by Ben English
The elevator doors opened, and Jack slid over the hood of the transport, breathing deeply. By the time he rounded the corner to the long hallway, he was moving fast, and his speed took the guards around the corner by surprise.
Four of them. Two were just fitting a six-barreled minigun onto a tripod in the middle of the hall. Only one had his weapon at the ready, and Jack dealt with him first, locking shoulder-to-shoulder, kicking the back of the man’s knee with his heel, and using his own momentum to drive the guard over backwards, headfirst, into the ground.
Three. Jack quick-punched the second guard in the wrist of his gun-hand, then turned the man’s pistol barrel-first against his leg, shooting him twice in the calf. As he fell, Jack cast himself toward the remaining—
Two. Jack ignored the one behind the sights of the minigun (it was an M134, and not made for quickdraw) and pounded down the hall toward the final guard. He hesitated, but not long enough for Jack to reach him before he could draw his gun. He fired, and Jack slid under the bullet like he was making a play for home plate, kicking up at the last minute into the man’s solar plexus.
One. Wasn’t time to stand up. Jack kicked out at the barrel of the minigun, swinging it into the last guard’s face, then pulling himself along it to get close enough to get a wristlock on the guard.
Knife in the other hand. Jack put all his weight behind his elbow and drove it down into a nerve ganglion in the guard’s upper arm, causing him to lose grip on the knife. Jack wasted no time pummeling the guard into unconsciousness with his knees and elbows.
By the time Mercedes negotiated the corner and maneuvered the transport fully into the tight hallway, Jack had all the obstacles lined up against the wall. The guard he shot twice would live; both shots were through-and-through, nowhere near any major arteries.
“Hang on,” said Mercedes, barely waiting for him to find a seat. The transport lurched down the hall, and he held on. Wouldn’t do to fall off at such high speed. Jack had no desire to satisfy the gods of goofy irony; he found the best handhold the transport offered.
Not counting Mercedes herself.
He ignored the voice, his mind elsewhere. They were in such a hurry he’d neglected to take a gun from the vanquished in the hallway. Might come in handy: Jack doubted he could take another close-quarters fight.
Ian looked even worse. The FBI man favored his side, but at least wasn’t bleeding. He made a mental note to scavenge any medical supplies they came across. The team hadn’t had time to pack a decent medical kit.
The transport passed a group of men and women in uniform, but they seemed to be merely technicians, fleeing the facility. The hallway was wide, but Mercedes barely swerved to avoid them.
“What happened to Raines?” she asked.
“Amontillado,” Jack said.
She shivered in the dank, fast-moving air.
They passed the stairway Jack and Mercedes had descended earlier, which put them pretty much directly under the main compound. He wondered if these tunnels were an extension of the original pirate lair, or if that network lay separate and undisturbed.
A ramp at the tunnel’s end led them up into a motor pool area, with a full machine shop and the equipment necessary for servicing military vehicles. It was open to the outside air, and Mercedes aimed them right at the wide door. Technicians scattered as the transport blasted out into the sunshine.
The lawn was sodden and covered in debris, and the transport slewed to a muddy stop underneath a shade tree.
There were two suns in the sky. The nearest one rested atop the highest peak of the island. Even in the bright ambient light the incandescent transmitter left a black afterimage on the eye when the viewer looked away.
The buildings stood festooned with greenery hammered in by the storm, battered. For a moment, they marveled at the disarray. Much of it was due to the storm, but the twin black clouds rising up outside the wall suggested intentional chaos.
“Alonzo,” Jack decided. “Chemical fire. Maybe even found a way to kill the mortar, if he’s on his game.”
Mercedes whistled. “Hello, Mrs. Dumont.”
Through the gate, far up the open meadow, a group of soldiers moved in loose formation. Ian shielded his eyes against the sun. “Colombians, or Raines’ security. Definitely nobody from our team.”
The armed figures ignored the transport, moving quickly through the thick grass toward the source of the smoke.
“Okay,” said Jack. “Get the kids to safety and the computer to Steve. No roads lead to the lighthouse hill anymore, so—”
“We’ll use the tunnel you talked about,” finished Mercedes. “Through the well.”
Take her with him, or send her to safety with the children? By the arch of her brow Jack could see she was ready for a fight, but they had no time for this. The window of opportunity to send a second set of instructions had to be closing soon.
That gave him an idea.
Ian moved around the transport. “We’ll be fine. The road leads away from the Colombians, eventually goes to the airfield. Probably the safest place on the island. I’ll take the kids there; if there’s no guards we’ll scrounge up something for them to eat.”
At the mention of food, several of the children started to make hungry noises.
Tick tock, Jack.
“Fine. The well is near the kitchen, in a side garden.” Jack blinked away fatigue, and busied himself with the computer. Its interface was similar to the controls of the operations center.
“I’ll drop you off,” said Ian, motioning to take over at the driver’s side. “Oh, when you use the elevator you built on the cliff, be careful. It was damaged in the storm. Hey kids, did you have any good snacks on the plane ride here?”
Mercedes still looked at Jack, her expression unreadable. She squeezed over, and he felt the warm, soft weight of her against his arm.
Ian accelerated out of the shade, the six wheels throwing up a muddy plume behind each tire.
Raines had an interesting way of organizing his thoughts, and the computer’s interface reflected a very simple yet unique accumulation of mental habits. How well did he know Raines?
Jack allowed himself a moment more to notice Mercedes, then brought the full weight of his mind to bear on the flat screen before him.
Flanked
Alonzo and Allison got into a single firefight on their way to Lighthouse Hill—wasn’t much of a fight, insomuch as the four mercenaries were so intent on the fleeing hostages they weren’t bothering to guard their rear.
Alonzo glided up through the trees and scrub as light-footed as he was able, closed to within twenty yards of the small group, and opened fire with his M4. Allison followed suit with her long gun, and again accounted herself well, taking two men out before they had any chance to retaliate.
Move faster. The shots were certain to bring unwanted attention, and if Steve’s reports were accurate, the other side of the hill was full of mercenaries. “And we’ve got increased radio chatter. It’s encrypted,” Steve said, “But it’s all on the usual U.S. Navy frequencies.”
“Bata’an?” Alonzo wondered aloud. “Ospreys?” Maybe Nicole had come through.
Mack Tanner’s voice came over the line. “We’ve got to warn them off. They don’t know anything about the island’s perimeter defenses.”
Good point. “Steve. Do whatever you have to do, but get me an open line to Bata’an. Two tin cans and a piece of string, if you have to.”
“I can do that. Got the satellite link up. Jack is coming through the tunnel right now, going to try to send out a signal over Raines’ network. Deactivate the nanodevices or something.”
Wait. “What?” Alonzo had been paying too much attention to his surroundings. He dropped to a crouch next to a tree. “What are you talking about?”
Allison stood above him, the barrel of her rifle sweeping the perimeter.
Steve coughed. “Jack has the trigger with him. The computer Raines used to control the nanodevices.”
He starte
d to explain further, but Alonzo cut him off. “I get it. Mack, Vern: do what you can to secure the civilians, but get Jack to Steve’s computer as fast as you can. That’s the priority.”
Something splashed on the back of Alonzo’s neck. It was warm.
Allison leaned against the tree and wiped behind his ear. “Alonzo,” she said, her hand red. “Are you hit?” The coffee candy lozenge fell from her mouth and she toppled forward over him.
Alonzo fought the instinct to catch her, instead dodging to the side and rolling downhill. Behind her, in the trees, stood an imposing figure in fatigues, his silver-hair cropped short.
Bark splintered above Alonzo’s head as he descended, and as he rolled again he visually checked the grenade launcher attached to his M4. Digging his heels in, Alonzo abruptly stopped, turned, and brought the weapon to bear. A bullet panged off his rifle, but it didn’t carry enough force to shift his aim. Nine millimeter, he thought, and a silencer.
The other man was already moving. Alonzo fired the grenade in front of the other man’s trajectory, then swept the hillside with full-auto. It was the security chief; the mastermind behind all the troop movements, the dodges and feints of the entire morning. The man who’d been calling down mortar strikes. Alonzo slammed another magazine home and emptied it into the smoke cloud thrown up by the grenade. He dropped the rifle and charged a forward a few steps, firing his sidearm blindly into the smoke.
Alonzo stopped before he ran through the full mag. This was idiocy. Focus.
The treeline was clear of enemies, but that was a temporary situation.
The major looked bad. Pale. The blood seeping from her side wasn’t dark; the bullet had missed her liver, but not by much. Maybe not enough. He’d seen his share of battlefield wounds, but Alonzo couldn’t call this one.
“Allison. Hey, Allison!”
Alonzo took her folding knife and sliced through her clothes around the wound. Back and front; it looked worse in the front. Each of them carried small medkits; they had hemostatics and quick-bandages. Alonzo tore the top off two small packets of Celox and dumped their contents into the stomach wound. He slapped a bandage over it and half-turned her so he could get at the entry wound on her back.
She made no sound during any of this.
A third packet of Celox and another bandage later, and the flow of blood seemed to have slowed, if not stopped altogether.
Perimeter was still clear, but men were shouting in the distance. Crashing through the brush below them. Nothing to do for it but over the ridge and up the ravine to the hill.
“Allison. Wake up.”
He worked himself underneath her, and lifted. His strength was almost spent, a fact which frightened him like nothing else. With difficulty, he levered her onto his shoulder, and they groaned together. At the sound of her voice, his physical weakness vanished.
Her words came haltingly. “Best leave me here and go fetch help.”
“Not sure there’s any help to fetch,” he replied. “What do you weigh, anyway?”
“About eight stone.”
He took a few staggering steps in the direction of the hill. “I don’t know what that means. Feels like close to two hundred pounds.”
“Put your back into it, little man.” She slapped at him, weakly.
That’s the spirit, Allison.
Buried
He was ignoring her. Jack tore his attention away from Raines’ computer long enough to show Mercedes how to negotiate the inside wall of the well. Bits of dislodged rock told her, with their heavy splashes from far below, that the well was more than a quaint landmark, and Mercedes carefully tested each mossy foothold and handhold before proceeding.
Once she began, it was easy to see that certain bricks and stones had been left protruding just so to allow for places to set one’s feet and hands. Still, climbing down was always harder than climbing up.
Thankfully the sun was nearly overhead, and the well brimmed with light.
The entrance to the tunnel was nearly twenty feet below the sill. Even with the well full of sunlight, she would have had a hard time finding it from above. The first several feet of the tunnel floor was made of the same cobbled, mossy mortar as the wall, and the rounded stones were tightly set in one area and loosely set in another, lending the illusion of depth where there was none. From the outside, it looked like the inner wall continued, smoothly, to the water below.
Jack carried a tiny flashlight, which he handed over impatiently.
“Thanks.”
“Make sure I don’t walk into anything.”
The tunnel was smooth and square, and remarkably cobweb-free. From time to time, branching tunnels led off or down to other dark passages. Jack didn’t seem to look at anything other than the screen, but he kept them on the right path.
The smell of the ocean and the spray in the air kept any feeling of claustrophobia at bay. She could tell they were close—and from time to time, Mercedes noticed symbols on the walls. She leaned in close. Sure enough.
“Skull and crossbones,” she said. “Pirates, Jack?”
He barely looked up. “We talked about that, right? Back in Havana.”
A gradual brightening heralded their approach to the tunnel mouth. A jumble of worked stone and rocks lay where the passage collapsed into the sea. She could see no way past the overhang, and wondered if they were about to climb.
The sea below seemed to boil and churn. Heaving water, not shallow. Nothing to rob the sea from delivering the full force of its strength against the crumbling crusted rock face.
A small, spinning object bounced against the cliff face at the protruding lip of the cave. Jack hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her down as the grenade exploded.
The Prayer of Ajax and the Song of Achilles
The miniature satellite array was safe, for the moment. The fallen stones and half-collapsed walls on Lighthouse Hill made for workable cover. Steve braced the equipment as best he could. One of his hands was full all the time, so this was a bit of a trick.
He saw Alonzo exit the ravine and begin his mad dash up the hill right at pretty much the same time the Colombians below did. At first they laughed at the sight of the American carrying the much larger woman on his back, and they took their careless time trying to kill him, aiming their rifles one-handed and calling out to each other in Spanish.
Alonzo never broke stride, but shouted back at them in the same language, obviously pissed. Steve had never seen such an expression on the small man’s face. As he drew closer, it was obvious that he was soaked at the waist down from running through the tall grass—and then Steve saw the rest of the dark damp stains were due to blood, probably Allison’s.
Whatever he yelled at them, it drew a reaction. They began to fire on him in earnest. Alonzo took a round and went down, cursing in Spanish. Just as quickly, he was back up again and running hard, taking the hill.
The Tanner brothers took up positions on either side of Steve and chose that moment to fire down on the little clump of mercenaries. Their weapons, fully automatic, carried tracer rounds, which always reminded Steve of the fantastic science fiction battles he’d lived through vicariously all his life.
All things being equal, he’d take the vicarious experience over this any day.
The brothers walked their laserlike rivers of fire back and forth across the group of mercenaries, actually lighting several of them ablaze. The rounds hissed as they passed through the heavy grass and the leaves of the low-slung trees. That side of the hill had been sopping wet since the hurricane. Steam actually rose, wakelike, behind the bright paths of the bullets.
Abruptly, the Tanners pulled back and ran to another side of the hill, dodging through the group of huddled civilians. Two of the men and one of the civilian women had military experience, and were all too content to hand fresh magazines of ammunition to the Tanners as they passed through.
Steve was happy to see the Marines go to the other side of the hill. Their presence invited the en
emy to shoot at them, and Steve didn’t want to be anywhere around incoming fire at the moment.
Cowardice wasn’t his motivator; although he carried as much timidity as the next man when it came to getting shot, he was more concerned about his miniature array of satellite dishes. The uplink was easy to maintain from a computational standpoint. The weakness lay in the hardware: the dishes themselves consisted of aluminum mesh and vinyl tubing. Not exactly grenade-proof. As the storm earlier had demonstrated, even a swift wind was a danger. He didn’t know what he’d do if the little array was damaged. That would really let Jack down.
(Given time, Steve had no doubt he’d be able to hack together suitable hardware substitute from the prosaic materials to be found back at Raines’ compound. One pound coffee cans and Pringles containers would do in a snap, for instance. Mmm. Have to see about lunch soon.)
Close up, Alonzo was covered in more mud and gore than Steve thought possible. The shorter man nearly collapsed on the level ground, then eased the Major to the earth amidst the people from the airplane. He spoke to them quietly and forcefully, and when Steve strained to hear what he was saying he remembered he was supposed to be cracking the encryption on the military radio frequencies. He got right to that, working one-handed.
“They’re taking the hill!” shouted Vern Tanner. “Now, Steve. Now!”
Now?
He’d almost forgotten what was in his other hand. The clacker for the Claymores. He released the safety and squeezed the two pieces of the grip together as tightly as he could.
The ground shook, and fire and earth rose skyward on three sides. Steve staggered through the smoke to check his satellite array. It was intact. The military frequency was isolated, too. Alonzo would be pleased.
He’d sprung up from the group of civilians and ran for the cliff. Steve tracked ahead of his path and saw the tripod come apart and slowly topple over the brink.
Alonzo was the closest, and barely reached it in time to keep everything from going over. As it was, he managed to save the tripod legs and the winch, but the braces went into the water below.