Forrest ignored him, trying to gain a sense of how long it would be before the machine unearthed the access tunnel. He estimated it would probably take less than an hour, despite the obvious inexperience of the man operating the ’dozer.
“We need to disable that fucking Cat,” he said finally. “That solves our problem.”
“Shannon’s M-203 will do the trick,” Kane replied. “I can hit it easily from the upstairs window.”
“Get Sullivan ready to back you up,” Forrest said. “I don’t want a family man going out there unless it becomes imperative. You two will have to be very fast, Marcus.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ worry about that,” Kane said, grabbing for the P.A. to call Sullivan.
“Wait!” Forrest said, having a sudden thought. “Why the fuck are they showing us what they’re up to?”
“To scare us.”
“But they’re giving us time to prepare,” Forrest said. “Hold on a second. This shit isn’t right. Check the rest of the feeds.”
Kane checked through half of the camera feeds before finding that the kitchen camera had been uncovered. All they could see, however, was a close-up shot of a paper plate. Written on the paper plate was a short note: SURRENDOR NOW OR YOU ALL DIE!
Forrest shook his head. “Fuckin’ idiots misspelled ‘surrender.’ ”
He took the up P.A. “Mike to the LC. Mike, come to the LC.”
“What the hell can he do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing but I’m having a brain lock.”
When Michael returned he was dressed in his street clothes. “What do you need, Jack?”
“Put me inside this asshole’s head,” Forrest said, pointing to the note on the screen.
“Well, he needs a dictionary. Other than that, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean why is he showing me what he’s up to?” Forrest said. “The fucking asshole has met me. He knows I’d never surrender. So why is he bothering to ask? A taunt I could understand. But a ridiculous demand? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Okay, I see what you mean,” Michael said. “But I’m not sure there’s any way to know what he’s thinking by this point. I mean, I’ve never interviewed anyone who’s been driven to cannibalism before. His entire psychological profile has been . . .”
“Been what?”
“Well, I was about to say that it’s been altered, but no, that wouldn’t be right. It’s been synthesized. Who he is now is who he’s always been . . . just with all the fat boiled off, nothing left to inhibit his true . . . psychopathic nature. He would have to be psychopathic in order to retain command over so many men under these conditions.”
“So what’s it mean?”
“I think it means he’s deliberately coming after us to kill us. He’s not one bit interested in our surrender . . . no matter how he spells it. Is that what you’re looking for?”
“That’s it,” Forrest said. “Take care of our girls, okay?”
Michael smiled. “You got it.”
Michael left the room and Forrest went back to watching the monitors. He counted the total number of men he could see and came up with only six, not counting however many men were goofing off in the basement with the flashlights, which couldn’t have been more than four or five. That left around ninety men unaccounted for.
“Bullshit,” he said at length, drawing deeply from his cigarette. “This cocksucker’s up to something, Marcus. Something we can’t see. Where are we most vulnerable?”
The answer hit them both at the same time.
“Fuck, the lift!”
Forrest grabbed the P.A. again. “All hands under arms to Launch Control now! All hands to Launch Control! Civilian personnel are to seal themselves inside the common area immediately—no exceptions!”
Kane was already up and shrugging into his body armor.
“We need to get to the cargo bay, Jack!”
“Forget it,” Forrest said, grabbing for his own armor. “Unless I’m wrong, they’re already inside. We’re going to lose the first blast door.”
“But we don’t have a countermeasure for the cargo tunnel.”
“We’re the countermeasure, my friend. You and me.”
“Suits me fine, Captain.”
The rest of the combat personnel were arriving in Launch Control and suiting up for battle, including Emory, whom Forrest was not about to argue with under such dire circumstances.
“Shannon, I want you armed and sitting right here manning the goddamn console. You and West will be the last line of defense. Doc, does Price have the box of cyanide capsules?”
“He’s got them,” West said, accepting a carbine from Ulrich. “He and Mike are both sealed in with the women and children and they know what needs to be done if we lose the complex.”
“Okay, people, here’s the deal,” Forrest said, unlocking the fuse box again. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’ve already lost the cargo bay, and if I’m right, we’ll be losing the first cargo door very soon. Marcus and I plan to be in the tunnel when they blow that door. We’ll hit them hard the second they make the breach. Under no circumstances is anyone to open the second cargo door to try and help us!
“Wayne, the five of you will wait at the top of the stairs inside the main entrance until Shannon flips this switch and blows up the fucking house. At that time you five will enter the main tunnel with Sean sealing it behind you. Sean, you will then haul ass back down here with Shannon.
“Wayne and his assault force will make their way into whatever is left of the house, killing every motherfucker they encounter while en route to the lift elevator from above. Once you’ve secured the opening to the cargo bay, Marcus and I will meet you in the middle.”
“We’ll all be dead before that rendezvous ever takes place,” Ulrich said, strapping into his harness.
“Men,” Forrest said, pulling his helmet on over his head, “those assholes up there are half starved to death. That makes us stronger, faster, sharper, and one fuck of a lot meaner than they are. Hooah?”
“Hooah!”
“Move fast, Stumpy! Take maximum advantage of their confusion after Shannon blows the house.”
Fifty-Six
Moriarty stood in the center of the lift elevator looking down through the hole they had blown in the deck as he waited for it to touch down. He then stepped into the cargo bay with twenty-five of his best men and stood looking around.
“They’re raising rats down here, Major,” said the man who had slid down the rope to lower the elevator for the rest of the team.
Moriarty stood grinning. His plan had worked perfectly. They had taken the cargo bay without firing a shot, and they were about to blow the first blast door with their enemy still entirely unaware of their presence. The fact that the plan had actually been Jeffries’s was irrelevant.
“Goddamn textbook!” he said, clapping Edelstein on the back. “Get that fucking door blown, Corporal. Christ Jesus, I think we’ll be running through their fucking halls before they even know we’re in. Get that goddamn flamethrower ready, Bishop!”
Edelstein and his men went quickly to work setting the linear charges in the shape of a man-door in the center of the much larger three-ton blast door.
“Major!” an airman shouted from across the sixty-by-sixty-foot square bay. “These two trucks are loaded up with MREs!”
“Nobody touches the food until after we’ve secured this installation!” Moriarty ordered. “Is that clear?”
Suddenly, there was a thunderous explosion outside the lift opening. One of their men standing near the edge lost his balance and fell in, snapping his knee when he hit the deck.
“What the fuck was that?” Moriarty demanded.
“Holy fuck!” the injured man screamed, holding his knee. “They blew up the fucking house!”
“Chr
ist, they’re probably attacking!” Moriarty said in fear. “Everyone back on the lift!”
Twenty-five men piled back onto the lift as the twenty-sixth ran to hit the up button.
Nothing happened.
“Major, they’ve cut the fucking power! We’re fucking trapped!”
Moriarty’s men fell into instant panic as the sound of automatic rifle fire began to erupt outside the opening and another man fell to the deck, shot through the head.
“Blow that fucking door open!” Moriarty screamed at Edelstein. “We’re rats in a goddamn barrel down here!”
Edelstein and his men went back to setting the charges, finishing quickly. “Everybody take cover!”
The men took cover behind the trucks as Edelstein ran backward, reeling out the wire for the detonator. He quickly twisted the wire ends around the leads then shouted, “Fire in the hole!” giving the small handle a twist.
The charges blew with a loud bang and the men surged forward to pry the chunk from the center of the door with crowbars. It fell forward onto the concrete, and everyone stood well clear of the opening as Moriarty shined his flashlight carefully inside the tunnel, all of them fearing another horrifying pyrotechnic countermeasure.
This tunnel was of an entirely different construction than the main entrance, made of steel walls and a steel ceiling, supported by I-beam framing every forty-eight inches for its entire length of thirty-two feet. The flooring was made of steel grating, and the walkway itself was suspended from no less than twenty steel-spring shock absorbers, ostensibly to allow the tunnel to survive a near-hit from a nuclear weapon. There were no holes in the ceiling or the walls, and there was nothing in the tunnel except some rubble blown inward by the blast.
“Get to work men,” Moriarty said, casting an upward glance at the dim opening in the ceiling, half expecting to see it encircled by enemy riflemen.
As Edelstein and his team hurried down the tunnel with the case of charges, two badly battered Green Berets stood up from beneath the steel grating with blood running from their eyes and ears. They opened fire at near point-blank range, aiming for the necks and faces of the four-man demolition team and killing them instantly.
Both Forrest and Kane then pulled the pins on a pair of grenades each and tossed them down the tunnel after Moriarty’s men, who were scrambling for cover with no idea what kind of force they had so suddenly and unexpectedly come up against. The grenades exploded as they bounced clear of the opening, and six of Moriarty’s men were killed or badly wounded, the quadruple explosion badly disorienting and rattling the remainder even as they fled.
Forrest and Kane pulled themselves up from the hole in the floor and shuffled to the end of the passage. Neither bothered to speak; it would be days before either would be able to hear at all. They switched on their infrared night vision as they took cover inside the partial doorway, easily seeing many of the men who were relying on the poor light for cover.
They began to fire, hitting Moriarty’s men in their exposed legs and arms, shattering bone and picking them apart. There was a lot of return fire but none of it was accurate enough to do much good, as most of Moriarty’s men had grown lax about recharging their NVDs. Kane took a hit in his left shoulder and Forrest took a direct hit on his boron carbide chest plate, but both men remained cool, calm, and collected, choosing their targets before squeezing off each three-round burst.
Moriarty lay on the concrete behind a small generator with his arms wrapped over the top of his helmet, his knees pulled tight to his chest in order to make himself as small a target as possible. He was now deadly certain he had fallen into some kind of Special Forces trap and that his middling force was heavily outgunned.
There wasn’t much of anywhere for his men to hide other than behind the wheels of the three vehicles, but with them pushing and shoving one another in an effort to get the best cover, they were like ducks in a shooting gallery. Men were dropping their weapons and screaming in capitulation even as they were being shot apart—but no one was listening.
A few moments later the loading dock fell silent, and Moriarty slowly reached to open the flap on his holster, drawing the pistol and pulling his knees beneath him to sneak a peek over the top of the generator.
Forrest was standing there with his M-4 shouldered and ready to fire. “Major Moriarty, I presume?”
Moriarty dropped the weapon, and Kane delivered him a butt-stroke to the side of his head, sending him sprawling across the concrete.
Fifty-Seven
Ulrich listened for the shock wave to strike the blast door, signaling that Emory had blown up the house. Counting to five, he pulled the lever and swung the door wide, running the twenty-foot length of the tunnel through the smoke and dust until he came out the other end into the dim light of the basement, where three dead airmen lay on the floor with their lungs crushed. A murky sky was visible at the top of the steel staircase, telling Ulrich the house had blown up, out and away—just as he had intended when he set the charges.
He and the other four men—Danzig, Vasquez, Sullivan, and Marty—stormed up the stairs and opened immediate fire on the stunned crowd of nearly thirty men gathered at the opening over the cargo bay, firing from prone positions on the flooring of the house. They shot the airmen down with near impunity as the airmen struggled through the deep snow in a vain attempt to seek cover. The few who tried to return fire were the first to be eliminated, one toppling over backward into the hole.
Sullivan banged Marty on the shoulder, signaling him to help reduce the men on their left flank who were taking up firing positions within the row of trucks and trailers. Marty sprayed them with grazing fire as Sullivan fired a 40mm grenade into the side of a small diesel tanker, killing five in the explosion and flushing many more from the cover of the trucks on either side of the inferno.
Ulrich and the others had eliminated the airmen near the lift elevator and were now adding to the fire directed at the trucks, where there were thirty or so Air Force men left to be dealt with.
Sullivan fired another grenade into the side of the explosives truck, killing or injuring another ten.
“Take cover!” Ulrich shouted, smacking Danzig on the shoulder and pointing toward what used to be the back porch, where the brick foundation of the house would provide them decent cover. “We’re too exposed!”
Danzig was crawling backward when he saw Vasquez’s head drop face first onto the deck, a round having struck him to the left of his nose and blowing out the back of his head. Danzig grabbed for his friend’s ankle, but Sullivan knocked his arm away and shoved him toward cover.
“He’s gone!”
Ulrich grabbed Marty’s collar and practically dragged him as Marty continued to pour fire onto the enemy, deftly switching out the empty magazine and continuing to fire like a veteran soldier. The two of them toppled off the back porch into the lee of the foundation.
Sullivan fired a grenade and blew up another truck, glancing behind him to his right as he was loading another round, seeing the Humvee ascending from below the earth. He swung the weapon around and was about to fire when Kane’s dark face emerged from the gunner’s opening in the roof.
The Humvee raced off the deck and swung wide around the compound to the west, outflanking the enemy position. Kane fired into their exposed flanks as Forrest sped through the snow, and within a few seconds the remaining airmen were throwing down their weapons and putting their hands into the air.
“Let’s move!” Ulrich shouted, jumping onto the porch and then charging across the floor to the front stairs.
The airmen were walking out to meet them with their hands raised, all of them shaggy and filthy and utterly demoralized.
“Hands on your heads!” Danzig screamed, kicking one of them viciously in the groin. “Down on your fucking knees!”
Soon there were eleven airmen down on their knees in the snow with their hands on top of t
heir heads. Sullivan stalked the row of trucks, shooting the wounded where they lay. Forrest and Kane checked inside each of the trailers for supplies and holdouts, but all they found were two sickly women who had somehow managed to survive the hail of bullets. The truck with the cage on the back of it was in flames, the five men inside, who had been on the menu, now terribly overcooked.
“There’s only six of you?” asked a young airman in abject disbelief.
“There were seven of us!” Danzig said, stomping pugnaciously forward to deliver a rifle butt to his face, knocking him over backward into the snow.
“Linus!” Forrest shouted. “Enough!”
“Sir!”
“Weapons and ammo!” Forrest was shouting much more loudly than necessary, his ears no longer bleeding but still ringing like church bells. “We leave nothing of value up here. Kane! Get on the Cat and push that dirt back into the hole.” He used hand signals to explain himself and marched off through the snow. He climbed the stairs onto the foundation of the house, knelt beside Oscar Vasquez and turned him gently over onto his back, stripping him of his weapons and ammo. He took the dog tags from around Oscar’s neck and put them into his pocket, rooting through his pockets for anything his wife Maria might want.
Danzig came up onto the foundation and began to remove Oscar’s boots.
Forrest stared at him.
“We wear the same size, Captain.” Danzig got his first look at the ruptured blood vessels in Forrest’s eyes, pointing to his own boots so Forrest would know what he was saying.
“Won’t be any more boot factories for a while, will there?” Forrest said in a loud voice.
“No, sir.”
“What do you want done for him, Linus? We can’t let Maria see him with his face shot apart.”
“Let’s build him a big fire, sir,” Danzig said, gesturing with his hands.
“Good idea!” Forrest said, offering him Oscar’s dog tags. “It was better this way, Linus. Diabetic coma’s no way for a soldier to die.”
“Yes, sir. I have a request, sir.”
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