“No shit,” she says.
That’s when soldiers on thrusters land amidst them, haul them out of the room without a ceiling, over the maze that’s not a maze, back out into the warehouse. Back out to the elevator. The room’s on fire. Smoke’s pouring down the catwalks. Noise is everywhere. The soldiers cluster around them.
Morat turns to one. “Lieutenant—what’s the status outside?”
“They’re attacking in strength all along the perimeter, sir.”
“How close are they to this building?”
“Sir, we think they’re inside, sir.”
“You think so?”
“We’ve lost contact with everybody beneath level forty.”
Morat shoves Haskell forward, sending her stumbling toward the lieutenant.
“Take the razor,” he says. “Save the razor. Take her up the shaft right now. Do it yourself. What’s left of your platoon can get in there and be the shields. I don’t care who gets hit. I don’t care who dies. Just save the fucking razor. Get her out of here. Assume this hedgehog’s getting overrun. Assume we’re fucked. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” replies the lieutenant. “What about you?”
“Leave one squad with me. We’ll dismantle this equipment and follow you.”
“Sir: if they’re inside the building, you won’t make it.”
“Don’t tell me what I will or won’t make,” says Morat. “Just go.”
They’re going. And Haskell knows why he’s staying. To gather the equipment—or make sure it’s properly destroyed. So he won’t have to tell Matthew Sinclair that he let the Jaguars root through everything CICom knows about their net. The soldiers are blasting the elevator doors down, adding to the smoke inside the room. They don’t take Morat’s instructions literally, though. The lieutenant’s got the most guns. So he hands her to one of the sergeants. Soldiers scramble into the elevator, ignite their thrusters. Some go up the shaft, some go down. The elevator car’s well below them. They rain explosives down upon it, send it crashing down for good. The sergeant grabs Haskell with both arms—“Sorry about this, ma’am,” she says, and steps forward, leaps. Haskell feels the heat of the jets on her face. She’s being hauled upward. Floors whiz past. Cables streak by. All of it’s wreathed in flame and shadow. Haskell feels the distance between her and sky narrowing.
Something slams against her. She hears an explosion. She hears a scream. She feels something wet hit her face. She feels her escort’s grip loosening. She tumbles from that dead grasp. She starts to fall down the shaft.
Something grabs her. “Got ya”—and she’s pressed into his arms: “for fuck’s sake protect her head,” someone shouts, and someone else is screaming that the Jags are in the shaft, and she finds herself thinking it must have been a trap after all. But she’s just clinging on to this arm, on to both arms, and her face is pressed up against the side of the soldier’s visor, and through it she can see distorted eyes peering intently past her at what’s reflected in that same visor: the ceiling shooting down toward her like she’s in a needle and it’s the plunger—and then the soldiers open fire and blast it away and they all blast straight through onto the roof.
Which is a shambles. As is everything beyond it. Buildings are burning, collapsing. Beams from heaven stab here and there, shimmer in the fog. The thunder of detonations rolls across the city. Belem-Macapa’s entered a new stage of its agony. The soldiers on the roof are firing in all directions. Haskell’s escorts shove her through a jet-copter’s open hatch. They’re screaming at the pilot to gun it. He needs no such urging: the ’copter rises. Haskell’s being strapped in by its gunner. She’s about to pull on her breath-mask: but now the doors slide shut and the craft switches over to its own recycled air as its motors switch into overdrive. She’s watching the rooftop fall away. Everything turns to cloud.
Suddenly there’s another explosion, and way too close—the rumbling of the engines shreds away into a high-pitched whining. The ’copter staggers. For a moment, it continues on its course.
But only for a moment.
“What the fuck’s happening?” yells the gunner.
“We’re going to crash,” the pilot says matter-of-factly.
The gunner’s lost it. He’s screaming. But Haskell’s saying nothing. She’s just lying back as the craft plummets downward. The plummet’s not total. The pilot’s still got some kind of control. But only just. They churn through smog. Buildings whip by. She hears the gunner praying. She hears the pilot cursing. He’s working the controls with more than just his hands—twisting his whole body this way and that, as though he could pull the craft out of its descent through sheer muscle. But to no avail. They scream in above a rooftop, just miss a pylon. She catches a glimpse of water. She catches a glimpse of ships. She thinks she must be dreaming. She braces herself.
They hit.
Marlowe can’t do anything but keep moving. His camos are turned up to the full. He’s stealing through the city like a wraith. He’s staying indoors whenever he can—hurtling down corridors, rising up shafts. He leaves his thrusters offline whenever he’s outside. He doesn’t want to make himself any more of a target than he already is. All he wants to do is get out of here.
Which is going to be tough. He’s glad his suit still has atmosphere despite the battering it’s taken. Because oxygen’s become a major factor. As has heat. The temperature’s at least twenty degrees warmer than when he made his entrance. It’s not hard to understand why. The flames off to the south are as tall as the buildings around which they lick. Their light brings a new kind of shadow to this dark. He’s intent on getting as far away from it as possible.
Nor is he the only one with that idea. The mob’s afoot at every level of the town. They’re swarming over the skyways, doing their utmost to escape. Marlowe’s trying to take the road less traveled. He’s trying to avoid the stampede.
Not to mention the fighting. Which is everywhere. Machines swarm like insects. The local militias are giving everything they’ve got. Before tonight, most of them would never have dared to take on the United States directly. Now they’ve got the inspiration. Or maybe just the insanity. And wherever the Americans aren’t in range, old scores are being settled. Local rivalries are being carried through to culmination. Artillery’s going to work from the rooftops, even as those rooftops get sheared off. Vehicles are exchanging fire with one another as they move along those bridges. Hi-ex is going off like it’s going out of style. The further out of control this gets the more Marlowe recalls being told how smooth it was all going to be. He can see the faces of his handlers all too clearly—those honeyed words, those knowing smiles. It’s all he can do to stop himself from smiling now.
But he restrains himself.
The Operative is having difficulty keeping himself in check. He’s cut off, with no way to tell what’s going on outside. There may still be trouble on the Elevator. There’s definitely still trouble going on below. He envisions all strategic reserves being rushed into the Latin cities: troops dropping down from orbit, buildings getting smashed, whole blocks laid to waste.
But all that’s only retaliation. It can’t turn back the clock. Nor can it tell him what’s going on. Is there a connection between the mutiny on the Elevator and the missiles from the city? Could some of those missiles have been aimed at the Elevator? The Operative doesn’t know. Nor does he know the extent to which he’s already caught up in it. He’d love to just ride this one out. He’d be happy to just slip right on by. He doubts that’s going to happen.
So now he’s thinking furiously. The Elevator. The Earth. This ship: in theory, crew of two. But in practice, God only knows how many they’ve got in that cockpit. And if they end up turning out to be hostile, that’s not the only place they might be. Adjacent to his feet are hatches leading to the cargo-modules. There’s a lot of volume that way. The Operative pictures all those chambers. He pictures all that cargo. He thinks of how easy it would be to hide in there….