Forrest sprinted down the hall into Launch Control. “What the fuck is it now?”
“Look!” Kane said, pointing at the monitor. On the screen, a large a D-8 Cat track hoe was digging into the earth on the far side of the compound. Given the depth of the hole, the Cat hadn’t made more than a few passes.
Ulrich arrived and took one look at the monitor. “Broken Arrow, Jack!”
Forrest was already on his way to the fuse box. He unlocked it quickly and threw one of two red switches.
Ulrich watched the monitor, hoping to see the ground erupt in a series of heavy explosions. “Nothing!” he shouted, kicking the waste can across the room. “They’ve already torn up the fucking grid! Goddamnit, Jack, I told you!”
Michael stood in the doorway in his pajamas looking very confused. “What was supposed to happen?”
“We mined the upper compound with TNT,” Kane answered. “Everything you’re seeing on the monitor right now should have been blown to shit when Jack threw that switch, but that ’dozer has torn up the grid.”
“Jack, blow the goddamn house!” Ulrich said, seeing that Forrest was relocking the fuse box. “Once they see the ground was mined they’ll check the house sure as shit.”
“Not necessarily,” Forrest said, moving back to the monitor. “And if we blow the house, we lose this camera feed.” He shook a smoke from the pack and fired it up, drawing deeply as he stood thinking.
“At least we’d kill these assholes here,” Kane said, bringing up the tunnel feed to point out the flashlights moving around in the darkness deep within the basement. “It’s tough to tell what they’re doing, but they have to be working on some sort of a countermeasure for the flamethrowers.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Ulrich said. “What’s it going to be, Jack? Use it or lose it, goddamnit.”
“We need to see what they’re doing up there, Wayne. The house stays intact.”
If he was completely honest about it, Ulrich was glad this particular call wasn’t up to him; he was truly at a loss to judge the best move under the present circumstances.
“For now,” Forrest said, “we form a human chain all the way to silo number two. We have to transfer every bit of food out of there before we’re cut off from it. They’re digging down to the access tunnel to blow their way in. Once the silo is empty, we’ll use the remainder of the TNT to booby-trap it and the tunnel. Wayne, you’re in charge of the relocation. Kane and I will remain here in the LC. Who’s on duty in the cargo bay?”
“Sullivan and Marty.”
“Get them out and seal it. There’s still a shit-ton of supply left in number two silo, and we’ll need every swinging dick to move it.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ulrich said.
Forrest picked up the P.A. “Attention everybody. Our friends upstairs are using a bulldozer to dig down to the number two access tunnel. So we need all of you to pitch in and help move our supplies out of number two silo and into the number one blast tunnel. Everyone stay calm and listen to Wayne. We’re going to be okay.”
He set the mike down and stood smoking as he watched the Cat plowing through the dirt.
“That last part might be the first lie you’ve told them,” Kane said.
“I know it.”
“Those assholes don’t have nothin’ to do but excavate,” Kane went on. “Pretty soon we’ll be robbing Peter to pay Paul down here, and we only got four days of air to do that. Even less with everybody workin’ their asses off shufflin’ shit around.”
“I know.”
“We’re gonna have to go up there and give those motherfuckers somethin’ else to—”
“I know it, Marcus, goddamnit!” Forrest stood watching the machine make yet another pass, his mind working to process the entirety of the situation.
“Jack, let me put together an assault team… me, Sullivan, and Vasquez. We’ll take out those assholes in the basement and clear the house in nothing flat.”
Forrest ignored him, trying to gain a sense of how long it would be before the machine unearthed the access tunnel. He estimated it would probably take less than an hour, despite the obvious inexperience of the man operating the ’dozer.
“We need to disable that fucking Cat,” he said finally. “That solves our problem.”
“Shannon’s M-203 will do the trick,” Kane replied. “I can hit it easily from the upstairs window.”
“Get Sullivan ready to back you up,” Forrest said. “I don’t want a family man going out there unless it becomes imperative. You two will have to be very fast, Marcus.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ worry about that,” Kane said, grabbing for the P.A. to call Sullivan.
“Wait!” Forrest said, having a sudden thought. “Why the fuck are they showing us what they’re up to?”
“To scare us.”
“But they’re giving us time to prepare,” Forrest said. “Hold on a second. This shit isn’t right. Check the rest of the feeds.”
Kane checked through half of the camera feeds before finding that the kitchen camera had been uncovered. All they could see, however, was a close-up shot of a paper plate. Written on the paper plate was a short note: SURRENDOR NOW OR YOU ALL DIE!
Forrest shook his head. “Fuckin’ idiots misspelled ‘surrender.’”
He took the up P.A. “Mike to the LC. Mike, come to the LC.”
“What the hell can he do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing but I’m having a brain lock.”
When Michael returned he was dressed in his street clothes. “What do you need, Jack?”
“Put me inside this asshole’s head,” Forrest said, pointing to the note on the screen.
“Well, he needs a dictionary. Other than that, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean why is he showing me what he’s up to?” Forrest said. “The fucking asshole has met me. He knows I’d never surrender. So why is he bothering to ask? A taunt I could understand. But a ridiculous demand? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Okay, I see what you mean,” Michael said. “But I’m not sure there’s any way to know what he’s thinking by this point. I mean, I’ve never interviewed anyone who’s been driven to cannibalism before. His entire psychological profile has been…”
“Been what?”
“Well, I was about to say that it’s been altered, but no, that wouldn’t be right. It’s been synthesized. Who he is now is who he’s always been… just with all the fat boiled off, nothing left to inhibit his true… psychopathic nature. He would have to be psychopathic in order to retain command over so many men under these conditions.”
“So what’s it mean?”
“I think it means he’s deliberately coming after us to kill us. He’s not one bit interested in our surrender… no matter how he spells it. Is that what you’re looking for?”
“That’s it,” Forrest said. “Take care of our girls, okay?”
Michael smiled. “You got it.”
Michael left the room and Forrest went back to watching the monitors. He counted the total number of men he could see and came up with only six, not counting however many men were goofing off in the basement with the flashlights, which couldn’t have been more than four or five. That left around ninety men unaccounted for.
“Bullshit,” he said at length, drawing deeply from his cigarette. “This cocksucker’s up to something, Marcus. Something we can’t see. Where are we most vulnerable?”
The answer hit them both at the same time.
“Fuck, the lift!”
Forrest grabbed the P.A. again. “All hands under arms to Launch Control now! All hands to Launch Control! Civilian personnel are to seal themselves inside the common area immediately—no exceptions!”