The Last of Zanzibar

It had been four hours of pyrotechnics and bullets and death since Sheriff Coyle had radioed in for her own SWAT unit; the entire force now dead. Another two-plus hours since the engagement on the resort suites had begun, and her emergency request to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for their elite SWAT unit called the Zebras. They were the supreme tacticians in the active-shooter responses, hostage and downed-officer rescues, containment, explosive breaching, and methodical team tactics… but they were Clark County, and the jurisdictional issues remained in debate.

Now, hours into the annihilation, while ensconced in the battered building, she called them herself, and was assured they would be resolved swiftly… while people were dying. She howled into the phone, “You realize we just had one of the hostages shot and tossed out a window right in front of us? My entire SWAT unit was taken out with an anti-tank missile? Four of my deputies were gunned down four hours ago that started all this shit!!! And you guys are still gonna fuck around on jurisdiction? Fuck you! Get me the fuck some help! NOW!”

She was now absent any last prayers or traditional story-book saviors. She knew they were on their own for whatever duration this hell would require of them. She didn’t feel good about their chances.

********************

After Leonard’s murder, the Turks remained quiet, weapons still. They had positioned two hostages in front of each of the three windows they held, along with small illumination lanterns set in the corner so their combatants knew it was the innocents. The human shields that westerners so conscientiously fretted over, the pragmatic and cost-free defense rarely failed.

The Turks were assessing the battle, and how much time they would need for the evacuation. Yusef was concerned for their fading ranks; Baki, in the first hours, and Omer both from a sniper’s bullet, and now Ahmet severely wounded with a slug to the flesh of his neck and one to the shoulder. He was spitting blood, but there was little flow from the neck wound. Lenin assessed as internalized bleeding, and there was no fix for that in the field without a surgeon. The second wound was why the fighter was incapacitated, as there was no shoulder to buttress his weapon, his right arm hung on torn muscle alone. There was copious blood loss, and no answer for any of it. He would surely die.

They had underestimated the fight in the lazy Americans, and they overestimated their own colleague’s assistance in response. They should have been there by now. They had already blown a hole through the ceiling to the roof and secured a knotted rope to exit. They would be ready in an instant, but that instant kept getting pushed back because of air traffic monitoring being heightened due to the very assault Yusef and his men were laying on the whorehouse. The local policing authorities were ramping up in response. It put them in a precarious position, one that Yusef was determined to shoot their way out.

With grenades boobytrapped to the front entry and the side entry to the east, both main access points were death traps. They were outnumbered, maybe, but they certainly had the advantage in weaponry. Yusef was determined to deploy everything. They could last, but his assessments were declining as his mercenaries were being taken out.

Ahmet sat leaning against the wall where he was shot. His pallor was caramel-grey from blood loss and dying; the man was still ready to fight, his AK-47 still at his disposal if he was called to it. Death was death, he knew how to dispense it. But Lenin knew he was certainly not an asset they could count on for long. So, Ahmet kept watch over two hostages positioned in the window, with his sidearm held in his one functioning hand.

Ule, with his own wounds bound but now so sodden, they were purging like an oversaturated sponge. After wringing the bandage from the German’s leg, Lenin rewrapped it with the same makeshift bandage, only adding a little more wadding. Their force was a mere remnant now.

“Kahretsin, pislikler nerede!” Ule shouted in obvious anger.

Yusef looked at him contemptuously, Ule, the non-Turk, ranting like a child. He couldn’t afford another loss of a shooter, so he had to pacify the man. The only way he knew how.

“De ‘assholes’ are coming to save us… asshole. Soon!” Then more directly as he pointed his Beretta for emphasis, “If you are weak, den go to de Americans. Pislik!” Such calming influence gave the mercenary no other option. It was death or discipline.

Ule responded as any worn and depleted fighter might, “Sikişmek!” Fuck, the universal retort of submission.

************************

Darlene was buried in the smell of death and cordite, waiting for a signal from one of these crazy fucking military vets… four middle-aged men with more fight than the infamous Zebras by her perspective. But she wanted more… more officers, more guns, more power, more prayer, more punishment. With two more of her people wounded and bleeding badly, she ground her teeth for the want to punch a hole through the heart of the death-team sitting in ominous silence across a swimming pool and patio at a whorehouse.

She received the text from the vets, “Get the cruiser ready.”

She quickly turned to her detective, “Harry, get a cruiser and bring it around the side. They’re almost ready.”

************************

After Donnie had cleared the flank of the hotel, crabbing along like another of the many desert denizens who make their days’ calories hunting at night. He needed to see the rear of the building to identify just where he was, and where he needed to be. The window, casement and all, had been replaced, but it still had the manufacturer’s stamp on the glass. He looked inside… the round Roman bed, without sheets or pillows or sexy women – neither dead nor alive. The Roman Room. His stomach started cooking up some pain that needed a place to go. He grimaced and ducked from the window walking back along the wall, then turning the western, windowless flank to a door marked, “Utility.” This was it, part of the ruse.

Donnie kneeled down and used the light from the face of his phone… Susie 2-cents had told him there would be two like-kind faux rocks on either side of the cement slab before the door. He reached down to the one on the right, and like turning the top of a mayonnaise jar, it spun; he lifted it up to disclose the entry key. He took it, recapped the faux rock, just to leave no sign of his activities.

He unlocked the door and slowly opened it, his phone giving the only light. He entered and closed the door quietly into its latch. He found himself in what appeared to be a custodian’s work room, unfinished, cement floors, unpainted drywall… and the slippers, exactly where the whore said they would be. There were four sets… he took the nearest one. After unshouldering the M-16 and hanging his UMP on a hook, he removed his boots and slipped on the fitting slippers, with a soft rubber soul for silence. He looped the UMP back over his head and shoulder, and turned his small light and followed the space to the right, where it quickly diverted left. There was a short hall ending in a door that would lead to the interior hall of the hotel; the door would be marked “Utility” on the other side. Along his right was a movie camera set up on a tripod at a sheet of glass. Donnie knew immediately the scam they ran, for the glass was a two-way mirror. Even by the modest moonlight coming through a brand new window, he knew he was looking on the Roman Room.

He turned to his right with a working knowledge of the schematic now, because he knew where the thugs had busted through - there was a small sliding door; he opened it, and he stepped into the closet. He could see through the slats in the louvred door. He was taking the exact steps of the murderers when they tried to assassinate him... the very same way that they had dispatched Mark and Lazlo in their rooms according to Susie. He growled in silent anger… he spun and returned to that clandestine space.

The schematic was identical on the north side of the building, same two-way glass, same covert access through the closet… and the short hall, that door, all the same.

The murderous bitch had the eight “high-roller” suites all set up for her schemes that had at first started out as extortion plots, and had, in recent years, evolved into kidnap and murder and wholesale digital theft of all they could get their electronic hands on!

He found the small ladder on the northern wall just to the side of the entry and took it up to the second floor, where it mirrored precisely in schematics and in the kill-for-greed plot as below. He gripped his Sig Sauer in its holster, wanting to just walk out and start shooting… But they had to save some people if they could.

He looked in through the two-way glass, then, in shock, turned aside, as the room was slightly illuminated by a lantern, and two women were standing side by side in front of the window… there was a dead man on the floor, clearly had been dragged from the window as there was a mash of thick blood in the carpet, and it scraped across the floor to where the body now lay.

Cliff’s work… “Atta, Cliff, give ‘em hell!” he whispered to himself.

He moved to the little sliding door to access the closet, and he heard a voice coming down the hall; he couldn’t understand a word, and that confirmed who it was. He reached down into his ankle and pulled out his Karambit knife, and slipped into the closet, with eyes peering through the louvres.

Just like they had planned. At least hoped.

***********************

Ule limped into the end suite where Omer lay inert, and two nearly naked women were posed as protection. He was interested in more than just inflicting terror and pain… Ule had a more liberalized view in matters of sexuality, with an insignificant measure of shame. He responded well to his lusts, and in this unique setting, where his victims were lovely, and dressed in lingerie, and fearing for their lives… Ule was deeply aroused.

“Beautiful! They call you, ‘babes’ here en America, yes?” He was pawing at both girls, his MP5 slung over his shoulder to make both hands free. Grappling with a knot in the lingerie, he was aiming to unveil more of the prize. The women were still bound with zip ties, but also the impulses of terror; paralysis. And Donnie was watching for his moment only hoping it would come.

Both women turned their heads from the German in fear and disgust, growing more certain their death was near. Donnie slid the closet door quietly, hoping the women wouldn’t see him and react.

“You babes love German men?” He was manipulating one woman’s breasts, getting his nose in close, “Too bad now… you don’t now smell good… like you are sick?” The other girl opened her eyes to simply be ready for what might be coming, and she saw Donnie, who held a hand to his mouth. She quickly turned her head again without a word, closing her eyes even tighter.

“Now I see your tits, babe!” and just as he was reaching to the second girl, Donnie wrapped a hand over the German’s mouth and ripped his head back, almost hard enough to break his neck, and he let the Karambit knife do the rest of the silencing, with a deep trenching from his victim’s left ear across his neck in one hard pull. Nothing but a spray of blood and a hissing sound were all that was left of the German’s life. It would take no more than a minute or two for his life to be gone in a growing pool of blood. Donnie ended that short interim, bringing the knife soundly into the German’s temple.

Both girls began to squeal, unable to make sense of their horror, and Donnie again held his hand to his mouth… then gave them urgent but hushed directions.

“Quiet…” he declared in hushed assertions, “I’m here to get you out. Come with me, now… hurry.” He quickly cut the zip ties on their wrists and their ankles. “Don’t speak, just come with me.”

He quickly led them out through the closet, and closed it back up, leaving only a mystery and another dead fighter behind.

“Take the ladder down… then the door on the right, it’ll take you outside. And just run straight away, follow the lights into the city… Don’t fuckin’ look back.”

The girl’s eyes seemed to glaze, maybe disbelieving the angel or the moment; they were frozen, now afraid of the next great challenge… Donnie just told them again, “Down, now! Take the door to your right – outside and run. Now go!”

This time they responded in action, holding their wails of agony.

Donnie returned to the room, the German set in some rictus of his final yet broken brain function. The vet leaned against the inner wall, and walked himself to the window, knowing Cliff had eyes. In the dimly lit room, he raised a hand, and gave a thumbs up.

“Good fucking work, D!” The tide was turning. He immediately sent a text to the group: “Time to breach. We got two girls out. Donnie took another down on this end… At my flare, flash-bangs, you got east I take middle, Johnny!”

**********************

Johnny and Art kept watch on the upper east window, two hostages, one male one female, remained secured and standing there as the Turk’s defense. They all received the text from Cliff: “Time to breach. We got two girls out. Donnie took another down on this end.” Feeling wounded and decimated, it emboldened the tattered offensive who’d been eating bullets at the hands of the kill-party ensconced inside. The assault was piecing together.

Sheriff Coyle gave the order, and the Nye County Sheriff’s deputy rolled his cruiser forward, swinging around the left flank of the besieged social building, first thumping over the curb, then out into the hardpack that surrounded the sex resort. The headlights of the vehicle came on to light the darkness of the desert… Johnny immediately stood and shouted, recklessly, but in the effort to save the deputy’s life.

“Shut off the lights! The lights! Cut the lights, you fool!”

As Johnny was yelling at the approaching cruiser, arms waving, the RPG stuck out from between the hostages, and let fire its ordnance in its signature smoke blast. It slammed into the front of the sheriff’s car, detonating in the windshield, instantly incapacitating the vehicle and its driver, creating a rolling bonfire, sending sparks and burning debris into the air… The vehicle veered and rolled another 20 yards before dipping into a little trough stopping its progress, another dead animal to the desert. There it would burn for hours… no possible survivor.

Art was left stifling a yell of anger as he beaded down on the window but could take no shot due to the two innocents, “Goddammit, I got no shot! I got no shot!” He impotently fired off three three-round bursts into the stucco surrounding the window in furious anger, wanting to bring the building down.

The sheriff watched Brody’s cruiser billowing in flames, she raged in her silence… the good men she had lost this day… doing the Sheriff’s work. She would endanger none other. She immediately ran from the devastated building she hunkered in, and took to her own SUV, still unharmed in the parking lot, and cranked it up. She would go wider, arcing further east, and no headlights… now she was ready to kick the doors in herself. She would rip someone’s heart out through his open mouth… whomever was on the munitions was a dead man! And by god, she would kill him over and over again if she could! “I’m coming for you cocksuckers!” her rage punctuated with tears.

******************

Lenin shouted in jubilance, “Domuzları siktir et!” Then in English so the slaves of the west would know their power, “Fuck the pigs!” He laughed, exchanging the missile launcher for his AK, and exited the room, the stench of sweat and tyranny following him. Their hostages were trembling in tears and the certainty of death.

Returning to Yusef in the middle suite, he railed in pride. “Dead men! They were running a police at us in the car. But he is no longer a fighter to worry.”

Yusef nodded and turned to the two women protecting his window, “Your saviors fail again. Dey will all fail! We will leave no one alive dis night!” Right then his radio crackled…

***********************

Donnie peeked out, looking down the hall, hearing nearby chatter, seeing no one, he quickly crossed the carpet and keyed open the “air conditioning” door and entered – it was exactly as Susie 2-cents had described. He was now in the murder room for the high-rollers in the middle suite.

His heart was rapidly kicking his chest, making this world of war feel strange… Was it that it was a domestic theater on U.S. soil, or that he was now middle-aged and balky? That pulsing echoed in his temple, rage or unsatisfied revenge? Or was it the impotence of being unable to just unleash the UMP into a devastating spray, ending the siege with prejudice? He crouched and listened, and he heard the Turk’s declaration, “Your saviors fail again. Dey will all fail! We will leave no one alive dis night!” Then the static chirp from a radio… and the Turk’s reply:

“Evet, ne kadar süreyle?”

In response from the radio, “20 dakika içinde iniş bölgenizde olacağız!”

“Tamam, 20 dakika. Artık yok.” Then the radio cut off, Donnie begging for any hint from the exchange, and as if upon ordering, the Turk contemptuously snarled at the hostages, “20 minutes for us to be gone. Our helicopter is near. So is all your deaths!”

Donnie heard the womens’ squeal, then pleas and sobs, then an incomprehensible mumble, the sound of drained souls.

Then he heard the crash, and a loud explosion from below!

*************************

Sheriff Coyle circled wide, riding by the diffuse light of the peeking moon and firelight from Brody’s destroyed cruiser. She idled by the two veterans, Johnny tapping the hood as she passed, as he began creeping up on the building, Art getting into firing position aiming on the window.

She pulled up directly in line with the side entry, still lingering 25-30 yards away, then she pulled up slowly, keeping the wheels aligned with the double-glass opening, aiming her vehicle, then retreated. She texted out, “Fire in the hole!”, cracked her door and gassed the SUV.

As the wheels spun in the sand, she inched up on her seat, swinging her door wide. Gaining ramming speed, it skipped up on the sidewalk, she put her left foot on the running board, and propelled out the door, losing her footing, but kicking loose, just as the Expedition met the glass, and she rolled for her life, over and over unable to get to her feet. She covered her head as the SUV pulverized the glass and frame, shattering the structure into shrapnel… and the grenades went off in perfect sequence… BOOM! BOOM! In succession, there was a brutal spray almost vaporizing the detritus of the collision, hot shrapnel replacing the flying glass. Darlene grunting as she took a few pieces in her legs and rear end. It had no effect on her.

She got into a kneeling position, withdrawing her Sig Saur 226, ready for what might come as she levered herself up and against the outer wall just aside from the smoking debris, and a simmering fire in the Expedition. There was more combustion promised, she was sure, but this was the point of attack, and she couldn’t give up position.

She looked at the back of her legs and she could see piercings in the fabric of her uniform pants, a tickle of blood on her legs, and she realized that numbed up little sizzle she was feeling wasn’t mosquitos at all but her latest bout with hot lead.

Art remained poised on the window, not sure which way to expect the Turks to emerge, but they were covering every route out of the building, if indeed they would try.

*********************

The explosions shook the building, startling the Turks… the boobytraps they expected, but the massive collision, then followed by the grenades… it was like the world was tearing to pieces.

Ahmet gripped his pistol and shuffled on his rear towards the door that was propped open, he reached and dragged his AK along with him. He didn’t know where the fight would come from, the window or now the hallway after what surely was a breach entry at ground level. He lifted the pistol in his left hand and held it on the open door, daring the Americans to try and take him.

There was a flare that lit up the compound just outside the window… the signal for an assault.

*********************

Yusef jumped at the collision and explosions, satisfied they would be successful in destroying those foolish enough to try to enter… but this was far larger than two grenades. He ran out of the room with his Kalashnikov levelled in a firing position as he turned left in the hall heading to the stairway… with the elevator locked down on the 2nd floor, the only way up was the stairwell, and they had something awaiting any who made it through the first boobytraps. Yusef, in a measured jog down the hall, was eager to get bullets into any interlopers.

As he moved down the hall, Donnie emerged from the “air conditioner” door behind the fighter, with the Turk fully exposed to him. The Vet slung his UMP around from his back and in a jog following the killer, he sighted on the running man and let a rattling spray from up to down in vertical pattern, instantly spouting blood. The Turk fumbled and fell forward, face-planting in the carpet… the body lay just outside the door now manned by Ahmet, who glared in big, frightened eyes at the sight of a bloody Yusef, laying, grunting in pain. Donnie had trotted right by the middle suite where he had overheard Yusef on the radio… and now moved into an attentive walk. His gun had given him away… but he would gladly engage with them all now that he was exposed… He just wasn’t sure how many remained. He could hear Cliff calling for hostages to jump in the background… it was fully in action now.

********************

Johnny and Cliff were underneath the windows that still gave cover to the Turks with the hostages. They were 40 feet apart, in clear vision of one another with the fire granting a reflective light all around the campus. They pulled the pins on the flashbangs, took a step away from the building and both hurled them in a wide arc, pitching them through the open windows into the two remaining suites that housed the enemy shooters. “Flashbangs up!”

Cliff’s throw flew up into the ceiling and rebounded into the room, but flipped and bounced beneath the front edge of the bed, and it blew in a loud crash of violent light and earsplitting pain… The hostages blanched and screamed… the last Turk, had already been exiting the suite when he saw the American run by firing on his partner, he was shaken by the blast, and fell to a knee, but not knocked out of his senses… The two women were now shrieking, in fear the world was coming to its brutal end… their ears ringing, the world had to have been aflame, and panic turned to action, foolish or not, there was no sense in it… but the Turk had fled, that meant no guns were on them. Cliff was shouting, “Jump… Jump if you can!”

What was their greatest mercy? What made sense in this sheering of senses, both, intuitively knew and acted on fearful impetus, where this room meant death, and the window… was something more… something different… they turned with eyes still blurred from the flashbang, and they tripped to the window and slammed into the sill, heaving their top half over, flipping pell-mell, still attached at the ankle and a wrist, toppling in the air in a painful tumble. Cliff thrust himself into the fall grabbing some portion of the tangled mass to diffuse the collision.

*********************

Their saviors were hollering for the hostages to jump. Tobias and Silkie, bound and screaming in the haze of the flashbang, losing sight of the wounded murderer, swinging their arms looking for hope… life… and they heard “JUMP!” and they followed the sound to the window. It was the only thing that made sense in a world where sense was flash-burned out of existence, and they turned… but not before Ahmet, who had been on the protected side of the room that muted the incendiary device, levelled his weapon and fired three quick bursts as the two hostages leaned out the window, and the woman went down in a heap…

Tobias, now bound to the sill with the dead weight of the woman, heaved her up to him and fell out backward, intuitively seeking anything that was not this killer’s bullets, and they flipped out, cartwheeling Silkie out and around and into the space ahead of the falling security man, and he toppled right on top of the dead woman as they landed in the dirt, limbs cracking… Johnny ran to their aid, looking up at the window, and just in time. Looking down on the escapists was a Turk struggling to get his Kalashnikov up and out the window.

Johnny twisted, aiming his M-16 upwards and as the Turk got his body out in position to fire, Johnny let off two three-round bursts Bdd-rrr-rripp, Bdd-rrr-rripp, and the Turk flew backward into the room, his weapon falling idly to the ground next to Johnny.

**********************

Lenin was running for the hall, seeing the American run by, then the room behind him erupted in an incendiary device, shattering his eardrums, with a violent burst of light… his back was to the explosion, so he fell to a knee, not incapacitated. He rose, hearing a rattling from the machine pistol in the hallway, and as he turned the corner, he saw Yusef fall to the carpet face-first, and still.

The American stopped running making himself an easier target, and Lenin let off a full squeeze of his trigger, spraying a heavy burst of automatic fire, splitting the target in a “Z” pattern to make sure of heavy damage… The American went down almost toppling over Yusef… As Lenin approached the fallen fighter, in the neighboring suite, he saw Ahmet leaning out the window with his weapon and at a double-burst from the enemy’s gun, Ahmet’s head lifted, with a heavy thatch flipping into the air, and Lenin’s comrade crumpled upon himself, his face gazing up at the ceiling with sightless eyes, and two fierce entry wounds.

Just then, Lenin heard the reverberating blast of the claymore they had triggered on the steps coming up… he grinned for another dead enemy… But he also realized he may be the last fighter remaining as Ule was not in the fight. He bent down to attend to Yusef, to help or declare him dead…

A second boobytrap blew that was surely the enemy trying to enter the main door directly beneath him… Smoke was wafting up the stairwell filling the hallway, a crackling of flames coming from the Americans’ foolish assault. The world was exploding, and Lenin smiled… It’s what he was born for… and the Americans were killing themselves in their foolish arrogance of attacking a superior fighting force…

Then one last explosion fired upwards in the stairwell, sending Lenin into the wall, bouncing back… Then another explosion on the stairs, flash-burning his face and hands; and out of the fire came a figure in leaps up the stairs, making themself his easy target. His last hail of weapon’s fire at the approaching figure would end the final battle of Zanzibar. He was would be victorious.

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