Wings of Death

In search of titanium

Back at Fort Barton, Captain Elijah was still trying to guess Lieutenant Amy’s plan. Though he knew that the Lieutenant was an excellent assassin and a smart leader he was still worried about her safety. He was pacing near the main entrance of the Fort when his cell phone rang. On the other end was Lieutenant Amy.

“We have the vanadium sir, heading back to the base.”

The Captain was relieved to hear her voice again, “Good job. You really are the best”, he replied.

Only the titanium remained. The plan was ready. All he could do now was to wait for Klaus to deliver the new weapons to the whole squad. Everyone had to do his part to ensure that the mission was carried out successfully. Unlike Lieutenant Williams, the Captain could not travel via the sewers because the military bunker was located on top of a hill. He and his men had to clear the skies before beginning their climb. To complicate things even further he still hadn’t figured out how he was going to transport the titanium doors back to the base after removing them. Dr. Erica’s words were still fresh in his mind. She had told them there might be many more Blood Demons. He just prayed that they wouldn’t have to encounter more than one Blood Demon during the mission.

Lieutenant Amy and her men returned from the mission a few minutes later and handed over the vanadium bars to Dr. Erica. She was surprised that the Lieutenant had managed to find the vanadium so quickly.

“When all this is over I would definitely like to know how you managed to find such a large amount of vanadium so quickly”, she said.

“I think you will enjoy the story. It was quite an exciting one”, replied Lieutenant Amy.

When all the vanadium bars had been handed over to Dr. Erica, the Lieutenant dismissed her men and went back to her room. She did not tell anyone about the explosives which she had acquired from the warehouse. What she planned to do with them remained a mystery.

The next evening, Klaus handed the Rain Blasters to all the men of the Viper squad including the three new recruits, Nathan, Alex and Joshua. The weapon was simple and didn’t have any targeting mechanism. It could fire a jet of rain water at a target up to 3 metres away. Though the weapon itself was quite light, weighing just around 2.5 kilograms the water cylinders attached to it made it quite heavy. Klaus had also designed leather harnesses to help the soldiers easily carry the cylinders on their back. Since the cylinders were quite large and bulky they could not carry their backpacks or other primary weapons. It took them quite a while to get used to the new weapons. They were now prepared to take on the Blood Demon.

Captain Elijah still hadn’t been able to figure out how they would transport the heavy titanium doors back to the base. He decided to ask his men for advice. No one could come up with a plan; the doors could not be broken down into smaller parts by conventional tools. One of the soldiers suggested that they should melt it down but the idea was discarded because unlike Fort Barton, the bunker on top of the hill did not have its own forge. Nathan was thinking about transporting them via choppers but it would be too risky since the Bloodwings could show up at any moment. Alex had been completely silent all this time. He had been reading about the abandoned bunker on the military database.

Showing his palmtop to the Captain he finally broke his silence, “There is a cable car service just a few hundred metres away from the bunker. When the bunker was still operational the troops used to receive supplies via that. It must have fallen out of use about 2 years ago when the bunker had to be abandoned due to an earthquake. If we can get the cable car running, we can use it to transport the doors. The cable car service connects the hill to a small village on the other side of the hill. It would take us farther away from Fort Barton but that is the only option I can think of right now”.

“Once we are back on the ground we will load the doors onto our armored pickup trucks and head back to the base. We have to split the team in two: the first will drive to the village where the cable cars are going to stop. That team will wait at the village with the pickup trucks while the other team will take the shortest route to the bunker which is on the other side of the hill. We are going to refer to the ground team as team Delta and the one on the hill will be called team Alpha. Once the doors have been extracted, team Alpha will try to get the cable cars operational again and transport the doors safely to the ground where team Delta would load them onto the pickup trucks. One member of Team Alpha will board the cable car and make sure the doors reach the ground safely. The other members of team Alpha will get back inside their vehicles and descend the hill using the same path they took while going up. But first we need to bait and kill the Blood Demon we encountered last night. Our first objective is going to be setting up an ambush for the Blood Demon. I hope you have the map of Valmont Street with you. Nathan, Alex, Joshua, Matt and Abel are going to enter the marked building on the left and the rest of you are going to camp in the right building. You are going to get only one shot at this so don’t miss. We need to cross City Square to reach the hill and we can’t do that until we kill that creature. If we encounter more than one Blood Demon we have to head back to the base. If you have any questions, now is the time to ask.” After briefing them about the basic plan, Captain Elijah requested Alex to send the soldiers the location of the village.