Continuation of Declaration

Claws of the Phoenix Chapter 1.1

Claws of the Phoenix Chapter 1.2

Claws of the Phoenix Chapter 2

Kurt's eyes then were set to an intelligent-looking boy; he wore a black coat and a hat covering his yellow-dyed head. He's neat from his shiny black shoes to his top. He then took his hat off and waved hello at Kurt. "James Turner is my name. Code name: Falcon." He slightly bowed at Kurt for courtesy and Elizabeth continued, "He is the fastest of us. He once took down the pentagon in one minute." "I don't think if he is that humble or just trying to make a fool out of me..." Kurt rolled his thoughts in that way.

The atmosphere almost died and fallen dreary as all eyes were gathered by an odd presence of the fifth man from the group. He was rather old compare to his comrades, a big guy in his late 20's, bald round head and stiff muscular body made up this fellow.

His eyes were buried deep into Kurt's way with rage or distinct pain, he cannot be certain. Kurt felt guilt piercing through his chest without even knowing anything about the guy. A few seconds felt like a long time and the guy took his leave. Surprised and dumbfounded, Kurt was lost in his train of thoughts until Elizabeth came upon him and talked him out,

"That is Robert, Robert Hounds; the Albatross He's not on our levels when it comes to hacking but he knows his way, he is the sole of our security, he works with Hawk most of the time but when technology meets safety he's our guy. An apology is what I owe you. May you not dwell on his behavior, for he is not doing well lately, thou shall not be mad at him.  So come with me and grab our breakfast."

It was noon, the sun's blazing with all its might as some clouds tried to make their way past its blaring lights. Kurt sat on the side of the port while hanging his feet above the blue sea. He was pondering about what the guys seemed to him.

He cannot seem to explain the strange familiarity with them and the strikingly attitude of Robert towards him. He felt so much guilt but could swear his life he never knew any of them until that day. He took up his transparent mobile phone and accessed the GPS, he decided to walk his thoughts off. He sent a message through his phone that was published on his workstation to make sure Elizabeth knew what he's going to do.

He didn't even pay any attention to anything until he was striding his way through the outskirts of the town. He noticed a car parked in front of the bank which is oddly opened. The street is so clear without any pedestrians in the vicinity. He took a halt a few meters away from the car and took his phone out.

He accessed the nearest telecommunication tower and used the location to filter the messages sent through the tower. Using the message extracting tool developed by Nightjar he came across a couple of messages that really caught his attention. The first message which was sent at 10:03 A.M. which read:

"Take me all the way down, love is in my bank, and we'll leave this night.

Love,

Fifth"

The second was a reply to the first and goes like this:

                "I wish you planted. To be it is to be loved.

                Love,

                III"

He sent these messages to Elizabeth in a hurry and followed it with a call. Kurt hid on the side of the street and started to talk as if he was hiding from somebody near.

"Elie, this is urgent. It is currently 1400 hours and an explosion is expected from 1800 hours onwards. I need a bomb squad here in the Firstbank on Downing St."

"What would you need the bomb squad for?" Elizabeth asked.

"I have no time for this, I think bombs are planted around this bank, I am certain of it for I have narrowed my search here."

"What do you mean? What are you doing on Downing? That's several miles away from here."

"Okay, I'm dropping it now I need to find those bombs before anyone else gets hurt. Bye Elie."

Kurt ended his call and crept his way through the back of the bank.

"Nightjar, I need blueprints of that bank now! Falcon, get us connected to SWAT. Hummingbird, live feeds from the bank, okay? Plover, cover their tracks, we cannot be caught on this now. Small-time robbers are not our objective. We just need to cover for Phoenix. Phoenix is Phoenix, no matter what. This is our welcome party."

Elizabeth instructed the team as she tried to get a hold of the traffic system in the area. To her surprise, the system has been rigged before her.

"Phoenix? No way. Albatross, this is bigger than I thought. The traffic systems are down. I'm taking control now." With that, Robert called unto Hawk and with loads of ammunition, they rode the car and got going.

Kurt entered an appliance center and bought several items. He went back to the alley and disassembled them. He then took out his phone and attached some of the scraps he took from the items. With his improvised radioactive detector, he made his rounds outside the bank.

Occasionally peeping through the tinted glasses to see if he can make his way inside. He went back again to his hiding place and analyzed what his findings were.

"Two? Why do they need two bombs for a small bank like this? There are not that many people here."

Colors from his face fades away when Kurt heard a striking "tick" sound with cold steel pressed against the back of his head. He freezes, as he is certain that it was a barrel of a gun that is pressed against him and with a deep voice started to talk to him.

"You know too much kid, this isn't a place to play. Come with me inside and do as I say."

Kurt obediently obeyed the man and found himself with lots of people inside, each one blindfolded and 5 men wearing masks holding a huge amount of firearms. Kurt was placed beside them and was blindfolded too. With all his remaining guts he asked the men,

"What interest do you have in such a small bank? All the money here won't even buy you a luxury car."

"Shut up kid!" exclaimed by a guy with what seems to Kurt a Russian accent.

"Relax; we don't like bloodshed here, not at the right time." Another guy said with another accent, almost Asian.

"We have a problem Captain." Jane startled. "Phoenix is inside the bank."

She continued. Elizabeth still with an air of calmness in her face replied,

"Hawk and Robert are on their way. We will handle this with extra care."

"Hawk and Albatross got company" exclaimed George.

Elizabeth looked at his monitor and saw a familiar logo on another car.

"What is CIA doing there? Can you zoom in further?" George did what Elizabeth instructed him and with a sigh of relief she exclaimed,

"Worry, we shall not. It's Plover."

"CIA huh?"

While Kurt is thinking about how to get a hold of the situation, he reached for his phone, he deliberately pressed a key and the alarm system of the bank went off.

"Hey, would you like to check outside?" Kurt said as to provoke the guys to peek at the blinds at the window.

"Sir we got company! There are officers outside."

"Okay tell the others we got a situation here!" replied the Russian guy.

Kurt fades away with his thoughts as he heard what the guy just said.

"The others? But I thought there were just 5 of them. Something isn't right, just not right."

"Kurt. Kurt! Listen to me."

A girl's voice just seemed to appear inside his mind, as he was about to talk the voice continued,

"Hush, don't you dare talk. This is Plover, I am outside the bank. I can see you and am talking to you through a uni-directional speaker. Just nod a little if you agree and look down slowly for a no.

We know that there are 5 men there, Hawk and Robert are on their way inside through the locker which has an underground door. We got swat surrounding the outside. We got everything under control but we first need to know what their objective really is. You can hear everything there right?"

Kurt nodded and with a fortunate twist of fate, the motion made a small place between the blindfold and his eyes that he can see the outside too. Wasting none of his time, he grabbed onto his phone and dialed Plover's number.

"Nice one Phoenix, now I can hear them too."

"The others said to set the bombs off. We'll escape by lift. Cars will be impossible."  

Startled with what she heard she called Elizabeth, "Trace every radioactive that left this area, we will need to find the locations of the other men these men are talking about."

"I don't think that that will be necessary. We were just notified that two other banks are in the same situation. One in Fremont and another in Kansas." Elie replied.

"We might also know what their objective is, the hostage-takings and the bombs are just diversions, and we had nothing to do with the crash of the traffic system. As we speak, a conference is taking place in Manhattan, defense secretaries of many countries attended this conference and this area is what they are targeting.

They planted bombs around it with that large of a radius to close down every possible route. We might be facing a nuclear bomb threat here with that big radius. Relay to Phoenix the scheme, we will come up with something."

"Raven, I think we got a bigger problem now," Nightjar said as he pointed out to his screen which shows a live feed from the areas via satellite. Elizabeth's eyes widened as she watches the two banks exploding. With these destructions, main roads are either blocked by cars in flame or impossible to pass through. Elizabeth clenched her fist as her face sunk in a mode of cold nothingness – "It has started..."

Series    : Claws of the Phoenix
Episode   : 004
Title     : The Declaration 2
Published : 02-Sep-2021
Author :  © RB 

Lead image : howtogeek