Empire (40 page)

“Just leave the packs?” asked Cat, shivering.

“We'll want our weapons if we make it up top.”

“Big if,” said Cat.

In answer, Cole started to climb. It was hard to keep his grip. And cold numb wet bare feet weren't as stable to climb with as well-fitting boots. But he had to keep moving. Maybe he could still get to the top before the doors opened.

Cat was keeping up with him, nice steady progress up the ladder.

The big steel door started opening. A couple of men in rebel body armor came out and scanned the area. It didn't take them two seconds to see Cole and Cat, and another two seconds to start shooting.

They missed.

“Their marksman training not as good as our marksman training,” said Cat.

“Fine with me,” said Cole.

A bullet came much closer.

“Getting the range now,” said Cat.

“I'm nearly there.”

Cole noticed the whooshing sound behind him and to the right. A moment later, the entrance of the tunnel erupted in flames.

“Good shot with the SMAW,” said Cat.

“Inappropriate weapon,” said Cole. “Rifles would have been enough.”

“Either way, I think we lost our element of surprise,
abun
.”

Cole knew that Drew and Babe would be moving the SMAW to a different position now.

“Wish I knew what was waiting for us at the top of this ladder.”

Rifle fire from directly behind them didn't result in any bullets striking near them. It was sniper work—
ping
. Wait.
Ping
. That would be Load and Arty, firing past them at someone on top of the island.

And now there was returning gunfire from directly above them, shooting out across the water.

“I just hope Drew and Babe don't try to use a mortar,” said Cole. “I don't want them to blow up that cabin.”

“Don't stop to put on your infra,
abun
.”

“Wasn't going to.”

They were now on the steel beams that supported the dock. But there was gunfire coming from inside the huge doors again, and from men fanning out along the shoreline. Correctly, Load and Arty were only shooting at targets on top of the island, so that Cole and Cat would have a chance to get up and onto the surface without getting their heads blown off the moment they raised them above the level of the dock.

Cole got out his handgun and swung out to climb the swimmer's ladder.

“Such a baby,” said Cat. He clambered directly onto the dock from the other side.

There were two bodies—in ranger uniforms, not armor—lying on the ground. But Cole was aware—from the sound, from motion—that there were others inside the cabin now, and a pair who had moved off into the brush beside the cabin. He flattened himself on the ground. He was immediately aware of every rise and dip in the surface and arranged his body to present the hardest possible target, even as he looked into the brush and found a target. A flurry of motion told him that he had at least come close.

He crept over to the nearest body and used that slight cover while he got his pack off. It would be like a howdah on an elephant to carry that around with him during this. He pulled his rifle off the pack. This was sniper work now.

If your soldiers can't fight at least as well as the enemy's soldiers, it doesn't matter how good a commander you are. Training is the foundation of everything.

The two dead bodies had been disguised as park rangers. The guys they were facing now wore body armor.

Whatever training the rebel troops might have had, it wasn't at Army Ranger level. They relied too much on their armor. It made them feel invulnerable. So they constantly revealed themselves. And they shot carelessly—too quickly, without stability. They also didn't learn from their own bad shots. They'd overshoot the first time, and on the next shot they'd do it again.

Even undertrained soldiers can kill you with a lucky shot, though. Cole had no intention of dying because he had contempt for his enemy.

Their pistols were mostly for noise and show. The rebels dodged the bullets—they didn't trust their armor enough to overcome their reflex to flinch.

Cole reached up and detached the M-24 sniper rifle from his pack. It fired a heavier round than the pistol—that's why he brought it. Testing had shown that at fairly close range, it penetrated the rebels' body armor at certain key points. Like the faceplate.

Two shots. Two rebels down.

“Good work,” said Cat. “Now it's time for Minimi.”

Cole fired into the cabin window, shattering glass, as Cat scrambled up the slope and got into position against the cabin wall, just beside the window. It was an obvious time to toss a grenade into the
cabin, but they both knew they couldn't risk damaging whatever mechanism concealed or locked the passage down into the tunnels. So Cat reached down and pulled up a lump of turf and tossed it through the window as if it were a grenade. It would take the guys inside a split second to realize it
wasn't
an explosive device. During the split second, Cat raked the inside with automatic fire from his Minimi.

They both reached the door of the cabin at the same time. It was open. They came in low, Cole first, and found three rebel soldiers, two dead, one trivially wounded in the left arm.

“I surrender!” the wounded guy said.

“How are we supposed to take you captive?” said Cole.

Cat walked over to the guy.

Terrified, the rebel said, “I'm an American, you can't kill me.”

“Tell it to the cops you guys killed in New York,” said Cole. “And the apartment building doorman.”

“You guys are all murderers!” shouted the rebel. “You love to kill!”

Cat reached down and broke the guy's right arm.

The guy screamed, staring at his arm. When he could speak, he groaned, “I'm an American!”

“American with a broken arm,” said Cat.

“He might be left-handed,” said Cole.

Cat broke the other arm. The guy screamed again. “Threat neutralized,” said Cat.

“Torturers,” the rebel gasped.

“Look, you said not to kill you,” said Cole. “Which do you want, pain or dead?”

Cole gave the guy a dose of morphine. “I think he wants us to surrender to
him
,” said Cat.

The cabin didn't have any obvious elevator doors. Hardly a surprise. Nor was there any visible trap door in the wooden floor, or anything that looked like a passageway inside the fireplace.

“You'll never find the entrance,” said the rebel.

“Kick his arm,” said Cat. “He'll tell us.”

“Torturers!” shouted the rebel.

Cat picked up the clod of dirt and grass that Cat had tossed inside as a fake grenade. He pushed it into the rebel's mouth. The rebel sputtered, spat. But he wasn't talking.

Then, using his sniper rifle, Cole shot downward into the floor. Methodically he crossed the room, shooting straight down. Obviously there was concrete under the wood. Right across the room, no change. He moved over closer to the fireplace, put a new magazine in his M-24, and started firing downward again. Concrete. Concrete. Steel.

The steel section lined up with the fireplace. Cole could now see that the wooden floor extended under the stone of the hearth.

“It slides under the fireplace,” said Cole. Stepping out a couple of paces, Cole could see how the floor planks, while they didn't all end in a straight line, had a slightly wider separation from the abutting boards.

“No doubt they've turned off whatever switch runs this from up here,” said Cole.

“Think there's a way to open it by hand?” said Cat.

“Probably. From below.”

Cole thought about how the trap door worked. It slid under the fireplace. The hearth wasn't deep enough to hold the entire trap door. So there had to be a projection on the outside of the house to hold the rest of the trap door.

“Going out back,” said Cole.

“I'll stay here and make sure nobody comes upstairs.”

Cole went outside. On the way around the cabin, he couldn't resist going near enough to the edge to look over.

There were mechs and hoverbikes coming out of the big doors now and swarming up into the woods. Cole knew that if Arty and Load could get back around the eastern arm of the lake to the cache, they'd be fine—they had weapons designed to counter both vehicles. Machines weren't so good in the deep woods anyway. And seeing how the footsoldiers—only about twenty of them—fanned out, they were clearly not trained at all for rough-country combat.
Urban warfare, that's what these guys were ready for. The other guys would be fine. And the more rebels they kept busy out here, the better it would be for Cole and Cat.

If they could even get down inside.

This was too much like a frontal assault. Two guys, and even if they got through the trap door, what would they do, ride the elevator and get blasted when they hit bottom? Or go down the stairs, where a flamethrower or a grenade could kill them before they had a chance to get off a shot?

At the same time, the longer they waited here, the better chance the rebels had of killing them. And what if Mingo and Benny couldn't get to a phone? What if President Nielson decided not to send a strike force?

The best chance of success here would come from moving forward. Pushing. But . . . carefully.

There was a concrete road running from the huge doorway out toward the dam. It was under water the whole way till it got near the dam. There it looked like a paved marina ramp as it rose up to the usual waterline. Clever disguise. They could bring trucks in and out of here without anything looking like a highway.

Cole jogged around to the back of the cabin. Sure enough, under the grass behind the chimney brick, there was a concrete projection. Totally enclosed. No easy way in.

Cole pulled the pin on a grenade and laid it down in the corner where the brick joined the concrete. Then he threw himself to the other side of the concrete projection and rolled down the slope.

Boom.

Cole got up and ran back. Some damage to the concrete. Not a lot.

He unpinned another grenade, set it right where the most damage was, and leapt and rolled. Another explosion. More damage.

After the fourth grenade, he had a hole.

He ran back to his pack, carried it up to the hole. He pulled out the crowbar and the flashlight. He could have used a sledgehammer, but that wasn't something that he had wanted with his gear when he was hiking.

With the flashlight, he could see the mechanism that pulled the trap door into the concrete sleeve. Not really a complicated machine. He didn't want to damage the tracks where the trap door would slide. Just the lever that pushed the trap door closed.

It was sweaty, frustrating work, because he didn't have great leverage. He also had to make sure he didn't drop the crowbar, because there'd be no getting it back, and he was the only one who had brought one.

Eventually, though, he popped the lever out of its socket. Now it was dangling free.

Taking the crowbar, the flashlight, and his pack, he ran back around the cabin and went inside. Cat had poured himself some coffee from the percolator. “Good stuff,” he said. “Lots of caffeine.”

“No thanks,” said Cole. “You can go out and get your pack now.”

Cat jogged out. The broken-armed rebel glared at Cole. He was sweating with pain and looked so miserable Cole almost felt sorry for him. “I notice nobody came out to see if you're all right,” he said.

The guy didn't say anything.

“I guess they knew we were going to beat the shit out of you,” said Cole. “You know, before people start wars, they ought to make sure they know how to win.”

“We don't have to win the war,” said the rebel. “We just have to keep you guys killing people till public opinion turns completely against you.”

“Same strategy as Al Qaeda,” said Cole.

“We're not terrorists,
you
are.”

“Since you're terrified and I'm not, I suppose you're right,” said Cole. He worked his knife into one of the spaces between floor planks, slicing away bits of wood to make a gap wide enough for the crowbar. “You're guilty of treason, but maybe they'll let you off because we broke your arms. Military brutality and all that.”

“I'm not the traitor, you are.”

“I'm a sworn soldier of the United States of America, performing
my duties according to orders,” said Cole. “You're a hired goon of Aldo Verus, functioning as his private army in order to subvert the United States. Besides, you guys are the ones who killed the President.”

“Not
my
President,” said the rebel.

“That's my point,” said Cole. “He was President of the United States, but he wasn't
your
President. What does that make you?”

“We didn't have anything to do with killing him. Terrorists did that.”

“It was your guys who stole the plans the terrorists used.”

“No way,” said the rebel. “It was your guys who
wrote
those plans.”

Cole couldn't deny that. “Only so we could plan to counter them.”

“And yet,” said the rebel, “you hadn't gotten around to countering them, had you?”

“And when the President died, you guys were right ready to move.”

“We've been ready for months,” said the rebel.

“Waiting for Friday the Thirteenth.”

“Waiting for a right-wing coup to give us an excuse,” said the rebel. “We never thought that asshole in the White House would be dead.”

Cole set his anger aside and thought about what he'd said. Was this just the line they fed their own troops? Or was it possible that Aldo Verus hadn't arranged the assassinations? Could it be that he was waiting for General Alton to get his phony coup under way, and they only seized on Friday the Thirteenth as an opportunity after the fact?