Kane was already up and shrugging into his body armor.
“We need to get to the cargo bay, Jack!”
“Forget it,” Forrest said, grabbing for his own armor. “Unless I’m wrong, they’re already inside. We’re going to lose the first blast door.”
“But we don’t have a countermeasure for the cargo tunnel.”
“We’re the countermeasure, my friend. You and me.”
“Suits me fine, Captain.”
The rest of the combat personnel were arriving in Launch Control and suiting up for battle, including Emory, whom Forrest was not about to argue with under such dire circumstances.
“Shannon, I want you armed and sitting right here manning the goddamn console. You and West will be the last line of defense. Doc, does Price have the box of cyanide capsules?”
“He’s got them,” West said, accepting a carbine from Ulrich. “He and Mike are both sealed in with the women and children and they know what needs to be done if we lose the complex.”
“Okay, people, here’s the deal,” Forrest said, unlocking the fuse box again. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’ve already lost the cargo bay, and if I’m right, we’ll be losing the first cargo door very soon. Marcus and I plan to be in the tunnel when they blow that door. We’ll hit them hard the second they make the breach. Under no circumstances is anyone to open the second cargo door to try and help us!
“Wayne, the five of you will wait at the top of the stairs inside the main entrance until Shannon flips this switch and blows up the fucking house. At that time you five will enter the main tunnel with Sean sealing it behind you. Sean, you will then haul ass back down here with Shannon.
“Wayne and his assault force will make their way into whatever is left of the house, killing every motherfucker they encounter while en route to the lift elevator from above. Once you’ve secured the opening to the cargo bay, Marcus and I will meet you in the middle.”
“We’ll all be dead before that rendezvous ever takes place,” Ulrich said, strapping into his harness.
“Men,” Forrest said, pulling his helmet on over his head, “those assholes up there are half starved to death. That makes us stronger, faster, sharper, and one fuck of a lot meaner than they are. Hooah?”
“Hooah!”
“Move fast, Stumpy! Take maximum advantage of their confusion after Shannon blows the house.”
Fifty-Six
Moriarty stood in the center of the lift elevator looking down through the hole they had blown in the deck as he waited for it to touch down. He then stepped into the cargo bay with twenty-five of his best men and stood looking around.
“They’re raising rats down here, Major,” said the man who had slid down the rope to lower the elevator for the rest of the team.
Moriarty stood grinning. His plan had worked perfectly. They had taken the cargo bay without firing a shot, and they were about to blow the first blast door with their enemy still entirely unaware of their presence. The fact that the plan had actually been Jeffries’s was irrelevant.
“Goddamn textbook!” he said, clapping Edelstein on the back. “Get that fucking door blown, Corporal. Christ Jesus, I think we’ll be running through their fucking halls before they even know we’re in. Get that goddamn flamethrower ready, Bishop!”
Edelstein and his men went quickly to work setting the linear charges in the shape of a man-door in the center of the much larger three-ton blast door.
“Major!” an airman shouted from across the sixty-by-sixty-foot square bay. “These two trucks are loaded up with MREs!”
“Nobody touches the food until after we’ve secured this installation!” Moriarty ordered. “Is that clear?”
Suddenly, there was a thunderous explosion outside the lift opening. One of their men standing near the edge lost his balance and fell in, snapping his knee when he hit the deck.
“What the fuck was that?” Moriarty demanded.
“Holy fuck!” the injured man screamed, holding his knee. “They blew up the fucking house!”
“Christ, they’re probably attacking!” Moriarty said in fear. “Everyone back on the lift!”
Twenty-five men piled back onto the lift as the twenty-sixth ran to hit the up button.
Nothing happened.
“Major, they’ve cut the fucking power! We’re fucking trapped!”
Moriarty’s men fell into instant panic as the sound of automatic rifle fire began to erupt outside the opening and another man fell to the deck, shot through the head.
“Blow that fucking door open!” Moriarty screamed at Edelstein. “We’re rats in a goddamn barrel down here!”
Edelstein and his men went back to setting the charges, finishing quickly. “Everybody take cover!”
The men took cover behind the trucks as Edelstein ran backward, reeling out the wire for the detonator. He quickly twisted the wire ends around the leads then shouted, “Fire in the hole!” giving the small handle a twist.
The charges blew with a loud bang and the men surged forward to pry the chunk from the center of the door with crowbars. It fell forward onto the concrete, and everyone stood well clear of the opening as Moriarty shined his flashlight carefully inside the tunnel, all of them fearing another horrifying pyrotechnic countermeasure.
This tunnel was of an entirely different construction than the main entrance, made of steel walls and a steel ceiling, supported by I-beam framing every forty-eight inches for its entire length of thirty-two feet. The flooring was made of steel grating, and the walkway itself was suspended from no less than twenty steel-spring shock absorbers, ostensibly to allow the tunnel to survive a near-hit from a nuclear weapon. There were no holes in the ceiling or the walls, and there was nothing in the tunnel except some rubble blown inward by the blast.
“Get to work men,” Moriarty said, casting an upward glance at the dim opening in the ceiling, half expecting to see it encircled by enemy riflemen.
As Edelstein and his team hurried down the tunnel with the case of charges, two badly battered Green Berets stood up from beneath the steel grating with blood running from their eyes and ears. They opened fire at near point-blank range, aiming for the necks and faces of the four-man demolition team and killing them instantly.
Both Forrest and Kane then pulled the pins on a pair of grenades each and tossed them down the tunnel after Moriarty’s men, who were scrambling for cover with no idea what kind of force they had so suddenly and unexpectedly come up against. The grenades exploded as they bounced clear of the opening, and six of Moriarty’s men were killed or badly wounded, the quadruple explosion badly disorienting and rattling the remainder even as they fled.
Forrest and Kane pulled themselves up from the hole in the floor and shuffled to the end of the passage. Neither bothered to speak; it would be days before either would be able to hear at all. They switched on their infrared night vision as they took cover inside the partial doorway, easily seeing many of the men who were relying on the poor light for cover.
They began to fire, hitting Moriarty’s men in their exposed legs and arms, shattering bone and picking them apart. There was a lot of return fire but none of it was accurate enough to do much good, as most of Moriarty’s men had grown lax about recharging their NVDs. Kane took a hit in his left shoulder and Forrest took a direct hit on his boron carbide chest plate, but both men remained cool, calm, and collected, choosing their targets before squeezing off each three-round burst.
Moriarty lay on the concrete behind a small generator with his arms wrapped over the top of his helmet, his knees pulled tight to his chest in order to make himself as small a target as possible. He was now deadly certain he had fallen into some kind of Special Forces trap and that his middling force was heavily outgunned.