At the top of the rope Bashful took a handful of Mercer’s uniform to haul him over the cornice. They were in a wide unsheltered terrace covered in square flagstones. Twenty yards away the monastery loomed above them, supported by a colonnade stretching the length of the building. The structure itself rose in tiers that vanished into the clouds. A soft glow filtered from the single arched doorway. Several upper rooms were also illuminated. To the left and right were small round structures he guessed were chapels. Other than the prayer flags ripping and snapping from atop dozens of poles, nothing moved on the courtyard.
In the minutes it took for the rest of the team to make the climb and haul up the equipment, Mercer kept his back pressed to the low wall surrounding the terrace and watched for movement. Once assembled, the team moved to the lee of one of the small chapel buildings for Sykes’s final orders.
“All right, my little dwarfs, from here on we run out of plan. We’ll go through that door over there and search floor by floor in teams of two. Snow, you’re with me. Grump’s the lone gun on the ground floor. The longer we avoid detection the more we can cover, but by the looks of this place there are probably two hundred rooms in there and Snow thinks there’s a lot of underground stuff too. At some point we’re gonna be spotted. Be ready.”
“Hoo-yah,” the men whispered in unison.
Sweeping around the chapel, the men jogged to the rear of the monastery, rifles at their shoulders, eyes peering into the shadows around the ranks of columns. The double doors stood fifteen feet tall, made of some exotic wood bound with ornate iron straps. There were no locks. With six guns covering him, Grumpy pulled on one of the five-foot-long handles. No matter how well balanced, the door was massive and he had to change his grip to ease it open. The tongue of light that seeped under the door grew. Mercer saw he wasn’t the only soldier sweating despite the chill.
When the door was open wide enough, Sykes tapped Dopey on the head. The commando dropped to his belly and ducked his head for a second-long peek into the building. He looked again, more slowly this time, his head swiveling as he searched the interior.
“Clear,” he said as he crawled forward.
The men followed him in, with Grumpy taking the drag slot. The room was twenty feet square, lit by oil lamps, and had no discernible purpose. The walls were paneled in dark wood while the floor was dressed stone. Other than the lamps, the space was empty. A door on the far side was the only way out.
This time Sykes made the first visual reconnaissance. “This is it,” he whispered. “The next area is open, lots of doors and hallways and a big staircase.”
He shouldered his assault rifle and pulled a silenced pistol. “Mercer, keep on the M-4. You’re my cover. Let’s go.”
Pouring out of the antechamber, the men rushed into the monastery’s central mezzanine, the sound of their advance deadened by the rich carpets on the floor. Grumpy peeled off to the right to begin searching independently while the rest moved to the stairs, climbing hard because of their exposure. Sykes motioned Bashful and Happy to check the second floor as he raced past the landing and continued upward. They skipped the third floor and Dopey and Sleepy were ordered to investigate the fourth. Mercer and Sykes reached the top landing. Halls ran off in three directions. Sykes arbitrarily went left with Mercer at his heels. The hallway was lined with small empty rooms and twisted crazily. Narrow staircases ran down to the floor below, creating a dark three-dimensional maze.
“This is going to take forever,” Sykes said after five minutes of opening doors on empty rooms. He opened yet another. The room was bare but inexplicably had its own set of steps leading down to the fourth floor. “And with all these staircases, someone can easily outflank us once we make contact.”
“Let’s hope there aren’t that many of them.”
Sykes looked at him hard. “Do you believe that?”
“Not for a second.”
Backing out of the room, Mercer bumped into someone. He whirled, bringing the rifle around in a blur. The stock caught the figure on the side of the jaw and dropped him to the floor. Sykes pushed past, his pistol held an inch from the unconscious man’s head as he patted him down with his free hand. His search turned up nothing.
The man was in his sixties, painfully thin and deeply wrinkled. He wore the robes of a monk. His breathing was even, though blood dribbled from a gash on his cheek.
“Jesus!” Sykes hissed. “You didn’t say anything about noncombatants here.”
“I didn’t know.” Mercer’s heart still hammered from the shock of the unexpected confrontation.
Sykes keyed his throat mike. “Dwarfs, this is Doc. We just ran into an unarmed monk. This place may be crawling with civilians. Be on the lookout.” He gestured to Mercer. “Let’s go.”
He hadn’t taken more than three steps when another monk rounded a corner. Sykes raised his Beretta. The monk, who was younger than the first, froze, his dark eyes widening at the sight of two black-clad soldiers inside the monastery, one of them holding a pistol on him, the other an automatic rifle. He dropped to his knees and cried out in Tibetan.
Sykes put his finger over his lips to silence the frightened man, but the gesture did no good. His cries grew louder and sharper. Sykes glanced back to mutter a disgusted oath at Mercer. The monk dropped his hands toward his waist. Mercer saw the movement. He held his fire for an instant, hoping Sykes would turn to see what was happening. There was no time for a warning.
As soon as he saw the gun coming from under the monk’s robe, Mercer fired a single shot. The rifle’s crack echoed down the hall as the man was blown back, scarlet drops spraying from the bullet hole in his forehead.
Sykes turned to see the gunman fall flat. His pistol lay on the floor next to him. “Contact,” he said coolly into the radio on the off chance his men hadn’t heard the M-4’s sharp bark in the otherwise silent monastery. “Shot fired. If they didn’t know we’re here before, they sure know now.” He unscrewed the long silencer from his pistol and tossed it aside before holstering the weapon and reaching for his M-4. “Nice shot,” he said to Mercer. “Thanks. I screwed up.”
He looked down the long corridor, trying to hear if anyone was coming for them. “This is going to get real ugly, real fast. There are seven of us on unfamiliar ground facing an unknown number of enemies. Situations don’t get much worse.”
“Look on the bright side,” Mercer said softly.
“What bright side?”
“I was hoping you’d think of one.”
Sykes took point again as they continued their search for Tisa. Every minute or so one of the other teams would report their progress. So far Grumpy was the only other person to make contact. He’d left an elderly woman bound and gagged in a temple room.
They’d covered no more than a quarter of the top floor in fifteen minutes. Sykes was becoming agitated. Someone must have heard the shot and yet no one was coming to investigate. It meant either no one else was here or they were laying an ambush.
A long burst of automatic fire from downstairs tore the silence. It was countered by the familiar crackle from a pair of M-4s.
“Sit rep?” Sykes shouted into the radio.
There was no immediate reply, and with his concentration split between his men and his own surroundings, he didn’t hear the whispers from around a corner. Mercer did and dove flat, knocking Sykes to the floor as three men charged around the hallway firing Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. The jagged fire spitting from the barrels gave the dim corridor a hellish cast.
The barrage flew over their heads as Mercer and Sykes lay prone. Mercer fired off a quick burst that raked one attacker across the torso and punched through the shoulder of another. Sykes added his own shots, dropping the uninjured man with a head shot and finishing off the wounded one with a double tap to the chest. The hall vanished behind a swirling veil of smoke as an oil lamp’s contents dribbled like a flaming waterfall onto the carpet. Sykes stayed low as he moved ahead to check around the corner. “Clear.”