Part 14 (2/2)
”Of course, of course,” Doc replied, his wandering mind suddenly sharpening as the necessity for speed in such a situation suddenly hit him. ”Forgive the foolish ramblings of a man old before his time. You two-” he indicated the two who hadn't spoken ”-take that side and make sure that none of the Illuminated Ones try to get at our rear from around the sides.
”As for you,” he said to the swarthy man who had questioned him, ”you come with me and we'll take the other side.” Doc indicated each side he spoke of with a flourish of his silver lion's-head cane. ”Now, get to it, and swiftly, for there may not be much time,” he snapped.
As the two parties went their separate ways, the Illuminated Ones to the front of the wags attempted another surge forward. It was doomed to failure...
Jorgensen's tactic had been simple and could have been ruthlessly effective. A small group of sec men would come up through the hidden exits into the compound and converge on the point where the men and wags of the Gate tribe were waiting for the Amazons to finish battle. Their attention would be focused in the opposite direction to the surprise attacking force, and it would be simple for the Illuminated Ones to blast the menfolk and take cover from any retaliatory fire by taking shelter in the doorways along the sidewalk.
The flaw in that being that Jorgensen hadn't accounted for the Gate menfolk having an idea that the attack was about to take place and opening up as soon as his people were in view. Then, the shelter in the doorways became the only place where they could avoid an instant chill, and what should have been protection became a prison where the only escape was to move out into the arms of a chilling.
Beneath ground level, observing this on the banks of monitors, and acutely aware of the sidelong glances coming his way from Simon, Al stammered the order for a small group of sec to detach from the rear of the action and circle around on each side, coming up between the main battle and the rear of the wags.
Even as Al spoke, Simon stared at the monitors in disbelief. He had seen Doc and the swarthy man leave the rear of the wags and make their way toward the junction where the sec force would attack. Checking another monitor, he could see that another two men from the wags were conducting a similar maneuver in the opposite direction.
”Er, Al...” Rack said quietly, tapping the sec chief on the arm with an index finger and using the same finger to point at the two monitors. ”Al, are you certain about that? Maybe you didn't...” He let his words dangle, unfinished, in the air.
”s.h.i.+t,” Al muttered, seeing all too clearly that he was sending his people to their chilling.
While he watched, the front line of the attack rounded the corner of a building and entered a hail of fire from the Gate forces, the two men with rifles repeating fire from their Sharps and Lee Enfield .303 to cut down three men before the others following fell back, yelling into their microphones a cacophony of garbled confusion that came in red static through Al's headset.
On the other side, Doc loosed a charge of shot that ripped into the chest of the first person to confront him, the woman's uniform shredding like her flesh and the splintered bone beneath as she was thrown backward into the man behind. That saved him, as the ball shot was next, flying harmlessly over his head to shatter the visor and helmet of the third warrior in line, whose microphone cut off with a violent crackle as he gurgled a voiceless scream.
Simon leaned across and gripped Al by the arm. ”We're getting slaughtered out there. Let them come to us here, where we can really f.u.c.k them over.” Casting a glance back at the monitors and the carnage outside, he wasn't sure if he really believed that, but he had to say something to jolt Jorgensen from his frozen and disbelieving stupor. Even as he looked, the Illuminated One who had been saved from Doc's second shot by the falling body of the chilled soldier in front of him had managed to scramble to his feet, only to be taken out by a blast from the blaster carried by the swarthy man beside Doc.
Jorgensen shook his head, unable to believe that his tactics had gone so wrong. ”This is a f.u.c.kin' nightmare,” he whispered before craning forward over the monitors and yelling into the mouthpiece of his headset, trying to cut across all the noise from his confused, wounded and dying sec force.
”All units, all units, listen! Fall back. Just get the f.u.c.k out and regroup at base. Fall back now.”
”THEY'RE FALLING back, John,” Mildred yelled over the shrieks of the Amazons and the roar of blasters. She was standing in a combat shooting stance near the Armorer, both hands steadying her Czech-made ZKR as she took careful aim at the exposed Illuminated Ones.
”Yeah, but it may be a blind,” J.B. shouted back over the chattering sound of his Uzi. ”I reckon we should keep firing until the last of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have disappeared.”
”I'll second that,” Dean yelled, training his Browning Hi-Power on an open door, ”but I reckon Mildred's right.”
It soon became apparent that Mildred was correct, and the firing from the Amazons and Ryan's people soon slowed to nothing as it became apparent that the Illuminated Ones had withdrawn into the building.
Keeping their blasters ready, the Gate gathered in the center of the forum to hear their queen.
”Looks like we win this round,” she said, ”but if we're going to follow them in there, well, they've got the drop on us, then.”
”A suggestion,” Ryan put in. ”Mebbe we establish a bulkhead just inside the building, secure it so that we aren't in the open but we've also gained ground. Then mebbe we can get an idea of the layout before we go any farther.”
Gloria nodded. ”Good. Tammy, get the wags out here, see how the men have fared.”
Then, turning as the auburn-haired warrior set off for the trailing caravan, the queen turned to her sister. ”Get their blasters, Marg. Detail some to help. Then we gather the chilled.”
Jak and Dean helped Margia and two of the Amazons to gather the blasters. There were twenty-three dead Illuminated Ones around the five exits, and all the blasters had been left behind. In contrast, there were only three chilled Gate warriors.
Tammy arrived with the wags. Jon and Petor had, at her behest, gathered the blasters from the chilled Illuminated Ones that the menfolk had accounted for, giving the tribe another twelve laser blasters.
”Add those to what we've already got and we've d.a.m.n near got enough for every one of us,” Margia enthused. ”I say we hand them out when we set up inside.”
J.B. and Mildred exchanged worried glances. Gloria caught sight of it, and without having to ask knew why they were worried.
”Let's just get ourselves sorted first, Marg,” the queen stated simply. ”We can worry about their blasters later. s.h.i.+t, we haven't done too badly with what we've already got.” And she turned to supervise the disposal of the dead Gate warriors, leaving Margia to fume to herself.
Jak and Tammy scouted through the front of the building, reporting that the lower level was now empty although the ways into the redoubt were obvious. The only conclusion could be that the Illuminated Ones would defend their base from the lower level, trying to lure the Gate into a rash attack that would entrap them. There was also a large lobby in the center of the floor from which a series of corridors ran. While that provided many avenues of possible attack, by its very openness it also gave them a chance to secure their base from all angles.
The companions stood guard with some of the Gate warriors while the others conducted a simplified version of the cremation ceremony, something that had obviously evolved over the years for a situation such as this. Dousing the chilled corpses in gasoline and oil, they were fired with flares that Margia told Petor to fetch from the armory wag. The magnesium flares were obviously rarely used for their original purpose, and had been stored especially for such an unorthodox use.
When the ceremony was concluded, Gloria turned to the rest of the tribe.
”Let's get ourselves settled into the building. Secure camp in the middle of if and then we'll start to plan our next move. Right, friend Ryan?”
The one-eyed warrior nodded. ”Sounds good to me.”
Chapter Fifteen.
”Set up and take up defensive positions. We wait here and plan. Needs must, sweeties...”
Gloria's voice rang out over the general hubbub as the Gate caravan entered the double doors, easing the wags through the large gap in the front of the building. Once they got inside the empty stone circle that formed the centerpiece of the lobby, their voices, footsteps and the ringing of the mules' hooves on the marble floor echoed up into the high cavern of the ceiling.
”Look for any cameras that you can see,” Ryan said to his people, who were cl.u.s.tered around him in order to be able to communicate easily with one another. ”Take out anything that could be an old tech surveillance device with a handblaster. And spread that among the Gate so that we don't cause panic when we shoot.”
”That's if they can hear us above this d.a.m.n noise,” Mildred added wryly.
”Or the blasters,” J.B. finished, almost to himself.
The companions spread out among the Gate, telling those warriors they pa.s.sed what they were doing. Jak was the one to tell Gloria, as he pa.s.sed her. She smiled and agreed with Ryan's decision before devoting herself to the task of organizing her people.
As he went about his task, Doc mused on the size of the building as a whole. The area in which they were making a temporary base was approximately a hundred yards square, with an elevation of something like 150 feet. Once upon a time, in the days before skydark when it had been a working military-or, at least, paramilitary-base, the hall in which they were now encamping would have contained functional office furniture and be used as a reception and meeting room, coming as it did at the junction of many corridors. Doc suspected that this would be the largest part of the web of offices, rooms and corridors that ran the length and breadth of the building.
If his suspicions were correct, then this would be the largest single room in the building. Instead of a large central point from which the spokes of corridors and smaller offices and rooms ran off like the interweaving strands of a spiderweb, this would be like the fixed point from which the corridors radiated out and along and up, like the fine lines on the petal of a flower would radiate from a point near the stamen. This was the stamen. Why not? Anyone attacking from outside-particularly if it was an aerial attack- would a.s.sume that the largest point, and point of control, would be central. Thus deceived, it would put their attack off kilter and enable those inside the building to defend from a stronger position.
All of which made alarm bells ring deep in the recesses of Doc's mind. There was something about this design that was familiar to him. He had seen it somewhere. And somewhere recently. Through the labyrinthine corridors and avenues of his mind, he searched for where this sighting had been. So much so that he very nearly missed one of the hidden cameras, about twenty feet up and hidden behind a dust and begrimed pillar that had once been adorned but was now starkly desolate. It was this starkness that allowed the camera to show where once it would have been hidden.
Doc raised the LeMat and fired, the heavy metal smas.h.i.+ng the deep-set lens of the camera and twisting the metal casing, raining shards of loosened gla.s.s into the arena below. It crashed harmlessly to one side of the armory tent, watched by Jon and Petor.
”Nice shooting, Doc,” Petor remarked, ”but try to look where you're landing it, yeah?”
”My apologies, dear boy. I was temporarily distracted,” Doc replied with a grin, one that spread farther as he suddenly recalled, memory spurred, where he had seen a similar interior building design.
Around the large central hall, which was beginning to sound less empty as the Gate filled it and built their base camp with defenses that deadened the sound of the empty stone and baffled them against echo and attack, the air rang with solitary s.p.a.ced shots, as Ryan's people took out the sec cameras. Mildred relished the task, leveling the Czech-made ZKR at regular intervals, lining up along the barrel sight and picking a spot dead center to the small, opaque lens of each camera. Shutting out the noise and bustle around her as she stood deathly still, her plaits loose around her shoulders and her feet rock solid on the floor, she was almost back at the last Olympics before the nukecaust, competing in another time, another place. It was only a temporary escape, but it helped her to focus herself. It created within her an oasis of peace. It also enabled her to take out her targets with ease.
<script>