It was an exercise in frustration more than a legitimate intelligence-gathering action, however, since no matter where he looked, nothing was moving.
“Damn,” he finally cursed. “Nothing’s outside, and I can’t even see through any of the windows.”
“This king has control over its pawns,” Norton said. “That’s not so good for us, I’m afraid.”
“Queen.”
Masters glanced up at Hannah, but ignored her correction. Not that he thought she was wrong, but honestly it was irrelevant.
“Lovely. More good news,” Masters sighed. “Lay it on me.”
“It indicates a strong Queen,” Norton said, with a sly glance at Hannah. “And a fairly well developed intelligence. Stupid enemies are always preferable.”
“Well, you have me there,” Masters acknowledged. “But I don’t see as how we’ve got much say in the matter, so we’d better get ready to move out.”
Decision made, they dropped back down from the embankment and headed around to where the others were waiting.
“We’re heading straight in to the generators,” Masters said, “so stay low, move fast. Eddie, take point. I’ve got drag, so Rand and Plains, take security positions.”
The two Asatru nodded. Security positions would basically put them on either side of Norton and Hannah, treating them like two VIPs in a protection detail. That wasn’t their job, exactly, but neither of them was going to complain about it.
“No matter how we cut it, we’ve got to penetrate a lot of enemy territory to get where we’re going,” Masters said seriously. “Last time we tripped off a response before we got much more than half the distance we need to get to now. Alex, you said they smell heat?”
Norton nodded. “That’s as close as anyone’s been able to describe it, yes.”
“No idea of range?”
Norton shrugged. “Probably relatively close range. A few meters at best.”
“Say about ten feet, then?” Masters considered the information.
“It’s as good a guess as any.”
“All right, I think we screw stealth,” Masters said.
Rankin stared, half raising a hand like he was a child in class. “Uh, I don’t know about you, boss, but I don’t have the ammo to take on a few thousand rotting bloodsuckers.”
“You’re not alone, Eddie.” Masters quirked a half smile. “But the longer we loiter around the shadows of these buildings, the more likely one of them sniffs us out. What if we just hammered right through?”
“Ballsy,” Eddie said after considering it for a moment. “Stupid, but ballsy.”
Besides Hannah, everyone chuckled at the comment. The goth girl just turned her lips up slightly and seemed mildly amused by Eddie’s creative description of Masters’s plan.
“We know they’re not hanging around the windows,” Masters offered up.
“You have a point,” Norton conceded, “but it’s high risk. If you’re wrong…”
He didn’t need to finish that statement. If Masters was wrong, they could find themselves surrounded by hundreds of enemies before they got halfway to their goal.
“If I’m a little wrong,” Masters said, “we run and gun our way to the generators and hold the building for as long as we can while we get it shut down. If I’m a lot wrong…well, we withdraw as we can and come in using another method.”
“As we can,” Norton said dryly. “That’s the part I’m worried about.”
Perry Rand chuckled. “What’s the matter, Black? Do you want to live forever?”
“So what if I do?” Norton rejoined dryly. “It’s a noble goal.”
“I would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory against overwhelming odds,” Rand told him, then shrugged and chuckled softly. “Though I admit, even as an Asatru, I’d prefer to do that after a few more decades.”
“While the image of you doddering off to war with a broadax in one hand and a walker in the other is terribly amusing,” Norton replied, rolling his eyes, “none of us gets to choose our time.”
“Not true,” Rick Plains said quietly, drawing their attention. “We all get to choose our time to die, Black. It’s just that the choice is either now or later. Most men inevitably choose later until they no longer have the choice. I, for one, will choose now, and if it becomes later…well, I’ll have some bonus years to spend, now won’t I?”
“I hate Asatru,” Norton grumbled. “Not even fundamentalists can make suicide sound so logical.”
“I object to your choice of words, Black,” Hannah said, her eyes gazing out over the town before them. “What Richard speaks of is not suicide; it is the mastery of one’s own fate.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Alex said, giving up.
Honestly he knew that she was right, and as he’d said, he even found Rick’s argument compelling. That was the problem — he didn’t like any argument that might compel him to walk into crazy situations on a regular basis. One of the many, many reasons he regularly cursed the day he’d met Hawk Masters.
“Enough,” Masters said finally, his eyes on the town as he calculated the best entry path. “Unless anyone has a better idea, I say we move in fast and stay clear of the buildings.”
Norton sighed, but nodded. “Fine, but we’d better avoid the scene of the little massacre you engineered the last time we were in town.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re vampires, and they may still be…active, for lack of a better word,” Norton explained. “Say you paralyzed one with a shot to the spine but didn’t take off its head.…Well, if we’re spotted by one, we’re spotted by them all.”
“Ah,” Masters grimaced, quickly unfolding his map and playing his flashlight across it. “Damn. That’s right on our best path.”
“Then it’s not our best path.”
“All right, we have to cut in along the south then,” Masters said, “following this road here up along the airport fence, then cutting north. After that we move in an almost straight line.…Everyone got that?”
He looked around, but there were no questions and everyone was nodding, so he put the map away.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
All but sprinting down the center of a street in a town held by enemies was not an action that put any of the military people in the group at ease. When they infiltrated a town, it was usually done from wall to wall, building to building, in short sprints. This time they felt like they were open to the world and begging for a sniper to take them out.
Masters had to keep telling himself that the enemy this time didn’t have snipers, they didn’t even have people throwing rocks, but it was hard for them to go against their training and instincts the way they were. They were making great time, but he couldn’t help but feel bare-ass naked in the cold Alaskan night.
In just a few minutes they made it to the first intersection, which they blew through without a sign of the enemy.
Luck like that couldn’t last. Just no way in hell, and Masters knew it.
By the time they passed the second intersection, they spotted their first hint of motion, a door swinging open as they bolted past.
“They’re onto us!”
“Damn it! I was hoping for a bit longer,” Masters growled when Rankin warned him of the motion. “Double-time!”
They moved from a trot to a near sprint, moving hell-bent for leather for the next intersection. Masters kept an eye on the two civilians he had along for the ride, but he was pleased and surprised when he saw that Norton and Hannah were easily keeping pace. Norton surprised him moderately less — the man didn’t carry a lot of weight on him and was in good shape. But Hannah wasn’t even breathing hard from what he could see. Granted, she carried even less weight than Norton, but that was still impressive.