Chapter 6

“Can you see anything?” Shane asked.

They were all crouched behind the locked door. They used their camera to see what was behind the door. The report came in that a local elementary school was locked down by an unknown amount of extremists. They had at least twenty students captive in a small room near the rear entrance of the school. The team decided to breach and clear from the top floor and work their way to the last room. They entered in complete silence, using their suppressed riffles they neutralised most of the suspects. Their mission was a little different. Because of the sensitivity of the situation, with children being involved, they had to extra cautious with how they handled the suspects in the presence of young children.

“There are four of them.” Helena replied. “Two with arms. One has something strapped on his waist, but I cant see what it is.” She continued.

“Think it could be explosives?” Bette asked.

“Possibility.”

“How many children?”

Helena moved the camera the entire room. “ About a dozen.”

“And adults?”

“I see six. Four standing two seated with the children.”

“Do you have a positive id on the teacher unaccounted for?”

“Affirmative.” Other than the four the only unknown is the other one with the children.”

“She could be a sleeper.” Dana added.

“How do you think we tackle this?” Bette looked at her team for advice.

“We could gas it.” Dana suggested.

“That’s a negative. The two with arms have gas masks.” Helena informed.

“Shit.” Bette stood and started pacing the floor. She stopped suddenly and turned to the team, “Einstein, you said that there are four standing right?”

“Affirmative.”

“And everyone else is seated.”

“Yes.”

“Distance?”

“What do you mean?”

“How tall? Approximately.”

“I would say about five feet. Giving a distance of about three feet between the tallest sitting to their necks.”

“I say we break down the door. If we do it quickly enough they wont have time to hide or run. Shoot anything above three feet. I’ll handle the unidentified seated.”

“Ok boss.”

“You ready?”

“We go in on you.” They replied in unison.

“Fall in and go in on me.”

Tina was at home grading papers. At the shelter, she also did remedial math, reading and english for the women. She sat at the table reading through some of the papers for the past hour or so. The words on the pages began to form one. At that point she decided to watch television to relax a bit. She was flipping through channels. As she channel surfed something grabbed her attention. It was a news report of the incident at the school. She increased the volume and listened intently.