After around an hour more of tense waiting, a police officer came to tell Lucia that a plan had been put together.
St Lucia had the officer replace her and she then walked back to the police who had moved up their operations base to be somewhat close to the house. Though the back lines of the police, where teens were, didn't change at all.
As soon as Lucia walked out of the door she saw Chief Matthews and her 3 teammates standing around the hood of a police car, which while somewhat awkward was better than nothing to look at the blueprints to the house. Scribbled onto the one for the basement were some notes about illegal modifications the cult had been doing to the basement. From the blueprint, it seems that the cult has made the basement the largest floor in the building and it was expanded quite extensively. The parameters from a glance suggest that the basement is around 10-15 ft in both width and length than the above-ground building. Lucia naturally assumed that the teens were the ones to give out the information. Though any extension that the cult has made is most likely not structurally sound compared to the actual basement.
That gave Lucia an idea, though she decided to wait until the Chief gave her his idea. Still, she had a sneaking suspicion that the chief's idea would be something similar.
When she finally reached the car, Chief Mathew had a confident grin, as if he had just solved one of the greatest problems of his career.
“I got a solution that will ‘blow’ you away.” The police chief said, which caused all of us here to unconsciously flinch at the extremely bad pun that Police Chief said and look as if he committed a crime. Though the only thing that Lucia did was roll her eyes.
The police chief could tell that his joke was poorly received and sheepishly said “Ok, sorry I couldn’t help myself.” Before clearing his voice and then starting to tell his plan in a much more confident voice.
“Ok, forgetting the bad pun, I do indeed have a plan that does involve explosives, so if you look at the blueprint, you will see that the basement covers a larger amount of land than the above-ground portion of the building and that it was not original to the building. This means that the cult did it most likely and that means that it will most likely be amateurish quality at best. We should also take in the fact that digging underground and expanding a basement requires much more expertise than building regular structures. So considering that along with the fact that with the size of the basement, we might be standing above it.”
The police chief then takes a moment for everyone to take in what he said so far before continuing with the briefing.
“So considering all those factors, to solve the problem, we must find an alternative entry point into the basement. Since the only one that is too heavily guarded is that we create one ourselves. By using explosives to blow another entrance will not only alleviate the problem but also give us the element of surprise because they wouldn’t suspect that we would try something like this.” After he finished he looked as proud as someone who had just presented an award-winning presentation.
Though pretty much everyone else looked at him as if he was telling a practical joke. Though Chief Matthew only thought that they were confused about where the explosives would come from.
Though after he opened his mouth again it would be clear that he wasn’t.
“Don’t worry about the explosives, I got a friend who agreed to give us some for the operation.” He said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
With that everyone who was in earshot stopped what they were doing and looked at the Chief as if he had just lost his mind. Well everyone except for Lucia, who was triumphantly nodding her head in agreement and thinking about how she knew that he would come up with the same plan as her.
This was not missed by her 3 coworkers who shifted their gaze onto her and looked at her to see what she had been agreeing on before wondering if she was agreeing with the Chief. Though they thought that she must have been thinking something else. Since Lucia was smart enough to know that cops using explosives in a small off-books raid was an incredibly dumb idea. Though as they thought about it more they realized that it might be the case and decided to hope that their gut feeling was wrong.
An awkward silence then arose in which no one could materialize an argument against the plan that Chief was proposing. It lasted until a truck that carried around 25 pounds of dynamite came into the parking lot. The cops then jumped into action moving everything backward and moving around 200 feet away from the building. Then Lucia called Jerry to help her plant the explosives. As it turned out, no one thought that they should send an explosives expert with it. So the people with the dynamite were only 2 military privates who were sent to deliver the dynamite. Who was sent with the explosives to help ensure that it was used properly? Which also tipped off where Chief Matthews got the explosives from.
So Lucia believed that she and Jerry were the most qualified people to handle the explosive out of anyone there. Which didn’t mean that they handled large amounts of explosives or that they had extensive training in how to use them.
Lucia had practical experience with handling some small amounts of it and she knew quite a bit of technical knowledge about explosives. That however is the limit to her explosives knowledge, she had no experience with how to use explosives to get a controlled response. The biggest problem however was that she had no experience with handling large amounts of explosives at once.
Jerry was about the same except for the fact that he had less experience overall than Lucia. That is because in the military he had some explosives training. Though like Lucia he had no training or experience with using explosives in large quantities or using them as a way to breach an underground building.
However, they had more experience than everyone else there at the time. So even with their relative lack of experience, they were the best people for the job.
So they took around an hour and a half to set the explosives in a way that they best believed would cause an entrance to the basement. They had put the explosive to the left of the building.
When they finally finished they took the detonator stick back around 100 feet. The 5 police officers that were in the building were evacuated to the outside of the building to a safe location. Thomas and William also join them as after the explosion is clear, they will storm into the building to dislodge the cults. While the police plan to storm in from the stairs, to create 2 fronts that the cult has to defend.
After everything is in position, Lucia looks at the ground in front of her before pushing down the plunger.
There is then a large boom as the earth flies up into the air. Then fall back to the ground, then after that happens the 4 of them along with the 5 police rush forward with their guns as they see that somehow Lucia was able to get something that seems to be an entrance, then it looks more like the structure failing and the basement partially collapsing.
On the other side, another 5 police officers rush over to the house, though a bit more cautiously since cultists may come rushing upstairs to escape a potential collapse.
When Lucia and the others reach the newly created entrance they see a large number of cultists choking on the dust that has blown towards them and they try to huddle in the original basement as other parts of the basement start to crumble.
Lucia then shouts “Police put your hands up in the air!” Then proceeded to shoot her gun up in the air several times.
At the same time, the cops coming from the stairs also come in shouting at the top of their lungs throwing the cultists into even more confusion.
As a result, many of them drop their guns and proceed to surrender but a few of them raise their guns but are shot before they can open fire or are surprisingly tackled by fellow cultists who wish to avoid further bloodshed. Which surprised Lucia. Though Lucia recognizes one of the cultists who was shot dead by a cop as he was trying to resist
Thus the affair is soon settled and most people begrudgingly accept the fact that Chief Matthew’s plan turned out to be the best possible solution.
Now the only thing left to do was clear the house and take a better look at parts of the house and take care of the surrendering cultists. Though that is the job of the Police and not Lucia. Though Lucia does have a sneaking suspicion that she will be given the responsibilities for the teens and knowing Chief Matthew, she wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up being responsible for all of the minors present. As he is constantly looking for ways to stick it to Lucia.
Though at the very least it is over and the case is now nearing its conclusion.
