Offensive Operations

Chapter 5

5

Joey was the only one sweating in the gym, but it had nothing to do with the heat.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you?” Brianna asked him. “Not now,” he replied to her and waited for what he knew would come next.

“Alright, Joey’s lost his mind. Typical.” Kelly said crossed his arms. “No, I didn’t lose my mind. Just wait,” Joey said and was so sure about what was coming next, but was doing his best to keep the secret. The general chatter in the room continued on but Joey focused on that stage in the middle of the room. Every minute feeling like ten to him, then the speaker squelched loud enough to make everyone shut up in a hurry.

"Introducing the President of the United States!" An unseen voice said over a speaker as Cody came walking out to the stage. This was unprecedented, unexpected and everyone seemed to be in awe. Joey smiled but the rest of the squad froze and the hair on the backs of their necks stood up.

“Oh, my God,” Tyler whispered to himself. Was this their moment, would they finally be recognized for their heroic actions by the highest power in the country? All of the sudden this became a lot more exciting or, terrifying if you thought about it long enough.

Four people walked in with him and they were all dressed in the typical secret service agent attire but the President was the main attraction today.

"Ah, it's good to be here today," Cody said to everyone and as before displayed a nervous nature in being a public speaker even if it were for a bunch of kids.

"Today I came here to kick off a nationwide tour of talking to the very foundation of our country about the events that have just taken place in our world," Cody said to them, trying to set the record as straight as possible. The four secret service agents didn't move, but if you could hear their thoughts it would have told a completely different story.

"I came here first to honor the," that is about the time when the five members of Joey’s team stood up, Joey leading them as if he knew what was coming.

“Thank you Mister President, we will be happy to accept our honor in public as we deserve it," Joey said as all five of them made their way down the steps. The crowd watched on, some horrified, others embarrassed. Everyone knew what they did, however no one thought that the President was here for them.

Cody just watched and shook his head he was stunned. Everyone in the gym was stunned too and could only watch as this unfolded. Cody wasn’t about to take this lightly. He waited for the five of them to make it all the way down to the floor.

“Remove these people from the room," It was all Cody had to say. Instantly the four agents came to life and took the so called delta squad out of the gym in front of everyone, the whole ordeal took less than a minute and everyone had their eyes on them.

“Well, it seems someone obviously thinks a little bit highly of themselves, now as I was saying, I’ve come here to talk to you about the future,” Cody said and did his best to lighten the mood in the room and continue his speech.

"Well the plan worked just like he said. Now what do we do with these kids?" Wyatt asked then. ”I don't know. We were supposed to just kill them I think," Josh said back to him causally and revealed his side arm to them just slightly.

"No, no you are scaring them now. Look at them. They think they're special or something just because they took our name. Can you believe that?" Dustin asked and laughed about it but didn’t know why it was funny. Joey and the others stood there.

"You‘re the Delta Squad!" Joey said in a voice that indicated that he should have known this already. Joey was stunned, normally if he wasn't in front of his computer he could get kind of annoying over time, all he ever talked about was the next adventure. His friends liked him well enough but now he was going to be worse than ever and they half groaned. Wishing that he’d only had made this stuff up.

The four men just shook their heads. "Quick isn't he?" Blake asked sarcastically. "Not really," Brianna finally said to them. Not really knowing what else to say.

“What are you guys doing here?” Joey had a million questions to ask, he had a million more he hadn’t thought of yet.

“Well, truth is we saw what you did at the convention. Takes a lot of courage to stand up to anyone like that. We just wanted to say thanks. Also we wanted to tell you that your stories are way off. They are too tame, and don’t have enough action,” Blake said to him and the other three tried to agree with this. They didn’t know that they were doing here just yet and Josh still wanted to kill them a little bit.

All Joey got out of it was that the heroes his grandfather told him about in the stories were real, and they read his stuff.

He wouldn’t have cared if they said his stories had been useless. Not at first anyway. He was living the dream right now. All of them were.

“Come on, this way,” Wyatt said to them, obviously, there was some kind of a plan here. They all made their way into a midsized study hall and sat down in various places.

“So, where did you get the idea to write the story ‘Delta Squad vs The Mummy’?” Dustin asked Joey. He really wanted to know. “Too much caffeine and going to bed way later than I should have, it wasn’t one of my better stories you know,” Joey said, embarrassed about it.

“Don’t feel too bad, kid. I am sure at some point in our insane history something like that happened, somewhere,“ Blake said, trying to imagine something like that but he couldn’t do it.

“Let’s get to the point, you realize that if you tell anyone about this experience you could disappear. You’re on the Syndicate’s radar now, all of you. So stop talking about what you did. It’s in your best interests,” Wyatt said to all of them as the reality set in on all of them.

“Yeah, we can do that. If you want to kill Joey now that’s fine with us, he doesn’t know when to shut up but the rest of us should be fine,” Tyler said and laughed nervously. The four men in black suits did not laugh. “Right, we can keep a secret, you can count on us,” Joey said to them, never more wanting to be out of a room all of the sudden than right this minute.

“Good, we believe you. “ Josh said, but his eyes had a distinct coldness to them. And continued. “The followers of 188 are still out there, and if they think you had anything to do with their leader’s downfall, they’ll hunt you down,” Josh finished. It was true. Not even Joey had thought of something like that.

The room they went into had the TV left on, but it was on mute. Nobody was paying much attention to it due to what was going on in the room at the time. Finally, Kelly, who had kept his mouth shut couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Something was going on, and it looked bad, the news guy was looking frantic and the news crawl at the bottom of the screen was flashing all kinds of information, the word attack appeared on the screen several times.

Kelly got up and moved to the TV, turned it up.

“Coming to you live over Liberty Island. A terrorist attack has just occurred moments ago. The Statue of Liberty has been destroyed. I repeat. The monument has been destroyed by a group of terrorists calling themselves the Delta Squad, they have attacked this country. The devastation is horrible,” The news man said and the camera panned over the situation from the helicopter. Pieces of the statue were in all directions and smoke filled the air, the head was nowhere to be seen.

No one in the room said a word as the reality set in. Everyone who saw it had chills sent down their backs at what they could see and hear.

“So, does that mean the secret is out then?” Joey asked without thinking, he was in shock. “We are leaving, now and I’ll tell mister President. You guys get out of here,” Blake said to them as he left and the others agreed as the watched the situation, hoping to get a glance of the enemy.

“If we know who you are, chances are the bad guys do to. You’re coming with us, besides you’ll be blamed for this. People are stupid and its best that the guys who invented this name and put it on the internet and his friends aren’t around to take the heat,” Wyatt said then and this got a nasty look from Josh and Dustin.

Neither one of them wanted to be babysitters. Also, there was little chance whomever was behind this would come after the kids for any reason, the only one who seemed to think so, was Wyatt.

“What could go wrong? Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Wyatt said to them and led the way out of the room. “Follow us and keep up,” Josh said reluctantly to a group of kids who’d just been thrown into something they never asked for. They all looked scared. For a second he got a flashback from Berlin, he’d seen these faces before.

Cody was in the middle of giving his speech when Blake came through the doors. In the middle of his speech was about the time people’s phones began to come to life. Cody looked over at Blake and the look on his face told him something was very wrong as he got closer.

“Cody, we need to leave now, apparently, we are attacking the country. So, if you can you wrap this up that would be helpful,” Blake said to him in a whisper. Cody couldn’t believe what he was hearing but nodded anyway despite how little sense it made. Blake stood aside.

“Sorry, everyone there is a situation that requires my attention. I am going to have to take care of it,” Cody said to everyone, immediately Blake and he made their way towards a planned exit, another agent opened the door long before the two of them got there.

“What in the hell is going on, Blake?” Cody demanded.

“News guy said a group calling themselves the Delta Squad just destroyed the Statue of Liberty. Someone’s pissed enough to be us and it’s a pretty short list of who it could be,” Blake said as they walked towards the helicopter.

“Yeah, where the hell was the Syndicate on this?” Cody asked out loud. “Your guess is as good as mine. We need to get you back to Washington. Don’t worry about the others,” Blake replied to him.

“What makes you think I ever did to begin with?” Cody replied with a smile. “Are you sure it is safe to fly back?” Blake asked him.

“Yeah, worst that happens is I get shot down but I have a feeling whoever did this has a sense for the dramatic. Shooting me down in a helicopter in transit would be the smart thing to do, so I’m safe. You get back with the others, do what you need to and find out what you can. I have a statement to make,” Cody said to Blake. Blake closed the door after that and walked away.

“Good luck.” he said, watching it take off.

Wyatt and the others were standing outside the school. They had a little bit of a problem. “What are we going to do with them?” Josh asked and glared. “I don’t know, let them go home, something. We are going to be too busy to help them,” Dustin replied. Wyatt crossed his arms and went into deep thought on what to do with them.

“I got it,” he said and the others looked at him. “We’ll send them to DIAB, they’ll be safe there,” Wyatt said and smiled. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Dustin asked nervously. That place made him nervous, sending a bunch of kids there didn’t help him. “Yeah, why not. It’s not like this situation is going to last very long. We’ll just handle it in a few hours, but just in case it lasts a little longer they’ll be safe,” Wyatt said with a smile.

“Who cares already. Get a tracer beam on them and teleport them to DIAB,” Josh said, frustrated. Dustin narrowed his eyes at him. “Do we just send them off with a sticky note on their backs or what?” Dustin asked him but before he could do anything, or anyone else could. Wyatt pulled out the phone on his belt.

“Kids, teleportation sucks. When you get there just make sure to tell them the Syndicate sent you. Not us, you can keep a secret, so here’s your chance,” Wyatt said to them and winked.

“Wait, you can’t just—“ Kelly was cut off as all five of them disappeared in a blue flash as Wyatt pushed the button.

Blake came back out just in time to see the blue flash. “What did you do?” he asked them. “Just sent a package with my highly experimental personal teleporter. I sure hope it worked. I’ve never actually tested it before,” Wyatt replied to him with a smile. No one was sure where Wyatt got something like that, they were all sure he wasn’t smart enough to build it himself. Maybe Emily installed it at a special request or something.

Blake just groaned as his phone rang, he answered it.

“Yeah?” he said and paused. No one was on the other end and he looked around, narrowed his eyes as he hung up. The others caught on that something was wrong.

“Guys, we need to get back to Washington, Cody’s already on his way there,” Blake said as he hung up and put the phone away. “We’ll carpool, Blake’s driving,” Wyatt said and with that they all moved towards the black limo.