“They’re not stupid. They’re going to hide out there and wait for their reinforcements,” Hannibal said, peering out the north entrance of the Fisher Building. Whatever Tabs were left after the IMP had been taken out and Quigley chewed them up had found good cover to hide behind. They weren’t moving on Nakatomi, but they weren’t leaving, either.
“Yeah,” Ed muttered.
The radio lit up with chatter between the IED team south of their position and Almighty, then Morris gave them an update on the enemy. “Almighty to all squads, be advised enemy ground units three hundred meters east our position, approaching on foot while armor is in overwatch. Repeat, enemy dismounts numbering approximately eighty, three hundred meters east our position and approaching our location and SkyBox under cover of armor. Large enemy armor column also now at West Grand and the Lodge Freeway near Quigley. Repeat, large enemy armor presence just west of Quigley. They do not seem to be approaching as yet, have assumed a defensive position.” There was a pause, then the Lieutenant Colonel said, “You’ve all done a hell of a job, but I’m calling it. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. Good luck, and God speed. Almighty is displacing. Over and out.”
“Time to go,” Hannibal said. He looked at Ed. “I can’t believe this worked as well as it did. Not that we did much of anything other than distract them.”
Ed shrugged. “Suckering them in was the important part.
Barker’s voice popped over the radio. “All squads, SkyBox is abandoning ship, heading to Nakatomi. Repeat, SkyBox en route to Nakatomi underground. Don’t shoot us.”
Hannibal smiled. “Excellent.” He grabbed his radio. “Nakatomi, time to go. Make your way back to the tunnel.” He checked his watch. “You have ten minutes, that is one-zero minutes, then we are blowing the end and you’ve got to find your own way home.” That had been the agreed-upon plan.
The radio clicked to life again. “Quigley to all squads, do not wait for us. Repeat, do not wait. We’re currently blocked from our exfil route. Good luck, it’s been fun.” Ed recognized the voice of Harris, who’d driven up from the aircraft hangar attack.
“What do they have, a hundred feet to cover to the sewer opening?” Hannibal asked. “If that?” Instead of crawling three hundred yards through the narrow pipe with everyone else, Weasel, Renny, and Carrells had exited the large trunk line, crawling up a short dirt ramp to find themselves north of the apartment building, just off the service drive of the Lodge. The opening was concealed by a bush, and had worked just fine for them in the dark when no satellites were overhead.
“Yeah, but it’s open, it’s daylight, it would be running toward the Tab column, and plus they’ve got soldiers inside their building between them and the ground floor. Even if they make it to the sewer, the Tabs will see their bolt hole and come into the sewers after them. Shit, they’ll be right on top of us right where we’re coming out of the narrow pipe, and there’s no cover down there. Quigley can’t get out, not that way, not when there’s anyone around to spot them, unless they want to kill us all.”
“Shit.”
“Nakatomi Tower to Ground, switch over to alternate.”
Ed changed the frequency on his radio. “Yeah George, go.”
“If we move over to the parking garage we’ll be a lot closer to that armor element by Quigley. I’ve still got a few grenades, and we’ve got two Spikes.”
Ed tried to pull the map of the area up in his head. “You’ll still be stretching it, that’s a Hail Mary for a Spike.”
“Well, from the parking garage to their apartment building is maybe a hundred yards, and I think their building will block us from view of the Tabs, as they’re on the far side.”
“You want to run it?” Ed asked. Hannibal, listening in, blinked his eyes at that.
Ed could almost hear George’s shrug. “Or you could run it while we cover. You’ve got Spikes left, right?”
“It’s a wide-open parking lot? Between the two buildings?”
“And a street,” George agreed.
“He can’t be serious,” Hannibal said in disbelief.
“You go,” Ed told Hannibal.
“What?”
“Tunnel. Head to the tunnel with your people. We’ll figure this out, but you need to get everybody else out of here.”
“Seriously?”
“They’re my guys, I’m not leaving them.”
“I get that, but… fuck. Shit. Dammit.” He sighed. “Go with God.” He slapped Ed on the shoulder. “Flintstone, on me!” he called out loudly, his voice echoing around the marble lobby, striding toward his men. He pointed at Brooke, who was on her back on the floor. His men had been working on her. “Can she travel?”
His medic turned to him, and Hannibal knew what he was going to say before the words came. “She’s dead.”
“Shit.” He pointed at Robbie, who was blinking and blank-faced and splashed with her blood. “This is not on you. You did your best. Nobody could have done better, and with all that blood there was no way to know she was gut-shot. But grieve later, we’ve got to go now. Flintstone! We’re heading down, NOW!”
“Theodore!” Ed waved. Jason, Early, and Morris’ loaner Sergeant Sarah Weaver were the only members of Theodore still in the lobby. “Over here.” He grabbed his radio. “Stand by,” he told George. He flipped back to the main frequency. “Almighty, do you copy? Almighty, do you copy, over?”
“Go for Almighty.” Morris sounded like he was moving fast.
“Do you still have eyes in the sky? Over.”
“Roger that.”
“This is Nakatomi Ground. I need to rendezvous with you and get that controller, I need those eyes.”
“Currently departing SkyBox, be there presently. Over.”
The three members of Theodore jogged across the huge echoing lobby, turning their heads to watch the rest of the dogsoldiers heading for the stairs down to the lower level. Ed eyed the trio. Relatively fresh, having only fired a few magazines at Tabs and their vehicles. And, and perhaps most importantly, between the three of them they had four Spikes.
“’Sup, Cap’n?” Early drawled. Jason looked back and forth between them.
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
At some point early in the anarchy a vehicle had crashed into the concrete wall enclosing the ground level of the Fisher Building parking garage. The vehicle was gone, but the rupture in the wall remained, and it was wide enough to admit a person. George slipped through it, having studied the open parking lot on the far side for a bit.
Per one of Almighty’s drones the freshly-arrived armor convoy was staged on the far side of the Lodge Freeway from one side of West Grand Boulevard to the other, but from his position on the ground the only Tab vehicle George could see was the IMP on West Grand in front of the apartment building. Weasel had indicated it was disabled by an RPG, and it certainly seemed inert, but Weasel had let them know there’d been Tabs on foot near the vehicle giving them harassing fire recently. George could only hope the soldiers had moved west to join up with the column when it had arrived.
“Fifty-foot intervals,” he said quietly, then moved away from the garage as fast as he could under his gear.
If the parking lot he was cutting across had been littered with vehicles that would have been something, a little cover, provided some security either real or perceived, but there were only a few abandoned and desiccated hulks in the lot and they were nowhere near the path he had to travel. The asphalt lot was wide open, and (as usual) he feared the worst… but he crossed it without incident, hopped the curbstones, jogged across the narrow street, and reached the cover of the far apartment building without receiving incoming fire. He stepped through an empty floor-to-ceiling window frame into what had been a bank lobby.