CAPT ROBERTA Jensen led her team of six women into the battlefront. They were all wearing night-vision Starlight goggles with face recognition app which scanned the faces of the Intersexuals from across the street.
The squad was on the search and destroy mission; the strike-force was ordered by Roberta to not engage in combat—but to seek out for the Preacher's presence in the urban battlefield.
Minutes later, one of her soldier spotted the assail Doran fighting alongside with Hajja and Li Chi defending from the mobilized e-SWAT infantry regiment that magnanimous outnumbering them three-to-one—and soldier enlightened to the rest loudly...
"Captain Jensen, that's him at 3 o'clock—it is the damn Preacher!"
Roberta spied at the direction—her green night-vision POV has the similar traction that confirmed that it was Doran in combat. She orchestrated the on-slaughter order to her troop...
"Shoot to kill!"
They all fired at the direction of Doran and his men who obstinately fighting from their last line of defence. Doran dropped on the tarmac, and took cover from the hailing ambush attack—and he felt the ground rumbling. Everyone peeked lurid ahead to detect three behemoth combat tanks coming from all directions of the streets.
One of the Abrams started firing and marred the buildings where the rebels were holed—the surviving OGA started to intersperse on foot from the bombardment...
Roberta yelled out. "Stupid fucktards! Who sent in the fucking tanks?"
"It must be Head of Police General Macready, Sir!" responded Sergeant Yale and the irked Roberta turned to communication-soldier. "What a dumb fuck! Radio, call them off!" The soldier reacted back...
"I can't Sir, this comes from a higher chain of command—so do you want me to patch you to General Macready, Sir—so that you can talk to her directly?"
"Forget it!"
*
In the confusion, Doran still held his ground, and he fired his last few machine-gun bullets at the approaching tank. He grabbed Li Chi's thumper and fired their last mortar with the negatory result—the invincible tank with retrofitted reactive composite Chobham armour was impenetrable.
The Abrams' gun turret spun towards them, Li Chi seized Doran's shoulder...
"Come on Preacher, let's go!"
"No! Today we stand and fight to the last," he loudly vexed unbendable to Li Chi...
Hajja knew the intransigent Preacher's intention of doing the unexpected on that grave and ineluctable moment—just like how he faced a Hummer alone at Tombscradle like a martyr.
"No Doran, let's go now!" Hajja flayed back.
Both Li Chi and Hajja dragged him away from the danger zone and started running with a few other surviving Negro Intersexuals. The assaulting tank fired, an explosion from the rear decimating some black rebels in the fleeing group.
**
Roberta was still peeved at a MIA3 Abrams tank passing in front of her— their presence had caused the chaos and now her target was lost. Sergeant Yale came running and called out to them...
"Capt. Jensen, we spotted the Preacher escaping that way!" Roberta and her band of troops pursued the radical militant on foot...
Hajja, Doran, Li Chi and two other black Intersexuals ran into a dark empty street while Roberta and her troops fired from the rear. Hajja ran ahead, still attired in his caped Trojan tunic—he was shooting at the CCTV above on a lamp post which made Madeline Cory in the Whitehouse to lose her video-feed of the chase on the escaping Preacher in New Orleans...
Doran saw the flood of headlights coming from ahead in the dark street—two Hummers were approaching firing their machine guns at them. Hajja pointed over at a three-star hotel building on his left, situated in a different street, yelling in-charge to the running rebels...
"We go over there!"
**
Some armed hotel women security guards stood vigilant in front of the hotel entrance after the Mardi Gras cavalcade attacks by the terrorist. The women in uniforms marked the five Intersexuals rebels approaching the vicinity—and they engaged fire. Li Chi in reprisal lobbed a grenade which killed them all.
Inside the hotel lobby, more armed security guards confronted the AOG rebels but they too were gunned down. The Intersexuals rebels ran up the fire-escape stairs inside the six-storied high hotel...
Li Chi peeked out of a ventilation window—outside in the streets were the troops, with two Hummers stationary at the hotel entrance, Roberta Jensen was martialing them. Li Chi alerted in malaise...
"Preacher, it is Jensen-cop! She will trap us in here!"
Doran listened and assessed their situation, they were all out of ammunition and they ditched their empty rifles in the streets a moment ago—and only Hajja who among them has a pistol with a few rounds of bullets...
But they have a demolition guy with them carrying a bag of explosives—he is their only trump card for their survival in the getaway quandary...
Doran replied with an intense tone. "Let's go, we will find another way out!" They continued to run up the fire-escape stairs.
*
Roberta was speaking to the Hummer unit before she ran back to her squad and administered out...
"Radio, you stay put here and call for all the backup units you can get for us...I want this entire goddamn place sealed off—nobody fucking comes and leaves out of here!"
Roberta and her remaining five Elite SWAT soldiers reached the hotel lobby entrance where they spotted frightened employees and guests with the dead security guards sprawled with blood pools on the pale marble floor. Roberta pointed at the elevator...
"Yale, take 2 guys and go up to the highest floor and search from top-down—the rest of you, we take the stairs."
*
The five AOG Intersexuals opened a fire-escape door on the fourth floor—the demolition-guy with a bag of explosives rigged a C4 plastic explosive on the outer side of the door. Meanwhile, Sergeant Yale and two Elite soldiers come out of the elevator on the top sixth floor. The trio swept the floor for the public enemy number one and his followers.
*
The five AOG rebels took a brief provisional breather after the long hours of street combat; everyone torpidly respites their aching bodies. Doran turned over to the explosive-guy...
"I want you to do the same thing of what you did back there. We need to create as many diversions as possible. Go set a C4 in one of the elevators to explode it on the 6th floor—and you come back here after that."
*
Roberta and three soldiers walked up the fire-escape stairs—Roberta was getting an update from Sargent Yale who was searching at the sixth floor. The Elite force members with Yale turned to notice the elevator coming up. One of the soldiers stood on point in front of the door. The chime dinged and the door opened with no one inside...
An Elite soldier stepped inside the elevator car, unaware that above her head was a C4 timer that just had clocked to the zeros...
The fiery blast threw back at them. The cable ruptured after the rocking explosion erupted—and the damaged car plummeted to the ground floor lobby with a great crashing impact. It was heard by the Elite-soldiers on the fire-escape stairs...
At the same time, when one of the Elite troopers with Roberta Jensen opened the door on the fourth floor—it triggered another explosion which killed two more Elite soldiers. Roberta and another private who followed from the backend were thrown rearward—and they both tumbled down the flight of concrete stairs with the spew of concrete debris and severed bodily entrails.
Sergeant Yale and a surviving soldier recovered from the explosion on the ablaze sixth floor. The sinecure Yale who was in-charge, she stood up; looking slightly dazed at the surviving Elite private beside her, who was on her knees cupping her bleeding ears with both hands...
"Get up soldier, we have to keep searching for the fucking Preacher!"
"My ears, I can't hear!"
*
The hotel guests and employees were rushing out in the main entrance. They gathered outside to peer at the blaze on the top two floors. Elite troopers made them sit on the tarmac while they then searched their identities.
On the fourth floor, the One God's Army rebels observed more hotel guest fleeing the bombed premise, carrying their belonging. Doran eyed some free-males carrying their luggage and he got a brainstorm—he told his men...
"If we want to get out of here alive, we need to change our clothes."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Everyone nodded and stared at Hajja who stood out prominent in the group wearing a caped Trojan tunic—they all could be easily spotted by the hounding enemy who was closing in...
The black BGF leader distinguished a tall free-male Japanese tourist who was the same size as him, scrambling on the floor with a suitcase—Hajja pointed the pistol at him...
"This is the bell-hop service; leave your luggage behind and Sayonara yourself by taking the fire-way stairs down for your own safety." The terrified Japanese civilian obeyed the costumed black rebel and ran away.
Doran looked at the rest and pointed at an empty room...
"Everyone, let's go and change!"
*
Roberta and a soldier were recovering from their injuries at the foot of the stairs—she removed a severed arm lying on her chest, while the smoke and dust settled down. Roberta staggered on her feet and her body ached all over from the fall on the flight of the stairs. She noticed above at the hotel guests rushing out on the blasted door passage, they were running down the fire-escape stairs.
Roberta slipped on her goggles with a face-recognition featured app—and she searched the people using the stairs down. Sergeant Yale and the partially deaf soldiers came down from the sixth-floor stairs, and both joined Roberta—now there were four of them—the Elite SWAT entered the blazing fourth floor, searching for the cornered rebels...
The OGA insurgents were in jarring Hawaiian shirts when they stepped out of the room after changing, acting nonchalant and moved among the fleeing hotel guests. Li Chi spotted the Elite soldiers occluding the exits...
"Jensen is on the floor—the bitch-cop will identify us..."
The rest of them started to panic, Hajja spoke out...
"We are trapped here now. Let's confront them and shoot all those cunts down!"
Hajja knew that it was coming to an end with no way to escape with the advanced technology tools like the face recognition goggles that the enforcers were utilizing—the rebels mire to get past them other than to have a stand-off even though Hajja has limited bullets in his pistol chamber to take all four of the e-soldiers out—plus and minus with some hits and misses...
"Wait, Hajja! We can create more diversions."
Doran voiced out to avoid the confrontation with Jensen but Hajja protested. "We don't have the time for that, Preacher!" Doran was now in equanimity despite under the pressure—he ignored the desperation filled Hajja and turned to the demolition OGA rebel soldier...
"You! Blow up a hole on the floor here—and we will escape down through it."
*
More e-SWAT soldiers were rounding up additional hotel occupants coming out from the ground lobby entrance and were checking their IDs. Everyone below looked up to an explosion happening on the fourth floor that shattered a segment of the wall with large slabs of concretes hurling from above. The screaming and scrambling people on the ground floor begin to disperse...
There was a hole on the floor—and the third floor can be seen below. Hajja helped the demolition guy down but shots were fired directly at them. Doran turned to view Roberta unfrocking shots at their direction, killing the other black Intersexual rebel beside him.
The unarmed Preacher was in frenzy; he grabbed the bag of explosive and sundering away from Jensen's attacks...
Hajja and Li Chi joined him while the trio was pursued by the machinegun firing Roberta and her Elite soldiers...
Doran coursed along the corridor and noticed that the ceiling above him was cracking zigzag—an enormous chunk from the fifth-floor detritus collapsed behind him—and this snarl-up separated him from Hajja and Li Chi...
Doran hollered back to them as the rest stood winnowed at the rubble pile...
"Hajja, go find another way out!"
Hajja turned to look at Roberta and the three soldiers firing at him and Li Chi. He kicked a room door that opened wide—he entered with Li Chi. Inside, with his last few bullets, the black BGF leader started shooting at the soft board wall to weaken it before they both smashed and broke through it.
Roberta and her troops closed into the room, but another colossal chunk of the fifth-floor concrete plummeted from above—crushing the three soldiers to their death...
Roberta was now the sole survivor—but she was trapped with flames in every direction surrounding her.
Roberta checked the building's structure has begun to collapsing with a fifty-foot metal beam from the roof above crashing on the fourth level. It created a path knocking several room walls down. Roberta scuttled by crossing on the smelting metal beam, it melted the rubber sole of her boots...
*
Doran too stood trapped near a corner with engulfing flames all around him while he receded and waited for Hajja and Li Chi. He was gripping on a bag of C4 explosives close to his chest while looking at the buildup inferno...
He recalled himself as a young monk in the blazing cathedral, staring at the burning cross at the altar—cracking sound of the Holy Madonna statue spoke to him...
"You failed, Soldier of God!"
He felt the presences of all the dead nuns and monk boys staring at him—someone then stepped from behind them—and it is his gorgon mother; her nightgown was in flames as she laughed out aloud...
"You abomination! You are finally going to burn in hell!"
Roberta hurried on the hot beam but stopped to spot through her goggle—it was a positive match seeing the Preacher standing alone among the smoke, she whipped out her pistol, and aimed at Doran...
Two shots were fired...
Doran was hit in his stomach and he recumbent down on one knee. Roberta closed into him—the manhunt is over—she removed her goggles after confirming that her target was incapacitated, she dropped the glasses down...
Doran gritted his teeth in agony, making out his adversary who was walking up in the beam among the miasma of smoke and flames. Doran lurched, and muster all his strength before he flung the bag of explosives towards her—the content spilt on the debris floor...
Roberta eyed an exposed eminent rigged C4—the timer with running sixty-five seconds in countdown motion towards an inevitable explosion...
Doran staggered up back on his tottering feet, holding his perforated belly and he rested his back on the tepid wall, calling out...
"Well Jensen, the God's Army has come today to New Orleans to fight you all to the very end! Okay, woman, let's now go down together in the name of God!"
The unarmed Doran was only thirty feet away, Roberta raised her pistol to spot the Preacher's head but she could not get a clear shot because of the bellowing heat, flames and smoke that crisscrossed on to her view—but her insensate trigger finger was ready to kill—Jensen grinned insidiously...
"Well Preacher, it was nice knowing you too, bitch..."
Li Chi and Hajja came in shooting from the flank, causing Roberta to dive off from the beam and roll on to chunks of burning debris. The surviving rebel duo had found rifles from the dead e-SWAT soldiers—they receded back to rescue their injured AOG leader...
"The Preacher's been shot!" Li Chi alerted at the coughing Hajja who was looking out to confirm if Roberta was really hit—but visibility was getting worse. They saw more cracks appearing on the ceiling with concrete chunks starting to drop...
"Come, Li Chi, let's get him, we got to go!"
They both aided the wounded Doran and made their way out towards another safe corridor near the fire escape door—they then down the flight of smoke-filled stairway.
*
Roberta was trapped once again...
She can't use the same path the rebels had used to escape as more of the top floor concrete has begun to crumble down at her path. The heat and smoke were chocking; the intense carbon monoxide concentration fumes were causing drowsiness when she staggered on a huge slab of fifth-floor concrete that had fallen earlier, glancing back at the C4 timer juncture before leaving.
She has only a small window gap of 38 seconds timeframe to evacuate or face the death anathema of the Preacher's God which he had earlier forewarned ...
Roberta mettle and leapt over sinkholes, the concrete below her feet were crumbling to drop into the third floor below—she managed to reach the elevator. She estimated that she has about less than thirty seconds left. Roberta used a scrap metal rod and pried open the elevator door.
She looked at the dark shaft—the cables that were vibrating at that moment with rumbling noises—she spotting an elevator car descending down fast—Roberta dived on top of the car and crashed into the insubstantial ceiling top...
Roberta landed on her belly, and noticed two pair of feet inside the express elevator car floor, she peeked to discover two terrified civilian Intersexuals staring down at her. They begin to help Roberta up...
"Are you okay, officer?"
"What the fuck, there is a fire out there and what are you two Einsteins doing in this elevator?" Roberta asked in between coughing.
One of them held up his Press ID pass, "We are reporters, we wanted to take shots of the fire on the 6th floor but the door will not open."
Roberta retorted with a sordid vile suggestion, "go and try the 4th floor, that is where I came in just now; and yeah, you can get magnificent photos up there."
The lift door opened and Roberta expressed away as it dinged...
She heard a voice behind. "Thank you very much officer, you have been so helpful." The door closed again and the lift ascended above to the top floors, Roberta paced towards the lobby, dusting the dirt off her uniform, giggling heinously...
The elevator door opened on the fourth floor, and both the gung-ho reporters beheld the dance of an angry inferno...
The photographer started to click pictures—nearby, the C4 timer clocked—00:02 seconds...00:01...00:00...
The camera flashed one last time...
*
Roberta stepped out of the hotel entrance door and two seconds later she heard an explosion from above, she dashed out and concrete debris dropped from above. Instantaneously, the entire six storied hotels finally crumbled to a devastating ground zero ruin—with Roberta being the last person to come out of it alive. She staggered out of the dust and the conflagration of smoke; and heard a voice calling...
"Look, Captain Jensen made it out alive!"
Everyone from the soldiers, hotel employees and the guests begin to clap and cheer while they looked ahead at Roberta stepping out from the fiery rubble and smoulder...
In the similar chaos, Hajja and Li Chi in their colourful civilian attire walked pass undetected while they shouldered Doran toward an ambulance nearby—an innocuous EMT staff responded immediately...
"Is he hurt?" Li Chi prodded a gun at the woman belly and pushed her into the ambulance...
"Get in and tend to him, you bitch!"
Li Chi then shut the backdoor with Doran, Hajja and the EMT personnel inside; the Chinese drove the ambulance away undetected from the gathered crowd who were still mesmerized by the inflammatory fallen hotel in the razed disaster zone and—many surrounded around the surviving super-cop, Roberta Jensen.
It was the perfect inestimable distraction as transient for the rebel leaders to flee the scene.
**
The ambulance arrived close to a small cargo plane on a hazy abandoned airstrip where Ramirez was waiting with Wu Leong and a dozen Latinos. They unload Doran's gurney—the Preacher was under morphine and his pupils were dilated—he gazed surrealistic at the shapeless movements surrounding him...
Hallucinating visages of the dead nuns and monk boys masked on the faces of the people nearby. Doran grinned at them—and Sister Lisa Marie smiled back at him, he murmured back to her...
"I will race you, Sister Li-sa-m-riee..."
"Race me to hell, you She-Demon of Edom!"
The voice of the gentle nun said—before her face transformed into his chuckling maternal mother, who then misshapen into her gorgon burnt-self with more bitterness in her tone of words.
Her voice was the loudest among the voices which were tormenting him every night in the isolation cell-hole in Tombscradle for the past five years—where a Revelation finally happened and he got his 'voice' to answer back at her every question and every argument.
"You are such a disappointment! You failed, you demon—you are no soldier of God! Now come to hell with me—the place you had once cursed me into before; where you burnt me to dust with hellfire and brimstones in the basement of my own damn house!"
"No, mother—I have not fallen—I will rise again like the Fallen Sun in that burning Cathedral!" Doran replied...
Hajja saw Doran staring intensely at them before he passed out—the Hispanic rebels loaded him into the freight plane door...
Despite losing their battle in New Orleans, Ramirez was back in high spirits...
"We go to Mexico and patch up the Preacher over there...
"Hajja, looks like you are in charge of the God's Army now till this Man of God himself returns from the dead," the Hispanic laughed aloud.
"Ramirez, I am following you to Mexico," Li Chi spoke out.
He somehow distrusted Ramirez—the Chinese wanted to be there and to make sure that the spearheaded Preacher will return back once he has convalesced and continued his ongoing revolution cause.
Ramirez chuckled while Li Chi got into the plane before him...
"Sure, why not, the more the merrier—but I must forewarn you, Leach, the Chow Mien over there sucks big time." Hajja and Wu Leong stood away, seeing the cargo plane door closed...
The plane then took off and flew into the smoky night skies.