sir,” The words were barely out my mouth when the student next to me got up from his seat, along with the fifty or so other students, and started to exit the hall.
The professor stood alone at the lectern packing his notes into a worn-out leather brief-bag. Ox came across “the COM.”
“Ok, Cougar, time to go introduce ourselves.”
A few minutes later we were in the professor’s office. The professor’s cluttered office was a 16 x 14 room on the second floor of university’s administration building. The room had one large rectangular window, which overlooked the parking lot and most of the university’s well-manicured grounds, and a frosted-glass door with professor’s name and title emblazoned across it. The room’s Spartan furnishings consisted of over-flowing book-shelves, a desk covered in papers and coffee stained files and two padded chairs on either side of the desk.
I took position by the door. Ox went to the window and closed the blinds. The professor obviously annoyed at this went to the window and re-opened the blinds defiantly. Cougar, amused, waved Ox “off.” He let it go.
The professor offered Cougar a seat as he hung his jacket on the back his chair and sat. Framed certificates and honors adorned the wall behind him. The professor looked impressive. A showing no doubt meant to awe any students who sat before this human bastion of knowledge.
“What can I do for you?”
Before Cougar could respond the Professor’s personal assistant barged in startling us all. Ox’s grin said it all as Cougar rolled her eyes, shook her head and turned back to face the Professor.
Of the three of us I was the only one who had reached for my gun. A“rookie” move I would no doubt be lectured about later.
Molly, seemingly unconcerned by our presence, gave Schuller his mail and the day’s itinerary and left.
“Professor, we’ve been sent to ask you come with us.”
“Sent by whom may I ask? Am I in some sort of trouble?” The professor’s tone was a mix of condescension and lack of concern.
“No. You’re in a very specific type of trouble,” she quipped. “We’ve been sent here by the N.S.A. We believe that your life may be in danger.”
“Is that so? And how, pray tell, is it that my life is suddenly so important to national security?” Schuller asked condescendingly, brimming with arrogance.
I listened as Cougar explained to the Professor that several of his colleagues and prominent scientists in the Fields of Marine-Biology, Marine-Crypto-zoology, Cold –fusion Physics, Geneticists and even Medicine had gone missing or dead within the last few weeks; all under mysterious circumstances.
Behind me I could faintly hear Molly, as she played her role as Professor Schuller’s gate keeper, to a couple of overly persistent students.
Ox moved from the window and came towards me.
“What’s going on out there?” Ox whispered
“Students,” I responded. “Want me to check it out?”
“Nah. I’ll go, kid. Watch the window.”
As he stepped past me he paused for moment and half-whispered to me,
“Relax, kid. You’re making me nervous,” he joked. “You’re doing fine,” he added. And with that Ox left the room. And I took up position at the window.
For a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening. But a moment was all it took… for everything to go to hell.
As the Professor and Cougar spoke I saw the jelly stain on the professor’s shirt pocket shift a fraction of an inch to his right. At first I thought it was a trick of the light. . But Cougar had seen it too.
Without warning or word she launched herself over the desk and tackled the startled professor.
“Sniper!” she yelled dragging Schuller to the ground behind his desk.
At the opposite side of the room there were two quick explosions and the frosted-glass door to the professor’s office shattered into a million pieces, as Ox came flying through it backwards; with a hole through his back and chest the size of a basket ball.
Cougar pinned the confused Schuller to the ground behind his desk while the wall above their heads suddenly became riddled with jagged holes from silenced sniper-fire that shattered the windows to Schuller’s office.
Meanwhile two men came through the doorway to the office wielding sawn-off double-barrel shot-guns. Dressed like Janitors they fired wildly.
I took the first one down with two shots to the head. As he went down I dove toward the doorway, for a better angle on the second target. In the process I emptied the clip of my H&K USP46 into his chest of the second man causing him to stumble backward through the doorway.
I landed hard on my chest right at the feet of a third armed assailant. He pointed his shot-gun in my face at point-blank range. The assassin’s finger tightened around the trigger as he muttered incomprehensibly. I knew I was a dead man.
“…free will is an illusion…the maker’s will is all…”
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!!
He went down in a lifeless heap beside me. Cougar yelled at me. Smoke rose from the muzzle of Sabre’s Sig Sauer.
“Goddammit!! Rabbit, this isn’t a Hollywood movie,” She crawled over, closed the blind and checked Ox’s body. Without a word she then tossed me his gun. It was a USP46 just like mine.
“Cover the door. Stay low and clear of the window there’s a sniper out-there somewhere.”
While the learned professor cowered under his desk, Cougar crawled over to each of the three dead-men and pulled out a pocket- knife. Staying low, she straddled each of them, emptied their pockets and cut off their thumbs. Wrapping them in a handkerchief she shoved the blood-stained cloth in her jacket pocket and turned to me. I didn’t even realize that I had not moved.
“Re-load. I’ll take point. You bring the Professor.”
As I scanned the room my eyes became transfixed on Ox’s dead body. Threads of smoke rose from the gaping hole in his chest filling the room with the stench of burnt flesh. His dead eyes stared past me.
That could have been me. Oh God, by all rights, it should have been, I thought.
“Rabbit,” Cougar said calmly as she grabbed me roughly by my tie. “We will come back for him,” she said firmly. “But for the next few minutes I need you to focus right now. Okay?”
Swallowing hard all I could manage was a nod.
“Okay then,” she said letting go of me, “Let’s move out.”
Weapons in hand but concealed at our sides we moved quickly down the halls and past offices and the teachers lounge to the emergency staircase. On our way down Cougar activated a fire alarm and set off the building’s automatic sprinkler system. The school administration building
