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Chapter XIX -

Gavin had left the security office a few minutes after he last talked to his boss and psychotic battle-buddy, climbing up through the oversized vent systems used in the hospital. Getting out of the security room unseen had been easy. It was getting up into other areas that was a bitch.

Luckily, the sleek little otter had brought all of his favorite toys. Little sucking noises heralded his ascent, as his suction cups stuck to the sheer metal one after another. Slow going, but he was nimble, patient, and had the stamina of a long-haul swimmer.

He snapped the bubble gum in his mouth. Climbing was boring most of the time, especially when it was so damns low. Still, as the only member of his team small enough to reasonably fit, he had to do it. So, he snapped gum to pass the time.

"Gav, where the fuck are you?"

The otter calmly craned his neck around, looking through a vent register into a room so he could read the number.

"ICU."

"Good. Sounds like they had someone in the lower floors just like...Idunno, taking a crap or something. Green Team got hit from behind, most of them are dead."

The otter quirked an eyebrow, glancing out into the darkened floor again, happy that his night vision had never failed him.

"I don't see any activity. Want me to check it out?"

"Heh, how do you feel about getting killed today?"

The otter wondered if that was rhetorical or not. With Collin, one never quite knew for sure. He shook his head and slipped into the horizontal part of the vent shaft, looking through the registers for any sign of what had happened. His voice dropped to a whisper, and he raised a paw to click the voice amplifier up on his mic.

"I see two dead in the hallway...Ripped apart, probably .45 ammo. Moving up to check things out."

Gavin inched slowly up the duct system, a few feet at a time, then stopping to listen, look, avoid being detected...

A movement in the darkness caught his eye through one of the glass panels of the ICU ward.

"I see them. Captain Buck and Corporal Blacktiger. They appear to be-"

A loud metallic clang echoed out.

"Those security doors aren't as tough as I thought. They just kicked right through one at the bottom. They're crawling through now."

Gav didn't like his chances fighting both of them. Even if he took one out in the first shot, the chances he could get them both before one of them unloaded an automatic weapon into the duct system weren't very high. Also, using a grenade in these kinds of glass-filled close quarters was just asking to die of shrapnel and one's own stupidity.

"They're headed up the central stairwell. Towards the roof, I think. Looks like Green never got Goza."

"I fucking know that, Gav, they never mentioned icing his ass. Remember the reward? Yeah, they get excited about shit like that."

Gavin calmly turned down the volume on his headset, then back up to speak back into it.

"Police are cordoning off the area. You have an exfiltration plan right?"

The long pause told him a lot of things he didn't want to know. The voice that came in afterwards told him even more just from its wan, annoyed, sarcastic tone.

"Wonderful work, Green, Black, and White teams." Simon Gecko. Great.

"Collin, see if you can find a way out. Don't bother going up. Our only chance now is for Gecko to snipe Goza on his way off the roof. If you can't find a way out, let me know. We'll hide. This place is massive, and they don't know our actual numbers."

The otter knew his buddy was cussing up a storm wherever he was. Predictably.

"Fine. Fuck. See you in a bit."

Tasha had jammed some supplies into Tristan's laptop bag, thrown on clothes, grabbed a rain jacket, and watched him get dressed while she was emptying the hotel room safe into her jacket pockets.

"What are these keys to?"

"Rental car."

She nodded and stuffed them into the pockets of a baggy pair of slacks she'd thrown on that fairly screamed 'tourist' thanks to being bright yellow.

Stan pulled the bag up over his shoulder and looked around one more time, checking for thigns he'd missed. With a wince, he remembered he'd missed his passport, and nabbed that off the table...Then paused with a grimace.

"My uncle took your passport, didn't he?"

"Da...Yes. Shit." She stepped out into the hall, only to find Gecko's room being blocked off by a pair of security guards. With a frown, she backed into Tristan's room again, shook her head once, closed the door, and spoke again.

"Too late. I'll find another one."

"Y-you mean you'll steal one?"

"No. I'll buy one. I know a fur who will do it."

Stan nodded, and when she gestured for him, he moved up to her, then slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. She could feel the nervousness in him as he did, and she leaned into the kiss, squeezing him back briefly before letting go and giving him a little push.

"Go, I will meet you downstairs."

He quirked his brows at her, not sure what she was up to, but just nodded and went. Just like that, she mused...Very trusting.

Doubling back into the bedroom, she nabbed up the hotel's monogrammed notepad and wrote a quick note.

My Dearest Simon,

I have your nephew Tristan. Worse, I have all the business data he knows or has in his laptop. If you wish the data to remain secret and wish your nephew to remain alive, do not pursue me. If I have so much as a hint that you are coming after me, I will know it, and he will be dead and your banking information will be on every message board in the internet. Not to mention records of all your dirty little operations.

-Natasha Tzarov

She slapped the note on the bedside table and made to leave the room...Then paused and came back to add an addendum.

P.S.: I hope you die in a fire. A very slow fire.

The vixen smirked, gave the note a kiss, left it on the table again, and ran to catch up with her wolf. Though whether he was her lover or her unknowing hostage, she'd not yet decided.

Arlen was panting with exertion by the time they'd reached the door into the last flight of stairs onto the roof. Long runs he could handle, even long runs going up a steep incline. But the stress, the lingering injury in his shoulder, the nerves of knowing enemies could come from any angle would tire anyone.

Still, when he saw little calico Tamra pointing a pistol at him from a few circles up the stairwell, he whooped out in happiness and put on speed, as the cat got about the world's most relieved look, lowered her sidearm, and waved for them both to get up there.

Moments later, he grabbed Tamra and hugged her tightly enough to squeeze the breath from her with an "oof", and then dropped her to rush past and go down into a kneel next to Sato.

The silver wolf was awake, at least enough to give his tiger a hazy smile and reach a limp paw out to pat his cheek.

"Your chin...You have a new scar there..."

Arlen laughed again, his eyes tearing as he shrugged off the comment with his usual self-effacement, and leaned down to kiss his wolf.

Buck had followed in silence, keeping his wits about him as the tiger rather predictably got involved and lost focus.

"There was a sniper up in the roof area when Rene took off. He's going to have to swoop in, grab us, and get out while we're potentially under fire. No good way to avoid it. We can't go back down, too much chance we'll run into the other Gecko teams or the police."

Tamra grimaced, her good humor dampened, despite her ears still being red from the big tiger's embrace. The cat's tail lashed to one side and she looked at the welded-shut door, dreading what they might have to handle on the other side.

"Any idea where he was shooting from?"

Buck moved past her, turning sideways on the steps to do so, and shook paws with the bodyguard, then the doctor.

"Western side, but by now he could be gone, could have repositioned...Could be anywhere. Doc, you've never been shot at before I take it?"

The mouse shook his head, whiskers trembling, his grip too tight with nerves.

"I'd leave you here but the guys who came after us are a bunch of psychopaths. They might kill you out of frustration. Also, we'll need you in the chopper to help the pilot. Don't worry, we'll pay."

The doctor just nodded his head and closed his eyes, paws going over them. Evidently, he'd had enough of today, by Buck's guess.

The captain keyed his radio and called out.

"Rene, get that chopper to us in three minutes, got it? We get one good shot at this."

Rene came back through sounding wet-chested and sardonic.

"No, Cap, that's the other guy who gets one shot, remember?"

"Three minutes, copy?"

"One-eight-zero seconds. Be there. Copy, out."

Buck walked over to Arlen, and put a paw on the big tiger's shoulder, shaking him slightly to get his attention away from the mostly-unconscious Sato. The black tiger looked up, shaking his head at the jarring experience of such relief and now battle trepidation again.

"Pop smoke out through the door, towards the west side. We have to take whatever cover we can get against that sniper. I'll get the east. Understood?"

Arlen nodded, leaned down to give the again-unconscious wolf a kiss to the forehead, and shouldered his SMG to grab a pair of smoke grenades.

Buck leaned against the wall, pulling his own in one paw, and waited.

Gecko smirked. He had a perfect position, just barely above the hospital and on the next block, he was laying flat in a corporate executive's office with a Remington R700 braced on his shoulder. Behind him, a hysterical secretary had gone quiet now, handcuffed as she was to the corpse of an overweight rabbit executive, the male's throat gapping open where Gecko had sliced it earlier.

The secretary knew not to scream, and he knew that. She'd been told what would happen to her if she dared to risk Gecko's plan. Of course, he wasn't intending to leave her alive anyway, but she had no need to know.

Through the scope, he almost missed the first bit of movement...The opening of the roof door, shielded as it was by the top of the stairwell, was so slight he only caught it because of something that bounced out, rolled...

He cursed loudly as the grenade exploded in white, thick, billowing smoke. Then another went off, and a third and fourth. Within moments, the rooftop was covered in rolling white.

Enraged, Gecko started squeezing off shots fairly at random, guessing where the people would be, as they rushed out of the building. He was so distracted by his fury that the chopper's sudden rise over the edge of the building and then descent to the roof happened before he could re-target.

Luckily for him, he realized what was happening, and opened fire as the chopper's blades started blowing the smoke in every direction. Unfortunately for him, the smoke was still obscuring enough that he wasn't sure who he'd dropped. Whoever it was, they were dragged into the chopper.

His bullets spanged ineffectually off the chopper's hull, and he cursed at the pilot for knowing to spin its windows away from him. Then, it dropped below the lip of the building in a swift, jinking move, and was away.