Our problem with the stairways was that it was almost impossible to make a direct assault on any floor. All the defenders had to do was sit outside the stairway doors with an assault rifle on full auto and a couple of dozen clips and keep firing at the doors. If they knew we were coming, there was no way we could even enter a floor from the stairways, let alone extricate a hostage.
“Merlin’s sure makin’ this rescue a challenge,” Weasel commented when we surveyed the layout several floors below seventeen, where (we hoped) Merlin was being held captive by the Messengers.
I pointed out that Merlin chose his holes on the basis of defensive capabilities, not ease of attack. “Stairs may be the only way in,” I commented, “but you can bet the bank he’s got one or two ways out that the architects didn’t originally incorporate into the building.”
“Think we need to find those escape hatches,” Weasel commented dryly. “By my way of thinking, each of these floors is probably laid out pretty much the same. Let’s scout down here and see if we can find some likely places he’d hide a back door. Try to think like he would.”
“Does that mean we’ve all got to get stoned first?” Stevie asked.
He had been uncommonly quiet ever since we had left. When I pulled him aside earlier to ask if he was all right, he had explained that all of the other times we had ventured from the compound as a group, it had been for scavenging, usually trips to libraries—low risk, adventurous, fun.
“This isn’t fun,” he said. “We could all be killed.”
“Definitely a better chance here than in a library,” I said. “Books and disks don’t shoot back.”
“I’m just worried about everyone,” he said. “Not scared. Don’t fret about that. I’ll be fine. Just worried. You take care of Sarah, Mac.”
“Tell you something, Stevie,” I said. “Sarah never talks about it, but she’s seen plenty of combat. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her. We’ll all watch each other. But Sarah doesn’t need any preferential treatment.”
“It’s just that she’s…”
“Special,” I said.
“Right. Precious. Like a natural resource. Or the sun rising every morning.”
I pulled his head next to mine so that our foreheads met. “You tell her that when this is over,” I told him. “It’ll pay big dividends.”
• • • •
James and two of his Black Gangster Disciple soldiers joined me to search the fifth floor, looking for likely locations where Merlin would have placed escape hatches in his home on seventeen. We found several possibilities. The best bet was in the bathrooms, where there were hidden access hatches to the plumbing in both the floor and ceiling. A little creative engineering would transform them into passages to the floors above and below.
We resumed the ascent. James accompanied Sarah, Duke and me in one stairwell. Stevie, Weasel and the two Disciples—Angel and Wind Chill—ascended in the other side, only a few feet away from us, but separated by a solid wall. All of us were wearing NVG’s, which made the stairway an eerie green vertical tube, and the communication devices. There was one more comm set and pair of goggles available. One of the Black Gangster Disciples on ground level had them, monitoring our progress in his earpiece.
“Watch for booby traps,” I told everyone before we began the climb. “Merlin always rigs his places.”
We took the ascent slowly, checking the stairway door to each level for enemy soldiers, assuring that no one would surface behind us, communicating in whispers among the seven of us. On six, Duke scratched my leg. He knew when not to whine or growl. On eleven, we found our first body, sprawled on the landing, looking as dead in the green hued night vision goggles as he would have in stark daylight. Duke had smelled it long before our noses picked it up. The man had been dead for several days.
“Be careful with that body, Mac,” Weasel whispered from the other side of the wall. “Could be booby trapped. Be something I sure as hell would do.”
Except for a small crossbow arrow in the leg just above the ankle, wedged firmly in the bone, and a very unusual cant to his neck, the soldier was clean. No traps, no weapons, no bullet holes, no body armor, no boots. Stripped of anything of use to his clan. Tattoos marked him as a Messenger.
“Looks like he tripped one of Merlin’s wires, took an arrow in the leg and fell down the stairs,” I commented. “Guess that pretty much takes care of any speculation as to whether or not they’re here. When we hit fourteen, let’s check each floor thoroughly. They got any brains, they’ll have men set up on one or all of those floors to get in behind us when we enter seventeen.”
From the other stairway, separated from us by the concrete wall, Weasel’s voice entered our ears. “Sit a minute,” came the whisper. “Now we know we got something, let’s coordinate these two teams.”
Before the mission we had tried to plan, visualizing the environment, the building itself, which none of us had ever entered, inventorying what we would need, speculating on how many soldiers we would encounter, where they would set an ambush.
We gave up. Not enough data. The only items we had settled upon was that we would need silencers for the pistols, which we had, and oil for squeaky door hinges. “We goin’ into a high rise and checking floors out for ambushes,” Weasel said, “I think we need to do something about those hinges. Thirty-five year old hinges make some serious noise, even if they been kept dry.” James provided us with fish oil. Merlin had WD40.
Now we planned, sitting on the stairs in a jade twilight, aware that a few floors above us, someone was waiting, anticipating the opportunity to take me down, present me to The Babe, be the richest man in the world. It was, in fact, quite possible that the fat man himself was lurking above, shrouded in the darkness our goggles would penetrate, dreaming of my head in a bird cage and Roberto’s never to come pledge of fealty.
• • • •
Each floor was a perfect square, nearly 60 meters to a side, giving us an area of nearly two thirds of an acre to clear of Messenger soldiers—assuming we located them before they found us. The first twenty floors were serviced by a bank of eight elevators, four facing four. They were useless to us, forming a cul de sac in the middle of each floor.
From the stairs we could enter any floor into a hallway which traversed north/south for about thirty meters. The stairway entrances were in the middle of the hallway, meaning that when we entered, one team would be responsible for the right; the other, left. Each end of the hallway opened into a huge bull pen of glassed cubicles which circled the entire floor. Between the two stairway entrances was a wall with double glass doors. On some floors the bullpen was replaced by individual offices.
Essentially, the outside of each floor, which gave the bullpens or offices access to windows, was the working area of the AON Building in the 20th, and the interior of each floor was used for access hallways, elevators banks, supply closets, bathrooms, vending machine areas and a separate section for two freight elevators.
The hallway ran the length of the building, north to south. Before it opened into the bullpen on each end, it had eight areas that were sources of potential danger, places for our opponents to hide. For a team exiting from the right side stairwell and sweeping right, there were two bathrooms about ten meters down the hall, facing each other on either side of the hall. Before the bathrooms, there was also a hallway on the right side of about twenty meters in length which led to the freight elevators.
Most dangerous of all, was an access corridor to the east side of the bullpen on the left side of the main hall. It was about five steps away from the stairway entrance.
From the other stairway, the one on the left, there was a vending machine area about the size of small bedroom on the right hand side. On the left was the main elevator area—eight double doored elevators facing each other across a twenty foot expanse. It was a big three sided open area. No place to hide, but nonetheless a source of danger.
The two other areas that were a danger to us wer
e the very stairwells that we were planning to use to surprise the Messengers. It could be a two way street, and we had no idea how many were waiting for us above. They could use the stairwells as easily as we could.
• • • •
We decided, sotto voce, to begin sweeping each floor on fourteen, coordinating our efforts to have two of us from our respective stairwells enter from the stairway door and work our way right or left, taking out whomever we encountered with blades or silenced pistols, then meeting again in the middle. When we finished with fifteen and sixteen, we would skip seventeen, where Merlin’s new domicile was located, and clear out eighteen and nineteen of any obstructions. Two hours outside for the work would give us plenty of time for the business on seventeen before the sun rose.
Considering we knew nothing of what awaited us, it was a nice plan.
• • • •
Sarah and I took our half of fourteen from our stairway entrance, darting in without resistance and then moving right, clearing each room, hallway and cul de sac until we entered the huge bullpen area. Weasel and one of the Disciples were doing the same on the left. We met at the east wall of the bullpen and teamed up to clear the rest of the floor. We left Duke in the stairwell with James. Duke was a noise maker when things got rough.
Fourteen was clear. No sign of human occupation.
On the way up to fifteen, we picked up the smell, the cloying heaviness of stale marijuana smoke, the prickly ammonia stench of old urine. We couldn’t tell from which floor it emanated. I oiled the door, swung it open to accommodate a peek and looked in. Scraps of paper and food littered the floor. There was no sign of the enemy.
“I think we have someone up here,” I whispered. “Be careful.”
Sarah and James entered from our side at Weasel’s signal. Stevie and one of James’ soldiers, Angel, went in at the same time from the other stairwell.
I watched them work both sides of the hallway for five minutes, oiling the doors when they were closed, nudging them open, looking inside, then one entering while the other covered the hall. Sarah and James cleared their section and entered the bullpen area, disappearing from my sight. To my left, Stevie and Angel were almost finished. We could all hear each other’s breathing in the headsets. There was no conversation.
Suddenly I heard the squeak of a door, then the bark of a laugh. I knew Sarah and James could hear it also. But I was closer to the sound. I left the stairwell, turned quickly right, and then entered the short hall on my left that gave access to the east side of the bullpen. I peeked my head into the open area, looking left, where I thought the sound came from and saw a huge walled off office area in the far corner, a flickering light emanated from its open door.
Quickly removing my goggles, I watched the light grow brighter, finally resolving itself into a lamp held at arm’s length by a scruffy soldier. He was heading directly toward me.
“Everybody down,” I whispered urgently. “I got a guy roaming around out here. Probably more of them in an office in the northeast corner. Don’t know how many.”
I scrambled back down the hallway and returned to the safety of the stairwell, leaving the door open a crack so I could monitor the man’s movements. Duke nuzzled my arm pit as I peeked into the hall. The soldier walked down the connecting corridor and took a quick left when he came to the main hallway, continuing down the hall, his back to me. He passed the branching hallway that led to the freight elevators and entered the bathroom on his right, draping the hallway once again in total darkness.
“Everybody stay still a couple of minutes,” I said. “The guy is in the bathroom. I’m going to pay him a visit.”
Placing my HK 81 assault rifle and the Skorpion machine pistol beside him, I told Duke to stay, placed the night vision goggles back over my eyes and slipped into the hallway, breathing softly as I crept along, unholstering the Glock, the pistol with the silencer.
When I reached the door, tagged by the line of light emanating from the gap at the floor, the stench told me it was a communal bathroom. It was one of those doors without a knob, the kind you just pushed open. I turned away, removed my goggles once more, took a deep breath and held it, pushed the door open and stepped inside, Glock in a two-handed grip at my right shoulder.
The soldier was stepping out of one of the stalls, the kind that separated the toilets, zipping his fatigues. The stink of the room was overwhelming, searing my nostrils, burning my eyes. “That you Dog Boy? Whoooee,” said the man as he walked over to his lantern. “Smells like twenty-one rotten pussies in here. Be glad when this job is done.”
The opening of the door informed him of my presence. He hadn’t bothered to look at me. As he reached for his lamp, he looked up at me, surprise registering in his eyes, then sudden realization that I wasn’t one of them. Before his brain could get a message to his vocal chords, I put a shot between his eyes, the noise of the round no more than a pushy whoosh of air. He fell behind the lamp, eyes open, mouth in the initial stages of a scream.
I grabbed the lamp, not bothering with a search of the body, blew out the flame and stepped back into the hallway. “He’s down,” I said. “I’m staying out here. Main hallway. Don’t shoot me. I’m a good guy.”
They all acknowledged. Sarah’s sweet voice entered my ear, the last to respond. “Are you OK, Mac?”
“Fine,” I responded.
“Be very careful,” she replied. “James and I are almost finished here. I think you should join us when we check the area that the soldier came from. Weasel,” she added, “you be careful too. You gotta figure there might be more of them than what Mac has seen. Stevie, you OK?”
“Cut the roll call, Sarah,” Weasel groused. “We got work to do. Watch your butt, young lady. Mac, I’m going out to join the Stevie and Wind Chill.”
“I’m fine, Sarah.” Stevie’s voice. Then silence.
Five minutes later Sarah said, “James and I are coming back to the stairway entrance. We’re clear here.” I joined them, and the three of us looked down the other hallway, green hued, silent. “Let’s go check that room,” I said. “See what we got. Weasel, when you three finish, cover the stairways. We don’t want anyone coming up behind us.”
Sarah, James and I crept down the hall and snuck a look to our left at the room in the northeast corner. There was a dim vertical line of barely visible emerald luminescence, marking the doorway to the office. I lifted my goggles and peered at the same spot. The light was no longer visible. They must have stuffed the edges with paper or rags.
“Definitely someone else in there,” I whispered. “The guy talked to me like he wasn’t surprised that someone would be there.”
James shrugged his shoulders. How many? he was asking.
I shrugged a don’t know reply and signaled it was time to find out. We crept to the threshold of the office and I removed my goggles, letting them hang from my neck. James and Sarah took the cue. I signaled that I would open the door and go center, Sarah left, James right. Each of us would be responsible for a third of the area. I pushed my palms toward the floor to indicate stay low. They nodded. I pointed the Glock at my head. Headshots when possible. We didn’t know how much armor they wore.
I turned the knob and pushed on the door. It opened a few inches and stuck. In the dim light I could see it was jammed into the rags they had used to keep the light from bleeding into the hall.
“Took you long enough,” said a voice on the other side of the door. “You whackin’ off or what?” Laughter. Several voices. The shadowy figure of one of the soldiers approached the door and kicked at the rags, clearing the obstruction.
They had been there a long time, too long. Weary of the anticipation of action, the trickle of adrenaline, fluttering in the stomach, with no pay off, they had lost their edge. Then tried to get it back with chems.
Before the man at the door could get away from its arc, I kicked it in, smashing it into his head. He dropped like a heart shot deer. I belly flopped center and heard Sarah and James dive in
on my flanks. We were in a suite of offices, not just one. Three or four lanterns flickered. Reception area, couches, chairs, tables to my right and left. In front of me was a curved work station, home to a receptionist four decades in the past. Behind it sat an astonished clan soldier, one hand, full of powder, was at his nostrils, the other was beginning to reach for an M 16. I snapped a shot, hitting the hand with the candy in it. The man dropped behind the reception desk. I swung left for more targets.
On each side I heard several shots, quiet little poofs from James’ Baretta and Sarah’s Ruger. All of us had 9mm semi-autos. They took well to silencers but still had the stopping power we needed.
A head popped from behind the work station at floor level, looking for a target. Seeing me, the man ducked back. I spaced five shots into the wood where I expected he was laying. There was no more movement.
From the corner of my right eye, I saw a clan soldier running toward the back of the office suite. The man dove past the protective contour of the work station, beyond my line of sight, headed for one of the rear offices. I dashed after him. It would only be seconds before he started firing or screaming. I saw him enter the first office and followed, closing the door behind me and flipping my glasses back on.
He was in a corner, back to the wall, frantically digging a huge .45 out of a holster, peering squint-eyed into the dark that enveloped him. I put a shot in the wall right beside his left ear and softly said, “Stop.” He hesitated a second, trying to locate me from the sound of my voice, then continued. I shot again, right side this time, and he stopped.
It was quiet in the other rooms. I asked Sarah if everything was all right. “We’re done,” she said. “You need help?”
“Give me a minute and I’ll be out,” I said. “I got a guy here who’s gonna talk to me.”
“Mac, how many soldiers in there?” It was Weasel’s voice.
Blood of the Dogs_Book I_Annihilation Page 33