12 Minutes (#2 in Military series)

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The speakers crackled with interference from the man's radio whilst the screen, an array of black and green, flickered in its transmition.

"Entering the building now." A man's voice filled the room until it seemed to surround them, leaving them on the edge of their seats.

A one-floor building filled the main screen. Its sand walls were awash with green from the night-scope vision of the cameras.

A dozen smaller screens to the right were transmitting similar video feeds from the six other cameras which were attached to the soldier's vests as they surrounded the site.

The image bobbed up and down slightly as the man it was attached to approached the building at a fast pace, beside him other soldiers were visible as they too entered the building.

A tense silence had fallen over the operations room as everyone watched with anticipation. They did not know what to expect; would a gunman be on the opposite side of that wall, were there explosives present?

Turning in his chair, Commander Strong cast a glance at the others around him. Everyone visible in the room were of vital importance to the security and safeguarding of the operation, and they were transfixed by to the screen with hope.

Strong could sense how badly they wanted this to be the end of the matter, to be able to go back to their superiors and say that the situation, which had erupted over a month earlier, had been dealt with.

However, Strong rather thought he wanted a good outcome more than any of them combined.

Turning back to the main screen when someone caught him staring, Strong watched the various video feeds of separate rooms in the building and saw that, except for the soldiers, they were all empty.

His hand balled into a fist on the table beside him when he saw, on the third screen to the right, a bare room with a blanket and a teddy bear discarded in the corner.

"Clear," A disappointed voice reported back through the mic, "It's all clear here, sir."

A dozen peopled let out small sighs of frustration when a naval commander on the opposite end of the table spoke to the soldier, "How long?"

The video showed the lead soldier turning around and heading outside where another man seemed to be waving him across, pointing to something on the ground.

Torchlight highlighted the spot on the ground, the night-vision turning it automatically green for those sat in a room back in London.

"Tyre tracks, sir, and oil deposits." The soldier knelt down and touched the oil, "It's still warm. We couldn't have long missed them."

"Right," An older man dressed in yellowed white shirt and slack blue tie got to his feet, "Return to your base and await further orders. We have this now, Captain."

"Sir, if I may," The captain on the other end of the call answered, "We could follow the tracks and-"

"-Those tracks, Captain, will only last until the vehicle reaches a road and then I'll have a Spec Ops team on a wild goose chase. No, Captain, return to your base. I'll make a call and get a drone in the sky."

"Perhaps they ought to stay out there," A representative of the Prime Minister suggested as he sat in his crisp suit, "Then when your drone finds anything they would be able to act immediately. We are talking about the lives of over twenty children-"

"-I am well aware of what is at stake, more than you perhaps!" The man shouted, "Our intel tells us that these terrorists are heavily armed. If our men do catch up with them, it'll be like the Wild West with twenty-six children stuck in the middle of it!"