowski came up behind him slowly and focused on the first door, still shaken to the core in what he was witnessing, but bound by training in his actions.
They crept like this all the way up the stairs, their eyes whipping down to their feet occasionally to look for more booby traps while having to ignore friends body parts. When they were at the top Walowski stood up and aimed up the hall, Dillok crouched and ran forward to the first door, whipping round to face the room inside with his gun raised… to find it empty. He gave the all clear sign and Walowski raced in front and turned into the second room when BANG his head exploded. Dillock whipped round behind him to where the shot came from and was faced with Angel who, quick as a flash, unsheathed the hunting knife on Dillock’s thigh and brought it with much force straight up, first through the bottom of- and then through the roof of – his mouth and into his brain.
It was over within seconds.


Angel pulled the knife out of the mans head and let him slump to the floor, he quickly gathered any extra ammo clips for the officers that were compatible with his Sig-Sauer and walked down the stairs, stopping only to pick up his briefcase along the way.
He ran down the stairs with his Desert Eagle raised, but he needn’t have bothered as all the S.W.A.T on this floor were coughing themselves senseless in a room to his right. He smiled and didn’t look at them again as he continued to the next flight, walking around the occasional unconscious officer that Magnum had left in his wake. He never understood why his brother only ever knocked them out, he had killed men before when they were Navy SEAL’s but not since their last mission together, after the worst he would do to someone was knock them out, gas them up and even beat them within an inch of their life, but he always stopped there.
Angel on the other hand looked at things rather differently. So much had been taken from him over the years that when it came right down to it he simply didn’t give a fuck anymore, and he still had plenty of rage to deal out to people. So rather then try to hide his rage, he harnessed it and became a successful millionaire by removing the intolerable for a reasonable fee.
So why-?… he wondered … -Am I doing the Mafia’s monkey work on a simple loose end?
He contemplated this inwardly, all the while walking carefully and calmly down stairs to the second floor, he stopped then and swung his gun round to the figure standing in front of the stairs.
It was Magnum. Angel let his gun sink and walked over to the corridor window as he asked his questions. He was neither surprised nor relieved to see his comrade alive, because he already knew that the Los Angeles Police Department had never really bargained for someone like Magnum, a man whose hands should be warranted as deadly weapons.
“They waiting?” Angel asked, nodding down the stairs in reference to the guards below.
“Yep.” Replied Magnum, who was looking at a fragment of mirror he had thrown like a knife into the wall at the bottom of the stairs, through it he could see the men at the end of the corridor waiting expectantly with their guns cocked and raised while yelling on their radio’s to the men suffocating on the fourth floor.
“They well-armed?”
“Yep”
They truly were, the S.W.A.T members were mainly carrying the Sig-Swats but a couple were packing two Ithaca 37 shotguns, which would help quickly with the decimation of any perp who tried to use the stairs.
Angel was quite for a moment as he silently but quickly went through his briefcase, reloading all of his weapons while he did and all the while counting down the minutes they had left to get out of this hell hole.
Four and twenty-one, four and twenty, four and nineteen… All the time, the seconds were dripping away and there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.
“All right, time to sort this out.” Angel said, picking up a grenade with a Chlorine-based explosive.
“Whoa, whoa! Are you crazy? Your gonna fry them and half the building along with them?”
“You got a better, non-lethal and time-conscious idea then?”
Magnum smiled. “As a matter of fact…”


The team below Magnum and Angel were edgy, very edgy. The entire investigation leading up to the arrest of the Decliano and the Fubrussi families had been compromised by these assailants, whoever they were, and now the apprehension and arrest of these individuals was botching up too. They’d lost contact with Alpha Team, who hadn’t sounded very peaceful at last transmission. Bravo had remained in contact but something had gone crazy for them on the fourth floor, they kept yelling about how fast the perp was and pretty soon were begging for backup in between coughing their lungs out.
It was clear to Sandelson, the squad leader, that there perps were armed and angry, but were not going anywhere, and with one team out of action and the other presumed dead he had cut off the second floor and barricaded the team halfway up the corridor aiming at the stairs. This gave plenty of space for the Negotiator to show himself to the men upstairs and try to coax them out before they were smoked out.
Till he arrived, they would just sit, wait and aim, these cop-killing pussy’s weren’t going anywhere, excluding prison or hell. But just to be sure he had surrounded the building and posted snipers on the rooftops. The snipers weren’t much help as they could only see into the apartments but he wanted to make sure that they didn’t try leaving through a window, at least not without a bullet or two in them.
He was confident he could finish this mission without losing another man and prayed to god that some of his team was still alive up there.
But then, just as he felt he was regaining the control of a situations he heard something coming from the stairs that chilled him.
If it had been footstep it wouldn’t have bothered him, guns would have fired and the fucks would have died no matter how many their were. But no, the sounds wasn’t footsteps, it sounded like bouncing, like throwing a baseball down some wooden stairs. That wasn’t far off actually, the stairs were wooden… but the things that landed about 3 yards away from the front of the barricade of men were not baseballs.
All three explosions happened at once.


The first was the lightest of the two grenades flung down the stairs, it was a flash-bang, a common military issue stun grenade that did exactly what the name implies with ferocity. The officers were completely blinded, a few thought for a second that it was a fragmentation grenade and that they were dead.
The second grenade had been a Electronic Disruption Grenade or an ED. It fragmented a millionth of a second after the flash-bang and sent up dozen of little strips of electro-magnetised metal, which sent the radio into total hell so no-one knew what was going on.
The third explosion however rocked the entire building, sending the officers straight on their faces and causing them to get up and run up the stairs as soon as they could to stop the suspects from using anymore explosives.
What they did not know however as they ran, stumbling, partially blind and deafened, up the stairs; was that the third explosion had blown a hole in one of the apartment floors upstairs, providing an escape route to the same apartment downstairs, the door of which was situated behind the barricade.
They slipped out of the corridor without anyone noticing.

The Officers in the lobby were buzzing, all of their guns aimed at the door, all of their triggers pulled back by an eighth of the inch that it takes to turn someone’s son or husband into a cold body in a drawer back at the precinct. They saw one of their men coming down, holding a SWAT over his back, the guy was obviously wounded or dead, judging by the explosions they heard.
The officer ran down the stairs yelling “OFFICERS DOWN!! THERES MORE OF THEM UP THERE WITH THAT FUCKING PSYCHO!!”
The Lieutenant who was there at the time ran forward yelling: “STAND DOWN!!” he helped the terrified officer carry the injured man down stairs. He recognised the officer as Moore’s new rookie, a kid who had joined them not so long ago, a transfer from a smaller precinct. It was unfair that this kid should see how awful this city can be in such a small amount of time, by the look of him he was still fresh from the training schools, but he had this look about him that spoke of an uncanny bravery, or at least that’s the way he had looked when he was assigned this case with Moore.
Now the rookie looked wrecked, he had pieces of plaster all over him, a bruise on his nose, and blood splattered here and there on his uniform.
“Report! Where is Moore and what the fuck is going on up there? My men haven’t been in contact since those explosions! Is there any severe structural damage?”
“Sir, Moore’s dead sir, that fucking psycho shot him, he ambushed us on the top floor and shot Moore before I knew what was going on, I pursued him down the stairs but all I found were bodies and this guy. I went past the standoff team on the second floor just as the grenades went. No structural damage, but a lot of mess, we need more men on this guy sir, he’s not going down easy.”
The Lieutenant looked sadly up the stairs thinking about how many good men had died because of one stupid informant. He was gonna nail this guy, if it was the last thing he did in his police career.
The rookie followed his eyes and started yelling. “Please don’t send me back up their sir, please! The other men know what they’re doing and this man is injured. I’ve-”
“-Done enough as it is, get that man to an ambulance then report to me when this is over.”


-To be continued (One day)