“Just a handful. Sir. Hatch called almost everyone off to the battle.”
“Why?”
“Who knows why? He called it real-world training.”
“How many is ‘a handful’?”
“Maybe thirty, including us. But they’re mostly the office workers.”
“Where are the office workers now?”
“They’re in the main headquarters.”
“Where’s the headquarters?”
“It’s about two hundred yards from here. There’s a map of the island inside the office.”
“What weapons do they have?”
“They have thousands of weapons. It’s the Elgen’s armory.”
“Where do they keep the weapons?”
“The main armory is in the south wing of the HQ.”
“How many armories are there?”
“There’s one in almost every main building. The explosives have their own building behind the HQ. The office workers didn’t want to store them where they worked.”
“Of course,” Enele said, nodding. “How do we get into the headquarters?”
“They’ll see you. There are cameras everywhere.”
“You’re Elgen. There are always cameras everywhere.”
“They haven’t been as vigilant watching. With everyone gone, things have been a bit lax. I think there’s been a lot of drinking going on.”
“We’ve noticed that.” Enele stood. “Adam, take Earl on board with the other Elgen prisoners. Then get back here. Tell your men we’re going to attack in fifteen minutes.”
8
Fish in a Barrel
When Adam returned, he was directed inside the dock house by the soldier guarding the door. Enele had already gathered the other leaders around the map of the island and was writing on it.
“Back, sir,” Adam said.
“Good. I’ll start again from the beginning. Surprise and speed are vital to our success. The last thing we want is a handful of men hunkered down for a week in the building. Zeel, I want you to march the men from your boat and position here, east of the HQ.” Enele moved his pencil down the side of the map. “Split your group; have half the men take the explosives armory behind the main building.” He looked up at Nazil. “How many of your men are armed?”
“About sixty.”
“I want you to take your soldiers and position them here, at the west side. I want you in behind me. We’ll send word.
“Me, Raphe, Adam, and all our men in Elgen uniforms will drive up through the front gate. If we’re lucky, they’ll think we’re just soldiers returning from the battle. We’ll leave fifty of my men here to hold the dock.
“Do not fire until you’ve been fired upon or you hear gunfire. This is a surprise attack. If we can do this without firing a shot, we’re better off. Our pigeon said that the Elgen they left behind are mostly paper pushers, not fighters. They might not fight unless they think they have to. But don’t count on them going peacefully. They are still Elgen.
“After we’ve taken the building, we’ll pull the trucks up and load them with every weapon they’ve got. We’ll put all the explosives on one boat.”
“Which boat?” Nazil asked.
“The one farthest from mine,” Enele said. Everyone looked at him, and a sudden, unexpected smile crossed his face. “I was kidding. What’s our smallest boat?”
“Mine,” said Pio, one of the four boat captains. “The Neutron.”
“How many passengers are you carrying?”
“Forty-six. Six crew.”
“We can take your soldiers on the Regulator. We’ll fill the Neutron with the heavy explosives and your crew. Grenades and mortar shells we’ll divide between the rest.” Enele looked around. “Any questions?”
No one said anything.
“Let’s do this. Have your men ready to move in five minutes. My team won’t make our entrance until everyone’s in place.”
Zeel held up a handheld radio. “We got these. Should we use them?”
“No. From here, those are powerful enough to reach Funafuti, and we don’t know who’s listening. We go in radio silence.”
Enele and his men waited ten minutes for the other squads to take their positions before driving the dock trucks up to the Elgen’s main building. The front gate was attended by only one guard. As they approached, the man stood at attention.
“You made it back, sir,” he said.
“Barely,” Enele said.
The guard looked at him, then at his badge. “You aren’t Collins.”
“No, I’m not,” Enele said, lifting his pistol at the man. Three of his soldiers pointed their guns at the man as well. “Hands on your head,” Enele said. “Speak into that radio, and we blow your mouth off.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”
“On your knees.”
“Yes, sir.”
Two men, Adam and one other, jumped down from the truck and went inside the guard booth. They cuffed the guard’s hands behind his back, then took his radio. Then they went through the booth, confiscating all the weapons inside.
“Sir,” Adam said. “We can see inside the building from here.”
Enele climbed down from the truck and walked around it to the guard booth. There were four different monitors on the wall, all of them switching camera views every few seconds.
“Right there,” Adam said. “They’re in those two offices.”
“And the break room,” Enele said. “They’re playing Ping-Pong.”
After a moment Adam said, “They’re not very good.”
Enele laughed. “Earl wasn’t kidding, was he? It looks like a bunch of accountants.”
“What kind of uniform is that?” Adam said, pointing at one of the monitors. “It looks . . . wimpy.”
“So far I haven’t seen a single weapon.”
“That guy has one,” Adam said, pointing at the screen. He leaned forward to read the small type across the bottom of the image. “That must be the explosives armory.” He turned back. “Should we warn Zeel?”
“Not for one guy. They’ll handle him.” Enele started back to the Jeep. “Let’s go catch us some Elgen.”
“Like fish in a barrel,” Adam said.
“Elgen fish,” Enele said. “They stink more.”
* * *
Only one Elgen even noticed Enele and his men as they entered the building. He wore thick glasses and was carrying a stack of papers.
“It’s about time you got back,” he said. “It’s gone to pot around here. Literally.”
Enele pointed his gun at him. “On your stomach, hands behind your back.”
“What?”
“Do it. Now.”
The man dropped to his stomach. Two soldiers ran to him, cuffed him, and dragged him out of the hall.
“Raphe, find Nazil. Tell him we’re in the building.”
Raphe nodded.
“. . . And don’t surprise them. You might get shot.”
“Check.” He turned and ran out the front door.
Enele split up his men, and they went separately down opposite corridors.
“This should be the room on the monitor,” Adam whispered.
Enele put his ear up against the door, looked back, and nodded.
Adam signaled for his men to line up behind the door, then turned back to Enele. Before Enele could open the door, the knob turned and began to open. They let the door open enough to expose a sloppily dressed, middle-aged man holding a porcelain coffee cup. His eyes were dull and his face was remarkably calm as he stared at the Tuvaluans in Elgen uniforms. He looked more confused than worried.
“Now!” Enele shouted, kicking open the door and knocking the man onto his butt. Coffee flew everywhere. Adam and his men ran into the room, brandishing their rifles. “Everyone, hands up. Now.”
The men inside the room watched the intrusion as casually as if they were watching a TV show.
“Up!” Adam shouted.
The men slowly raised their
hands.
“What’s the meaning of this?” one of the men asked, his voice soft and slightly slurred.
“Hands on your head! Mouth shut!” Enele said.
The man looked back and forth between the Tuvaluans, lifted a drink to his mouth, and then said, “Thank God, you’re just Tuvaluan. For a moment I thought Admiral-General Hatch had sent you.”
Their behavior was so peculiar that Enele walked over to see what they were drinking. He held up a cup. “Kava Kava.”
The Tuvaluans nodded knowingly.
“Kava,” Adam said. “That explains everything.”
* * *
Enele’s soldiers lined the men up, checked them for weapons (the only thing anyone had resembling a weapon was a letter opener), cuffed them, and then put them all into a closet and locked it.
“You’re going to let us out eventually?” the last man into the closet said.
“Eventually,” Enele said.
“I rather need to use the water closet. That’s where I was going when you barged in.”
Enele left one man to guard the closet, then went back out into the hallway. One of their soldiers was bringing a man back from the bathroom. “Found this guy in there.”
“Put him in the closet with the others.”
“Enele,” someone shouted.
Enele looked down the hallway. Raphe had returned with Nazil. The two men came down the hallway after him.
“What’s going on?” Nazil asked.
“Only thirty on the island. We just locked up a roomful of krunked accountants.”
“Krunked? You mean drunk on kava?”
Enele nodded. “They were more afraid I was Elgen than Tuvaluan.”
“Not surprising,” Raphe said. “Hatch would have them fed to rats.”
“When the cat’s away, the mice play,” Nazil said. “What do you want us to do?”
“Check the rest of the rooms throughout the building,” Enele said, stopping outside a door. “Adam and I will take this one.”
Nazil’s forehead furrowed. “What’s that sound?”
Enele grinned. “Ping-Pong.”
9
The Mother Lode
Hatch had wildly underestimated the Electroclan and had never considered the battle of Hades as anything more than an easy victory and practice for his soldiers. War games. In this he had left himself wide open. Had Enele and his Tuvaluans arrived before the battle, they would have met the fiercest, best-trained squads of Elgen in the world. They wouldn’t have even made it off the dock. They wouldn’t have made it off the boat. But that was before the battle. Now the most opposition the Elgen put up was when one of the soldiers was hit in the face with a Ping-Pong paddle.
It took Enele less than an hour to secure the whole of the Elgen’s war headquarters, with only one shot fired. They forced the guard stationed inside the armory to open the room, which wasn’t hard once Enele threatened to blow up the room with the man still inside.
Inside the armory Enele couldn’t believe what he saw. The room was more than a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, with racks of guns and munition filling the room. “This is more than we can use,” he said to Adam. “This could equip an army.”
“Two of them,” Adam said. “What do you think it’s all for?”
“It’s more than they needed for Tuvalu. Before Hatch came, we had less than two dozen guns in the whole nation. He’s arming up for his next conquest.”
“What should we do with it?”
“Take it all. We can drop what we don’t need into the sea.”
Enele had his men back the trucks up to the front door and began loading them up with weapons. They created a chain of more than a hundred Tuvaluans as Enele and Adam walked through the room, directing what weapons should be moved first. A half hour later Zeel walked into the armory. “We’ve secured the explosives armory.”
“Any trouble? I heard a gunshot.”
“No trouble,” Zeel said, looking slightly embarrassed. “That was one of my men dropping his rifle. He was inexperienced. What do you want me to do with the explosives?”
“What did you find?”
“Half the room was filled with grenades, mortar shells, land mines, and munitions. The other half was filled with heavy stuff. C4. Blasting caps. Slurry. Even some dynamite. There’s enough in there to make a very big hole in the world.”
“Take your men and one of the trucks and start transporting the heavy explosives to the Neutron. Leave the land mines but take all the ammo, grenades, and shells and leave them on the dock with the other weapons. Do you have anyone who knows anything about explosives?”
“Just the Elgen guy who was working there.”
“Will he cooperate?”
“I think so. He says he has a secret Tuvaluan girlfriend on Nui.”
“Have him help you, but have two guards on him at all times. Let him know that you’ll shoot him if he tries anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Only a few minutes after Zeel walked out of the armory, Raphe walked back in. “We’ve already filled the first truck.”
“We haven’t even made a dent in this,” Enele said. “Take everything to the dock and unload it in organized piles, then come back for more. Don’t put anything on the boats yet. We’ll do that after we know where we want everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pass the word on to Nazil and the others.”
“Yes, sir.”
Adam frowned. “This is going to take us all day.”
“That sounded like a complaint,” Enele said. “That’s like complaining because you got too much for Christmas.”
“Sorry,” Adam said.
Enele put his hand on Adam’s shoulder. “We were wondering if we’d find any weapons. I’d say we hit the mother lode.”
* * *
It took three hundred men nearly five hours to clear out the armories. When Enele drove back to the dock, he was surprised to see just how much they had confiscated. Stretched out in the open, it looked like a military flea market.
Zeel walked up to him. “We’ve filled the Neutron with the heavy explosives. The rest we’ve piled over there.”
“Good,” Enele said.
“Not for the crew,” Zeel said. “That’s one nervous group of men. Sterling told them there were enough explosives on board to blow up a third of Funafuti.”
“Sterling?”
“He’s the Elgen.”
“That’s good to know,” Enele said.
“Again, not good for the crew.”
Enele grinned. “Just tell them that if the C4 explodes, they’ll never even know. But if they suddenly find themselves on a beautiful island with perfect weather and fine hula dancers—just relax. They’re already dead.”
Zeel grinned back. “I’ll let them know.”
“How’s your Elgen? Sterling.”
“He’s swapping stories with the men.”
“Just keep your eye on him. Nazil!”
Nazil had just arrived at the dock and was climbing out of a truck. He walked up to Enele. “Yes, sir.”
“We need to get the boats loaded before dark. Have each soldier arm himself with the best weapons he can find. Have them take a utility belt, grenades, and ammunition as well. I want them armed and prepared to fight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After they’ve armed themselves, have them secure their weapons and then start transporting the rest of the weaponry and ammo to the ships. Adam and Raphe will oversee the distribution.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked puzzled. “We leave for Funafuti tonight?”
“No. Our men need rest. And food. When they’re done, send your men back to the headquarters to eat. I’ll order their chefs to cook for us.”
“We can trust the Elgen chefs?”
“I should hope so. They’re Tuvaluan.”
* * *
The sun was setting in the western Pacific as Enele watched the men close up the last doors on the ship
s.
“It’s done, sir,” Adam said. “The ships are full.”
“Well done. Let’s get us something to eat.”
“Thank you.”
They drove the last truck over to headquarters. Most of the men had already eaten, and some were out in the yard, shouting and laughing.
“What’s going on over there?” Enele asked.
“Looks like sport,” Adam said.
They pulled up outside a wide circle of men. In the clearing were two Elgen stripped down to their underwear, fist fighting.
“What’s going on?” Enele asked.
“Just having a little fun,” one of the men said. “We put wagers down on who’s the better fighter. The loser gets fed to the rats.”
Enele flashed with anger. “Stop this.” He pointed at the two men, who were both bloodied. One of them had a broken nose. “Elgen, stop this right now.”
The men gladly obeyed.
Enele turned back to face his own men. “What are you, Elgen? This is not us. We are here to liberate our islands from the Elgen, not to become them. Do you wish to offend the gods? Go to your boats. Now!”
The group quickly dissipated, all except one, whom Enele ordered to stay and gather up the men’s clothes. Enele walked up to the two Elgen men. He threw them their clothes. “Get dressed.” The men looked at him with surprise. “We are not uncivilized,” Enele said. “We leave that to you.” He turned to the soldier he’d kept back. “Take them back inside where you got them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Adam looked at him. “They were just releasing tension, sir. They may be killing Elgen soon enough. Or being killed.”
“I know.” He started to the building. “There are worse things that could happen.”
“Sir?”
Enele stopped, then said, “After slavery was abolished in America, many Africans were returned to their own country. Instead of returning to their way of life, they imitated the cruel world they had left and began capturing and enslaving other Africans.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m worried that we might not get the Elgen out of our islands. But I am far more worried that, after the cruelty our people have suffered, we might not get the Elgen out of our people.”
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