“What the fuck are you doing here!” Marty bolted upright. “Get the fuck outta my house!”
Agent Paulis laughed. “It’s not your house anymore, asshole. It’s been mine for days. And I’d like to thank you for stocking my basement with food.”
Marty knew he was a dead man, that he’d never be able to protect Susan now. “You’ve been living down there?” he said, aghast.
“Get out of my bed,” Paulis said, gesturing with the weapon. “The little lady and I don’t want your blood all over the mattress.”
Without warning, three loud cracks rang out. Hit in the chest, Paulis stumbled backward into the wall and slid to the floor. Quickly, Susan pulled the pistol from beneath the sheet and tried to shoot him again, but the Walther jammed just like it had for Marty earlier that day. Paulis made an odd strangled sound and struggled to lift his weapon, but Marty sprang from the bed and threw the lamp at him, then rushed at Paulis and kicked him in the chin with his bare foot.
Paulis slumped over and continued to make the grotesque gurgling sound for almost a minute before falling silent. He still wasn’t quite dead, but Marty didn’t waste any more time. He wrapped the agent in a sheet and dragged him from the room, down the tiled hallway and out the back door, where he stashed the dying man under his deck.
When he returned to the room, Susan was still sitting in bed, staring in disbelief at the jammed Walther in her hand with the empty shell casing stove-piped in the receiver.
She looked up at him disgustedly. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what, honey?”
“Those guys at the gun store sold me a piece of shit!”
Twenty-Three
Private Shannon Emory ran around to the other side of her overturned Humvee and dragged Sergeant Flynn out through the window. The four female troopers in back were either dead or so close to death that it didn’t matter, doomed the minute the rear window of the vehicle had been struck by a 66mm LAW rocket fired by their male counterparts from within the company.
The six women crammed into the lead Humvee had stopped to come back in support, the roof gunner firing the .50 cal machine gun. Orange tracers streaked through darkness as the heavy, half-inch rounds easily pierced the hulls of the lighter armored Humvees driven by the men. The female gunner killed the driver of the closest vehicle, setting it on fire and forcing the other two pursuing Humvees to retreat back down the highway. “How bad are you, Sarge?” Emory said, collecting their carbines from inside the Hummer.
The machine gunner opened up again with a long burst, spotting three survivors from the burning Humvee as they advanced up the median. Their bodies virtually exploded from the hydrostatic shock of the .50 cal rounds.
“Shannon, let’s go!” the gunner screamed. “Before they bring up the javelin!”
“Can you walk?” Emory said to the sergeant.
He held onto her shoulder, putting one foot forward. “I’m okay.”
They packed themselves into the armored Humvee with the remaining six female troops, and the driver sped off down the highway.
“Take the first exit,” Sergeant Flynn said. “We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to lose them.” He smacked the gunner on her leg, and she ducked down inside to see what he wanted.
“Be careful with that barrel. It only takes a four-second burst to warp it!”
“Hooah!” the gunner said, and stood back up to cover the rear.
The driver raced along in the night at fifty mph in the fast lane, where there seemed to be fewer cars out of gas. Two travelers tried to flag her down by stepping right out in front of her, and got themselves run over for their efforts.
“What the hell was that, Sheree?” someone asked from the back.
“Muthafuckers in the road, girl.” Sheree was weaving in and out of the stopped cars, trying to keep her speed up.
“I guess Lieutenant Boyle didn’t like us taking the only two armored Humvees,” Flynn said.
“Fuck ’em!” Sheree said. “We know what they was plannin’.” She slowed down as she pulled off the highway and drove up the exit ramp. “Which way we goin’, Sarge?”
“South. That’s all I know to do.”
“Contact!” the gunner screamed from above, and the .50 cal began to hammer away once again.
The others craned their necks to see out the thick back window, but all they could see were the tracers streaking off to the rear and to the left. Suddenly, a brilliant fireball behind them illuminated the countryside, revealing half a dozen civilian silhouettes near the road with hunting rifles and shotguns.
“Roadblock!” Sheree shouted, hitting the brakes and cutting the wheel to skirt a number of cars parked across the road.
The gunner collapsed and fell down inside on top of them, a bullet through her head.
“Goddamnit!” Emory swore, feeling the dead gunner’s brain oozing into her hands. “She’s gone, guys.”
Sergeant Flynn took a helmet from one of the women and stood up to man the gun. “This mission sure went to shit in a hurry.”
Emory opened the back door and allowed the woman’s body to fall out as they sped along. “Sorry, Carmen, we’ll see you soon.”
From the turret above, Flynn scanned the countryside through a night vision device attached to the front of his helmet. There wasn’t much to see except empty terrain. Thirty miles later they came across an abandoned silver mine, and Sheree pulled off the road and drove up the hill, shining the lights on the gate. There were close to twenty motorcycles parked outside the entrance to the mine.
“Shit, I know who that is!” Emory said. “Get us out of here, Sheree!”
There was a rifleshot, and Sergeant Flynn fell down into the Humvee, hit in the neck. Blood was spurting from his carotid artery, and Emory clamped her hand over the wound as Sheree jammed the vehicle into reverse. The other women in the Humvee shouted an instant before they were rammed in the front right by a black Dodge van. The steering wheel spun wildly in Sheree’s hands as the vehicle whipped around, catching her thumb with the cross bar and snapping her wrist.
“Dismount!” shouted the soldier in the passenger seat, deciding their only chance now was to fight it out.
“Don’t!” Emory warned, but it was too late, the others were already piling out on either side of the vehicle. She covered Flynn’s body with her own as the bullets began to fly, the staccato sound of their M-4s met with a fusillade of shotgun blasts at close range. Her comrades screamed as they fell, and moments later there was no sound except for the idling engine. As Sergeant Flynn died under her, Emory grabbed for her weapon, but someone caught her ankle and jerked her out the back door. She landed hard on her chin and saw stars as she rolled to her back, trying to kick away the hairy blond man dragging her across the gravel toward the entrance to the mine.
A biker chick swore at her viciously and kicked her in the side of the head, and the lights went out.
Twenty-Four
“Sealing blast door number one,” Forrest announced over the radio, pushing the door shut, pulling the lever hard to seal it tight, and turning the bright red wheel to extend the sixteen three-inch steel pins around the entire jamb. “Door one sealed.”
“Roger that,” Ulrich answered from Launch Control, watching him on the monitor.
Forrest then withdrew twenty feet to the second blast door, holding the barrel of his slung carbine with his hand to prevent it from scraping against the wall. He stepped into the stairwell and allowed Kane to push the door closed and seal it.