Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (46 page)

Just as we cleared the staircase, the door to the tunnels opened and a man with a bald head and thick glasses stepped through. I recognized him immediately as the engineer in charge of the tunnels. Gladius raised his M-4, but I held up a hand and motioned him back.

Happy birthday to me
.

The engineer pulled a Faraday flashlight out of his pocket and began shaking it up. I crept through the darkness until I was standing within arm’s reach of him. Slowly, I moved the barrel of my carbine until the suppressor touched his neck.

“Don’t move.”

He gasped, and pulled away. I stuck the barrel under his chin and pushed up, forcing his head back. “I said don’t move. Do that again and you’re dead.”

He put his hands up and went still, eyes darting around in the darkness. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel powerful, me being able to see, and him being blind in the lightless basement. With my free hand, I motioned Trident over.

“Gag and cuff this fucker, and get him back to Alpha Leader.”

I’d half expected the Ranger to protest, but being the professional that he was, he complied without a word. In short order, the engineer was bound, gagged, and being dragged back up the stairway. Gladius and I moved through the door.

“What about traps?” the tall man asked.

“No traps. These idiots spend most of their time piss drunk, or stoned out of their minds. If the Legion booby-trapped their tunnels, they’d lose half their guys in a week.”

Gladius shook his head. “Fucking amateurs.”

“Look at it this way; it makes our job that much easier.”

The two of us crept slowly down the corridor, moving silently. We crossed the hundred or so yards of tunnel that connected the office building basement with the network under the warehouse. As we rounded a corner, I saw two guards at the main intersection standing under the light of a lantern. They both leaned against the wall, rifles slung over their shoulders, not expecting trouble.

Motioning for Gladius to take position on the left side of the wall, I shined an infrared illuminator on one of the guards and then pointed at my chest. Shifting the illuminator to the other guard, I pointed at Gladius. He gave a single nod, and leveled his rifle. The guards continued chatting, oblivious to the fact that their lives were about to end.

I whispered,
“On my mark. Two, one, mark.”

I triggered two rounds, and Gladius triggered four. As before, his shots hit center of mass, and mine took my target in the head. Even with suppressors equipped, the clanging of our rifles was uncomfortably loud. We waited a few seconds to see if we’d drawn any attention, ears straining for the telltale beat of footsteps. When we heard nothing, and no one else appeared, we moved out of cover, doused the lantern, and dragged the two bodies off into the darkness. I paused over one of the corpses long enough to remove his hat and his jacket. Lifting my goggles out of the way, I shined a light on him and studied his face. I recognized him from my time in the tunnels; his name was Williams.

“What are you doing?” Gladius asked.

“You’ll see.”

We went back to the intersection and waited, me covering the hatch to the warehouse, and Gladius covering my back. Gabe didn’t keep us waiting for very long.

“Charlie Two, Charlie One. Closing on your position. Charlie Three is with me.”

“Copy, Wolf. Did you see Trident on the way in?”

“Affirmative. Alpha Leader sent two men to secure the prisoner. Trident is inbound.”

“Great. We’re gonna need the help.”

Two minutes, and approximately a thousand years later, Gabe motioned to me from the tunnel to the office building. I waved him forward. He gestured a hand behind him, and then the other six men who comprised Charlie Squad emerged from around the bend, all armed to the teeth and equipped with NVGs.

“What’s the situation?” he asked upon reaching me.

“We took out the guards stationed here, and we’ve been waiting on you ever since.”

“Good work.” He pointed at the hatch. “What’s waiting on the other side of that thing?”

“About sixty Legion troops, Lucian, and the female slaves.”

He looked at me, his heat signature clear and distinct. By his hesitation, I could tell what he was thinking. “Maybe you should-”

“No.” I cut my hand through the air. “We stick to the plan.”

The ghostly illumination of his mouth turned down, his lips a thin white line. Behind him, standing out brightly in the darkness, the other soldiers shuffled, looking like chalky paper cutouts come to life. It reminded me of that old movie franchise “Predator.” The one with the murderous, man-hunting aliens that saw everything in infrared. Only instead of seeing the world in oranges, reds, and yellows, I saw it in grays and whites. And the resolution was a hell of a lot better.

“Fine. I’ll take the Hollow Rock tunnel,” Gabe said. “Hawk, you take the Connector Loop, just like we planned. Let’s get this place wired up.”

The big Apache dropped his assault pack and started taking out little black cubes and coils of wire. He and Gabe spent a few minutes placing charges around the small cavern, and connecting them to detonators. The rest of us stood around with our guns trained on the hatch above us, praying nobody tried to come through it.

Finally, Gabe motioned to his men. “All right, the charges are good to go. Eric, you take the switch. You can trigger it from anywhere within a hundred yards, and it should reach the receivers just fine.”

He handed me the little triggering device. It was a small cylinder with a switch on one side, and a little button under a plastic flip-top.

“Depress the switch, flip the top, and push the button. You want to be far away when you do it.”

I tucked the switch into my chest pocket. “Will do. You and Hawk keep an eye out for the guards. When I blow the entrance hatch, they’re gonna come running.”

Gabe nodded. “We’ll be ready. Good luck.”

He slapped a palm on top of my shoulder, then turned to his Rangers. “Let’s go.”

The three of them set off down the Hollow Rock access at an easy trot. Great Hawk paused for a moment before leaving, staring at me.

“For someone who is not a soldier, you fight well,” he said.

“And you, Lincoln Great Hawk, are the scariest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” I raised a finger and pointed at him. “Before you go brushing off that comment, consider the company I keep.” 

The big Apache chuckled. “
Ka dish day
, Irishman.”

“Uh … yeah. Back at you. I think.”

He laughed, and turned toward the connector loop, breaking into a loping trot. His Rangers took off after him.

I turned to Gladius and Trident. Both men looked tense, but focused. This obviously wasn’t their first rodeo. “Okay, guys. Here’s what we’re going to do …”

They gathered close, and I explained the plan. Even with his eyes covered by NVGs, I could tell that Trident was looking at me as if I had lost my mind. “Irish, that ain’t gonna work. Nobody’s that stupid. A unit this small, that guard’s gonna know you’re not one of ’em. Trust me.”

I grinned. “That’s where you’re wrong. These guys rotate out all the time, back and forth between encampments. There are new faces coming through every couple of weeks. In the dark, if I use the right name, they won’t know the difference. At least not until it’s too late.”

Gladius tilted his head at me. “How do you know all this?”

“Sorry, man. That information is need to know only.”

Trident looked at Gladius. “Told ya. Definitely a spook.”

“Anyway,” I said. “Which one of you is better at silent kills? No egos, gentlemen. Be honest.”

The two Rangers looked at each other.

Gladius said, “Come on, man.”

Trident waved a hand. “Fine, whatever. Your kung-fu is stronger than mine.”

“Great,” I said. “Come up the ladder with me, but hang back until I distract the guard. When you go, don’t hesitate, and don’t let him scream. There are a lot of innocent people up there counting on us to get them out of this hellhole.”

He nodded, slid his rifle around to his back, and drew a K-bar combat knife from his MOLLE vest. “Roger that. Let’s do this.”

I was starting to like this guy.

Slipping out of my tactical sling, I handed my rifle to Trident, donned the hat and coat I’d stolen from the dead guard, and shouldered one of their Kalashnikovs. Last, I checked myself over as best I could to ensure that I looked the part. Satisfied, I slipped off my goggles and handed them to Trident as well. The world immediately went dark.

My hand was already on the ladder, so I didn’t have to grope around to find it. I climbed up, with Gladius nipping at my heels, until my knuckles scraped on the cement surrounding the
hatch. Sliding my hand along the rough metal surface, I found the latch, turned it, and pushed the hatch open.

Calmly and slowly, like a man doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, I climbed out. The lack of sudden movements kept the guard standing a few feet away at ease. He turned around casually, seeing only a dim outline in the low-banked light of a single wind-up lantern.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Something’s wrong with Williams, man. He’s sick as hell. Started getting stomach cramps all of a sudden. I need to find Doc Klauberg. You know where he is?”

The guard turned his head and pointed. “Over there by the-”

Gladius’s
knife severed the guard’s brain stem, ending his sentence mid-note. While I had been talking to him, I’d been gesticulating and moving to my left, drawing the guard’s eye away from the hatch. Gladius had crawled out behind me, quiet as a mouse, and snuck up behind the unsuspecting marauder. With the knife reversed in one hand, and a palm poised flat against the pommel, he thrust forward, stepping into the strike. The guard shuddered and then collapsed, like flipping a switch. I stepped forward and caught him under the shoulders, easing him to the ground.

“What do you want to do with the body?” Gladius whispered.

“Just leave him. We won’t be here long, and shift change isn’t for another hour. Nobody will find him until then. Besides, we can’t risk the noise. Hang out here for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

I went back to the hatch and motioned for Trident to climb up. Taking off the dead raider’s coat and hat, I donned my thermal imagers, and slipped my rifle’s tactical sling back around my shoulders. The two Rangers crowded close, and I spoke to them in a hushed voice.

“Okay, next step is to kill the last four guards. There are two at each station, but lucky for us, they can’t see each other.”

“No radios?” Gladius asked.

I shook my head. “Like you said, fucking amateurs. We’ll go to the north side first. That side is the most dangerous because it’s closest to the troops’ sleeping area. Once they’re down, we go to the south side and take out those guards. While you two are doing that, I’ll start unlocking the hostages. Let’s go.”

With deliberate care, we made our way to the north side of the warehouse. We skirted around the large piles of dirt near the hatch, gave the area where the reinforcing materials were stored a wide berth, and crept with aching tension past the poorly lit sleeping quarters. Finally, we reached the north wall and hugged it, staying low and fanning out on either side of the guards. Gladius circled around their front, darting by less than five yards away.

“Hey, did you see something?” One of the guards said.

“Where?”

I stopped in my tracks and, in a quick series of movements, I pulled my pistol and attached the suppressor. Gladius kept moving and took position off to the left of the guards. Trident closed in on the right. One of the marauders reached for his flashlight and, just as he was about to press the switch, the two Rangers gave me the signal that they were in position. Raising the pistol, I took careful aim, one hand poised next to the ejection port to catch the brass as it came out.

My finger squeezed the trigger and the gun fired, the suppressor keeping the noise down to a low thump. The hollow-point projectile hit the first guard in the nose, mushroomed out, and made an exit wound the size of a man’s fist on the back of his skull. Blood, bone, and brain matter smacked the wall behind him with a splat. Trident caught his body as it fell.

The other guard barely had time to register what happened before Gladius rushed forward, clamped a hand over his mouth, and rammed his K-bar into the man’s kidney. A fraction of a second later, the knife came up and sawed viciously at the guard’s throat. Gladius let him slide to the ground.

Nervously, I looked around. The shot from my pistol hadn’t been very loud, but in the dead silence of the warehouse, it might have carried far enough to wake someone. If that happened, we were going to have to shoot our way to the hostages. With sixty troops between us and freedom, I didn’t like our odds.

My heart hammered in my ears as I looked around. Behind me, the two rangers stood up with their rifles leveled. I held up a hand to keep them from doing anything rash.

Five seconds went by. Ten. Fifteen. Nobody moved. I lowered my hand and let out a breath.