GARGOYLES: Re-Awakening

Dislocation: 2

Elisa Maza was ducked behind a squad car, her knees in the mud. Is this really what you always dreamed you wanted to be?, she thought to herself. She was proud to be a member of the NYPD, and even more proud to have made it to the rank of detective, but this latest "promotion" wasn't sitting well with her. Adding some type of concussive injury to the mix was not going to do anything to warm her up to it.

"All units, move in!" she cried into her radio. The fun was over.

She slipped around behind the car, keeping her head down, as she headed to the back of the battering ram team. She reached them just as they smashed the doors in. A cloud of smoke rushed out of the sudden opening and the team filed in, one next to the other, and then fanned out left and right. Immediately the rat-a-tat of weapons fire pierced through the smoke. It was still too thick and the room too dark to see who was firing. Only the quick, tiny flashes of gun muzzles gave a sense of where they were and it wasn't good, because they seemed to span the entire rear of the building. As she rushed in she ran square into an officer who had perched on one knee to take aim. They both sprawled onto the floor. Shit! It was all a lot easier when she had only one partner instead of a whole team.

The gunfire intensified from all sides. This was getting worse. Her people couldn't see what they were aiming at so they were just spraying bullets at targets that may or may not have even been open. For all she and her colleagues knew, the perps were hidden behind protective barriers. In that case, they were busy firing at flashes without any chance of hitting someone while at the same time giving away their own wide open, unprotected positions. Another few minutes of this and no one with a badge would be left.

There had to be windows along the back wall, Elisa figured. They were blacked out, but there. If she could just blow a big enough hole in one the targets would be backlit. She crawled her way over to the officer she'd knocked into; he had managed to slither behind a piller to gather himself.

"Are you carrying any entry explosives?" she asked him.

"A full pack," he replied.

"Give 'em here," she ordered.

Under easier circumstances he would have asked why, given that they were already inside and hadn't needed to blast the door anyway, but between the noise, the smoke, and the adrenaline, he didn't much care. He handed them over and watched her crawl over to the next officer, where she repeated the same question. What on earth is she up to?, he wondered to himself, not really wanting to know.

Having sequestered two full packs of entry charges, Elisa was busy now with the somewhat riskier task of crawling back towards the spot where she'd bumped into the officer. His smoke grenade launcher had come loose when it happened and was still lying on the floor. It was in front of the door, so if she went for it she'd be the one backlit for all to see. Ultimately, she decided she did not have much choice and so, with a deep breath, she somersaulted herself right over the launcher, grabbing it on the upswing before smacking her feet and butt onto the ground on the other side. Bruises weren't going to make her any happier about this promotion either.

Without further thought, she removed all the entry charges she had collected and inserted the detonators. The firing around her was relentless. "I hope this doesn't blow up in my face," she said to herself. Holding the launcher between her knees she stuffed all of the charges down the barrel. She then set the detonator switch and poised her left thumb over it. With her right hand she swung the launcher up, aimed it at the back wall and pulled the trigger. A split second later, her left thumb pressed down.

The sound of the exploding charges was unimpressive. It sounded like two blocks of wood being smacked together. The sound of raining glass, on the other hand, was impressive. All the weapons fire ceased. With her makeshift rocket Elisa had managed to shatter an entire six by six foot section of pained glass that had been covered over with paper. The gaping hole sent light streaming in from the outside, revealing just a half dozen or so wooden crates, each with two gun toting terrorists behind them. She jumped up, pointed her weapon and yelled "freeze!"

The twelve terrorists stood up slowly with their rifles to their sides, looking utterly stunned. It would have been a great moment if not for the fact that Elisa's team was doing the exact same thing. The two sides were essentially mirror images of each other—gun wielding men and women with their rifles dangling and their mouths agape—except that instead of facing each other, everyone was looking at her.

She blew a loose strand of hair out of her face with a puff.