Short Story: The Female of the Species

She checked her watch again; T minus 20 seconds. She’d been in place for six minutes and she was impatient to begin. There was no thought of whether the other three were in position; she had enough faith in them to expect nothing less than complete success on this mission. Nevertheless, she had enough experience to beware overconfidence. Once they moved in, they would only have a few minutes to take down the few perimeter guards and get Cassie inside, to the nearest terminal. That was going to be the biggest challenge; if a single guard managed to raise the alarm…well, then they’d have the whole base to deal with. And not on the terms she’d like either. Extraction was not an option unless the mission had been completed. As with so many previous missions, they all had to be perfect. Anything less would get them killed. Or worse, captured.

At exactly 26 minutes past 3 in the morning, the power for the electrified fence went down, and 3 grey clad figures emerged from the darkness and made their separate ways to the perimeter fence. They stealthily made their climb over the perimeter wall and were inside the facility by 26 minutes and 54 seconds past 3. At 27 minutes past, a soft crackling noise indicated that the fence’s power was back on. Though the three women had no reason to doubt Cassie’s ability to take down the power and delay the alarm, they all breathed a sigh of relief that the first phase had gone off without a hitch.

There were eight guards to deal with before the three women could send the signal for Cassie to join them. They had chosen their points of entry with the split of the guards in mind; both Lucy and Clare were to take down two guards apiece. This left Amanda to deal with the remaining four; one patroller and three gate guards. The Captain had been insistent that Amanda do the lion’s share in phase 2. This had annoyed Lucy to an extent; so Amanda had screwed up on the last mission. Everyone made mistakes, but as far as the rest of the team were concerned, Amanda atoned for hers by making sure all 6 of them got out alive. Yes, Nicky was still in hospital but in a few months she’d be back and good as new.

The Captain, though impressed with Amanda’s initiative subsequent to that (admittedly horrendous) cock-up was furious at the lapse in protocol that had led to it. This, Lucy reasoned, was her way of making Amanda prove her professionalism. “And if she doesn’t and winds up dead, will the Captain be sorry? Or will she just shrug and take on another team member?” Lucy, annoyed at herself for the distracting thought, shook her head to clear it. Amanda was one of the best Special Ops soldiers that Lucy had ever worked with. They could have told her to take down all eight and she’d probably still manage it quicker than with all five of them working together. But Nicky wasn’t here, and the Captain was co-ordinating this from the Eyrie. And so the three would have to do their tasks without the additional support. So be it.

Despite Lucy’s faith in Amanda’s ability, it was Clare who made the first contact. As the fence’s power had returned, one of her two guards had heard the crackle and made his way to the fence. Clare froze into perfect stillness as he passed her by without noticing, his eyes fixed on the fence. With a sweep of her arm executed with a ballerina’s grace, she took her Glock from it’s holster on her shoulder, brought it to bear and fired a single shot. She was close enough that the silencer had minimal effect on her aim, and the guard dropped to the ground. Working quickly in case anyone else had heard him hit the floor, she moved him into the shadows of one of the outlying facility buildings. She whispered “First contact, complete” into the microphone under her ski-mask.

Amanda smiled as Clare’s voice came through her earpiece. The others tended to write Clare off as lacking the killer instinct. “Too methodical and too damn slow” was the main complaint. Amanda on the other hand, never doubted Clare’s ability for a second. So she was methodical? Then she made fewer mistakes. And Amanda had recently had cause to really appreciate getting it right without any errors. Now Clare had just proved that she could be as good as making snap decisions as she was making them with the luxury of time on her side. All Amanda had to do was the work of two women against four Spetznaz trained guards. Simple, right?

She dealt with the patroller first. For all his Special Forces background, weeks of idly patrolling what had become the world’s most boring perimeter must have dulled his edge. She had gotten both arms into place before he even registered her presence, and the compression of his carotid artery made for a silent death. As she lowered him to the floor, she whispered “Second contact complete”. Almost instantaneously, Clare’s voice was heard “Se…third contact complete”.

In spite of herself, Lucy was impressed. She’d always regarded Clare as being fundamentally unsuited to field ops. As Intel, she was second to none but Lucy had misgiving about trusting her with the simple task of killing. It seemed her doubts had been misplaced. Once again, the Captain’s decisions were the right ones. The Captain was always right it seemed, and that fact provoked a faint, nebulous sense of irritation in Lucy.

Happily, she had an immediate opportunity to deal with it; both of her patrollers had met on their circuitous route. Amanda and Clare’s kills had made it imperative that these two not live to walk their patrol again. Rather unprofessionally, both had stopped to exchange a few words. This gave her a couple of seconds to decide on how she was going to do this. She couldn’t give either man a chance to shout or raise any sort of alarm that would lead to the alarm going off. And good as she was, it would be arrogant in the extreme to assume that she could get two perfect shots off in the short time it would take either man to draw breath and make a noise.
With the speed and grace that was her norm, she set a simple trip-trap. A volley of darts, loaded with Ketamine, would launch from the small box she positioned at chest height and at least one would hit the target’s flesh. She retreated back to the few shadows that the numerous floodlights in the facility grounds allowed, and waited.

The men finished their final chat, and made their way onwards. Their pace was maddeningly uneven; by the time that the first guard had triggered the trap, the second was at the very edge of her vision. Though they generally worked without night sights, Lucy found herself wishing for one as she fired the shot simultaneously with the darts finding their target.

She should have spared her wish for another time; a red Rorschach blot blossomed on the ground in front of the man as he fell, looking for all the world like a man who had drunkenly stumbled and fell. When she was satisfied that he wasn’t getting back up, she made her way over to the prone, pin-cushioned, and heavily drugged guard. She placed her gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. A quick spasm marked the end of his life. Lucy checked both guards for a pulse. As she dismantled the trip trap, she muttered “Contacts four and five complete”.

Amanda had just finished getting the dead man’s fatigues on over her own grey combat suit when she heard Lucy’s voice. The final three contacts were all down to her, and it had to be done quickly. She tried to remember how the guard had walked, silently cursing herself for not allowing him a few more moments of life so that she could better observe how he moved. Not bothering to hide the body now that all the patrollers were dead, she took a deep breath and advanced on the gate.

One of the guards sat in the booth flipping idly through the worn pages of a magazine. The other two, a man and a woman, were at the gate itself. The man turned and nodded an acknowledgement to Amanda, confirming that her disguise was good enough for what was required of it. She nodded back and, head down, approached the booth. She walked around it to the door, opened it, and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and turned to face the guard who looked up from his magazine

The report of the rifle rang out at an almost painful volume in the cramped booth. Although it muffled the shot to the outside world, it didn’t muffle it nearly enough to hide the sound from the two guards on the gate. The door was kicked open just as Amanda had turned to face it. Three shots sent him staggering back, and Amanda followed him, training her gun on the momentarily startled woman. Her life ended in that moment. The echo of the final shot faded away.

“Contacts six through eight complete. Cassie, in you come.”

Lucy and Clare joined Amanda at the booth.

- “No silencer?” Clare’s tone neutral, not implying any fault.
- “No need. All the other contacts were done. There’s no way the noise will have been heard in the facility.”

Lucy nodded in agreement with Amanda’s assessment, as did Clare. They waited for Cassie to join them. She was there in just over two minutes, her cheerful face red with exertion and perched on her stocky frame. She smiled at all three of her colleagues, then made her way to the terminal within the booth. From a pocket came a flash drive, filled with all manner of beautifully coded pieces of poison, which was inserted into a dock in the terminal.

“O-kay…lockdown is easy enough to initiate, but there’s a bitch of a failsafe to ensure that the main alarm goes off. The Captain says that there are 3 people in there who have the authorisation code to disarm the Suppression measures, and if they hear that alarm you can be damn sure that’s what they’ll do.”

Lucy sighed inwardly, knowing exactly where this was going. Amanda gamely played her part; “Can you deal with it Cass?”

Cassie’s grin broadened. “What do you think? Give me 10 minutes to bypass it and get the lockdown started. Unless one of them decides to come out for some air, the first they’ll know of it is when they hear the gas vents. At which point, they’re fucked. The corporation chiefs are so shit-scared of any of the fun that they’re researching finding it’s way out of that facility that the Suppression won’t leave fleas alive, let alone people.”

Lucy nodded. She hadn’t been happy at the unknown factor; what if one of them did decide to come out for air? She would have to trust Cassie to make sure that any disarm codes’ binary scream went unheard. Again though, she needn’t have worried. It was seven minutes later when Cassie said “Okay, we’re on.”

It would be three minutes before the Suppression measures began, and Cassie had hacked the facilities internal cameras to monitor things. The women clustered around the terminal and watched anxiously. The three minutes passed without incident. The majority of the people were sleeping in their bunks; the entire Research team were in bed. Only a few insomniacs and security staff were out of their beds.

The cameras showed those facility staff that were still awake reacting with puzzlement to the hissing noise from the walls. That soon gave way to shock, and then fear. Whatever that stuff was, it was effective. The twenty or so people who had been awake were unconscious within twenty seconds and dead in another twenty. Those who had been sleeping died quietly and without fuss.

Cassie touched a button and the monitor went dead. She retrieved her flash drive, and left the booth with the others. As they made their way from the facility gates, Lucy spoke into her face-mic.

“Facility staff neutralised. Lockdown complete. ETA at extraction point, 5 minutes”

A mellifluous voice answered. “Good work. See you all back at the Eyrie.”

From the Captain, that counted as the ringing praises of a choir of angels. Satisfied with a job executed professionally, the women made their way to the extraction point and from thence, home.