"Shooter One, this is Assault One, we are in position, assault Two and Three are also ready."

"Roger, Assault Teams, be ready to move upon signal or on hearing gunfire. Shooter teams, be advised the wind is 8 kilometers per hour from the North, adjust accordingly. All set?"

Each team radioed in their readiness, and windage adjusted for. Now they waited for their commander to begin what they hoped would be a swift and clean end to this bloody affair.

While the cult leader thought he was protected by distance and the metal blinds, Blade knew better, he may as well have been at arm's length and behind paper, his rifle fired an bullet originally designed to stop light tanks, but the difficulty was the triggering device for the bomb. They didn't have time to deal with the complicated and unusually advanced detonator set up in the van, at least they'd managed to remove five barrels packed with explosives, which left another two...The leader had to die instantly, no time to trigger the remaining explosives. Which meant he had to be shot in the base of the skull, and that was tricky shot, and so he changed one of the rounds in his rifle to deal with this problem.

Nothing, all was calm, nothing...the SWAT commander let all else evapourate but concentrating on the terrorist leader. The man stopped pacing up an down in the room, Blade didn't hear him say, "Begin the flensing! Glory to the Masters! Let them see our devotion as we hang their skins from these walls!" The trigger slowly depressed...the gun fired with a loud thud, the muzzle blast supressed by a device similar to a silencer, the bullet flew 600 yards in half a second, past through a gap in the blinds left by the rough treatment of the lady, and struck the leader at the juncture of skull and neck. The bullet was a "Glasser slug", designed for fire fights on aircraft, it wouldn't even penetrate hard wood. On impact it's soft, copper case ripped open like a tin can run over by a truck, inside it was filled with liquid teflon and tiny lead pellets: basically, it was the ultimate dum-dum bullet. The man's head literally exploded, blowing fragments over his surprised second-in-command. As his nerves were destoyed by the hydraulic shock, the leader couldn't trigger the detonator.

Before his followers could react, Blade tracked back to the left, the computerized sight adjusted for the armour piercing bullet that was now loaded...Fire! And the projectile tore through brickwork, making it tumble, and it struck the man who'd hurled the model to her death in the middle of his back. It blew a hole the size of dinner plate in his chest. Simultaneously, explosive charges blew in the doors to the room adjacent, and the assualt squad hurled thunderflash grenades, the terrific concussion and pyrotechnics stunned the surviors, and submachine gun blasts finished the work.

"Shit!" One of the surveillance team swore as an old friend in the assault squad was turned into a living torch as he charged into the next room, and fell screaming through a window. "Bastards have got flamethrowers! Where the hell they get those?"

The terrorists tried to burn and shoot their hostages as well as the SWAT team, but they were soon reduced to corpses themselves: two being hit by snipers as the grenades had blown the windows out, allowing clear shots.

In the smoking carnage, the SWAT team checked for surviors. The hostages, held in a storage room and a toilet, were either hysterical or in shock.

"The Brood...!"

One of the SWAT team shot a terrorist through the head, he'd been trying to pull the pin on a grenade. He should have acted first, then talked. "Up yours, idiot!"

As usual, the media went into a feeding frenzy as the survivors were lead out the grand entrance of the renowned building. Another feeding frenzy started as the forces of law and order began their investigations, forensic teams were sent in and--

Windows shattered in a two block radius as the remaining explosives in the van detonated, the lateral blast drove the North side of the museum through a recently built coporate headquarters of a software giant, and destroyed a pricless collection of human creation in the older building. Tears, unabashed, not put on for the media, rolled down the museum director's cheeks as he thought of what was lost, and the insurance company representatives were sick to the pits of their stomach, the minumum loss had to be at least fifty million!

"Lieutenant Neil..." the museum director stuttered as they entered the building together, he 'd read his lapel badge, "Couldn't you have saved this, this..." He motioned to the carnage: shrapnel and falling masonary had caused widespread damage throughtout the building, never mind the wrecked North section. But the man was too hurt to be bitter, he merely begged.

"I'm sorry, I tuly am! I used to come here..." Blade was aghast at the destruction, the collection of Eastern art, his favourite, was...annihilated. Bad as that was, he now had to go view the scene of the slaughter, he ordered a uniform cop to take the director elsewhere, the poor sod didn't need to see this.