Part 13 (2/2)
”Meaning?” Ryan quizzed.
”Well, my dear boy, I would surmise that if the Illuminated Ones have somehow been arranging these roadblocks, then it would suggest that they have a myriad of entries and exits to their redoubt. Now, as this-” he swept his arm expansively ”-is modeled on the very mother of all U.S. military mother lodes, then it would not, I should say, be unreasonable to expect that there would be a veritable warren of hidden pa.s.sages and elevators leading to the heart of the beast.”
”Very picturesquely put, Doc,” Mildred murmured, ”but a good point. I'd add to that the fact that the Gate don't have the knowledge we do about these people. I know we've told Gloria about them, but I don't know if she's really taken it all in.”
”Gloria not problem,” Jak put in, ”but rest of Gate? Mebbe not believe what she say because it come from us and not from what see.”
”Yeah, that's what I mean,” Mildred agreed. ”The best thing is practical experience, and no amount of telling is going to change that.”
”So we watch their backs, as well as ours,” Krysty said. She huddled into her coat, despite the warmth of the day. ”You know, I do get the feeling from them that they think it's going to be easy. They're such good warriors that they have trouble believing anything other than total victory.”
”Only way fight,” Jak said. ”Doubt and you chilled.”
Krysty smiled wryly. ”Mebbe I mean something else, then-caution and not underestimating your enemy.”
”What is there to underestimate?” Dean spoke for the first time. As he stood in front of Ryan, his face grimly set, he could have been the mirror image of his father were it not for the scars and wounds his father bore.
”How do you mean?” his father asked.
Dean shrugged. ”You don't estimate, you just deal with it and keep triple red. There's always a curve ball, so you just try to hit it...” And he grinned wolfishly.
”That's right.” Ryan showed a half smile. ”Let's do it.”
THE GATE CARAVAN moved off, all those who were a part of it aware that they were on the verge of battle.
Because they were looking for it, Gloria and Ryan were aware of the way in which the roads had been blocked. Every road that led off to the right was now impa.s.sable for the wags, forcing the caravan to take left turns at intersections or proceed ahead until the forward path was also blocked.
”The little sweeties, they're not very subtle, are they?” Gloria murmured to Ryan as they turned left once more, pa.s.sing a right-hand turn that had a ruined wag across the center of the roadway.
”They don't have to be,” Ryan replied. ”After all, would we think that if we didn't know?”
”Fair point,” Gloria murmured. ”But where does it lead us?”
”That's the big question,” Ryan mused. ”I think the turns are partly meant to disorient us, so we don't know which direction we're headed.”
Gloria's face lit up with her lopsided grin. ”Stupidworks b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. The day they f.u.c.k with my sense of direction is the day they can burn me, 'cause I'll be better off chilled. We're going straight for the center. They're leading us exactly to where we want to go.”
”Then they're going to have a warm reception waiting for us,” Ryan warned.
”We can deal with it,” the Gate queen said simply.
Another turn came up as she spoke. At the end of the road ahead lay a large expanse of open concrete, leading up to the front of a flat building, the facade of which stretched beyond the perspective of the roadway, hemmed in by the old buildings.
”Now, if I were so dumb, even I wouldn't bet that the stupidworks building down there isn't five sided,” Gloria murmured as Ryan clicked back the bolt of his Steyr.
Behind them, the Gate prepared for battle. In the midst, Mildred chambered a slug in her Czech-made ZKR target pistol while J.B. switched his Uzi to rapid fire.
”Dark night, talk about into the jaws of the lion,” he murmured, ignoring Mildred's astonished look at such a poetic outburst. As an afterthought, he added: ”Guess I've been around Doc too long...”
Chapter Fourteen.
”This is it,” Petor breathed from the rear of the caravan with Jon and the armory wag. Margia hurried back to them.
”Get the laser blasters ready. We won't use them yet, but if things get too crazy they may give us the edge.” There was a gleam in her eye that suggested she wanted badly for things to get that crazy.
At the front of the caravan, Ryan and Gloria advanced beyond the last line of cover into open s.p.a.ce, with Jak, Krysty and Tammy on their heels. The taller Gate warrior, with her ma.s.s of auburn curls framing a face taut with tension, had risen swiftly in the ranks, and Gloria now trusted her implicitly. It was unspoken, but the manner of her acting had promoted the younger woman in the ranks of the Gate warriors so that she was now almost second to the queen in battle.
The last line of cover itself was a small wall that ran around the last row of buildings before the vast concrete expanse. It was roughly 150 yards in itself, but vast enough when the lack of cover made every inch a potential death trap. The wall was only two and a half feet high and would have been little use as cover in a firefight, but nonetheless it marked a boundary, and Krysty s.h.i.+vered when one foot went beyond that boundary. Her hair closed around her neck. The tendrils that snaked down into her collar spoke volumes of the imminent danger.
”I feel completely naked like this,” Gloria whispered to Ryan.
”So do I,” the one-eyed warrior replied, ”but there's nothing we can do about it.
They've directed us here. Why haven't they picked us off if they can move about the ruins that easily without being seen? Mebbe they want to capture us more than kill us.”
”You hope...”
Ryan gave a small shrug. ”Mebbe. Just keep triple red and shoot on sight. They won't be expecting that.”
Gloria spared him a glance, smiling with that lopsided grin he was getting used to. ”You hope...” she said with a dry humor.
”Wish they start,” Jak added from just behind. ”Getting itchy.”
As if on cue, the first attack began, and from directly in front of them.
Emerging into the open forum in front of the building that lay at the center of the complex, it was clearly visible that this was indeed a replica of the Pentagon. The building had the cla.s.sic squared design to its facade, leading off to diagonal walls that took it around in a five-sided shape. The open area of concrete, designed specifically for clearing a no-man's-land s.p.a.ce all around, stretched away from them on all sides, curving around the diagonal walls and forming a circular shape where the decorative walls in front of the last line of buildings were shaped away from the line of the blocks.
It was a h.e.l.l of a large s.p.a.ce in which to be chilled.
The Pentagon look-alike in front of them had few windows on the airless facade, and those that there were had long since been blown out. But they expected the building to be empty aboveground. At a signal from their leader, some of the Gate warriors raised their handblasters to cover the windows above ground level, in case a few sec men fired from above.
It was what Ryan or Gloria would have done. The building provided cover, and the height gave a wider angle of fire. But whoever was in command of the Illuminated Ones' sec force either hadn't thought of such an option, or had a plan that precluded this move, for the windows were as lifeless as they had been since the nukecaust.
On the ground level, the Gate and Ryan's people found that they had emerged at the front of the building. If they had been given pause to consider, it would have been an obvious move-bring them into the open right in front of the main entrance to the building. It revealed something about the mindset of whoever was in charge of the sec attack.
And yet, although things were about to happen too fast for rational and conscious thought, the sight of the front entrance triggered survival and combat instincts in Ryan and Gloria-and their respective forces-that had been honed in long years of battle.
The front of the building consisted of a series of false windows along the length of the wall at ground level. They were shaped into the facade like the windows on the upper levels, but were bricked in with decorative stonework that had eroded and faded into a series of seemingly random shapes. A main entrance arch framed iron double doors that were much more primitive than those on the original Pentagon building. Like everything else on this copy, it was a rough sketch with the emphasis on solid security rather than on accuracy. So the double doors had no subtlety, but were solid enough to withstand even the most hardened firefight. Set along the wall at regular intervals were four other sets of doors, flush to the wall with no arch or b.u.t.tress to shelter them from the elements. The hinges to the doors were protected by being laid back behind the main sh.e.l.l of the door, indicating that they had to open outward.
So, it was obvious from the lack of sec force on the upper levels, and from the fact that they had been brought out to the front of the building, that this was where the attack would stem from-an a.s.sumption that was proved correct as the large double doors began to swing open with a speed that indicated a regular maintenance.
”Dark night,” J.B. shouted. ”Five fronts-get them covered.”
The Armorer had been watching the other sets of doors while Ryan's and Gloria's attention had been focused on the double set. He had seen the four doors begin to open as one, and he was in motion before the first thought in his head had finished forming into his shouted warning.
<script>