The Trap

After visiting the beach Lucas decided to head back to the hotel. He needed to get his plans chalked out for the night for his encounter with Rosmus and Hussein. He would try to get as much Intel as possible and then look for an opportunity to take both of them down before they could cause any more harm to the innocent civilians around the world. In the cab, he noticed that the security beacon on his watch had started flashing. Annie must have had found out something important which she intended to tell him.  On reaching the hotel, Lucas moved hastily through the lobby towards the elevator. As he moved past the reception, he noticed that Alfred was not present there; even the guys at the reception were missing. The lobby looked unusually empty in the middle of the day. That was really strange considering the fact that Hotel Nacional was one of the biggest hotels in entire Cuba. As Lucas headed towards the elevator, he couldn’t help but notice that the security cameras were pointed straight towards him. Lucas entered the elevator and headed towards the 7th floor. The camera in the elevator was also looking straight at him. Something was not right. Someone was watching his every move very closely.

The elevator came to a screeching halt at the 7th floor and Lucas walked out of it. He walked out on the hallway and moved towards his room. Room number 702 was just round the corner. Lucas walked halfway and looked up for the security cameras. The two cameras were at opposite ends of the hallway. If his assumption was right, then he was standing at an eclipse zone where none of the cameras could track him down. He needed to perform the vanishing act. He could neither go forward nor backwards without avoiding the cameras....the only way to travel undetected was to move up. He could use the air conditioning vents for this purpose. It could lead him straight to his room. Lucas pulled out his left shoe and opened a secret chamber from the sole. He pulled out a thin wire and a mini grappling hook. It didn't take him long to pull down the cover of the vent and pull himself up. He turned the dial of his watch to activate the location system. He had to find the way to his room. As Lucas moved forward through the vent, he could see four masked men with automatic rifles waiting below him around the corner. He would have been shot as soon as he reached near his room had he been walking all along. It was a death trap set for him. He needed to move to his room quickly and check on the whereabouts of Annie… for the first time, he felt worried about that girl.

Lucas slowly moved forward to ensure that he didn’t make any noise in the vent. He could not make his presence felt. When he entered the room he could see only a part of it from the vent. He took out his pen and started unscrewing the cap. The pen extended into a foot long thin metallic rod with a small camera on its tip. He lowered the camera from the vent and turned the cap to move it around. There were two armed men in the room. One was guarding the windows while the other was waiting near the door. The room was empty with no signs of Annie. Annie’s suit cases along with the weapons obtained from Maria were lying on the floor. Annie must have been in the hotel to drop off the bags. Probably the assailants had her in custody or in the worst case, had already executed her. Lucas took a closer look at the room once more and pulled up the camera. He had tagged the location of the two armed men in his watch. He needed to take them down silently without the slightest of fuss.

Lucas slowly unwound the screws from the vent access using a Swiss knife that he always carried. He slowly lifted the access door and attached the grappling hook on the vent. Then he slowly moved into the room with body hanging vertically downwards. He could not afford to land on his feet since his boots could make enough noise to give away his presence. He landed on his palms without a sound and swiftly rolled behind one of the couches. He pulled down the grappling hook swiftly and silently. The guys were still stranded in the same positions. Lucas wondered what exactly they were waiting for. He rolled across the door and moved swiftly behind the man waiting at the main door. He took out the Swiss knife, rose up behind the man and like a silent assassin covered his victim’s mouth and jabbed the knife onto his neck. The poor guy didn’t even get a chance to blink.

Lucas could hear the sound of the rest of the armed men outside the room. They were moving around trying to find him since he did not walk up onto their trap. The radios were crackling and from the conversation, it didn’t seem that their boss was too pleased. Lucas had to take out the next guy in order to search the room for any clue he could find and then he needed to vanish again before the other guys arrived. He could see his backpack lying near the bed. Apparently it had not been opened. He rolled again swiftly on the carpet trying to get near the second guy when his plans went wrong. The phone in the room started ringing and the guy looked back to stare straight at him. As he lifted his rifle, Lucas threw the knife straight at him and lunged forwards. The knife struck his shoulder but he managed to fire a few rounds before Lucas landed on him. A brutal blow on his neck ended his misery.

Lucas rushed towards Annie’s luggage and pulled out a silenced M9 along with a smoke grenade. As the door opened up he threw up the smoke grenade and jumped across the room away from the windows taking shelter behind a recliner. He got hold of his backpack as well. The men started firing their rounds as smoke filled up the room and the fire alarm started ringing. Lucas put on his glasses from the backpack and turned on the thermal imaging. As the bewildered men moved around the room firing haphazardly, he watched their every move and took them down one by one with his shots. All the four men were gunned down. As the sprinklers came to life, Lucas turned his attention to the room. There was no sign of Annie. He packed up his backpack whatever he could from the accessories that Maria had provided. He needed to clear the place of every trace. He took out a round of C4 and placed it tactically in the room to ensure that all his traces were gone. He went on to the men who were guarding the room and searched for clues on their bodies. The only thing he found was that all of them had a patch on their shirts with the name of “Viper”. He would need to do some more research to find about them. He would need every single clue to track down and rescue Annie if she was still alive. One of the men had a cell phone and the last call was made to someone named Dmitri minutes before the men had rushed into the room. Lucas took the cell phone for analyzing later as he wired up the C4 and got ready to move on. He would work his way up the vent again and on reaching the stairs would detonate the bomb.

While going through all these thoughts, Lucas did not realize that there was a sound of a rotor constantly increasing in strength. As the sound grew up louder, Lucas moved on to the windows to take a look. What awaited him was no less than hell. A MI 24 gunship slowly rose up to the height of the room and the machine guns started firing. Lucas helplessly jumped across the room for cover as the window panes were shattered and the guns blazed through the entire room. Lucas jumped across the room onto the bed and then tried to reach for the ceiling. He grabbed hold of one of the sprinklers and latched onto it in his desperate bid for survival. With all the firing, the C4 got detonated and the entire room turned into a blast furnace. With the explosion, the sprinkler that he was holding on to, finally gave away and Lucas landed heavily on the floor. The firing had momentarily stopped. It seemed that the explosion had disoriented the pilot and the gunship was trying to steady itself before unleashing death once again.

Lucas was hurt with the sudden fall. His left arm was on fire and he could barely hear anything due to the sudden explosion. He tried desperately to get his act together. He could not be bothered about the pain if he needed to complete his mission. He needed to cheat death and survive. He needed to eliminate the enemies. He rose up slowly and looked around. He could still see the gunship as it slowly was regaining control. He couldn’t lose any more time. The entire ceiling leading to the vent had come down and hence there was no escape route. He had to fight his way out. Lucas brought out his grappling hook and fastened the straps of his backpack tightly. He took out two grenades and pulled out the pins. He started running towards the windows with the grenades latched in one hand and the grappling hook swirling in the other. The gunship had managed to regain its control and slowly started aiming the guns towards the room.

Lucas leaped out of the window straight at the gunship and managed to get the grappling hook onto the sensors at nose of the helicopter. He jammed a grenade onto the sensor and swung ahead as the guns started blazing again. He tossed the second grenade just behind the primary gun, released the grappling hook and dived below. A fall from the seventh floor would be fatal and hence Lucas released the grappling hook again in search of anything he could probably latch on to. Just when every hope seemed to have been lost and he was getting too near to his death, the hook managed to latch onto an extended wire from a nearby building. Lucas came to a stop around thirty feet above the ground with a huge jerk before the rope finally broke off and he fell down heavily on his back. The grenades detonated and the Gunship came down on to the street as a ball of fire. Lucas had to move away quickly to ensure he didn’t get crushed by the fireball. He rose up slowly looking around to notice any suspicious behavior. He had surely bruised a rib or two due to his misadventures for the day. Lucas headed swiftly to the nearby alley before the cops and the authorities arrived. He would need to find himself a new hive and operate from there. His entire mission had been compromised.