Clay nodded and led Palin toward the bag.
Munn gave Clay a farewell gesture and disappeared. He suddenly popped his head back in. “By the way, we’re now even.” And he was gone.
Clay quickly unzipped the back and pulled out a dark jumpsuit for Palin. “Get this on, quickly!”
While Palin dressed, Clay withdrew an AR-15 and ammunition belt loaded with several high capacity magazines. He also clipped a holster onto his side and dropped a .40 caliber Springfield into it. No sooner had Palin zipped up the jumpsuit then Clay grabbed him and shoved him through the door.
They ran back down the hall and up three flights of stairs. When they reached the first large set of doors, Clay tried the guard’s access card. The slot buzzed and flashed a red light. He tried it again. The loud buzz sounded again. Clay turned around and looked up at the ceiling mounted camera.
Will Borger watched Clay and Palin on his monitor. He quickly typed some keys on his keyboard, and the door behind Clay unlocked with a green light. Clay put his hand on the handle and motioned Palin to back up.
In one motion, he jerked the door open and trained his rifle through the other side, finger near the trigger. The bright entryway was empty. They proceeded quietly as Clay kept his muzzle trained on the giant steel door at the end of the hall. As they neared the end of the hall, Clay looked over his shoulder checking for Palin.
At the steel door, Clay tried his card again. No dice. He waited for Borger. After ten seconds of silence, he began to grow concerned, but the electronic lock finally clicked. Clay slowly pushed the door open and looked outside. It looked empty. Clay closed his eyes and listened. Nothing. He grabbed Palin and broke into a run, headed for two vehicles on the far side of the open, graveled area. Palin ran quickly behind him as Clay swept his gun back and forth.
They made it halfway to the first vehicle, a small white Humvee, when the alarm went off. A screeching siren from the building behind them along with a bright red rotating light alerted nearly the entire base.
“Crap!” He looked at Palin. “Any chance you can teleport us out of here?”
“I need the brick.”
“What brick?” Clay asked.
Palin made a small rectangle with his hands. “The small silver device you took on the ship.”
Clay suddenly remembered the object. He looked around absently trying to remember where he left it. “Dammit!” he said when he thought of where it was. “I don’t have it.”
They watched as a searchlight from a watch tower in the distance pointed toward them. They could hear yelling coming from multiple locations and two pair of headlights cresting a small hill.
Clay looked back to the building. “Plan B.”
They ran back to the door, still ajar, and ran back down the entryway. They reached the stairs and heard faint voices below. Clay knew there would be men responding from the lower levels. They were lucky if they had two minutes.
They ran up two flights of stairs and stopped at another door. Clay looked away and fired three rounds through the lock. With a hard thrust, he kicked the door open and he and Palin burst out onto the roof.
It was a large roof. He could clearly see more headlights in the distance and over a dozen men running towards them on foot. Bullets suddenly flew overhead and hit the wall of the stairwell behind them.
“Get down!” he yelled and pushed Palin down onto the cold roof. Clay stayed low and ran back to the stairs. He listened to the voices getting louder. They were coming fast. More bullets hit the outside wall, one making it through and scattering pieces of plaster and sheetrock all over the top stair. Clay looked around the dark roof where Palin was laying quietly.
The pounding of footsteps grew louder up the stairs. Clay knelt down and closed the door with only the barrel of his gun visible and pointing downward. More bullets impacted the wall. He waited patiently until he saw lights approaching in the stairwell. He pointed his gun down to the corner where the stairwell made its last turn before ascending to the roof. The reflection of the lights grew brighter from around the corner. Finally when the pounding grew loud enough and the lights reached full brightness, he knew they were close. He fired three shots into the wall on that last corner. The footsteps stopped instantly. The bright lights that were reflecting off the walls suddenly went out.
Clay knew they would take the last flight of stairs slowly now. Being shot at had that effect. Clay fired one more bullet into the wall and then backed up and let the door shut. Staying low he ran back to Palin. “You okay?”
Palin nodded. “Yes. Although our situation does not look good.”
“I know, I know,” agreed Clay. This is exactly where he did not want to be. He slowly slid down onto his belly and got into position, propping up onto his elbows with his gun pointed at the stairs. He was thankful for the raised edge around the roof making it difficult to see them from the ground and for the men approaching the building. Clay leveled his eye with the rifle sights and locked in on the dark shape of the roof’s exit door.
Finally, the door slowly started to open. Inside it was pitch black which made it hard to discern who or what was being used to open the door. When it reached a fully open position, Clay could see something move toward the bottom hinge, something to prop it open. Just as a muzzle began to poke out, Clay heard something. It was the sound of an engine.
Suddenly the dark shape of a helicopter rose up and over the far corner of the building and swept over the roof. As it passed over the stairwell, a huge deluge of liquid was released from the skids smashing through the opening and knocking the men inside backwards, slipping and tumbling back down the stairs.
The small helicopter banked hard to the right as sparks flew off from bullets fired from the ground. Caesare quickly dipped back down and circled, slowing at the far edge for safety.
“Run!” Clay yelled, pulling Palin to his feet and pushing him forward. They ran low and as quickly as they could to the waiting chopper floating just a few feet above the roof line. As they reached the edge, Clay pushed Palin into the small oval opening of the passenger’s seat. There was no room for a third person. Bullets ricocheted again off the side of the helicopter as marines covered in a slippery liquid came tumbling out of the stairwell. Clay looked at Caesare sitting in the pilot’s seat. He gave a quick nod and then motioned over his shoulder. Caesare nodded back.
Caesare opened the engine wide and titled away from the building. In one motion, Clay turned and emptied the rest of his magazine just over the heads of the marines. He continued his turn stepping onto the edge of the roof, dropping his rifle, and dove head first off the side of the building.
Borger switched the view on his monitor to one of the security cameras at the air strip. He started shutting down the sirens as quickly as he could, but men were already running out of the buildings, headed for the other side of the base in armored vehicles. Several ran out onto the nearby tarmac where four UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters sat waiting. The pilots climbed in, quickly powering up the systems and starting the engines. The cockpits lit up as all the instruments came to life, and the rotors slowly began turning overhead. The pilots strapped themselves in and turned their computerized helmets on, waiting for the weapons system to sync with their digitized face plates.
“Uh oh.” Borger said. He cut all of the lighting to the runway and tarmac, but it was too late, the cockpit navigation systems on the helicopters were now fully functional. They could fly with no outside lights or visibility at all. The rotors increased in speed as they neared the point of lift.
Suddenly a bright blue wave of light passed over the buildings and across the tarmac, past the choppers and disappeared. The Black Hawk’s lights and cockpit instruments went out, and the engines died leaving only the sound of the rotors spinning and winding back down. The pilots inside looked at each other confused and tried to power back up. The aircrafts were all dead.