Crack. Glass shattered away from the .30-06 round. Crack. Just in case the bullet had been deflected by the glass or the frame.
He ran forward again. A dozen paces and Kolo was nearly at the door; it opened, and someone was standing there with a machine pistol in his grip—
Simmons halted again, and the rifle made the same smooth transit to his shoulder. This is going to be a little more tricky….
But Kolo was already diving to one side, not to escape the stubby muzzle that tracked him, but to give the Scout a clear shot. The crosshairs leveled on a face—it had to be a head shot, to make sure the man didn’t have enough time to fire.
Crack. The youth with the Uzi toppled backwards, a round blue hole in his forehead and the back blown out of his head. Crack. Crack. To discourage anyone thinking of following him out.
He pounded forward again. Kolo waited until he was nearly there, then dove through the open doorway. Simmons hurdled the body lying there.
“Eddie?” someone called, from a door to the right down the corridor. “Eddie?”
Kolo went through; Simmons followed just quickly enough to see his hand chop forward. The hatchet moved in a blur, and the technician in the swivel chair behind the radio spun with the blade sunk three inches deep between his eyes, the .45 flying from his hand. His boot heels drummed on the plank floor as he pinwheeled across the room, the chair rattling on its casters. Simmons stopped the chair with a slight grimace of distaste at the huge spastic yawn on the dead man’s face and pushed the sprattling body out on the floor. Then he set his rifle against the table and sat down before the shortwave set himself. It was a powerful unit, and there was a relay station on Mount Whitney; it would reach the coastal valleys without a problem. His fingers twisted the dials to the frequency that would be listening twenty-four hours a day, and he flipped the transmission switch:
“Climb Mount Etna. Climb Mount Etna. Climb Mount Etna.” That code had been John Rolfe’s idea, and for some reason the ghastly old bugger had thought it was hilarious. “Climb Mount Etna. Climb Mount—”
Something very heavy struck James Simmons on the point of the left shoulder. Cold flashed along his side; he clawed at the radio with his right hand, but still fell out of the chair. His legs buckled as he tried to rise, and then he was on his back, half under the table, mouth opening and closing as he tried hard to breathe.
Kolo was fighting with two men, shrieking like a mechanical saw going through a millstone as he leapt and slashed. A third lay curled around himself in the entranceway, trying to hold his rent stomach closed and screaming. The other two were close to Kolo, too close to shoot, trying to hit him with the butts of their rifles or stab with their bayonets. The Yokut moved between them as if they were in slow motion and he in real time, and red drops trailed from his knife. One man folded over with the blade buried in his gut; the other staggered back, firing blindly, blood flooding across his face from a cut that stretched from the corner of his mouth across an eyeball.
Two of the rounds punched home into Kolomusnim’s torso, and he dropped limply, the war scream cut off.
The room was suddenly empty except for the crackle of the radio speakers and the moans of the wounded. Simmons tried to breath again, but his insides felt wet. There were voices in the corridor outside, shrill with alarm. He fumbled behind himself, and found the toggle of the explosive charge.
Supposed to throw it in when we left, he thought, as he doggedly fought to close the numb fingers. So damn cold. Mother—
One last sharp tug.
“Three!” Tom said.
Tully’s thumb came down on the button. Half a mile away, the Semtex exploded where the Nyo-Ilcha warriors had crawled through the night to pack it around the bases of the watchtowers.
The light from the flashes came a fractional second before the sound, a multitude of thudding, snapping barks. Sound and flashes rippled like a strobe light, the explosions overlapping but distinct. The towers were thread-thin at this distance, the three he could see; their searchlights went out all at once, lowering the ambient light by about half. The blockhouse at the top of one tower seemed to fall straight down; the shock must have blown the four heavy pine logs away from the cross braces, and they’d opened out like someone doing splits. The other two shook, trembled, and then fell inward like hammers—which was exactly the effect the logs of the blockhouses at their summits would have on the machine gunners inside, and any Zapotecs in the tents beneath, when they hit the ground. Dust billowed up, cold under the starlight and the distant floods.
“Well, well, Good Star’s men did place all their charges,” Tom said quietly, as he began to walk briskly toward the armored car.
Behind him Sandra Margolin dropped to her belly in the dirt. Of the three of them, she was the mostly likely to make someone twig that instant too soon—nobody was going to miss the fact that she was a woman, not even in fatigues and not even for the half second that the rough baggy clothing might fool someone looking at Adrienne’s taller, sleeker curves.
Besides…
Crack.
The shot came from behind him, and the tall blond man in the beret a hundred yards ahead staggered, clutching at his arm.
Tom could have placed the location of the shooter easily from the sound alone, but he was expecting it. Everyone else was staring off toward the tent camp, and the chorus of screams and shouts there. And the high shrill whoops, and the flat banging of muskets. Some of the Russian officers and noncoms marching toward the transport aircraft with their Zapotec trainees had hit the ground and had their personal arms out, and they were bellowing at their charges to do the same. Tom was worried about their reflexes; they’d been there when it hit the fan before.
Less worried about the Colletta household troops manning the armor or lining the road. This was their first taste of the devil’s stew, mostly.
Crack.
The blond went down with limp finality, but the smaller man beside him had hit the dirt with commendable speed.
Good girl, Tom thought; she’d gotten one definitely at least.
“Good girl!” Tully said. “Didn’t freeze, and kept on thinking.”
The armored car loomed up, massive and shadowed—most of the light was coming from the landing lights of the airstrip behind him, and they were placed low and pointed straight up. The commander was still out of the turret hatch, his head cocked as he listened to something on the headphones he held in one hand rather than wearing. Now he was looking back a little, at the group of figures in gray field uniforms approaching him, but the light welling up out of the turret would make them indistinct. It made him very clear to Tom, down to the Colletta flash on his shoulder.
Tom began shouting: in Russian, keeping his voice deliberately blurred. The commander of the Catamount probably didn’t know Russian very well, and wouldn’t expect to understand what this tall blond man was shouting. He would recognize the sound of the language and immediately assume it was one of his lord’s Batyushkov allies.
Five yards from the vehicle, Tom began to run. Adrienne and Tully were both at his heels, but he left them behind; people were usually surprised at how suddenly Tom Christiansen could accelerate, although not those who’d seen him as a running back at Ironwood High. His legs were long enough that he walked quickly even without taking fast strides, and when he did…