He heard the soft hush of a breeze, and some crickets, but that was it. Ed strode across and stopped on the sidewalk on the far side of the street, at the mouth of the alley. He looked back the way he’d come and saw Hannibal walking toward him, his thick gray hair reflecting the moonlight like dirty snow. Under the weight of his gear the leader of Flintstone moved like an old man.
Hannibal stopped beside him and the two men looked around, north toward McNichols, south along the dark street, east down the alley, and back toward the building they’d just exited. A handful of dogsoldiers were now visible in the alley, black silhouettes against charcoal gray. Several started moving toward the squad leaders. Suddenly Hannibal shot his fist up into the air, and everyone stopped.
Ed cranked his head around. He’d heard it too, somewhere behind him, east. A low voice, and then a metallic sound, possibly a weapon. Not right on top of them, but close enough. Quiet, but loud enough to be heard…. He moved away from Hannibal and brought the butt of his carbine against his shoulder. Hannibal signaled for two of the men to come, but slowly. When the four of them were together, they moved out, trying to find the source of the sound. It was probably nothing, just a local denizen, but they had to check.
Moving at a creep, the men moved through the alley, into the backyard of a bungalow facing away from them. The rear wall of the house had crumbled into a pile of bricks, making an easy exit for a quick getaway. Or an easy way to get into the house without having to open a door. There was a soft sound from inside the house. Ed waved two of the men around the side of the house and then went through the hole in the wall, Hannibal at his side.
“I can’t believe it’s this fucking humid up here,” a male voice said, not much more than a murmur. There was the faint glow of a light. A flashlight, turned down low.
Ed took three very slow, careful steps, paused, then pushed around the corner, rifle up, Hannibal right there at his elbow. Two men sat on ratty furniture in the main room of the house, their heads leaned together. Ed lowered the muzzle of his rifle an inch as his eyes took in the men before him, then brought it back up. “Hey,” he said quietly.
The two men, engrossed in the map before them, physically jumped in surprise. They instinctively looked for their rifles, which Ed could see leaning against the wall behind them, perhaps six feet away. “Don’t move,” he growled, and Hannibal was beside him, rifle up. Then Sarah and Jason were coming in the front door, carbines up and aimed. The two men before them froze, looking back and forth between the dogsoldiers. If they’d wanted to try something their chances of success had dropped toward zero with the appearance of two more people toting rifles. Ed and Hannibal were on one side of the room, twelve feet away from Jason and Sarah.
“You guys with a squad?” Ed asked. Sylvester had been the last squad to leave ahead of Theodore, but they shouldn’t have caught up to them already. Plus, Ed didn’t recognize either of these guys, and he was pretty sure he knew everybody in Sylvester, from Brooke on down. The men were in their early thirties, with beards, wearing civilian clothes, and solid with muscle.
The two men exchanged a look. “Um, no,” the taller of the two said. He was wearing a khaki button-down shirt over blue jeans. He glanced again at the gear on the floor behind him. There was a plate carrier with pouches, a big backpack, and a suppressed sniper rifle.
“Hands on your heads!” Hannibal barked, his rifle up, safety off, and finger on the trigger. “Hands on your fucking heads!” He took a step closer. To his left Sarah raised her suppressed short-barreled carbine as well.
“Whoa, relax, easy,” the shorter of the two men said. “Relax, we’re on your side.” They both had pistols on their hips, but when confronted by four people with rifles up and ready they laced their fingers atop their heads, eyes dancing from face to face.
“Golf ball,” Ed challenged them.
“What?”
“Golf ball,” he said, even louder. The agreed-upon codeword response, given to every member of every team by LTC Morris for this mission, was ‘Felix’. He became aware of growing sounds behind him, but didn’t take his eyes off the men.
“Look, I don’t, we don’t know what that means. We’re just on our own, in the city to shoot some of those Army assholes,” one of the men with his hands on this head said rapidly. His eyes darted left and right as the sounds Ed had been hearing to his rear seemed to flow around the house. Two dogsoldiers stepped in the front door behind Sarah and Jason, and the head of a third appeared through the empty window frame to one side of the men. He was standing in the front yard, dimly illuminated by the numerous flashlights now on inside the house. Ed felt the floor under him move as more men entered the structure.
“I’m not going to take your pistols,” Ed said evenly, “but I am going to ask you to get down on your knees and keep your hands on your heads. That way we can all relax and have some polite conversation, get this sorted out.”
After a three-heartbeat pause, and a shared look, the men did as they were asked. They weren’t happy about it, but the number of heavily-armed dogsoldiers in the house had swelled to a dozen. Their eyes darted all around, wondering just what the hell was going on, why the house was suddenly filled with guerrillas.
“You got this?” Ed heard softly in his ear.
“Yeah,” he told George, without taking his eyes off the duo. “Leave me half and get going. We’ll meet you there.”
“We’re on a clock,” George reminded him unnecessarily.
Thirty seconds later half the contingent had moved off, leaving six dogsoldiers inside the house and three outside on watch. Verifying that others had their carbines still trained on the men Sarah slung her SBR and walked behind them. She walked out from behind the moldy couch carrying the suppressed M5 carbine she and Hannibal had spotted. She hoisted it for the two men on their knees to see, a dubious expression on her face.
“I dug the chip out of it,” the smaller of the two men said quickly.
“Yeah?” Deftly and with a few sure movements Sarah unloaded the rifle and separated the polymer stock from the metal components. She peered inside, then dropped the barreled receiver to the floor with a loud thump and dug out her flashlight. She shone it inside the stock, then turned it so everyone in the room could see. There was a divot cut out of the polymer in the center of the handguard.
“See?” the man said.
“How long have you been using that?” Ed asked.
“A couple of weeks. We ran into a couple of Army guys, killed them and took their gear. But we’d been told about the chip, so I dug that out.”
Sarah’s face got hard. “Yeah?” she said derisively. She walked back over to where she’d grabbed the rifle and picked up a Kevlar helmet with night vision goggles attached. “They tell you about the chips in the helmets, too?” She set the helmet down and shook the camo carbine stock at them. “They tell you about the second chip in the stock, the one in the middle of the butt, that you can’t dig out without destroying the stock, or at least making the rifle unshootable?” Her voice rose in volume until she was almost shouting. “Apparently your commanding officer didn’t tell you everything you needed to know for your mission. Because if you were who you say you are, after just one week of carrying this shit around you’d be fucking dead.”
She dropped the M5 stock, grabbed the pistol grip of her SBR, and pressed the muzzle of the weapon against the side of the man’s head. “Name, rank, and goddamn serial number,” she growled. Behind her, Jason’s eyes grew wide.