Brooke swung her rifle toward him, causing his eyes to fly open even wider, but it was just so she could put four rounds into the doorframe right beside him, destroying the frame around the bolt. Then she charged across the hallway, bullets whipping by her, and bodyslammed the door. It opened and she fell into the room. Robbie was in right behind her and yanked her up.
She took half a second to look around the small hotel room. They had cover from the hallway now, but were trapped. She popped out to fire a few rounds down the hallway, to keep the Tabs honest, then pulled back.
“You got a grenade launcher?” she asked Robbie. “Shit,” she said, as she saw he didn’t. She moved close and looked out into the hallway at an angle. Doug and Jester were dead on the hallway floor, peppered with rifle rounds. Jester had a single shot grenade launcher attached to his carbine, but it was trapped under his body.
Braving another peek down the hallway Brooke saw two, maybe three soldiers had taken the far end, using the turn in the hallway for cover. She pulled her head back, and two bullets cracked by where her face had been just half a second earlier.
“Well, this sucks,” she said to Robbie. She stared at the two men on the floor just outside the door. Whether she wanted to attempt first aid or grab the grenade launcher, they might as well be on the moon.
“Can you radio for help?”
Before she could answer their radios exploded in noise, static and screams of pain, but she was able to understand the shout. “IMP on the north side, IMP on the north side of Nakatomi!”
She looked at Robbie’s young face. “Nope. This is on us, junior, they’ve got their own problems.”
He swallowed nervously. “Can’t you use your rocket? Or is it only for outdoors?”
She frowned at him, not comprehending his comment for a second, than whipped her head around to look over her shoulder. “I’m such a dumb bitch,” she swore. She had a Spike strapped to the outside of her pack, but had forgotten all about it. “Listen, make sure they’re not running up here, or getting close enough to chuck ‘nades.” She dumped her pack on the floor and unstrapped the rocket.
She got it ready to fire, then paused. “Question is, once I touch this off, do we head for the stairs and get the fuck out, or do we follow it down the hallway and fight it out? Rocket might kill them all, but it might not.” The Tabs were fifty, maybe sixty feet down the hallway, which with no cover might as well have been a mile. Charging down the hallway, if any of them were still in shape to shoot back, would be close to suicide.
Robbie swallowed again. “You think the rest of the squad is dead?” he asked, his face pale.
“Yeah, I do.”
He scrunched his face up into a red ball. “You shoot, and I’ll run down the hall first. I can run faster than you.” His eyes dipped down to her big chest and back up.
She wasn’t offended. The boy spoke the truth. “Fuck yeah you can. Let’s do this.”
Should she pop her head out once, just to take another look? Probably not, whenever she did that they always fired a few rounds, and probably sat there waiting for her to reappear. Best to catch them by surprise.
Brooke took a deep breath, then another, then told Robbie, “Watch your eyes and ears, this might be messy.” The rocket tube was too long to fit through the door frame sideways, she’d either have to lead with the nose or point it downward as she moved through and then jerk it back up. She depressed the safety, took half a step toward the doorway until her elbow was right there on the threshold, took another breath, then stepped out into the hallway with one foot, raised the rocket, pulled it tight against her shoulder, centered the sights in the middle of the end of the hallway, and pressed the trigger as the Tabs at the end of the hall began firing at her.
The rocket jumped from the launcher with a whooshing clap and the air around her filled with dust and smoke as the end of the hallway convulsed in cloud and fire. She fell on her ass in the middle of the hallway, out of the way, and Robbie came charging through the doorway.
Brooke struggled to her feet, grabbed her rifle, and took off after Robbie as fast as she could. She heard a few shots. By the time she reached the L-corner at the end of the hall Robbie was standing uncontested amidst four bodies and chunks of the wall destroyed by the rocket. She spotted another four Tabs in the side hallway, apparent victims of a firefight with Cambridge East.
“We need to find East, see if they’re still alive,” she panted.
“Yeah,” Robbie said, hoarse and wide-eyed. He then noticed her left arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’ve felt better,” she groaned. She leaned against the wall, then slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. She glanced at her arm. The rifle bullet had hit her just above the elbow and nearly ripped her lower arm off. It didn’t really hurt yet, which was the weird part. Blood was pouring out of the ghastly wound. “Do you have a tourniquet? I think I’ve got one in my pack somewhere. Probably need it to keep from dying.”
The wound didn’t hurt at all until he tightened down on the tourniquet, but then it hurt so much she screamed, and passed out.
“Fucking hold them!” Barker shouted down the third-floor hallway. Half his squad was near the middle of the huge building, fighting back Tabs who had tried to sneak up one of those stairways. He and Petal and Bruce were holding the westernmost stairwell. He wasn’t sure how many soldiers were below them, but every time he tried to peek over the railing they blew half a magazine at him on full auto, the bullets bouncing everywhere. Both his arms were bleeding from ricochets, and Petal had a nasty cut on her temple. He’d tossed two grenades down the stairs, without effect. Or maybe they’d done a lot of good, but there were too many Tabs below them holding the second floor. So far Kermit had lost one soldier in the melee, and Barker didn’t want to lose any more.
“How many Goddamn stairwells does this building have?” he swore. It was mostly a rhetorical question; he vaguely remembered from the briefing there were ten. Or maybe it was twelve.
“Too fucking many,” Bruce said, as they heard more shots from the dogsoldiers trying to hold the middle of the building.
“Chan, Chan, where the fuck are you?” Barker spat into his radio. “We’re stuck on three. Repeat, we’re stuck on three.” He waited, but there was no response. They could hear faint shooting from the other end of the building, though, which meant Yosemite was still fighting.
“The longer this takes, the worse it is for us,” Petal growled. Her hair was matted with blood.
“You know they gotta be sending for fucking reinforcements,” Bruce added.
“I know, I know, shit.”
“Should we give up one stairwell and just push down the other in force?” Bruce wondered. “Grenades, whatever? Dropping bombs on ‘em from the rooftops is one thing, but I don’t want to be fighting Toads and IMPs on the street.”
Barker didn’t disagree. Suddenly he spun to the two of them. “Hold these stairs. I just got a really stupid idea.” Then he ran off down the hall toward the center of the building. Petal and Bruce exchanged a look.
Bill and Seattle had personally scouted the building out three weeks previous, during ‘Uncle Charlie’s’ final frantic preparations for the mission. After having spent years working sniper and counter-sniper insurgent operations, neither man could believe the building had actually been left standing. It was too choice of a location for surveillance or sniping, but perhaps because it was in the middle of the supposedly secure ‘Blue Zone’ no one had apparently worried about its potential use by dogsoldiers.