filling the room with sharp pieces of flying metal. Three terrorists died, four others experienced the pain of being severely wounded.
Jishin was not hit. She was already on her way to the computer room to see how things were going there. She heard the explosion and the screams but kept going. Someone would catch up with the details all too soon.
She found the terrorists wandering around the computer room. They looked lost.
'What's going on here?' Jishin demanded.
'Jobs are running. The computers are being worked but no one's here,' someone reported in a puzzled voice.
'So what!' Jishin screamed. 'Just get on with it.'
They hastily moved in on the computer keyboards and started deciphering entry codes and working at a way to acquire the classified data.
Jishin stomped out in disgust, through the security and noise barriers, to the back of the building to discover what happened to the third part of the invading force. There was a sharp
Jishin found the final third of her army frantically trying to dig their fellow workers out from under a heavy load of transformer cores and shelving.
'What do you think you're doing?' she barked.
The terrorists stopped and looked up.
'Tanna and Brian hit a trip wire and the shelves fell in on them.'
Jishin stopped and picked up a discarded M-16. She jacked a shell into the chamber and fired two short bursts, killing the two imprisoned terrorists.
'That's what happens to careless types. Now, move it, before I lose patience. Find out what happened to the people who were working here.'
Two messengers finally caught up with their leader.
'What do you two want?' she snapped at them.
'The file cabinets in the general office exploded,' the first reported. 'We have three dead and four wounded.'
'The tape drive in the computer room also blew up,' the other reported. 'We have two more seriously wounded.'
Before Jishin could react, someone yelled. 'Gas!'
Jishin recognized the harsh, burning sensation of strong ammonia in her nostrils.
'Clear the area,' she barked.
In their haste to make it to the front of the building, the terrorists began to push and shove. That was when the lights went out.
There was still plenty of light streaming in the windows, but the power failure was the last straw for the already terrified killers. Their anger turned on each other. Soon fists were flying, the terrorists urgently wanting to quit the ammonia-filled stockrooms.
Jishin was still holding the M-16. She fired it into the air.
When she had sufficient attention, she spoke. 'The next person I see shoving, gets shot.'
The evacuation was immediately more orderly, but Jishin was forced to tie up her time standing in the ammonia-filled room, eyes streaming water, fighting not to cough, while her troops scrambled out the single door into the other parts of the building.
The terrorists in the general office area quickly patched up their wounded, leaving the dead where they lay. There was a brief argument about which eight would carry the wounded to a bus and which four would stay behind. It was settled that all would head for the buses, three carrying each wounded.
The buses were not there.
The two terrorists left to keep an eye on the bus drivers had remained behind. Each was carefully stretched out on the parking lot, his neck broken and his weapon missing.
It was too much for three of the terrorists-in-training. They dropped their wounded comrade and sprinted away from the menacing, silent building that seemed to be functioning, but in which no one could be found. They did not make it. One of the confiscated M-16s opened up, cutting them down with three short bursts.
None of the terrorists tried to return fire. They were tasting terror instead of dispensing it. They dropped their wounded and retreated back inside the building. The last one in slammed the door and then looked in horror at the string tied to the door handle. On the end of the string was a grenade pin. In the hush, all nine survivors heard the spoon fall with a clatter. Three were killed by the blast, two more were severely injured.
When Jishin found her first contingent of terrorists, the ones she had entered the building with, they were grouped in the reception area, ignoring the wounded at their feet. They were all crouched and waving weapons around, terrified, unable to find anything to shoot at.
After much bullying and commanding, Aya Jishin got the nine quaking terrorists to move and join the group in the computer room. They arrived at the double glass windows and looked into the soundproofed area just in time to see two grenades go off. The defensive grenades threw wire throughout the room, killing six and injuring several more, but the blast did not destroy the tempered glass of the viewing windows.
A close-up view of their companions being lacerated with thousands of pieces of wire was too much for the already cowering terrorists. They dropped their weapons and ran for the nearest door.
The group that had encountered the high concentrations of ammonia gas had cleared their eyes. It had taken much sponging and washing, but they were ready to continue their conquest of Elwood Electronics.
Then suddenly an M-16 started to chatter, spraying bullets into their ranks. The terrorists dived for whatever cover they could find and brought their own weapons up. They were all set when their fleeing companions charged through the room on their way to the door. All nine were cut down before the terrorists realized they were shooting their own people.
When the terrified goons began to stampede, Jishin went after them. She saw the M-16 that provoked the firing. It had poked out above one of the sound-suppressing ceiling tiles.
'The enemy is above you!' Jishin yelled. 'Watch the ceiling.'
They responded immediately, chopping the tiles over their heads with .223 tumblers. Then they leaped on anything available, ready to establish a beachhead in the new war zone.
The sound of a low-flying jet boomed overhead. Jishin's battle instincts flared. A quick count told her that eighteen able-bodied troops were after the sniper or snipers in the crawl space. That was more than enough. Aya Jishin took off to find the other terrorists and move them outside to meet a new threat.
Lao Ti and Deborah Devine had had a busy afternoon. They had kept machines running, freshened coffee in cups, lit cigarettes and left them in ashtrays, coming back later to butt them and mess the ashes, and done many other small things to make the building look as if it was in use. Ti knew their survival required a psychological edge.
They also booby-trapped files and planned their own movements and routes to pick off the stragglers without exposing themselves to counterattack.
When the terrorists finally arrived, Deborah and Ti found themselves working like a well-trained team.
Ti waited in the crawl space for some of the traps to cause confusion. Deborah slipped outside, jogged over to the buses and easily took out the two amateur guards. After that, it took very little persuading to convince the bus drivers that they should leave.
Deborah then picked up the guards' M-16s and spare clips. Able Team had left weapons as well as grenades and explosives behind, but Deborah and Ti both preferred the psychological effect of using the enemy's own weapons against them.
Deborah delivered one weapon to Ti and then returned to the parking lot and waited for the wounded to be delivered to the buses, which were no longer there.
Ti heard the file drawers blow up. She was already in position over the storerooms. When someone hit a trip wire and the shelves collapsed on top of the goons, she dropped the bottles of ammonia where they would do the most damage.
She then had managed to slip into the reception room and rig the grenade booby trap while the wounded
