Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (21 page)

The TAC Team personnel forming the assault unit, Tim Shaw in the middle of them now, were nearly into position.

The three black Honolulu PD TAC Team SWAT vans hit and there was a shriek of metal against metal like nothing Tim Shaw had ever heard before, the armored truck starting to rock. In one dark little corner of his mind, Tim Shaw realized he’d have about six feet deep worth of reports to fill out because he had allowed the semitrashing of the three SWAT vans, but there’d be time enough for that later.

The armored truck seemed to balance itself for a second on the rims of its blown-out tires, then it started to fall.

Eddie shouted, “Let’s go.” And Tim Shaw quickened his pace.

The armored truck hit the pavement and flopped, the street vibrating under Tim Shaw’s flat feet. The rain seemed to be driving down harder now and despite the lights that instantly flicked on from the other police vehicles, the darkness of the sky threw everything into such silhouette that movement seemed in slow motion, like the vid-tapes of the old pretalking pictures—jerky, distinct, clipped.

They were at the roof of the armored truck now, its

camel color blackened and smudged, the pavement cracked beneath the roof corners from its impact, a smell of dust and tarmac in the air despite the rain and the wind. Eddie was the first one up. Tim Shaw clambered onto the cab. A gun protruded out of the slit in the driver’s side window. “Gun! Watch it!” Tim Shaw shouted.

Tim Shaw racked the pump with his left hand, torquing the shotgun, then ramming its muzzle toward the firing slit. A shot was fired, then another. Tim Shaw punched the muzzle of his gun through the slit and pulled the trigger, the shotgun’s recoil almost breaking his wrist.

There was a scream, almost nonhuman, from within the cab. Tim Shaw pulled the shotgun back, pumped, rammed its muzzle into the slit again and pulled the trigger.

Eddie and the other men of the assault unit were already up onto the side of the van, unlimbering the fire extinguishers they carried.

Tim Shaw pulled back on the shotgun, freeing it from the firing slit, jumped away, clambered onto the side of the truck and was up beside Eddie and the TAC Team assault unit. He was breathing hard. The first of the extinguisher hoses was down into the side firing slits, pumping foam into the truck’s interior from their tanks.

“Be ready if they bolt!” Tim Shaw advised his son and the others.

Ed Shaw nodded, alerting two of the assault team, “Be ready to fire down into that doorway just in case they try making a run for it!”

The rain seemed to be getting heavier, drenching Tim Shaw everywhere above and below his raincoat.

There was no let up in the rain predicted by even the most optimistic forecaster. The particles, that were constantly being pushed into the atmosphere by the nearby volcanic eruption, were, of course, the ideal material around which water vapor could condense. The islands, surrounded by water as they were, had a constant supply of vaporization. The cycle of rain could go on unendingly.

As a cop who started out on a beat, worked his way into being a detective and had always chosen the streets over a desk, Tim Shaw was used to lousy weather. It somehow magically occurred in perfect synchronicity with any operation which would require spending time outdoors. A raincoat was such a matter of course for him that half the time he wore one when the weather was bright and sunny. He was so inured to rain that he never spent a dime .more than he had to on shoes because they were always the first things to go.

As he crouched there on the armored car near his son, the rain coming in torrents, he couldn’t help but think of his shoes. Every time he moved his feet water flushed out of them. But unlike in his youth, there would be no one waiting at home against whom to get warmed.

Tim Shaw had a bet with himself that the men inside the overturned armored car wouldn’t surrender, were fanatics who would rather die than be taken alive.

In less than a minute, he was proven right.

The doors below them moved, one falling open and downward, men from inside, half-covered with foam,

emerging. The respirator vents on their gas masks had foam clinging to them. The men had to be choking inside their gas masks. They stumbled or crawled out, firing upward toward the assault team, some of them getting to their feet, running for it into the lights, guns blazing in order to take out as many of their enemies as they could before they were brought down.

Tim Shaw fired his shotgun, putting down a man who had just nailed one of Eddie’s men with an energy rifle blast in the leg. There was answering fire from the police personnel ringing the overturned armored truck, its volume tremendous. Tim Shaw’s ears rang with it. The men who had fled were cut down in mere seconds, dead or wounded.

Shaw’s son directed that the infusion of the chemical foam be halted, then started down to the street level, Tim Shaw behind him.

They did the usual thing for door entry, only this time rigged a couple of slings together so that when they opened the now uppermost side door of the armored truck, the door could be held back instead of slamming down.

Then they went in, Tim Shaw and his son right behind the three men who were the first inside, all of them not only vigilant for lurking enemy personnel but careful of their footing in the overturned vehicle, the slippery foam clinging to everything.

There were crates of explosives visible in the flashlights of the TAC Team men, the crates wired in series and ready to be exploded. There was a detonator rigged, but the detonator was covered with foam, as were the battery terminal leads.

“You made a lucky guess with the fire extinguishers, Eddie,” Shaw announced. “Good tactics. Glad I hired you. If they’d blown this shit, we woulda been sittin’ on the biggest fragmentation grenade in history.” And Tim Shaw walked out, back onto the street knowing he was no longer needed. And, he was tired.

His shoes were covered with white foam, his raincoat and his trouser legs were mud-stained and he was wet and cold. Then he started whistling as he walked away from the overturned armored truck and toward the police lines.

A woman reporter from a video news crew which had evidently slipped through the lines accosted him as soon as he neared them. Instantly, she started firing questions. “Who were these men, Inspector Shaw?”

Tim Shaw stopped whistling, cutting the melody in midphrase. “We have reason to believe they were terrorist saboteurs. There was some evidence of explosives inside the vehicle, but we have no definite data at this point on if or how those explosives were to be used. There’ll be statements released as soon as possible outlining the progress of the investigation. So I’m afraid you’ll have to wait and see.”

“What will happen to these men?”

“It’s too early to say. The wounded will, of course, be given the best possible medical attention. Beyond that, the situation is still very fluid. A number of charges will probably result.”

“Were there any police casualties?”

“Very few, and no fatalities which I’m aware of, thank God.”

Almost as an afterthought, the reporter asked him,

“What were you whistling, Inspector Shaw?”

Tim Shaw grinned. “Gilbert & Sullivan, from The Pirates of Penzance—you know, ‘a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’”

Thirty-Eight

This meant openly invading the community, of course, but there was no other option left but to blast their way inside. Using every sensing device available to them aboard the Nazi V-stol, no other chink in the walls of the mountain was discernible. It was clear that the occupants of the mountain redoubt were either capable of utilizing a technology those living beyond its walls could not suspect or else they simply never went outside.

Where the main entrance to the onetime War Retreat had been, there were now thousands of tons of rock. The age of the rock slide was impossible to ascertain. Rourke supposed there might be still another alternative, that the occupants were trapped inside. But, that hardly seemed possible. And the gas could not have been natural.

And, with the presence of the lethal halucinogenic gas, he and Paul and their unlikely temporary allies would not have been able to risk moving about inside the mountain without chemical warfare gear, which

would have made their presence rather obvious anyway.

“What if these people are perfectly peaceful, John? This is wrong.”

John Rourke turned away from the laying of the explosives, put his hand to Paul Rubenstein’s shoulder and started walking off with him, leaving the party of men planting the charges and moving toward the V-stol. “That fact hasn’t escaped me. If we don’t cooperate long enough to get the remains Zimmer wants, we have no real bargaining chip at all for the return of Sarah. After all, what if Michael’s identity is discovered? There won’t be any shooting unless it’s in self-defense, and that wouldn’t be morally justified either, I know. This may very well be wrong.”

“You know I’m with you, regardless.”

John Rourke nodded, wishing his own trepidations were as easily set aside. He was uncertain as to his rectitude, a feeling which troubled him greatly. He said nothing more of it, however, because Hauptsturmfuhrer Gunther Spitz was coming straight toward them from the V-stol.

“So, Herr Doctor! How goes it?”

“It goes well.”

“The explosives?”

“Nearly in place.”

“Good,” Gunther Spitz said, walking on then. Paul, his voice little over a whisper, said, “He’s being too friendly.” “Agreed.” “What if—”

“It isn’t all that it appears?” John Rourke interjected, preempting his friend. “That thought has crossed my mind. What if, for example, they merely gave us a convincing-sounding lie, hmm? But, there’s no way to know short of blasting our way in through the side of the mountain, is there?”

“So,” Paul observed, “either way—”

“The expression I think you’re searching for,” John Rourke noted, “is we’re either damned if we do or damned if we don’t, but in any event, damned.”

Paul Rubenstein beside him, John Rourke started back toward the base of the mountain, where the laying of the explosives, indeed, was nearly complete.

Thirty-Nine

The noise came from below her.

Emma Shaw crouched in the mouth of the cave and stared downward into the night, toward the river in the gorge below.

And she realized the noise was the whinnying of a horse.

There was a small fire glowing below, very small, as though built by someone exceedingly careful not to be observed.

Emma Shaw debated what she should do. To stay here in the cave was definitely the most prudent course of action, at least when viewed simplistically. Stay in the cave and whoever was down in the base of the gorge would move on.

Yet, two factors mitigated against her deciding to do just that. First, what if the fire were from the Land Pirates and they decided to stay put for a while? She couldn’t remain hidden in this cave for more than a few days without running out of food. And the cold would eventually get her, because the solar batteries in her

sleeping bag would be discharged and could not be recharged in the darkness of the cave. And building a fire would generate smoke which would draw attention to her position.

Also, the idea of a horse appealed to her considerably. With a horse, she could make it down river no faster but considerably more safely.

If she waited until morning, her options might well be fewer. She might, indeed, find that she was trapped, or that the possibility of stealing the horse had eluded her. Yet trying to navigate the side of the gorge at night might precipitate danger of another sort, either a fatal fall or a broken limb, which would—just as surely as it had so often for the old pioneering mountain men of the early part of the nineteenth century—insure her eventual death.

Emma Shaw lit a cigarette and tried to weigh her possibilities…

The V-stol was airborne and John Rourke had made a decision.

There was no sense in attempting to hide his conclusions from the Nazis who made up the rest of his and Paul’s party, because the Nazis themselves would play an intrinsic part in what would happen if John Rourke’s idea proved correct.

Rourke ordered that the V-stol land some twenty-five miles away from the mountain, then called a meeting, both the pilot and copilot present for it as well.

Outside, there was nothing but darkness, the moon—it should have been three-quarters fulltotally obscured by heavy cloud cover. Their aircraft, the window curtains drawn down and all running lights off, would only be visible for its heat signature.

Hauptsturmfuhrer Spitz lit one of his cigarettes from the case which had the built-in lighter, leaning back as he said, “So? Why are we not activating the explosives, Herr Doctor General?”

Rourke ignored Spitz’s use of the contrived-sounding title. “The explosives are in place and all we have to do is detonate. If our mysterious inhabitants of the mountain do have sensing equipment, they’ll know it, be prepared for us to blast our way inside, or at least attempt to do so. There are two possibilities, of course: either that the explosives will do the job and get us in or merely cause some damage and we’ll be unable to enter. I’ve been giving the present situation a great deal of thought,” Rourke said, not about to mention that he and Paul had also considered that the very intent of their mission might be a ruse. “In order for that synth-concrete-style cap to have been put in place over the exhaust system for the lethal halucinogenic gas we discovered, someone had to get on top of the mountain to construct it, right?”

Gunther Spitz leaned forward in his seat, flicking ashes from his cigarette into the palm of his hand rather than looking away to use the ashtray. “I am intrigued, Herr Doctor.”

Rourke smiled thinly. “I thought that you might be. The American short story writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, was of course best known for his tales of horror. But he also pioneered the detective story, predating Conan-Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes with his own character, Dupin.”

“‘The Purloined Letter,’” Paul almost whispered. “The object which is in contention is in plain sight.”