“Any sign of Amanda?”
Quillain shook his head. “No, sir, not out here. Any sign aboard the ship?”
“Some western woman’s clothing in the captain’s cabin,” MacIntyre replied. “Looked right for Amanda… Captain Garrett’s size. There was some indication that the cabin was being used as a prisoner holding site. That’s all.”
“Hell, then they must have got her into the laterals before we hit. She’s inside here.”
“If she’s here at all,” MacIntyre added. “God save us and her, we might have figured this wrong. Have there been any attempts at negotiation by the defenders? Any threats against a hostage?”
“Just bullets so far, but if that’s going to come, it’s going to come soon.” Quillain snapped a command into his lip mike, and the recorded and amplified surrender demand ceased to boom from the crumpled upper works of the Sutanto.
“We have to know if she’s in there or not before we can make our next move,” Quillain continued, “and if she is in there we need to figure where….”
The Marine hesitated, tilting his helmet slightly to listen, then a rare genuine grin flowed across his blunt-featured face.
“What is it?” MacIntyre demanded.
“A firefight. Listen.”
Now that the loudspeakers were silent, the sound of rifle shots and machine-gun fire could be heard echoing from somewhere back in the tunnel labyrinth.
Quillain’s grin widened. “Well, bless her heart. We might have known that the skipper wouldn’t be one to just sit around, tending to her knittin’.”
Amanda hadn’t wanted to fool with the sprawled bodies of the guards outside of the technicians’ quarters, so she had done the next best thing. She smashed the work light outside of the door with the butt of the Sterling, plunging the end of the tunnel corridor into darkness. She’d done the same with the closer of the two lights inside the room, leaving the remaining one to illuminate her prisoners. From her position in the door way, she’d be in the shadows while anyone coming at her would be backlit. After adding the last guard’s M-16 and ammunition to her arsenal, she crouched down to await events.
Given the multiple explosions and the sound of heavy gunfire, a hellacious fight was going on out in the cavern. Amanda did not doubt her people would win eventually, but she would have to hold out here until they could reach her.
She glanced at her prisoners, who were huddled against the back wall. None of them looked like much of a physical threat, except maybe for the Russian. Still, she wished she could have tied them up somehow. She hadn’t wanted to get that close to them or be that diverted from the door way. Without someone on her side, it couldn’t be helped.
“Ah, Captain… Captain.” It was Sonoo.
“What?”
“You must realize that we, none of us here, have had a part in any of the violence that has been done in this affair.”
“Really?”
Sonoo shook bis head. “Not at all, nor of any of the decision-making. We are only employees here under the instructions of our firms.”
Amanda shifted her vision back down the outside passage. “I see. You were only following orders. Well, Professor, I’m afraid that didn’t wash for Nuremberg, and it won’t wash here. At least the SS were following an ideology and not just a profit margin.”
“But Captain… you are a person of great authority in this situation. I am sure that if you could be… open enough to assist us in avoiding unpleasantness in this matter, we, our corporations, could be most generous… extensively generous.”
The breath hissed from between Amanda’s teeth, and she swung the stumpy barrel of her submachine gun back into the room to pan across the row of corporates. “I am sick,” she snarled, “of people thinking I will sell out for money or sex or anything else! You may take your employer’s generosity and shove it up your fat ass, Professor! You and your playmates are going to stand trial for your part in these crimes, and you are going to help convict your lords and masters of the same! Now, sit back, shut up, and pray my people reach us in time, because if they don’t, I intend to empty my last magazine into you leeches out of sheer self-indulgence!”
The paralytic silence she desired answered her.
She caught movement in the outside corridor and sank down into a prone firing position, trying not to think about the cooling slickness in which she was lying, using one of the guard’s bodies as a barricade and aiming down the passage.
Three Bugis were loping in her direction, their weapons at port arms, obviously in a hurry and obviously with this room as their destination.
Amanda half exhaled and took up the trigger slack.
The Bugis noted the pool of darkness they were running into and hesitated some fifty feet down the passage.
“Aim! Short bursts!” Stone Quillain yelled out of her memory. “Save your barrel! Save your ammo! Don’t hose it!”
She dropped two of the three men, the third springing aside into a lateral passage so her bullets only chipped concrete. He bounced back an instant later, snapping off a shot from his AK47. Amanda felt the body in front of her jerk, and she blazed an answer, driving the rifleman back around his corner.
Reaching inside the door, Amanda caught the carrying straps of the second Sterling and the ammunition pouches, dragging them up beside her. Guns hot, fangs out, and fight’s on.
“Do you really think it’s her?” MacIntyre demanded.
“I can’t think of who else would be shootin’ at these guys.” Quillain slammed the touch pad on his harness. “Hey, Donaldson! We’re getting fire inside the tunnel complex. You hear it?”
“Roger that, Skipper,” the reply from the far side squad leader came back in his earphone. “I can hear it.”
“Does it sound like it’s coming from your side — you know, from up your primary tunnel?”
“Kinda hard to tell with the echoes, but I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so, either. Stand by. All Sea Dragon elements, this is Sea Dragon Six. Rally! I say again, rally! Position to the left and right of the primary tunnel entries! Move it!”
Stone tore a smoke grenade from his harness. If the Lady was in a fight at the rear of the tunnel complex, he intended to pull attention to the front. Yanking the pin, he flipped the smoke bomb into the entry. As the white chemical smoke began to billow, the Bugis machine gunners cut loose, their tracer streams snaking wildly out of the tunnel mouth and spraying across the ship pen.
“Admiral, if the Lady’s shooting it out in there, we don’t know what shape she’s in or how long she can hold. We gotta do this fast and dirty.”
“I concur fully, Stone. The faster the better!”
“Right! Donaldson, put some smoke into your tunnel entry. Get me some satchel charges up here! We’re going in!”
Amanda’s lips ached from the tension of the fighting snarl fixed on them. The Bugis recognized that she, as a hostage, might be their only means of escape. Obversely, if they couldn’t have her as a hostage, then they wished her dead out of vengeance.
Of the six magazines she’d had for the machine pistols, she’d already burned through five, holding them back. After that, there were only the sixty rounds for the more clumsy assault rifle. The body she had used for a shield had been chopped to hamburger by incoming fire and burned by her own muzzle blast. The scent of charred flesh made her want to vomit.
The shooting had fallen off out toward the ship pen, and she heard, or thought she heard, a noise in the room beyond the ringing in her ears. Convulsively she rolled on her side, whipping the smoking barrel of the Sterling around.