Wennda put a hand on his arm. “It’s looking at its wing, Joe. I don’t think it saw us.”
Farley blinked at her. “Its wing?” he said.
“Look,” she said.
He stared at her a few more seconds. She looked past him at Yone, and her expression was beseeching, and for some reason the idea that she was asking Yone for help because he’d gone flak happy snapped him out of it. He stood straight and looked out across the hard distance where the Typhon lay running simulation after simulation to teach itself how to destroy his bomber.
The wing was still extended. The head was still turned back. The re-created Morgana flew ahead of it again. The shape beneath the Typhon’s wing was longer now, and bulbous, like some kind of engine.
The aerodynamic head turned back to face the resurrected bomber. The vista dizzyingly revolved until the Morgana faced the Typhon head-on. The Flying Fortress frozen mid-bank. Two figures dimly visible through the cockpit windows. One of them Joe Farley.
The scene zoomed backward. The frozen bomber retreated to a distant speck, a slanted line of wing. The image held a moment, and then the B-17 completed its mid-canyon turn and the walls streaked forward as the Typhon advanced. This time a full-out headlong charge. The bomber growing in the center of the lifelike vista. Small white flashes from the nose and belly as the guns began to fire. The top turret swiveling forward. Bomber and Typhon like jousters at some apocalyptic tournament. The Morgana banked again to swerve. A bolt of white-hot fire shot from the Typhon’s wing pod. The Flying Fortress soundlessly erupted into a brilliant ball of particles that quickly dissipated and left no hint that in the previous second it had been a huge machine with men inside.
The image froze. The Typhon’s head cocked, then cocked the other way. The landscape vanished and the long head lowered to the slab.
You figured me out, thought Farley. You son of a bitch. You figured me out.
THIRTY
With eight men in it the long and narrow room in which Broben found himself was stuffed like a rush-hour bus. Boney had to hunch to keep his head from hitting the low ceiling. The walls were white plastic panels. Light was indirect and glaring. The floor had a grated drain, and high up on one wall was a bank of shower heads. No furniture of any kind. The whole thing looked molded in one piece. Not exactly the vast aquarium-city vista Broben had been expecting.
A muffled klaxon brayed like a distant angry goose.
Sten touched a panel on the wall and the oval opening squeezed shut like a tightening muscle. Broben started to tell him about Arshall, but something in Sten’s look made him realize that he already knew. “Where are we?” Broben asked instead.
“Clean room,” Sten said. “Decontam.”
“Anybody see you?”
Sten shook his head. “I don’t think so, but they could have cameras in here. I would.”
“Well, we’re not gonna hang around to find out.” Broben nodded at the inner door. “What’s waiting for us in there?”
Sten hesitated. “It’s easier to show you,” he said.
Broben gestured impatiently and Sten turned to the inner door. Sten motioned Boney aside and Boney shuffled awkwardly out of the way. The men had to crowd even tighter against each another as Sten pulled the door wider.
In the distance, framed perfectly in the doorway, was the Fata Morgana.
“Oh, baby,” Garrett breathed.
“Thurgood here we come,” said Shorty.
“Are you kidding?” said Plavitz. “That ship couldn’t be more of a trap if it was made out of cheese.”
“You want to go back to the Dome?” said Broben. “Feel free.” He stared hard at the bomber two hundred yards away. The bomb bay doors were open and the ball turret was pointing straight down into a divot scooped out of the floor beneath it. An arc of clean metal lay over the gouge that had been blown from the tail section. She was too far away to see what else might have been done to her, but from here it looked as if she were waiting for them on her hardstand. Nothing moved on or near her. Just looking at her lifted a weight from Broben’s heart.
He pointed at the doorway and swept his arm to the left. “All right, everybody on this side, break left a hundred yards and then go for the bomber.” He lowered his arm. “Garrett, you’re up front with the Browning. I got the rear.”
“Will do, cap—uh, lieutenant,” said Garrett.
Broben’s only acknowledgement of the slip was a slight nod. He looked at the men to the right of the hatch. “This side, break right, same thing. Sten, do your chameleon trick and provide cover from the rear.”
“The suit battery is pretty low,” Sten warned.
“I’ll take what I can get.” Broben looked around the cramped little room. “We’re not attacking a fort, we’re stealing a bomber. Got it? Keep it quiet. But you see anything that even looks like it’s guarding our ride, you shoot it like a mad dog. I don’t care if it’s a blind nun with a tin cup; we’re getting on that bomber and going home. Got it?”
“What do we do when we’re on board?” asked Garrett.
“Firing positions. Shoot anything that moves that isn’t us.”
Garrett, Plavitz, Martin, and Francis bolted out the doorway and veered left. Broben had time to think, This must be how those poor saps in Airborne feel when it’s their turn to jump, and then he was out the door and running on a rough stone floor inside a space so vast he didn’t perceive it as inside at all. Full night had fallen in the fissure, and faint pale light like strong moonlight came from everywhere and nowhere. Ahead and to the left was a cluster of low structures. Behind them rose taller, lighted buildings with narrow roads between them. Here was the vast aquarium space he had expected.
Near the huge main door were stacked rows of large rectangular containers the size of semi-trailers. Parked near these was a wedge-shaped troop transport. Ahead and to the right, the Fata Morgana faced the main door in the middle of a huge rectangular staging area.
In the lead, Garrett cut right and made for the Morgana as ordered. Broben glanced at Everett leading the right-flank charge. Boney had fallen back and was limping so bad he looked like he was skipping. Broben looked for Sten in the rear but couldn’t see him, which was terrific.
Where the hell were all these Redoubt bastards? Attackers outside, invaders inside, alarms going off like the end of the world, and not a soul in sight.
Shut up. Run.
The two flanking lines converged upon the bomber.
Man, the ship looked like a million bucks. The tail damage had been beautifully repaired. Broben saw no trace of flak damage, no oil streaks, no burn marks, not even bulletholes. Who’d bother patching bulletholes in a bird that wasn’t flight-ready?
Fifty feet from the bomber Garrett pulled up short and raised the .30-cal, with its remaining yard of ammo belt. Broben clearly heard him say, “What. The. Shit.”
A spider the size of a St. Bernard dropped from the open bomb bay and scurried off in the direction of the nearest cluster of buildings.
Garrett apparently realized that machine-gun fire would only invite attention, because he lowered the Browning. The creature wasn’t heading toward them, anyway.
Then another giant spider crawled out of the Number Four engine cowling and crept onto the wing.
Screw this, thought Broben. “Shoot it!” he yelled. “Shoot the goddamn thing!”