GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

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Chapter Twelve

Scarlett tightened the straps around her shoulders and waist and stood up, holding onto a handle above the row of seats to steady herself. The C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft soared above the state of New York, flying low as it approached their destination. Scarlett looked across the crowded interior of the plane and felt a surge of anticipation, a familiar twist in her stomach and increased heartbeat.

A loaded MPAV armored jeep was clamped down in the place, its wheels locked to keep it steady during takeoff. A large machine gun was attached to the roof, and the driver, Clutch, was busy testing the systems. He sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and one leg dangling out, punching in commands on a small laptop. Stalker was at the front of the cargo area, speaking into his helmet’s microphone, probably talking to the pilot to determine their point of arrival. He and Clutch were both dressed in gray, unmarked military fatigues, and Stalker had an M-16 slung over his shoulder.

Scarlett turned her head to see Snake Eyes standing easily in the middle of the aisle, arms crossed, watching out one of the small windows. Even with the minor turbulence and tremble of the aircraft, Snake Eyes had impeccable balance, and never had to touch the wall to steady himself, as Scarlett did. She guessed that he could walk across a floor covered in marbles without falling over.

Like her, he was dressed in his new black outfit, complete with shoulder straps and web gear. A line of smoke grenades and other equipment was hooked to his belts, and as always, his sword was strapped to a sheath across his back. Two Glock 18 automatics were resting in holsters at his thighs.

Scarlett had similar web gear for her outfit, with attached items like an infra-red detector and a set of tools for hacking into computer systems. She also had special black forearm braces. She had a Glock in a holster as well, but she didn’t expect to use it.

She pulled a black plastic case from underneath her seat and flipped it open. Black foam had been cut out to conform to the shape of the items inside. There was a small black composite stock, an advanced laser scope, and a flexible crossbar. Scarlett pulled out the pieces and snapped them together with practiced ease. The stock clicked firmly into the crossbar, and she pulled back the strong cord until it snapped into place on the trigger mechanism. Then she attached the scope. In her hands was a handheld miniature crossbow.

As she took out her set of six-inch-long bolts, Snake Eyes walked over to her and watched interestedly.

“Is that a crossbow?” he signed.

“Yes,” she answered with a smile.

“Isn’t that a strange weapon to use?”

“Is this coming from the guy with a katana strapped to his back?”

Snake Eyes shrugged. “You have a point.”

“That’s not all I have,” Scarlett said. She pulled back the magnetic strap over her forearm brace to expose the set of six-sided shuriken blades held in place there. “You’re not the only one who can use ninja weapons.”

“Not bad,” Snake Eyes conceded.

Stalker came over to them. “Alright, it’s go time,” he said. “Snake, hit the switch. We’ll be over the landing site in thirty seconds.”

Snake Eyes activated the rear doors and they eased downward, letting in a rush of air that drowned out any other sounds. Scarlett’s red hair whipped behind her head as she approached the edge of the door, holding onto the side handles for support. With her other hand, she put on the small ear communicator that Stalker handed her. It was little more than an ear bud connected to a tiny wire microphone that hooked over her ear and rested against her cheek. She also put on a pair of clear plastic goggles.

She looked out across the night sky to the dark countryside below. A few scattered lights glowed lonely in the darkness, and she could make out a nearby highway by the line of lights. Other than that, the land below them was utterly dark from this height.

Stalker came up to her and put his hand on her arm. “We’ll be half a mile west of the facility,” he shouted over the noise. “Follow the GPS on your watch and keep radio silence unless it’s an emergency. Do not engage if you can help it.”

“Gotcha,” Scarlett said, giving a thumbs up.

“Alright, good luck.”

Snake Eyes glanced at her and she could almost see him smile, by the way his facemask twisted a bit around his mouth. And then, with one step, he hopped out into the darkness. Scarlett smiled to herself and followed him out, jumping from the plane.

Skydiving at night is very different than during the day. You can’t see anything except the lights in the distance, and you’re completely surrounded in penetrating darkness. Scarlett felt as if she was falling through outer space, and the lights below were the stars shining around her.

Snake Eyes was invisible in his black outfit, so Scarlett had no idea where he was. She allowed herself to fall for another few seconds, looking at her watch to check her GPS position. She adjusted her freefall, trying to aim more in the direction of the target. She had no way to tell where it was on the dark landscape below her, so she had to rely on the GPS.

She pulled her cord and her parachute deployed with a rush, the impact of the straps across her chest almost knocking the wind out of her. The sky hurtling past her came to an abrupt halt, and she gently floated downward, pulling on the directional cords to aim her descent.

Her parachute was black, like the rest of her outfit, and she would be hard to see clearly from below. Someone watching the sky very carefully would see her once she got closer to the ground, but she didn’t expect anyone to be looking. Any security guards would have their attention focused on the land around the facility, not on the sky above it.

Checking the GPS again, she pulled hard to the right, and floated down toward a large property marked by floodlights on the perimeter. According to the GPS, that was her target, so she aimed directly for the roof of the large building right in the center of the compound. As she got closer, more details came into view, one detail being the figure already on the roof.

Scarlett aimed her descent perfectly, coming down in between two tall satellite dishes with tall antennas, and touched down on the roof as gracefully as a ballet dancer landing a pirouette. She immediately backpedaled as her parachute fluttered to the rooftop in front of her. As the parachute flattened out, she pulled on the cords and wrapped as much of the parachute up as possible. One edge of the parachute caught on the antenna tower but she yanked it free.

It took a few minutes as she kneeled down and quickly folded the parachute up as small as she could, wrapping it in its cords until it was a tight ball of cloth. She stuffed the oversize bundle back into her parachute pack and zipped it closed. They could not leave evidence of their arrival behind.

Snake Eyes was done before Scarlett was, and he silently walked to the edge of the roof and took a look around. Three stories below them was a wide parking lot currently lined with tractor trailers. Several large wooden crates were stacked up near the trucks, and a forklift was moving around, loading one of the trailers.

Scarlett snuck to the edge and looked out as well. The parking lot was surrounded in a tall fence topped with razor wire, and armed guards patrolled the whole area. A trio of large spotlights swept back and forth across the edge of the fence. Scarlett looked closely at the guards as they walked along the perimeter.

“Those don’t look like normal security guards,” she whispered.

Snake Eyes shook his head. They had expected guards, of course, since M.A.R.S. was a weapons manufacturer. But the men patrolling the area below them were not your standard security personnel wearing blue uniforms and carrying a flashlight and a pistol. They wore specialized black and red body armor and wielded machine guns.

Snake Eyes and Scarlett went to the rear side of the building and saw that the coast was clear on that side. For the moment, there were no guards patrolling that area, and the entire side of the building was dark. In a few minutes, they were both rappelling down the side of the building with rope from Snake Eyes’ pack.

They crept in darkness to the edge of the building and Snake Eyes peeked out briefly across the parking lot. As one of the spotlights swept past them, they ducked back behind the building, staying in shadow. Snake Eyes held up two fingers, indicating that two guards were nearby. As soon as the spotlight moved back in the other direction, he snuck out moved along the side of the building. Scarlett stayed close behind.

Two guards had their backs to them, watching as the forklift loaded another crate into one of the trailers. The crate was unmarked, as were the trailers. They had no signs or markings to designate them as a weapon transport. The fact that the crates were being loaded onto unmarked commercial vehicles was suspicious. Normally a shipment such as this would be transported with special vehicles under special guard.

“Who are they shipping these weapons to?” Scarlett asked in sign language.

Snake Eyes paused, watching the guards. “Maybe it’s not weapons,” he signed back. “Maybe they’re just loading equipment or machinery.”

There were a pair of large dock doors on this side of the building, and one of them began to open with a loud hum. Snake Eyes and Scarlett moved along the edge of the building, concealed by deep shadows, until they were only fifty feet from the door. They remained hidden behind a stack of broken wooden pallets a few feet high. When the door opened all the way, a second forklift came through, carrying another wooden crate. Four armed guards walked out as well, and Scarlett peeked out from above the pallets to see someone else join the guards.

“There she is,” she signed excitedly to Snake Eyes. “The woman we’re looking for.”

Standing with her arms on her hips was the tall brunette captured on the Russian security video. She wore black boots, black leather pants, and a long black leather trenchcoat that flapped lazily around her feet. Lights above the doors shined down on her, reflecting off the leather outfit and off the edge of her thin-framed glasses. She looked harshly out across the lot at the trucks being loaded and then waved her arms at the second forklift operator.

“Let’s go! We don’t have all night!” she snapped.

One of the guards came over and said something to her, and then she returned to the building, followed by a few more guards.

The minutes crawled by with agonizing slowness as Snake Eyes and Scarlett waited, watching as the final few crates were loaded onto the trailers. Scarlett checked her watch and saw that almost a full half-hour had passed since they had landed at the facility. By now, Stalker and Clutch were probably in position at the rendevous point.

Finally, the two forklifts drove back into the building, and guards began to close up the trucks. The two guards nearest them went over to the door and walked inside, and a second later the door started to close behind them.

Snake Eyes glanced up around them. “Wait here,” he signed. “I’ll be just a moment.”

Before Scarlett could even ask him what he was doing, he jumped out from behind the pallets and ran to the door in the space of a few seconds. He was like a blur, barely noticeable in his black uniform as he zipped through the shadows along the side of the building.

The dock door was almost closed by the time he got there, only a few feet off the ground and closing fast. Snake Eyes ran up to it and rolled right under the door just before it closed completely. Scarlett stared at the door in utter disbelief, looking around nervously. By some miracle, none of the guards outside noticed Snake Eyes, since they were still paying attention to the trucks.

The door stopped when it was barely a foot off the ground, and to Scarlett’s amazement, she saw Snake Eyes’ gloved hand come out from under it and wave to her. Scarlett took a deep breath, waited until she was sure the other guards were not looking in her direction, and ran to the door. She quickly crawled under it and got to her feet.

She found herself in a wide, empty loading dock with bright overhead lights, that led to a production area through a large foyer. Lying on the ground in front of her were two unconscious guards, sprawled painfully on the bare concrete. When Scarlett looked at Snake Eyes, he merely shrugged.

“They were like that when I got here,” he signed. “I swear.”

After they had dragged the unconscious guards out of sight, they snuck to the foyer and looked out into the production area. It was a long rectangular area lined with aisles with large metal racks and more stacks of wooden crates and large metal bins. The area led off to another room far to the left, and there was a large doorway at the other side as well leading into more storage.

There were at least a dozen guards walking around, all of them wearing the same red and black body armor. They were loading guns into smaller shipping containers, and packing the containers into more crates.

All the while, the woman in the leather trenchcoat supervised the operation. She walked around and barked orders to the workers, while talking intermittently into a cell phone.

Scarlett took a small digital camera from one of the pouches on her supply belt and began snapping photographs. Snake Eyes tapped on her shoulder and pointed to his left. Along the wall was a metal staircase that led up to a series of catwalks above the production floor. Scarlett nodded and the two of them snuck along the wall to the staircase.

The metal stairs seemed to creak under Scarlett’s feet, but Snake Eyes moved up to the catwalk as silently as a ghost. When they were up at the top, they had a perfect view down to the entire production and warehouse area.

“They aren’t making those guns here,” Scarlett said quietly, taking more pictures with her camera. “They’re just packing them up and shipping them. I thought this was supposed to be a manufacturing facility.”

Snake Eyes shook his head and pointed down to one corner of the room. Lying on a long table were half a dozen oblong wooden crates. Scarlett didn’t recognize them at first, but she saw a few opened crates lying across the aisle and realized what she was looking at. They were crates full of cheap rocket launchers, the kind used by terrorists throughout the Middle East, sold primarily by Russian arms dealers. The workers were unloading them from their original crates and repacking them into larger containers for shipment.

“What in the world is going on here?” Scarlett asked. She snapped a photo of the rocket launchers and looked at Snake Eyes, who just crossed his arms disapprovingly.

“Hey!” someone below them shouted. “Up there!”

One of the workers noticed them, and all of a sudden they were all drawing guns. Snake Eyes and Scarlett immediately bolted along the catwalk to the opposite end of the room, where the catwalk led to a maintenance doorway. As Snake Eyes ran, he pulled both his pistols from their holsters.

The woman in the leather outfit screamed, “Don’t just stand there! Shoot them!”

Gunshots rang out and bullets struck the ceiling directly over their heads, sparking and ricocheting on the metal ceiling panels. Bullets blasted the edge of the catwalk. Scarlett felt a bullet tear through her parachute pack but it managed to miss her body.

Snake Eyes slammed the maintenance door open and they rushed through as more bullets rattled against the wall, blasting off bits of plaster and tile. Scarlett swung the door closed and it clanged with bullet impacts.

“What do we do now?” Scarlett asked, drawing her crossbow. “Are we going to just shoot our way out of here?”

“That’s the idea,” Snake Eyes signed.

“We can’t kill anyone,” Scarlett said firmly.

“Right. But we can wound them if we have to.”

They went down the maintenance corridor, which was lined with electrical boxes and small closets full of spare parts and janitorial supplies. A door at the end of the hall led to another hallway, this one lined with gray carpet and lit with muted overhead lights. Abstract artwork hung on the walls, and nearby doors led to conference rooms and offices.

Almost as soon as they entered the hallway, they heard the sound of doors banging open and heavy footsteps coming in their direction. A loud voice shouted, “Go! Check every room! Check the maintenance shaft!”

Snake Eyes and Scarlett ran down the hall and turned a corner, heading down to another hallway intersection that split off to the left and right. Before they made it halfway there, Scarlett heard more footsteps ahead of them from the upcoming hallway.

Snake Eyes ran even faster and jumped into the air. A soldier in red and black armor appeared at the hallway and had time to raise his gun just as Snake Eyes kicked him directly in the chest, launching him into the air as if he’d been struck by a speeding train. He sailed backward, his machine gun spinning into the air, and flipped upside down. Along the wall was a long glass case with thin wooden shelves of medieval artifacts, and the soldier slammed into it head first. He shattered the glass as his body crashed to the floor, taking the shelves with him.

There was another soldier as well coming around the corner, and Scarlett threw herself at him, crashing the two of them through a doorway and onto the floor.

Snake Eyes plucked the soldier’s machine gun out of the air before it even hit the ground. He turned to open fire down the hallway they had come from, as more soldiers came running toward them. Fire danced from the gun’s barrel and the lights along the ceiling of the hallway burst like flash bulbs. Soldiers scattered and ran for cover.

Scarlett tumbled to her feet and kicked away the soldier’s gun. He jumped up and lunged at her, but she spun around, grabbing his arm and effortlessly flipping him into the air. He flew over a conference table and crashed into the large office chairs. Scarlett ran up and struck him across the face with her elbow, knocking him out cold.

Snake Eyes tossed a couple of smoke grenades into the hall and they exploded in a huge puff of thick gray smoke. Since he had shot out the lights, the entire hallway was now dark and clouded with smoke, and he could hear the soldiers coughing and gasping for breath. A few of them dared to open fire blindly through the smoke, but Snake Eyes was already on the move.

He ran into the room with Scarlett and saw that she was okay. He walked right to the large windows in the conference room and picked up one of the chairs. He tossed the chair right through the window.

They jumped out together and landed deftly on the grass fifteen feet below. Luckily, they still faced the rear of the building, where it was darkest. They took off across the lawn as spotlights popped up closer to the compound and began sweeping across the open area.

They ran to a large fence surrounding the property and Snake Eyes took a grenade out, placing it right against the fence. He and Scarlett ran back and crouched down as the grenade blew a hole in the fence, giving them room to squeeze through. The grenade gave away their position immediately, and gunfire burst from the window they had jumped from. Bullets struck the ground nearby, spitting up dirt.

“Stalker!” Scarlett said into her microphone. “We are leaving the target and are being pursued! You’ll have to come and get us! We’re heading north right now!”

Stalker’s voice came through her earpiece. “We’re on our way. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Snake Eyes and Scarlett ran full speed across the open field, sprinting as fast they as could go. Their black outfits made them almost invisible against the dark landscape, but if one of the spotlights swept past them, Scarlett’s red hair would stick out like a sore thumb. It hardly mattered, since their footprints across the field would be easy to track. They heard more scattered gunfire and distant shouting behind them.

Scarlett dared a glance over her shoulder and saw moving lights along the fence where they had gotten through. The lights moved fast in their direction and the sound of an engine reached her ears..

“They’re on motorcycles!” she cried.

They ran up across the top of a ridge and more gunfire burst out behind them as their pursuers saw their silhouettes outlined against the sky, even in the darkness. Snake Eyes jumped down along the other slope of the hill and slid on his knees. Scarlett went to help him up but he waved her off and crouched down right along the top of the slope. They heard the motorcycles get closer, and their headlights marked their approach.

When the first motorcycle flew up along the top of the ridge, it caught air as it came over, and Snake Eyes was ready, swinging upward with his katana blade. It cut through the front tire and damaged the rim with the sound of scraping metal. When the cycle hit the ground it immediately flipped upside down, its front wheel bending right in half, and sent its rider soaring through the air and crumpling to the ground.

Scarlett met the next biker as he came over the ridge, jumping into the air and kicking him right in the face. He flipped over backwards, his gun flying from his hand, and the motorcycle spun out of control. Two cycles were down, but there was still one more coming.

It zoomed across the ridge and went right past Snake Eyes. It turned halfway down the slope, its rear wheel spinning madly, kicking up dirt and chunks of grass, its bright headlight shining right at them. The rider brought his machine gun up.

Scarlett went down to one knee and drew her crossbow. Just as the cycle rider opened fire, she pressed the trigger and sent a bolt straight into his neck. He slapped a hand to his neck as if swatting a mosquito, and toppled from the bike as it drove out from under him, crashing to the ground without a rider.

Snake Eyes paused a moment, shielding his eyes from the glare of the cycle headlight. He looked over at Scarlett and signed, “I thought we couldn’t kill anyone.”

“He’s not dead,” Scarlett said, tucking the crossbow back into its large holster at her hip. “I used tranquilizer darts. He’ll just be asleep for a few hours.”

“Not bad. I’m impressed.”

“Come on, let’s go.”

They had only gone another hundred yards before the MPAV came roaring toward them, with Stalker at the gunner position, wielding the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the roof. He jumped down and opened the doors for Scarlett and Snake Eyes to get in, and then got in the front passenger seat.

“Gun it, Clutch,” he said. “Get us out of here.”

Clutch, sitting in the driver’s seat, gripped the steering wheel tightly and smiled, his eyes glowing with excitement. “Yes, sir.”

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