Three or four figures came through the doorway and started toward us. Several others grouped behind the doorway, peering out in curiosity. Behind me, I could hear the slight click, as Li Chin switched her weapon to automatic fire. My muscles tensed with readiness. I waited. The figures advanced. Now they were only thirty yards away. Twenty. Ten.
Now!
"Drop me!" I snapped to the guard. And instants later I was rolling on the ground, out of the line of Li Chin's fire, the Sten's stock tucking under my chin, its sights zeroing in on the group of men in front of me as they began to fall under Li Chin's fire. More fell, spinning with the force of the bullets, as my own gun began to spit fire. It was instant carnage, skulls erupting into bloody masses of brains and bone, faces ripped away, limbs exploded from torsos and sent tumbling into the air. And, because of the silencers on the Stens, it was all happening in an eerie quiet, like a music-less ballet of mutilation and death, with the victims being hit too quickly and too thoroughly for them even to be able to scream or cry out.
"The door!" I shouted suddenly. "Get the door!"
I swung my gun over the bodies of the men in front of us, and sprayed fire at the door. It was closing. Then I cursed. The Sten was empty. I ejected the empty clip and yanked another full one from my pocket, ramming it into the gun as behind me Li Chin continued to fire. For a moment the door stopped moving, and then, slowly, it started to close again, as if someone behind it was wounded, but trying desperately to close the line of defense. I fired off another round, then sprang to my feet.
"Cover me!" I shouted to Li Chin, simultaneously ripping a line of bullets into one of the men just in front of me who was trying to rise.
Then I was running, crouched, the Sten spitting its silent but deadly fire in front of me. I hit the door with my shoulder at full running force, then spun, spraying the room. There was a deafening explosion of shattering glass, as an entire wall of TV screens splintered into nothingness; then, to my left, a single non-silenced shot from a handgun. I spun again, the Sten blasting silently. From behind the door a single figure jerked upward with the force of bullets hitting his chest, then slowly slumped forward.
"Carter!" I heard Li Chin cry from outside. "The other door! More guards!"
I jumped for the door, over the lifeless bodies who were the room's only other occupants. My hand found and flipped the light switch, pitching the room into darkness. Around the corner of the building complex, from the door on the other side of the crater, came a massed group of guards, their automatic weapons already chattering. The TV monitors had told them all they had to know — attack on the volcano!
"Inside!" I cried to Li Chin, returning the guards' fire. "Hurry!"
Bullets spattered on the cement-block alongside the door, puffed up a deadly trail of dust at Li Chin's heels as she dashed furiously toward me. I felt a slicing pain through my shoulder and staggered back a step, then saw Li Chin leap through the doorway, pivot, and slam the steel door shut behind her, throwing home the heavy bolts. Wincing from the pain in my shoulder, I fumbled for the light switch. An instant later I found it and the room was flooded with light. Li Chin stood, her gun smoking, regarding me with concern.
"You'd better let me see that wound, Carter," she said.
But I'd already seen it myself. The bullet had just grazed the flesh of my upper bicep. It was painful, but I could still use the arm, and there was little blood.
"No time," I snapped. "Come on!"
I moved toward the door to the inside of the complex, at the same time ejecting the three-quarter empty clip from the Sten and ramming in another full one. The barrel of the gun was red-hot, smoking, and I only hoped it would continue to function.
"Which way do we go?" I heard Li Chin say behind me.
"Both wings with exits into the crater joined at one central wing, where it was built directly into the body of volcanic rock. That's where they'd store the most valuable weapons and have their workshops."
"And that's where they'd be expecting us to go," reminded Li Chin.
"Right," I said, turning to her and grinning. "And we don't want to disappoint them, do we?"
"Oh, no," said Li Chin, shaking her head solemnly. "Heavens to Betsy, no."
I opened the interior door slowly with my left hand, the Sten at the ready in my right. It led into a long, narrow corridor, bare except for fluorescent tubing along the ceiling. The thick cement-block walls muffled all sound from the outside, but on sounds from inside the complex it acted like a gigantic echo chamber. And the sounds I heard then were exactly the ones I had been expecting. In the distance, the sound of running feet in heavy combat boots. A lot of feet, and coming from two directions.
I turned and my eyes met Li Chin's. This was going to be the trickiest part of the whole operation.
"Now!" I said.
We went down the corridor side by side, at a run. The rattle of running feet was louder, nearer. It was coming both from the stairs at the end of the corridor and the corridor which led off to the left. We were less than twenty feet from the stairs when two heads appeared, coming fast up the stairs.
"Down!" I shouted.
We hit the floor at the same time, our Stens coming to our shoulders at the same time, and a deadly line of bullets spit from their mouths. The two bodies were smashed backward as if hit with gigantic fists, blood spurting upward as they disappeared down the stairs below them. The men below must have gotten the idea. No other heads made an appearance. But I could hear voices coming from the stairs, out of sight. A lot of voices.
I could also hear voices coming from the corridor off to the left.
"Let's have a little fishing expedition," I said to Li Chin.
She nodded. Side by side we snaked down the corridor on our bellies, fingers still on the triggers of the Stens. When we reached the turn in the corridor, only a few feet away from the stairs ahead of us, I took off the hat I'd taken away from the dead guard and slid it out in front of me, beyond the turn.
The blast of gunfire was deafening. The hat was torn to ribbons.
"Gee," said Li Chin. "Troops to the left of us. Troops in front of us. Troops in back of us. I'm beginning to feel downright claustrophobic."
"It won't be long now," I said. "They know they've got us trapped."
And it wasn't long. When the voice came it was angry, furious. We'd killed at least 20 OAS soldiers. But the voice was also controlled.
"Carter!" it shouted, the sound echoing in the cement block corridor. "Can you hear me?"
"No!" I shouted back. "I'm a lip reader. You'll have to come out where I can see you."
Li Chin grinned beside me.
"Stop the foolishness!" bellowed the voice, echoing more than ever. "We have you surrounded! Any way you try to go, we can blast you to pieces! I'm calling on you and the girl to surrender! Now!"
"You mean, if we move you'll blast us to pieces, but if we surrender you'll only boil us alive in oil?" I shouted back.
From the half-stifled growl that came next, I was sure that was what he would have liked to have done. And more. But again, the speaker controlled himself.
"No," he shouted. "You and the girl are guaranteed your safety. But only if you surrender now. You are wasting our time."
"Wasting their time?" Li Chin murmured.
I called out again: "How can I believe you?"
"I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman!" the voice came back. "Also, let me remind you, you have little choice."
"Well, Li Chin," I said softly, "shall we take his word as an officer and a gentleman?"
"Well, Carter," said Li Chin, "I've got a sneaking suspicion he's an enlisted man and a cad. But what the heck. I've always wondered what it would be like to be boiled alive in oil."