The hellish storm of bullets, that had been crashing into the hull of the ship, had stopped. The native sailors had begun grabbing and tipping over tables, chairs, anything metal or wooden they could find, as makeshift cover in the hallways leading to the belly of the ship. It appeared that they were going to make the invaders pay for every inch.
Hendrik was pushed by these men further and further into the ship until he came into a room crowded with men and women. In light blue hats. The UN personnel had taken to huddling up in the ship's lounge and, though the majority looked panicked and tearful, some seemed remarkably nonchalant to the tumult around them.
Their guns sat in a pile in the middle of the room, unloaded.
This flabbergasted Hendrik, and he demanded of the nearest man, "Why are you not participating in the defense of this ship?"
The man gave him a irritated glance, "First, It's against the rules of the United Nations peacekeeping personnel to fire on any enemy who hasn't fired directly upon us. We all knew this was a possibility."
Henrik interrupted with a shout, "They certainly fired upon me!"
"And second," the man continued, holding up two fingers, as though Henrik hadn't spoken, "These raiders, whoever they are, have no business with us. We're neutral, we're not a threat to them, and we have no valuables. It would be a significant breach of international law to touch us. Our best course of action is to wait here and cooperate with their demands until we receive further orders from the secretary-general."
"You can't be serious."
"Excuse me? I served in Kosovo in the 90's. I served in the Congo. I even worked the Iraqi consulate for a few months back in 2005. If you think any of this really bothers me after I survived all those hellholes, you could do to walk a mile in my shoes."
"Wha- You all agree with this?" A few in the room nodded, most looked too afraid to speak up. "Well, I was outside when these people attacked, I'm not going to wait for them to come and shoot me." With that he un-holstered his pistol and retrieved the single clip he'd been given and clumsily loaded it. "Give me your bullets." he demanded to a group sitting at the dinner table. They looked at each other, before reaching into their jackets or pockets and tossing him three clips.
Hendrik stuffed one clip in each of his pant's pockets and held the third clenched between his teeth, as he'd seen several of the sailors do on his way back. He hoped he cut a heroic figure as he walked out of the room, his adrenaline keeping him from realizing exactly how stupid he was being.
Hendrik had taken the same two weeks of sidearm training and target range practice with blanks that everyone who was given a firearm was required to, but nothing else. He'd never hunted as a kid, or even fired a real round before.
He came to a stop at the very end of the long hallway, leading straight to the door to the outside. He figured if there was one place that was sturdy and safe in this hallway, it was this one. He hunkered down behind a cabinet that had been torn loose from a wall.
He peered over the cabinet and steadied his arm on the top of it, staring down the iron sights of the weapon.
The hand of the man next to him reached over and plucked the baby blue beret off his head and tossed it behind them, "You'll get yourself killed wearing that. Too bright." the sailor said with a grim smile, before returning to the sights of his rifle.
Hendrik swallowed deeply as he stared at the door though his mouth was dry, his tongue feeling the sour taste of metal. He had no idea where the attackers were, or even whether they were on the ship or not. But there was one thing he did know: they knew where he was. And they probably weren't coming to have a beer.
The clatter of feet and equipment could be heard outside the door and a rattling reverberated through the silent hallway. Whoever was outside was attempting to open the locked door.
A loud voice yelled in English through the hull door, "A’ight, you monkeys, you better open up!"
The crew told him exactly who he could fornicate with, in English from those who could manage it, but in a wide variety of tongues from others. The slides on everyone's weapon were pulled as everyone chambered their first round.
A beat of silence.
“You'll regret this." The voice behind the door called out.
There was silence and then the sound of hurriedly retreating feet. Hendrik followed the crowd, as everyone else instinctively hunkered down. As everyone else did, Hendrik began to count in his head. One. Two. He was too young for this. Three. Four. He'd never tried that new local beer or bedded that cute, new, intern. Five. And now he never would.
Chaos.
The door was blown inward slamming through tables; crushing and tossing aside bodies like a bowling ball. It came to a skittering stop about halfway down the hall. A great thicket of smoke hung over the doorway completely obscuring the view to the outside. The explosion caused Hendrik to reflexively bite down, painfully hard, on the clip of bullets between his teeth. The ammunition then tumbled from his mouth to the floor.
Three bouncing black circles skipped their way to a stop in the front of the hallway. Henrik quickly realized what these were: grenades. But they didn't conventionally explode in a fiery blast. Two blew open with a hissing burst of air and threw a whistling wall of sharp, speeding metal in every direction.
It created a curious orchestra as these shards drove into various surfaces: like a nail being hammered in when they hit wood; a blacksmith's smithy when they hit metal; and a loud squish when they bored into human flesh. The cries of the wounded played the chorus over the grenade's percussion. The first third of the hallway had been turned into a hellish pin cushion. Hendrik, luckily, was far enough back in the hall to escape the nightmare. For now.
The third shape detonated on a five second delay after the others, clouding the front half of the hall in a cloud of thick artificial smoke.
In the new carnage of the torn up walkway, one man fired his gun through the smoke towards what he hoped was the doorway. And then more people started firing. Eventually, everyone in the hall was discharging their weapon at the newly created opening. Hendrik attempted to join in, but found that the trigger on his weapon wasn't depressing. He pulled the pistol back and stared at it, in disbelief that he'd been given the one broken gun in the bunch. A hand again reached over from his left and adjusted something on the side of the pistol. The safety had been on... The guardian angel to his left, had saved him once again. Hendrik brought it back to bear on the cloud of smoke, and, upon pulling the trigger, the gun began to kick back satisfyingly.
It made Hendrik feel invulnerable somehow, as though as long as he kept pulling the trigger, these bad men couldn't kill him. But then, gradually, the fire waned as men ran out of bullets and had to pause to reload. It was in this pause that five green lasers speared through the smoke, reached out, and touched five sailor's chests. With a loud crack the five dropped; as though the lasers were the very arms of the Angel of Death, pulling these men from this world.
The lasers quickly picked five new victims and precise three round bursts riddled them as well. Everyone in the hall hunkered low, behind whatever they could find. Those who'd had their protection bludgeoned by the impact of the door being blown in, and had miraculously survived the tidal wave of metal, didn't even attempt to finish reloading. But they were gunned down, as they attempted to run back towards where Hendrik was crouched.
Then, the lasers abruptly retracted back into the dispersing smoke as they were switched off. Henrik was inexperienced enough to think that this might mean a small reprieve in the fire fight.
When a deafening blast sounded out from the unknown, and five commandos came bursting through the smoke with imposing looking weapons steadied against their shoulders; he realized how silly he'd been. The squad moved fluidly, in a military leap frog pattern, exposing only the very first man in the line. That man would let a roaring blast from a shotgun chew through anything in its path. They’d switched to shotguns…
While that man pumped his shotgun to load the next shell, he fell back to the end of the line, as the man behind him stepped up to the lead of the line and fired his blast. The result was a constant wave of fire raking the hall as they advanced, while putting only one person in heavy danger of return fire. If anyone had been brave enough to try to return fire.
Thick boots trod over the metal shrapnel like it was nothing, and the men vaulted the various broken obstacles of the hallway like they weren't even there.
Henrik saw line after line of sailors cut down like grass before the mower, right in front of his eyes. He sat there frozen in shock. He was going to die.
The man next to him, God bless him, shoved him away from the killing field and down the hall that was untouched so far. He didn't know why this man had taken upon it to help him. Hendrik didn't know the sailor's name, indeed, couldn't remember ever meeting the man, before sharing the firing line with him. But this unknown soldier had protected him. The sailor didn't look at him, as Hendrik reached back to grab his beret. He simply kept firing forward with practiced intensity.
Hendrik scurried up and didn't look back as he hurried down the hallway. He'd never see that sailor again. His guardian angel died in that hall. As he raced down the hallway, he failed to notice that no one else was retreating with him, but it would eat at him later.
He burst back into the room where the UN members were holed up and bent over in the center of the room, hands on his knees, breathing heavily.
"Ah. you're back," snorted the man who'd derided him earlier, "Done playing hero so soon? And here we thought you were going to save us all."
The rest of the room didn't reply to him, either they were silently looking worried or praying, or were calmly waiting for this all to come to a quiet end. Well, if the more and more interspaced gunfire was any sign, the fighting was cleaning up in the halls outside the room. Hendrik grimly guessed his team probably hadn't won.
Several sets of footsteps walked down the hallway and strode into the room without pause. They pointed their frightening weapons at the various occupants of the room. A tall man, probably the leader of the group, regarded the pile of weapons on the floor with a grin, "Hhmm, light blue patches, acting like pussies... looks like we've got some UNnies, guys."
The five wore heavy combat vests and held their shotguns with practiced familiarity. Weapons and gear hung off, or were strapped to, every spare inch of their dark green suits. Gloves covered their hands, and thick boots their feet. They wore helmets, not unlike those a moto-cross biker would wear, with a dark tint hiding their faces. But not an inch of skin or humanity showed through the layering. They might as well have been aliens.
The man who'd dressed Hendrik down stood up and addressed the invading pirates. "Take what you want off this ship. But you will not touch a hair on the head of anyone in this room."
"I won't?" the man in the lead asked, "Or what?"
"You would be bringing the full weight of the United Nations down upon you and your group. These severe breaches of international law and the Geneva Convention would brand you as war criminals, and you'd all be subject to trial at the International Criminal Court. Peacekeepers would be authorized into these Straits, and your job would become much more difficult. In addition-"
The tall man who'd spoke first wordlessly walked over to the lecturing UN man, slung his shotgun over his shoulder, and quickly pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster. He jammed the barrel into the man's gut before pulling the trigger. The crack and muzzle flare were more muffled than normal, but the blast crumpled the man to his knees. He slumped to the ground, holding his bleeding stomach and crying out for help.
"That's called a gut shot. His internal organs are probably pretty torn up right now, and he'll probably die from it. If he does, it will be slow and painful. If you tell us what we need to know, you may be able to get him medical care before he kicks the bucket. If you don't..." The tall man let it hang.
"More gut shots." One of the other four attackers chimed in.
"More gut shots." the tall man agreed with a wave of his pistol, "Now who wants to tell us where we can get some documents? Huh? You?" he nudged the man he'd just shot with the toe of his boot, who was clearly going into shock, "Ah, you're no help.”
“Wh- why do you need documents? We’re just United Nation’s staff, we don’t have those.” A timid female voice spoke out.
“We have passports or letters of introduction. I have credit cards.” Another added, hoping to appease the attackers.
“Buncha fuckin’ idiots.” A voice growled from another commando who’d yet to speak, “We don’t want your fuckin' money. We want stuff that your bigwigs will pay up for. We’re talkin’ real shit here. Bank account numbers, classified IMF analyses, unreleased WHO drug prices, Peacekeeper locations and distributions. C'mon, give us something we can use here.”
They wanted to deal. Hendrik could deal. Hendrik could deal very well, “I think I can help you with your goal.”
“Finally, some cooperation around here.” The one in charge grumbled.
“I’ll, uh, need to get to my computer to get the files.” He said, still a bit unsure what he had that could appease these people, “If you give me ten to fifteen minutes, I could get them for you.”
The man checked a digital watch and shook his head, “Nah, the heat’s coming, and so you’re coming with us. We have computers.”
“Come wit- but I need mine!”
“You’ll deal with it.” One of the pirates walked over and roughly spun him around before binding his hands behind his back.
“Hmm, Grab another person. Hostages pay nice.” The leader said, after some thought.
A second pirate walked over and grabbed the timid girl who’d spoken up first. She cried out before her hands were also zip-tied and a strip of tape was plastered across her mouth.
The two UN members were marched out by two of the commandos, before the leader turned and offered, “I’d get that man medical attention if I were you lot. You need to stop the bleeding. Enjoy the rest of your trip.” And with that, the attackers exited.
The room was quiet except for the moans and gasps of their shot comrade. Nobody moved.
