Story Market Day

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Kara was walking down the alley in front of the SUV while Garen was out and walking a distance behind it. They were being super careful in avoiding excess noise and movement as much as possible but they knew they would be making some soon.

In the distance, they could hear the hum of many generators running. They were on the Light-all portable light towers like you find at construction sites. That was what lit up the sky from a distance. The bowl of the stadium must have twenty or thirty of them considering how bright the glow was in the air over the city. This could be a big clue and might be beneficial to their plans.

The roll up door for the theater’s loading dock entrance was partially blocked with stuff strewn about. Most looked to be long term trash since the water didn’t seem to get very deep here. They made not of what was there and picked out some more they could sling about to cover up the tracks of the SUV.

Allyson backed the SUV up to the door. Angelique and Kara climbed the bumper and then onto the roof of the big SUV. Bekka helped them unroll a huge canvas tarp they had over the SUV. They then held it up against the wall of the building. They were hoping this would help minimize the noise of the door rolling up.

Garen was now in front of the SUV. From here he could see down both directions in the alley. Bekka went to work on the personnel door. A quick minute or two and it swung open. They were in.

Soon the freight door started moving upward. Its progress was slow and somewhat noisy. They were glad they did the tarp to prevent it carrying too far. As soon as it was up high enough for the SUV, Kara told Bekka to stop. Kara and Angelique hopped off the SUV. Without removing the tarp, they guided Allyson as she backed into the bay. There was plenty of room. It was designed for the moving vans used to transport theater companies and orchestras’ instruments. As soon as the nose was clear, Bekka started lowering the door. Garen did a last minute sweep, followed by dragging some more flotsam to disguise their intrusion. The last was a piece of cardboard leaned against the people door as he closed it from the inside.

Time to get to work.
 
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ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Reading this chapter, I recalled a song from Pirates of Penzance:

"The Team"
With Cat-Like Tread
Upon our prey we steal
In silence dread
Our cautious way we feel
No sound at all
We never speak a word
A fly's foot-fall
Would be distinctly heard

Bad Guys:
Tarantara, Tarantara.

Wonderful story. Appreciate frequent and often generous updates.


Would that make Bekka Kristy McNichol ?
 

LawPoet

Contributing Member
Becky = Kristy? Nope! Your Becky is far too mercenary and deadly!

Garen:
Here's your crowbar
And your centre bit
Your [AK -47]
You may want to hit

Your silent matches
Your dark lantern seize
Take your file
And your skeletonic keys

Bad Guys:
Tarantara,

The Team:
With Cat like tread

Bad Guys:
Tarantara

Team:
In silence dread
etc!.

Wow, PAW story with a musical sound track! First Rate!
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
After a quick sweep to confirm no one else was there, they set up some sleeping positions, and distributed the gear they had brought with them. The next part of the plan was to get eyes on the targets to confirm they had the badguys identified. This could very well be a real humanitarian group, but the consensus was they were probably a set up.

Bekka went onto the roof of the theater, exploring access to the department store next door. She spotted a good sign when she found a stack of cigarette butts around a window in the building. They were all about a year old or older, but the window was functional at least a year ago. She tried the window. To her surprise, it was unlatched. She was able to slide it up enough for her to enter. Looking around, the room was dark. She didn’t want to be a moving blob of light in the darkness, so she slid her night vision goggles back down. She also had a small Infrared (IR) tactical light for those areas without enough spill from the outside. She first looked at her immediate surroundings.

She was in some sort of back office area. There were the remaining walls of a cubical farm for about 10 people. The walls were still there, as was the normal clutter from a closed office such as pens, mostly used sticky notes, waste paper baskets, and a bunch of useless stuff, all left behind. She slowly moved out into the hallway to continue her survey. Her biggest worry was sound. She didn’t want to make any, she also didn’t want to miss someone else making any. In the dark, that can be the biggest clue, as well as the biggest error.

Her first goal was not to clear the entire building. Her first target was the top floor to get a better vantage point of what they are up against. With the age of the building, its layout was a bit different than what most people are used to now. Instead of isolated fire door protected stairwells, this building was designed in an era where a very broad set of stairs led from one floor to another. They were at least fifteen or twenty feet wide, making them a severe liability in trying to either defend or attack. The other bonus: the treads were marble, so no creaking or sound as she moved upward. She kept moving up and up. She bypassed anything other than a cursory glance on the other floors as she climbed. She topped out on the seventh floor. This floor was still configured as it was while still a department store, albeit cluttered up with a ton of old fixtures left over and shoved up to what had become the collective junk room.

She pressed forward, making her way towards the front face of the building. She knew what should be there, this was where the executive offices once were. The windows there should give a good view without skylining herself like she would up on the roof trying to look down and over. She notices as she went forward, it was getting darker , not lighter as she would expect with the large windows ahead of her. It made more sense as she got closer. There was a wall there, made of polished dark wood, resplendent for some CEO from long ago. She found a door in the middle of the wall. Opening it, she could only stare in amazement.

This was the old boardroom. She knew this because all the expected elements were still here. She could understand the table. It looked like you could land a helicopter on it. It was at least thirty feet long. The wall must have been built after the table was here. But it was the other things that shocked her. The chairs were still here, as were the lamps, several credenzas along the wall, and the wall of bookshelves at one end still held a full load of leather bound books. It all looked right out of a late fifties movie. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, so it was obvious no one had been here in quite some time. With the circuitous route she had taken through the maze of old clothing fixtures and racks, she could be fairly sure it would be quite difficult to suspect, much less find someone here. The room was bathed in enough light from the stadium, she no longer needed her goggles. She moved closer to the window and pulled out a spotting scope. She needed to see the goings on, both at the entrances and within the stadium tent city itself.
 

Grouchy Granny

Deceased
Love this story! Keep it coming......

You done good CCG. I keep thinking this would make one heck of a disaster/adventure movie, but then I realize that Follywood would just screw it up.

Hopefully some day you will publish the entire thing and be our next New York Times Best Seller Author,
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Love this story! Keep it coming......

You done good CCG. I keep thinking this would make one heck of a disaster/adventure movie, but then I realize that Follywood would just screw it up.

Hopefully some day you will publish the entire thing and be our next New York Times Best Seller Author,

My background is Audio Visual, so I think as if it was a movie, then put it down
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Garen was taking more time getting to his perch. He was going into the newer building. He was able to defeat one of the access doors to the rear of the building. He had to use some brute force methods for part of it. The slide hammer was useful for the one lock he wasn’t able to pick. He put a small piece of silver duct tape over the missing tumbler parts. He put a small sheet of metal over the striker plate gap to prevent it from relocking. This would make it easier for them to dodge in and out of the building. The building was fifteen stories and they didn’t anticipate much foot traffic but they had some things to help ensure their privacy.

He did a sweep to the central core of the building, where the elevators were. This gave him some critical data. He was able to shoot a picture of the directory, giving them a good shopping list of floors to search, floors to avoid and places to set up. They figured the top floor or two would be good for their observations. Most people wouldn’t climb ten or more stories for a bunch of empty offices for a brokerage. No money, no supplies, nothing worth the climb. This was all plusses in their favor. The down side was the bottleneck as far as if they were found out, how to get away. Allyson had come up with a beautiful solution

They would secure all the ground floor stairwell doors. There was a service set of stairs that only went to the balcony above the main entrance. They would select one stairwell to leave open from that level. This would give them time to figure out and react to what might be coming for them. Their escape hatch was one of the elevator shafts. They would pick a shaft, unlock the ground floor doors, and set up a rappel rope from the highest floor they were going to use. No one would be figuring to need to cover an elevator when there is no power. If the bad guys were closing in on them on the fifteenth floor, they could be back down to the first in under a minute.

Bekka had the idea to fix the problem of what to do to prevent the bad guys from using their escape method to get themselves down just as fast in the pursuit. They set up a small piece of plywood about two feet square as a platform above the elevator door they were going to use. A piece of 550 cord would lead down from the brace holding it up, like an old school figure four trap. On the platform would be a “devil’s slinky” i.e. a coil of concertina wire. If they have to bail out with the rappel, last person down grabs the ripcord and pulls. This sends the accordion of wire expanding and uncoiling as it falls, landing in a jumble on top of the roof of the elevator car. It will take a bit of time to clear it out of the way before they can get through the hatch. They brought enough rope and wire for both the department store and the brokerage.

Allyson, Kara and Angelique were setting up these systems, as well as the initial communication systems. They were doing a lot of the grunt work initially while Bekka and Garen were gathering their first eyes on intel. Garen was using a decent video camera to record and zoom in to catch details for review later. The camera would allow him to get close to the window without the classic ‘people’ profile. Everyone was on edge. The sooner they could confirm or eliminate this as the bad guy’s operation, the sooner they could move to the next step.
 
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ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
I long for those multi-chapter days :). Thanks.

Those take both time and muse. You guys are getting the first draft as it comes out of my head. That is part of the reason the sections are short. My brain shows me the scene, then I have to figure out how to describe it. I am slowly going back through and cleaning up my master document for a cleaner final document. I'm glad people seem to like what I'm doing.
 

Sportsman

Veteran Member
We appreciate the time you've put into this story. As complicated as this story line is, I can imagine the energy it takes to add a chapter a week, much less one or more per day. You do have a talent for it and once this is completed, I'm looking forward to grabbing a Kindle or Lulu copy.
Thank you.
 

Lone_Hawk

Resident Spook
I feel a twist coming. Gangs aren't going to spend the effort on something as big as that, they plunder, steal, and party.

Thanks CCG!
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
It didn’t take long for them to confirm that at least part of the element here at the stadium was affiliated with those that seized the Park Rangers facility. Bekka saw several from their flip book of faces moving about, seeming to be part of the staff here. Garen was able to match some of the vans seen in Kara’s pictures.

So, with these individuals being part of a trafficking ring, presumably actively recruiting for kidnap among the city’s survivors, the next step was trying to determine if the whole staff were part of it, or only just some. It was time to start the process of culling the herd and wresting some control from them.

The crew gathered up in the theater to plan how they were going to proceed. Garen started off.

“We still don’t know a lot, but I think we have enough to make them start losing sleep, and losing control. I don’t think we can go at all the workers yet. We should contain our actions to those we have in the flip books.”

Bekka jumped in at this point.

“I agree, we should start with some random 22 sniping. Let’s try to keep them as torso hits. This gives them wounded to care for. They will eventually have to decide what to do with their casualties. If we make good torso hits, it will lead to a loss of combat effectiveness. We need to force them to pull their resources here. They will try to hunt us down do our first strikes need to be somewhere other than these three buildings we are operating from.”

Garen picked back up from there.

“Let’s get back on the scopes. I think we can do some golf ball launching to see how far out they pay attention to. That will give is a basic radius to work with. Around dawn, we should be able to start phase 2.”

Kara had some questions.

“So, what’s the rotation? Do we do a solo hunter thing so we can keep up the pressure? Otherwise, we will wear ourselves out faster than we can wear them down.”

Bekka handled this one.

“First, we do a quick hit, then we fade, rest during the day as they lose their minds, then late afternoon, we start a rotation of one in overwatch and one making a strike. Any big target of opportunity, we spool everyone up to take advantage of it. Anything to add Garen?”

“Yeah, I want to start taking away their wheels. Any vehicle we have pics of is fair game. Something simple like a couple rounds into the radiator is good, a couple into the fuel tank is better. We are not looking to blow it up, a fuel leak will make it undrivable and difficult to repair until they get the right patching material. That takes time, and steals resources from them. I want everyone with some time looking at the footage of the stadium area. Start picking some routes and locations. All parts of the compass. Don’t forget the stickers and such. Remember, we are a high school paintball team attacking them. The more we can mess with their minds to keep them off balance and underestimating us, the better.”

With no more questions, they moved to their assigned spots. By dawn, they should be well underway.
 

Sportsman

Veteran Member
Thanks CCG. There is some real innovation in play with the way they're attacking. I'd much rather have you on my side than in my opposition force!
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Garen and Bekka were stealing a quick few minutes between for some conversation. Garen was visibly relieved they had seen enough to confirm the bad guys were here and was quite vocal to Bekka about that.

“As sucky as this whole thing is, I’m glad that number 16 was at the entrance. I really didn’t like your other plan.”

‘It would have worked and you know it” Bekka shot back.

“Would have worked, probably. Worth the risk? I don’t think so. The only combo that would have worked was you and Angelique as a mother/daughter team to see if they split her out. That would have meant you guys going in unarmed and you know what they would have in store for her, as well as no idea what they are doing with the parents. Correction, we know they couldn’t let them live, but we don’t know how soon or with what method they would kill them. I don’t see that as much of an option.” Garen’s temper was showing a bit. It wasn’t aimed AT her, but some came that way.

They had talked through this a little in the abstract before they came to the city. Angelique was their best bait. She was passable as young enough to be tempting. Kara would be an iffy sell as her mother, Allyson was too young. She would have to be an older sister. That was considered an option, and considered hard. It still might have been a good back up plan, but Bekka had a lot more training at hostile captivity type situations. She had been through several of the Department of Defense survival schools and POW training courses. She could send tap code without sounding out the letters and could resist most methods of interrogation for a short while, at least long enough to give the rest a chance to get away.

Angelique could present another problem as bait. These guys seemed to be related to the batch that hit the store. Depending on who was where, someone might recognize her from down there and set off a whole cascade of issues with the lines of questioning it would suggest like where have you been, how did you escape, who are these people, and so on and so on and so on. It’s much better they didn’t try and slip this whole thing by them. Better they just start their destruction.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Kara, Allyson and Angelique went to positions on the far side of the stadium. Kara’s idea was they could move faster than Bekka and Garen. This was also a modification of the plan they had just agreed on a short while ago.

The golf balls were ignored if they landed more than a short block away. They also saw no apparent night vision gear being used by the staff. With the way the area was lit up, they would have been inefficient with so much reflection and bloom. This was a good thing for this morning’s activities, but may change as things went on. Also, people checking out noise were currently not taking long guns, just sidearms. They all figured that would change soon as well.

Kara, Angelique and Allyson were to set up positions to shoot from designed to be found, so they added stickers, a handful of 22 casings, and a spray painted message on the walls. They used some orange engine enamel so it would still be wet when they found it. This would hopefully make them think they were right on the heels of the shooters. In reality, the shooters would be a little farther out so they could shoot and scoot, leaving the fake hide as bait to slow them down. They might even work a secondary attack on the response force.

Bekka and Garen were working another angle. They wanted to start with their transportation. They were setting up in the storm drain, well back from the openings. This would make the shots even harder to hear and isolate. The generators on the Light-All’s made so much racket and the 22s were so quiet, they may not be noticed at all.

They were targeting the vehicles in more underhanded ways. Shots into the bottom of radiators and fuel tanks and oil pans will let out the magic fluid and make them unusable until they fix it. Depending on how it was done, it might not even look like bullets. They may think it was someone with an ice pick or screwdriver. This will stretch the time out before they start hunting at a distance.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
I don’t know how this is going to play out. When I slow down and think about it, I really worry. Not so much about the physical aspects of what we are doing. We can physically pull it off. It’s the mental aspects that have me on edge. The cold-blooded taking of a life in a premeditated manor is nothing to be taken lightly. Garen and Kara aren’t the ones that worry me. The three of us have been here before, metaphorically. Allyson, she is, deep down, a cop at heart. This isn’t a policing issue however. We are not going to arrest these guys. We don’t have evidence that can be used to prosecute them. She is going to have to come to terms with it, both before and after she pulls the trigger. This isn’t in the heat of self-defense. We are going to have to help her through it after the fact. To be honest, we also have to be prepared to help her if she can’t go through with it as well. Either way, she will be going through some rough times going forward.

Angelique is the wildcard. She is nursing a hate and rage that may carry her through this. This can be a problem in its own right. I’ve met a few people that are thrown into chaos and open conflict. Some are able to put the genie back in the bottle later when things calm down, others are too desensitized and cannot come back to a more passive realm.

Hate and rage may not be enough. She is a seventeen-year-old kid. She is trying to step up to the challenge and is working hard but this is still the deliberate killing of people. If it wasn’t the same people who killed her father and grandfather and shot her, I don’t know if we should be letting her help us do this. Should or should not, me, Garen, and Kara will do everything we can to make sure she knows how to survive in this new world she is in.

As I stand here in a sewer poking holes in the tender bits of a few vehicles, I can’t help but wonder if we will have five shooters or only three. In some ways I don’t know which way I am rooting. One thing I do know, Garen, Kara and I can pull it off with just the three of us, but it will be a lot messier and much more violent, complete with a ten-fold increase of risk. We will know one way or another quite soon. Garen thinks it will take about a week and a half to be completely done here. I’m more optimistic. I think three to five days will see the end of things one way or another here in the city.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
A little unexpectedly, Angelique was the first to draw blood. She had staked out a position overlooking one of the far side entrances that appeared to have many of the “Staff” coming and going. She was waiting for one of the faces from the stack of pictures, or the brief images she still had from the convenience store invasion. Once she identified one walking away from the building towards some of their vehicles, she laid the red dot sight right on the center of the chest. With Garen’s calculations, she figured this would give her enough drop to put the slug somewhere around the bellybutton. She squeezed the trigger just as she did a hundred times in the tunnelway shooting range. As soon as the shot broke, she knew she was too high. She dropped her aim and fired her second shot.

The man was walking out to the car. His shift was over and he was heading back to the hotel they were operating out of. He was just about to wave at one of the other guys coming in when he got a deep stabbing pain that took his breath away. He didn’t understand what was causing this. His hands reflexively went to the pain. It was just below the ribs, like he had been running too hard or something. Just as he started to catch his breath, he felt another lancing pain deep in his stomach. He collapsed to the ground, writhing weakly, trying to scream the intense pain away. He was failing miserably at it. The others stood and stared at him while this was going on. His feebly clawing hands found the holes in his shirt. His brain was confused for a few moments, then came up with “sniper”, but that didn’t make any sense. He could hear and feel the people around him asking him what was wrong, feel them trying to help him sit up, but he couldn’t make words come out of his mouth. The blackness growing at the edge of his vision swallowed him up.


No one noticed off in the distance beyond the reach of the lights, a slim figure slip deeper into the darkness of the city.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Allyson was next with a shot. She was watching some of the perimeter ‘lookouts’. She found one she could set up a good angle on after she confirmed he was one of those in the pictures. She checked again and again as she still debated whether she could go through with shooting. Her mind flashed back to some of the other images Kara brought back, plus what she saw them do in the forest.

The trigger broke cleanly. Two rounds went downrange, the second in the air before the first one hit. She saw him clutch low on his body as he collapsed to the ground. She could hear a little bit of his screams over the generators. She waited to see if anyone would come to his aid. It took awhile. The people seemed to not check up on things very often.

While she waited, she replayed the shots again and again. To counter she used the muzzle flash of the belt fed machine gun from the forest to try and blot the images out. She still knew she would have to find a way to reconcile her actions with who she thought she was, and try and figure out who she was becoming. She didn’t know if she liked it, but she had to come up with a way to accept it.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
Kara was trying to work a slightly different angle. She was creeping up closer and wanted to get some of the scurrying ants from the nest they had kicked. She was watching several she recognized. They were going back and forth. She saw two over trying to help the one Allyson dropped. That was too far away. She also saw the confused mob around Angelique’s victim. They were not venturing out yet. That meant she would have to delay her idea until later. Maybe tonight.

Disappointed, she shifted her focus to another lookout on the perimeter. None were handy. She then turned to the crowd leaving the area of the first victim. She zeroed in on the new guy left looking around, seeming to be a security type left to watch over the entrance. She watched him pace and smoke, both of which he did constantly. She started counting to herself to get the timing of his actions. In ten minutes he had settled down to a pattern she could track. She next waited for him to hit the right point and body position. When his movements matched the track in her head, she fired three shots. As soon as she saw them hit, she left for the next position. These should give them enough to think about for the day.


A stabbing pain plunged into his chest under the arm holding his cigarette. The pain seemed to fill his whole chest and make it hard to breath. He suddenly had a feeling this is what happened to the one they were carrying back inside from here. As he slumped to the ground, he keyed his radio for help.
 

kua

Veteran Member
I could feel a little sad for them to be so clueless but I also remember what they were doing to civilians and this seems to be justified.

Good story CCG. Keep 'em coming.
 

ComCamGuy

Remote Paramedical pain in the ass
I could feel a little sad for them to be so clueless but I also remember what they were doing to civilians and this seems to be justified.

Good story CCG. Keep 'em coming.


Well the bad guys could abandon their plans and take these guys to get medical treatment
 
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