The man with the gun looked like a four-eyed monster. Joey knew that was ridiculous, and he told himself to listen to the words he was hearing, not the ones that were screaming in his head. He knew they weren’t eyes, but that’s what they looked like. He’d seen night vision eye things on the History Channel before, but they were always just two. He figured that the four ones were better.
“Listen up, we’re in a hurry,” the man said. “My name is Scorpion. My big friend is Big Guy. I think you know the lady over there.”
Babushka stood in the doorway. She was dressed like the men, but without the four eyes. She wore a black outfit and she carried a rifle. “Hello, Joey,” she said. She held out her arms for a hug, but before he could move, the man who called himself Scorpion stopped him.
“The hallway, Yelena!” the man yelled. Then he turned to Joey. “Put this on,” he said. He’d pulled a helmet out of the backpack he’d put on the floor. “This is bulletproof,” he said, settling on his head and adjusted the chin strap. “Don’t even touch it if you don’t have to. These things’ll keep you alive if someone shoots at you.”
Joey cast a glance over to his father for confirmation, and saw in the weird green light that a huge man who looked just like Scorpion was giving a helmet to Dad.
“What if they shoot someplace other than my head?” Joey asked.
He thought he saw Scorpion smile. “Bad guys don’t shoot at legs,” he said. “And if they tried, they’d have to go through me.”
As Scorpion stood, he grasped Joey’s shoulders and moved him toward the door. The guy was a lot stronger than he looked. But rather than put him out in the hall, he pushed him to the corner near the open door. A few seconds later, his dad was next to him, and the men gathered under the window to talk about things.
“I told you we’d get out of here,” Dad said.
Len Shaw moved with agonizing slowness up the eastern stairs into the darkness, putting out of his mind the carnage that he’d literally crawled through. He was terrified of being caught and shot like a dog, but he was equally terrified of pressing his hand on an unseen trip wire and inadvertently blasting himself to vapor. These monsters who’d invaded Saint Stephen’s killed without hesitation and without granting dignity to other brave soldiers.
The Americans had the audacity to label him and the Movement as terrorists, yet they unleashed this brand of wholesale murder. It was unspeakable.
Soon, he was able to hear voices over the pounding of his heart, and as he approached the top step to the fourth floor, he could just barely see a silhouette in the dim light of the fires outside, combined with an otherworldly green glow emanating from the interior of the cell, which had clearly been opened. The silhouette was that of a soldier, but a small one. He imagined it to be a woman, commensurate with the Americans’ decision to finally allow women to do their duty for their nation’s defense. Where there was one, there had to be many more. The others must be stationed in shadowy corners that he could not see.
Len had a clear kill shot on the woman if he’d wanted to take it, but it made no sense to kill only one when they had killed so many. He would wait. Sooner or later, they would all have to enter into the hallway, toward one of the two stairs. Either direction they chose, he would have unobstructed access to them.
He could show patience when he needed to.
The view from the air showed destruction of a scale that David had never seen before. Through the left-hand door of the cargo area, where a harness kept him from falling out, and from which he was supposed to shoot people if it came to that, he could see that an enormous hole had been blown open on the north end of the complex, along the western wall. Scale was hard to judge from this far away, but he guessed that it was every bit of sixty or seventy feet square. What wasn’t blown open had collapsed in on itself, and that whole part of the complex was on fire.
Two trucks were burning as well — two of the very trucks that had passed him on the way in. One of them lay on its side, as if the blast of the explosion had toppled it. Somehow, the lights in the compound had remained on, and in their glow, David saw maybe two dozen people moving around on the ground, and half that number sprawled in crimson-stained snow. The ones who were still alive seemed to be organizing themselves, clustering in groups on the southern end of the compound, as if to greet the incoming emergency vehicles. They all appeared to be armed.
Striker had given him a headset to wear after he climbed aboard the helicopter, and through it, he heard the pilot’s voice say, “Scorpion, Striker’s on station at eight hundred feet. Rooster and Chickadee are both on board, and I’m awaiting instruction.”
Scorpion’s reply was immediate: “Good evening, Striker. Welcome to the party. Give me a sit rep from up there.”
“It isn’t pretty. You made a hell of a dent—” He paused. “Break. Mother Hen, are you still on the net?”
“Affirmative.”
“Contact the Ottawa authorities and tell them that the police and fire units responding to Saint Stephen’s are driving straight into a firefight. The bad guys are lined up, and it looks like the fire trucks will be hit first. Break. Okay, Scorpion, you’re pretty much screwed.”
The helicopter nosed down and banked hard to the left as they dropped a couple hundred feet and headed toward the north end of the shoreline. Down below, the ground was strewn with burning debris.
“Your primary exfil site is inaccessible from the western side of the compound,” Striker said over the radio. “No way to get to the boat, and way, way too many people with guns. Secondary exfil is now filled with skirmishers lining up to do battle with emergency responders. If I set down there, we’ll never have a chance. We need a third option.”
“Stand by,” Scorpion said.
As they turned to go south, David saw the flicker of muzzle flashes among one of the clusters of people with guns. “They’re shooting!” he shouted.
“So I see,” Striker said. “Let’s give them something to think about. Both of you move to the starboard—right-hand—door.”
As David moved across the cabin, dragging his safety line along the wire that ran the width of the ceiling, the chopper gained altitude again, and flew out over the river a ways before pivoting on its own axis and heading back toward the compound at a million miles an hour.
Striker’s voice sounded excited as he said, “Put your weapons on full-auto. When I say ‘shoot,’ point the muzzles down forty-five degrees below the horizon and just pull the trigger till I say to stop. In three, two, one, shoot!”
David had expected more warning. He’d barely switched the lever to full-auto when the order came. He didn’t aim the gun so much as he pointed it, pulled the trigger, and let fly. His bullets raked the line of shooters, all of whom appeared to be facing the other direction. His magazine went dry the instant before Striker said, “Cease fire.”
David looked over to Becky. In the dim, deflected light, she looked pale.
“Sounds like Striker pretty much hit the nail on the head,” Boxers said in a low tone. “We’re screwed. We need a way to get to the roof.”
Jonathan smiled. It’s funny how sometimes it’s the simplest things that bring clarity to your mind. “I’ve got six GPCs left,” he said. “What about you?”
Big Guy shrugged. “I used them all in the chapel. I’ve still got probably twenty feet of det cord, though. What are you thinking?”
“Well, this room’s pretty tight,” Jonathan thought aloud. He pretended not to hear the increased rate of fire from outside. He hated the thought of the local police getting caught up in all of this and dying for a cause they didn’t even understand. “And this stone, while it’s strong, it’s probably pretty brittle, too. If we can combine the charges, wrap them in the det cord, and then place them up against the wall—”