In a small forest, close to the highway BAS-74, four men lurked in the rainy undergrowth and peered eastwards. They wore camouflage clothes and their faces were hidden under black balaclavas. Three of them fumbled nervously with their assault rifles, while another man had a field glass and gave instructions to his comrades.
„How much longer, Sven?”, asked one of the men.
„I will already tell you. They must soon be here! And remeber: Jens only shoots at the tires, the rest only shoots at the drivers!“, answered Sven. „And don`t perforate the back area of the van by mistake, got it?”, he added.
„The whole thing is damn risky. I hope, we will come home alive!”, said one of the men quietly.
„It is too late for such thoughts now. We will just do it! Check your weapons!”, hissed the young man with the field glass.
The minutes passed and the four men crawled further forward, in the direction of the road. Sven suddenly stopped, waving the other men nearer.
„Look! Over there! It`s the van! Go!“, he called.
All jumped under cover and grabbed their assault rifles. The transport van, the four men had waited for several hours, came closer with medium speed.
Another long and tense minute passed, full of doubts and uncertainty in the hearts of the four men. Then it began. And while the three policemen, who sat in the driver's cab of the transport van, were still grouching about the fact that they had to drive from Bernau to Bonn, just because of the transfer of only two prisoners, they suddenly saw four shadows, coming closer to their vehicle from the forest.
„Now! Fire!”, roared the scout with the field glass and all four men raised their weapons in the air, rushed forward and sent a deafening hail of bullets to the transporter.
„Tac! Tac! Tac! Tac!”, it echoed through the small forest and the four men continued to shoot at the windshield and the tires of the vehicle.
With a loud clank, the windows of the transport van bursted and it turned out in hurling. Then the damaged vehicle stopped.
„Kill these rats!”, screamed a masked men and fired at the driver's cab. One of the two officials in the forepart of the van got a headshot and an enormous bloodstain spreaded over the headrest of his seat. Another policeman was also hit in the arm and tried to find cover behind the engine mount, searching for his weapon in panic. The third tore up the passenger door and fired wildly at the masked attackers. A salvo of two assault rifles finally sent him to the ground.
Meanwhile, the four men had come so close to the vehicle, that they could also fire from the side at the policeman, who huddled between the seats. One of the men raised his rifle and executed the official with an angry burst.
„Destroy the detector!”, screamed one of the masked men and the guy, who was called Sven by the others, jumped forward and shot with his pistol at a radio-like thing in the front part of the transporter.
„Bolt cutters! Hurry! Hurry!”, he yelled and the four men ran to the backdoor of the vehicle.
The sound of gunfire, coming from outside, had not been unnoticed by the two police officers, who guarded Frank Kohlhaas and Alf Bäumer. Even patient 111-F-47 seemed to have briefly lost his mental confusion and looked around with surprise.
„What the hell goes on there?”, said one of the officers, loading his shotgun. Then he opened the door of the van`s back area. The other policeman followed him.
„Help me out!”, roared Bäumer at the top of his lungs and gave one of the officers a kick in the abdomen.
In the same moment, the door was broken up and light fell into the darkness of the back area from the outside. One of the guards fired out of the van and hit a masked attacker, who tried to enter the vehicle. The head of the man exploded like an overripe melon and Frank stared at a cloud of blood and bone fragments, while he staggered to the ground.
The remaining three attackers answered with fire bursts of their assault rifles and killed the policeman, who stumbled on the street like a bleeding sieve.
Meanwhile, Frank began to cry like a tormented child. He shrieked in pain and wildly pulled, in an accumulation of unrestrained rage, on his additional seat belt, tearing it out of its holder. Then Frank hit the second guard`s face with a high kick and the man tumbled down.
Now the inmate squealed like a pig and started then to laugh loudly. Finally, the laughter became an insane screaming. Suddenly Frank`s eyes were clear and gory, and before the three other masked men had come into the back area of the vehicle, he had sent the last policeman to the ground with a headbutt. His hands were still bound on his back, but he stomped on the guard`s face and the man broke down again.
Frank swooped down on him and bit in his cheek like a wild animal. A shot from a handgun followed, which had almost hit the crazy Kohlhaas - then also the last policeman was dead. Frank howled and still kicked several times in the head of the dying man. The other men finally pulled him out of the van. His white dress was blood-smeared and Frank reminded the masked men, who confusedly stood in front of him, rather of a mad butcher than a prisoner. Now he seemed to fall in a state of blankness again and sat down, totally exhausted, on the metallic stairs of the transport vehicle.
„Well, what`s up now, man? Come on! Or do you want to wait for the next policemen?”, asked Alf.
Bäumer trailed him and followed the three other men into the forest. Now it was important to hurry, because the operation had lasted far too long and, moreover, such a slaughter hadn`t been planned.
Furthermore, they had lost a man and it was just luck that no other car had come along the country road, otherwise the bloodshed would have been much worse. The three disguised men and Alfred, who was trying to propel Frank, fastly ran through the thicket.
„Move!”, roared one of the three masked men. „Dash it! What are you waiting for?”
Alf Bäumer gripped Kohlhaas at the collar and ordered him to run faster, but the confused young man still walked slowly behind him.
„If your buddy does not hurry a little more, I will shoot him, Alf! I mean it!”, yelled one of the three men, who was running ahead.
Alfred stood before Frank, vibrated him and growled: „This is your only chance, you idiot! If they get you now, you are a dead man! Come with me, trust me!“
Frank Kohlhaas hadn`t been able to trust anyone in the last months and the mental bleeding, the holo cell had demanded of him, had been enormous. But the word „trust“ sounded like a gentle balsam in his ears, that had only absorbed poison for such a long time. The fresh cold forest air, he was inhaling now, slowly showed him that this opportunity to attain freedom, should not be thrown away. Suddenly he ran, ran and ran, catched up with the others and disappeared with them in the thicket of the forest. The five men reached a large field after some minutes, where were an old looking and small airplane was waiting for them. They jumped into the flier and shut a rusty door behind themselves. All were totally exhausted and wheezed loudly, while the plane took off.
„Who is that guy, Alf?”, asked one of the three liberators with an unfriendly undertone and pulled the balaclava from his face. The young man was blond, with short hair and a boyish face.
„I have no notion! He has been transported together with me!”, answered Alf.
„Tell us your name, man!”, demanded the blond man and regarded Frank with a searching look.
„Frank Kohlhaas, citizen 1-564398B-278843….“, hummed Frank and closed his eyes.
„Your citizen number isn`t interesting for us, buddy! We don`t need to have this shit!”, hissed the young man, who was called Sven by the others. „We are free men and no slaves with citizen numbers.“
„Well, I think this man has been in a holo cell. That`s the reason, why he is so abstracted!“ Alf tried to explain.
„Such a cell… “, stammered Frank.
„A holo cell? That thing, which is currently tested by the GSA in all prisons worldwide? Really?“, asked one of the three rebels with surprise.
„No wonder, that you seem to be on drugs. These things
are the worst instruments of brainwashing of our time. How long have you been in this hellish cell?“
„I think, since August 2027…leave me alone…“, hummed Frank quietly and hid his face behind his knees again, as he had done it so often in the last months. Then he turned to the side and dozed in his usual half-sleep, although the outdated airplane made a big noise and vibrated during the whole flight.
In the year 2028, it was not easy to organize an operation like this, because of the almost perfect air surveillance in “Central Europe”. However, this flier was inconspicuous, because it had been registered as an outdated, but nevertheless permitted transportation in the Baltic. If the plane was scanned by the computer of a satellite or an air surveillance station, it was just shown as the transport aircraft of a man called Matas Litov, a Lithuanian farmer, in the data bases of the European monitoring servers.
The chip card of the plane had been changed by a highly gifted computer hacker, who had made it perfectly inconspicuous. But even the arts of this man had their limits, and one day the constantly improved monitoring could probably also recognize his tricks.
Anyhow, the authorities hadn`t been prepared for such a brutal attack on a prisoner transporter. And it was also just luck, that the operation had finally been successful.
Frank Kohlhaas, whose citizen number was no longer of importance, flew with the others over Poland towards the the former Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Meanwhile, the three abolished national states had been summarized with other former countries of Eastern Europe to a single administrative sector.
In Eastern Europe, the complete monitoring of the population and the entire public life was so far not as perfect as in North America or in Western Europe. Many states of Eastern Europe had refused to blindly obey the instructions of the World Government for a long time. This new power had been established in the western regions at first and so it just took longer, until a complex monitoring network of western standards could be installed there.
But the World Government also planned the same extensive system of total control for Eastern Europe. And it did everything, to build it up, as soon as possible.
In the year 2028, the British islands were the most sharply supervised area of the world. Here, the doom had built up its first strong bastion in the past, from where it had come over the rest of mankind.
In England, the World Government already tested and introduced the next steps for global domination. For example, the complete prohibition of sexual contacts between men and women, the total destruction of any family structures, and even a breeding of the population after the defaults of economic necessity.
Who wanted to fight against this tyranny, was really a dreamer and had to have a good relationship to his maker, because the propability to meet him soon, was very high.
Like Alf and his fellows, who apparently thought, that they could change something. Anyhow, Frank Kohlhaas was with them now - and enjoyed it. He was just happy to breathe fresh air and had the feeling, that he had been born again. How often he had begged the Grim Reaper to come, to end the torture of the holo cell. But the Gevatter apparently did not want him yet. Now, everything had changed…
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