"Let's go!" he yelled, and his men were behind him, sprinting down the tunnel. As they rounded the corner, Seay again caught sight of what had been making the noise, but it was too far away to make out clearly — almost fifty meters down the darkened corridor.
Seay flinched as a row of red tracers exploded past his right ear, the flat crack of the bullets echoing off the wall. "Cease fire!" he screamed as he rolled away from the rounds. The sudden silence was as abrupt as the shots. Seay slowly got up and turned to face his men. The team's junior engineer, Bartlett, stood there, rifle held in his hand, looking sheepish.
"Jesus, Bartlett, you just about took my head off!" Seay admonished. "Did you even see what you were shooting at?"
"I saw something running," Bartlett said.
"It looked too small to be a Synbat," Bob Philips commented. "Maybe a dog."
"A dog?" Seay asked. "How did a dog get down here? Maybe it was one of the baby Synbats."
"Merrit said the young ones wouldn't be able to move for a while," Philips noted.
"Merrit's been wrong before," Seay said. He pointed down the corridor. "Let's move out, but from now on, no one, and I mean no one, shoots across the formation." He turned his bulky goggles to peer directly at Bartlett. "Clear?"
"Clear, Sarge."
Saturday was Lester Karney's favorite workday. It was the one day when the City Hall was empty. Lester was thirty-eight, going on sixty. His body was whipcord thin, and his face lined and pitted from the ravages of alcohol.
Lester pushed his cleaning cart down the second floor main hallway to the freight elevator. He rolled the cart in and punched the button labeled B3. With a steady rumble the elevator descended, past the ground floor and the first two basement levels to the subbasement. The doors whooshed open, revealing a dark corridor that led to the furnace room and storage areas. Lester flipped on the set of naked light bulbs that lined the corridor and left his cart just outside the elevator doors. He slipped a paper bag from underneath a cleaning rag and stuck it in the large back pocket of his coveralls.
Lester walked past the double doors that opened into the furnace room, then took a sharp left turn in the corridor. He shook his head as he passed carton upon carton of papers piled haphazardly against the hallway walls. If the fire inspector ever came down here, there'd be hell to pay. But Lester knew that no one official had come down here in a long time. He'd poked through some of the boxes once and found papers dating back thirty-five years.
He heard the clink of a bottle around the corner and smiled. He entered a room lined with boxes, with a dilapidated desk in the center. Seated behind the desk was a skinny black woman of indeterminate age, her face crinkled up in a smile. "Sit down, Lester, baby."
Lester sat on the corner of the desk, pulled out his own bottle, and clinked it to hers. "Bottoms up."
He took a long swig. "So how goes the third floor, Liz?"
"Same as two," she replied, cackling. It was their little ritual every Saturday night. Lester took another slug and then set the bottle carefully on the floor next to the desk.
"You're in a little bit of a rush tonight, ain't you, Lester?" Liz said as he came around the desk.
"Been a long week, sweetie," Lester replied as he wrapped his arms around her from behind.
"Mmm," Liz replied, arching her head back and meeting his kiss. Lester lifted her out of the seat and turned her around. With smooth movements, he pulled her coveralls down around her feet. Pushing her down on the desktop, he began unfastening his own clothing.
He grabbed her legs and stretched them up into the air as he plunged into her. The two lost sight of the dinginess of their surroundings as they fell into the animal passion of the moment.
The clink of the bottle falling over on the floor was lost on Lester, but not Liz. Her eyes cracked open and looked past the form of the man on top of her. They grew wide as they took in the other occupants of the room. She screamed and Lester thrust even harder until he suddenly arched back, his face frozen in a grimace, his body shuddering. Liz screamed again and Lester smiled down on her for a brief second before a hand wrapped around his throat and another hand, holding a knife, cut across it, severing his jugular vein. Blood exploded out, pulsing over Liz, who was pinned to the desktop by Lester's dying weight. She pushed at him futilely as a grinning face dominated by two massive fangs loomed over Lester's body.
Liz closed her eyes and began praying to the God her mother down in Alabama had beaten into her. The prayers were interrupted by pain, and for a few seconds her agonized screams echoed unheard through the basement of City Hall.
Hossey crumpled up the message that Powers had transcribed and stuffed it into his pocket. The sergeant major stood at Hossey's side as he looked out the window of the 5th Group headquarters, peering at the stars in the clear night sky.
"What do you think, sir?"
"I think this is a bunch of bullshit, Dan," Hossey answered. "I think Lewis is in over his head and Trollers is playing politics."
"They aren't going to find them, sir," Powers said. "Sixty miles of tunnels…" He shook his head. "Shit, in Vietnam we hit tunnels and it was always bad news. And we weren't going against anything like these things."
Hossey rubbed the back of his neck. "I know. I know. They need more men."
"I've got B Company standing by, sir," Powers offered.
Hossey sighed and pointed across the street. "See that car, Dan?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you think?"
He took in the two men sitting in the front seat. Powers sighed in turn. "DIA."
"Yeah. The minute we alert Bravo, they'll be down on us. I'd need the choppers to lift them up to Chicago, but when I talked to Captain Devens ten minutes ago out at the airfield, he said that two of Trollers's people were out there. They'd never get off the ground."
"Shit," Powers muttered.
Hossey left the window and went back to his desk. "But if we can't do the job, I know someone who can. And they're a bit closer than we are."
"Who, sir?"
Hossey absently reached up and rubbed a finger across the Ranger tab on his left shoulder. "I talked to Colonel Luckert of the 1st Ranger Battalion earlier today and his Alpha Company is at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin right now. He told me I could use them."
For the first time that evening a smile crossed Powers's face. A company of Rangers. The smile disappeared, though, as he thought it through. "They'll bust you, sir."
"Yes. They will." Hossey picked up the phone. "But if I don't do it, people may die. I don't have much of a choice. I'm putting them on alert to move in."
Riley peeled off his mud and sweat-soaked combat vest and threw it down on the floor of the van. Lewis was sitting in front of a communications console, watching him without expression.
"Get some sleep," Riley ordered Doc Seay, who simply nodded and slipped out the back of the van. They'd spent the last thirty minutes briefing Lewis on the results — or more appropriately, lack of results — of their search today. The back door of the van rattled closed behind Seay, and Riley was left alone with the colonel and his night shift of DIA agents.
"Do you think Seay's man fired at a young Synbat?" Lewis asked.
Riley tugged his 9mm pistol out of the vest holster and started breaking it down, cleaning the parts. "I don't know, sir. It doesn't matter, does it? Bartlett didn't hit anything."
Lewis looked at a map. "As best as I can tell, you and your men covered about eight miles of tunnels."
"That leaves only fifty-two miles to go," Riley said. "And that doesn't count the fact that they could be hiding outside of the tunnel system and simply using it for traveling."