They surged into the warehouse from two sides and scattered widely, looking for the enemy.
There was no enemy, but there was a fire.
In the middle of the floor, a green steel drum blazed: brilliant blue flames, with a rippling heat haze towering above them like a genie in the still air.
And just below them, Shud knew, not to mention in the truck parked on the far side of the vast room, there were crates and barrels of high explosive, both stable and unstable; cubane, nitrocellulose, half a dozen varieties of plastique and toluenes.
‘Put it out,’ Hifela hissed.
That wasn’t the mistake. Two men moved forward quickly, the others coming up behind to cover them. One of the two dragged a fire blanket down from an emergency point without breaking stride.
But as they got closer to the burning drum, their footsteps faltered. One of them fell to his knees, the other staggered and clutched his throat.
Shud suddenly realised something that he should have registered before: the colour of the flames.
‘Don’t go any closer!’ he bellowed, in the tongue of the People. ‘Stay away from it. That’s paracyanogen. There’s cyanide gas in the—’
A shadow occulted the light, directly above his head. He dived and rolled even before he thought about it, and so was saved. Something slammed down out of empty air like the slamming of a door, and the two men to his left were no longer there.
Staying down, Shud took in the scene in a series of quick glances. The shattered packing crate, full of steel ball-bearings that were now rolling freely across the floor. The two men under it, the one clearly dead, the other horribly crushed but still moving, trying to free himself.
Above them, the jib of the overhead crane still rocking, its jaws wide and empty. All their enemy had had to do was position it above the burning drum and wait for them to come.
And that was when the shooting started.
36
These things occurred to Diema, in this order.
First, that the sound she’d heard at first couldn’t have been a gunshot, because only a lunatic would fire a gun in a warehouse full of high explosives.
Then, that the sounds she was now hearing definitely were gunshots.
And then, and therefore, that someone inside the building either didn’t care about consequences or was so sure of his aim that he was prepared to take the risk.
Leo Tillman was making a fight of it. Against ten Elohim. It was the most perfect, the most complete insanity.
But as madness went, there was something admirable about it.
37
From his position on the floor, Elias Shud had two major advantages.
The first was that the remains of the broken packing crate gave him effective cover. The second was that the toxic gas coming off the burning drum of paracyanogen was both hotter and lighter than the air in the warehouse, so he wasn’t in danger of inadvertently taking in a gulp of invisible and odourless death.
He was well placed, therefore, to admire the precision of the shots that killed several of his comrades.
They were coming from high up and over to his left, and they were spaced far enough apart to indicate a handgun set on full manual. Heavy, too: a .454 Casull load, or something very similar. The tool of a craftsman, in other words. Three men fell in the space of about ten seconds, each taken out by a single shot.
In combat, Shud kept his emotions firmly in check, but he was aware that one of the emotions he was shutting down was the thrill of meeting — after so long an interval — a worthy opponent.
He saw his comrade and leader, Hifela, kneeling behind the angle of a wall, triangulating — just as Shud himself had done — the point of origin of the shots. Hifela caught Shud’s gaze, gestured him to wait, took out his phone.
Shud turned his head, slowly and smoothly, to take in the area of the freight bay. There were very few places that would allow both for cover and for a clean line of fire. And obviously the shooter had started off by being there, in that corner, where the controls for the overhead crane were dangling on the end of their free line.
Hifela was talking in a murmur to the two men outside, the ones he’d left covering the rear doors. He put the phone away, signalled to Shud be ready.
Shud had a sica blade in one hand and a gun — a Jericho 941 loaded with low-penetration hollow-point ammo — in the other. Aside from being flat on his back, he was as ready as it was possible to be.
When the doors burst open, he was already rising into a crouch. Their man would be facing a vicious enfilade out of nowhere: he’d have to move or die, and any move away from this fresh attack would take him in Shud’s direction.
The whipstitch whine of semi-automatics was his signal. Shud was on his feet and running, Hifela running too on the other side of the shelving rack, staking out the dead ground between them without any need for discussion or signals.
Shud actually saw his man, just for a moment, wedged into the corner of the freight bay with nowhere to run. He brought up his arm and squeezed off a shot without even slowing, and felt a surge of satisfaction when the intruder jerked, half-turned around by the force of the bullet. He’d taken the shot either in the shoulder or high up on his chest.
Then the neon strips stuttered and stalled, and the room was plunged into complete darkness. Acting on honed instinct, Shud shifted left and slowed, breaking his stride. Bullets snarled against concrete beside him, where he’d been. So the enemy was hurt, but not down, and still working every advantage he had.
But the darkness helped Shud just as much as it helped his quarry. Knowing that Hifela was perfectly placed to fire if the man moved away from the wall and betrayed his position out in the open, he ran forward another ten feet, ducked and rolled, so that he was right up against the rear wheel of the truck. At this distance, even going by hearing alone, he could hardly miss. He waited for his enemy to move.
But nothing moved. And now Shud was skewered on the same dilemma, afraid of giving away his own position by an incautious sound or movement.
He considered. The man had to be very close. If he’d run towards Hifela or the others, there would have been shots or scuffles by now. So he’d remained in the freight bay, holding perfectly still just as Shud was, waiting for his moment.
The man had very few options, at this point. He could go around the front of the truck, between its bumper and the drop-down doors; around the rear, into the open — and into Hifela’s line of sight; under the truck, over it, or into it.
It struck Shud that by putting out the lights, the man had given away his decision. In the dark he was moving out, now, across the floor of the room. He was in the open, advancing as silently as he could between his attackers, taking the only chance he had to make it out of the trap he’d dug for himself and reach one of the doors.
Shud rose to his feet. Ten steps away, at the mouth of the freight bay, was the main bank of light switches. He took those steps slowly, soundlessly, shifting his weight with infinite care so that not even the rustling of the fabric of his own clothes would give him away.
Beside the cab of the truck, he paused again. There was no movement, yet, from anywhere else in the room. He reached out, still slowly, still silently, and found the lower edge of the panel of light switches, smooth steel bolted to split and weathered plywood board. His fingers traced the switches. He knew them by their relative positions. External lights. Bay lights. Main strips.